THE EARL (A HAMMER FOR PRINCES) (6 page)

She laughed her warm, deep laugh. He helped her through the door and onto the bed; she was breathing too hard for the short distance she had walked, and while he watched she shut her eyes and lay still a moment. Finally, she looked up and began to arrange herself on the pillows, pulling a fur coverlet over her.

"Who taught me to use advantages? Hawisse, where is—there he is.” She dissolved into a torrent of baby talk, and Hawisse deposited a small dog on the bed. Fulk went to the window and sat down on the sill. Maids and waiting women rushed back and forth across his shadow on the floor. Clusters of flowers appeared on every available surface, and bundles and boxes sprang open and were emptied of their contents. Chattering women filled the room. The door flew open, and the cook, beaming, marched in with a tray of fresh pastries. Hawisse snatched it away and took it to the bed. Three maids began to air out clothes near the cupboards.

"
Stafford
again,” Hawisse said, looking down her bony nose. “Oh, my lady, don’t you wish we had never left Arby?”

“But
Stafford
’s so much nicer,” one of the three maids piped, off by the cupboards, and Hawisse gave her a poisonous look. Fulk laughed. Hawisse glanced at him through the corner of her eye and sniffed; her sour mouth thinned to a wrinkle. Fulk grunted at her.

More baggage appeared, and Hawisse, arms raised, ordered it about. “Bring them here—Gilbert, isn’t it? Yes. Thank you. We shall require another tall cabinet for my lady’s things. Kindly remove this chest. My lady will—oh! oh!”

The lapdog on the bed charged across the covers, yapping, and Merry, who had just come through the door, snarled and broke into deep-throated barks. The women rushed toward him, shooing him out in high voices, but the big dog set himself. He looked mildly surprised--after the first barks he ignored the lapdog. All along his spine, brindle hair stood up in a roach. Margaret grabbed the lapdog and was soothing it. From the safety of her enormous arms it squealed and yipped and made small lunges.

“Merry,” Fulk said, and the dog dodged around the women to him. “Lie down. Good dog.”

The lapdog raced up and down Margaret’s body, screaming. Hawisse glared at Merry, who had lain down at Fulk’s feet. “My lord, that dog.”

“He’s doing nothing at all.” Fulk crooked a finger at a page and sent him for one of the pastries Margaret was eating. “Get rid of the troublemaker.”

Margaret said coolly, “Take him, Hawisse, he scratches.”

She gathered up the lapdog like a ball and gave it to one of her women. “Leave me, all of you. The noise tires me. Hawisse, send up more honey for these cakes. Go on, leave me.”

The room emptied out immediately. Across a litter of boxes and furniture, Margaret met Fulk’s eyes and smiled.

“As usual I’ve disrupted your life, my lord. Forgive me.” She sounded amused and tired.

Fulk brushed crumbs off his palms. “I see being sick hasn’t spoiled your appetite.”

“I wish you had kept Rannulf here until I came. Move this cushion for me.”

“The errand was pressing.” He slid off the window sill and went to the bed. The cushion lay half under her back, and he pulled it free and stuck it in behind her head. She sighed. Crumbs and bits of dried jam littered the front of her gown and the fur robe. This close to her, he saw again how sick she was, and he sat down on the bed, worried.

“I am so weak,” she said. “I can barely lift my head.” She turned her head and coughed, deep out of her lungs, tearing and wet.

“The air is better here than at Arby,” Fulk said.

“It will do me no good. Where is Thierry?”

“Gone to Prince Henry.”

“What a fool he is, he always puts himself at your mercy. Have you been busy? Isn’t that a silly question? You are never idle. Here’s the honey.”

A page with Hawisse like a drover just behind him set down a tray with a pot of honey and another pile of cakes on it. Fulk stared at Hawisse until she left. It was unlike Margaret to make so much of being sick.

“I got from
Derby
what you talked about, you two,” she said, when the door had shut. “You think a lot of this little prince, don’t you.”

“Damn you, you always have to know everything, don’t you.”

“Put honey on that bread for me. It’s boring being a woman. Of course I meddle. I think you’re making a mistake, Fulk.”

“I don’t.”

“King Stephen is an easy man. The empress was not, and I can’t suppose her son is much finer, particularly when I consider his sire. You have always had a weakness for treacherous men.”

Fulk stabbed the bread at her. “We came through this reign well enough, didn’t we? For all my weaknesses and—”

“Don’t be angry, you betray yourself too much. As for coming through well, other families came through far better.”

“If you admire the chimerical successes of, say, the Earl of Chester, my lady, I shall go out and murder and rampage and fight for cities I can’t hold and gain enemies in high places.”

Margaret grimaced. She was a Clare and had all their arrogant ambition—her brother was Earl of Pembroke. Fulk thrust the honey knife into the pot and lay down crosswise on the bed, his bead propped up on his crooked arm.

“Suppose we enjoy a moment’s truce. How do you feel sick?”

“Look at me,” she said stonily. “Do I look well?”

“Not at all. You’ll be better in a few days.”

“You may believe so if you wish. I knew I should get no sympathy from you.”

“That’s what Hawisse is for. Myself, I am wondering how you mean to use what you found out from
Derby
. If you’ve done anything, Margaret, I’ll be angry.”

“If you think your temper frightens me you’re very wrong.” She stared at him a moment. “I think you are nourishing a viper in this prince of yours.”

Fulk shrugged. “I doubt that.”

“If he is all you told
Derby
, then certainly when he is king his first action will be to weaken all the powerful men around him.”

“Not if he owes his throne to us.”

Margaret chewed on bread and honey, her cheeks stuffed, and swallowed with difficulty. “I am beginning to fear that you will make just as base a bargain with this prince in
England
and you did with his father in
Normandy
.”

“Come now. That’s talk I would expect from Rannulf. Henry and his father ruined nearly every great house in
Normandy
but ours. I thought I did well in
Normandy
.”

“You made a merchants bargain with the conquerors.”

Fulk picked dog hairs out of the fur coverlet. This was an old argument, rehearsed a dozen times before. “When I was vicomte we were powerless. Now I am bailiff, and we control the whole region. Power isn’t base.”

“There’s no sense in arguing with you, clearly. Only see: the prince is Duke of Normandy, and he has overthrown his own brother to make himself Count of Anjou, and with this new wife he holds Aquitaine—more and richer lands than England. Will he let his English barons rule him?”

“Your dog is shedding. I don’t know what he will do. I don’t know if we can control him. But these wars are destroying the kingdom.”

She laid her limp hands in her lap. “No one listening to you would imagine you are such a great knight.”

The back of Fulk’s neck and ears grew hot, and he plucked furiously at the coverlet. “I will take that as praise.”

“It was intended so.”

In the little silence that followed, he heard men calling to each other on the walls; he smelled the fragrance of the flowers crowding the room. He was reluctant to break the good will between them, but there was something he had to get her to do.

“I want Rannulf to come with me when I go back to the prince’s army.”

“He never will. He is King Stephen’s man.”

“He will if you tell him to.

“I won’t.”

“You have to. He goes if I must drag him. I’d prefer him to come willingly. Wouldn’t you?”

She said nothing; she blew her nose and lay still, her eyes elsewhere.

“You must see the reason in it.”

“The king may yet deal with this prince. He has done so before. You make too little of the king.”

“I doubt anybody could make too little of that king.”

She coughed, and the harsh, ripping sound developed into a spasm. Fulk lay still, waiting for her to subside. Finally she lay back, her faced blotched with red, and gasped for breath, and her eyes moved toward him.

“You have met Stephen only at court,” Fulk said. “I’ve talked to him in councils, fought against him, and been his prisoner.”

“I’m not going to argue.”

“Good. Tell Rannulf to come with me.”

She closed her eyes and lay still, inert on the bed, her graying brown hair scattered on the pillows. Fulk sat up; the rasp of her breath alarmed him.

“I have to see Rannulf,” she said. “Could no one else have run this errand?”

A shock passed through him. This was no simple cold, when talking exhausted her so much. He picked up her fevered hand.

“He’ll be back in a day at the most. You’ll be better by then.”

“Perhaps.”

“Margaret, I’m sorry. I’ll let you rest.”

She looked at him without moving her head, and her mouth twitched upward into a smile. “Without finding out what I mean to tell him?”

“I’ll send for a physician.”

“Hawisse is capable. We have to talk later, I have some things to settle with you.”

“When you’re well,” he said stubbornly.

“I’m not going to get well.”

He said nothing; their eyes met, and he saw that she read on his face what he was thinking. She touched her lips with her tongue. He had never seen her frightened before. He realized he was gripping her hand and relaxed his fingers.

“I’ll go.”

“Stay until I fall asleep.”

“I will.”

She turned her head a little and closed her eyes. Sliding off the bed, Fulk moved over near the window, into the sunlight’s warmth. I have seen enough people die to . . .

Through the window, beyond the yew thickets that the wind combed back, he saw the thatched roofs of the town at the foot of the hill.

“Where is Hawisse?”

“I’ll get her,” he said, turning.

“No. Stay.”

She could be long in dying or she could die now. In her sleep. Before Rannulf came. She would live until Rannulf came, if she could. He’d seen men fight off death for days. What made her die? No wound, no gush of blood, nothing but a cold. That pierced into her body and attacked the organs, heart, spleen, lungs, belly, all those things I have laid open to the air with a sword. He remembered saying she took advantage of being sick, and heat washed over him. I am so clever, I deserve whipping. He heard her rough breathing and turned to see her lying there, her mouth gaping, her eyes shut. Get a physician. She should be bled.

He went to the door and opened it, and Hawisse nearly fell through.

“Listening again? I’ll find a leech.”

Hawisse looked down her nose at him. “Better a priest, my lord.” She passed him, moving toward the bed, her wooden heels clicking on the floor. Fulk went out into the antechamber. I should send for Hugh and Madeline. The bed in there had been his grandfather’s deathbed, too.

He still had to go inspect the abandoned monastery. He and Roger could go today, it was still only mid-morning, and the monastery was not so far away. The thought of spending the rest of the day away from the castle and its air of dying lightened his spirits, and he went down the stairs into the courtyard, looking for Roger.

"They say the forest is packed with outlaws,” Roger said. He reined his horse around a small tree in their path. “None of the garrison has actually seen any, of course.” He smiled.

Fulk grunted. Looking back, he could see the red stone mass of the castle on the hill behind them, the highest hill, the steepest. Sheep were grazing on the slope below the wall.

“The rumor’s always worse. It does more damage, at least.” The air smelled of the wet ground and the yew woods. “Let’s go down past the river.”

They rode along the foot of a low hill and around it, single file where the trees grew thickly, and came to the river. Here, it ran swiftly between low banks, not very wide, but difficult to cross without a bridge. They followed it a while, looking for a ford. Once or twice they crossed footpaths leading down to the water—a few herders had their cottages nearby; once Fulk smelled the pine smoke from a hearth. The trees grew thickly down to the river, so that they had to smash their way through thickets of thorny brush.

The river veered off around a hill, and when they rounded the bend, Fulk saw that a flat barge was tied up to the far bank, near a hut with a brush fence.

“Wulfric the Fisher,” Roger said. “He’s made a wall around his house.”

“Not all he’s made.” Someone had tied ropes across the river, between two trees, to draw the barge back and forth. “It seems that Wulfric the Fisher is now Wulfric the Ferryman. Come on, let’s see if he’ll take us across.” He kicked his horse into a trot and rode down toward the bank.