Lords of the White Castle (70 page)

'It is what you desire? I do not want you to take it out of faith to me and in doing so be unfaithful to yourself.'

'It is what I desire,' Jean said firmly and folded his arms as if gathering the offer to his breast. 'I do not believe that I will hanker after new adventure or women to tumble for a long time… if , of course, she will have me.'

'Do you doubt that she will?'

Jean pondered for a moment then shook his head. 'No,'

he said. 'She is like me. She cannot afford to dance on the edge for ever, no matter how exhilarating. Besides, she needs a protector for this place, and you are clearly spoken for. I believe I have brought her to see the benefits of changing allegiance.'

'Good,' said Fulke wryly. 'Perhaps you ought to go and tell my wife before she does your future wife an injury'

Jean and Oonagh were married two days later in the small wooden chapel adjoining the hall. Fulke was well enough to be on his feet, if a little slow of movement. He had vacated the lord's bedchamber so that Oonagh and Jean might have it for their wedding night—although, as he observed to Maude, the couple had managed very well on the solar floor thus far.

Oonagh wore a gown of simple blue linen, bound at the waist by a girdle of silver braid. In deference to the sanctity of the chapel, she had covered her plait with a light veil of silk, bound in place with a bridal chaplet of myrtle and roses. She pledged herself before the witnesses in a loud, clear voice, making it clear to all that she had not been forced into the marriage. Jean presented her with a gold besant in token of endowing her with his wealth, and a ring as a symbol of the bond between them.

The priest blessed the couple and gave the Church's sanction to the union. Bride and groom kissed, their hands bound together by the priest's stole of office. With smiling eyes, Oonagh stood before Fulke and Maude to receive their congratulations. As Fulke stooped to kiss her cheek, she mischievously turned her head so that their lips met, and then she set her arms around his neck and made sure that the kiss was a full-blooded salute. 'In memory of the past,' she said with a coquettish flutter of her eyelashes as she released him.

Fulke inclined his head. 'May it be put behind us.'

Beside him, Maude quietly seethed. While she had made her truce with Oonagh, the women were never going to be outright friends. There was too much suspicion and jealousy on both sides. They would tolerate each other for the sake of the bond between their husbands, but no more than that.

Maude murmured her congratulations and the women kissed the air above each other's cheeks. When Jean stooped over Maude to receive her tribute, she embraced him in the manner that Oonagh had embraced Fulke, but with slower deliberation.

'For all the times I have asked and you have been there,' she said. Fulke looked shocked, but also reluctantly amused. Oonagh's brow, irritatingly smooth for a woman of her years, wore the tiniest furrow of irritation. Good. Let her realise that she was matched.

'If I had known you would do that to me,' Jean jested, 'I would have got married years ago!'

They were sitting down to the wedding feast in the hall—a hastily arranged affair of spicy meat ragout and bannocks, when the alarm horn sounded on the stockade and one of the guards on duty came running with the news that Padraig O'Donnel had returned with more men and siege ladders.

Cursing, Fulke eased to his feet. Jean finished his mouthful of ragout, washed it down with wine, and, tearing a piece of bannock off the large round in the centre of the trestle, headed for the wall walks.

Oonagh stared at the ruins of her wedding feast and cursed fluently in Gaelic. Fear snatched Maude's appetite, already fickle in the first weeks of pregnancy. Suddenly the spicy scent of the stew was nauseating. She pushed her bowl aside. 'We need to prepare for the wounded.' She rose to her feet, taking refuge in motion, one hand instinctively going to her belly. 'And help the men on the walls. Where do you keep the cauldrons for laundry and dyeing? No one will climb a ladder into a faceful of boiling water,'

'In one of the bailey stores, still ready from last time.' Oonagh was on her feet, her expression bright with anger. 'I'll show you.'

As the women worked to fill the cauldrons with water, to build fires beneath them, to prepare lengths of linen bandages, needles and thread, their truce gave way to a grudging respect for each other's skills.

'You're not a dainty Norman lady after all,' Oonagh said as she watched Maude pump the turves with the bellows to fan the flames and increase the heat beneath the cauldron.

'Is that what you thought I was?' Maude wiped her brow on her forearm, leaving a sooty smut. Beyond the wall walk, they could hear a cacophony of howls and insults as O'Donnel's men prepared to put up the siege ladders.

'When I saw you with Theobald Walter, for sure,' Oonagh said. 'So pretty and meek and neat; the sort of woman that you hear French troubadours praise in their songs.' Her tone emphasised that she was not passing a compliment. 'I could not imagine Fulke being besotted by such a wife unless he was attracted to her lands.'

'He was.' Maude began to gasp. It was hard work, but worth it. The flames were fairly licking beneath the cauldron now. 'No man marries for love alone—and few women get the choice.'

'Did you have a choice?'

'Oh yes.' Red-faced, Maude stopped and wiped her brow again. 'Him or King John.'

Oonagh stared, then suddenly she began to laugh. 'And therein lies the difference. I had the same choice, and I chose John.' Sobering, she took the bellows from Maude and attacked the fire. 'I wouldn't make the same mistake again. Not that he was a bad lover, you understand, far from it, but he did not keep the promises made between the sheets.' She grimaced. 'But then I was naive enough in those days to believe that he would.'

'John only keeps his promises when forced to them,' Maude said grimly. 'Whether between the sheets or in full view of the Curia Regis.'

Oonagh looked at her curiously.

'It is a long tale. Ask Jean to tell you, it calls for the skill of a troubadour.'

Oonagh's look of curiosity increased. Within the cauldron, small bubbles began to rise in the steaming water. Whether or not she would have pursued the subject became a moot point as the women saw Fulke walking slowly towards them, constrained by the wound in his side. Maude could see that he was hurting and she hurt with him. Pray God that he did not have to fight.

'Your former brother-by-marriage has brought mercenaries from Limerick to support him,' he said. 'Dregs and gutter-sweepings, hired on the promise of rich pickings.'

Oonagh whitened. 'Are they strong enough to break through?'

He rubbed the side of his jaw. 'I…'

'The truth' Oonagh bared her teeth. 'I don't want false reassurance.'

Wintry humour glinted in his eyes. 'Nor would
I
give it to you. There are plenty of them, but rudely trained. There is a possibility they will overwhelm us by sheer weight of numbers. We have managed to get a messenger away through their ranks to Glencavern. That is all I can tell you. I am sorry that it is not a precise answer, but warfare never is. Just now they are drinking uisge beatha in huge quantities for courage and working themselves into a rage by hurling insults. Keep the water ready, we are going to need it.'

'You will not fight on the wall walk?' Maude said unsteadily, imagining him slowed and weakened by his wound and made the prey of a howling Irish spearman.

'Do I look like a madman?'

'No, but that means nothing. You didn't look like one when you rode into Canterbury to take me, nor when you went after Will when the royal foresters captured him.'

He took her by the shoulders. 'Even if I desired to fight, I would not, because I am a liability to the other men. Grant me some leeway of common sense.'

'I know you. You will not sit still and watch others fight unless I tie you to a bench with ten yards of rope.' Tears
of
worry glittered in her eyes and she forced her hand up between their bodies to wipe them away.

'Of course I will not sit and watch. There are other things to be done: organising a second line of defence for one. If they break through, they need to be contained. The best fighting men are on the wall, but that does not mean that those left are incapable of defending themselves.'

Maude compressed her lips and nodded. At least he would not be leaning over a parapet with a sword in his hand—unlike Jean. She glanced at Oonagh, but the Irish woman's expression was controlled, her emotions tucked away until it was safe to bring them out.

'Where's your lad?' Fulke demanded of Oonagh.

'In the hall.' She jerked her head and a glimmer of fear escaped to spark in her eyes. 'Surely, for Gods love, you are not bringing him out to the battle?'

'I would not dream of endangering him, but the people need a rallying point. It is him they are fighting for, not a group of Normans upon whom none of them had set eyes a seven-day since.'

'Very well then.' Oonagh swallowed. 'Do as you see fit, but if anything happens to him, I will kill you myself.'

'You won't need to,' Fulke said grimly, 'because I will already be dead.' And on the comfort of those words, left the women at the cauldron and moved on.

Fulke sought in the hall for Oonagh's thirteen-year-old son and found only the women industriously cutting strips of linen into bandages. No, they had not seen the young lord. Hand pressed to his aching side, Fulke searched every corner and crevice of the room, checking the bedrolls for sign of the slender, dark-haired youth. The bedchambers were next, but there too he could find nothing. Fulke cursed. He went to the boy's bed bench and picked up a discarded linen shirt. It was old and beginning to fray: a garment that the lad wore at night. Bundling it up, Fulke took it back into the hall and moved stiffly over to the two huge silver wolfhounds dozing by the fire.

'Seek,' he commanded, thrusting the shirt beneath the questing damp noses and pitching his voice high as if playing a game.

The bitch hound lunged to her feet. 'Seek,' Fulke said again, wafting the shirt under her nose.

The wolfhound cast around the floor, burying her nose in the rushes, licking them. Then with a whine, she trotted from one side of the hall to the other, zigzagging almost as if on the trail of a hare, before shooting out of the door into the bailey. The younger dog followed, gambolling, half copying, eager but unsure. Fulke gritted his teeth and, ignoring the pain from his chest each time he expanded his ribs, did his best to run after the dogs.

The bitch snuffled the bailey, the grass trampled to a clay-like mud by the passing of too many feet. She circled, and Fulke was beginning to wonder if she had lost the lad's scent among the confusion of so many others, when she set off again at a straight run towards the wall walks. Now Fulke did curse. God in heaven, the most dangerous place that the lad could be, and without armour too!

From the ditch below the stockade, there came a sudden, concerted howl of voices, followed by the slamming sound of wood on wood as the siege ladders struck the top of the defences. Missiles sang through the air, egg-sized chunks of stone hurled by slingers, pots of powdered lime that smashed on impact and blinded the eyes. Arrows fired from on high, curving and plummeting—not many of those, thank God, but then it only took one to wreak the damage.

A lime pot exploded on the steps above him, filling the air with choking white powder. Fulke threw his sleeve across his face and stumbled up the last few steps. The dogs fled, yelping.

'My lord, you should not be here!' cried Ralf Gras. His shield was down on his left arm, his sword drawn. In front of him, a group of soldiers had hooked grappling irons around the top of the ladder and were attempting to cast it and its cargo of rapidly climbing men down into the ditch.

'The lad!' Fulke gagged. 'I've come for the lad!'

'What lad?'

'Collum O'Donnel, who else?'

'He's up here?'

'Well, he's certainly not anywhere else!' Fulke snarled.

Ralf suddenly lunged and slashed. There was a yell and the Irishman at the top of the ladder crashed down, taking with him several of the climbers beneath. Two Serjeants dislodged the ladder, pushing it sideways until it fell away with its cargo and hit the ground with a jarring crash.

Fulke drew his sword and eased along the timbered wall walk. The boy was standing near the entrance to the next stairway. Transfixed, he was gripping the pointed tips of the stockade stakes and leaning over to watch the attacking swarm. No helm, no armour. Just a wedding tunic of bright red wool and a cloak of a colour only a little less dark, making of him a wonderful target.

'You little fool!' Fulke roared. 'What in the name of God's ten toes are you doing!'

The boy looked up, startled. 'I was just—' he started to say and then his eyes widened in shock, giving Fulke a split second of warning. Through instinct and years of training, he ducked and at the same time, swiped low with his sword, connecting with unprotected flesh and bone.

The mercenary screamed and fell. Fulke struck again to make sure that he stayed down. The boy began to gasp, his breath sawing in his chest in a high-pitched whine of shock. Fulke felt the trickle of blood down his side. His mouth was dry, his heart pounding in great hammer strokes.

'I thought I could help,' the boy said through chattering teeth. 'I didn't want to stay in the hall.'

'That doesn't mean you have to endanger yourself and everyone around you by climbing the wall walk!' Fulke grabbed his arm and bundled the lad back down into the bailey. The heat of the moment was holding his pain at bay but he knew he would pay for it later. Behind him, he could hear the clash of hard-fought battle as more of O'Donnel's men gained the walk boards.

'I can fight, I've started my training.' Pride rang in the boy's voice and, beneath it, an undercurrent of trembling fear. Fulke suspected he had forced himself to take the greatest risk of all because of the shame of that fear.

'You have courage, lad,' Fulke said grimly. 'What you need to accompany it is common sense. You'd not last a heartbeat against one of those mercenaries, and I doubt that your uncle Padraig would much care if one of them "accidentally" spitted you on his spear. Stay close to me. You're of more use being seen by your people than standing up there as a target.'