Elizabeth Chadwick (52 page)

Maude compressed her lips. She did not weep; she did not argue. The time for all that was over. “Wherever you go, I go too,” she said and, without giving him a chance to argue, went to pack the baggage chests.

***

Fulke joined the rebels, but when the first glut of his fury wore off, he found himself discontented. He had no burning desire to fight for the King of France or see French lords acquire English lands by right of conquest. William Salisbury, after a minor toying with the rebels, had clearly thought the same and returned to his brother. There was a siege at Lincoln where the castle was held for the King. John descended on the city, raised the siege, and scattered the rebels.

Fulke was not at Lincoln. He joined neither side, but spent the time coddling a severe and serious bout of ague at his manor of Whadborough in Leicestershire. It was mid-October, a damp day, the leaves whispering from the trees and clothing the ground in slick brown and yellow patterns. Braziers burned in the main chamber, fragranced with aromatic herbs, and Maude had dosed him with horehound syrup.

She saw his malaise as one not so much of the body as of the mind. Unable to see a way out of the vicious circle in which he was bound, having loyalty to neither Philip, nor John, nor for that matter Llewelyn, he had retreated into a feverish state where he did not have to think about any of them. Maude left him to sleep for the best part of the day, finally taking him a bowl of broth and a small loaf as the midafternoon began to descend slowly toward dusk. A maid replenished the candles and the braziers and quietly left the room.

Maude gently nudged Fulke awake. He pulled himself upright and leaned against the bolsters. His eyes were hazy with sleep, but the glazed look of fever seemed to have diminished a little. His chest still rattled like a coffer of rusty swords, though.

“I’m not hungry,” he croaked.

“Just drink the broth then.” She broke the bread, dipped it, and ate a morsel herself, feeling rather like a mother trying to cajole a picky child.

After a moment, he raised the bowl to his lips and sipped in a desultory fashion. “I have been thinking,” he said. The deep power of his voice had been constricted to a smoky whisper. “There is something I have been meaning to do for a long time—since my mother died.”

“What?” Maude eyed him cautiously.

“I want to sponsor a religious foundation on my land. At Alberbury, where my mother and father are buried.”

She felt a jolt of fear. She wondered if he thought he was dying and wanted to make provision for his soul. Her thought must have shown on her face, for he shook his head and found a smile.

“I am not sick unto death, I hope,” he whispered. “But matters such as Hawise’s marriage and the fact that I have taken to my bed at all lead me to realize that I should set my affairs in order.” He paused to cough and Maude took the bowl of broth so that he would not spill it on the sheets.

Her anxiety abated somewhat as she remembered Theobald’s preoccupation with his monasteries in the latter part of their marriage, a growing need for the spirit to be comforted rather than the body.

“Yes, I think it is a good idea.” Perhaps if he went home and threw himself into the building, his discontent would ease. That was part of it too, she thought. While temporal leaders failed, God was a constant.

“I have thought also to make provision for Mabile,” he said, taking the broth from her again and cupping the bowl in his hands. “Without a miracle she will never be fit to wed and she cannot enter the Church because she does not comprehend the meaning of worship. If—God forbid—anything should happen to us while she lives, I need to know that she is protected by law.”

Maude nodded and sat down beside him. She often wondered if she had done something during her pregnancy to cause Mabile’s condition. It was said that women who gave birth to babies deformed by a harelip had been startled by that animal during their pregnancy. However, she could think of nothing to account for Mabile’s misfortune unless it was the difficulty of her birth. Mayhap it was God’s punishment for her parents’ sins. Either way, the guilt and uncertainty gnawed at her. “What do you intend?”

He sipped the broth and set it aside. “I am going to give Lambourn and all its revenues to maintain her for as long as she lives.”

Maude stared. It was his richest manor, the plum of his de Dinan inheritance. It was guilt, she thought, like her own, for which he was overcompensating. Then again, not all the riches in the world could compensate for their daughter’s tragedy.

“It is the least I can do,” he said, as if reading her thoughts. “That and a chapel for prayer.”

***

In the morning Fulke was well enough to leave his bed and sit before the brazier, wrapped in his warmest tunic and fur-lined cloak. He had developed a harsh, rattling cough, but he was bright enough to be considering plans for his religious house.

He dictated to the scribe in a hoarse, scratchy voice. Another three or four days’ rest, he thought, and he would be well enough to think about leaving Whadborough, but for which destination was a question he did not want to consider. Home to Whittington, or south to rejoin the rebels? He had no idea. Last they heard, John had been at Lynn, organizing supplies for his army of mercenaries, but where he was now and what his intentions were, Fulke did not know. John or the French. The price demanded was too high to support either. Look to God instead. He smiled with grim humor.

The quill scratched across the vellum. Fulke rubbed his forehead and Maude brought him a cup of spiced wine. Earlier she had massaged his chest with aromatic herbs and goose grease. The smell was revolting but it had eased his breathing.

There was a thump on the door and Fulke’s squire, Walter, poked his head around to announce that a messenger had arrived from Earl Ranulf of Chester.

“Admit him,” Fulke commanded.

Maude’s expression had frozen. “What do you think he wants?”

“I know not, but for him to send a messenger here, it must be important.”

Maude bit her lip. He could imagine the scenarios racing across her mind because they were doing their best to gallop through the wool occupying his own. John was on his way here with an army, squashing resistance as he went as he had squashed it at Berwick by butchering everyone in his path. The royalists had seized Whittington and were holding their children hostage. The French had retreated and John was demanding surrender of all rebel barons.

The messenger was ushered into the room and bowed to Fulke. He was a florid man of middle years with a thatch of gray hair and a full mustache.

“You look as if you have ridden hard,” Fulke said in greeting and gestured the man to rise.

“That I have, my lord, and with momentous tidings.” He gratefully took the wine that Maude gave him and drank deeply. Then he said, “The Earl of Chester bids me greet you and deliver the news that King John is dead at Newark Castle of a grievous flux of the bowels.”

“Dead?” Fulke repeated blankly. The word rang in his ears but seemed unable to pierce further.

“Yes, my lord. He took ill of the gripes on the morning he left Lynn and they worsened.” The messenger licked his lips. “He was making for Swineshead Abbey and sent his baggage train the short route across the estuary. It was caught by the tide and all the gold with which he was going to pay his soldiers was lost. When he heard that news, it worsened his plight. My lord rode with the King to Newark and sent for the Abbot of Croxton when it became plain that he was mortally ill. But there was nothing to be done.”

Maude crossed herself. “God rest his soul,” she whispered.

Fulke followed her lead, responding by rote as he struggled to assimilate the news. John had loomed over most of his life. He had expended years fighting him, pushing at him as if he were an insurmountable object in his path. Now suddenly there was nothing, and he was free to go forward, except that the removing of the object seemed to have brought him to his knees.

“Earl Ranulf has been named an executor of his will and co-guardian of the young King with the Earl of Pembroke. They ask that you come and swear your fealty as soon as you may.”

Fulke rubbed his jaw and felt the prickle of stubble like small needles against his palm. John’s son and heir was a boy of nine, so in effect his guardians would rule the country. He had every respect for Chester and Pembroke. “And the Great Charter, what said they of that?”

“That they will honor the terms, my lord,” the man said.

Fulke thanked the messenger and dismissed him to seek food and rest. Rising to his feet, he walked haltingly around the room until he came to a chess set arranged near the window. Suddenly he felt incomplete—as if half the pieces were missing. “I should be leaping for joy,” he said to Maude, “but I feel naught but emptiness. All these years…” He swallowed. He was not going to weep because John was dead. He was not! But against his will, the tears came anyway.

She put her arms around him. “A freed prisoner has to grow accustomed to the daylight,” she said.

“There are only two years between us in age.” He continued to gaze at the chess pieces through a blur of moisture. “I thought…” He swallowed. “I thought he was going to be my enemy forever.” He blinked hard. It was as though his hatred for John was a skeleton around which the flesh of his life had been modeled. Now, without that solid backbone, he was dissolving. Perhaps he should have died of this ague even as John had died of the flux.

“Game’s end,” Maude said. Leaving their embrace, she picked up the heavy wooden chessboard, pieces and all, and, carrying it past the astonished scribe, she threw the entirety on the fire.

Fulke stared through a brilliance of tears. Billows of smoke rose toward the roof vents. The flames seized the edges of the board in avid, fiery claws.

“Finished,” Maude said with a brusque nod. “Neither black nor white, but mingled ashes. Now we can go home.”

Alberbury, Shropshire, Summer 1222

A smell of powdered stone dust filled the air, mingling with the sound of a mason’s hammer chipping on stone. Alberbury Priory was growing out of the land cleared for its birthing, stone by mortared stone. It was to be a house of Augustinian canons when completed; Fulke had already negotiated with Lilleshall Abbey for the provision of a prior and monks.

Fulke watched the toiling laborers and artisans with a mingling of pleasure and irritation. “Pleased as I am to see this working going forth to the glory of God,” he said, “I cannot help but think that I could put these masons to better use at Whittington, strengthening the defenses.” He folded his arms and frowned.

“Can’t you just send them, sir, and set them to work?”

Fulke glanced at his son and namesake. The lad was almost eighteen with a nimbus dazzle of fair hair and dark-gray eyes. Coltish, still growing into his limbs, but promising the athletic strength to balance his height. He was serving as a squire to Ranulf Chester and his leave was short: a couple of weeks to visit his family during the long days of midsummer and attend his sister Jonetta’s wedding to Henry of Pembridge.

“It isn’t as easy as that, son,” Fulke said wryly. “I cannot strengthen Whittington unless I am given a license from the King. If I build in stone without his yeasay, then he is entitled to command his sheriff to see that all the work is destroyed. Also I would be levied an enormous fine and we are already in debt to the Crown.”

“Well, why won’t he give you permission?” The youth picked up a chip of stone and lobbed it across the grass.

“Because I was one of the rebels who took against his father. Because it is forgiven but not yet forgotten. Young Henry and his advisers could grant me permission to strengthen my keeps and then find that instead of using them to keep the Welsh at bay, I was fomenting another rebellion.”

“They don’t really think that,” the young man said. “Earl Ranulf would be happy for you to build in stone. Look at me, I’m his squire and his godson. He wishes you nothing but well.”

“Earl Ranulf may have a say in governing the country, but his word is not the law and there are others who are more cautious.”

“It has been difficult since the Earl of Pembroke died and the disagreements at court have widened.”

“Well, it doesn’t seem sound to me to forbid you to strengthen Whittington. What if Llewelyn strikes?”

Fulke laughed without humor. “Whittington will burn,” he said. Turning from the industry, he strolled back toward the keep. It was a slow process, regaining trust, he acknowledged. Slow and often frustrating. In the six years since John’s death, the country was gradually settling back to normal, like a pool clearing after the throwing of a stone. Fulke remembered kneeling at the feet of John’s nine-year-old son to pledge his homage. The child had been fair, with his mother’s pale complexion and long, fine bones. The crown upon his yellow hair was a circlet belonging to his mother since John’s regalia was somewhere in the murk of the Wellstream estuary. Henry’s responses had been given in a clear voice, high-pitched as a bell, almost feminine. The eyes were Isobel’s, the features thin and fastidious. There had been nothing of John to see, thank Christ, in any of the child’s features or mannerisms. Fulke could not imagine playing chess with Prince Henry except on the most excruciatingly polite of terms. The sort of man he would make remained to be seen—as it remained to be seen with his own sons.

“I think, then, that I would strengthen and be damned,” said his heir.

Fulke’s lips twitched. “Yes, I used to think that way too. I must be getting old.”

***

Maude watched Clarice’s silver needle fly in and out of the Flemish linen. The weave was so fine and tight that it did not seem possible that human hand had been involved in its manufacture. The quality had been reflected in the price, but since it was to be an altar cloth for the family chapel when the new abbey was consecrated, expense was not an issue. They were in Alberbury’s garden, sitting together on a turf seat.

“I do not understand why you turned Hamelin FitzWilliam away,” Maude said irritably. The day before, Clarice had refused yet another offer of marriage.

“I am content as I am.”

Maude suppressed the urge to throttle Clarice. The words were spoken serenely and the face remained smooth and untroubled. It was like talking to a nun who had such a powerful vocation that it was unshakable. The same words every time, like a litany. The slight, sweet curve of the lips. Maude longed to shake that composure and see what lay beneath.

“If you had been raised in another household—my father’s, for example—you would have been forced to the altar long before now,” she said darkly.

“I know, and I am thankful beyond measure that you have put no such pressure on me.”

“I think you are afraid,” Maude said sharply. “You have such a comfortable nest with us that you don’t want to fly away and feather your own.” She had thought that Jonetta’s marriage the previous week to Henry of Pembridge would put Clarice in a receptive frame of mind, but apparently not.

Clarice set her needle neatly in the fabric and rose, hands pressed to the small of her back. “Perhaps you are right,” she murmured, “but I do not see why it makes you angry. While I remain unwed, my lord can avail himself of my revenues.”

Maude gritted her teeth. Arguing with Clarice was as futile as pummeling a bolster. “I am not angry, merely concerned.”

“You need not be.” Clarice stooped to pluck a small clump of weeds from the soil. “I have said I am content…unless of course you want to be rid of me?”

“Don’t be foolish. We have raised you as one of our own and we love you dearly.” She met the perceptive gray-gold gaze for an instant, then looked at the embroidery. Clarice was as sharp as a needle and there had been an undercurrent of truth in her observation just now. Maude sometimes found Clarice’s presence annoying. Her air of serenity and her unfailing good nature could be as wearing in its own way as petulance and tantrums. Moreover, now that Clarice was a woman grown, there were frictions—unspoken but potent.

Clarice said nothing, but strayed further up the bed, pulling a weed here, deadheading a flower there. It was always her way. Arguments never went anywhere with Clarice because Clarice, quite simply, refused to argue. The docility was indicative of either a truly bovine nature or control beyond belief. Cut Clarice and likely she would bleed pure honey.

A shadow covered the sunlight on the embroidery frame. Looking up, she met the frightened eyes of one of the younger maids.

“What is it, Nesta?”

The girl dipped a curtsey, holding the folds of her gown with shaking hands. “My lord sent me to fetch you, my lady. There’s been a Welsh raid at Hilfrich…they’ve torched it. There are some villagers in the bailey—several sore wounded.” She swallowed.

Maude was immediately on her feet. “Dear God. Nesta, take care of Mabile.” She indicated her youngest daughter who was sitting in a corner of the garden, playing with a heap of shredded petals and singing in a strange, high-pitched voice. “Clarice, come with me.”

Together the women ran from the garden to the keep. The first thing Maude saw was Hilfrich’s reeve, Sion, his hand heavily bandaged and the wrappings brown with dried blood. Lying at his feet was a child of about Mabile’s age, her fair plaits matted dark-red around a terrible wound in her skull. Fulke was crouching, his hand on the man’s shoulder, his expression one of fury and grief.

“She’s dead,” Sion said, looking numbly at Maude. “One of them rode her down and she took a kick…” He didn’t finish the sentence. His eyes were glazed and dry, looking inward to the horror of what he had seen. He was a Welshman. His wife was English, but there was no sign of her among the gathering of shocked, dazed villagers.

“What happened? Who did this?” she asked Sion. Clarice had found a blanket and she laid it tenderly over the dead child, covering the awful wound beneath its woven softness.

“They came without warning,” Sion said. “Out of nowhere on horses they came.” His voice was as blank as his eyes.

“Who came?” Maude took his bound hand and gently unwrapped the bandages.

“The Welsh,” Fulke answered for the reeve, the word harsh with rage. “Hilfrich is a border village. They claim it theirs.”

Maude was appalled. “But why burn it to the ground? Always before they have raided for crops and cattle, not…not like this.” There was a deep cut across the back of the reeve’s hand, exposing a glisten of tendon and bone. She winced; even with stitching, he would likely lose the use of the limb.

Fulke shook his head. “I know not,” he said grimly. “Llewelyn and I…we have had our differences ever since I made peace with the King and renewed my oath of fealty, but this…”

“Llewelyn? You think it was Llewelyn’s men?”

“Who else could it be?” He moved on among the villagers, stooping to talk and console, promising them that he would deal with the matter. Young Fulke followed in his footsteps, white-faced but resolute.

Maude applied herself to tending the wounded. Earlier she had been irritated with Clarice, but now she could do naught but bless the young woman as she moved efficiently among the villagers, her calm, competent manner visibly easing their distress.

“They are all telling the same story,” Fulke said later to Maude. He had ordered the horses saddled and was donning his mail. “No warning—just armed riders pouring into the village, torching the houses, driving off the livestock, riding down anyone who got in their way.”

“What are you going to do?” Watching him put on his armor, she felt sick with fear. For six years, there had been peace; seeing him in mail again made her realize how fragile that peace was, how complacent she had become, and now, caught off guard, how vulnerable they all were.

“Look at the damage,” he said.

“What if the Welsh are still there?”

“They won’t be, and if they are, I’m no untrained farmer armed with naught but a hoe. They won’t run with their tails between their legs because they won’t be able to run.” The last word ended on a grunt as he laced his scabbard to his sword belt.

The thought of him caught up in a fight chilled her but so did the notion that the aggravation between English and Welsh had taken a new and vicious turn for the worse. “Why did they do it?”

“I would guess that Llewelyn is serving me notice of a full border war,” he said grimly. “Henry won’t let me strengthen my keeps and Llewelyn must know this; he has his spies. Hilfrich is only four miles from Alberbury. He’s been at odds with Pembroke and Chester all summer.”

“You cannot withstand Llewelyn,” she whispered. “Not alone.”

“Tell me something else I do not know,” he said bleakly. “I will go again to the King, demand that he let me strengthen my keeps, for if he does not, the Welsh will overrun the borders.” He pulled her against him and kissed her hard. “I hope not to be gone too long.”

As he left the chamber, his son stepped out. “Take me with you, Papa?” he requested. “I can act as your squire, I know what to do.”

Fulke looked at the lad. He might well need more than a squire at his left shoulder and had no intention of endangering the youth. Give him a few more years of experience and it would be different. He set his hand on the boy’s narrow shoulder. “No, I need you to stay here and guard your mother and sisters.” His fingers tightened as his son’s face began to darken. “And before you complain that I am wrapping you in swaddling, let me tell you that remaining here is just as dangerous. If the Welsh come, the responsibility for defending Alberbury is yours.”

“Yes, Papa.” The youth still looked crestfallen, but accepted the judgment. Fulke nodded brusquely, man to man, and turned to stride for the courtyard, only to find his way blocked by a breathless Clarice.

“Your spurs,” she said, showing him the silver crescents, then knelt to attach them to his boots. Fulke let her. Bending over in a hauberk was uncomfortable and breathing was difficult. He looked down at her bent head. Being still unwed and in her own domain, she wore no veil, and the skin of her parting was a precise white line dividing her glossy, braided hair. A feeling of tenderness flowed through him.

She rose to her feet, her face flushed from stooping. “God keep you, my lord,” she said, and he saw the suspicion of moisture in her eyes. Then she left him, walking swiftly, her spine straight, her head carried high.

***

The hamlet of Hilfrich stood on the Welsh border a little over four miles from Alberbury, to which the villagers paid their dues. It was, or had been, a small farming community: seven cots with stockades and vegetable garths, housing a total of six and twenty individuals. Now it lay in smoking ruins. Every house had been torched, every fence smashed down, every animal pen emptied, and the animals themselves either driven off or slaughtered. Fulke guided his horse through the debris, the drifts of smoke smarting in his eyes, particles of soot floating in the air like black snow. The smell was choking and acrid.

A few bodies sprawled among the burning ruins. An old woman too slow to run. A man who had resisted them with a boar spear. He thought of the little girl back at Alberbury, ridden down by a warhorse. And his gorge rose.

“Bastards,” said Richard, riding up beside him, his voice muffled as he held his cloak over his mouth. His eyes were red-rimmed and streaming. “You think it is Llewelyn?”

“Not in person,” Fulke said, “but certainly a raiding party and probably of men who are fighting for the pleasure of killing the English as much as for coin.” He grimaced, the taste of ashes in his mouth. “I know Llewelyn well but old friendships count for little in the wider scheme of a prince’s ambition. Besides, I am allied to Pembroke and Chester and my keeps are the weakest link in that chain.” He looked bleakly at the smoking remnants of what had been a thriving hamlet. “I think that this is the warning of the blaze to come and we are standing directly in the path of the fire.”

***

There had been pleasure in torching the buildings, in seeing the people run and scream. In watching the smoke rise to make clouds in the clear blue sky, trampling the vegetable plots, slaughtering the animals. Gwyn FitzMorys had not smiled for a long time, but he was smiling now. He had a war band, he had Llewelyn’s sanction to raid along the border, and he had old scores to settle.