The Lords of Arden (16 page)

 Clinton, solid and Norman and
unpretentious seemed unperturbed by the other man's quicksilver agility; the
oak matched with the sapling ash. He took the buffetings as if the shock of
each blow from the heavy blade failed to jar every bone and sinew in his body
and the young man with the slim wrists, who should have wearied and tired and
slackened in his attack, surprisingly pressed home every advantage with
increasing vigour.

 Sir John looked on with a certain
satisfaction. Johanna in her tower was leaning out over the awning, thumping a
fist upon the ledge in her excitement and Lady A caught the countess's eye
across the width of the yard and raised her brows questioningly. Kate only ran
a pink tongue along her white teeth and laughed at her.

 Cousin Ned was down in the sand, his
impressive blade describing an arabesque about him, dazzling the spectators. The
man who wore Johanna's scarf and the Mortimer Eagle stood with one foot
dramatically, if lightly, upon Clinton's reluctant form, the point of his own
sword hovering inches above Ned's pulsing throat. It was, of course, a friendly
joust but Sir John hastily flung his baton into the sand and, sheathing his
blade, the White Knight gave a hand to Ned, elaborately brushing away sand and
sawdust. Then he mounted his grey and rode slowly to the tower.

 Johanna, pink as a cook over a stew-pot,
leant out to present the prize to the victor. ‘Sir, shall we know your name?’
she asked breathily.

 ‘You must forgive me, fleurdeluce, a
sacred vow - a self-imposed penance. Nameless, I live on my wits; I borrow
nothing from my family or forbears.’

 ‘Only the valour of your race, sir,’ said
Johanna. ‘Blood will out, they say. You should acknowledge your sire. Even a
horse is valued by the reputation of its stable.’ He smiled up at her without
further words and took the hand she stretched out to him up to his lips. Then
he turned and rode across the courtyard, dismounted and unbound the silken rope
which was wrapped loosely about Lady Kate's white wrists. Their eyes met; the
gaze of an amber-eyed girl in an amber gown, the challenging smile of a
victorious young man with louche violet eyes. They had painted the pages of a
romaunt for themselves, a web of fantasy, a summer's dream. The air was alive
with a vibrant, tangible emanance, the crowd faded into a blur of buzzing
colour.

 John de Montfort put his hands upon the
white shoulders and drew her towards him and she lifted her full, red mouth for
his kiss which, when it came, sealing her breath on a little gasp, was hard and
firm and practised enough to set her soft whiteness thrilling with
anticipation.

 Montfort drew away, his voice husky, ‘The
white pavilion,’ said he without subtlety, ‘with the double silver valance,
edged onde and nebuly.’

 She nodded and he remounted, wheeled his
grey away and rode from the tiltyard. His valet, one of the Trussel boys from
Billesley, ran forward to his horse's head, congratulating his master.

 ‘Holy Mary, I've a thirst on! Did you
manage to chill the muscadel? I am expecting a lady; it might be inadvisable to
disturb us.’

 ‘Sir,’ said the Trussel boy, ‘I managed
to beg ice from Clinton's butler and sir…’ but the White Knight, dismounting
swiftly, was already striding towards his pavilion, ducking through the flap. ‘I
was going to say that she is already here!’ said the boy to himself, shrugging
his shoulders. Then he turned his attention to the stamping grey to plant a
kiss on the velvet muzzle and pull at the silky ears.

 The floor of the tent was scattered with
bright cushions; silk and velvet, rayed and brocaded and tasselled. A flagon of
wine was set upon an exquisite little campaigning table; mother of pearl inlay,
one of the fruits of a discerning ancestor's foray into crusading country. The
woman had made herself comfortable, stretched out upon the cushions. As he came
towards her she set down her goblet and rose in one fluid movement, crossed to
the table and poured him a cupful of the golden wine; the goblet was frosted
with condensation, ice-cold to the touch. She was tall and slim, her
slenderness emphasised by the close-fitting dark gown; Indian purple. Her face
above a long neck was oval and flawless, creamy pale, with only a little colour
high on the cheekbones. The fine eyes were sea-green, the dark brows winged
from above her patrician nose like flying buttresses. Her hair was, in all
probability, dark too, pulled back severely and completely hidden beneath the
elaborately goffered headdress.

 ‘I was not expected and you do not know
whether to be ingratiatingly polite or merely abusive,’ said Lady A. ‘We do not
need introductions.’

 ‘No,’ said the young man. ‘It is many
years; shall I bother to say that I could not have forgotten? I should have
recognised the audacity to say nothing of the line in headdresses. Welcome,
Lady A.’

 ‘I think you do not, however, know the
name of your chained Andromeda, I have that advantage. I am also
well-acquainted with the lady's husband.’

 ‘Ah…,’ said the White Knight with
amusement, ‘he is away and the lady is bored; it is a common complaint.’

 ‘You have grown up, John de Montfort,
since last we met. A fitting spouse for Lady Joan, and obviously commended by
her father; a fitting arrogance for your father's son; a fitting memorial to
your mother's shame.’ She let one of the long-fingered hands drift to encompass
the glittering, showy magnificence of the pavilion. ‘Perhaps it is time I
should make my reverence to the Bastard of Beaudesert?’ She had sunk into a
curtsey, straight-backed, head bent. There were tendrils of dark hair curling
at the nape of her neck from the terrible headdress. She rose to look him in
the eye then took her seat again amongst the cushions. ‘If you wish to disarm
please do not let me inhibit your progress. I am afraid your lad is performing
a service for me. On pain of great unpleasantness he is to keep your captive
milkmaid at bay until I have talked with you.’ She watched him as he began to
unbuckle his sword belt, his fingers working quickly and deftly at the buckles
of his mail shirt and the fastenings on the quilted gambeson beneath. Orabella
drained her cup. ‘The lady is Katherine Mortimer, Countess of Warwick, daughter
of the White Wolf, wife to Earl Thomas, mother of his sons, chatelaine of his
fortress, shrine of his honour and, as you mentioned earlier, the lady is
bored. She does not look to cuckold her husband. Kate is as chaste as Diana
outside the marriage bed. This perusal of your knightly charms is mere
dalliance, the ways of the old Courts of Love where words whisper for kisses
and a glance, caressing the body, is softer than importuning hands. And if
there is betrayal, it is only because a song can draw the heart out of man or
woman. She wishes merely to tantalise, to draw you after her, lemming-like, so
that her lord will take his eyes from his service to the king, from his horses
and hounds, his lordship of the courts, his preoccupation with ashlar and
voussoir, arch and string-course - his vast building programme. I hate
melodrama, John, but I think that if you touch her he will kill her, and if you
let her enter here, there is nothing so certain in this uncertain world but you
will hang and be glad of the rope.’

 He had moved to an open coffer and
selected a blue robe. He belted it loosely over shirt and hose and turned his
attention to her again.

 ‘And why, Lady A, should I believe that
you care what fate awaits me? Because when I was eight years old I sat at your
feet in the great hall at Edstone and you fed me ginger and saffron cakes? Because
my father and your husband crouched over fires together and dreamed of a better
world than the second Edward could ever provide? Because…’

 Orabella put out a hand and touched his
lips lightly with one beautifully manicured finger. ‘Oh, I would not give a
silverling to preserve your life, John de Montfort, but I would not see the
shire in arms and the march ablaze between Warwick and Beaudesert, our houses
feuding, over one girl's lightness and one man's lechery!’

 John de Montfort was not smiling, he said
dryly, ‘More muscadel, Lady A? You appear to have saved the dynasty!’

It was raining heavily at Coleshill,
sheeting across the river meadows, flinging itself against the shutters like
shingle brought in from the sea with the spring tides. Johanna sat in her
favourite chimney corner, hunched in her cloak, and reading by the light of a
candle-stub. The Lytle Geste of Sir Esquivat took place in a fairer southern
summer, beneath a blue sky. Esquivat rode through greening forests with four
noble deeds to accomplish before achieving the hand of the Lady Mellisent. Four
seemed excessive; three was all that was generally expected. Johanna's thoughts
went back to a certain sunny St. Barnaby's and to the coming of the White
Knight, to her father’s patient, good-humoured search of the midlands until he
found the man's name: John de Montfort, son of Peter of Beaudesert. Illegitimate,
of course, but from so romantic a coupling it could be overlooked. Johanna had
made her own enquiries and come to her own conclusions weeks before but the
game must be played out. No lady makes up her mind in unseemly haste but summer
was slipping by and they could be married by Lammas Tide. Johanna laid aside
Sir Esquivat. Clinton was almost asleep in his fireside chair; his head was
nodding, his chin drooping by inches.

 ‘Father!’ said Johanna imperiously. ‘I am
resolved. I shall take John de Montfort!’

 The Lord of Coleshill sat bolt upright
with a start. ‘Sweetheart, it will make me so proud! When our name dies here at
Coleshill, what better than to replace it with the name of Montfort and all it
stands for!’

 Johanna said, ‘Please keep the speeches
for my wedding. The Clintons were proud builders of castles, the Montforts
merely castle razers when all's said and done. I think I shall have an early
night.’ She planted a kiss on his forehead and took her unsteady candle up the
spiral staircase to her chamber in the Lady Tower. The rain was relentless. Mazera
had lit a fire in the grate and put a hot stone in her bed. Johanna lay for a
long time, candle extinguished, watching the glowing embers but only seeing the
White Knight’s mocking smile, the lithe body, the long slim hands; and hearing
the clear young voice scattering lines of poetry across that hot summer’s day
like the troubadours of the old Courts of Love. What if her father and Peter de
Montfort had sprung a trap for her? She had willingly, wittingly walked
straight into it.

~o0o~

John de Montfort received the news that his
future was all but signed and sealed, half way to the Lewes Tower, on another such melancholy day over a week later. The heavens had voided themselves of
all they had that July, there had even been a hail storm, and the promise of
June with its attendant blue skies and eglantine, birdsong and butterflies had
melted away. There had been a fall of masonry loosened by the winter frosts and
toppled by the recent storms and father and son were striding out to inspect
the damage.

 ‘Have you no comment to make?’ shouted
Peter into the teeth of the storm. ‘Does the prospect of the Lady Johanna
please you? She's young and strong and Clinton says he won't marry again;
she’ll be his heiress. You'll be castellan in your own right when he eventually
quits this life.’

 ‘He's younger than you are,’ mouthed
John, ‘and you are mistaken, father - castellan in right of my wife only!’

 ‘How else can you achieve the
distinction? You're not leading me through a quagmire, are you, boy?’

 ‘No, sir. And what comments am I supposed
to make? What am I supposed to feel? Relief, because she appears to have the
requisite number of limbs and visible organs?’

 ‘Gratitude would not come amiss, you
carping young…’ Peter’s words were lost against the weather. ‘What a bloody
mess!’ He was staring at a gaping hole in the wall of the Lewes Tower where it sat athwart the allure.

 ‘Father, I need your good offices. I need
the money. I'll submit to this marriage. I'll cherish the woman according to
her state. I'll honour her according to her deserts and my inclinations. I'll
get you grandchildren on her if she's fruitful but don't expect me to cavort
about dewy eyed with wild protestations of love on my lips!’

 They were in the lee of the Lewes Tower now, out of the moaning of the wind.

 ‘Don't shout,’ said Peter, ‘I never
mentioned love, never have; it's not an essential prerequisite in marriage.’

 ‘As you discovered with Margaret,’ said
John acidly.

 ‘As I discovered with Margaret and don't
preach love at me, boy. You don't know the meaning of the word. There's a world
more to love than lust. Are we risking the stairs? There may be another fall.’

 ‘I'll go up and have a look round. Wait
here.’

 Peter put a hand on his shoulder. ‘No,
John, whilst we're here in some privacy I've something that needs to be said. I
don't want to preach…’

 ‘Oh dear,’ said John, ‘this sounds
ominous.’ He was leaning against the core of the spiral, auburn hair tangled in
the dampness of the air, eyes bright, raindrops spattering the dark stuff of
his mantle. ‘Why don’t we go to my room? Simon has been trained to light fires.
If you go down with an ague you’ll never get me to the church door!’

 Peter nodded, pulling his own warm russet
cloak about him. They trudged back up the slope of the bailey towards the Great
Gatehouse and into the inner wards, making for the Audley Tower and John’s
inner sanctum. Peter realised that he had rarely been invited over the
threshold of his son’s room; like most boys he had guarded his private space
jealously. But now John was standing aside, ushering him into the firelit space
with a mocking bow. Simon Trussel vanished unobtrusively leaving them to a
heaped fire of crackling logs. In spite of Trussel’s best efforts it remained a
jumble of a room; cushions heaped on the bed, rare and costly books piled in a
corner and various military accoutrements in odd niches. The walls were hung
with the kind of tapestries you did not see in the average solar.

 Peter coughed. ‘These will have to go. The
Lady Johanna…’

 ‘She might appreciate them. It’s said she
has a romantic turn of mind.’

 ‘Yes, well,’ said Peter, ‘there’s romance
and there’s …. That reminds me. It wasn’t so long ago you chided me for my
silences where your mother was concerned. I’ve come to think that perhaps you
were right to do so. A man, especially a man about to be married, should know
something of his parentage.’

 ‘Please,’ said John, ‘sit down, there is
a chair.’ He hooked the room’s only seat towards them with one foot and, when
his father was settled, flung himself onto the bed, arms under his head. ‘So
what was she like, Lora Astley?’

 Peter did not look at him; his gaze was
fixed upon the flickering flames. ‘I can only tell you that I loved her; that
from the day I met her until the day she left us both to be with the White
Ladies, I never ceased to love her, never took another woman outside of wedlock.
When she fled from Beaudesert my world crumbled about my ears; that is why I
have never been able to talk about it. Your mother was a delightful girl, a
beautiful woman. I was the first man she had ever known and I have no doubts
that she will go to her grave amongst the Holy Sisters without knowing another.
Whatever you hear from others, she was no strumpet. She left me bereft but she
also left me her son, our son. I thank God for it. Perhaps I made a poor job of
rearing you, I don’t know, but when I look into your face I see her. I fear I
was too lax a father.’

 John had been watching him as he spoke. He
accepted all without comment before saying lightly. ‘Then you needn’t have
worried on that score. No sooner were you out of the gates but the rest of the
family would descend upon me and I would pay for my sins in full.’

 ‘I didn’t know. What I am trying to say
is that your mother and I had something a world apart from what I could ever
have had with Margaret, though I honour the girl’s memory and give thanks for
Guy’s birth. When you marry Johanna it won’t be as it was for us, for Lora and
me, it can’t be, but if you start well together and build firm foundations it
will be a good marriage.’

 John grimaced. ‘That was rather trite. I
don’t want a ‘good marriage’; it sounds like a death knell.’

 ‘You need to grow up, John. Be kind to
her, be gentle, let things settle, let her get used to us and then, in a few
months, if your inclinations take you elsewhere just be discreet. Eventually,
of course, she will discover the truth. Women have a nose for such things. But
she will resign herself in time, realise that that is how men are made and how
things will be.’

 ‘Poor Johanna,’ said John sarcastically.

 ‘Oh, by then she will be thinking about
babies and re-decorating the solar and who to invite for Christmas, the sort of
minutiae women love to involve themselves in. She’ll just be thankful that you
don’t expect to bed her every night. For God’s sake, boy, stop laughing at me. I
am obliged to say such things. Your Aunt Bess has been on at me for weeks;
thinks you ought to practice a little abstinence between now and the wedding,
clear the blood; see you at your fittest…’

 ‘Dear heaven,’ sighed John, ‘how about if
I back down and profess a desire for the flower-filled gardens of some monastic
cloister?’

 ‘I don’t speculate in miracles,’ said
Peter.

 John was sitting up, arms linked about
one knee. The firelight limned his face, bringing the cheek bones into relief,
burnishing the red hair. He looked suddenly very young. Peter put a hand on his
shoulder and patted it lightly.

 ‘Now, is there anything you’d like to ask
me?’ He seemed to have shed his habitual reticence and was throwing himself
into his new role as father of the groom.

 It was John’s turn to feel discomforted. It
was not the firelight which set the rose-glow suffusing his face and spreading
down the smooth neck. ‘Father, I wish you’d just go! The masonry needs sorting
out. The Lewes Tower, remember? You don’t have to tell me; we need the Clinton inheritance. The whole tower needs to come down and half the Curtain with it.’

 Peter got up amicably enough and went
out, whistling to himself. John sent the door crashing to and retreated back to
his bed, the bed he would soon be sharing with the alarming girl with the
bell-rope braids. He looked about him at the room which had always been his
sanctuary, his bolt hole, and tried to imagine it cluttered with women’s
apparel. Eventually, he rolled over onto his stomach and pulled the pillow over
his head. Simon came in and tidied up around him.

~o0o~

At least the weather had warmed for
Lammas. At the castle of Beaudesert in the County of Warwick, John de Montfort,
natural son of Peter, Third Lord Montfort and his paramour, Lora Astley, now of
the Holy Sisters of St. Mary the Virgin, Pinley, was wedded to the Lady
Johanna, only daughter of Sir John de Clinton of the Manor of Coleshill. But it
was a dull, humid day, sticky and uncomfortable indoors, oppressive in the
open. Even the two fond parents could not, it seemed, command the elements.

 The ceremony took place in the chapel at
Beaudesert, performed by Jack de Lobbenham, Peter's chaplain, amanuensis and
former partner in levity and graceless deeds. The Lady Johanna wore cloth of
silver, heavily powdered with the Clinton fleurdeluce. Her hair, unbound from
its accustomed braids to proclaim her virginity, snaked down her back in a
shaggy pelt. The snowy blossoms in her coronet wilted in the heat. The
bridegroom wore Montfort blue and gold.

 Immediately after the ceremony the
feasting began with no visible expense spared. Bride and groom sat side by side
upon the dais with their illustrious fathers, John's half-brother, eight year
old Guy, his Aunt Bess and a clutch of Freville and Butler cousins of John's
and Clinton kin of Johanna's. The boards were spread with a feast fit for an
emperor.

 Peter looked about him with satisfaction
and nudged his elder son. ‘They'll be finding a new nickname for you soon, lad,
Prester John
no doubt.’

 Before them gleamed the family silver and
pewter and the great salt. From between the service screens filed a long column
of pages carrying the main dishes: crane and swan in their plumage, a hog's
head stuck with almonds, tiny venison pasties, plover and quail, teal and
widgeon, a paste of lark's tongues; numerous fish dishes, sturgeon and roach,
bream and tench, all garnished and spiced with cinnamon and ginger, saffron and
nutmeg, decorated with fragrant herbs and bright radishes, candied violets and
gaudy marigolds. Then came the crumbling pastries, yellow custards, trembling
jellies and towering sugar subtleties, moulded into the shapes of palaces and
fabled birds. Wine flowed as from a bottomless conduit; muscadel and malvoisie,
clary and vernage..

 In the gallery above the hall the
minstrels played throughout the feast. When the boards were cleared and the
trestles removed the dancing began. John led Johanna forward. The bride was
pink with the heat, made clumsy by the weight of her gold-encrusted surcote; the
groom was flushed with wine. They trod a stately measure together, stiffly,
formally. John bowed, Joan made a less than graceful reverence and they parted
to mingle with their guests. As the hall became hotter and the dancing more
abandoned, as voices rose and the musicians became just a little too strident
Johanna moved to take a seat in one of the window embrasures, leaning an aching
head against a cool stone mullion. John was flinging himself into the dance,
every now and then reaching out for a brimming goblet of wine, egging the
musicians on to faster measures, bawdier songs, a wild bacchanal.