Shields of Pride (28 page)

‘Come on, you whoreson, yield!’ Ralf snarled as he pressed Conan to the edge of the circle.

Conan was panting hard and didn’t reply - but the expression in his eyes was eloquent.

Ralf redoubled his efforts. Although he still moved with grace, his face was pink and streaked, and his chest was heaving rapidly. Conan watched and waited for his moment, then made a deliberate, almost clumsy feint at Ralf ’s legs. Ralf immediately lowered his shield to counter the intended blow, but Conan straightened and changed direction like a sudden dazzle of lightning and the blunt sword came down across the back of Ralf’s unprotected neck.

‘You’re dead,’ Conan gasped, lowering his guard and standing back.

A shocked silence descended, the onlookers not quite believing what they had seen. Ralf quivered, muscles tense to renew the attack. ‘Don’t make a fool of yourself,’ Conan said softly out of the side of his mouth. ‘Part of learning is knowing how to take defeat.’

‘I don’t need a lecture from vermin like you!’ Ralf spat and, tossing down his sword, shoved his way out of the circle, making sure that his shoulder barged Conan’s in passing.

Conan returned the whalebone sword and the shield to Hamo and watched Ralf stride towards the hall with thoughtful eyes. The spectators started to disperse.

‘He let his hatred cloud his senses,’ Conan said to Ironheart. ‘Otherwise he’s an accomplished young man.’

‘You didn’t exactly encourage him to be rational,’ William answered as his courser was led out and a fresh horse was brought for the mercenary.

Conan set his foot in the stirrup. ‘Neither would an enemy,’ he retorted. ‘He’s wound up as tight as the pulley on a siege engine. Just make sure that when he lets fly you aren’t standing in the way.’

Ironheart grunted. ‘I don’t need your advice on how to handle my own son. Ralf doesn’t like you and I don’t blame him.’

Conan sighed deeply. There was still a wide rift between himself and William de Rocher and he didn’t think that, despite praying together at Morwenna’s tomb, it was ever going to narrow beyond a brusque truce.

Ironheart glowered at him. ‘Anyway,’ he said shortly, ‘why send for me? What makes you think I am going to be of any comfort to Joscelin?’

‘If the woman and child die, he will need you. You have known the grief. I do not want to see him ruined as you and I were ruined. I’ve always had the lad’s best interests at heart, whatever you think of me. He is my kin and the de Gaels were not always mercenaries and ne’er-do-wells. My grandfather had lands and a proud bloodline but he was brought low by taking the wrong side in a dispute. I want Joscelin to succeed. I want him to have a better life than either you or I have had.’ Conan paused and sucked a breath through his teeth, his complexion dusky with high feeling. ‘I have said more than I should but this is not the time for holding back.’

They rode out of the keep in silence: a normal state for William but not for Conan, who was usually as brash as a jay.

‘The woman and child are mortally sick, then?’ William asked after a long time.

‘I do not know,’ Conan said wearily. ‘As few people as possible are going near them lest they breathe in the evil vapours - Lady Linnet’s instructions. I only know that Joscelin has scarcely eaten or slept since they took ill, and this morning he sent for Father Gregory.’

‘Does he know you have come to fetch me?’

Conan shook his head. ‘I do not think he knows anything but the mortal peril of his wife and stepson.’

William compressed his lips. ‘He’s only been wed to the wench since harvest time,’ he growled. ‘You’re not telling me he’s heartsick beyond all healing?’ And, without waiting for Conan’s contradiction, he rode on ahead, making it clear to the other man that he did not wish to communicate at all.

Joscelin eyed the congealing bowl of pottage that Stephen had brought to the bedchamber half an hour since. Small circles of fat were forming at the edges, encrusting the pieces of diced vegetables sticking out of the liquid. His stomach, normally robust enough to accept any form of sustenance without demur, clenched and recoiled. He abandoned the bowl on the hearthstones, an untouched loaf beside it, and reached for the flagon of wine that Stephen had brought with the meal. That at least he could swallow without retching.

With dragging feet he returned to the bed and sat down in the box chair that had become his prison and his prop during two lonely nights of vigil, or was it three? Time had lost all meaning as he watched the contagion invade and consume.

Father Gregory had visited mother and child, and used the opportunity to shrive them. A precaution and a comfort, he had said, but it had been no reassurance to Joscelin. To shrive them was to acknowledge that they might not recover.

His eyes felt raw with lack of sleep but he knew that if he closed them, if he relaxed his vigil for one moment, death would come with swift stealth and take Robert and Linnet from him as it had taken Juhel. And even if death did stay away, he knew the dreams would not.

He stared at them both sleeping together in the great bed. Perhaps Robert was breathing more easily since the last dose of feverfew or perhaps it was just the fancy of his aching mind. Linnet tossed and moaned, her hair darkly damp, her face and throat marked with the red blotches of the fever. She pushed at the covers and began to mutter. Her body arched and bucked and she licked her dry, pale lips.

Joscelin leaned over her, grasping her hot hand in his, stroking her forehead.

Her glazed eyes flew open and she stared directly at him, but he knew she could not see him. ‘Raymond,’ she panted. ‘Raymond, someone will come, please don’t.’

‘It’s all right, Raymond’s not here,’ he soothed and turned briefly away to wring out a cloth in cold water and then lay it across her brow. ‘You are but dreaming.’

‘No.’ She frowned, weakly fighting him. ‘Not a dream.’ Her body moved beneath the damp linen sheet, arching sinuously as if receiving a lover. ‘No, please, it is too dangerous. I . . . ah!’ A spasm caught her, leaving him in no doubt that her imaginary lover had entered her body. Prickles of cold shivered down Joscelin’s spine. His gut churned as she twisted and cried out, for the sounds, despite the torment of fever, were of pleasure, not pain. Raymond de Montsorrel. He was being cuckolded by a phantom in his own bed.

‘Linnet, in God’s name, he’s dead!’ Joscelin cried, striving to hold her thrashing body. ‘Christ, wake up!’

She fought him, her muscles rigid, her lips drawn back from her teeth in something that was part snarl, part sob, then she gasped and went limp.

Almost weeping himself, Joscelin slowly released her. ‘Oh God,’ he said, and put his head in his hands.

‘It will be safer if you let me pleasure you in the other way,’ she said in a hoarse, pleading whisper, her gaze darting upon the ceiling as if she could see moving pictures there. ‘If Giles were to find out, he’d kill us both. I know you like it when I do this.’

The urge to crush his hand over her mouth and silence her almost overpowered him. He sprang to his feet and strode into the antechamber while he still retained the control to do so. Pressing his temple against the cold stone wall, he fought his gorge. He remembered the bawdy barrack-room gossip in Nottingham. Raymond de Montsorrel’s appetite for sexual congress had been legend. The man himself had been nothing to look upon - balding, raddle-featured and with bowed legs from a life spent in the saddle - but that had never spoiled his attraction as far as women were concerned. His talents were all tucked inside his braies, so the gossip went. One of the garrison whores had boasted that Montsorrel had taken her up against the wall of St Mary’s Church on Ascension Day and that the size of his manhood would have put a bull to shame. And Linnet had let him—Joscelin ground his fist against the wall, not feeling the pain, and tried to think with his head, not his lurching gut.

It was no different from himself and Breaca, he told his recoiling instincts. She had been twice his age, amused and experienced in the ways of lust, and he had had no sense of guilt or sin at the time. He had no right to cast stones but he was deeply chagrined to find them lying at his feet anyway. Filled with self-disgust, he turned round to go back to the bed and saw his father standing in the doorway.

‘Conan told me,’ Ironheart said and stepped over the threshold. ‘For once he was right to open his stupid big mouth. Stand aside and stop glowering. Where are they - through here?’

Joscelin nodded. His head felt muzzy and he knew one of his incapacitating headaches was waiting on the periphery to attack. Damn Conan, he thought, and at the same time felt a tight swelling of relief in his throat and behind his eyes. Unsteadily he followed his father into the bedchamber.

Ironheart stood at the bedside. Joscelin heard the low mutter of Linnet’s voice.

‘What is she saying?’ He hastened to his father’s side, alarmed at what she might reveal in front of him.

Ironheart looked sidelong at Joscelin, his eyes bright with speculation. ‘That you cannot lie with her any more because she is with child.’

‘What?’

‘Is it true?’

‘I . . . I don’t know. She didn’t say anything before the fever struck.’ Joscelin sat down on the chair at the bedside and clasped his hands. ‘It is too soon, I think, and there have been very few opportunities.’ How many opportunities had there been with Raymond de Montsorrel? His eyes flickered to the little boy. The fever flush had faded from his brow and he appeared to be sleeping deeply and calmly. He resembled his mother, scarcely any Montsorrel traits to be seen lest it be in the slant of cheekbone and jaw. Did it really matter which Montsorrel? An exquisite pain was beginning to throb through his skull, making rational thought impossible. Behind his closed lids, small specks of colour performed a wayward dance and he groaned softly.

‘You need to sleep,’ Ironheart said, giving him a sharp look. ‘There is nothing you can do that a maidservant cannot. Go to.’

Joscelin was horrified. The thought of what Linnet might gasp out to a maid or his father in her fever was enough to make him shake his head in vehement denial. And there was the memory of how he had lost Juhel and Breaca, one in the flesh, the other in spirit. ‘I cannot!’ he said hoarsely.

‘You must.’ Ironheart laid his hand on Joscelin’s shoulder and stared him in the eye. ‘I do not know how loyal your men are but, if necessary, I will give the order for you to be taken and bound. Milo and Conan for certain will not hesitate.’

‘You would not dare!’ Nauseous with exhaustion and pain, Joscelin returned his father’s glare. For reply, Ironheart removed his hand from Joscelin’s shoulder and headed towards the door, his breath indrawn to bellow.

‘For Jesu’s sake, you do not understand!’ Joscelin cried after him, his voice breaking. The effort of forcing his shout through the tightness in his throat squeezed the band of pain across his forehead until he thought his skull was going to shatter. ‘I had a woman and child once before and I lost them. I wasn’t there when it mattered!’

Ironheart winced as if the raw anguish in Joscelin’s voice was a physical blow. Turning, he took two paces back towards his son, then stopped. His fists opened and closed and his throat worked. When the words came they were heaved out with effort as if they were enormous stones. ‘I wasn’t there to protect your mother,’ he said. ‘When I arrived from their summons she was dead but still warm enough for me to believe she was yet alive - only sleeping.’ He gave a choked laugh. ‘They said I tried to kill myself for love of her but it wasn’t true. It was for hatred of myself.’ Clamping his hands around his belt, he drew a shaken breath. ‘The woman and child you mentioned, this happened during those missing seven years?’

Joscelin nodded, his pain too great for him to be amazed that his father had voluntarily spoken of his own hidden guilts and griefs. ‘Breaca took me under her wing and then into her bed. She bore Juhel in the winter of ’sixty-one. Your grandson would have been twelve years old by now.’

‘What happened?’

‘Camp fever.’ Joscelin bit his lip. ‘He wasn’t strong enough to survive it. When he died, so did the fire between his mother and me - or perhaps it was already out. I don’t want to lose Linnet and Robert, too.’ He bowed his head and closed his eyes. Even the candlelight was almost too much to bear as the headache invaded and wrecked his faculties.

‘You won’t lose them,’ Ironheart said gruffly. ‘The child looks to be over the worst, from what I saw just now, and the woman’s got a stubborn core of steel.’

‘No, I’m going to lose her, too,’ Joscelin said bleakly. ‘Everything has changed.’

‘Don’t talk such drivel. All that has changed is your ability to think.’ Ironheart’s harsh features suddenly softened and he gave a deep sigh. ‘Conan thought I’d dredge up some wise words from somewhere to comfort you but I fear he overestimated my ability. All I can say is that I am here. You have to trust me. Give me the care of your wife and stepson for tonight and I promise I won’t let anything happen.’

Joscelin wanted to deny his father, tell him it was impossible, but the pain that had been toying with him like a cat with a mouse now sheathed its claws in his skull and the world became a seething agony. He was only dimly aware that the words emerging from his mouth were not the ones he desired to say.

Ironheart went to the door and shouted for the servants.

Linnet felt something lying on top of her. Hot and smothering, it pinned her to the mattress, making it impossible to breathe. She struggled to push it off but it responded by tightening its grip. She thought she could feel cruel fingers digging into her flesh and the bowl of her pelvis cramped as if she had been invaded. Choking for air, she opened her eyes and at first saw only the darkness of the night illuminated by the one lonely flame of the night candle beside the bed. She could make out the figure of a man sitting in the chair. He started to rise and bend towards her, and as he did the weight on her chest grew leaden.

‘Don’t fight me,’ whispered the voice of Raymond de Montsorrel. ‘You cannot win.’

She tried to scream but there was no breath in her lungs. A whirling darkness engulfed her. Her eyes were blind but she could still hear voices. Raymond whispering in her ear with the darkness of lust, Giles raging, calling her a harlot. Joscelin . . . Joscelin saying, Christ, wake up, I don’t want to listen to this. Another voice, closer, harder with frustration.