Roselynde (4 page)

"A warden!" Alinor interrupted, forgetting in her sudden
fury to whom she was speaking. "I have managed my lands full well this
year. My vassals are at peace with me and with each other—"

"You forget yourself," the Queen snapped. "You are
young and I have been indulgent—overindulgent, I fear." Then her manner
softened. "You must learn, Alinor, that nothing comes in this life without
payment. Always the bitter accompanies the better. Perhaps your lands are well
in hand. Certainly the behavior of your vassals and the appearance and manner
of your keep and your servants give evidence of good management."

"Then why must I be overseen?" Alinor asked
rebelliously.

The Queen stared into the face that she could see was red as fire,
even in the dim light. She gauged the intelligence and anger in the dark eyes
that showed sparks of brightness in their depths. Why anger? The child was
neither greedy nor dishonest. Ah, she was proud. There was the key. Alinor could
not abide the thought that she was considered incapable of ruling her own
lands. The cold truth would do more good here than either threats or honeyed
lies.

"In plain words—for the King's good. You have ruled your
lands for this past year for your good and for the good of your vassals. That
is most reasonable. If you were to marry, your husband would rule your lands to
the same purposes. If you do not marry, however, your revenues come to the
King." The Queen paused and then said distinctly, separating her words so
that no implication could be missed. "A warden is needful to make certain
that every mil not used for your maintenance or for the heedful repairs and
care of the lands comes into the King's coffers and not into private purses. Do
you understand?"

Silence. Alinor stood like a carven image, except for the shallow
breaths that lifted her young bosom. The Queen sat down on the bed, and Alinor
automatically knelt and removed her shoes. As the Queen lay down, Alinor rose.
Tears glittered in her eyes.

"Is this your way to force me into marriage, Madam? Will you
set a warden who will impoverish my estates and ruin my vassals to bring me to
obedience?"

"Alinor!" the Queen exclaimed exasperatedly. "One
does not accuse royalty to its face of such things!" She could not help
laughing at the mixture of the naivete and boldness. "In fact, in this
case it is not true. It suits the King's purposes better for you to remain
unwed in that, as long as you are single, he is the richer. This is some
protection to you. If the King foresees your wardship will last some years,
there is no sense in wringing the lands so dry one year that revenues will fail
the next year. Also, when he decides to give you in marriage, he will not wish
his vassal to feel cheated. However, I warn you, it may not be so easy to bring
the King to agree to your marriage as it has been to bring me to agree that you
should not marry."

"No, I see that," Alinor replied slowly with apparent
submission.

But the shock was past and her fertile mind was already busy. The
King's warden might be less successful in finding every mil than she herself
was. If he tried to find too much— Her vassals would certainly aid and abet her
in this matter, more especially as it demanded no outright defiance of
authority. To the contrary, the more the appearance of total compliance, the
more successful they were likely to be.

The only thing that troubled Alinor was that her vassals were
honest to a fault. Her grandfather had been honest and honorable to a
fault—that was the one and only source of conflict between her grandmother and
grandfather. Often they came to words because Lord Rannulf would not consider
his own interest sufficiently. In a long life, he had enough time to pick and
choose among the men who owed him allegiance, and he had always given power and
advancement to his own kind. Of course, in some ways this was greatly to
Alinor's benefit. Her men had sworn to uphold and protect her, and they would
die if necessary in the keeping of that oath—they were truly honorable men. In
other ways so open an honesty was less advantageous. Perhaps they would try to
hold their tongues or skirt around the warden's questions, but their faces and
demeanors would betray them. Alinor could always tell when they were trying to
keep something from her—usually for what they mistakenly thought was her own
good.

Then let them speak the truth of what they sent to their lady.
Alinor herself had kept the records for many years—her grandmother's idea, not
her grandfather's, who considered learning unnecessary for a woman. And, Alinor
thought, as she had thought many times before, the more fool he. Her
grandfather might have been more lovable—but her grandmother was wiser. It
would be easy to fix those records—Alinor fought back a smile and curtsied to
the Queen. She did not mean to cheat the King of his rightful due, but she did
not intend to allow him to rob her, either.

"If you will permit me, Madam, I will leave you to
sleep."

The voice was deferential, the face free of trouble now. The Queen
had an uneasy feeling that that was wrong. Alinor might fly into a rage or a
tempest of tears over a small thing and as quickly forget, but she did not seem
the type so easily to put aside a serious matter. Yet Queen Alinor could not
keep the girl beside her every minute of the day. And she was very weary.

"Very well, my dear, I will let you go."

All that was necessary now was to avoid the eyes of the men in the
Great Hall. Not so hard. Alinor hurried across to the smaller chamber where the
clothing was stored. She removed the wimple that had protected her throat and
hair from the sun and dust of the road and cast off her riding dress. She did
not trouble that her tunic should match the simple gray bliaut she drew over
it. It would be necessary to change to grander dress to do honor to the Queen
for dinner anyway. Thus attired she did not look so different from the women
servants of the keep unless one were close enough to notice the embroidery of
the bliaut or the fact that the cloth was much finer.

Alinor need not have taken even as much trouble as she did. So
long as she did not literally shriek in their faces or blow a brass trumpet
right into their ears, neither of her vassals would have noticed her presence
in any case. As soon as Sir Simon had removed his helmet and pushed back his
hood, Sir Andre and Sir John had recognized him. They should have known him
sooner, of course, but his squire had carried the Queen's pennon instead of his
own and, until she left them, their real attention had been for the great lady.

Once recognition came, however, their attention was fixed. Sir
Simon was no mere castle-holder like themselves, casually ordered to accompany
the Queen. Although he lacked wealth and title and was not even the scion of a
great house, he was a power in the land, high in the councils of the mighty.
Born of minor Norman nobility, Simon had come to the Queen's household as a
page soon after her annulment from Louis of France and her second marriage to
Henry. He had, as was natural, been trained in arms and had shown such prowess
that he had carried the Queen's colors in every Court tourney from the time he
was sixteen years old. And rare, indeed, had been the occasion when he had not
brought her the prize.

Twice duplicate prizes had been awarded when he and that William
who was now Grand Marshal of England had fought to a standstill. Unwilling to
lose either man, the King and Queen had stopped the fighting. Once he had been
defeated by William, and once—his dearest memory—he had disarmed William, although
he was so close to exhaustion himself that he never claimed to have won the
bout. William Marshal, naturally, was Simon's closest friend.

The differences in their fortunes—the conditions that had made
William Grand Marshal of England and Simon a mere King's justiciar—was a matter
of sympathy and affiliation. William had been a King's man always; Simon,
although he served the King, was really attached to the Queen whom he adored.
It was very fortunate for him that he had been on a long drawn out mission for
the King in Germany when Queen Alinor finally erupted into open rebellion and
was taken and imprisoned. That Simon did not agree with her had nothing to do
with the case. He would have followed her and fought for her and ended in
prison or with his head on the executioner's block.

King Henry was well aware of Simon's weakness. Even with the Queen
kindly but firmly imprisoned, he dared not permit too great a concentration of
power to fall into Simon's hands. Normally the slightest stain of dishonor was
abhorrent to Simon, but had he headed an army capable of breaking Queen
Alinor's prison and had she commanded him to use his power in that manner, King
Henry had his doubts about Simon's ability to resist. Simon was very long on
devotion and very short on common sense where the Queen was concerned.

Thus Henry sent Simon to the outlying reaches of the kingdom—to
play mentor to Richard when he was a young eagle trying his wings, to bring
rebellious petty barons to heel, to bring justice to corrupt shires, to enforce
the King's writ wherever there seemed doubts that it would be obeyed. In all
things that did not touch the Queen, King Henry had trusted Simon; he had
asked, and sometimes even followed his counsel. And in all things that did not
touch the Queen, Simon had served the King faithfully, fighting his enemies up
and down the length and breadth of the far-flung realm until he was
acknowledged as invincible a warrior as he was incorruptible a judge.

In the last few years that incorruptibility had brought him out of
favor with the King. As Henry's troubles pressed closer upon him, as he saw his
two remaining sons preparing to tear him apart to gain their inheritance
prematurely by arranging his death, he grew more arbitrary, more rapacious,
more paranoid. He demanded fines where no crimes had been committed,
confiscations where there was no cause for disseisin. Technically it was the
King's right to deprive a man of his land at his own will. Long custom,
justice, and common sense, however, had nearly always prevented a king from
arbitrary disseisin. That dreadful punishment, really more awful than death
because it disinherited a man's heirs as well as destroyed the man himself, was
usually reserved for such crimes as treason. Many justiciars complied with Henry's
demands; Simon went his own way, fining what was right and just, confiscating
where there was cause. Henry complained, then warned, then relieved Simon of
his posts and sent him into house arrest on his own small estate.

Thus Simon was not called to serve the King in his last struggle
with his sons, which saved him much mental anguish. He would have served as
loyally as William Marshal did, faithful even in defeat and when it was clear
the King was dying. Unlike William, however, Simon would have done his duty
with a bitterly divided heart—knowing rebellion was wrong but also knowing that
Lord Richard's victory meant Queen Alinor's liberation.

Out of his disgrace came great joy. When William had been
reconciled to Lord Richard after Henry's death, he had been sent to England to
free the Queen and place the realm in her hands. In his haste to arrive and
provide strong and continuing government before news of the King's death
brought a wave of lawlessness, William scorned warnings of a storm in the
channel. The ship had been smashed and William had been injured. That, of
course, had not stopped him. He had transferred to another ship and set sail at
once, but by the time he reached England he had a high fever and was in
excruciating pain. Less disturbed by his illness than by the fact that he might
die before he completed his mission, William sent for Simon. The messenger bore
no more than William's seal on the brief letter, "Come to me, I have need
of thee."

Swiftly Simon gathered his own household guard, the only men
available to him, and rode through the night. He was not happy, believing that
he was summoned to the aid of the King in some final struggle, but he did not
delay an instant nor withhold a single man. The reward of his faithfulness was
to bring Queen Alinor the news of her release.

Sir Andre and Sir John knew that rumor in all times flies on swift
wings, but real news travels slowly. To them, as to every man, the intentions
of the new King were of paramount importance. Here was a source of real news, a
man to whom royalty and royalty's highest servants spoke their minds. It was no
wonder that both men hung upon Simon's words as if pearls were tumbling from
his lips.

Nor did Simon stint them. To his mind, there was no reason to do
so. Simon was a good judge of men, and he knew that these were of his own kind.
That they were Lord Rannulf's choice spoke for them. That they had supported
and protected their lady when it would have profited them greatly to desert
her, spoke even more clearly of their characters and honor. Unarmed and at
ease, he gave both the good news and the bad. The good was simply that Lord
Richard was a man of high honor. The new King had no intention of punishing the
lords who were faithful to his father. Indeed, even such servants of the dead
King as William Marshal were in high favor and would be rewarded rather than
punished for abiding by their oaths to the King.

The bad news followed naturally from the good. Lord Richard had
taken the Cross, and he was determined to hold by that oath as well as by
others. He had no intention of begging release from his vow to go on Crusade on
the expedient grounds that the realm newly come into his hands needed its King.
He would come to England as soon as he could to reform the bad customs that had
developed during the last years of King Henry's reign, but he would also come
to gather men and money, and money, and money and more money for the Crusade.