A Place Beyond Courage (52 page)
She shook her head. ‘No, Gilbert. It’s not you they want, nor Walter. You are not blood kin to Patrick of Salisbury.’
His eyes widened and he stared at his small half-brothers.
Sybilla swallowed the painful lump in her throat and steeled herself. ‘William,’ she said, ‘come here.’
‘William? They want him?’
‘Your father had to choose.’
‘Dear sweet Christ.’ Gilbert’s mouth twisted.
‘Go back to your game . . . don’t . . .’ Sybilla clenched her fists. ‘Don’t make this more difficult than it is going to be.’
Gilbert gave her a long stare but did as she bade, pausing to ruffle William’s fair-brown hair as the lad came to her side. Removing the cross on a leather cord he wore around his neck, he placed it around William’s instead. ‘For Christ’s protection,’ he said.
William touched the cord, still warm and a little damp from Gilbert’s skin, and admired the incised silver gilt and the garnet stone at its centre.
Sybilla drew him to the bench near the hearth and sat him down beside her. He swung his legs and fidgeted. It was the start of the day and his energy levels were prodigious. With gentle fingers she smoothed the hair that Gilbert had just ruffled. ‘William, I want you to listen to me carefully.’
Behind them, John yelped as the kitten pounced and caught him with its tiny needle claws. William looked round, then grinned.
‘Carefully,’ Sybilla repeated with emphasis and tapped his arm. ‘Never mind your brother for now. You have a task to perform for your family. For your father . . . for me. A task that I would usually ask of a squire or a knight, but the King says he will only have you.’
‘What kind of task?’ William ceased wriggling and sat up, his eyes suddenly full of curiosity and interest.
‘One that will take you away from home. The King . . .’ she swallowed. ‘The King desires you to keep him company for a while. It’s a very important duty.’
She watched him absorb the details as she told him. He was good at listening when he wanted to and had a phenomenal memory. He looked again towards his big brother, but this time with a smug glint in his eyes. ‘Is John going too?’
‘No, just you. Your father chose you.’ She smoothed his hair again and felt the betrayal enter her vitals like a knife as his look of pleasure increased.‘Some of the King’s knights are waiting in the hall to take you to the King’s camp.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Not far from Newbury.’
William looked thoughtful, then nodded. He knew where Newbury was. Less than half a day’s ride. ‘Can I take Lion?’ He looked towards the kitten.
‘It’s not the sort of journey for him. I’ll look after him until you . . . until you come home.’
William gave a trusting nod. ‘Am I going to be a squire?’
‘A squire in training,’ she said. ‘You might be tested, so you’ll have to remember everything we’ve taught you. Remember you are the son of the Empress’s marshal and the grandson of the lord of Salisbury.’
He lifted his chin at that and thrust out his jaw. Sybilla put a smile on her face and went to pack his baggage in a large travelling satchel. When the maids came to help her she waved them away. It was something she wanted to do for him herself because she might never have the opportunity again. His best blue chausses. The other pair she had so recently mended with a sigh at his escapades. Two tunics, two shirts. His green cloak and the woollen hood with the squirrel-fur lining. His spare shoes with antlerwork toggles and plaited red vamp strips. Their small size and the slight wear that showed evidence of running and vigorous play made her throat ache with dammed-up grief. Dear Holy Virgin, she could not bear this, and yet she must, and for William’s sake not show how much it was costing her.
In her cradle, the baby began to wail, and the wet nurse went to tend her, already unpinning the neck of her gown. Sybilla’s own breasts ached, but not for her infant daughter.
William skipped over to Sybilla with his toy hobby horse and the wooden sword and shield his father had made for him. A red lion snarled across the centre just like John’s own. Through her pain, laughter tugged at Sybilla’s mouth corners. Masculine priorities were always the same when it came to loading the packhorse. Before the laughter could take hold and become hysteria, she agreed that he could take his accoutrements; they were the necessities of a knight. She turned aside to her own coffer and brought out the new hair ribbons of blue silk brocade that John had given her at the May feast. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Wear these and be my champion.’
William’s eyes shone with pleasure as she knelt and tied the ribbons to his wrists, just like the knights wore when they were in their feast-day finery.
Young John came over to see what they were doing, the kitten following him and pouncing at the string still dangling from his fingers.
‘I’m going away to be a knight,’ William declared. ‘I’ve been chosen.’
John gave his brother a narrow look. ‘You’re not old enough. I’m older than you.’
‘It’s true, isn’t it, Mama?’
Sybilla felt like an animal caught in a trap. Now she had to somehow gnaw herself free, then crawl off and bleed to death somewhere quiet and out of sight. ‘Yes, it is true,’ she said and looked at John. ‘William is to go to King Stephen, but your father made that decision because he needs you here. You are older and better suited to protecting those within. If your father chose William to go, then he equally chose you to stay.’
John’s stiff stance relaxed and Sybilla breathed an internal sigh of relief. Going to the fabric cupboard she brought out a bolt of charcoal-grey wool she had been saving to make winter tunics for the boys, and another of madder-red for chausses. William was growing faster than wheat in May. At least if he had cloth in his baggage, someone might have the charity to make new garments for him. She didn’t know how long he was going to be gone. She packed the fabric in his baggage roll, her whole body rigid with pain. When she turned round, William was crouching to stroke the kitten in farewell and his father was standing in the doorway, his expression carved from granite.
A wave of panic washed over her. She wanted to seize William in her arms and scream that no one was going to take him away - that she would fight like a lioness to protect her cub. She knelt to William’s level and embraced him, holding him tightly as if she could absorb him back into herself. ‘Remember that I love you, William,’ she said in a choked voice, then held him slightly away and looked into his face. Sudden apprehension glimmered in his eyes. Tears blurred her own vision. ‘Kiss me and go with your father.’
She felt his lips on her cheek and his arms suddenly tight around her neck, clinging.
‘Stop weeping, woman,’ John growled, ‘you’re unsettling him.’
Still clutching William, Sybilla slanted him a furious look, but the set of his jaw and the compressed line of his mouth told his story as completely as her own.
‘Are you ready, son?’ John asked gruffly.
William turned and looked up at his father. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. His hand came up for a very swift swipe across his eyes and then he jutted his chin and stood up as straight as the soldiers did when the master-at-arms had them at their drill.
‘Brave lad.’ John squeezed his shoulder and, with a brusque man-to-man nod, picked up his baggage roll. ‘You’ll carry your own weapons, hmm?’
William nodded stoutly and in direct imitation of the household knights, pushed his miniature shield round on to his back by its long strap.
Sybilla wanted to howl, but forced a smile on to her face. She could feel her mouth corners straining with the effort and concentrated upon how proud she was of William, rather than the terror that this was the last she was ever going to see of him.
The King’s men were waiting in the courtyard and they had brought a brown pony for William, but then Sybilla saw that John had had Aranais saddled up in full barding with the red and green pendants on his breast-band and the decorated saddle cloth.
‘Is Papa going too?’ young John wanted to know. His eyes were huge as he tried to take in what was happening.
‘I don’t know.’ She wondered what John was doing. He wasn’t armed apart from his sword and she certainly couldn’t see him taking William all the way to the King. She watched him swing into the saddle, bend down, then draw William up before him on the stallion. He leaned towards William, spoke, and was answered with a solemn nod. Sybilla bit her lip and hugged her older son to her side.
The party rode out of Hamstead at a trot and the last she saw of William was a flutter of blue ribbon, for the rest was concealed by his father’s body. Although the morning was warm and bright, Sybilla’s teeth chattered as if it were the middle of winter.
John returned within the hour, striding hard, slamming and cursing. The servants scuttled for cover; his men kept out of his way. He blew into the domestic chamber, threw himself down at the trestle and stared with loathing at the parchments and tallies, still there from two days before. Then, with an oath, he stood up again and went to look out of the window, bracing his arms on the walls either side of the embrasure.
With a gesture, Sybilla dismissed her women and bade Walter and Gilbert take young John out to practise his riding. Then she went to her husband and tentatively laid the palm of her hand to the middle of his spine.
‘I went a little way with them in order to say farewell,’ he said in a choked voice. ‘They gave him a beast he had never ridden before and he took to it as if he’d known it all his life. Already he rides with a spine like a lance. I could not have asked more of him than I received. God help me, Sybilla, he thinks it all a great adventure.’
‘Did you tell him why he was going to the King?’
‘I said that I had made a promise and that he was to stay with the King until I had kept that promise. He accepted it . . . smiled at me and waved. I . . .’ He pushed away from the wall and past her into the room. Picking up the flagon on the trestle, he sloshed wine into his cup, spilling almost as much as he poured, and this from a man who despite the loss of an eye had a feline accuracy of coordination. He cursed and Sybilla hastened with a length of the baby’s swaddling to blot the spillage. John drank hard, slammed the cup down and then once more sat at the trestle. ‘Ah, God,’ he said. ‘I would rather walk through the fire at Wherwell again than do what I have just done.’
Sybilla laid the wet swaddling aside and, kneeling before the bench, reached for his hands. She hadn’t cried properly yet, although she knew when the tears did come, they would wash her away. There had to be a path round this for all their sakes.
‘Can you not negotiate with Stephen?’
John looked at their joined hands. ‘That is what I have been doing. I’ve earned us two weeks. He’ll leave a token force and withdraw.’ He pulled away from her and, facing the trestle, picked up and examined a tally stick.
‘And then what?’
‘And then I restock the keep with men and supplies,’ he said and now his voice was hard and devoid of emotion.
She rose to her feet, her stomach quailing. ‘You have written to Henry though.’
John snorted. ‘He is hardly going to cross the Narrow Sea in that time to save Newbury from Stephen, and I already know his reply. I didn’t ask him for permission to yield. I told him Wallingford was in great peril and that I would hold out and delay for as long as I could, but he should not expect miracles. I have ordered up supplies to take into Newbury - it’ll probably have to be done at night once Stephen’s men have drawn back.’
‘What about William?’ Her words emerged in a thready whisper.
‘He’ll have to take his chance.’ He avoided her gaze. ‘Stephen doesn’t have the stomach for violence against women and children. Time and again I’ve seen him back down and William has a way with him that could charm a smile from the sourest curmudgeon. Stephen’s wife is dead. He’s in mourning for her; he won’t kill a small child.’
‘He killed the garrison at Shrewsbury,’ she said, feeling nauseous. ‘Hanged them all. Are you prepared to take that risk with our son?’
‘The garrison at Shrewsbury were grown men, not infants,’ he said curtly. ‘I promise you, Stephen won’t do it.’
She blinked and shook her head, tears welling, and turned away to compose herself. If she started screaming and weeping she was lost. Drawing a deep breath she turned round again. ‘Perhaps you could swear to Stephen in order to save Newbury and get William back, but quietly bide your time.’
‘Give my oath without giving it, you mean?’ His tone was dangerously flat.
‘No,’ she retorted with exasperation, ‘give your oath and keep your head down. You don’t have to go out on a limb all the time.’
Colour flooded into his face, matching the hue of his scar. ‘For all your cleverness, wife, you haven’t dwelt at court beyond a single Christmas gathering with the Empress. Believe me, if I yield to Stephen, you’ll be a widow before the autumn winds strip the leaves from the trees. Those around Stephen would cut me down and spit upon my corpse.’
‘Holy Virgin, you are ten times worse than Patrick!’ She stamped her foot. ‘There are more moves in a game of chess than two - as you should know if you are the great courtier you claim to be! Others have played the game to their own advantage by balancing a line between Stephen and Henry. Why can’t we do the same?’
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