Ferrers smoothed the corners of his mouth between forefinger and thumb. ‘I believe we might be useful to each other in the future. Running to my banner as you ran to Leicester’s would be downright foolish and a waste of time to us both but if you were lord of Arnsby, matters might be different.’

Ralf ’s voice was suddenly hoarse. ‘You mean if my father were to die?’ What was Ferrers suggesting? In his mind’s eye he saw a vision of himself waiting in a dark stairwell with a dagger in his hand or tipping a vial of poison into a flagon of wine.

Ferrers saw him baulk and laid a hand quickly on his sleeve. ‘In the fullness of time, of course,’ he soothed, but his eyes told a different story.

Ralf looked at Ferrers, both drawn and repelled by what he was intimating. It was like the times he had committed rape: the excitement of the struggle, the subjugation, the final tremendous thrust and then the revulsion and self-disgust.

‘We’ll talk again later,’ Ferrers said, and turned his horse around to join his companions. Ralf sat where he was until the bearers came past him with the body of the deer. Snow fell, making new spots on its fallow hide, and was melted away by the residual body heat. Blood dripped in slow, black clots from its muzzle and stained the forest floor. Ralf gasped and spurred away from the sight of death to join his fellow huntsmen, seeking their company, their loud, trivial banter, to take the darkness from his mind.

* * *

‘A nunnery!’ Agnes said furiously to Ralf. ‘I’ll see him in hell first!’ Her tone was pitched low, making the hatred with which it smouldered all the more intense. Her maid, who had become accustomed to the low muttering these past few days, did not respond to it except to make herself as inconspicuous as possible.

Agnes left the window splay where she had been sitting to watch William and his entourage ride away in the direction of the Nottingham road. ‘He cannot force me. I’ll not be put aside like a worn-out rag.’ She faced her son, who was in her chamber to be fitted for a new tunic. He was standing somewhat impatiently for the seamstress, who was taking note of his measurements by making knots in lengths of string.

‘No, Mama,’ Ralf said, a glazed look in his eye, and stretched his arm horizontally to be measured from armpit to wrist.

Agnes regarded his broad, handsome strength and the gleam of light on his red-gold hair. William wanted to obtain a wife for Ralf and was looking around for a suitable girl. Agnes feared that she understood his reasoning. Martin would soon be squiring in Richard de Luci’s household and her nest would be empty of chicks. She was of no more use to him. He would replace her in the household with Ralf ’s young wife. Jealousy and fear gnawed at her. If she were placed in a nunnery, she would not be able to keep an eye on the girl - as she had kept an eye on Morwenna.

With an irritated sound, she grabbed the string from the seamstress and waved her away. ‘I’ll do it myself!’ she snapped. ‘Go and look in the coffers to see what fabric we have.’

‘Yes, madam.’ The woman curtseyed, her eyes downcast.

Agnes moved in closer to Ralf’s pungent, masculine warmth. She knew he had been out in the village last night, gaming in the alehouse and wenching. A residue of his indulgences still lingered in his pores. ‘You would not put me away in a nunnery if you were master here, would you?’ she wheedled.

His nostrils flared. ‘Of course not, Mama!’

Agnes smiled and kissed his cheek, feeling the prickle of beard stubble under her lips where once his skin had been smooth like a petal. ‘I knew you would say that, you’re a good son.’

A slight shudder ran through him. At first, dismayed, she thought it was because she had touched him but then he said abruptly, ‘Nottingham is going to be ravaged by Robert Ferrers.’

Her hands fumbled with the string and she stared up at him, a red flush creeping from her throat into her face. ‘When?’

Ralf shrugged. ‘Today, tomorrow, the day after. I don’t know exactly but it will be while my father is there. One of Ferrers’ own men brought me a warning last night. That’s why I went to the alehouse. I’ve been in contact with the rebels since I went to Ferrers’ Candlemas hunt. They are going to raze the town and, if all goes well, take the castle.’ He folded his arms and leaned against a decorated stone pillar, his eyes golden with hunger. ‘There is an understanding that were I suddenly to become master of Arnsby, there would be a handsome reward for the person who put me in that position.’

Agnes’s wits were dull, but she possessed an innate craftiness and it did not take a scholar to unravel what Ralf was implying. ‘You’ve employed someone to kill your father?’ she whispered with a mingling of fear and exultation.

‘It’s more of an unspoken understanding. If I had wanted, I could have stopped him from riding out just now but why should I?’ He gave her a moody stare. ‘He has never taken the time to stop for me lest it be to bawl his disapproval. Arnsby is mine now, every stick and stone and beast in the field.’ He ran a possessive hand over the blood-red chevrons decorating the pillar.

Agnes bit her lip and ran the knotted string through her fingers. ‘What if your father returns unharmed?’

‘Who’s to know? Will you tell him?’

‘What reason would I have after the way he has treated me all these years? You have my support and always will. One thing I will say to you: do not mention this to Ivo. He is a weak reed and not to be trusted.’

‘I can deal with Ivo,’ he said softly.

‘What about the bastard and his wife?’ she asked after a moment. ‘I heard William say that he was meeting them in Nottingham?’

Ralf ’s mouth twisted in a dark smile. ‘I also let it be known that the custodian of Rushcliffe is a thorn in my side that I would pay handsomely to have plucked out. The woman and child won’t be harmed,’ he added magnanimously. ‘I’ve no grudge against them. They will make valuable pawns since I will be kin to the deceased with an interest in what happens to the lands.’

Agnes had never heard him speak like this before, in so controlled and calculating a manner. She did not doubt that he would deal with Ivo, and anyone else who stood in his way, and her admiration for him increased a hundred fold. He would prove a worthy lord for Arnsby, far more so than the father he was intending to usurp.

Chapter 29

William Ironheart owned three houses in Nottingham on the hill that meandered down from the Derby road towards the merchant dwellings on Long Row and the poultry market. Two of the houses were leased to wine merchants. The third, his own, was maintained by Jonas and Gytha, a couple in late middle-age. While Jonas kept the house in repair, Gytha took in laundry from the merchants farther down the row and there was often a tub full of linens and steaming lye suds in the backyard.

From the doorway, Linnet watched the pungent steam billowing skyward and felt queasy. Inside the house it was no better, the air being humid with the odour of boiled cabbages and onions from the cauldron that bubbled over the fire pit in the main room. These last three days her stomach had been unsettled. Indeed, only this morning before they set out she had almost been sick when Stephen had placed a dish of smoked herrings in front of her. Usually she enjoyed such fare but she had scarcely been able to swallow a morsel of bread without retching.

She had begun to toy with the suspicion that she was with child but, since it was indeed no more than a suspicion, she had said nothing to Joscelin. Her flux was scarcely more than a week late and in her previous marriage she had been slow to conceive. She smiled through the nausea, thinking of their new bed with its coverings of plain linen, sheepskin and blankets of plaid. All ostentation had been consigned to the pyre in the bailey where together she and Joscelin had watched the burning of the Montsorrel family bed until it was naught but ashes, blowing away in the wind.

Joscelin was up at the castle visiting acquaintances from his garrison days and she did not expect him home until late afternoon. Robert had fretted at not being allowed to go with his hero, but Joscelin’s promise to take him round the market booths on the morrow had mollified him a little. He was playing in a corner of the yard with a young tabby cat that Gytha had bought at the Weekday market to deal with the local rat and mouse problem.

Linnet watched her son and felt a deep tenderness well up within her. She still feared for his future as a natural part of her maternal instinct, but there was hope now too - bright and steady as a clean-burning candle. She could dare to believe that all would be well. Now she had Joscelin, she could dare to believe anything.

She had just turned to go back inside the house when Ironheart arrived back from his errand to a wool factor who lived close by the city wall.

‘Daughter,’ he greeted her with a gruff nod.

Linnet inclined her head in response and going into the house, dutifully offered him wine. Since her illness in the autumn, their relationship had subtly altered. She knew that Ironheart had been present at the crisis of her fever for Joscelin’s sake and that he had remained at Rushcliffe until it was certain that she would recover, his support silent but solid as rock. She no longer thought of him as a threat, nor did she have to stiffen her spine in his presence to control her fear. Yes, he had his flaws, some of them deep and ugly, but beyond them was the rock and to that she trusted.

For his part, Joscelin’s father had tempered his aggression towards her and in rare moments displayed a clumsy tenderness in his dealings. He had ceased speaking darkly to Joscelin of beating and bedding, and while she and Ironheart seldom held prolonged conversations at least they could communicate with each other without bristling up like cat and dog.

‘Joscelin not back yet?’ Ironheart asked. His long nose wrinkled in the direction of the cauldron. ‘You can never tell whether it’s her washing or the dinner you can smell when you come in the door,’ he commented.

‘No, he said he might be late.’

‘Gossiping with his old cronies, I daresay.’

‘Yes.’ She gave him a wan smile.

Ironheart eyed her from beneath his brows. ‘You’re as green as a new cheese,’ he said abruptly. ‘Is something the matter?’

‘No, Father.’ Linnet moved away from the bubbling cauldron. ‘A mild stomach upset, nothing more.’

‘Hah!’ He continued to eye her, not in the face but up and down. Linnet blushed and quickly put her hand to her belly, the gesture giving her away. Ironheart, however, did not press the point. ‘You need to go and rest, then,’ he said mildly. ‘Dry bread and sweet wine are good for such an ailment.’ He jerked his head. ‘Go on, get you to the loft for an hour. I’ll watch the boy.’

Linnet hesitated for a moment, but another pungent waft of steam from the cooking pot caused her stomach to lurch and she accepted the offer with a grateful smile.

* * *

‘I don’t like it,’ said Ranulf FitzRanulf, garrison commander of Nottingham, as he stared out of the high tower window. Spread before his view was Nottingham’s immediate southern hinterland: the rivers Leen and Trent holding between them the broad green floodplain of the Meadows and beyond them the villages of Briggford, Wilford and Cliftun. ‘There are too many of Ferrers’s men in the city and they are bent upon mischief.’

Standing beside his former paymaster, Joscelin, too, looked out on the scene of pastoral tranquillity. The trees lining the riverbank wore new mantles of tender green and the meadowland was a lush carpet of flower-starred grass dotted by grazing cattle. Smoke twirled from the roofs of the tanneries on the banks of the Leen and a supply barge was wending its way upriver towards the castle’s wharf. ‘I noticed a lot of Ferrers’ soldiers when I was here in the autumn,’ he said.

‘Around the time of the battle of Fornham?’ FitzRanulf turned to look at Joscelin out of watery, light-blue eyes. The left one had a slight cast so that FitzRanulf never seemed to be looking directly, even when he was. It was an illusion for FitzRanulf was the most direct of men. ‘They were vultures waiting their moment to strike but it never came. When news of Leicester’s defeat arrived, they melted away.’

‘And now they are back.’

‘The winter truces are at an end. I have men enough to defend the castle but not the town. Ferrers has too much influence there. If there is trouble, the citizens will have to fend for themselves. How long are you staying?’