Elizabeth Chadwick - Shields of Pride

It was sealed. The port culis was down and the massive oak doors had been closed behind the party and the bar drawn across. The grey reared to a halt. Too weak to hold on any longer, Ironheart was pitched from the saddle and hit the ground like a child’s doll made of rags and straw.

Linnet reined her mare aside and Joscelin was finally able to turn Whitesocks and gallop down to the gateway. The grey milled round the bailey, head high, eyes rolling, avoiding the efforts of the groom to capture it. Joscelin flung down from the saddle and knelt at his father’s side. Ironheart still breathed, his willpower holding him yet to life and consciousness.

‘Tell the guards to open the gates,’ he forced out, then stopped to cough. ‘Tell them I command it.’

The two menservants approached with the litter, Ralf pacing beside them.

Joscelin glanced at the four men on gate duty. They returned his stare with a blankness that penetrated his gut. He had never seen them before and, from the way their hands hovered over their weapons, he did not believe that they would respond to any command but Ralf’s.

‘The fever has overset his wits.’ Ralf shook his head sadly and glanced over his shoulder. ‘Mama, you had best take him to your chamber and care for him there. Obviously he has been neglected to the point of death.’

Ironheart made a choking sound. Joscelin jerked to his feet and faced Ralf’s gleaming smile. ‘How long have you been planning this?’

‘Planning what?’ Ralf gave a laconic shrug. ‘I’m a dutiful son. Ever since I came home in the autumn, I haven’t set a foot wrong. The gates are closed for a good reason.’

Ironheart groaned as he was lifted on to the rope stretcher and Agnes de Rocher smiled at the sound.

Joscelin stared at Ralf. ‘What reason?’

Ralf shrugged. ‘My father is too weak and sick to go anywhere and in such dangerous times it behoves me to keep those gates shut. The Scots are over the border again, did you know? And the Flemish will be sailing any day for Norfolk.’

‘The gates were wide open when we arrived,’ Joscelin said icily.

‘Indeed and how better to defend myself than by capturing my enemies? I have the proof of what you have done to my poor father. In the name of King Henry the Younger, I arrest you for treason and attempted parricide. ’

Joscelin began to shake. ‘You stinking, conniving, treacherous nithing!’ he spat and leaped, bearing Ralf to the bailey floor. He succeeded in making of his brother’s nose a scarlet squelch before the gate guards managed to drag him off. Joscelin’s soldiers were prevented from joining the affray by more of Ralf ’s hired men. The ordinary castle guards who had always owed their loyalty to Ironheart looked on and did nothing. Ralf might be overstepping his authority, and Joscelin might be Ironheart’s favourite son, but their lord was dying and in the future they would look to Ralf to pay their wages.

Ralf regained his feet. Blood dribbled from his nose, masking his mouth and chin and dripping ruinously onto the green silk. Joscelin struggled in the rough embrace of the gate guards. ‘You have no authority!’ he spat.

‘I have all the authority I need,’ Ralf retorted nasally. ‘And to prove it, at noon tomorrow, I am going to hang you from the battlements. Then I’m going to have you flayed and your hide nailed to Arnsby’s gates.’ He flicked a brusque gesture at the guards. ‘Take him away and put him in the oubliette. Mama, I leave you to make arrangements for my father and Lady de Montsorrel.’ He dabbed his bloody nose with his sleeve.

Agnes stared at Ralf as if he had descended from the heavens in a cloud of light. Slowly she folded him a deep curtsey. Open-mouthed, Ivo gaped at her, then at his brother. Beneath his frozen hand, Martin’s shoulder quivered.

‘I won’t let you hang, Joscelin, I won’t!’ the child burst out. ‘He hasn’t done anything, you just want him out of the way because he’s better than you are!’ He flung himself at Ralf, screaming and pummelling.

‘Hold your tongue, brat!’ Ralf sent Martin reeling with a clout to the side of his head. ‘It’s not your place to speak of matters you know nothing about. Ivo, get him out of my sight!’

Looking dazed, Ivo took Martin by the scruff and dragged him away, still kicking and shrieking. The guards stripped Joscelin of sword, dagger and purse. Then they manhandled him towards the keep, jabbing him roughly with their spear butts to make him move.

Linnet screamed his name and rode her mare at the guards but she was intercepted, the bridle was grasped, and she was pulled down off the horse. Agnes de Rocher seized her arm in a vicious grip. ‘You don’t want to go where he’s going, my dear,’ she hissed. ‘The oubliette’s no place for a lady of gentle breeding.’ Her voice oozed venom. ‘Come with me to the bower and learn from me how a sick man should truly be nursed.’ Her gaze gloated upon Ironheart.

Linnet struggled to wrench herself free but Agnes held fast. Hanged and then flayed. Burning nausea rose in Linnet’s throat. Straining away from Agnes, she was sick. Agnes did not for one second relent of her fierce grip, but her brown eyes roved quickly over Linnet’s figure and then narrowed.

‘You’re not really going to hang him tomorrow, are you?’ Ivo looked nervously at Ralf and ignored the steaming, skewered small birds on the trencher in front of him.

Shrugging, Ralf took a loaf from the dish that the squire had just placed in front of him. He sat in his father’s chair on the high dais, a white linen cloth covering the trestle. The best tableware had been set before him: silver-gilt goblets and expensive golden wine glowing through the incised rock crystal of a Byzantine flagon. He had exchanged his bloodstained tunic for one chequered in two shades of blue. The effect was not as opulent as the green but it still flaunted his rank and displayed to advantage his strong bone structure and thick, red-blond hair.

‘What else should I do with him?’ Ralf broke the bread and bit into the fragrant, soft interior.

‘He’s our brother, too.’

Ralf swallowed. His gaze narrowed. ‘Surely you’re not squeamish?’

Ivo grimaced. ‘I don’t like Joscelin,’ he said, taking one of the loaves, ‘but I don’t hate him like you do. It doesn’t matter who his mother was, he’s still of our blood.’

Ralf continued to eat. ‘I have never noticed yours being thicker than water before,’ he said.

‘You have never taken it this far before.’ Ivo crumbled the bread between his fingers and then blinked at the mess on his wooden trencher. ‘Papa heard everything you said in the bailey. I saw his face.’

Ralf’s expression darkened. He threw down his own bread and lifted a knife from the table to drag one of the small birds off the spit. Amber fat dripped on to the cloth. ‘I intended him to hear every word,’ he said. ‘Let him have his first taste of hell even before he gets there.’

Ivo drank his wine and wondered how long it would take to get drunk.

‘Of course,’ Ralf added softly, his voice still nasal from the dried blood clogging his nostrils, ‘if you don’t approve of what I do, you can always take to the tourney road and hold Joscelin’s memory sacred by selling your own sword - although God knows who would want to buy it! I warn you, if you’re not prepared to work in my interests then get out now.’

Ivo bit his lip. ‘And if I am prepared?’

‘You have always coveted our father’s manor house near Melton. You can have that and the hunting lodge and I’ll find you a rich young wife to go with it. But only for your obedience. I don’t want you running here and there in your usual weasel fashion, carrying tales and blowing hot and cold.’

Taking his cup, Ivo left the table and went to stand before the deep fire pit around which the eating trestles were grouped. Red heat simmered over him. The manor house had only been built six years ago and boasted a proper stone fireplace and a private room where the lord could withdraw to his pleasures, whatever they happened to be. The windows in the solar were fitted with real glass and the ceiling had a French design of gold knots upon a rich green background. Their father did not care for luxury but recognized that sometimes important guests had to be entertained and it was useful to have somewhere opulent to do so. A manor house was far less expensive to furbish than a castle.

Ivo swung round to find Ralf still watching him. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You have my obedience.’ And at the back of his mind he saw the image of a man swinging from the castle battlements in the wind.

Ralf smiled. A moist white sliver of meat dangled between his forefinger and thumb. ‘And you will do me homage for what I give you before witnesses. Tomorrow, in the bailey.’

Suddenly the image of the hanging man came sharply into focus and Ivo saw with foreboding that it was his own body that dangled on the end of Ralf’s rope, suffused and choking.

‘Go and get the scribe,’ Ralf said, wiping his fingers on a napkin. ‘I’ve got messages to send.’

In Maude’s chamber a single candle burned at the dying man’s bedside. The priest finished his ministrations and started to put away the vial of holy oil and Communion wafers in a small cedarwood pyx.

Linnet watched the proceedings from a low stool in the corner where she sat with Ella and Martin. Agnes lurked near the priest and Linnet fancied that she was like a demon, awaiting her moment to dart in and snatch Ironheart’s soul. This was her dark domain. The rooms belonging to Ironheart had been seized by Ralf to underline his authority, and so Agnes had insisted on nursing him here.