Shields of Pride

Chapter 26

Left foot presented, Ralf leaned into his shield and hammered his sword-hilt lightly against the rawhide rim in a steady litany of challenge. The blade was fashioned of whalebone and his opponent was Hamo, one of his father’s knights, who had agreed to a practice bout in a corner of the bailey.

All the pent-up anger and tension within Ralf came seeping to the surface. He found himself wishing that it were for real: that he could strike and see blood flow. From the perimeter of the battle circle, soldiers, knights and retainers shouted advice and encouragement. Ralf could smell their anticipation. A rapid glance upwards showed him that his mother and aunt were watching from the bower window. He would give them what they wanted, prove to them the kind of warrior he truly was. But desire for their admiration was not the spur that drove him. That particular goad was in the possession of the badger-haired man who had reined in his grey horse and, hand on hip, was watching Ralf thoughtfully.

Ralf started to circle Hamo, seeking a weakness, an opening to exploit. He lunged. Hamo twisted and quickly parried with his shield.

‘Come on, Ralf, get him!’ shouted someone in the crowd. Two or three others added their voices and Ralf noted them with grim pleasure. For all that he had been in disgrace for joining Leicester’s rebellion, he was still the heir. His father had pardoned him and accepted him back into the family fold. It was believed in some quarters that William Ironheart was beginning to fail and Ralf had done nothing to disabuse that notion. Only let them look to him as Ironheart’s natural successor.

Hamo weaved and dodged and managed to strike the occasional good blow on Ralf’s shield but the effort it cost him told in his scarlet complexion and whistling breath. Ralf remained on the balls of his feet - light, elegant and deadly.

‘Get yourself out of that corner, Ham, or he’ll have you!’ a knight in the crowd yelled, his own sympathies with the older, heavier man.

Eyes blazing with exultation, Ralf sprang like a lion and made a triumphant killing blow. Hamo dropped sword and shield and knelt, conceding defeat. Ralf ’s roar of triumph rang around the bailey, raising hairs on scalps and spines. The whalebone sword lifted on high, he pivoted in a slow circle, acknowledging the adulation of the women in the window splay. Eyes hot with jubilation, he sought his father’s gaze. But Ironheart’s attention was not upon him. His father’s back was turned and he was listening to the mercenary Conan de Gael, who had just dismounted from a foam-spattered courser and was talking rapidly.

Ralf’s pleasure turned to bitter resentment. He spat over the side of his raised shield, then stalked over to his father and the mercenary.

‘It is very important that you come—’ Conan was saying but broke off and turned to look Ralf up and down. ‘Learning to fight?’ he said pleasantly.

Ralf wished that his practice sword had a true steel blade. He looked at his father but the old man’s expression was so stiff with control that it might have been carved of rock. ‘I already know how to fight - but if you want me to teach you a lesson?’ he sneered and raised the whalebone sword suggestively.

Conan lifted his brows. He, too, glanced at Ironheart, but receiving the same stony response he shrugged his powerful shoulders. ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘I’ve to wait while a fresh horse is saddled, and a man gets rusty without regular practice. Besides, it won’t take long.’ He went to Hamo. ‘May I?’ He took the whalebone sword from the knight and tested its balance.

Ralf quivered with rage at the mercenary’s nonchalance. The man was near his father’s age, with more scars than a raddled old tomcat. His blond hair was receding and the suggestion of a paunch bulged his quilted surcoat. It was obscene that Conan de Gael should even dare to take up the challenge.

A larger crowd was gathering now, drawn by the scent of drama. Martin pushed and wriggled his way to the forefront of the audience. Conan saw him and winked and grinned. Martin winked back and then cheekily stuck his tongue out at Ralf.

It was the final insult and Ralf attacked without warning, fast and hard. Conan was flung backwards by the flurry of blows but, after the first undignified leap, he kept Hamo’s shield high to absorb the violence of Ralf’s attack and played a defensive role until he had worn the edge off the younger man. Again and again Ralf came at him, full of vicious aggression, determined to make a kill. Conan parried and heard the shouts of derision from the watchers, the yells encouraging Ralf to finish him off.

‘Come on, you whoreson, yield!’ Ralf snarled as he pressed Conan to the edge of the circle.

Conan was panting hard and didn’t reply - but the expression in his eyes was eloquent.

Ralf redoubled his efforts. Although he still moved with grace, his face was pink and streaked, and his chest was heaving rapidly. Conan watched and waited for his moment, then made a deliberate, almost clumsy feint at Ralf ’s legs. Ralf immediately lowered his shield to counter the intended blow, but Conan straightened and changed direction like a sudden dazzle of lightning and the blunt sword came down across the back of Ralf’s unprotected neck.

‘You’re dead,’ Conan gasped, lowering his guard and standing back.

A shocked silence descended, the onlookers not quite believing what they had seen. Ralf quivered, muscles tense to renew the attack. ‘Don’t make a fool of yourself,’ Conan said softly out of the side of his mouth. ‘Part of learning is knowing how to take defeat.’

‘I don’t need a lecture from vermin like you!’ Ralf spat and, tossing down his sword, shoved his way out of the circle, making sure that his shoulder barged Conan’s in passing.

Conan returned the whalebone sword and the shield to Hamo and watched Ralf stride towards the hall with thoughtful eyes. The spectators started to disperse.

‘He let his hatred cloud his senses,’ Conan said to Ironheart. ‘Otherwise he’s an accomplished young man.’

‘You didn’t exactly encourage him to be rational,’ William answered as his courser was led out and a fresh horse was brought for the mercenary.

Conan set his foot in the stirrup. ‘Neither would an enemy,’ he retorted. ‘He’s wound up as tight as the pulley on a siege engine. Just make sure that when he lets fly you aren’t standing in the way.’

Ironheart grunted. ‘I don’t need your advice on how to handle my own son. Ralf doesn’t like you and I don’t blame him.’

Conan sighed deeply. There was still a wide rift between himself and William de Rocher and he didn’t think that, despite praying together at Morwenna’s tomb, it was ever going to narrow beyond a brusque truce.

Ironheart glowered at him. ‘Anyway,’ he said shortly, ‘why send for me? What makes you think I am going to be of any comfort to Joscelin?’

‘If the woman and child die, he will need you. You have known the grief. I do not want to see him ruined as you and I were ruined. I’ve always had the lad’s best interests at heart, whatever you think of me. He is my kin and the de Gaels were not always mercenaries and ne’er-do-wells. My grandfather had lands and a proud bloodline but he was brought low by taking the wrong side in a dispute. I want Joscelin to succeed. I want him to have a better life than either you or I have had.’ Conan paused and sucked a breath through his teeth, his complexion dusky with high feeling. ‘I have said more than I should but this is not the time for holding back.’

They rode out of the keep in silence: a normal state for William but not for Conan, who was usually as brash as a jay.

‘The woman and child are mortally sick, then?’ William asked after a long time.

‘I do not know,’ Conan said wearily. ‘As few people as possible are going near them lest they breathe in the evil vapours - Lady Linnet’s instructions. I only know that Joscelin has scarcely eaten or slept since they took ill, and this morning he sent for Father Gregory.’

‘Does he know you have come to fetch me?’

Conan shook his head. ‘I do not think he knows anything but the mortal peril of his wife and stepson.’

William compressed his lips. ‘He’s only been wed to the wench since harvest time,’ he growled. ‘You’re not telling me he’s heartsick beyond all healing?’ And, without waiting for Conan’s contradiction, he rode on ahead, making it clear to the other man that he did not wish to communicate at all.

Joscelin eyed the congealing bowl of pottage that Stephen had brought to the bedchamber half an hour since. Small circles of fat were forming at the edges, encrusting the pieces of diced vegetables sticking out of the liquid. His stomach, normally robust enough to accept any form of sustenance without demur, clenched and recoiled. He abandoned the bowl on the hearthstones, an untouched loaf beside it, and reached for the flagon of wine that Stephen had brought with the meal. That at least he could swallow without retching.

With dragging feet he returned to the bed and sat down in the box chair that had become his prison and his prop during two lonely nights of vigil, or was it three? Time had lost all meaning as he watched the contagion invade and consume.

Father Gregory had visited mother and child, and used the opportunity to shrive them. A precaution and a comfort, he had said, but it had been no reassurance to Joscelin. To shrive them was to acknowledge that they might not recover.

His eyes felt raw with lack of sleep but he knew that if he closed them, if he relaxed his vigil for one moment, death would come with swift stealth and take Robert and Linnet from him as it had taken Juhel. And even if death did stay away, he knew the dreams would not.

He stared at them both sleeping together in the great bed. Perhaps Robert was breathing more easily since the last dose of feverfew or perhaps it was just the fancy of his aching mind. Linnet tossed and moaned, her hair darkly damp, her face and throat marked with the red blotches of the fever. She pushed at the covers and began to mutter. Her body arched and bucked and she licked her dry, pale lips.

Joscelin leaned over her, grasping her hot hand in his, stroking her forehead.

Her glazed eyes flew open and she stared directly at him, but he knew she could not see him. ‘Raymond,’ she panted. ‘Raymond, someone will come, please don’t.’

‘It’s all right, Raymond’s not here,’ he soothed and turned briefly away to wring out a cloth in cold water and then lay it across her brow. ‘You are but dreaming.’

‘No.’ She frowned, weakly fighting him. ‘Not a dream.’ Her body moved beneath the damp linen sheet, arching sinuously as if receiving a lover. ‘No, please, it is too dangerous. I . . . ah!’ A spasm caught her, leaving him in no doubt that her imaginary lover had entered her body. Prickles of cold shivered down Joscelin’s spine. His gut churned as she twisted and cried out, for the sounds, despite the torment of fever, were of pleasure, not pain. Raymond de Montsorrel. He was being cuckolded by a phantom in his own bed.

‘Linnet, in God’s name, he’s dead!’ Joscelin cried, striving to hold her thrashing body. ‘Christ, wake up!’

She fought him, her muscles rigid, her lips drawn back from her teeth in something that was part snarl, part sob, then she gasped and went limp.

Almost weeping himself, Joscelin slowly released her. ‘Oh God,’ he said, and put his head in his hands.

‘It will be safer if you let me pleasure you in the other way,’ she said in a hoarse, pleading whisper, her gaze darting upon the ceiling as if she could see moving pictures there. ‘If Giles were to find out, he’d kill us both. I know you like it when I do this.’

The urge to crush his hand over her mouth and silence her almost overpowered him. He sprang to his feet and strode into the antechamber while he still retained the control to do so. Pressing his temple against the cold stone wall, he fought his gorge. He remembered the bawdy barrack-room gossip in Nottingham. Raymond de Montsorrel’s appetite for sexual congress had been legend. The man himself had been nothing to look upon - balding, raddle-featured and with bowed legs from a life spent in the saddle - but that had never spoiled his attraction as far as women were concerned. His talents were all tucked inside his braies, so the gossip went. One of the garrison whores had boasted that Montsorrel had taken her up against the wall of St Mary’s Church on Ascension Day and that the size of his manhood would have put a bull to shame. And Linnet had let him—Joscelin ground his fist against the wall, not feeling the pain, and tried to think with his head, not his lurching gut.

It was no different from himself and Breaca, he told his recoiling instincts. She had been twice his age, amused and experienced in the ways of lust, and he had had no sense of guilt or sin at the time. He had no right to cast stones but he was deeply chagrined to find them lying at his feet anyway. Filled with self-disgust, he turned round to go back to the bed and saw his father standing in the doorway.

‘Conan told me,’ Ironheart said and stepped over the threshold. ‘For once he was right to open his stupid big mouth. Stand aside and stop glowering. Where are they - through here?’

Joscelin nodded. His head felt muzzy and he knew one of his incapacitating headaches was waiting on the periphery to attack. Damn Conan, he thought, and at the same time felt a tight swelling of relief in his throat and behind his eyes. Unsteadily he followed his father into the bedchamber.

Ironheart stood at the bedside. Joscelin heard the low mutter of Linnet’s voice.

‘What is she saying?’ He hastened to his father’s side, alarmed at what she might reveal in front of him.

Ironheart looked sidelong at Joscelin, his eyes bright with speculation. ‘That you cannot lie with her any more because she is with child.’

‘What?’

‘Is it true?’

‘I . . . I don’t know. She didn’t say anything before the fever struck.’ Joscelin sat down on the chair at the bedside and clasped his hands. ‘It is too soon, I think, and there have been very few opportunities.’ How many opportunities had there been with Raymond de Montsorrel? His eyes flickered to the little boy. The fever flush had faded from his brow and he appeared to be sleeping deeply and calmly. He resembled his mother, scarcely any Montsorrel traits to be seen lest it be in the slant of cheekbone and jaw. Did it really matter which Montsorrel? An exquisite pain was beginning to throb through his skull, making rational thought impossible. Behind his closed lids, small specks of colour performed a wayward dance and he groaned softly.

‘You need to sleep,’ Ironheart said, giving him a sharp look. ‘There is nothing you can do that a maidservant cannot. Go to.’

Joscelin was horrified. The thought of what Linnet might gasp out to a maid or his father in her fever was enough to make him shake his head in vehement denial. And there was the memory of how he had lost Juhel and Breaca, one in the flesh, the other in spirit. ‘I cannot!’ he said hoarsely.

‘You must.’ Ironheart laid his hand on Joscelin’s shoulder and stared him in the eye. ‘I do not know how loyal your men are but, if necessary, I will give the order for you to be taken and bound. Milo and Conan for certain will not hesitate.’

‘You would not dare!’ Nauseous with exhaustion and pain, Joscelin returned his father’s glare. For reply, Ironheart removed his hand from Joscelin’s shoulder and headed towards the door, his breath indrawn to bellow.

‘For Jesu’s sake, you do not understand!’ Joscelin cried after him, his voice breaking. The effort of forcing his shout through the tightness in his throat squeezed the band of pain across his forehead until he thought his skull was going to shatter. ‘I had a woman and child once before and I lost them. I wasn’t there when it mattered!’

Ironheart winced as if the raw anguish in Joscelin’s voice was a physical blow. Turning, he took two paces back towards his son, then stopped. His fists opened and closed and his throat worked. When the words came they were heaved out with effort as if they were enormous stones. ‘I wasn’t there to protect your mother,’ he said. ‘When I arrived from their summons she was dead but still warm enough for me to believe she was yet alive - only sleeping.’ He gave a choked laugh. ‘They said I tried to kill myself for love of her but it wasn’t true. It was for hatred of myself.’ Clamping his hands around his belt, he drew a shaken breath. ‘The woman and child you mentioned, this happened during those missing seven years?’

Joscelin nodded, his pain too great for him to be amazed that his father had voluntarily spoken of his own hidden guilts and griefs. ‘Breaca took me under her wing and then into her bed. She bore Juhel in the winter of ’sixty-one. Your grandson would have been twelve years old by now.’

‘What happened?’

‘Camp fever.’ Joscelin bit his lip. ‘He wasn’t strong enough to survive it. When he died, so did the fire between his mother and me - or perhaps it was already out. I don’t want to lose Linnet and Robert, too.’ He bowed his head and closed his eyes. Even the candlelight was almost too much to bear as the headache invaded and wrecked his faculties.

‘You won’t lose them,’ Ironheart said gruffly. ‘The child looks to be over the worst, from what I saw just now, and the woman’s got a stubborn core of steel.’

‘No, I’m going to lose her, too,’ Joscelin said bleakly. ‘Everything has changed.’

‘Don’t talk such drivel. All that has changed is your ability to think.’ Ironheart’s harsh features suddenly softened and he gave a deep sigh. ‘Conan thought I’d dredge up some wise words from somewhere to comfort you but I fear he overestimated my ability. All I can say is that I am here. You have to trust me. Give me the care of your wife and stepson for tonight and I promise I won’t let anything happen.’

Joscelin wanted to deny his father, tell him it was impossible, but the pain that had been toying with him like a cat with a mouse now sheathed its claws in his skull and the world became a seething agony. He was only dimly aware that the words emerging from his mouth were not the ones he desired to say.

Ironheart went to the door and shouted for the servants.

Linnet felt something lying on top of her. Hot and smothering, it pinned her to the mattress, making it impossible to breathe. She struggled to push it off but it responded by tightening its grip. She thought she could feel cruel fingers digging into her flesh and the bowl of her pelvis cramped as if she had been invaded. Choking for air, she opened her eyes and at first saw only the darkness of the night illuminated by the one lonely flame of the night candle beside the bed. She could make out the figure of a man sitting in the chair. He started to rise and bend towards her, and as he did the weight on her chest grew leaden.

‘Don’t fight me,’ whispered the voice of Raymond de Montsorrel. ‘You cannot win.’

She tried to scream but there was no breath in her lungs. A whirling darkness engulfed her. Her eyes were blind but she could still hear voices. Raymond whispering in her ear with the darkness of lust, Giles raging, calling her a harlot. Joscelin . . . Joscelin saying, Christ, wake up, I don’t want to listen to this. Another voice, closer, harder with frustration.

‘Come on, woman, damn you. Fight. Or was I wrong about your spirit? Do you think I’m going to let you do this to my son? You will not die!’

The other voices faded and the darkness ceased to whirl. Her lungs shuddered, filling with cold air. Making a tremendous effort, she forced her lids apart. The figure was leaning over her now, eyes darkly gleaming in the candlelight, cadaverous features intense but very different from Raymond’s. William de Rocher laid a calloused palm on her brow in a surprisingly gentle manner. She tried to flinch but her weakness was too great. Indeed, her eyelids were too heavy to hold open, and after a brief struggle she had to let them flicker down.

‘Hmph, still hot,’ she heard Ironheart say, ‘but steadying down. You, girl, see to your mistress.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Linnet heard the trickle of water in a bowl, and in a moment a blessedly cool cloth was laid across her forehead. The bedside chair creaked as Ironheart sat down again. Why was he here? she wondered vaguely, and where were Joscelin and Robert? It was too difficult to think. Sleep was claiming her in a soft, deep blanket and she welcomed its embrace.

Ironheart watched Linnet sink into sleep as the maid lightly wiped her down. Dawn was still several hours away, late because of the encroaching winter, but he judged that the crisis had been reached and perhaps a corner turned.

After a while, as Linnet continued to breathe deeply and evenly without impediment, he left the maid in attendance and went stiffly into the antechamber, where Joscelin was sleeping with Robert on a makeshift pallet. The child was visibly improving. Probably by the morning he would be complaining he was hungry. Thin and small though he was, sapped to pallor and shadows, he also possessed the tenacity of a clinging vine.

Ironheart turned his attention to the man against whom Robert was curled. Even in sleep, the marks of pain were etched between Joscelin’s dark brows. He remembered his son’s earlier words. A woman and child in the mercenary camps. The thought, which had been held on the surface by other considerations, now began to seep into every level of his being. Ironheart stooped to the hearth to pick up the flagon of usquebaugh-laden wine. Seven missing years in which, unaware, he had become a grandfather and then been bereaved. Joscelin was so much like him that he wondered if his bloodline was cursed.