Elizabeth Chadwick (49 page)

“If he does, then I hold you to blame as much as Fulke,” she snapped. “You were the one who came to him, full of this talk of a charter.”

“And a good thing it has been, only now it has gone far enough and it is time to call a halt. I’ll not have you talking to me in that tone, Daughter.”

Maude clenched her fists. She wanted to do more than just talk. Making an effort, she controlled herself. “And where is Fulke now?”

“He’s gone to a tourney in Oxford.”

“A tourney!” Maude saw red. “Our lands are forfeit, I could have royal officials in the bailey at any moment, and he’s gone jousting without so much as a message to me?” She felt sick; she wanted to weep.

“The barons who had refused to swear are keeping an army in the field. It is just a way of honing their skills.”

“Honing their skills!” She nodded with vehement fury. “And what of other duties and obligations? What of me, what of his children? Has he no thought for us?” It was not a question she gave her father time to answer, even had he possessed the wit. “I am no Maude de Braose to be cast into an oubliette with my offspring for nourishment. When you set out for the north on the morrow, you will take me with you. It is time I paid a visit to my dower lands.” Turning on her heel, she left him standing in the hall, a stunned expression on his face.

Clarice brought him wine, sat him in a chair by the hearth, and sent his two grandsons to entertain him. Then she hurried after Maude.

Maude hurled back the lid of a traveling chest and felt pleasure amidst her rage to hear it crash against the keep wall. She tossed in two shifts, two gowns, a sleeveless over-tunic, and several rectangular wimple cloths. “A tourney!” she spat as Clarice entered the room, breathless from her run. “Did you hear him? A tourney!”

Clarice dipped into the traveling coffer and carefully folded the gowns that Maude had hurled within. “Perhaps it is necessary for him to remain with the other lords.”

“About as necessary as it was for him to go with them at the start!” Maude snapped as she dug a pair of shoes out from beneath the bed.

“You cannot expect to make a hearth dog out of a wolf,” Clarice said. “Nor would you want to, I think.”

In that moment, Maude came very close to loathing Clarice. The composure, the gentle expression. She itched to slap it from her face. “Allow me to know Fulke and myself,” she seethed. “You hide in your corner and pretend you know more about life than anyone else when you know nothing.”

The girl looked at her steadily, without flinching, although the gray-gold eyes were wounded. “Mayhap because I sit in a corner, I am overlooked and I see and hear more than most. I know, despite what you say, you love him beyond measure and that he would give his life for you.”

“Would he?” Maude flung a braid belt into the chest. “I no longer know. I cannot reach him across the void that is John.”

“You truly intend to go then?”

Maude compressed her lips. “I will not be taken for granted. Let him know what it is like to be deserted.”

***

Autumn winds were stripping the branches of leaves when Fulke rode into Whittington. The estate pigs foraged among the beech mast in Babbin’s Wood where the villagers were out gathering kindling to store for their winter fires, and hunting among the tree roots for fungi to augment their diets. Fulke found himself envying them their lives, but quickly quashed the notion. If the winter was bad, then they faced the threat of starvation. If there was war, they risked being burned out of their homes or slaughtered. Their wealth was measured in one cow, three pigs, five chickens, not in acres of land and numbers of manors. Doubtless they envied him his fine horse and fur-lined cloak.

The castle gates were open to admit him, smoke twirling from the louvers and giving an extra pungency to the autumn air. His brother William came to greet him as he dismounted. Fulke had written to him, asking that he should come from Whadborough and take the position of constable at Whittington until the dispute with John was settled.

“It’s good to see you.” Fulke clasped his brother’s taut, wiry frame.

“And you,” William said wryly. “Llewelyn’s young men have been growing restless. We’ve had more than one raid since the summer. It doesn’t matter that you’re supposed to be on the same side.”

Fulke gazed at the fabric of the keep. From a besieger’s viewpoint, it was a gift. He was glad that the fighting between John and his opponents had not spread to this part of the Marches. But if Ranulf Chester should take it into his head to descend on Whittington, its capture was a foregone conclusion, no matter the skill of its commander. Llewelyn did not have the sophisticated siege equipment, but fire would do just as well for a timber keep, especially if the summer had been warm and dry.

“He’s raided Pantulf’s lands too, although the Corbets have escaped. I carried out a couple of counter-raids—drove off some herds. It’s been quiet the last two weeks.”

Leaving his horse in the care of a groom, Fulke headed for the hall. “I’ve agreed a truce until the spring—although my promise was given to William Marshal. If I’d given it to John, I wouldn’t be here now.”

William strode at his side. “Llewelyn won’t like you signing a truce.”

“Llewelyn wants what is best for Wales,” Fulke said shortly. The back of his neck was cold, as if someone had just blown upon it. Entering the hall, he stared around. It was a bachelor’s mess, the floor rushes soft and greasy, old candle wax overflowing the sconces, crumbs and spill stains on the trestles.

“Has Maude not returned from Yorkshire?” he demanded, although the evidence of his own eyes told him that she had not. He had received a curt note from his wife on a trimming of parchment no larger than the size of his hand to say that she was going to their northern estates. From the brevity and tone, he knew that she was angry, but he had thought it might have worn off by now.

Richard glanced up from toasting a heel of bread over the open fire. “Not yet,” he said uncomfortably.

“No word?”

His brother shook his head and looked away.

Fulke glowered and kicked the rushes. “This place is a pig sty! You might not care about living in shit, but I do. Go and do something about it!”

Richard knew when to make himself scarce. William had already vanished to oversee weapons practice for the garrison. Cursing, Fulke collected a flagon of cloudy ale from the sideboard, a grease-smeared cup, and mounted the dais to survey his domain with a jaundiced eye.

That night disgruntled, irritated, Fulke rolled himself in his fur-lined cloak for warmth and comfort, but still he was cold and Whittington seemed not so much a haven and a home as a desolate, haunted place. Finally, unable to sleep, he rose. Fetching ink, quill, and vellum, he penned a brief letter to Maude, sealed it, and bade a messenger ride to find her at first light.

***

Ten days later, with still no word from Maude, Fulke left Whittington to visit the Welsh court at Aber. Llewelyn greeted Fulke courteously enough, but with an air of reserve that Fulke reciprocated.

“Wales reaps a bitter harvest when England is at peace,” Llewelyn said, “for then all her ambition turns to the conquering of her neighbors. Why should I be delighted that you have sealed a truce with John?”

“I am not asking you to be delighted,” Fulke answered. “Do you remember when you sealed your own pact with him by marrying his daughter and forced me to leave Whittington?”

“A fair point, but much water has flowed beneath our bridges since that time.”

“I agree,” Fulke said shortly. “I have not consented to this truce in order to make war on Wales. All I am requesting is that you curb your young men from raiding my lands.”

“In the time of your grandfather, those lands were Welsh. And before that English, then Welsh, then English again. It is a game of push and pull. But if you raid, then my men will retaliate, and so it will go on.”

***

“Llewelyn has changed,” Fulke said as he rode home with William from their parley. “He has grown more bitter, more cynical.” Hearing his own words, he winced. So do we all, he thought. When trust was broken and broken again, there came a point when it could not be mended—like a cracked tile underfoot that made the foot step awry and the body lose its balance.

“Do you think the raids will stop?”

Fulke shrugged. “It is likely for a time, unless the winter is hard and their hunger fierce. I have served Llewelyn warning that I will treat the raids as acts of war, not the peccadilloes of hot-blooded young men, but I have kept the pathways between us open.”

William smiled faintly. “You have the diplomacy that many do not,” he said. “The ability to show your fist and talk like a courtier at the same time.”

“I wouldn’t call it diplomacy.”

“Then what?”

“Needs must when the devil drives.”

***

They arrived at Whittington to find travelers’ horses in the stables: a powerful dappled cob and two smaller mounts. Fulke recognized his daughter’s chestnut mare and Clarice’s small brown gelding. There were also several saddle horses probably belonging to an escort, but there was no sign of Maude’s favorite cream-colored palfrey.

His heart leaping, Fulke almost ran into the hall. Tall and whipcord lean, William Pantulf was warming his hands at the fire in the company of the two girls. As Fulke entered the hall he looked up, and his glance alerted the others.

“Papa!” Hawise ran to him, her red braids snaking. He caught her up and swung her round, hugging her close in delight and pain and then holding her away to look at her.

“Holy Mother, you’ve grown again! Last I saw you, I could tuck you beneath my arm, now you reach above my shoulder!”

Hawise giggled, sounding so much like her mother that it was almost like an arrow in his heart. To look at she was pure de Dinan, her gaining height and ripening curves the legacy of the grandmother for whom she was named.

“Are you home for good now?” she demanded.

“For the winter at least. Did my letter not reach you and your mother?” His arm around Hawise, he went forward to the fire to greet Will Pantulf and Clarice.

Hawise stiffened against him. “Yes,” she said. “We were at Edlington and Will was visiting so he offered to escort us to Whittington. I couldn’t come on my own, so Clarice accompanied me as a chaperone.” Her voice was breathless and Fulke did not miss the look that two young women exchanged.

“Is your mother following later?”

Will Pantulf cleared his throat and looked embarrassed, as if wishing himself somewhere else.

Hawise shook her head. “No, Papa.”

“Why not?” Fulke’s stomach turned over. There was a look in his daughter’s eyes, a mingling of anger, sadness, and compassion, containing a feminine wisdom far beyond her years.

Hawise lifted her chin. “She says that if she is going to be a widow while her husband is alive, she will dwell on her dower lands as befits her station.”

“What!” Fulke demanded with incredulity and anger.

Hawise’s composure slipped. “Why did you go to a tourney, Papa, instead of coming home to us?”

He shook his head, trying to grasp what she was saying, trying to make some sense of the morass.

“My grandfather said that you had gone to a tourney.”

“It wasn’t just a tourney,” Fulke snapped. “It was a gathering of all the men who felt that the spirit of the charter was not going to be honored.”

“Mama said that if you wanted to chase your dream as well as your own tail, then well and good, but that you should not expect her to wait at Whittington for you and become another Maude de Braose.”

Fulke clenched his fists, furious that Maude should use Hawise as a pawn in their battle. “She sent you with that message, did she?”

“No, Papa.” Hawise shook her head miserably. “But I heard her say it. Go to her, please. I cannot bear to watch you destroy each other.” She made a pleading gesture.

Fulke kissed her broad, white brow and smoothed the curly red wisps that had escaped the tight braiding. “I’ll ride out on the morrow,” he said gently, but his eyes were hard.

A servant brought hot wine and William joined them from outside, hugging his niece, nodding to the others, bringing welcome relief.

“No Maude?” he inquired.

“I’m going north tomorrow to fetch her,” Fulke said, managing for his daughter’s sake to keep his voice neutral.

***

“Well, and what should I say to my wife?”

Clarice looked at Fulke where he stood before the hearth, drinking a last cup of wine before he retired. “Only you can know that, my lord,” she said, picking up her cloak. Hawise and Will Pantulf had gone outside to admire the stars and each other. In her role of chaperone, Clarice was slowly preparing to follow them out.

Clarice had felt the anger and anxiety coming off Fulke in waves almost as hot as a brazier throughout the evening. Now he was brooding, and although he was far from drunk she could see that the wine he had consumed had made him melancholy rather than mellow. “One thing I can tell you: she will not come to you.”

“Why?”

“You are asking to hear her words from my mouth. I cannot do that.” Clarice fastened the cloak.

“I don’t see why not. Everyone else seems to know her reasons. She must have discussed the matter with you.”

Hearing the growl in his voice, Clarice mutely shook her head. Turning from him, she hurried from the hall, and did not answer when he shouted her back. She had no intention of becoming a grain of corn between two grindstones, or of putting herself through the mill of facing him and speaking for another woman when all she really wanted was to…Clarice banished the thought before it could develop coherence at the front of her mind.

Outside it was a night for lovers, crisp and star-frosted. A time to embrace within the shelter of each other’s cloaks, sharing warmth. Clarice’s breath whitened in the air as she climbed the wall walks and joined Hawise and Will, standing breast to breast, their lips so close that their own breath mingled as one. She felt no envy; indeed she was wary for she had seen both sides of a coin that evening. Nevertheless, a wistful pang clutched her heart as she looked on the couple and knew that such an innocent love would never be hers.