Shields of Pride

Chapter 35

Torch in hand, Ralf wound his way down into the bowels of the keep. The guards he encountered saluted him, their eyes shifting. The authority to command them was now his, but while his father still clung to life it was incomplete. And what he intended to do tomorrow did not meet with unanimous approval.

Ralf responded to the sidelong looks with an air of supreme indifference but, behind his mask, he was irritated by their uncertainty. Indeed, they made him feel tense, for their attitude unsettled his own view of himself as being utterly in control. Once his father and Joscelin were out of the way, he told himself, everything would come right. The black bitterness would leave him and he would be healed.

He moved through the undercroft, the heat from the torch searing his face as he passed barrels, casks and bins of supplies, until he came to the cells. Behind stoutly barred doors set with small iron grilles for observation of the prisoners, Joscelin’s men were being held captive together with those of his father’s soldiers who had objected to his taking command of Arnsby. Keeping guard were two Flemish mercenaries he had borrowed from Robert Ferrers. Although unmannerly and rough, they at least seemed to know how to use their weapons, which half of their countrymen didn’t, and they did as they were instructed without demur.

Finally, at the very end of the undercroft where the shadows were deepest, Ralf came to the bolted trap covering the mouth of the oubliette. He stood upon the door with its wrought-iron bandings, his legs planted wide, and imagined Joscelin twenty feet below him, staring up into the pitch blackness. The oubliette was a deep, windowless pit. Originally it had been constructed with the dual purpose of storing roots and confining difficult prisoners in hope of demoralizing them into submission. Underground seepage, however, meant that there was always six inches of murky sludge lying in the bottom of the pit and the roots were far better stored in the main undercroft. It was still, however, used occasionally for prisoners. A couple of days standing ankle-deep in cold water without food usually subdued the most stubborn captives - if they did not die of the lung fever first.

Ralf quivered. He could feel Joscelin’s presence as if the two of them were bound together by an umbilical cord. The temptation to open the trap and peer inside was almost unbearable. What was Joscelin doing? What was he feeling, knowing that in the morning he was going to die?

Ralf’s mind wandered back to a hot summer’s day when he was on the brink of adolescence. Joscelin had been fifteen then, big-boned and gawky with a voice like a cracked cup. Ralf remembered baiting him, taunting and teasing, following him round, refusing to leave him alone. In the end, Joscelin’s temper had snapped and he had turned upon his tormentor. Ralf had been injured but he had made far more of a fuss than his wounds warranted. Enough for their father to administer Joscelin a sound thrashing. Ralf could still taste the triumph of that day. At the time, he had thought it worth every bruise.

Of course, it had not lasted. Joscelin had run away, their father had blamed Ralf for it and the deception had come home to roost with a vengeance. Old fool. The torch sputtered and resin hissed at Ralf’s feet. He considered tomorrow’s revenge and through the triumph felt a disturbing frisson as he imagined Joscelin kicking at the end of a rope. A desperate need to see the thing accomplished warred with a feeling of utter revulsion. A small voice inside him was crying that he would never be free of Joscelin, whatever he did.

The torch was growing heavy and making his arm tremble. ‘Damn you!’ he snarled into the darkness and, turning on his heel, strode back towards light and company.

In the hall, he noticed that the scribe had returned from his visit to the latrine and was busy with his quill once more. He set his torch in an empty wall sconce and went over to the man.

‘How soon will you be finished?’ He braced his thin fingers on the trestle and leaned over the parchments.

‘Soon, my lord, v-very soon.’

Ralf eyed Fulbert’s trembling hand and then the script. That at least appeared neat and flowing even if its creator was a gibbering wreck. Well, he needed the man for now but he could soon and easily replace him. Scribes were ten a half-penny in Nottingham. ‘Make haste,’ he said. ‘And have the messengers ride out immediately you have finished.’

‘Yes, lord.’ Fulbert swallowed bulbously. Then his gaze settled beyond Ralf’s shoulder. Turning, Ralf saw Father Hubert standing to one side, his expression grim and his hands toying with a silver cross hanging on a cord from his belt.

‘Sir William is dead,’ announced the priest. ‘I think you should come to your mother’s chamber, my lord. He had some sort of seizure in his last moments and assaulted the lady Agnes. She is asking for you.’

Ralf looked down and gently opened the fists he had clenched on hearing Father Hubert’s news. So now he was indeed ‘my lord’ and no one in the keep to gainsay his will. ‘Tell her I will come as soon as I can,’ he said, and felt a black desolation overshadowing his triumph.

Stomach rolling with fear, Fulbert finished working on the missives that Ralf had commanded him to write, sealing them in hot wax with the ring the young man had pulled from his father’s finger in the courtyard. His hands shook as he set all except two to one side. He paused to try and think but was horribly aware of time slipping away with each moment he procrastinated. He had a choice to make and make it now he must. He imagined Judgement Day with his sins on one side of the scales and his good deeds on the other. He remembered Lady Linnet’s accusing grey eyes. Then he thought of the fires of hell and came face-to-face with his own cowardice.

In trembling haste his hands went to the leaves of clean vellum at his left-hand side. He folded deftly, attached seals, scrawled salutations, but the pages were entirely blank. These he gave out to the messengers who were to ride to Robert Ferrers of Derby and the men of Leicester’s and Norfolk’s mesnie. The two letters most recently written, he gave to the men with the best horses. Fortunately for his quaking knees, Fulbert was not questioned. It was only polite custom that the king’s representative in Nottingham be informed of a baronial death, and if Lord Ralf wanted letters delivered to Rushcliffe then that was his own business.

When the last horseman had clattered out of the postern gate onto the road, Fulbert returned to his lectern, and screwing up the letters he had written on Ralf’s behalf summoning the rebels to Arnsby he tossed them in the great hearth. As soon as he was sure that they had been consumed by the flames, he went to rouse his wife and children and pack his belongings for another move.