Elizabeth Chadwick - Shields of Pride

‘The babies were all pink and blind at first but they’ve got black fur now,’ Robert announced somewhat stickily. ‘The messenger said he’d like a black coney-skin cloak but Malcolm told him my coneys were special pets.’

Linnet grasped Robert’s arm. ‘What messenger, sweetheart? ’

‘The one who arrived when we were unsaddling Petra. He was all covered in dust and his horse was foamy. Henry’s sister gave the man a drink.’

Linnet stood up, her mouth dry and her heart pounding. She had taken only two steps towards the chamber door when she heard voices on the stairs and Malcolm appeared on her threshold with Milo. They flanked a travel-stained, dishevelled and obviously exhausted young soldier.

Linnet stood straight and still as she looked at the men. ‘What news?’ she demanded. ‘Tell me.’

The messenger advanced and bent the knee. He was one of Conan’s Bretons, a stocky young man scarcely out of adolescence with a downy beard fuzzing his square jaw. ‘There is no need for fear, my lady, the news is good,’ he said as she gestured him to rise and face her. ‘Our troops met Leicester’s near to Edmundsbury at a place called Fornham. All swampy, the land was, and no fit place to fight but we forced them to a battle nevertheless and cut them to pieces. Them as we didn’t get, the peasants did with pitchforks and spears. The earl himself has been taken prisoner and his countess with him.’ Rummaging in his pouch, he withdrew a crumpled, water-stained packet. ‘A letter from my lord. He says to expect him in three days’ time, all being well.’

Colour flooded back into Linnet’s face as she took the packet from the mercenary’s blunt fingers. ‘And is he whole? He has taken no injury?’

‘No, my lady.’ The young man grinned, revealing a recently lost front tooth. ‘Mostly it was like spearing fish in a barrel. In the end we fetched up pitying the poor bastards that were left and let them run away into the marshes.’ He shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Not as that’ll do ’em any good. Like as not they’ll drown or be picked off one by one by the eel fishers and fowlers round about.’ His voice dried up and he began to cough.

Maude quickly poured him wine from the pitcher on the side table and brought it to him. ‘Do you know what happened to your lord’s half-brothers, Ralf and Ivo de Rocher?’ she asked anxiously.

The mercenary took several gulps from his cup. ‘No, my lady. All I can tell you is that they weren’t taken with the earl and his wife. Sir William has offered a reward for their safe delivery into his custody and he’s stayed behind at Fornham to see if anyone turns them in. Lord Joscelin says Sir William ought to come home, the damp’s not good for him, but he won’t be swayed. Says he doesn’t care whether his sons are alive or corpses, they’re still coming home.’

Linnet unfolded the vellum sheet and gazed upon her husband’s firm brown ink strokes. Joscelin wrote almost as good a hand as a professional scribe, although the flow was a little too open and generous of vellum for a true craftsman. She imagined him seated at a table, one hand thrust into his hair, the other busy with a quill. It was a satisfying image and she deliberately enlarged upon it to banish the other one of him astride Whitesocks, brandishing a dripping sword.

‘My heart bleeds for them,’ Maude had said to her when the messenger had gone. ‘William and my nephews both. What if Ralf and Ivo are dead? How will William live with the burden of knowing he might have killed them? They may look like grown men but really they are still jealous little boys.’ And she had dabbed at her eyes with the trailing end of her sleeve.

Robert had taken Maude to the garth to look at his coneys, thus giving Linnet a moment alone to read her letter in peace. She sat down in the window embrasure. A puddle of late autumn sunshine warmed her feet through her soft leather shoes. The only sound was the muted conversation of two maids weaving braid by the hearth.

As a child, Linnet had received basic tuition in reading and writing from the household priest - enough so that she could understand but she was not particularly fluent. Painstakingly she picked up each word of Joscelin’s and consigned it like a jewel from page to memory.

Joscelin de Gael to my lady and before God mine own beloved wife, greeting. As you will know by the time you read this, I am coming home to you unscathed from our army’s meeting with the Earl of Leicester. A truce has been agreed with the rebels until spring.

We should reach Nottingham the day after tomorrow. I will lodge there the night at my father’s town house, and ride to you as soon as I have concluded business with the constable.

Until then, I give you keeping of my heart.

Witness myself on the third day after the feast of Saint Luke.

The words warmed her as much as the splash of sunlight and foolish tears blurred her vision. Not since childhood had affection been hers to command except in Robert’s eyes. Once she had made the mistake of believing that Raymond de Montsorrel was fond of her, that the gentle hands and persuasive voice were indicative of his concern, but it had all been a game to him, a bolster of his prideful boast that no woman, lady or whore, had ever refused him.

The sunlight blazed on the vellum as she folded it tenderly, her fingertips lingering on the strokes that bore the mark of Joscelin’s hand. She went to her work basket, and taking her awl worked a hole through the folded corners. Then she threaded it onto the cord around her neck, which also held her cross. The cord lay between her breasts and the vellum lay on her skin; Joscelin’s heart over hers.

‘We’re lost, aren’t we?’ Ivo snivelled.

Ralf clenched his fists on his wet reins and turned in the saddle to scowl at his brother. ‘God’s eyes, will you cease whining! You’re still alive, aren’t you?’

The rain had been falling steadily since dawn, making of the forest a permanent green twilight. Water sluiced down Ralf’s helm and soaked through the twin layers of his cloak. His hauberk bled gritty rust and his thighs chafed against the saddle with each stride of his exhausted horse.

In heavy drizzle, Leicester’s army had struck across the country towards the earl’s Midland strongholds and had been met by their doom on the marshy ground near the village of Fornham. Earl Robert had relied too heavily on his Flemish recruits - weedy men and boys who were mostly unemployed weavers by trade - and Hugh de Bohun’s knights had smashed them. Filled with rage and fear, Ralf had hacked his way to escape, dragging a terrified Ivo in his wake. Now the forests surrounding Edmunsbury and Thetford stretched for miles, punctuated by the occasional charcoal-burner’s dwelling or verderer’s hut. And outside of their gloomy green protection, for all Ralf knew, the Royalist army was waiting to finish anyone who had not died by the sword or drowned in the marshes.

‘My horse is going lame,’ Ivo complained. ‘Do you think we’ll find shelter soon?’

Ralf closed his eyes and swallowed. In a moment he was going to offer Ivo shelter - six feet deep with a cosy counterpane of leaf mould. The idiot was about as much use as a punctured waterskin. Couldn’t fight, couldn’t think. Ralf did not answer but urged his own horse to a faster pace.

The forest dripped around him like a giant open mouth waiting to swallow whatever was foolish enough to ride over the drawbridge of its mossy tongue. The smell of mildew and fungus was almost overpowering. Ralf ’s eyes stung and his vision became a green blur. He was a rebel, an outcast, shivering to death in a Lowland forest. The spark of rebellion that had led him in fellow sympathy to join young Henry’s cause was extinguished. The desire to wound his father, and at the same time prove his own worth, still goaded him with a vengeance. He hungered for respect and admiration, and the more they eluded him the more desperate he grew.

‘Ralf, wait!’ Ivo’s forlorn cry came muffled through the grey-green downpour.

Viciously, Ralf jabbed the stallion’s flanks. The beast stumbled on a tree root then shied as a woodpecker dipped across the path. Ralf gripped the pommel to steady himself. One shoulder struck a tree branch and he cursed at the crunch of pain. He drew rein to recover and with resignation listened to the beat of approaching hooves as Ivo made up the ground between them.

‘Ralf . . . ,’ Ivo said miserably.

Ralf inhaled to snarl at his brother, but his breath solidified in his chest for Ivo was being held at spearpoint by a grinning English soldier who was one of a group of half a dozen armed men.

‘If your hand is going to your sword, I hope it’s only to surrender it,’ said the soldier in thickly accented French. ‘Give me one small excuse, Norman, and I’ll have your guts to banner my spear.’

Ralf shuddered, more than half-tempted to give the soldier the very excuse he needed. It would be so simple. One thrust and everything would be finished. But was there any guarantee except a priest’s prating assurance that the afterlife was any better? Slowly he grasped the hilt of his sword and drew it from its wool-lined scabbard.

‘Ralf, for Jesu’s sake, give it to him!’ Ivo croaked, eyes huge with alarm. ‘You’ll find us worth the ransom,’ he gabbled, eyes darting around the tightening circle of men. ‘We’re the sons of William de Rocher, known as Ironheart - his heirs, in fact.’ He licked his lips.

Ralf sent Ivo a glare of utter scorn and threw the sword down into the thick leaf mould at his destrier’s fore-hooves as if he were tossing a coin to a beggar.

The Englishman grinned. ‘The sons of the great Ironheart, eh?’ The relish in his tone scoured deep. ‘I wonder how much your illustrious sire is willing to pay for the return of his two lost sheep. Better hope it’s more than your true worth or I might be tempted not to go to the bother of ransoming you.’

‘He’ll pay anything you want,’ Ivo assured the Englishman anxiously. ‘He will, Ralf, won’t he?’

Ralf narrowed his light-brown eyes. ‘Oh yes,’ he muttered. ‘He’ll pay.’

* * *

In the wet October afternoon, a bitter wind herded a fleece of clouds northwards and blew into the face of William de Rocher as he and his men drew rein outside the village alehouse to which their English guide had brought them.

‘Is this the place?’ A paradox of hope and sinking despair made Ironheart’s voice harsh.

‘Yes, my lord.’ His guide looked at him sidelong. ‘It might not seem much but there’s a mighty stout apple-cellar under the main-room floor.’

A muscle flickered in Ironheart’s jaw. ‘My sons are in the apple cellar?’

‘Safest place for ’em. If they weren’t worth good silver, they’d be feeding the ravens of Hallows Wood by now.’

‘Watch your mouth,’ Ironheart warned as the soldier nimbly dismounted. ‘Just because you have something I want, do not think you can take liberties with me.’

The soldier looked him up and down. ‘I wasn’t, my lord. I thought you were known as a man of plain speaking and I have told you nothing but the truth. Many of Leicester’s troops have not lived to see their ransoms paid.’

William glared at him and felt a goutish envy for the lively arrogance and fluid grace of youth. Slowly he swung his stiff right leg over the cantle and dismounted. The ground was soggy underfoot with a mulch of dead leaves. They twirled from the elm trees across the green, like souls fleeing into the darkness, some of them falling by the wayside at his feet. Rain spattered into his face, forcing him to squint. Noisy laughter drifted from the alehouse and a raucous voice bellowed an English ballad about a virgin and a blacksmith.

‘They’re still celebrating their victory over Leicester’s army,’ said his guide with a tolerant smile as a well-lubricated villager staggered out of the doorway and towards a cluster of dwellings huddled around the green. ‘It’ll be the talk of the parish for generations to come - how Grandpa beat off hordes of Flemings with nowt but a pitchfork.’

‘My sons,’ said Ironheart icily. ‘I want my sons. Now.’

The smile dropped from the soldier’s face. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘This way, my lord.’ He flourished towards the alehouse doorway like a servant ushering a great lord into a magnificent hall. It took all of Ironheart’s control not to send him teeth over tail into the mud.

Ralf was dozing, the nearest he could come to sleep in his cramped, cold prison. They had handled him roughly, goaded by his lack of response and the contempt in his eyes. The places where they had kicked him had stiffened, and since there was virtually no room to move he had set.