Bond of Blood (51 page)

"Have you done, madam? Are you through with my manners, morals, and ancestry? Can we speak of the Earl of Chester now?"

"Chester, Chester. I will hold him till he rots. Do not tell me you will bring those men into council to lie for you. You have outmaneuvered yourself by sending them away to be safe. Even if you have lied again and they are indeed within recall, you cannot use them, for they will name Pembroke also. Moreover, to raise such a noise would be a great act against the king."

"I never said I intended to bring your killers into council, although they will not name Pembroke. They know only of Oxford, madam, and of you. The act is one of self-defence, which no oath binds a man against and, moreover, if those men speak in council they will not speak against the king who is, indeed, blameless. If your unwise actions should topple him from his throne, what fault is that of mine? Ay, madam, you look strangely now. In future it might be well to remember that it is not so easy to remove 'that devil of Gaunt' from your road."

Maud gasped at his effrontery and insolence. They were standing some distance from her ladies and gentlemen, and Radnor had kept his husky voice too low to carry. Still, Maud could not remember being so spoken to by any man except her husband since she had become queen.

"What I will do," Radnor continued calmly, "if I do not have my way, is to go to your husband with my tale."

"You would not dare!"

"You know me well. Can you say there is anything I would not dare? Moreover, what do I dare? I report a treachery against myself—all saw it happen—and against the king also. Your husband, madam, is too good a knight to appreciate efforts on his behalf made in such a disgusting way. Especially when those efforts have recoiled and are about to intensify his troubles. Nay, nay, I am but a good subject doing my duty. I could have brought the men into council to make trouble for my king, and so I will tell him. It is out of consideration for him that I withheld this knowledge for his private ear. Do you think he will disbelieve? Do you think he will credit that I set those men upon myself, or that Pembroke, my father-by-marriage, did? Does he know you so little?"

Radnor's face was a hard mask of revulsion and bitter determination. It was not against Maud alone that his feeling was directed, but the entire system and situation. His own behavior disgusted him as much as hers, for he recognized that she was driven by necessity as he was. Hereford's way was clean, at least, even if disastrous. This keeping of the word of an oath and disregarding the spirit would never cease to distress him.

"Give me Chester," he cried finally, "and it will be quits between us. I am sick with this planning and plotting."

Maud had met her match, and her terror of Stephen's anger far more than the fear of political repercussion had defeated her. "Lord Radnor," she replied quietly, a barely perceptible note of pleading in her voice, "I cannot. To allow him who has so openly plotted against the king, who has not even denied the plot, to go scot free …  Even you must acknowledge that to be impossible!"

This, then, was the beginning of the end. Radnor sighed. "If you please, madam, let us sit down." He covered his eyes with his hand. "I did not mean that you should allow Chester pardon without punishment. Indeed, that is as evil for my cause as for yours. Such easy pardon will make a rebel of every petty warrior in the realm. Hear what I propose."

In rapid outline he detailed the castles Chester would offer as forfeit and the truage he would be expected to pay. In return, however, Fitz Richard's lands were to be returned to the young man and both Chester and Fitz Richard were to be allowed to depart in peace.

Maud baulked at that. "Fitz Richard was a warranty for Chester. It is our right—and no man will say us nay—to keep his lands in our hand!"

"That is the price which must be paid, or I will have no peace in Wales. Madam, it cannot matter to you. What you planned in Wales is finished. Pembroke will not fall into your hands again. Hereford guards the north between Chester's lands and Gloucester's. There is no way now for you to put a knife to Gloucester's back."

"You say you desire peace and you tell me to release a man who, no sooner gone from here, will raise up an army and make war."

Lord Radnor shrugged and shook his head. "What can I do? What influence I have will be brought to bear for peace, and I can promise the same for my father. I will be warrant for Fitz Richard's behavior, but who can manage Chester? You should not have spited Lady Elizabeth; she can do more with him than any other. He is my godfather. I may not leave him to languish, even in the loose confinement of mandatory attendance at court."

"How can I know what you promise will be given? We have not Chester's word—for whatever value that has—that he agrees."

The pot calling the kettle black, thought Radnor. "I will also be warranty for the delivery of the castles. Those you may have before Chester leaves London. The truage I cannot hold myself responsible for. I will urge him to pay. Part may, no doubt, be had from Lady Elizabeth, but you know yourself that he must go to his lands to collect the remainder. What he does then is beyond my ordering, and I will not raise my hand against my godfather."

"It will take a little time," Maud finally replied sullenly. "I must talk Stephen round."

"If that is all we need to wait for, it will be done quickly enough. We are agreed on the price of Chester's freedom then?"

Maud looked up at him, startled, "There is more?"

"Ay, more. I have had news—needless to say I will not name my source for it—that Henry of Anjou is here." The brief anxiety faded from her eyes and was replaced by caution and curiosity. "I thought you knew and I see that I was right. Did your husband tell you what letters I wrung from him concerning the Angevin?"

After the faint flush of relief, Maud's sudden pallor made her sallow skin look greenish. "Letters?"

"Ay. Assuring him the succession as agreed. In
Stephen's own hand, madam, and dated."

"They are not sealed with the Great Seal." Maud had recovered swiftly and she answered with narrowed eyes.

"No." Lord Radnor's lips twitched. There was, after all, a certain amount of humor in the situation. He and Maud knew each other so well that the moves of the game might almost be called in advance. Briefly Cain regretted that he had never played chess with her. "That I could not quite manage. But something else I can and will. I will promise you that both the letters and Henry himself will go back to France without any major engagement of arms—for a price."

"Dirty usurer," she jeered. "You are rich enough, I hear, to buy the kingdom and you are content to grow filthy begging and stealing more. I would not put a copper mil into your hands that sweat with greed. Who do you think you are to ask for gold—Philip of Gloucester? You promise for a price what even he could not perform."

That touched him. Radnor's complexion darkened and his hands knotted together as he fought the impulse to strike her. How Maud would have loved that. Such a simple way to end all her troubles. No excuse could have saved him if he struck the queen, and she had a dozen witnesses present. Up until now she had despaired of making him angry, for she had already insulted him in every way she knew how. Possibly, she thought, with her own flash of humor, this hurt more because it was perfectly sincere and uncalculated; she had only said the first thing that came into her head.

Maud was a good judge of men, but she had miscalculated this time. Radnor's rage was in response to the slur cast upon Philip, his poor dying Philip. What she said about him was not true and was of no account. "I never promise what I cannot perform," he said when he had his voice under control. "The price is for Henry to pay off his French adherents in lieu of English land. I care nothing one way or another. If you do not pay, they will loot, and it will not be
my
vassals' keeps they will raid."

"Why not take it and let others believe that is its use, Philip of Gloucester did no less and we have continued to content him. It is an easier life than one of war, and leaves a man more time to lie abed."

Radnor's face went as white as it could go, and the scars stood out like two newly burnt brands. Maud sought desperately for something else to say. The last gibe about his uxoriousness, she thought, not realizing that he believed her to be sneering at Philip's recent behavior as if she did not credit the excuse of sickness, had hit him hard. One more remark about his wife and he would be completely out of control.

"I do not deny, Lord Radnor, that I have a score to even with you, and it gives me pleasure to tell you this. You doting husbands are all alike. She drips honey on your neck, and you can taste nothing but the sweetness. Well, it is venom she drips into my ears. You should hear what she says of you. You should see how she looks at William of Gloucester—and what she says of him."

Instantly, Cain saw what the queen had meant all along. He shut his eyes completely and took a breath so deep that the seams of his surcoat strained to open. Leah had been trying to make Maud believe her indifferent to Cain and Cain's watchfulness to be mere distrust. She understood that if Maud thought her valueless to her husband, it would be useless to abduct her. For a flushed triumphant second, Maud believed she had won, but what Radnor was fighting now was a laughter close to tears, not wrath. He had to drop his head into his hands to conceal his face, and a strangled sound worked its way out of his tortured gullet in spite of himself. He must not laugh; it would give all away—but why William?

Could Leah not have fixed on a more likely object? One more convulsive shudder and Lord Radnor lifted a face drained of all emotion.

"You finished my character earlier. If you are now done insulting my wife, we can discuss the price further."

"I am not helpless and undefended. You are a fool, also, to come here unsupported." The challenge was bravely flung, but Maud's eyes were hopeless.

Radnor smiled and shook his head, almost with sympathy. "You know I am no fool, madam. My father is returned and waits for me beyond the gate; my men wait in the hall below. They will rouse every Marcher lord in the whole city if I come not forth."

"What do you want?" Maud asked dully. There was nothing more she could do.

When the gates of the White Tower opened to release Lord Radnor, his father had but one word for him, "Done?”

“It is done."

"You sound ill content. Is it as we would have it?"

"Yes." The voice was drained, empty.

"Then I will ride home at once. We have left the lands too long to underlings. There is no need for more than one of us to be here to see that she fulfils her promises."

Gaunt should have left to get what sleep he could before starting his long ride. Instead he sat on his horse, staring at his son, who had not replied. At last Radnor nodded and touched his own mount gently with a spurred heel, turning its head automatically towards the house where Leah was. Surprisingly Gaunt's mount moved with his. Each was immersed in his own thoughts, and, although those thoughts were on similar subjects, the ride was silent, as their rides together usually were. They were nearly at the door when Radnor pulled his horse to a stop and spoke.

"Father—"

"Yes?"

"I hope when this is finished you have no more plans for me."

"Why?"

"I wish to take my wife to Painscastle and settle her there. I have some news that will please you. Leah is with child. There may soon be an heir to the lands of Gaunt."

So that was Cain's trouble. The earl had suspected it, but had hoped that his son would not so soon be wrenched with fear. The old man still hoped he was wrong, and strained his eyes to see Cain's face in the silver moonlight that made all so soft and deceptive.

"You do not sound as if the news gave you much pleasure." In a long pause there was no reply, and under the shadowing hood Radnor's face was a mystery of black hollows. "My son—" Gaunt stopped.

He was so sure he was right and wished so much to be wrong about what Cain was thinking. In any case, he would not add to the trouble by talking about it, not even to start the bitterness now so that it might be less bitter later. If he was old and soft, so it was. He could not be otherwise, not even to be wise, just now.

The younger man dismounted painfully, and Gaunt followed with more agility in spite of his years. "I have no plans for you, Cain. You well deserve a rest. Take your wife home by easy stages. I hope to settle all in Wales before you come. You need do nothing then but watch."

"Will you be there when I come?"

Was there fear in the question or desire? It did not matter; they would be better apart. "No, what need for us both to be at Painscastle? I will go to Chester and do what I may with him. I may even go as far north as Scotland to see King David. I have been thinking that it would be well to have young Henry knighted on this soil. To cajole Stephen so far will be impossible, so David is the only man with rank enough to do it." I am babbling like an idiot child, Gaunt thought, and as he saw Cain draw breath to speak, babbled on. "When a man grows old he grows restless again, as in youth. I have been too long at war in Wales alone. I would look on the rest of the world. Perhaps I will give all into your hands and join the crusade. To go on pilgrimage has been long in my mind."

Through all this Radnor stood like a stump, awkwardly, his right hip jutted out to relieve the pressure on his left foot. It was a position his father hated and had reproved him for often in the past, but now Gaunt said nothing.

"Women die in childbearing."

The words dropped into the silence that had fallen when Gaunt had run out of breath and senseless talk. Why he had said it, Cain did not know. To expose a raw hurt to his father seemed madness in the light of his past experience, but to whom else in the world could he speak?

"I know. On that rack your mother died." Gaunt only meant to say that he understood his son's fear, but he saw Cain wince and realized that his words had again been taken amiss. "My son—good God, do you look to me for comfort? What can I say to you?" So great was his desire to express his sympathy and so unknown to him, who had never expressed it before, was how to do it that his voice was unusually harsh. He grasped Cain's shoulder before his son could turn away. "She is young and strong. Many women bear successfully. In Jesus' name, do not dwell upon it. That way lies madness—I know—and worse than madness. My son, my son—"