Shields of Pride

Chapter 5

The mouse sat on its haunches, industriously manipulating an ear of grain in its forepaws, sharp teeth nibbling through the husk to reach the sweet, starchy kernel. Sunlight wove through the crack in the stable door, patterning the straw, splashing up the wattle-and-daub walls and gilding the hide of a dozing liver-chestnut stallion.

Joscelin watched the busy rodent with the myopic gaze of the newly awakened. His head was throbbing and his mouth was dry and tasted of kennel sweepings - payment for last night’s sins of which, after the fight with Ralf, he remembered very little - nor wished to.

A blur of rust and gold suddenly shot past the tip of his nose and pounced in a flurry of straw. Startled, Joscelin jerked upright, heart thrusting vigorously against his ribs. The tabby stable cat regarded him, a mixture of wariness and disdain in its agate-green eyes, a mouse dangling from its jaws like a moustache. Then, keeping him in view, it slunk across the stable and undulated through the narrowly open door into the courtyard.

Joscelin exhaled with a soft groan and put his head down between his parted knees. Outside he could hear the sounds of his father’s house coming to life in the bright summer morning - two maids gossiping at the trough, the cheeky wolf-whistle of a soldier and the good-natured riposte. Hens crooned and scratched in the dust. Feet scuffled immediately outside the stable door, voices consulted in low tones, one adolescent, the other mature.

‘I have to tend the horses, sir, but he’s still asleep in there.’

‘Not surprising, the state he returned in last night,’ commented the older voice. ‘All right, go and break your fast. I’ll see if I can rouse him up.’

‘No need,’ Joscelin pushed open the stable door to the full light of morning and squinted blearily at the groom and his wide-eyed lad. He raked his hand through his rumpled hair and plucked out a stalk of straw. ‘I would have made my way to bed in the hall but the stables were closer and I wasn’t sure my feet would carry me the extra distance.’

A grin widened the groom’s weather-brown face. ‘You were a trifle unsteady, Messire Joscelin,’ he agreed.

‘I was gilded to the eyeballs,’ Joscelin replied, ‘and I’ve a head to prove it this morning.’

The apprentice sidled away to get his food before the groom had a chance to press him to his duty now that there was no longer an obstacle.

Joscelin loosened the drawstring of his braies and relieved himself in the waste channel that ran the length of the stable block.

‘Messire Ralf didn’t come home at all,’ the groom volunteered and, picking up the dung fork, looked round in exasperation for his lad. ‘Your lord father’s not best pleased.’

Joscelin adjusted his garments and went to wash his hands and face in the rain butt against the gutter pipe. His cut lip stung and his ribs ached. His lord father was going to be even less pleased when he heard about the fight. Perhaps he already knew; Ivo excelled at carrying tales.

‘What about Ivo?’

‘Sick as a dog,’ said the groom with a gleam of satisfaction.

Joscelin’s lips twitched. It might be possible to avoid the reckoning until he was fit to cope with it, after all.

‘Joscelin!’ A freckle-faced boy came sprinting across the yard and launched himself at Joscelin, clambering his body as if it were a tree and swarming aloft to sit on his shoulders. ‘Will you take me to see the dancing bear at Smithfield?’ He peered down into Joscelin’s face at an angle that made focusing for Joscelin a nauseous pain. Raising his arms, he grabbed the child and somersaulted him to the ground, setting him on his feet.

His youngest half-brother, Martin, gazed up at him, an urchin grin polishing his face. At eight years old, he was soon to fledge the nest for a page’s position in de Luci’s household. He possessed his full share of the de Rocher self-assurance, although at the moment it was innocent rather than arrogant.

‘Why in the world should I take you anywhere?’ Joscelin demanded.

Chuckling, the groom departed in search of his wily apprentice.

‘I’ll be good, I promise!’

‘I’ve heard that one before, too!’

‘Please,’ Martin beseeched with eyes as soulful as a hound’s so that, despite his aching head, Joscelin had to bite his lip on his amusement.

‘Let me settle my wits and my gut first and I’ll see,’ he said, and started towards the house. Martin skipped beside him like a spring lamb and chattered about the dubious fairground delights offered on Smithfield’s perimeter.

‘There’s a real mermaid!’ he enthused as they entered the hall together. ‘All bare up here but it costs a whole penny to see her.’

Joscelin knew the ‘mermaid’ well since fairgrounds and tourneys frequently travelled sword-in-sheath. The nearest she had ever come to being a fish was servicing herring men in a Southampton brothel. Her long blonde hair was a wig and her ‘tail’ was made of cunningly stitched snake-skins. He supposed that she had good breasts if that was the only opportunity you ever got to see a pair, but hardly a full penny’s worth. ‘Gingerbread’s better value,’ he advised gravely and halted, his expression becoming blank, as Lady Agnes descended upon them, her face puckered in temper.

‘Where have you been?’ she snapped at Martin and grabbed his arm in a pincer grip. ‘Go and change your tunic, hurry. We’re due at the justiciar’s hall within the hour. You look like something disreputable in a mercenary’s baggage train!’ She released him with a push.

Self-assured Martin might be, but not stupid, and he obeyed her command at a run, grimacing over his shoulder at Joscelin as he reached the end of the hall.

Her insult had been all for Joscelin. Last night he had responded to Ralf ’s baiting with violence. Now he offered the lady Agnes a stony courtesy. She might claim that he had been bred in the gutter but she was the one who stooped to it to sling mud.

He sat down at a trestle and took a small loaf from the bread basket in the centre of the table. Then he poured himself a mug of ale. He could have insisted on taking his place at the high table and commandeering white bread and good wine, but he could not be bothered with that sort of battle this morning.

‘Where’s my father?’ he asked, a glance round the hall showing him a suffering, bleary handful of his own men, the steward and servants, but few of the de Rocher retainers. For a moment he thought that she was not going to reply. Her eyes narrowed and her lips tightened. None of your business, her expression said, but the submission to male dominance was so ingrained that she did not openly defy him. ‘He’s gone to fetch Ralf from Leicester’s house,’ she said frostily and turned her back on him to chivvy the servants.

Joscelin broke the bread and began to eat. Small joy his father would have of Ralf, he thought. At four-and-twenty, brimful of anger and resentment, his half-brother was too old and dangerous to be whipped to heel like a raw adolescent. He regarded the skinned knuckles of his own right hand, flexed them and winced.

Agnes stalked away from the trestle with a stony face. The servants suffered. Joscelin thought about holding his ground and decided that it wasn’t worth the aggravation. Cramming a final piece of bread into his mouth, he took his cup outside to finish his ale in peace. It was a mistake. As he sauntered into the warm morning air his father arrived, Ralf riding behind and both of them obviously in filthy tempers.

Ironheart dismounted, cuffed the groom’s apprentice across the ear for being a fraction too slow at the bridle, and stamped towards the hall. His pace checked for an instant when he saw Joscelin and a muscle ticked beneath his cheekbone. Then he came on, his body stiff with anger.

‘Leicester’s house!’ he snarled at Joscelin as he came level. ‘You couldn’t have chosen a more public place to brawl had you scoured all of London! You shame me and you shame your blood!’

Joscelin looked beyond his father’s mottled fury to where Ralf still sat on his horse. ‘I had good reason,’ he said quietly. His fist tightened around the cup.

‘Leicester says you were drunk,’ Ironheart snapped. ‘He was only too pleased to furnish me with the details while I dragged Ralf off some strumpet he’d fallen asleep on. I’d have done better to take a vow of celibacy than beget the brood of half-wit sons collaring me now!’

‘I wasn’t drunk, I was angry,’ Joscelin said.

‘And spoiling for a fight before you left me last night. A dozen eyewitnesses say that you started it. If you can’t control that anger then you’re not fit to lead men!’

Joscelin’s shoulders went back as if he had taken a blow, but he said nothing. Not for the world would he repeat the insult that had goaded him to strike.

‘Oh, get out of my way!’ Ironheart snapped. ‘Let me swallow a drink before I choke!’ Thrusting past Joscelin into the house, he bellowed at his wife like a wounded bear.

Ralf rode over to Joscelin, deliberately fretting the horse, making it prance. ‘I thought for the good of your hide you’d be long gone by now,’ he said.

‘As usual, you thought wrong,’ Joscelin retorted.

Ralf’s complexion was pale and sweaty. An ugly bruise marred his left eye socket where Joscelin’s fist had connected the night before. Reddish beard stubble framed the compressed line of his mouth. ‘One day I’ll be lord of all my father owns and you’ll be nothing,’ he said, each word edged with bitterness. The horse stamped and sidled. The swish of its tail clipped the cup in Joscelin’s hands.

Joscelin refused to be intimidated. ‘You really don’t know the difference, Ralf, between having nothing and being nothing,’ he said and poured the dregs from his cup onto the ground. The dust lumped and glistened. ‘I might sell my sword for money but never my integrity.’

For a moment, the prospect of another brawl hung imminent but the sound of Ironheart’s choler-choked voice barking through the open hall doors held the brothers to caution. Ralf bestowed a single, glittering look on Joscelin that spoke more eloquently than words and snatched the horse around towards the waiting groom. In the course of its turn, his mount’s glossy shoulder brushed Joscelin, forcing him to step back. A hoofprint bit into the dark stain in the dust where the drink had spilled. Joscelin stared at it and then at his brother’s back. It was long and broad and the amount of fine Flemish cloth required to make his tunic must have cost Lady Agnes’s domestic budget several shillings.

Ralf did not know the privation of lying down at a roadside because there was nowhere better to sleep. He had never had to fight for each mouthful of food or gather firewood in freezing, sleety rain when you were so weary you wanted to give up and die, but couldn’t because people were depending on you. Ralf did not know what real hunger was.

Ralf moved restlessly around his mother’s chamber, touching this and that without any real purpose. Agnes watched his progress with troubled eyes. She could still feel the dry imprint of his kiss on her cheek. He stank of wine, sweat and the cheap scent of whores. She was disappointed but not surprised; nor did she blame him. It was all William’s fault.

‘Shall I find you some salve for your eye, my love?’

Ralf shook his head and fiddled with a piece of braid lying on top of her work basket. ‘It doesn’t hurt,’ he muttered. He dropped the braid and moved to the window.

Agnes admired his spare, angular grace and the gleam of his sun-bright hair. She was so proud of his golden fierceness and the fact that she had given him life.

‘I need money,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to ask my father and, even if I did, he would not give it to me.’

‘How much?’

‘Enough to see me comfortable while I’m in Normandy with Leicester’s troops.’

Her heart plummeted. ‘You are truly going?’

He said nothing but, after a moment, turned his head and fixed her with a stare that held a world of discontent and frustration. His eyes were light brown like her own. With the sun striking them obliquely, they held flecks of suspended gold. The swollen bruise was an affront to his beauty.

‘Have you told your father?’

‘Not in so many words, but he knows.’

And would do nothing to help him, Agnes thought, because he thoroughly disapproved of Robert of Leicester. If she herself disapproved it was because of the danger to Ralf’s safety, but she knew she could no more hold him or persuade him to do her bidding than she could handle William’s great Norway hawk. To her mind, it thus made eminent sense to ensure that Ralf had everything he needed to survive.

‘How much?’ she asked again and went to her jewel casket. Every penny she spent had to be accounted for to William but she still had her jewellery which was hers to dispose of as she wished. William never noticed whether she wore trinkets or not and she seldom felt the need to deck herself in finery. If she could spare Ralf even a moment of hardship, she would give up every last piece.

He left the window niche and crossed the room to stand at her shoulder as she raised the lid. There were rings and brooches, ornate belts, clasps and a braid girdle that her waist had outgrown in the course of numerous pregnancies. Ralf ignored all these and pounced upon a reliquary cross on a thick gold chain.

‘This will do,’ he said and held it up to the light. Amethyst and moonstone, sapphire and beryl flashed amid a fire of sun-caught gold. ‘Thank you, Mother, I can always count on you for an ally.’ He rewarded her with another kiss, less perfunctory this time, and, ducking the cross around his neck, headed for the door.

On the threshold he encountered his aunt Maude, a dish of marchpane-covered dates in her hand. He kissed her, too, snatched several of the sweetmeats off the tray and, whistling loudly, pounded away down the stairs.

Maude looked curiously at Agnes, who, pink-faced, was closing and locking her jewel casket.

‘Ralf ’s uncommonly cocky to say that William almost flayed him alive earlier,’ Maude remarked, setting the dish on the coffer. ‘Have you been helping him out again?’

‘If I have, it’s none of your business,’ Agnes sniffed. She considered her sister-in-law to be a greedy, interfering sow and a spy in the household.

‘Just be careful. I don’t think William would approve.’

Agnes gave her a hostile stare. ‘Are you going to tell him?’

Maude shrugged and reached for one of the sweetmeats. ‘It’s none of my business, is it?’ she said, returning Agnes’ look impassively.