Shields of Pride

Chapter 29

William Ironheart owned three houses in Nottingham on the hill that meandered down from the Derby road towards the merchant dwellings on Long Row and the poultry market. Two of the houses were leased to wine merchants. The third, his own, was maintained by Jonas and Gytha, a couple in late middle-age. While Jonas kept the house in repair, Gytha took in laundry from the merchants farther down the row and there was often a tub full of linens and steaming lye suds in the backyard.

From the doorway, Linnet watched the pungent steam billowing skyward and felt queasy. Inside the house it was no better, the air being humid with the odour of boiled cabbages and onions from the cauldron that bubbled over the fire pit in the main room. These last three days her stomach had been unsettled. Indeed, only this morning before they set out she had almost been sick when Stephen had placed a dish of smoked herrings in front of her. Usually she enjoyed such fare but she had scarcely been able to swallow a morsel of bread without retching.

She had begun to toy with the suspicion that she was with child but, since it was indeed no more than a suspicion, she had said nothing to Joscelin. Her flux was scarcely more than a week late and in her previous marriage she had been slow to conceive. She smiled through the nausea, thinking of their new bed with its coverings of plain linen, sheepskin and blankets of plaid. All ostentation had been consigned to the pyre in the bailey where together she and Joscelin had watched the burning of the Montsorrel family bed until it was naught but ashes, blowing away in the wind.

Joscelin was up at the castle visiting acquaintances from his garrison days and she did not expect him home until late afternoon. Robert had fretted at not being allowed to go with his hero, but Joscelin’s promise to take him round the market booths on the morrow had mollified him a little. He was playing in a corner of the yard with a young tabby cat that Gytha had bought at the Weekday market to deal with the local rat and mouse problem.

Linnet watched her son and felt a deep tenderness well up within her. She still feared for his future as a natural part of her maternal instinct, but there was hope now too - bright and steady as a clean-burning candle. She could dare to believe that all would be well. Now she had Joscelin, she could dare to believe anything.

She had just turned to go back inside the house when Ironheart arrived back from his errand to a wool factor who lived close by the city wall.

‘Daughter,’ he greeted her with a gruff nod.

Linnet inclined her head in response and going into the house, dutifully offered him wine. Since her illness in the autumn, their relationship had subtly altered. She knew that Ironheart had been present at the crisis of her fever for Joscelin’s sake and that he had remained at Rushcliffe until it was certain that she would recover, his support silent but solid as rock. She no longer thought of him as a threat, nor did she have to stiffen her spine in his presence to control her fear. Yes, he had his flaws, some of them deep and ugly, but beyond them was the rock and to that she trusted.

For his part, Joscelin’s father had tempered his aggression towards her and in rare moments displayed a clumsy tenderness in his dealings. He had ceased speaking darkly to Joscelin of beating and bedding, and while she and Ironheart seldom held prolonged conversations at least they could communicate with each other without bristling up like cat and dog.

‘Joscelin not back yet?’ Ironheart asked. His long nose wrinkled in the direction of the cauldron. ‘You can never tell whether it’s her washing or the dinner you can smell when you come in the door,’ he commented.

‘No, he said he might be late.’

‘Gossiping with his old cronies, I daresay.’

‘Yes.’ She gave him a wan smile.

Ironheart eyed her from beneath his brows. ‘You’re as green as a new cheese,’ he said abruptly. ‘Is something the matter?’

‘No, Father.’ Linnet moved away from the bubbling cauldron. ‘A mild stomach upset, nothing more.’

‘Hah!’ He continued to eye her, not in the face but up and down. Linnet blushed and quickly put her hand to her belly, the gesture giving her away. Ironheart, however, did not press the point. ‘You need to go and rest, then,’ he said mildly. ‘Dry bread and sweet wine are good for such an ailment.’ He jerked his head. ‘Go on, get you to the loft for an hour. I’ll watch the boy.’

Linnet hesitated for a moment, but another pungent waft of steam from the cooking pot caused her stomach to lurch and she accepted the offer with a grateful smile.

‘I don’t like it,’ said Ranulf FitzRanulf, garrison commander of Nottingham, as he stared out of the high tower window. Spread before his view was Nottingham’s immediate southern hinterland: the rivers Leen and Trent holding between them the broad green floodplain of the Meadows and beyond them the villages of Briggford, Wilford and Cliftun. ‘There are too many of Ferrers’s men in the city and they are bent upon mischief.’

Standing beside his former paymaster, Joscelin, too, looked out on the scene of pastoral tranquillity. The trees lining the riverbank wore new mantles of tender green and the meadowland was a lush carpet of flower-starred grass dotted by grazing cattle. Smoke twirled from the roofs of the tanneries on the banks of the Leen and a supply barge was wending its way upriver towards the castle’s wharf. ‘I noticed a lot of Ferrers’ soldiers when I was here in the autumn,’ he said.

‘Around the time of the battle of Fornham?’ FitzRanulf turned to look at Joscelin out of watery, light-blue eyes. The left one had a slight cast so that FitzRanulf never seemed to be looking directly, even when he was. It was an illusion for FitzRanulf was the most direct of men. ‘They were vultures waiting their moment to strike but it never came. When news of Leicester’s defeat arrived, they melted away.’

‘And now they are back.’

‘The winter truces are at an end. I have men enough to defend the castle but not the town. Ferrers has too much influence there. If there is trouble, the citizens will have to fend for themselves. How long are you staying?’

‘We’re only here to buy supplies. Two, three days at the most, although my father will probably leave guards at his house since it’s so close to Ferrers’.’

‘Your father’s here, too?’

‘On different errands and likely to be here a couple of days more than myself. I know he intends calling on you.’

FitzRanulf nodded, then he gave a humour-filled scowl. ‘It was the worst turn the justiciar ever did me when he gave you Linnet de Montsorrel to wife,’ he grumbled. ‘I lost the best men in my pay. Still, at least I can rely on Rushcliffe’s loyalty now. When the Montsorrels had possession, getting them to cooperate on anything was like trying to turn water into wine. Old Raymond could be as difficult as they come.’

‘Yes, I know.’

FitzRanulf cocked his head, his expression curious, but Joscelin had no intention of divulging the particular ‘difficulties’ that Raymond de Montsorrel had bequeathed to him. ‘I have to return to Rushcliffe,’ he diverted, ‘but I can leave some of my men here if you want - trained up and in full battle kit.’

‘At whose expense?’ enquired FitzRanulf, revealing that he was as shrewd about money as he was about everything else.

‘They have a contract with me until midsummer. All you need do is feed and house them and see that they receive a fair share of the booty, should the situation arise.’

‘Fair enough.’ FitzRanulf nodded. ‘I know a golden goose when it waddles over my foot. If there’s anything I can do for you in the future, let me know.’

Following his visit to FitzRanulf, Joscelin repaired to the guardroom to pay his respects there and was furnished with a piggin of the castle’s justly famous ale and some bread and new cheese. One of the guards, Odinel le Gros, so named because of his enormous gut, nudged Joscelin, his eyes gleaming with relish. ‘Josce, is it all really true about Raymond de Montsorrel, then?’

Joselin’s mouthful of bread and cheese suddenly seemed too enormous to swallow. He chewed, took a drink of ale and shrugged, affecting indifference.

‘Come on, stop teasing. You know what I mean. They say he tupped every woman on the estate between the ages of thirteen and fifty. I bet everywhere you ride, you see little bastards made in the old man’s image!’ Odinel chuckled. ‘Do you remember that wench we had who claimed he futtered her against St Mary’s wall? She said his pizzle were the biggest she’d ever seen! I reckon it should’ve been preserved when he died, just like they do with saints’ bones.’

Joscelin heard the laughter of the other soldiers but it was fuzzy, as if it were coming from a far distance. A red mist was before his eyes and sweat sprang on his body. However, he did not leap at Odinel and rip his voice from his throat, for to have done so would be to acknowledge that Raymond’s ghost still had a hold on him. As far as Joscelin was concerned, the burning of the bed had been the final exorcism.

‘You have a high imagination,’ he said when he could trust himself to speak. ‘Raymond de Montsorrel was a common lecher and whores will always tell exaggerated tales of any highborn client who passes between their thighs. It gives them a feeling of importance and makes people listen to them,’ he added pointedly.

Odinel blinked uncertainly. There was a brief, uncomfortable silence. Joscelin wondered what on earth he was truly doing here in the guardroom. His title was a barrier as tangible as the fine braid hemming on his tunic and the beryl and amber brooch pinned high on the shoulder of his fur-lined cloak. Although he had not deliberately willed it, the situation had changed and he had become an outsider, one of ‘them’ and, because of his past status, viewed with both admiration and resentment. In his absence they would talk about him as they talked about Raymond de Montsorrel. And it was not fair to stay.

He took his leave of them quickly, with relief on both sides. As the guardroom door closed behind him, the soldiers breathed out and relaxed as if they had been standing to attention all the time he had been in the room. And on the other side of the door, Joscelin closed his eyes and inhaled deeply like a prisoner released. His only dilemma, as he started down the hill towards the Saturday, market, was where to go. Not back to Linnet, not yet, not with Odinel’s words still sliding their slime trail across his mind.

In the end, he turned his feet in Conan’s direction, which he knew of old would be the Weekday alehouse. He wound his way through narrow streets and alleys into the dip of Broad Marsh, then up the other side. The stream running down the middle of Byard Lane was blocked again, this time by a dead dog, and various residents of the cut-through were conducting a lively argument as to who was responsible for clearing the obstruction. Joscelin picked his way through the sludge at the side of the lane, easing past dark doorways that gave entrance to cramped dwellings with central fire pits and smoke holes in the roof. At one point, near the top of the hill, there were steps cut down to a series of dwellings carved out of the soft sandstone rock upon which the city was built.

A cordwainer sat outside his home, a small trestle set up to hold his tools and the cut pieces of leather he was making into shoes. Next door to him stood a small dyehouse, and as Joscelin walked past its proprietor ceased pummelling a cloth in a cauldron of dark-red water to watch him. Beside the dye shop stood a booth belonging to Rothgar the swordsmith and Joscelin paused here to examine a long dagger.

‘Best Lombardy steel, sir,’ said the proprietor, laying down his tools and coming forward.

Joscelin had known Rothgar since childhood when Ironheart had brought him in wide-eyed delight to this very same booth. Rothgar’s wife had fed him sugared figs and made a fuss of him, and Rothgar had let him handle the weapons.

The dagger he was handling today had a nine-inch blade, sharp on both edges, and a haft of plain, natural buckskin that felt good in his hands. His own dagger, which had served him since his early days as a mercenary, was wearing out. It had already been fitted with several new grips and the blade was thin.

‘How much?’

‘Five shillings,’ Rothgar immediately responded and wiped his wrist across his full moustache. ‘The materials alone cost me two and there’s my time and skill on top.’

‘I’ll give you two and a half,’ Joscelin said, testing the sharpened edge against the ball of this thumb. ‘That’s how much I’d pay on the road in Normandy.’

Rothgar shook his head. ‘Normandy’s closer to the Lombards and the steel costs less because of it. It’s a mortal long way to go for a bargain. Tell you what, being as you and your father are good customers here, I’ll let you have it for four and a half.’

‘Three,’ said Joscelin, well accustomed to the etiquette of haggling, ‘and I’ll commission a blunt sword for my stepson while I’m here.’

Rothgar tugged at his beard. ‘You drive a hard bargain, my lord. Call it three and a half and commission that sword for your stepson with half a shilling down, and we’ll call it fair.’

‘On the nail,’ Joscelin reached in his purse and put the required coins on top of the squat, flat-topped post Rothgar used for that purpose.

Rothgar counted the silver and swept it into his cupped palm. ‘You’ll need to bring the lad into the shop so I can see the size of him.’

‘Later this afternoon?’

‘Aye, that’ll do.’ Rothgar started to unlatch the toggle on his belt bag but paused and lifted his head. ‘What’s that rumpus?’

Joscelin ducked out into the street, the new dagger in hand. From the direction of the Hologate road he could hear shouting and the clash of weapons. Then louder shrieks of terror and dismay and the bright blossoming of flame.

‘God’s eyes, what’s happening?’ Rothgar peered over Joscelin’s shoulder, his forging hammer in his fist.

‘I can’t tell, except that it’s trouble. Best shut up shop and make yourself and any valuables scarce. As a weapons-smith, you’re a prime target. I’m going to the Weekday; my mercenary captain should be there.’

Rothgar nodded and hastened back into his shop, bellowing for his apprentice.

Joscelin moved quickly across the narrow, muddy street and started up the hill towards the alehouse. Folk were emerging from their shops and houses, exclaiming, looking anxious, demanding to know what was happening. Other townsfolk were pouring down the hill away from the marketplace, fleeing in panic.

‘Soldiers!’ A panting merchant paused to cry warning. Tucked under his arm, a goose wildly paddled its orange feet. ‘Derby’s men. Save yourselves!’

Joscelin thrust himself against the tide of panicking humanity, shouldering through them until he reached the Weekday. The evergreen bush that was usually suspended on a horizontal pole from the gable, advertising the place as an alehouse, was trampled down outside the door, and smoke billowed in thick clouds from the interior. The empty yard showed no sign of the landlord’s guard dog, only its kennel and the length of bear chain that usually leashed it.

People streamed away from the marketplace, heading for the sanctuary of the churches. Smoke belched from a row of merchants’ houses on the King’s road leading to St Mary’s. Fire crowned the thatch in sudden licks of flame but no one stopped to organize a bucket chain. With life and limb at stake, houses could burn.

Joscelin was buffeted like a rock in the midst of a turbulent sea by the crowds milling around him. Then he saw the soldiers. Reflected fire from the torches they held glinted on their helms and mail. In and out of houses and shops they darted, setting alight thatch and straw, kicking apart hearths, scattering embers to consume homes and shops in the fury of flame.

He came across two bodies sprawled in the street. One of them was a whore, her gaudy yellow gown splashed with blood. The other, his arm still across her body, was Gamel. His carpentry tools were scattered across the street and his wooden leg stuck out at an awkward angle. Appalled, Joscelin crouched and made the sign of the cross over the bodies, closed Gamel’s staring eyes and rose to his feet. Fear and anger surged through him. Where in God’s name was Conan?

Church bells clamoured from all quarters. His thoughts flashed to Linnet and Robert. With his father absent on business and just a few servants in the house, they were vulnerable. His father’s townhouses stood almost on top of Derby’s. That might protect the dwellings from fire but it also meant there would be a high concentration of Derby’s men in the area.

He began to force his way along the narrow street, pushing himself against the tide of humanity striving towards the sanctuary of St Peter’s church. The ground underfoot was muddy and he slipped and skidded. Behind him there was panic as a barrel of pitch in a carpenter’s workshop exploded, showering the crowd with flaming debris. A globule landed on his hand and sizzled into his flesh before he was able to brush it off. He was pushed and jostled, almost forced by the surge of the crowd to enter St Peter’s, but managed to thrust his way out of the press and across the street to a narrow passageway that progressed in a crooked dogleg to the backs of the houses lining the Saturday market square.

Here, too, there was chaos, and Joscelin realized with a renewed leap of fear that the assault on the city was widespread. Surrounded by the sounds of looting and burning, he crouched for a moment in the garden of one of the houses to recover his breath. He wondered if the constable would send soldiers into the city or just hold fast to the castle and hope that Ferrers’s attack was more an act of spite and bile than an attempt to subjugate city and castle to his will.

Brandishing his new dagger, Joscelin straightened and moved up through the garden. Suddenly, an enormous black sow galloped around the corner of the building and almost bowled him over. He leaped aside and found himself confronted by two foot soldiers, their own knives to hand for the purposes of pig-sticking. The sow snorted away down the garth, wallowed across the damaged wattle fence at the foot and disappeared into the noisome alley beyond. The foot soldiers and Joscelin appraised each other over their poised weapons.

‘I have no quarrel with you,’ Joscelin said. ‘Let me go my way in peace and I will let you go yours.’

The men exchanged swift glances and returned their scrutiny to Joscelin. He was suddenly very aware of the gold braid edging his tunic, the quality of his cloak and its ornate clasp - temptations far greater than a prospective haunch of roast pork that was already halfway to Broadmarsh by now.

‘We wouldn’t rightly want to quarrel with you either,’ said the older of the two men, ‘but we’d like you better if you was to hand over that cloak and clasp as a sign of goodwill.’

‘Your purse and belt, too,’ added the second, whose quick crafty gaze had not missed the promising roundness of Joscelin’s money pouch and the gilding on the tooled leather belt.

One soldier moved right, the other left. Joscelin ran at the latter, dagger lifted to strike. His attack was blocked as the man grasped his knife hand. Joscelin responded in a similar manner by grasping his opponent’s wrist and used their grip on each other as leverage to hurl the man hard to the right, fouling the other soldier’s path. Having broken free, Joscelin ran. He heard the sound of rapid footfalls in pursuit but he had a start on them and, being faster into the bargain, reached the market square well in front. Across it, Joscelin saw soldiers rolling wine barrels out of a vintner’s cellar while the vintner and his family watched in helpless shock. A hauberk-clad soldier sat astride his war-horse conducting operations, a long whip dangling from his fist.

Behind Joscelin, there was a triumphant cry. ‘There he is, the whoreson, get him!’

Flashing a glance over his shoulder, Joscelin saw the two soldiers he had just evaded running out of the doorway of a house on Cuckstool Row. Joscelin took to his heels, knowing that if they caught him they would kill him.

The marketplace was a shambles of overturned booths and stalls, the looters picking among them like scavengers at the scene of a larger animal’s kill. Joscelin sought the shelter of these booths, dodging in and out between them, weaving from one to the other across the square towards Organ Lane. Near the low wall that separated the corn market from the rest of the stalls, a looter threatened him with a short knife but backed off the moment he saw the gleam of Joscelin’s dagger and went in search of easier prey. Joscelin was preoccupied in watching the looter and did not see the body sprawled behind one of the raided booths until too late. He measured his length across the corpse and lay upon it, momentarily too winded to move. When he drew his first breath he almost choked, for the stench emanating from the dead man’s garments proclaimed him an employee of one of the numerous tanneries down by the Leen bridge. Essence of excrement mingled with that of putrefaction, rancid mutton fat and the metallic tang of tannin. The stink was so powerful that Joscelin retched. In the background he could hear his pursuers approaching and knew that in a moment they would be upon him.

In haste, Joscelin tore off his mantle and gilded tunic. Stuffing them beneath the trestle in the booth, he rolled the corpse over, dragged off its cloak and stained tunic and dressed himself in the foulsome rags. A greasy, louse-infested hood and a knobbled quarterstaff completed the ensemble - and not a moment too soon. As Joscelin started to walk away from the corpse, his two pursuers ran panting round the side of the booth.

His fall had been greatly to his advantage. Still winded, Joscelin did not stride out as he might have otherwise done, which would have given him away immediately. Instead he moved with a shuffling walk more reminiscent of a peasant.

‘Ho!’ cried one of the soldiers. ‘You there, have you seen a noble running this way? Tall, wearing a dark-red cloak?’

Joscelin shook his head and mumbled a reply in the rustic Anglo-Dane of the countryside. At the same time, he gestured with his arm so that the dreadful stench of his garments wafted towards the men. Neither of them, he hazarded, would want to move in as close as it would take to kill him.

‘Ah God, he stinks as if he’s been dead a week!’ declared the other soldier. ‘Can you tell what he’s saying?’

His companion shook his head, equally baffled. ‘His accent’s too heavy. Come on, we’re wasting our time. Let’s search round the other side.’

Cold sweat clasping his body, Joscelin watched them walk rapidly away. He breathed out hard, then in again. The smell from his garments was not as bad now that he had grown accustomed and it had quite probably saved his life. Turning, he cut his way across the marketplace and up towards the town gate near Derby Road. The looted houses of Long Row bordered the marketplace with a ragged line of fire. As he hurried up the muddy thoroughfare, Joscelin hoped desperately that his father’s houses were close enough to Derby’s not to have been torched.

From a dark alleyway, a band of hurrying soldiers emerged like wine running from an open flask. They spilled over Joscelin before he could avoid them and then they drew back, exclaiming at the stench of him.

Joscelin’s hand relaxed on the grip of his dagger. ‘Where in God’s name have you been!’ he roared at Conan.

His uncle set his hands on his hips and stared Joscelin up and down. ‘I might ask the same of you.’ His scarred lip curved lopsidedly towards his left nostril. ‘Christ’s buttocks, but you stink worse than a three-week-old battlefield! ’

‘I had to exchange clothes with a tanner’s corpse to keep myself from being skewered by two routiers,’ Joscelin said shortly. ‘I thought you’d be in the Weekday.’

‘And so we would, except that Godred’s uncle has an alehouse on Cherry Tree Lane. We were paying our respects there when a brawl of Derby men came by and started causing trouble. We got rid of them soon enough, then realized it was more serious than our little disagreement. We’re on our way back to your father even now.’

‘There’s no time to waste.’ Joscelin began hurrying up the hill again. ‘I don’t think Derby’s men will harm Linnet and Robert - they’re too valuable - but I don’t want them taken into his care.’

‘Surely your father’s knights will protect the place?’ Conan trotted beside him, his nose still wrinkled in response to the stench of Joscelin’s garments.

‘My father had business with a wool factor up Organ Lane and he gave most of his men leave to go round the town, the same as I gave leave to you,’ Joscelin answered. ‘As far as I’m aware, only the servants are there.’

They arrived at Ironheart’s three houses to find them standing ominously silent and tranquil. A cookshop across the road was on fire but otherwise this quarter of the town had seen less damage. But it was still obvious that all was not well. The front door of the first house hung drunkenly on one hinge and on the floor in the passage were the plundered bodies of Ironheart’s squire and Gytha’s husband, Jonas. The rooms were all empty. Everything of value had been stripped and no one answered Joscelin’s shout. He strode into the yard. Gytha’s laundry tub lay overturned, a mess of torn, crumpled linens, spilling across the ground. Ears flat to its small skull, Gytha’s kitten hissed and spat at him from beneath a wooden trestle. A bowl of water containing some strips of softened rawhide stood on the bench beside some of his father’s weapon-mending tools. His father’s red and gold shield lay on the ground, a great split running from a damaged section of rawhide right through to the centre boss. There were blood smears on the ground.

He picked up a pair of blacksmith’s pincers and squeezed the grip until the pressure brought pain. He could not be too late. It was impossible; he would not allow it to happen.

And then he heard the sound of shouting from the gardens backing on to the other side of the narrow alley and a woman’s scream.

Dropping the pincers, he grabbed his father’s shield by the short hand-straps and began to run.