The Briton (19 page)

A stench of bilge water wafted up from below deck, and the tall mast overhead swayed like a willow in the breeze.

Bronwen much preferred the
snekkar
with its long narrow body and deep secure seats to this creaky old sieve. At last she spied the captain talking with two of his crew.

“Ah, madam,” he called as she approached. He dismissed the men. “I’m happy to see you on deck. I began to fear I’d dreamed the lot of you.”

She smiled. “My sister labors to accustom herself to sea travel.”

“Tell her we’ll be on dry land soon enough. Tomorrow evening, we weigh anchor at Chester where I’ll be taking
162

The Briton

on a load of cheeses. Then we’ll stop in Bangor, and after that Cardiff.”

“When will we arrive in London?”

“Exeter and Southampton will be our final ports before the great city. You’ll see France when we pass Dover, but it won’t be long before we’re sailing up the old Thames. We should be at sea no more than two weeks. I’m bound to arrive before the first of August. I’ve a load to pick up from a merchant who wants it shipped to the Holy Land.”

“You go there often, sir?”

“It’s my regular route. The crusades have brought much interest in trade between England and the east.”

“Do you know of Antioch?” she asked.

“A beautiful place!” he exclaimed. “Antioch is a walled city that sits between a river and a mountain range. Never have you seen such homes as those in Antioch, madam—marble walls, painted ceilings, floors inlaid with mosaics. The homes of the wealthy have great wide windows to let in the fresh air, and gardens and orchards filled with oranges, lemons and fruits you’ve never seen. Their baths use water piped in through aqueducts from the springs of Daphne. The people lay large tapestries they call carpets on their floors, instead of rushes as the English do. Antioch is fairyland indeed, madam.”

Bronwen tried to make his words form pictures in her mind, but she could not even imagine such things. “Do you know many merchants in Antioch, Captain Muldrew?”

“Every one, madam.”

“Have you heard of a man, Charles, who went with Robert of Normandy on the First Crusade?”

The captain nodded. “Indeed, he is one of the wealthiest merchants in Antioch. He married a local woman, and they have several children. How do you know him?”

Catherine Palmer

163

“I met his son, Jacques Le Brun.”

“You must mean young Jacob, the second son. Does he call himself by his Norman name now? Then I suppose he has left his homeland. It stands to reason. His older brother was to inherit the father’s business. The last I heard of Jacob, he was a student of law at the college in Antioch—a fine intellectual and very bold as well. He studied swordsmanship under a great master. When did you meet him?”

“He usurped my husband’s lands, and I was widowed during the battle. Your young Jacob has become a knight in the service of Henry Plantagenet. He is now lord of Warbreck Castle in Amounderness.”

“Fancy that,” the old man muttered.

The gnarled seaman and the young woman stood in silence on the deck. Bronwen supposed the captain was trying to envision the youth he had known as Jacob, now a powerful Norman lord. And Bronwen was trying to see the Norman as a boy.

What had it been like to grow up in a city such as Antioch?

she wondered. What was a college—and how could one study law? And how had the second son felt, knowing his older brother would inherit the family’s trade, and he would have nothing? Perhaps that had driven him to embrace his father’s Norman heritage and serve Henry Plantagenet—a man who also struggled to gain power in a world that would deny it to him.

Nothing was as it had seemed to her in the firelit chamber inside Rossall, Bronwen realized. People could be very different than she had been taught. Vikings were not all cruel barbarians. Rossall was not a great hall, and though Warbreck had seemed a mighty keep, the castles she had seen along the English coastline were far grander.

164

The Briton

Preston had been an enormous town but she knew Chester was much larger. London would be bigger still. Marriage had appeared to be a secure, orderly tradition—until Bronwen had learned that husbands could be treacherous, deceitful and cruel. The gods she worshipped had seemed all-powerful, but believers of the one God and His Son had conquered much of the world. As she leaned on the ship’s rail, Bronwen wondered how many new ideas she must accept before she could be at peace with herself again.

“I have a proposal,” Bronwen said. The three women—all on deck at last—took in the sights as the old boat slipped down the estuary of the River Dee toward Chester. “Gildan, you must trade one of your gold rings for fabric. On our way to London, we shall sew new tunics for you and Enit. I would like to wear black mourning garb, for I have not given proper homage to my husband.”

The plan breathed life into Gildan at once. “A widow’s dress must have wide sleeves and hang loosely to the floor.

We’ll make a short black veil and then fashion a guimpe.”

The white fabric would cover the upper part of Bronwen’s chest, encircle her throat and join the veil. Would this sign of grief be just a farce? she wondered. Had she any real desire to honor the old man she had barely known? Since leaving Warbreck, Bronwen had tried to picture Olaf Lothbrok, but she found it difficult to recall any distinguishing features.

She could only form the image of a great bulk of a man, standing like a shadow over her.

“We’ll cut the instep of your stockings, too,” Gildan said, as though she were creating a costume for a mummer’s play.

“Then you’ll look like a proper widow in mourning.”

The sun rising behind them cast soft pinks and oranges
Catherine Palmer

165

across the purple waters of the River Dee—one bank of which was Wales, the other England. Trees were still black sil-houettes, while snow-white gulls wheeled and dipped above the ship. In the distance, a great old walled city began to emerge from shadow as men gradually filled the wharf and set to the day’s tasks….

“’Tis a lovely city, Chester,” Captain Muldrew said as he joined the women. “The Romans built her more than a thousand years ago—named her Deva and put one of their main forts up on that high sandstone ridge you see there where the river bends.”

“Romans?” Bronwen said. “How strange to imagine Romans living on our land.”

“Land is owned by God,” he said. “Men may fight and die for it, but they never truly possess it. The Romans came and went. Saxons took their place. Aethelflaeda, daughter of the Saxon king Alfred the Great, refortified the old city. She built some of those very walls you see in order to keep out the Vikings. That was more than two hundred years ago, when they were at their worst. Vikings. One never hears of that forgotten race these days.”

Gildan was about to speak up when Enit nudged her into silence.

“You must go into the city and have a look,” Muldrew went on. “You’ll find three churches—St. Werburgh’s, St. Peter’s and St. John’s—and the Roman amphitheatre. The great castle begun by William the Conqueror is now home to the Earl of Chester, a Norman of course.”

As the captain wandered off to begin preparations for weighing anchor, Enit spoke up. “Perhaps we should not leave the ship. What if
he
is here?”

“Aeschby? He’ll be back at Rossall, fearful that the Norman will usurp his holding if he stays away too long.”

166

The Briton

“We must be careful, though,” Enit said. “Your husband may have slain the Norman.”

“That handsome fellow has twice the strength of Aeschby,”

Gildan returned. “Though he’s a Norman dog, I thought him beautiful beyond measure. Did you see his eyes? They never left Bronwen once. Frankly, I cannot help but wonder how you managed to draw his attention, sister. It is obvious he feels great affection for you.”

Bronwen’s heart ached at the reference to Jacques Le Brun.

How cruel she had been to him—insulting the man and his entire people, spurning his offers of protection, accusing him of every manner of evil and treachery. And yet he had left his newly taken holding and ridden to her rescue—speaking of honor, defending her name. The man was a mystery she could not begin to unravel.

Her last memory saw him battling the hate-filled Aeschby, who had vowed to take her life. Haakon, too, had joined in the fracas. The thought of Jacques lying dead on the wharf filled her with unspeakable dread. From their first meeting, the man had been with her constantly—his gentle touch and admiring words always in her thoughts.

Surely she would have been wise to accept the Norman’s offer to go back to Warbreck. Had he not proven his honor when he came to defend her on the wharf?

She pulled the black mantle around her shoulders and touched the dagger at her side. Why had she scorned him?

What had led her to believe without question in the villainy of England’s Norman conquerors? Captain Muldrew had spoken truth about the land she held so dear. Tradition held that Britons had populated Amounderness—indeed all England—since time began. But the old seaman had recounted the rule of Romans, Saxons, Vikings and now Normans.

Catherine Palmer

167

Who did own the land? Perhaps all her father’s dreams of reuniting England under Briton rule had been nothing but wisps in the wind. Perhaps Jacques Le Brun’s chosen king, Henry Plantagenet, would be as capable as any Briton. But such musings had no value now. Jacques was far away, possibly lying dead, and all because of her.

Confirming the women’s freedom from pursuit at last, their journey into Chester proved uneventful. They purchased fabrics and other necessities, and then they returned to the ship in time to settle in for the remainder of their journey.

In the following days they sailed around the rugged green coast of Wales. At Bangor, the crew unloaded the cheeses in exchange for woolen blankets. At Cardiff, they took on boxes of fishing nets. Next the ship rounded Cornwall, a stormy finger of land protruding into the blustery Atlantic, and sailed along the southern coast of England to Exeter and Southampton. By the time they passed through the Strait of Dover—

with tall white cliffs rising from the sea on one side and the distant shore of France on the other—the ship was laden with all manner of goods.

“A good day to you, ladies,” Captain Muldrew said as he crossed the deck to the bench where Bronwen, Gildan and Enit had taken up regular residence. “Come up to have a look at the old city, have you?”

All three stood at once. “Is it London?” Gildan asked.

“’Tis Canterbury, the center of church power in England.

The School of Canterbury, under Theobald, has pledged itself to the succession of Henry Plantagenet.”

“That man again,” Gildan said. “Everywhere I go, I hear of Henry Plantagenet. Everyone adores him.”

“Not everyone,” the captain said with a chuckle. “King
168

The Briton

Stephen has a loyal following. Indeed, I fear this blood-soaked civil war will continue for years.”

“Who do you favor in the struggle for the throne, Captain Muldrew?” Bronwen asked.

“I support the man who’ll do the best for trade. His name is Henry Plantagenet.”

While Bronwen absorbed this information, Enit was questioning the captain about where they might find a nunnery when they arrived in London. The man found the idea of himself even associating with such pious women highly amusing and declared that he had no idea. As they could not pay for a room at an inn, he suggested they visit the home of Gregory, Lord Whittaker. He was a wealthy Norman merchant with whom Captain Muldrew often traded, and they were friends.

The thought of beseeching this stranger—an enemy to her father’s cause—for food and shelter distressed Bronwen. She suggested they find an almshouse instead.

“Never!” Gildan exclaimed. “I’ll not set foot in such a place.

We aren’t beggars who must depend upon the charity of others.”

“Be reasonable, Gildan,” Bronwen admonished her sister.

“We have no money and nothing to recommend us.”

“The almshouse nearest the wharf is named after St.

Nicholas,” the captain said. “I’ll give you directions if you wish, but I do believe Sir Gregory would welcome you.”

At the mention of St. Nicholas, whose symbol appeared on her mantle’s crest, Bronwen’s heart stumbled. Throughout the journey from Preston, she had done her best not to worry about what had become of Jacques Le Brun in his battle with Aeschby and Haakon. Indeed, she had tried to forget him altogether and concentrate on the freedom of the sea and the future that stretched out before her.

Catherine Palmer

169

But once again, the man’s glossy black curls and high cheekbones formed in her mind. At her final refusal of his offer, his eyes had gone a liquid brown, and she’d felt the sting her words had inflicted. Expecting him to despise her, she had been astonished beyond measure to see him riding along the wharf and declaring himself her defender.

Had she made the gravest error of her life in setting sail for London? Or was her action honorable—a deed about which her father would have boasted to his men?

It seemed the ship had barely passed Canterbury when the old captain stretched out a knobby finger. “Look there in the distance,” he said. “There’s your destiny, ladies—’tis London.”

After much discussion and argument, Gildan finally per-suaded Bronwen to go to Lord Whittaker’s house and make inquiry. But now on the wharf, the two young women stood hand in hand, afraid to move. Enit had gone as pale as a frog’s belly. The vast city with its innumerable chimneys, rows of wooden houses and endless winding streets all but overwhelmed them.

Bronwen could not count the ships of all shapes and sizes moored along the brown river. Every sort of food, drink and spice that could be made was rolled in barrels down long planks, or packed in timber crates and burlap sacks ready for export. In the shops that supplied the wharfsmen lay dried cod, whiting, hake and eel. The aroma of freshly baked breads, cakes and puddings mingled with cinnamon, chives, garlic, mint and thyme.