Shields of Pride

Chapter 24

Matthew the peddler unfastened his pack and, spreading a cloth of madder-red wool on the floor rushes, proceeded to lay out his wares for the inspection of his potential customers. Every October and April for the past ten years, Rushcliffe had been a point on the circumference of his regular trade route between Nottingham and Newark. He was a sturdily built, red-cheeked man in his early thirties and usually enjoyed the rudest of health. Recently, however, he had caught a chill he could not shake off and today he felt like death warmed up. A tight band of pain was slicing across the top of his skull and his limbs felt as if they were made of hot lead. Shoulders jerking, he fought to subdue the spasms of a racking cough, knowing that it was extremely bad for business.

With shaking fingers, he reached inside a leather pouch and brought out a selection of ring and pin brooches, some plain bronze, some brightly enamelled. Another sack contained glass and ceramic beads for women to thread on waxed linen-string to make their own feast-day necklaces.

One of the keep’s laundresses stopped by with her little girl to watch him setting out his wares and started haggling with him over a small pair of sewing shears in a tooled leather case. Her astonishment was boundless when Matthew scarcely bothered to argue over the price of the shears and accepted her second offer with a wan smile. Emboldened, she also purchased half a dozen beads to make a necklace for her daughter.

‘Lost your killer instinct, Matthew?’ Henry asked as the laundress walked off with a gleam of triumph in her eyes, the little girl skipping excitedly at her side.

The peddler rumpled his hair and sniffed loudly. ‘Bit of a chill in the bones,’ he said. ‘I’m all right.’

‘I’ll get me mam to make you some hot cider and honey,’ Henry offered. ‘Or Lady Linnet might have some mulled wine if I ask her nicely.’

Despite his savage headache, the peddler did not miss the proprietorial note in Henry’s voice. The dapper cut of Henry’s tunic and his new gilded belt had not gone unnoticed either. ‘Taken a ride on fortune’s wheel, have you?’

Henry smiled. ‘I’m Lord Joscelin’s understeward these days. It’s my task to see that everything runs smoothly and that grumbles get aired rather than festering in dark corners. Lord Joscelin says it’s no use having a head if there’s no backbone to support it and legs to make it walk.’

‘He’s a better master than the last two, then?’

‘Make up your own mind. He’ll be home by compline tonight. You landed on your feet arriving when the men are due back in triumph from battle. They’ll all have money in their pouches and women they’ll want to spend it on. And there’s to be a feast with marchpane subtleties and swan with chaudron sauce!’

Matthew gagged. Chaudron sauce was made from the bird’s blood and entrails. It was considered a delicacy but at the moment even the mention of ordinary food was enough to make him heave. The image of the dark, almost black sauce was too much for his quailing stomach.

‘Best go and lie down,’ Henry said, his smile fading as he took a proper look at Matthew. ‘Your customers aren’t going to run away in a day.’

Matthew nodded, suddenly not having the strength to argue. Feeling as limp as a wrung-out dishcloth, he began clumsily replacing his wares in his pack. Henry stooped to help him, then spun round at an unholy whistling sound immediately behind him.

‘Henry, look what cook gave me!’ Robert waved a bone flute under the servant’s nose. ‘Father Gregory says he’s going to teach me to play a tune!’

‘Sooner rather than later, I hope.’ Henry winced and decided a serious word with Saul the cook was long overdue, since the man’s nature appeared to have taken an irresponsible and sadistic turn.

‘Oh yes, before Papa comes home, then I’ll be able to play it for him.’ Robert gave the flute another excruciating twiddle then stopped, his head cocked on one side. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Matthew’s too sick to sell his wares today; I’m helping him put them away.’

‘Can I help, too?’ Before Henry could answer, Robert had knelt down on the trade cloth and reached for a small heap of crosses carved of bone.

‘Better, I think, if you leave me and Matthew to it, Master Robert,’ said Henry as the child returned the crosses to their leather pouch, pulled the drawstring tight and handed them to the peddler. If Matthew was exuding evil vapours then this was the last place Robert ought to be. Although the child had grown in stature and girth this summer, he still looked as if a puff of wind would blow him away and his mother would roast anyone who put him in danger.

The peddler reached for the bag of beads but fumbled and knocked them over. Robert, attracted by the bright colours, ignored Henry and leaned over to pick them up. Matthew was taken with another bout of coughing. Spasms ripped through him, and although he covered his face with his cloak sputum still sprayed into the atmosphere.

‘Go now,’ Henry commanded Robert, his voice sharp with anxiety.

Robert jutted his small chin. Henry stared him out. The boy’s eyes flickered away and landed on Matthew, who was loudly wiping his nose on his sleeve. Robert pulled a face. ‘Don’t want to stay anyway,’ he said and scampered from the hall, the shrill notes of the bone flute alerting everyone to his passage.

It was very late and Joscelin had still not arrived. Linnet paced the bedchamber, beset by anxiety. The distance between Rushcliffe and Nottingham could easily be covered between dawn and dusk in the early autumn and he had said he would be here today. She went to the hearth and crouched shivering before the glowing logs as her imagination conjured up all manner of terrible things that might have happened to him on his way home to her.

The wind moaned in the chimney and the flames gusted upon the logs. Otherwise there was a suffocating silence. Below in the hall, the household was settling down for the night, the arrival hour of compline but a memory. The tables had been cleared of their fine linen cloths and glazed cups. The feast had been consumed by those with an appetite, but barely a morsel had passed her own lips and what she had eaten she had not tasted. Most of the swan had been polished off by the men of the garrison. Robert too had picked at his food and whined, demanding to know when Joscelin would be back. At length her patience had snapped and she had had her women put him to bed.

Rising from the fireside, she went to look at him. He was curled in a ball on his small truckle bed, his thumb in his mouth and his breathing easy and regular. She gently touched his cheek. It was flushed but he did not appear overly warm and she decided that it was just a residue of his earlier tantrum. Linnet felt like screaming herself and knew she was being foolish. It was only a night. If something disastrous had happened, Joscelin would have sent word. He might not think to do so for a minor delay, for men were like that, and what worried women did not worry them.

She undressed, washed her hands and face in the laver and went to bed. The sheets were cold as she drew them around herself. She thought of Joscelin’s warm bulk and the comforting security of his arms and felt bereft. If he did not come tomorrow, she would send a messenger to Nottingham and find out where he was. The decision made her feel a little better and after a while, as the bedclothes grew warm from her solitary body heat, she fell asleep.

A dream came to her, shockingly erotic and vividly real. She was lying on top of the bed dressed in the red samite wedding gown of her first marriage. A man was teasing her, his hand beneath her skirts and his hot, slow kisses draining her.

‘Does that feel good?’ he whispered against her mouth.

‘Joscelin,’ she murmured, arching towards him. She raised her hands to bury them in his thick, dark hair. Instead she encountered thin wisps receding from a broad, bony forehead. Her eyes flew open and met the lustful gaze and cruel smile of Raymond de Montsorrel, and she screamed. Candlelight blossomed in her face and she shot bolt upright in bed, scrabbling backward in terror from the brightness.

The light flickered rapidly sideways as its bearer placed the candlestick on the coffer. She saw the glitter of rain-drops on a wet cloak, the flash of metal on brooch and belt, dark hair curling around a cap. Her heart flopped over and over like a struggling, landed fish.

‘I didn’t mean to startle you,’ Joscelin said.

She became aware that she was exposed to his stare and that it was both admiring and avid. Kneeling up among the bedclothes, she donned her chemise. ‘I’ve not long retired and then to a nightmare. I have been so worried; where have you been?’

‘We didn’t leave Nottingham until after noon.’ He tossed his hat and cloak over the coffer. ‘I was using that old baggage wain of Giles’s and another wheel broke.’ He drew her against him and cupped her face for a long, exploratory kiss.

Linnet closed her eyes and melted against him. His lips and hands were cold but warmth spread through her from their touch. ‘Do you want to eat?’ she murmured between kisses.

‘Only you.’ He pushed aside the bedrobe to cup her breast. She uttered a small gasp that was silenced by another kiss. Her knees weakened.

‘You’re all wet!’ she giggled as his lips followed the touch of his fingers and spikes of hair struck cold against her throat and chest.

‘That’s because it’s filthy weather outside,’ he answered in a muffled voice as they fell together across the bed. ‘So are you, come to that.’

She revelled in his weight, the hard pressure of his hips upon hers. She found her way inside his braies and found him hot and hard, tight to bursting, and she could not bear it, she wanted him so much. ‘Oh please, now!’ she half-sobbed against his mouth in a fever of urgency, positioning herself to receive him and make herself whole.

The prickle of damp wool against her skin, the thrust of hot, smooth flesh, the grip of his cold hands lent exciting contrasts of texture and sensation to the experience and within moments she was thrashing on the crest of a wild climax as Joscelin surged to his own.

‘God send me this kind of homecoming every time!’ he said with a breathless laugh and, having kissed her tenderly on each eyelid, he sat up and removed the rest of his clothing. Linnet eyed his physique by the glow of the candle. He was not heavily muscled and broad like Conan. Indeed, he carried more than a hint of his father’s wiriness. Here and there were minor scars, reminders of his life as a mercenary, but she could see no new ones to worry about.

‘Now do you want to eat?’ she asked. Coupling had always given Giles a voracious appetite and she knew that despite Joscelin’s lean frame, he could put away vast amounts of food.

‘Again? Give me time to rest, woman!’

‘You know what I mean!’ She nudged him, then smiled impishly.

He chuckled. ‘Well, since I am ravenous on both counts, but have taken the edge off the most important, food would be welcome to replenish my strength for the subtlety to come.’

Linnet answered his pun with a laugh and went to rouse her women.

‘We heard about the battle,’ she said later as she watched Joscelin tuck into bread and thick slices of meat from one of the cold roasts. ‘All sorts of rumours have arrived with merchants and peddlers. Will there be peace now, do you think?’

Joscelin swallowed and shook his head. ‘Hard to tell. The king and his sons are still wrangling in Normandy. At least there’s a truce until the spring. Once the grass stops growing, there is not enough provender for the destriers. I’ve known winter campaigns before but if they can be avoided, they usually are.’ He cut another slice of meat and there was silence while he devoured it. Then he wiped his hands on a napkin and picked up his goblet. ‘I know that the earls of Leicester and Chester are imprisoned but there are still plenty of troublemakers left - Norfolk for one, Ferrers for another. His men were all over Nottingham making nuisances of themselves.’

Linnet refilled his cup. She had met Robert Ferrers on occasion: a strikingly handsome young man, although short in stature and possessed of sharp-cornered aggression. He was one of Nottingham’s greatest landholders and she knew it was a source of anger to him and jealous envy that he did not also own the castle, which was firmly in the hands of the Crown.

‘That was another reason I was late,’ Joscelin said. Rising, he dusted crumbs from the clean shirt he had slipped on and went to the bed where his hastily removed belt still lay, his knife and pouch hanging from it. He pulled open the drawstring of the pouch, removed something and returned to her. ‘I went to the Weekday alehouse and met up with an old acquaintance from my garrison days.’

‘You were late because you were gossiping in an alehouse?’

‘Some of Ferrers’ men were making fun of him and had to be dealt with. And then I saw Gamel safely home. He’s a bone carver now, a skilled one. I bought this for you.’ He placed an intricately carved comb and matching mirror case in her hand. ‘I thought they were appropriate, ’ he said softly. ‘A token of our wedding night.’

Linnet looked at his gifts, turned them over in her hands, and felt the pressure of tears at the back of her eyes. The carving on the mirror case was exquisite, depicting in miniature a man and a woman riding out with hawks and dogs. ‘They are beautiful,’ she said a little unsteadily. Giles had never given her anything. ‘He’s a member of the garrison, you said?’

‘Used to be. He lost his leg in battle and had to find a different living. He has a small booth on the weekday market up near Hologate.’ He smiled. ‘Gamel even carves his own legs now.’ Resuming his seat, he prepared to assault a dish of raisin honey-cakes. ‘I’ve commissioned him to put the carving on two new chairs for the dais.’

Linnet was about to enquire if they could afford such luxuries, then remembered what the messenger had said about the battle at Fornham. ‘Did you take many ransoms?’

He gave her a look of irritated amusement. ‘Do you want me to show you a tally of the keep’s accounts? I assure you I haggled a good bargain out of him - although not as good as yourself, I do admit, having seen you at work in London.’

She blushed but nevertheless held his gaze steadily. ‘Well, did you?’

Joscelin sighed. ‘Enough to keep Conan and his men until Easter. Enough to pay for two new chairs, a set of bridle bells for my stepson’s pony and a gift for my beautiful wife.’ He dusted crumbs from his fingers and finished the wine in his cup, adding a little pensively, ‘And enough to repay my father for what he lent to us in the summer. He has need of coin and comfort now.’ He frowned and shook his head. ‘I never thought my prowess with the sword would lead me to contribute to my brothers’ ransoms.’

Linnet ran her forefinger across the teeth of the comb. Although she disliked Joscelin’s father, she was slowly coming to understand that his brusque arrogance was the blazon on a battered shield of pride behind which lay accumulated years of lonely pain. ‘Will he find them, do you think?’

Joscelin shrugged. ‘I expect so, unless they’re at the bottom of a bog. The battle was chaos but we held the better ground and the spine of Leicester’s army was made up of untried Flemings. Once they broke and ran, it was all over.’ He pushed his hands through his hair. ‘I helped my father search among the dead and the prisoners the next day but there was no sign of Ralf or Ivo. If they escaped the killing and there is any sense in their skulls, they’ll try and make their way back to Norfolk’s keep at Framlingham.’ He turned to face her as she rose from the stool by the hearthside.

‘If we have sons other than Robert, or indeed daughters, God forbid I should ever raise them the way my father raised us. I thought his face was going to crack beneath the strain of keeping it blank when we were looking at all the bodies laid out. Do you know, the only time I’ve ever seen him weep, the tears were made of usquebaugh.’

Linnet came to him across the dimness of firelight and wrapped her arms around him. ‘You fear needlessly,’ she said. ‘Our sons and daughters, should God grant them to us, will know love and joy from the moment of their birth. Neither of us would have it otherwise because of what has gone before.’ She stood on tiptoe to kiss the side of his mouth. ‘It’s very late my husband. Come to bed.’