Shields of Pride

Chapter 25

Drawn by the sound of gleeful squeals, Linnet left her sewing and went to look out of the unscreened window into the area of greensward between inner and outer baileys. Joscelin and Robert were playing a chasing game, a romp of duck-and-dodge, catch-and-cuddle. Her heart filled with an ache of love that was almost too much to bear and tears prickled her eyes.

Beyond the keep walls, the forest was an ocean of gold and russet leaves tossed by a frisky wind and it was with delight that she watched the tints ruffle and surge. She had Joscelin to herself for the remains of the autumn and all the long winter. No campaigning, no dangerous separations, just time to gain fulfilling knowledge. She was not in the least dismayed by the thought of short, cold days and even colder long nights. Their chamber faced south to catch the best of the light, it had a fire and they could always pile furs upon the bed if their body heat was not enough. She smiled at the thought, warmth settling in her loins.

The sound of a throat being cleared made her jump and turn quickly round.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you, madam,’ said Henry from the doorway, ‘but Matthew the peddler - the man you looked at last night - well, he’s worse and I think Father Gregory ought to be fetched. Me mam gave him that willow-bark tisane like you told her but he just spewed it back up and his fever’s greater than ever.’

‘Is he so bad?’ Linnet said anxiously.

‘I fear so, my lady.’ Henry tugged at one earlobe in a worried manner. ‘When me mam looked at him there were red spots all over his chest and belly, the size of silver pieces. She reckons as it’s probably spotted fever.’

‘I’ll come at once and yes, you had better send for Father Gregory.’ She hastened to follow Henry down to the hall, her joy evaporating like morning mist.

On inspecting the sick peddler, Linnet’s fears were both increased and diminished. Matthew did indeed appear to be close to death. His breathing was ragged and harsh, and the only colour on his face was provided by the two bright-red fever streaks on each cheekbone and the smudged caverns of his eye sockets. A glance at the spots Henry had mentioned, however, revealed that they were not pus-filled and angry as was usual in cases of the deadliest kind of spotted fever. If victims survived, they were nearly always left with scarred, pitted skin. These blemishes were pustule-free, more of a rash.

There was nothing to be done for him except to keep him lightly covered with a blanket, isolate him in a corner of the hall and try to make him drink brews of feverfew and willow bark to keep the fever down.

‘Don’t let Robert go near him,’ she told Henry as she left the peddler to Father Gregory’s spiritual care. ‘He’s plainly surrounded by evil vapours.’

Henry bit his lip and looked away. ‘No, my lady,’ he said.

The peddler’s fever did not abate; his lungs continued to fill with fluid and he died at dawn the next morning. The words ‘spotted fever’ spread from mouth to mouth faster than plague itself. Women gathered herbs to burn to ward off the sickness. Rushcliffe’s village wisewoman suddenly found herself inundated with worried customers. So did Father Gregory. Confessions poured into his ears by the bucket-load, quite gluing them up. Holy relics and badges competed for space on people’s belts with nosegays and pomanders. Lurid stories of previous epidemics were related by sundry generations of survivors.

On the day that Matthew was buried in the churchyard, the laundress and her daughter complained of feeling ill, and by the evening of that same day, were both huddled upon their pallets with high fevers and blinding headaches. A report arrived via a pack-train from Newark that the spotted fever was raging there, too, and that several villages between the town and Rushcliffe had also been struck. The only good news was that most victims appeared to be recovering from the disease and that it was only dangerous to the old, the very young, the weak and the occasional unfortunates of whom Matthew seemed to be one.

Feeling tired and apprehensive, Linnet sent Ella away to bed and sat down on the couch in the bedchamber to finish sewing the hem of a new tunic she was making for Joscelin. He was in the antechamber talking business with Milo, Henry, Malcolm and Conan, the men who were fast becoming the nucleus of Rushcliffe’s administration. Conan was present in a military capacity, being responsible for the garrison and patrols. Milo straddled a bridge between the duties of seneschal and steward, with Malcolm as his adjutant and Henry ensuring that all ran smoothly on a practical level.

The arrangement appeared to be working well. It was less than six months since Joscelin had taken up the reins of government but there was already a marked difference in people’s attitudes. They had a sense of purpose and knew that if they took pride in their work their new lord would take pride in them and reward them accordingly.

The men left and Joscelin came into the bedchamber, arms stretched above his head to ease a stiff muscle. ‘My brothers have been ransomed,’ he told her. ‘Apparently they were captured in the forest not far from the battlefield and held by some enterprising villagers in the apple cellar of the local alehouse.’ Lowering his arms, he set them around her from behind and kissed her cheek.

‘What happens now?’

‘The usual,’ he said and she felt his shrug before he released her and sat down on the great bed. ‘They’ll all snarl at each other but my father will snarl the loudest and Ralf will be forced to back down - for a while, at least. As soon as he sees my father’s attention wandering, he’ll up and cause mischief again and Ivo will follow him.’

Linnet yawned and, leaving her sewing, followed him to the bed. Her limbs felt heavy and she was a little cold, as if it were the time of her monthly flux, although that was not due for another week at least. Her mind upon the relationships between Joscelin, his father and his brothers, she asked, ‘Why did you run away to Normandy when you were fifteen?’

He paused in the act of removing his boot. ‘Because if I hadn’t, either I would have killed Ralf or he would have killed me. Our father used to intervene - he put us in the dungeon once, in different cells, and left us there for three days. But that only made us hate him as well as each other. Running away was the only means of breaking the chain. When I came home, it was on my terms, not my father’s, and I had outgrown Ralf.’ He finished removing his boots and leaned his forearms upon his thighs. ‘Ralf ’s still trying to break his chain but his struggles just bind him all the more tightly.’

‘And if he breaks loose?’ Linnet asked.

Joscelin’s lips compressed. ‘Then God help us all,’ he said, then turned his head at a sound from the curtain that partitioned Robert’s small truckle bed from theirs.

‘Mama, my head hurts,’ Robert whimpered, wandering into the main chamber like a little ghost. Linnet gasped and started forward, but Joscelin reached the child first and, picking him up, brought him to the bed.

‘He’s as hot as a furnace,’ he said to Linnet, and they looked at each other in dawning horror.

‘It’s all right, sweetheart,’ Linnet soothed, gathering his small body into her arms. ‘Mama will give you something to make you better.’

Even as she spoke, Robert began to shudder with chills. ‘I saw Papa, my old papa, in a dream and I was frightened. ’

Linnet flickered a glance at Joscelin. ‘Hush, there’s nothing to worry about, dreams cannot hurt you.’ She kissed her son’s flushed brow. ‘Sit here with Joscelin while I fetch you something to drink. It won’t taste nice but it will help your poorly head.’ Easing Robert back into Joscelin’s arms, she left the bed and went quickly to the hearth.

Joscelin felt the rapid throb, throb of Robert’s heartbeat against the fragile ribcage and heard the swift shallow breathing and knew, as he had known in the past, how terrifying it was to be helpless.

In the bleak darkness of the wet October dawn, Joscelin fitfully dozed in the box chair at the side of the great bed. Beneath the covers, Linnet and Robert slept, the latter tossing and moaning in the grip of high fever. The rain drummed against the shutters, but in his mind the sound became the drumming of horse hooves on the hard-baked soil of a mercenary camp in the grip of burning midsummer heat. He sat astride a bay stallion, a horse past its prime with a spavined hind leg. The harness was scuffed and shabby, so was the scabbard housing his plain battle sword. With the eyes of a dreamer he looked upon his own face, seeing the burn of summer on cheekbones, nose and brow, the hard brightness of eye and the predatory leanness that showed an edge of hunger. He was very young.

A woman ran to his stirrup and looked up at him. She was slender and dark-eyed, her fine bones sharp with worry beneath lined, sallow skin. He tasted wine on his tongue and knew that he had been drinking, although he was not drunk.

Dismounting, he followed her urgings to a tent of waxed linen that bore more patches than original canvas. As he stooped through the opening, the fetid stench of fever and bowel-sickness hit him like a fist. Overwhelming love and fear drove him forward, instinct pegged him back.

The child on the pallet still breathed but he wore the face of a corpse: the dark eyes he had inherited from his mother sunken in their sockets, his mouth tinged with blue. He turned his head and looked at Joscelin. ‘Papa,’ he said through dry, blistered lips. The woman uttered a small, almost inaudible whimper and she, too, looked at Joscelin with dead eyes before slowly turning her back on him.

‘No!’ he roared and jerked awake to the sound of his own voice wrenching out a denial.

Linnet raised her head from the pillow and looked at him hazily.

‘A bad dream,’ he said, struggling to banish the image of Juhel’s waxen face. ‘How is he?’

Linnet leaned on one elbow to look at her child and set her palm against his neck. ‘The willow bark has held the fever but not taken it away. He’ll need another dose soon. I must try and get him to drink.’ She sat up and pushed the hair out of her eyes, then pressed her hands into the small of her back.

‘I’ll fetch him something - apple juice from the press?’ he suggested, knowing that the trees had been recently harvested and that cider brewing was under way.

‘Yes.’

Joscelin hesitated, perturbed by the dull tone of her voice and unable to see her face behind the tangled screen of her hair. ‘Linnet?’

She turned towards him and folded her arms across her breasts, not in modesty but in a gesture of shivering cold. ‘It will be for the best if you give the apple juice to Ella and do not come back,’ she said through chattering teeth. ‘She has had the spotted fever before.’

Fear flashed through him like a sheet of fire and flared into terror. ‘What are you saying?’

‘I think you know.’

Stubborn anger joined Joscelin’s other emotions. ‘Then you will also know that you cannot command me to something like that.’

‘Then I ask it.’

‘No!’ he said violently. ‘You ask too much. Breaca sent me away when Juhel was dying. She said that it was a woman’s domain, that I should be out earning silver to keep us in firewood. And when he died and she took sick with the bloody flux, she would not let me near her either.’ His voice became ragged as old scars were torn open and became new wounds. ‘Christ on the cross, I will not bear it again!’ Striding to the bed, he seized her in his arms and crushed his mouth down on hers in a long, hard kiss, absorbing her sweat and fever-heat.

‘There!’ He parted from her, gasping and darkly triumphant. ‘I’m irrevocably committed now. I’ll go and bring the apple juice and the willow-bark tisane and you won’t gainsay me again!’