Elizabeth Chadwick - Shields of Pride

‘Christ’s blood, what goes forth here!’

Linnet de Montsorrel clutched her bruised throat and drew great gulps of air, her breathing no less desperate than her husband’s.

His complexion a deep wattle-crimson, Beaumont glared along the sword at Joscelin. ‘It’s a private matter,’ he snarled. ‘None of your interfering business!’

Joscelin was heartily sick of being told what was and was not his business. ‘Almost a private murder,’ he retorted. ‘You’ll answer to the justiciar.’

‘No, let him go,’ Linnet choked. Her veil had been torn off in the struggle and her hair tumbled around her shoulders in two dishevelled fair-brown braids.

Joscelin stared at her in disbelief. Beaumont used the instant’s loss of concentration to lunge sideways, past the bed and out of the door.

‘Please, I beg you, let be!’ Linnet implored as Joscelin made to run after him. ‘Let him go!’

‘But he would have killed you, my lady!’ Joscelin said incredulously but, after a hesitation, sheathed his sword and helped her to her feet.

‘And I thank you for your concern but, as he said, it was a private matter.’

Joscelin shook his head in disbelief. Red fingerprints blotched her throat and there was a long graze where Beaumont had tried to tear off the leather cord she was now clutching. Joscelin suspected the key to the Montsorrel strongbox was sequestered upon it beneath gown and chemise. ‘My lady, I do not think it is,’ he said curtly.

Avoiding his gaze, she hastened to the bedside, knelt and took her husband’s hand. Her hoarse entreaties to the Virgin were drowned out by Giles’s rasping struggle for air. He stiffened, exhaled on a choking bubble of blood and did not draw another breath. As his body sagged against the mattress, Linnet bowed her head. Against the shutters the rain spattered in lieu of the tears she would never cry. She was free, unanchored and driving towards the point where she would smash on the rocks of her own guilt.

Leaning over her, Joscelin de Gael gently closed Giles’s staring eyes and told the maid to fetch the chaplain from his meal in the hall.

‘I assume he wanted the contents of the strongbox?’

‘Assume what you wish,’ she said tonelessly, adding, ‘He was Giles’s friend, not mine.’

‘Hubert de Beaumont is no one’s friend.’

Linnet looked over her shoulder and saw that he had gone to the curtain behind which Robert was asleep on his small rope-framed bed. Drawing the fabric slightly to one side, he looked down on her sleeping, vulnerable son, his expression inscrutable. Then he gently let the curtain fall back into place and gave his attention back to her. ‘I can see you object to my questions,’ he said, ‘but you will let me post a guard at the door and send word to the justiciar.’

His tone was courteous but it held authority and expectation of obedience. Since she had no reason to challenge him, she nodded. Her jaw started to chatter and suddenly she was frozen to the marrow.

He took her cloak from the back of a chair and draped it around her shoulders.

‘You need someone to stay with you, another woman of your own rank to help where your maid cannot. Do you know anyone?’

Linnet shook her head. ‘My husband did not permit me to meet with other men’s wives and sisters except on formal occasions when he had no choice.’ She grimaced. ‘I suppose the Countess of Leicester is my kinswoman after a fashion, but I would rather not turn to her for succour.’

‘No,’ he agreed wryly, his tone revealing that his opinion of Petronilla of Leicester differed little from her own. ‘I have an aunt in the city. She’s a widow herself and of excellent character.’

‘To be my jailer?’

His brows drew together. ‘I don’t blame you for being suspicious but it was truly an offer of comfort.’

The outer door swung open and the hissing sound of the rain followed the priest into the room. Linnet touched her bruised throat. She was as good as a prisoner already if a guard was to be set on the door. Another woman’s company would make her fears less overwhelming; there would not be so much time for her to brood on them and magnify them out of proportion.

The priest was brushing rain from his robes and bending over the corpse. Giles demanded her attention. There were rituals to observe for the sake of his soul and his body had to be washed and prepared for its final resting.

‘I apologize,’ she said to Joscelin. ‘Your aunt will be most welcome if she will come.’

His eyes remained guarded but his mouth softened a little. He bowed to her, crossed his breast to the priest and left. She heard his footsteps clattering down the stairs, as Giles’s had done only yesterday and would never do again.

It was midmorning when Joscelin had the dream. He was riding through a forest of mature hazel and birch trees, dusty sunlight diffusing through the foliage, turning the world a luminous green-gold. He could hear birdsong, the drone of bees and the chock of a woodsman’s axe muted by distance.

A woman was riding beside him. Breaca, he thought at first, but when she turned to speak to him her eyes were not brown but a quiet blue-grey and filled with a world of sad experience. Behind them his troop escorted a coffin on which there was neither lid nor pall. Open to the air, Giles de Montsorrel stared up at the green lacework of branches with dry, dead eyes. Initially Joscelin thought that the corpse was wearing a hauberk but then he realized, his scalp crawling, that Giles was clad in a mesh of silver pennies. The coins flashed and slithered and Joscelin felt a scream gathering in his throat as the corpse slowly started to sit up. The linen jaw bandage slipped from its anchoring and Giles’s mouth laughed open.

The woman spoke anxiously to Joscelin. Struck dumb with horror, he couldn’t respond. The birds ceased to sing and the flash of sun on steel in the trees ahead caught the corner of his eye. Too late he realized he had ridden into an ambush. Even while the thought staggered through his brain, the attack was launched. His shield was still on its long strap at his back, his sword still in its scabbard, when the bright blade of a hand axe took him square in the chest. He screamed his denial and woke shivering and drenched in cold sweat. Disoriented, he stared at the smoke-blackened rafters and the curtain screening his pallet from the main room. The clatter and bustle of a busy domestic household rang in his ears together with the fading echo of his cry.

Sitting up, he pressed his face into his palms and shuddered. The dream had been horribly real, and the fading images still held their colours and emotions. A blinding pain thumped behind his eyes.

The curtain parted and Stephen entered the tiny alcove, bearing a horn cup of watered wine. ‘Justiciar de Luci is waiting to see you,’ he announced as he presented the drink.

Joscelin took a tentative swallow and his stomach churned. He stifled a retch.

‘Is something wrong, sir?’

Joscelin fumbled for his undergown and tunic. They were still creased and damp from last night’s rain. His body ached with bruises from his fight with Ralf and the whip welt on his face was throbbing. ‘I slept badly and I can do without my father and the justiciar this morning.’ He caught his breath with pain as he raised his arm to don his shirt. Stephen made haste to help him but, even so, by the time he had finished dressing, Joscelin was pale and sweating. He pressed his hands over his eyes for a moment.

‘Go and ask one of the maids for a willow bark potion before my skull splits in two,’ he said, swallowing hard.

The youth left at a run. Joscelin’s own gait was a slow shamble as he followed him into the hall. A hound scented the fear still lingering on his body and growled softly. He ignored the dog and the gossiping serving women who pretended to be busy while he passed and then returned to their chatter. Two priests and a clerk sat at a trestle, breaking their fast on bread and fat bacon. A scribe had set up his lectern on the dais and was writing steadily. Joscelin walked gingerly to the hearth, trying not to jolt his precarious stomach and even more precarious skull. Richard de Luci and his father were deep in conversation but, when they saw him approaching, they broke off and looked quickly at each other like a pair of conspirators.

‘You wished to speak to me, my lord?’ Joscelin said, hoping that de Luci was not going to procrastinate.

De Luci looked Joscelin up and down with concern. ‘It has been a rough night,’ he said.

Joscelin winced a reply and rubbed his aching forehead. He had not finished reporting to de Luci until after midnight, and by the time he had come off duty and arrived at his father’s house the matins bells had been ringing in the dawn.

‘Leicester’s claiming the blood-right to be the warden of Montsorrel’s heir,’ de Luci said. ‘He served me notice at first light and I told him that the Crown’s right was greater and that either myself or the king would appoint the right man to the post in our own good time.’

Joscelin struggled to concentrate. His wits had not gone wool-gathering - they were the wool itself: grey, fuzzy and tangled. De Luci was looking at him expectantly. What was he supposed to say? ‘What about the silver?’ he asked.

‘Ah, yes, the silver.’ Smile creases deepened at the corners of de Luci’s eyes. ‘Lord Leicester was not slow to raise the subject either, nor the fact that when his representative went to the Montsorrel house last night to make enquiries he was summarily seen off the premises by one of my men. “A rustic trouble-causing oaf ” you were described to me.’