Elizabeth Chadwick - Shields of Pride

Maude looked astonished. ‘Richard de Luci has offered you in marriage to Joscelin?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, well, well.’ Maude folded her arms and assimilated the fact with pursed lips. ‘What did Joscelin say?’

‘That wedding me was an honour, that he desired my willingness,’ Linnet said in a scornful voice. ‘Of course, it’s an excuse for him to take what he wants without a bleat from his conscience. He was paying lip service to honour, and I told him so.’

‘You said that to Joscelin?’ Maude’s expression became guarded.

‘I said it to all three of them,’ Linnet answered, drying her hands on the rectangle of bleached linen hanging at the side of the laver. ‘Giles believed in honour, too.’ She yanked her gown and chemise to one side and showed Maude the livid mark of the bite on her neck, the yellow smudges encircling her throat, the friction graze of the leather key-cord. ‘Here’s the proof.’

Maude unfolded her arms and put them around Linnet in a warm embrace. ‘Oh my love, not all men are so tainted,’ she said in a voice tender with compassion. ‘My husband never took his fist to me, nor did he reproach me because I was barren. We were very fond of each other. I still miss him terribly.’

Linnet refused to be diverted from her course. Such paragons might exist but they were a minority. ‘And your nephew, how does he treat women?’

‘Joscelin would not abuse you, I know he would not.’

‘With his father for an example?’

Maude squeezed Linnet’s shoulder. ‘Once you know William, he’s more bark than bite. I’m not saying he’s an easy man; sometimes he can be so vile you want to murder him, but his bad temper is a shield to prevent him from being wounded. Joscelin has always had the strength of will to go his own way. That’s one of the reasons he and William sometimes quarrel fit to fly the doors off their hinges.’

‘Madam my aunt, I would be grateful for a moment alone with Lady Linnet,’ said Joscelin.

Linnet pulled away from Maude’s embrace. ‘I have nothing to say to you,’ she said curtly to him.

Maude stepped protectively in front of her. ‘I think tomorrow would be better for us all,’ she said.

‘No, now.’ The quiet determination in the words informed her that while she might badger him and win on trivial issues such as shopping trips, she would have no success on this matter. He sat down on the coffer where he had earlier eaten his pasty and leaned his back against the wall, indicating that he was not leaving.

Maude held her ground for a moment longer then capitulated with a deep shrug and an apologetic glance for Linnet. She retired to the far end of the room and would have left the partitioning curtain open but Joscelin signalled her to draw it across. After a silent battle of wills, she yielded with an exasperated twitch of her hand.

Feeling sick with apprehension, Linnet faced Joscelin.

He came straight to the point. ‘If not me,’ he said, ‘it will be someone else and soon. You cannot remain a widow, you must know that.’

His tone was reasonable but she was not deceived. He was as tense as herself and filled with anger. She had seen the signs often enough in Giles.

‘My husband has yet to be buried and you speak to me of marriage? Mother of God, you even pursue me here to my chamber to press your claim? You must be eager indeed!’

He looked wry. ‘I would have discussed it in the hall but you showed no inclination to stay.’

‘With the three of you staring at me like hucksters deliberating over a choice piece of ware?’

‘I suppose it must have appeared like that to you,’ he admitted, ‘but the justiciar has not made me this offer out of pure generosity for services rendered in the past. He sees me as a choice piece of ware, too.’

‘So he uses me and my son to buy your loyalty.’

‘In Christ’s name, woman, use your wits for a moment!’ he snapped with exasperation. Then he slumped on the coffer and rubbed his eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I’m tired and sore and my temper’s frayed. I don’t mean to frighten you. Look, de Luci has offered me something that will never come within my grasp again. Most mercenaries die in the ditch. Those who don’t might rise as high as the post of seneschal in a modest keep if they are fortunate. It’s a glittering prize and I would be mad not to desire it with all my being. Surely you can see that?’

Linnet had flinched when he snapped at her but his apology gave her the courage to fight back. ‘Rushcliffe is my son’s by right. You make it sound like a choice morsel that has landed on your trencher for you to devour.’

Joscelin gave a judicious nod. ‘It is true,’ he said, ‘that being the warden of a small child who is heir to wide estates is a lucrative post. I pay de Luci for the privilege and then make good my loss and hopefully a profit out of the estate’s revenues. It would be dishonest of me to claim otherwise but unless I’m a competent steward those profits are going to be negligible, and in the end they will dry up.’

His words held the ring of common sense but Linnet was not yet ready to be mollified. And certainly she had no intention of trusting him. ‘Giles was not averse to selling his own child’s inheritance to the French,’ she said coldly. ‘Why should you as a stepfather be any more tender?’

‘Because . . .’ he began but stopped, the words unspoken. A haunted look filled his eyes. He indicated the right portion of the coffer and eased along slightly so that there was room enough for her to be seated without having to touch him. ‘Please, sit down.’

Linnet did so, not for his asking but because she no longer trusted her legs to support her. She perched right on the edge, her hands clenched together in her lap.

‘When your son comes of age and I have to yield the lands, there will still be your dower estates in Derbyshire and rights to a lead mine,’ he resumed. ‘If I serve the justiciar well, other rewards will come my way. Why jeopardize a comfortable future for the sake of a few years of extravagance?’

Yes, she thought, my lands, my rights, myself. Most surely Giles was turning in his coffin. ‘And a life on the tourney circuits qualifies you for such a post?’

‘I’ve lived on crumbs and I’ve lived on largesse, depending on my fortunes, but I have never been reduced to begging in the gutter. Early on I learned to pace my income and not live beyond it. You will find me well qualified to govern.’

The weight of his gaze was almost tangible. ‘What advantage is there to me in becoming any man’s wife when I can remain Giles’s widow?’

‘De Luci will still have to appoint a warden for your son. And your dower lands will cause men to seek you in marriage, perhaps by force.’

‘Richard de Luci would never permit that to happen!’

He shook his head. ‘Possession is nine-points of the law and money the other. If the justiciar decides you are difficult because you rejected my suit, he’ll be far less inclined to sympathy on the next occasion - he might well choose to levy a fine and turn a blind eye.’

She stared at her hands, forcing them to be still so that her agitation would not be displayed to his miss-nothing stare. She studied the walls of her trap for a means of escape. There were doors in her cage but, as she examined them, she saw that they only led into other cages, smaller and meaner, without even the room to turn and chase her own tail.

She studied Joscelin from beneath her lashes. He had been kind to Robert and he had twice the patience of Giles but that by no means made him a saint. Like Giles, he was strong-willed, determined and ambitious; she had no reason to associate those traits with her own personal good, yet what was the alternative? The thought of men such as Hubert de Beaumont made her shudder.

‘What would you have done had I not overheard you talking downstairs?’ she asked curiously.

‘Approached you in the morning.’ A self-deprecating smile lifted his features and took her completely by surprise. ‘Probably on the turf seat in the orchard after Mass with Stephen playing his lute behind the wall and me on my bended knees.’

She had to swallow a treacherous answering smile. ‘Then I would have refused you indeed.’

‘And do you refuse me now?’

Linnet glanced around the current setting - a bedchamber at night in shadowy rushlight, with a curious audience a mere curtain away, and the bed itself, the satin coverlet gleaming like horsehide, inviting the wild ride and the nightmare. How she hated it. Throughout her life it had been a symbol of betrayal, pain and death. She inhaled deeply. ‘I do not refuse you,’ she said.

A spark leaped in his eyes. ‘And you are willing?’

‘I give my consent.’ Which was not the same thing. ‘And I want to observe three months of mourning for Giles in the proper manner. I owe him that duty at least.’ She uttered the last sentence softly, more than half to herself.

She saw him stiffen as he registered the tone and content of her reply. His own gaze on the bed, he said quietly, ‘I doubt you owe him any kind of duty at all.’ Then he looked at her and shrugged. ‘It’s as close as I’m going to get for the moment and the prize is worth the compromise. ’ He rose to his feet. ‘Will you agree to plight troth in front of witnesses tomorrow before we leave the city?’

Linnet hesitated then mutely nodded assent.

‘You’ll have no cause for regret, I swear,’ he said earnestly.

Her father-by-marriage Raymond de Montsorrel, had whispered those same words to her once and he had lied. Christ on the cross, how he had lied as he destroyed her.

Joscelin waited but when she did not respond and kept her face averted, he sighed and went to the door. On the threshold he stopped and turned round. ‘You were going to suggest something about the security of the strongbox earlier, before all this cropped up?’

Linnet rose unsteadily from the coffer. She had been silently praying for him to leave but obviously she was not a good enough Christian. It would be easy to put him off by saying that it was nothing, that it could wait until the morning. She knew he would not argue, for there were tired shadows beneath his eyes and he still had his vigil to keep at the bier of the soldier who had died. But by the morning there would be too many other considerations to snatch at her time.

And so she told him and was rewarded by a look of admiration and a dark chuckle. ‘I’ll set it in motion straight away before I go to prayer,’ he promised, and when he left her his tread was buoyant, as if he saw her willingness to cooperate with him where the silver was concerned as a willingness on other levels too.

In the warmth of a midsummer afternoon, Joscelin approached Rushcliffe by way of the Fosse road that ran through the undulating wolds to the east of the river Trent and the city of Nottingham, and then he struck on to a rutted byway that linked Rushcliffe to Southwell and Newark.

Leaning against his chest, tucked into his cloak, was Robert de Montsorrel. Joscelin had taken the child on to his saddle to give Linnet and her maid a respite and, besides, he now had a paternal responsibility to the little boy. Indeed, an empty space within him seemed a little less barren for the comfort of the warm weight lying against his ribs.

He smiled down at Robert’s drowsy blond head, imagining Ironheart’s response could he but witness the scene. His father would snort and say that he was storing up trouble, would say that people would consider him soft and afford him less respect. A child’s place was with its mother and its mother’s place was at the hearth if a man had any sense. Joscelin’s smile grew wry and dark. He was obviously not a sensible man.

As he rounded a turn in the dusty road, the castle of Rushcliffe came into sight, filling his vision, and momentarily taking his breath. Limewashed to protect the timber and stone from the weather, it stood out in the landscape like a perfect white tooth, proclaiming the local power of its lord. Joscelin had served garrison duty in imposing castles such as Dover and Nottingham but as a small cog in the doings of influential men. But this keep before him was greater by far because the authority was now his own. A warm feeling of possession washed over him but he did his best to hold it down. Rushcliffe was only on loan to him until the child in his arms should come of age and it was unwise when faced with a banquet after years of privation to devour and gorge. For his own sake he had to consume sparingly.

A village had grown up in the security of the castle’s shadow and, as they rode down the narrow main street and negotiated the market cross, folk emerged from their wattle-and-daub dwellings to watch the procession of soldiers and the funeral cortège. Poultry and children scampered from underfoot. Dogs barked. An enormous spotted sow held up their progress while she was persuaded to leave the middle of the road, where she had been lying in a puddle suckling her litter.