Lords of the White Castle (34 page)

Fulke clenched his teeth. Blood was seeping from the wound but he could tell it was not mortal—or not mortal as yet. 'I'm all right,' he managed to gasp. 'It's only a flesh wound, not in the bone.'

'Can you ride?'

Fulke laughed mirthlessly. 'I can scarcely walk, can I?' He looked over his shoulder. Desultory arrows still hissed at them, falling far short. All the doors in the village remained firmly closed, the ruffled hens and geese the only signs of occupation. No one was going to challenge them. 'One more moment and we would have had FitzRoger.' He ground his fist against his saddle.

'We could always surround the keep,' William speculated. 'He lost several men back there, and he's obviously on the defensive now.'

Fulke shook his head. 'If we sat down to a siege, it would be our last deed on this earth. Someone in the village will go running for aid and I have no desire to be trapped if reinforcements arrive from Shrewsbury.' He looked at William to see if his point was hitting home. 'To succeed we have to be swift. We have to practise chevauchée and make ourselves such a nuisance to John that he will be desperate for peace on our terms.'

William scowled, obviously seeing the sense in Fulke's words but reluctant to give in.

'There will be other opportunities,' Fulke said through a fire of pain. 'We have given notice of our intention. Let FitzRoger stew in fear for the nonce.' I don't—'

A loud scream from the direction of the village made the brothers turn. One of Fulke's knights had found a young peasant woman hiding behind a byre and with a grinning companion in tow was set upon having some sport. They had pinned her against the daub and wattle wall of the byre, and were dragging her dress from her shoulders.

Fulke swore. Despite the hot agony spearing his leg, he kicked Blaze to a trot, crossed the road, and forced his way through a gathering crowd of his knights, some watching uneasily, others sheepishly grinning. He drew his sword. The sound of it clearing the scabbard caused both men to look up from what they were doing.

'If that is your need,' Fulke said icily, 'there are whores enough in Oswestry and Shrewsbury to give you service. Any man who has a taste for rape has no place in my retinue. He also has no bollocks.' He flourished the sword. 'Let her go, mount up, and either learn your lesson or leave.'

'It was only a bit of fun, my lord,' one of them tried to defend himself, sidling towards his horse. His companion lowered his eyes and shuffled away from the weeping, half-hysterical girl.

'For whom?' Fulke bit out. 'Do you not have a mother and sisters? What would they think if they could see you now?'

In silence, shamed, the young men mounted up. Fulke glared at them, and then round at the other soldiers. 'Whittington is mine,' he said, laying down each word like a blow. 'Every stick and stone, every cow and calf and person. Harm one and you harm me. Those who cannot live with that notion can leave my service now.'

There was some shuffling, some cleared throats, but no one moved. Fulke held them with the blaze of his stare for a moment longer then turned to the weeping girl. 'Go home,' he commanded brusquely. 'No one will harm you further.' He tossed her a silver penny. The coin landed in the dust at her feet. She looked at it, wiped her hand beneath her nose, streaking a trail of mucus and tears, then snatched up the silver and fled.

Fulke twitched on the reins and swung Blaze on to the road that led out of Whittington and back into the woods, his thigh pulsing and jabbing with each stride that the stallion took.

CHAPTER 18

Maude enjoyed riding, especially when she could be astride a horse of her own rather than having to sit pillion behind a groom. She liked controlling the reins and feeling the response between herself and her palfrey. To protect her skin from the midday sun, she wore a broad-brimmed pilgrim hat over her light linen wimple. This was the third day of her journey from Theobald's abbey at Cockersand near Lancaster to Higford. The weather had grown progressively stickier as they moved inland away from the cooling sea breeze of the coast and down through Cheshire.

She had stayed with her father at Edlington for the briefest time that duty permitted. As usual he had been patronising and brusque, his main concern not for her welfare, but for her position on fortune's wheel. 'I made you a good marriage,' he had said, fists clutched importantly at his belt. 'You are kin to Hubert Walter, perhaps the most powerful man in the land. Why is it that your husband has no more now than he had on your wedding day—less in fact, since King John has removed many of his privileges?' He spoke as if it was her fault. Perhaps in a way it was. Doubtless if she had lain with John like so many baronial wives and daughters, the King's favour would have been easy to obtain.

Maude shuddered at the notion and the palfrey responded with a flicker of her ears and a sideways prance. She had told her father that Theobald would not curry favour at the price of his honour. Robert le Vavasour had snorted rudely and said that his son-in-law's honour was an expensive luxury that would eventually ruin him. At the end of a week, she had left Edlington without looking back.

It was common knowledge that a man's seed was stronger than a woman's, that what he planted in the womb was mainly of his essence. God help her, it couldn't be true. She didn't want to be made in the image of Robert le Vavasour: greedy, so obsessed with status and power that he was like a man with his face pressed up to an impenetrable wall.

Another week had been spent with her grandmother at Bolton, but that too had been raw with friction. Mathilda de Chauz said with pursed lips that Maude should settle to her needle and distaff and produce some children instead of spending hours at the archery butts. It was neither womanly nor decent. How did she expect to attract her husband to her bed when she behaved like a hoyden?

Maude had borne the clucking, her gritted teeth masquerading as a smile. Obligation discharged, she had ridden on to Theobald's manor and abbey at Cockersand. The salt tang of the wind, the wide view of sandy mud flats reddening in the sunset, the hiss of the ocean curling on the shore had given her the space she needed to recover from the ordeal of duty.

Theobald's messenger had found her there and given her his letter. The court would soon be returning from Normandy and she was to meet him in London. He did not say whether he had been successful in gaining permission to visit his Irish lands. The main item of news was that King John, having divorced his first wife, had taken another bride, a girl of twelve years old. Her name was Isobel of Angoulême and Theobald had written laconically that not only was she a great heiress, but that John was fond of her.

Maude grimaced, not venturing to wonder what that fondness might entail. Twelve was, after all, the age at which a girl could legally be married—even if she had not yet attained her physical womanhood. Maude remembered the fears and anxieties of her own wedding day. And she had had nothing to fear from Theo. What would it be like to be married to John? It was said that he was good to his mistresses, providing for them generously and acknowledging his bastard children, but that did not change the fact that he was a lecher, cruel and selfish in his lusts. Maude suspected that for every woman to benefit from his generosity, there were half a dozen others who paid the price—their families too.

Maude and her escort rounded a curve and the road widened, yielding a view of the daub and wattle houses of Higford. She had promised Emmeline FitzWarin that she would return this way and although it was a slightly longer route, the journey was pleasant and it was no chore. She liked Emmeline, she wanted to pray at Hawise FitzWarin's tomb, and the horses could be rested for a couple of nights before she continued down to London.

She rode past the shingle-roofed mill at the riverside and was curtseyed to and gazed at by the women waiting to have their wheatsheaves ground into flour. The mill wheel turned ponderously, the water of the race rippling like translucent green silk. A fisherman was emptying his wicker eel trap of its wriggling, glittering catch. Maude smiled. Likely she had just seen her dinner.

Rounding another turn, she came upon the manor. Lulled by the scenes of pleasant industry in the village, she was startled to find the place frenetic with activity as if someone had thrust their arm into a hive of bees. The courtyard was rilled with horses and armed men, recently arrived to judge by the chaos. Emmeline's grooms were busy amongst them and the knights themselves were unsaddling their mounts. Maude felt a selfish rush of dismay and irritation, swiftly followed by a burst of curiosity.

'Shall I find out what is happening, my lady?' asked Wimarc of Amounderness, who was in charge of her escort.

Maude nodded. 'Do so.'

Wimarc dismounted and went to speak to the men within. Maude watched him join a group, saw him listen and nod. Glancing beyond, her gaze lit on two young men in conversation, one as tall and thin as a jousting lance, the other smaller and stockier with a head of cropped red curls. Alain and Philip FitzWarin. And where Philip and Alain went, Fulke was likely to be ahead of them. She scanned the crowd, her stomach suddenly turning like the mill wheel.

Wimarc returned and told her what she already knew. 'Lady Emmeline's nephews are here to rest up for a short while,' he said. He gave her a shrewd look. 'Do you want to ride on, my lady?'

Usually decisive, Maude did not give him an answer straight away, but looked at the activity in the courtyard and gnawed her lip. It would be for the best, she thought. Accommodation would be horrendously crowded and the thought of seeing Fulke made the wheel in her stomach churn and surge. The thought of not seeing him filled her with flat disappointment. She had promised Emmeline that she would return this way and she owed Fulke the courtesy telling him how sorry she was for his mother's death. But with so many men, his purpose was obviously not just to visit his aunt.

Wimarc rubbed his palm over his bearded jaw and, as if reading her thoughts, said, 'They tried to lay an ambush for Morys FitzRoger and Lord Fulke came away from it with a quarrel in his leg. Lady Emmeline's tending him now.'

'A quarrel?' Maude stared at Wimarc in horror. King Richard had died of a crossbow bolt in the shoulder—a minor battle wound that had festered and poisoned his blood so that a week later he died in agony. 'Lady Emmeline will need aid if she is to tend Lord Fulke and see to all these men,' she said, her decisiveness returning. Gathering the reins, she nudged Doucette through the gateway into the frantic business of the yard.

Maude quietly parted the thick woollen curtain and entered Emmeline's bedchamber. It was a large, well appointed room at the top of the manor with limewashed walls that had been warmed and decorated by colourful hangings.

Fulke was in Emmeline's bed, propped up against a collection of bolsters. There were dark circles beneath his eyes, his mouth was thin with pain and weariness, and his nose had caught the sun so that he looked more hawkish than ever. Although battle-worn, he scarcely appeared to be at death's door and the fist of fear beneath Maude's ribs ceased to clench quite so hard.