Brien tiredly pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘He’s a perennial rebel. If there’s a brew of trouble, you’ll find Hugh Bigod taking a turn at stirring it. I’ve got parchments in my baggage for you to read - and you, too, my lord de Rocher.’ His glance went to Ironheart, who was sitting on a coffer, condescending with bad grace but a copious thirst to drink Linnet’s mulled wine. ‘Hugh de Bohun, the constable, is mustering an army to prevent Leicester from striking across the Midlands to join his allies. You are commanded to respond as soon as you can.’

Joscelin sipped the hot wine and watched Linnet and a maid warming towels at the hearth and laying out clean garments for him to wear. Linnet stopped in the act of unfolding a shirt and stared his way, a look of dismay on her face.

‘The horses are in no fit shape,’ Ironheart said tersely. ‘We’ve pushed them up hill and down dale these past three weeks. What do you want, blood out of a stone?’

‘If we don’t stop them now, it will be worse later.’ Brien’s voice was laden with weariness. ‘I need not remind you, my lord, that Arnsby and Rushcliffe will be prime targets for Leicester to attempt should he gain a solid footing in the region.’

Ironheart gulped down the wine and stalked across to the hearth to replenish his cup. Robert skipped nervously out of his way and ran to the side of the bathtub. Joscelin gently tousled the boy’s thistledown hair. He could not remember the anarchy of King Stephen’s reign, since he had only been a small boy himself when it had ended. He had, however, heard enough from his father and seen the lasting effect of its ravages to have a healthy fear of the like ever happening again.

‘Give me a night and a day to get married and I’ll put the troops on the road,’ Joscelin sighed to Brien. ‘As my father says, the horses need to be rested but I daresay I can commandeer some fresh mounts round and about.’

Brien looked from Joscelin to Linnet and spread his hands in a gesture of apology. ‘I know it is a lot to ask but if we can break Leicester now then I do believe we have a chance of peace.’

When Brien had gone, Joscelin looked at his father. ‘If you want to stay behind, I’ll take your men,’ he suggested.

‘I’m not in my dotage yet!’ Ironheart said indignantly. ‘All right, I would rather not go chasing across the country but Ralf and Ivo are with Leicester and it is past time they weren’t. I have given them free rein to no avail. Now let them feel the weight of my displeasure.’

Joscelin bit his tongue and attended to his ablutions, knowing that his words would only be wasted on his father’s current mood. To Ralf and Ivo, the weight of Ironheart’s displeasure would probably seem little different to the way he usually treated them.

Drying himself, Joscelin stepped from the tub and donned the new clothes that Linnet had laid out - a shirt of softened linen, an undertunic also of linen in a mustard colour and a tunic of dark-green wool. All were new, and while there had been no time for Linnet to do any embroidery they were embellished with braid and far finer than anything he had owned before.

‘Fine feathers,’ Ironheart said sourly.

‘Very fine,’ Joscelin smiled at Linnet.

With an impatient sound, Ironheart turned away and, shrugging off his cloak, began unlatching his belt. ‘There’s no point in wasting this bathwater, it’s still hot enough to boil an egg. Lay me out some fresh towels, will you?’

Beside him, Joscelin felt Linnet stiffen. Her eyes narrowed. Oblivious, Ironheart continued to tug off his clothes and toss them on the floor. In a quiet, cold voice, she told her maid to see to the towels and find fresh clothes for Ironheart to wear. Then, on the pretext of checking that the dinner arrangements were in hand, she excused herself.

Ironheart scowled after her. ‘She’s a wayward wench,’ he said.

Joscelin eyed his father with no small degree of irritation. ‘I think she had had enough of you,’ he said. ‘To have played bath maid, as duty insists, would have been too much. She might have drowned you. I know I certainly would.’

‘Where’s Mama gone?’ Robert sidled nervously around Ironheart.

Joscelin picked him up. ‘To talk to the cook. Do you want to come to the stables and see what I’ve brought you all the way from the north?’

Robert nodded vigorously.

Ironheart shook his head and, naked, went to the hearth to pour another cup of hot wine before stepping into the bath.


It had been October when Linnet had married Giles: fine, clear weather, scented with the pungent mulch from the harvest of cider apples and the trees all russet and golden in the beauty of their dying leaves. She had worn a chaplet woven with ears of grain as a fertility charm representing the ploughing of the virgin soil and the scattering of seed in hope of abundant harvest, and had felt dead inside.

It was October again: the cider harvest under way and the grain stacked in the barns. The weather this time was grey and damp, her bridal chaplet was a simple band of silver-woven braid and feelings were flowing through her, some of them with the same kind of discomfort that came to a cramped limb when unfolded.

On the high table, which was adorned with Rushcliffe’s rescued silver plate, Linnet sipped from the handsome, engraved marriage cup. She had toasted her first union in its depths as now she was toasting this new one to Joscelin. Henry, resplendent in a new tunic of green fustian, leaned between herself and Joscelin to refill the loving cup from the flagon in his hand. When he drew back and moved on down the table, she was faced by the bright hunger in Joscelin’s eyes. His look was like a hot handprint on her bare skin.

She swallowed, feeling afraid. Giles had been drunk and fumbling on their wedding night, full of terse instructions and curses. Open your legs, damn you. Wider, higher. Don’t just lie there like a cabbage. Stop screaming, it doesn’t hurt.

Joscelin placed his hand over hers and with the other lifted the refilled loving cup to drink from the place where she had set her own lips. It doesn’t always hurt, she told herself. There is pleasure in sin.

She became aware that Conan was watching them with benign amusement. The mercenary raised his cup in toast and murmured something sidelong to Brien FitzRenard. The justiciar’s man laughed and looked teasingly at bride and groom. Linnet wanted to snatch her hand from beneath Joscelin’s but knew that it would only intensify the ribbing. It was, after all, their wedding night and Conan was doing his best to preserve the traditions. Now and then, Ironheart would raise his head from the stupor of wine fumes to mutter about duty.

‘Use her well in bed,’ he slurred, eyes focusing independently of each other. ‘Girl children’re what you want.’ His head nodded as if too heavy for his neck. ‘When they marry you can choose your sons. Won’t be lum—lumbered with idiots.’

Joscelin cast an exasperated glance in his father’s direction. ‘God, how much longer before the drink poles him silent?’ he muttered to Linnet.

Linnet grimaced as she watched her father-in-law’s behaviour sinking further into boorishness with the diminishing level of wine in his cup. She laid her hand urgently along Joscelin’s sleeve. ‘I know that we are indebted to your father for the restocking of the keep,’ she said quietly, ‘but duty or not, I know I won’t be able to strip myself naked before him when it comes to the bedding ceremony. ’

He shook his head. ‘There is no need for us to stand unclothed before witnesses.’ He set his hand over hers. ‘You have seen me naked before and have been able to judge that you are not getting damaged goods, and I would have to be mad to repudiate you because of some unseen physical flaw. Besides,’ he added with a rueful glance at Conan, ‘do you think I relish the thought of being stripped and drunkenly commented upon? A man has more to conceal than a woman. Stiff or limp, I’ll be cause for all manner of bawdy jests.’

Linnet felt a weak surge of relief and gave him a heartfelt thank you. She bit her lip. ‘When I married Giles, the bedding ceremony was as if I was being shut in a cage with a wild animal and all the guests were grinning onlookers.’

‘You have nothing to fear from me.’

‘Yes, I know.’ She crumbled a sweet honey cake set on the platter beside her trencher. ‘It is not you I fear.’

He frowned in thought for a moment, then leaned closer to speak softly.

‘Look, there’s only one more course to be served and we’ve eaten ourselves stupid anyway. Make the excuse that you’re going to check that Robert has settled down and go to our chamber. I’ll sit here and make idle conversation for a while to disarm their suspicions, then I’ll visit the latrine. By the time they realize what has happened, we’ll have the door bolted in their faces.’

She nodded with alacrity and rose to her feet as the final parade of food began arriving from the kitchens - sweet frumenties and tarts, pressed cheeses, small pasties and bowls of fresh green herbs. She was aware of the salacious glances following her, of men imagining how she would look unclothed, her hair loose. She heard the bawdy remarks shouted to Joscelin and his good-natured rejoinders. Her face flamed and her heart began to thump. Glancing over her shoulder as she reached the tower entrance, she saw that Joscelin was unconcernedly helping himself to a slice of nutmeg tart and bandying words with Conan, lulling him into a false sense of security. Gratefully, Linnet started up the concealing twist of the dimly lit stairs.


Joscelin dropped the bar across the door. ‘They might rattle at the latch,’ he said, ‘but I doubt they’ll go to the trouble of fetching an axe to see tradition upheld.’