Elizabeth Chadwick - Shields of Pride

Hulda was frequently sought out by the castle soldiers because, not only was she willing to lie with them for a pittance, she had the added attraction of being barren. No man was going to plant his seed and then find a woman whining at his tunic hem, demanding financial support for her growing belly. This being the case, the lady Agnes turned a blind eye to Hulda’s copulatory industriousness and only groused if it interfered with her work in the kitchens.

‘I heard Cook say your father’s gone into Nottingham to find you a bride,’ she fished as she secured her braid with a leather cord.

Ralf said nothing and stretched. Tufts of red-gold hair sprouted in his armpits.

‘Is it true?’ Hulda pursued. ‘Are you really going to take a wife?’

Her eyes were avid and made him smile and bite the inside of his mouth. To lie with the lord’s son was a source of power in itself but to have snippets of information straight from his own lips was even more useful.

‘When the time comes,’ he said with a shrug and picked his shirt off the straw. ‘Here’s a penny for you to spend next time the new packman comes calling.’

She took the coin willingly enough, but he saw the sulky droop of her lower lip. His own mouth tightened. The slut need not think he was going to pay her with information.

‘Go on, back to the kitchens; you’ve been away from them long enough!’ He gave her rump a stinging slap.

She squealed and, rubbing her buttock, said reproachfully, ‘You was the one who took me from my duties and kept me here so long.’

Ralf laughed. ‘If you’d wanted a short ride, you should have let Ivo mount you!’

‘P’rhaps I will.’ She set her foot upon the top rung of the ladder. There was a loud commotion in the stable below, and after briefly looking down, she tossed her head at Ralf. ‘I’ll ask him now, shall I?’

In the stable, a hard-ridden horse was blowing loudly as the groom unsaddled it. Hulda descended to the bottom step and stood aside, hands behind her back, eyes coyly weighing up Ivo who had just dismounted.

‘Where’s Ralf ?’ he snapped at her. She rolled her eyes towards the loft hatch. Ivo brushed her aside and shouted up. ‘Ralf, in Jesu’s name, come down. There’s news!’

Alerted by Ivo’s flushed face and his breathing, which was louder than that of his hard-ridden courser, Ralf came to the trap and stood fastening his braies. ‘Oh yes?’

Ivo peered up at him, chestnut hair sweat-dark on his brow. ‘I met one of our messengers on the road. He’ll be here soon, but his horse was tiring and mine was still fresh. It’s Papa, Ralf - he’s been wounded in a fight and they’re bringing him home.’

Ralf ’s complexion flooded with colour and his brown eyes turned to liquid gold. ‘Who is “they”?’ he demanded. ‘Move out of the way, let me come down.’

‘Joscelin and that wife of his.’ Ivo was almost leaping up and down with excitement. ‘They stopped off at Rushcliffe on their way to leave the brat and his nurse, so the messenger says. Joscelin’s wife’s insisted on attending Papa all the way to Arnsby because he’s in such a bad state. What’s more, they’re on their way here from the whore’s chapel. Papa wanted to be taken there. He’s dying, Ralf.’

Ralf descended the ladder and strode from the stables towards the keep. Elation surged through him. Ivo, shorter in the leg, had to run to keep up. ‘Ferrers attacked Nottingham. Apparently our houses were sacked but Papa escaped with the women into the cellars of the house next door.’

‘How was he wounded, then?’

‘In a sword fight defending them - a deep cut to the left shoulder.’

Ralf grunted. If it was not all that he had hoped for, then it was still excellent news. Joscelin was bringing the old man home to die. They would ride through Arnsby’s gates and never leave again. He glanced sharply at his scurrying brother. ‘You didn’t ride back along the road to greet them yourself, then?’

‘No, I came straight to tell you.’

Ralf nodded with satisfaction. As a younger son, Ivo’s inheritance was slim and likely to stay so unless he married well. He was dependent on the goodwill of the head of the household and obviously he had decided which way the wind was blowing.

‘Go and give Mama the tidings, will you?’ Ralf said. ‘She will need to prepare the bedchamber if our father is as bad as you say.’ And strew it with wormwood, gall and deadly nightshade, he thought. Maude was absent on one of her frequent visits to friends in convents and not expected home until the end of the week. His mother was always worse without Maude’s presence to lend an absorbent ear.

Ivo glowered. ‘What are you going to be doing?’ he asked in a disgruntled voice.

Ralf parted his lips in a narrow, white grin. ‘Preparing a welcoming committee, what else?’

‘Blast you, woman, leave me alone, I’m all right, I tell you!’ Ironheart snapped at Linnet.

‘I haven’t said a word!’ she protested.

‘It’s the way you keep looking at me. God’s arse, I could ride before I was out of napkins. I’ve lived in the saddle all my life, and if I die in one I’ll be a damned sight more happy than lying on a litter like an old woman!’

Linnet pressed her lips together and somehow kept silent. Ironheart looked dreadful. His eyes were sunken and their dangerous glitter was as much fever as rage. She had managed to get him to swallow a cup of willow-bark tisane when they were at Morwenna’s chapel, but he had refused to the point of apoplexy to be borne in a litter and had forced his will beyond his broken, dying body in order to mount his grey stallion at the block by the chapel door. As she had watched him wrestle with the horse, a lump had ached in her throat and she had had to fight hard to suppress tearful words at his stupidity. Joscelin had said nothing, just held the horse steady while his father dragged his shaking body into the saddle.

Linnet glanced at her husband now. He was riding on his father’s other side, affecting indifference but close enough to grab him if he fell. She might have thought Joscelin cold had she not witnessed his anguish in the privacy of their own chamber. ‘He hates sentiment and fuss,’ he had said, staring bleakly out of the narrow lance of window into Rushcliffe’s bailey. ‘He’s dying. Nothing can change that. I won’t break his pride.’

And for the sake of that pride, William de Rocher approached the keep his father had built to protect the lands that the de Rochers had seized at the time of the great Conquest. Like the first William de Rocher, he came astride a war-horse, a polished sword at his hip, his gaze glittering and hungry. But his ancestor had had thirty more years of life before him to build his stronghold, marry a thegn’s daughter and beget the next generation. Ironheart’s own time was measured in hours.

Scaffolding stood against Arnsby’s walls, although on a different section from last year, and the same builders, masons and painters were busy about the task of maintenance. The castle gates stood open and the road was a sunlit white ribbon disappearing into the bailey.

The grey stallion, scenting familiarity, plunged and strained at the bit and Ironheart almost lost control of him, for only one arm had any strength left in it to pull back and that was pared of flesh and fever-weakened.

Quickly Joscelin leaned over and grabbed the bridle. ‘Whoa, steady,’ he said. The stallion’s ears flickered and the skin twitched upon its sweating hide, but its pace slackened.

‘Let go, I can manage,’ Ironheart said in a hoarse, death-rattle voice. His face was grey apart from two scarlet flashes of fever upon each cheekbone.

‘Papa—’

‘Let go, I tell you!’

Joscelin released the bridle and, setting his jaw, looked away. Linnet’s heart ached for both men. She saw the glimmer of unshed tears in Joscelin’s eyes and the rapid movement of his throat. It was almost more than she could bear and she had to turn her own head.

In the bailey, the messenger’s arrival had ensured they were expected and there were people to greet them. Two serving men stood to attention beside a stretcher fashioned of latticed rope. Lady Agnes was present, attired in her best red gown and silk wimple. At her side, Martin shifted from foot to foot, his hair damp and his face freshly scrubbed. Ivo, a frown on his face, had one hand on the child’s shoulder, the other on his sword hilt, as he watched the company approach. But it was Ralf who stepped forward to take his father’s bridle; Ralf resplendent in a tunic of grass-green silk with gold braid trimmings. Ironheart’s spare sword belt - the one he never wore because he said it looked as if it ought to belong to a court whore - was buckled around Ralf’s lean hips.

Breath bubbling, Ironheart stared down at his heir. ‘Why are you trapped out like a marchpane fancy?’ he wheezed.

‘To honour your homecoming, sire,’ Ralf responded, his brown eyes reflecting golden glints from his costume. ‘To accord you the respect that is your due.’

‘You call this respect?’ Spittle appeared on the old man’s lips and his shoulders trembled with more than just the thud of his fever-driven heart. He stared round the silent group of his family and met his wife’s bitter, triumphant eyes. ‘When I am dead, then you can dance upon my grave,’ he ground out, ‘but by God, you’ll not mock me while there’s still breath in my body!’ He wheeled the grey around and dug in his spurs. The horse neighed and gave a startled leap forward before breaking into a gallop.

‘Papa!’ Joscelin tried to turn Whitesocks but his way was blocked by other mounts and he could only watch helplessly as the grey bolted towards the gateway.