A Place Beyond Courage (54 page)

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Authors: Elizabeth Chadwick

Tags: #Fiction, #Historical

BOOK: A Place Beyond Courage
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Having finished her laundry and draped it on a rope slung between two spears to dry, Mariette made William wash his face and hands again even though he protested they weren’t dirty. Then she clucked at a mark on his tunic and made him change it for his best blue one. She tweaked the folds straight and combed his hair, lamenting a particular tuft that refused to lie flat.
‘God’s blood, woman, he’s the whelp of a thrice-dyed treacherous rebel whoremonger, not your son!’ Henk snapped.
She glared at him. ‘He’s a child!’
‘He is at the moment,’ Henk said darkly, then switched to Flemish to growl something that made Mariette gasp and then launch a tirade at him. William looked from one to the other, interested rather than alarmed. They were always squabbling. He noticed a youth wearing a fine scarlet tunic standing in the tent entrance. Henk turned to leave and saw him too.
‘You’re to bring the boy to the Earl of Arundel,’ the youth said. ‘Now.’
Mariette gave William’s hair another stroke and then let him go. Her eyes looked all watery and William wondered if she was crying. His mother’s eyes had gone like that when he left to come here. Henk nodded acknowledgement to the youth and taking William’s arm drew him from the tent.
As they emerged from the camp on to the open ground before the castle, William saw several riders clattering over the lowered drawbridge. He recognised his father on Aranais, and Benet and Jaston, the latter on Ronsorel, his mottled red-chestnut. William thought about leaping up and down and waving and shouting to attract their attention but, knowing that such behaviour was discouraged at home, held himself back. However, he stared at his father as hard as he could, trying to make him glance in his direction. Even with only one eye, his father seemed to notice most things around him, but today, for whatever reason, William couldn’t make him turn his head.
Henk gave him a sharp tug. ‘Come, boy,’ he growled. ‘You’ll see your father soon enough.’
The mercenary brought William to a group of lords and knights who were standing on the open ground waiting for the riders to reach them. William didn’t know any of them and there was still no one who looked like a king, although one lord had a magnificent golden brooch pinning the throat of his cloak which was trimmed with ermine tails. No crown though. Henk muttered to him as an aside that it was William Martel, one of King Stephen’s senior men, and that William should bow to him and stay quiet.
William did as he was told. He liked Martel’s big gold brooch and he had a beautiful scabbard at his hip, but the man himself exuded menace. William sensed he was being studied with disapproval, although he didn’t know what he’d done wrong.
‘Come here, boy,’ said Martel and, before William could comply, seized him by the neck of his tunic and dragged him to stand in front of him. He had thick, strong fingers smothered in gold rings. William could sense the anger in him. It was like the surface of a cauldron of water when it was simmering up to the boil. He wriggled in discomfort, and Martel immediately increased his grip, pinching William’s shoulder bone between fingers and thumb until William had to swallow a yelp of pain. He wasn’t going to cry out in front of all these soldiers, and especially not in front of his father who had arrived to face Stephen’s men. He was holding Aranais on a tight rein and showed no intention of dismounting. William looked up at him but still his father wouldn’t engage his glance. His jaw was clenched as if there was a bunched fist inside his cheek. Aranais sidled and snorted, hindquarters swinging and tail swishing.
William felt Martel’s chest expand as he drew a deep breath. ‘FitzGilbert, I do not know why you have bothered to come to the meet,’ he sneered, ‘unless it be to bid farewell to your son. We know you have fortified the keep with men and supplies and it’s hardly for our benefit, is it?’
His father was silent for a long time. When he spoke, his voice was straight and cold. ‘Where is the King?’
‘Waiting in his tent for your surrender, my lord, and he will not speak with you unless you swear now to yield.’
‘Then perhaps, knowing what you do, you might think it prudent to return my son to me and depart with your lives.’
William felt Martel’s belly shake as he laughed. ‘A fine try, FitzGilbert. You have audacity, I’ll grant you that, but it won’t save you or the boy. Hand over the castle to us now - or his life is forfeit.’
William looked at his father, not certain what the words meant, but not liking the sound of them, or the bruising weight of Martel’s hand still gripping his shoulder. His father’s face was set like stone and the expression on it was the one he wore when he was furious about something - not just annoyed, but truly angry, beyond stamping or shouting. He’d gone white too so that his scar stood out in scarlet relief.
‘Then it is forfeit,’ his father said with a wave of his hand. ‘I have three other sons at home and, as the King well knows, the anvils and hammers to forge better than this one. Do as you will.’ He tugged on the rein, drawing Aranais around, pricked him with his spurs and cantered back to the castle without a backward glance, his two subalterns accompanying him. William stared after him, his tummy swooping with shocked surprise. Something was wrong. He didn’t understand. His eyes stung, but he dug his fingers into the palm of his hand, held himself straight and didn’t cry. His mother had said he was her champion and his father had told him that he had to be a good soldier and do his best.
‘Bastard,’ muttered one of the men, his voice filled with revulsion.
‘He’s bluffing,’ someone else said. ‘The brat’s Patrick of Salisbury’s nephew. He’ll back down. He must.’
Martel gave a short bark of laughter. ‘You don’t know John Marshal.’ They started talking about his father’s fight at Wherwell Abbey when he lost his eye, a tale William had occasionally heard before from his father’s knights and guards, then Martel went off, saying he was going to talk to the King, and Henk took William back to his tent.
Mariette left off plucking the mallards and squeezed William in a tight embrace. She gave him a cup of goat’s milk to drink and fussed over him so much that he wriggled to get away. All he wanted to do was leap on his pony and ride after his father at full gallop. Failing that, around the camp would do. He felt as if he was going to burst with all the pent-up energy that being made to sit and stand and be still had built up inside him. All the fear as well.
Henk and Mariette started talking rapidly to each other in Flemish. He knew it was about him because he heard his name and he could recognise some other words too. Mariette started getting upset and buried her face in her apron to sob. Then a different messenger arrived with a summons.
Henk grabbed William’s arm and bundled him out of the tent, dragging him swiftly away from the soldiers’ bivouacs and towards another group of noblemen standing in contemplation of the castle. As well as the baron called William Martel, there was a lord carrying a beautiful silk banner wafting on a long, painted lance. He had been present before when his father had come out of the castle, but he hadn’t said anything. With them was a third man: tall and broad-set with greying fair hair and vein-reddened cheeks. He looked sad, William thought.
Henk pushed William to his knees in front of him. ‘Kneel to your King, child,’ he said.
William was astonished.
This
man was King Stephen? All the same, he bowed his head like he was supposed to do before God in church.
He was bidden to rise and as he stood, looked up into the care-worn features of an old, tired man. ‘Are you the King?’ he asked to satisfy his own curiosity.
‘I am, although your father seems not to think so,’ the man said dourly, and glanced round at his advisers. ‘So this is the boy whose only value to his father has been the buying of time.’
‘My lord, he says you may do as you like with the child; he cares not,’ said Martel with a sinister glare in William’s direction. ‘I say put him to the test. If he opens the gates we have won. If he doesn’t, then he’ll bear the guilt for this death - and there’ll be one less flea to suck our blood.’
The King rubbed his beard and drew Martel and a couple of his captains aside to discuss what they should do. William turned to the man with the silk banner and asked if he could hold it. The man looked surprised, then amused and let him, warning him to be careful. ‘You’re as bold as your father, aren’t you?’
William twirled the spear, making the banner ripple in the breeze. ‘He has a red lion on his shield,’ he said, pointing to the design on the rippling silk. ‘My kitten’s called Lion too.’
For some reason the lord bit his lip. Then he looked at the discussion going on between the King and the others and his eyelids tightened.
Martel broke from the group and strode to William. He snatched the spear out of his hand and thrust it back into its owner’s. Then he hauled William across the sward to a timber frame that had been set up beside one of the trebuchets in full view of the castle. A rope had been thrown over the beam and one of its ends tied into a loop that swung gently back and forth, reminding William of the swing in the orchard at Hamstead, except the one at Hamstead had a seat to straddle made of a timber plank.
William looked round. His hand was burning because of the way Martel had snatched the lance from him. The lord who owned it was talking rapidly to the King and gesticulating.
Releasing William’s arm, Martel reached for the rope and held the loop with a hand on either side. ‘How would you like to swing on this, lad?’ he asked.
William nodded, but then thought he had better be polite, since the man seemed so cross about something. ‘You can have first turn,’ he said.
Behind him, someone spluttered and William looked round to find that several of the men were laughing, and that made him laugh too. Furiously Martel grabbed William and set the noose around his neck. ‘No,’ he growled. ‘Let’s see how well you kick first.’
 
Standing on the wall walk between the two towers flanking the gatehouse, John watched them bring William out and then take him to the makeshift gibbet.
‘Dear God in heaven,’ Benet muttered. He looked at John, saying nothing, but with an appalled question in his eyes.
John raised his hand and felt the rough scarring under his fingertips and said nothing because he had to stand firm. He saw William grabbed, saw the noose go over his head and braced himself against the palisade. It was one thing to say it didn’t matter, another to stand and watch it happen. He had gambled that Stephen’s nature was too soft to hang a five-year-old boy, no matter his parentage. But he had also gambled that Stephen would be strong enough to gainsay the intention of harder men such as William Martel.
‘Should we loose some arrows?’
‘No, save them. They’re out of range and we’ll need them later. If they see we are moved by any of this, it will only prolong matters.’
There was an altercation at the gibbet. Martel was gesturing, someone else gesturing back, and Stephen standing a little away, looking from one to the other. Suddenly William was hoisted up with a rapid jerk on the rope. John stared, straight-faced, one hand on his sword hilt, the other pressed to the palisade, knuckles showing white. Pain and shock ripped through him. His stomach muscles were so taut that he felt as if they were fusing to his spine. He daren’t loosen any part of himself, daren’t let anything through or he would shatter into a hundred irreparable shards, and he couldn’t do that, because he had to command the defence of this place.
There was silence along the battlements. John swallowed hard and sought his voice. ‘Tell the men to give my battle cry,’ he commanded hoarsely. ‘Tell them to beat their spears on the ground and shout. Loud as they can - do it now!’
‘My lord!’ Benet turned on his heel.
John let out his breath and stared across the open ground to the gibbet, not knowing whether to weep or exult. They hadn’t strung the noose around William’s delicate neck. They had hauled him up by the chest instead, taunting those in the keep.
‘
Dex ai! Dex ai le Maréchal!
’ He heard the first cry go up, then another, and another, ragged at first, but gaining momentum. The thud of the spears on the wall-walk planks set up a hard reverberation like a strong, steady heartbeat.
Christ, boy, Christ, boy, listen to this. It’s all I can send you.
His good eye was suddenly blind and stinging. ‘
Dex ai! Dex ai le Maréchal!
’ He took up the cry himself and sent it fullthroated across the space between them.
A herald rode out from the royal camp waving a flag of parley and John signalled for silence. It fell in ragged increments as the command was relayed.
‘That was but a warning!’ the herald bellowed up. ‘Unless you surrender, John FitzGilbert, know that your son will die before your eyes!’
‘You had your answer this morning!’ John roared back. ‘Do as you will with him, you will not move me.’ He gestured and the chanting recommenced with vigour.
The herald hesitated, then wrenched his horse round and galloped back across the camp to relay the response.
‘My lord.’ Benet handed him a cup of wine.
John drank. The taste was heavy and sour, or perhaps that taste had been in his mouth already.

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