The Sword and The Swan (30 page)

Rannulf might have the right of life or death over his servants, but by long custom, he had no right to deprive them of their positions. For a sufficiently serious infraction of his trust, he might order a man to be killed or maimed, but since the man's son, or nephew, or cousin, or uncle would then inherit the position, severe or unmerited punishment was a double-edged sword. It was one of the few sure ways to destroy his own influence over his servants and the safety and comfort of his home.

Far worse, however, was any attempt to interfere with the hereditary status of each servant. Many masters were cruel and unreasonable; servants accepted this as the will of God to try them. Usually they still did their work faithfully while they prayed for their master's early demise. After all, if one master was a devil, the next might be a saint, and their sons or their sons' sons would reap the benefit of their patience and forbearance. If the hope of that benefit were taken from them, the fabric of their lives would be torn and all endeavor would be worthless.

Never had Rannulf failed in the minutest fulfillment of that duty. He knew each of the men who were the chiefs of the various aspects of castle life since childhood. He knew their wives and their children and which of their sons showed the most promise. He laid his hand to the bellows or the hammer in the smithy; he waked with his farrier when a promising mare was in foal; he selected puppies or held a sick hunting dog on his lap while his kennelman dosed or treated it; he put his shoulder to the uprooting of stumps with his forester and tracked game with his huntsmen.

Most of all, he joyed in the verbal battles with old and faithful servants, descending to the vernacular and to their level of expostulation with grim pleasure, bearing unflinchingly language from them for which he would have killed an equal. Few men in the kingdom, king, earl or baron—other than his foster brother Leicester—dared call Rannulf a fool, yet his servants informed him trenchantly that he was an unripe gapeseed, a mutton-headed ass, a gaping cod, without fear and without restraint. Rannulf bore all, but not meekly; he returned the compliments in even less-elegant language.

To see Rannulf, then, with his hands behind his head and half-closed eyes while he replied to Richard's questions was a shock to Catherine. Skillfully ridding herself of the boy by sending him on a short errand, she attempted to renew her examination of her husband for wounds or illness. He defended himself with laughter, protesting that nothing but old age and indolence ailed him. At last, seeing that Catherine was really troubled, Rannulf admitted how he had hurried to be at home, thereby saving himself the time for this lazy pleasure.

"You wish to be rid of me," he complained. "You wish to make the bed and attend to your women's duties without the burden of a lazy husband to mar your efficiency. Therefore you would drive me out to labor at dawn."

"Dawn!" Catherine protested. "It is nigh time for dinner, and you are lying abed like a slug. Your poor men have been indeed laboring since dawn, and some of them all night from what I hear, cleaning and making all ready for your eyes. Do have mercy on them, Rannulf. The past two years they have had far too much of woman's governance. Get up now, my lord, do."

She fetched a bedrobe from the chest and held it out to him, smiling warmly as she added, "It would be too unkind to deny your servants altogether, my lord, but I am very glad you have some time to spend on pleasure. I, too, have naught to do."

She explained about leaving more and more of the work of the keep in Mary's hands and added, "She is a very good girl, Rannulf, hard-working, obedient, and of a sweet temper. She deserves well of you."

"I suppose so, but if her temper is sweet, she has caught it from you. Certainly it came not from her mother nor from me."

Catherine refrained from pointing out that Mary's mother had reason enough to be short of temper, merely thanking Rannulf for his compliment as she straightened the bed. She called past the screen for water for washing and, after watching her husband scrub himself in silence, decided to try his mellow mood a little further.

"She is fifteen, Rannulf."

"Who?"

"Mary."

"Oh, yes," he said indifferently.

"It is time she was married."

"There is time enough for that. She cannot be unhappy here with you, she is useful to you, and, in all truth, I have nothing to spare for her just now, neither land nor gold."

Catherine knew that to be true and resented it. Everything seemed to be swallowed up by the fruitless, senseless war. She knew she should have been satisfied with the knowledge that Rannulf intended to dower his daughter, but the very fact that he had reminded her that all his resources were presently committed to war increased her sense of urgency.

If anything happened to Rannulf, Mary's position would be desperate. Doubtless Rannulf had lands and possessions given him or won in war that were not entailed upon his eldest son. Most of these, of course, would go to enrich Richard's portion, adding to Adelecia's dower, which belonged to her son. Nonetheless, Rannulf could, if he chose, give some part of the free property as a gift to his daughter who, being illegitimate, had nothing by right.

If he died before disposing otherwise of his property, it would all, except for Adelecia's dower, go to Geoffrey. Catherine did not really know Geoffrey. Perhaps he would wish to be generous to his half sister, but once the property passed into his hands, custom would bind him to pass it on to his own heirs. He might find money to give her, but certainly if the war continued there would be little left for him to find.

"It cannot be done at once, I know," Catherine persisted, "but you could promise something definite, and if you have no particular man in mind for her—"

"I have more to consider than a silly girl's marriage," Rannulf snapped irritably, aware that he had really opened his mouth to agree to anything Catherine suggested. Momentarily he was frightened by her power over him, but as he realized he had resisted it successfully, he regained confidence. "Do you think of nothing but the children?" he asked. "I have wrested two short days from a hard duty. Is it wrong to wish to give myself to pleasure without thought for two days?"

"Of course not, Rannulf." Catherine crossed to where he was moodily looking out a window. How cruel she was to him. He was so duty-bound that it was a sin to spoil his brief release.

"Look," Rannulf said suddenly, pushing away his fear, "the sky is clearing. What say you, my lady, can you spare the afternoon to come hawking with me? Shall we ride away from our duty and our labor to indulge ourselves in guilty pleasure?"

Catherine giggled, partly at the notion of so innocent an amusement being called a guilty pleasure and partly with the sudden realization that Rannulf would not know a guilty pleasure if one bit him. Not that he had not tried them all. Catherine herself had never seen her husband more than slightly heated with wine, but there were tales of past carouses. He gambled, yes, and took some pleasure in it; only the vice had so little hold upon him that there could be no guilt involved. Nor had Catherine forgotten the women. There, if you wished, was guilt, but pleasure?

That was the meat of the matter. Rannulf was so made that when he felt guilt, he could feel no pleasure. Even sadder, Catherine thought, glancing quickly at him, he had not called hawking a guilty pleasure entirely in jest. Any amusement indulged in merely for pleasure gave Rannulf a sense of guilt.

"Oh, yes," Catherine sighed, sliding her arm around Rannulf's waist, "let us go and be guilty together."

Without turning to look at her, as if he were afraid to acknowledge to himself what he was doing, Rannulf pulled Catherine still closer and, after a short, silent pause, pressed his lips to her hair.

"Rannulf," Catherine added urgently, "do you have only the two days? Is there no way to stretch the time?"

Again the twinge of fear that he would yield and stay. "I dare not," Rannulf said. "I have sent the summons out, but I am commanded to hand-pick the men who follow my vassals and, in truth, I believe much will depend upon their quality. If you wish," he continued as if the idea were new to him, "we may stretch the time of being together. You may travel with me to my vassals' keeps." He had planned to take her, but that she should come by her own desire was sweeter yet.

A fool only, Catherine thought, walks wide-eyed into the maw of danger. Every hour in her husband's company carried the threat of the exposure of her plans and the clash of wills to follow. On the other hand, he had never been so soft to her. Perhaps now if she pleaded with him to withdraw from the king's war he would listen. Catherine snuggled closer to the hard body beside her as if she would seek shelter within it.

"Thank you, Rannulf. I do desire to come."

She had thanked him for what he would have demanded of her. Rannulf understood at last the strange juxtaposition of the ideas in the 23rd Psalm: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over."

The rod and the staff, however, were not missing. Sometimes subtly, sometimes directly, but always mixed with an outpouring of love that disarmed Rannulf completely, Catherine pleaded expediency. In terms of her own fears, she pointed out how naked his lands would be when he had stripped them of their best fighters. She told him of her recurring nightmare, in which his vassals turned on him to be free of the unceasing, hopeless war, and murdered Richard and Geoffrey so that there would be no heirs of his name to take revenge. She clung and she kissed and she wept.

Rannulf soothed her. He explained how the victories in France were healing Eustace's bitterness; how the rebels were shaken by those victories; how Stephen might at last be king of a peaceful realm. And each time he voiced these convictions, the optimism he had felt faded. Leicester's warnings, dismissed previously, burned in his brain, and Catherine's nightmare took such hold upon him that he scarcely dared close his eyes at night.

Never had Rannulf suffered such torment. He had often been bitterly unhappy in his personal life. Now, lapped in love, dazed—glutted—with emotional satisfaction, he found the scaffolding of his life collapsing. The music of Catherine's voice was no happy contrast to the clamor of war he would soon hear. The rich green fields were no invitation to make desolation elsewhere. And nights of love do not well prepare a man to go and look upon death.

CHAPTER 14

Like a carved figure of obsidian touched with silver, the horseman sat in the moonlight. Before him, dropping away from the crest of the low hill, stretched the once-fertile fields around Wallingford. Even the night could not hide their ravishment. Nothing. Empty. There was a darker shadow, which might be a single mud wall of a serf's hut still standing. Here, closer, was a tree, gnarled, stark, obscene without leaves in the late summer, writhing as if it still felt the fire that had stripped it.

A faint shudder disturbed the stillness of the horseman, and the moonlight flickered, a pale, cold flame without warmth or comfort, on the polished helmet. Another fitful gleam, light without light, showed faintly as a metal-sewn gauntlet moved the reins. The horse, dull-shining now in movement, went down toward that scorched nothingness, and behind, out of the shadows, came other horsemen whose accoutrements shone palely and faded. The silence was broken, but not by the voices of men. No command for silence had been given, for there was no danger in the empty fields for these horsemen, but their leader's burden lay upon them and they were weary.

For some time the dull thud of hooves unmuffled by any green blade on that blackened earth made a monotonous music. Then, across the emptiness, hanging threateningly above it, rose the black towers of Wallingford keep, and on the near side of the river before it the men could see the campfires of the besiegers—red eyes that gazed hungrily at the great stone walls. Each man saw something different in those fires.

To most they were the cheerful heralds of comfort, telling of food and drink and sleep. To Andre Fortesque they were leaping beacons of hope. To Rannulf they were the final touch to a nightmare, the fires of hell glowing red in a burnt and desolate land.

A quicker beat; a galloping messenger came toward them. Although they could not see the raised hand of their leader, the troop pulled to a halt.

"Who rides by night?"

The moonlight gleamed on a horn raised to blast a warning.

"Rannulf, earl of Soke." He rode forward alone, pushing back his helm and unlacing his mail hood. "Do you know me?"

"Aye, my lord." It was one of Stephen's squires, and the horn was lowered. "You have been looked for, and I rode out to take you to your place in the camp."

Within the ring of fires, the squire led them to an empty area not far from the king's own pavilion. Rannulf dismounted, silent still. There was no need to give orders, for his men were well-picked, experienced soldiers. He need only wait, and his little village of tents and fires would spring up within the camp city. Fortesque's voice came clear, giving orders to the household guard, who would be placed closest to Rannulf's tent. John of Northampton was giving orders too, interlarded with a good kick to a slow-moving servant now and again. In a little while, Rannulf knew, he could disarm and his cot would be ready.

Rannulf's armor was gone, the night was mild, and a soft woolen coverlet shielded him from the damp. Still his body was no lighter, and even heavy winter furs could not have warmed his inner cold. Softly, softer than a sighing breath, Rannulf groaned.

Who would believe that the love of a good woman could bring such pain? Her fear and helplessness unsettled his very soul. And even here, there was room for indecision. Fear or rebel sympathy? Which drove Catherine to infect him with doubt? It was as if she instilled poison with her kisses. He could not doubt her love for him, but he had not slept through any night except the first that he had spent at home. He dreamed ever of a peaceful land and the love that was his to take and have at will, and he woke ever with an oppression of guilt as if such dreams were treason.