Elizabeth Chadwick (23 page)

Theobald gave her a quizzical look. “Mayhap but if I were making wagers, my money would be on him, not his pursuers.” He bared his teeth. “I know in part how Fulke must feel, and I wish him good hunting.”

She said nothing. The stakes were too high to make wagers.

Once in their tent, Theobald gave the order to begin packing. They would leave at first light and head down to Bristol to take ship for Ireland. Maude made herself busy, working harder than her maid, knowing that if she sat and did nothing, she would go mad. She was aware of Theobald watching her with curiosity. She felt his gaze, the unspoken questions, and turned away in shame.

An hour later, Hubert Walter arrived with Jean de Rampaigne in tow.

“Well,” he said without preamble as he looked around the tent, by now bare of all save the essential sleeping pallets and blankets. “There is more than one cat among the pigeons tonight.”

The years since the crusade had not been kind to Hubert. Whereas Theobald’s bones had sharpened with age, Hubert’s had melted into the flesh of good living. His corpulence was concealed to some extent beneath his gorgeously bejeweled and embroidered cope, but nothing could hide the folds of his numerous chins.

Theobald gave him a narrow look. “Meaning?”

“Meaning that the King’s body is in as much discomfort as his mind. An attendant found him doubled up in the walkway between the hall and the private chambers, swearing that he would ‘kill the bitch’ for what she had done. By the time he was escorted back to the hall, he was claiming that he had walked into a pillar, but of course, no one believes him. There are wagers and speculation aplenty, and Maude’s name is on too many lips.” His glance flickered to his sister by marriage.

“Let them speculate,” Theobald snapped. “I have been given leave to retire to Ireland, and I see no reason to stay.”

“You will not renounce your fealty?” It was the royal servant speaking rather than the brother—the Chancellor and Archbishop who had to know men’s hearts and minds.

“Would I tell you even if it was my intention?” Theobald sat down on a campstool that had yet to be dismantled and pushed one hand through his iron-gray curls. “Jesu, Hubert, if blood is thicker than water, then power is thicker than blood.”

If the remark stung Hubert, he did not show it. “It is my duty to know your frame of mind,” he said evenly.

“If you do not know it by now, then you are not my brother.”

Hubert sighed, the sound wheezing in his chest. “I have to do more than know; I have to hear your loyalty declared lest John should ask me.”

“And rub salt deep into an open cut?” Theobald’s upper lip curled back. “John insults my wife, insults my honor, and then demands my oath of fealty! God’s sweet wounds, you are asking too much!”

“It is a price you have to afford if you don’t want to be arraigned for treason.”

“Treason!” Theobald almost choked on the word. He shot to his feet, paced the two steps to the rear of the tent where Maude stood, and paused, breathing hard, summoning control. At last, turning round, he glared at his brother. “Very well,” he said with bitter contempt. “I swear my allegiance to John as King of England and lord of Normandy and Ireland, saving only my honor and the honor of my wife.” He slipped his arm around Maude’s shoulder. “Do not push me for more, Hubert, you will be wasting your time and, my brother or not, I will drive you from my presence on the edge of my blade.”

“No, what you have said will suffice,” Hubert replied, thinking that in the interests of diplomacy he could omit the last part.

As if reading his mind, Theobald gave his brother a glacial look. “If he touches Maude again, I swear I will cut off his balls and stuff them in his mouth. You can tell him that too.”

“I doubt that necessity. You will both be out of sight and mind in Ireland, and just now John has other prey to hunt.”

“Meaning Fulke?” An expression of grim pleasure crossed Theobald’s face. “I know where my sympathies lie.”

“And so they should,” Hubert said, his own expression somber. “John’s ordered a full pursuit and nothing will satisfy him save Fulke’s hacked corpse thrown at his feet for him to trample.”

Maude gasped. She clapped her hand across her mouth to stifle the sound and gazed in horror at Hubert. “You have to warn him!” Her eyes flew to Jean de Rampaigne who had been standing unobtrusively near the tent flap throughout the exchanges.

“He’s a rebel, an outlaw, and he has just robbed the King of England of more than a hundred marks’ worth of merchandise. Not only that but recently he attacked and sought to kill Morys FitzRoger, the lawful vassal of Whittington.”

“Morys FitzRoger is no more a lawful vassal of Whittington than John’s an honorable king!” Maude spat. “And since John has robbed Fulke of his inheritance and denied him the justice of the common law, he has no recourse to complaint!”

Hubert blinked rapidly, obviously surprised at her vehemence. “Whatever the argument, it does not alter the fact that the King is sending troops to hunt him down,” he said.

Maude shuddered. She felt Theobald’s hand tighten on her shoulder. “There must be something you can do,” she whispered.

“My hands are tied,” Hubert said, but at the same time spread them open, palm up, in a contradictory gesture. “I know that you have much to do if you are to leave with the morrow’s dawn, Theo. Perhaps you would like to borrow your former squire for a time. I have no pressing need of him at the moment, and he will likely be of great use to you.”

A look passed between the brothers, acknowledging the words that went unspoken. Maude realized that Hubert had come here with the intention of helping Fulke without being seen to do so.

“Thank you; indeed he will.” Theobald’s tone thawed. “If you want a drink there’s wine in that flagon.”

Hubert shook his head. “I cannot stay. Other than my official business, I came to wish you a good voyage and to ask you to pray for me in a less worldly place than this.”

Theobald went to him and the brothers embraced, at first in a constrained manner, and then with the bear hug reminiscent of their young manhood when neither had much more to their dignity than the family name.

Hubert embraced Maude too and she was engulfed in the mingled scents of sweat and incense. When she drew away and looked into his eyes, she saw warmth, intelligence, and a terrifying shrewdness that overrode both.

Hubert departed into the wet evening, and there was a brief silence, punctuated by the drip of water on the canvas roof and the muted sound of rain on grass.

Theobald handed the wine flagon to Jean. “Collect what you need for your journey and go,” he said. “I trust you to find Fulke before John’s men do.” Reaching in his pouch, he drew out a handful of silver pennies and gave them to the knight.

“You can count on me, Lord Walter, my lady. I have no more desire to see him captured than you.” Jean took a full swallow of wine and then flashed his smile. “Mayhap for my pains Fulke will give me a bolt of cloth.” Setting the flagon down, he pouched the coins, drew up the hood of his cloak, and hastened out into the dusk.

Maude sat down on the campstool, her stomach churning so badly that she thought she might be sick again.

She had used their supply of uisge beatha on Fulke’s wound, but Theobald had a small, personal flask of his own, and now he brought it to her and bade her drink. “Jean will reach him in time,” he said. “And Fulke has more skill and cunning than any man the King will send against him.”

“I know. But you did not see the arrow I dug out of his leg. Even the skilled and cunning are not immortal.” Maude gratefully took the flask and swallowed deeply. As usual, the brew robbed her of her voice and set her gullet on fire. It also brought tears to her eyes. She dashed them away on the back of her hand.

“Strange the ways of love,” Theobald mused, taking the wine flagon and leaning against the tent pole. “We strew the paths we tread with thorns, do we not?”

It would have been easier to keep her back to him: the coward’s way out. Maude forced herself to turn on the stool and look him in the eyes. “My love is for you,” she said steadily. “I would never betray you or dishonor your name.”

“I doubt neither your love, nor your honor.” Theobald took a long swallow straight from the flagon without bothering to find his drinking horn. “But I have seen the care that you and Fulke take in each other’s company—the cold courtesy, the avoidance of touch. At first I thought that it was because you harbored a grudge over that incident with the whore, but I grew to realize that it was not in your nature to allow a petty quarrel to fester. Not once have I seen a lover’s look pass between you, and that is because you will not look each other in the eye.”

Maude felt the heat of tears scald her lids. There was no point in denial. Theobald’s perception was sword sharp. Her voice wavered. “I do not deny that he attracts me, but I have fought it as hard as I know how. I do not want to feel sick at the thought of his danger; I do not want to be on edge when I know he is by—craning for a look at him and frightened that others will notice, or that he will turn and our eyes will meet. Sometimes I imagine—” She broke off, biting her lip, and looked at her husband. There was compassion in his eyes, and sadness. If there was jealousy, it was well hidden. She swallowed. “Your love is like a warm cloak around me, Theo. His would be like riding an untamed horse. I need…I need your shelter.” She went into his arms and they folded around her, as she had known they would.

Theobald kissed the top of her head and felt a tightness in his throat. To be told that she compared his love to a sheltering blanket was a tender, touching compliment but no consolation when matched against riding an untamed horse—by implication a stallion. Against his better nature, he felt hurt and possessive.

“We do not have to stay until morning,” he said. “We can leave now if you desire.”

“Please,” she said and buried her face in the dry, sagey scent of his tunic.

A pale thread of smoke dallied from the fire toward a leaf canopy of lamellar gold and the breeze sent flickers of changing light through the branches like fingers rifling a jewel box.

“Fine day,” remarked Jean de Rampaigne, joining Fulke on a fallen log that had been draped with a saddle blanket. “Pity there won’t be many more of them this side of winter.”

Fulke rubbed his thigh. “We have friends enough to give us shelter or look the other way.” His mouth curved in a grim smile. “And we have the means to pay for our keep.” He glanced around the camp they had made the previous night after the raid on John’s merchant train. Several laden pack ponies attested to their success. He had distributed most of the bolts of cloth among his knights but had retained for himself a cloak of heavy blue wool with a beaver lining. As Jean said, the fine weather would soon end and while red and gold silk was a wonderful luxury, it would not keep him warm on a winter night.

Jean nodded. “But a thousand pounds’ worth of silver for your hide might sway the odds in the King’s favor.”

“The odds were already in his favor. This raid will not alter that balance, but it will show him that an underdog can still have sharp teeth.” Continuing to rub his thigh, Fulke rose and walked to the fire. Men were breaking their fast on unleavened barley cakes smeared with bacon fat and the horses were champing on rations of oats.

They couldn’t stay here. Even without Jean’s arrival at first light, he had known that they would be hunted for this. John had been made a laughingstock before the entire court and nothing less than death would punish the perpetrators. He stroked the crooked bridge of his nose with the tip of his index finger. They were still playing chess and neither of them had learned the lessons of the past. Fulke had expected John to be fair and John had expected to win.

“So where do we go now?” Jean asked.

Fulke swung round. “We?”

Jean shrugged. “The Archbishop likes to have a foot in each camp.”

“As long as he doesn’t get caught by the bollocks straddling both,” Fulke said acidly, “but you are more than welcome to stay. There is no one I would rather have at my side.” He waved aside Jean’s flippant gesture of acknowledgment. “Next, we go to Higford to repay my aunt for her generosity. After that, we divide our time between Morys FitzRoger and John. I’m going to burn them so badly that they’ll be glad to make peace on my terms.”

Jean helped himself to a barley cake from a pile that Richard FitzWarin was just sliding off the griddle. Throwing it from hand to hand like a tickled trout, blowing on the crusted dark surface, he said with eyes firmly on the morsel, “John attempted Maude Walter yester evening in between the roast and the subtleties.”

Fulke’s hand closed over his sword hilt. “What?”

“Oh, it was all kept quiet and besides, the arrival of your merchants put all other happenings in the shade. Apparently he granted Theobald leave to go to Ireland and suggested that Lady Maude might be better ‘served’ by remaining behind and following the court.” With perfect dramatic timing, Jean bit into the barley cake then fanned his hand in front of his mouth. “Hot,” he mumbled.

Fulke stared at him. A few merchants, a hundred marks’ worth of damage. He had found pleasure in the deed, but now it seemed not nearly enough. “And?” His voice was dangerously hoarse.

“And Lady Maude ‘served’ him,” Jean said, drawing it out like the skilled storyteller he was while he observed the effect on his audience. “But not as he expected, only as he deserved.” Jean polished off the rest of the barley cake and dusted his hands. “She kicked him in the bollocks so hard that he was almost bent double when he received those merchants you robbed. Then she and Lord Theobald made preparations to leave the court. They’ll be halfway to Bristol by now, heading to take ship for Ireland.”

Fulke let out the breath he had been holding.

“Don’t worry; she’s safe.” Jean looked shrewdly at Fulke. “Her main concern was for you and the danger you were courting.”

“The danger
I
was courting!” Fulke spluttered. “That is rich beyond swallowing!” Then he sobered. What other choices could either of them have made except unacceptable ones?

“I never thought when I teased you at her wedding that she would indeed become your Melusine,” Jean said.

“Even if I am hers, she is not mine,” Fulke said wryly. “And likely safer because of it. I think that—” He stopped speaking as a hunting horn sounded in the distance to the south, and then another one, a little to the east of the first. Swearing, he shouted the command to saddle up.

“They’ll be riding from Marlborough to hunt you,” Jean said as he hastened to his own mount and shook out his mail shirt from its leather bag behind his saddle. “John will have alerted all the villages too. With a reward of a thousand pounds of silver on your head, you’re worth the chase.”

With the speed born of long practice, Fulke and Richard had the fire kicked out and the griddle dismantled in moments, the hot iron plate cooled with a splash of water from a costrel. By the time Jean had struggled into his hauberk, the packhorse was loaded and Fulke was astride Blaze. “Well then,” he said with a wolfish grin. “Let’s lead them a merry dance.”

***

“A merry dance, eh?” Jean gasped as he wiped his sword on his cloak and briefly removed his helm to blot his brow on his sleeve. “I tell you, the steps are too fast for my liking. There must be more folk hunting you in this forest than there are trees.”

An attempt to break out on the eastern side had failed. A contingent of knights had been waiting for them and although Fulke might have won through, it was by no means certain. He had turned around, headed back into the woods, and been met by a smaller hunting party. A difficult skirmish had brought them out free, but not unscathed. Blood was streaming from Ivo’s brow where the edge of a spear had slashed up the side of his helm, narrowly missing his eye, and several other members of the company had been wounded.

“I cannot help that!” Fulke panted in return. “If we are to win, then the steps have to grow faster yet!” He reined his sweating horse about. “East!” he said. “They won’t be heavily guarding the south road because they won’t expect us to head back toward Marlborough!”

“And when we get there?”

“There’s Savernake Forest to give us succor, and Stanley Abbey.” Fulke wheeled Blaze and slapped the reins on the stallion’s neck.

They followed the deer trails, leaping streams, thudding along moist paths, autumn leaves flickering like golden feathers. The sound of hunting horns came close at times, at others diminished as they played a game of catch as catch can with their pursuers.

As they approached Stanley abbey, the porter saw them coming and ran to close the heavy gates of the lodge.

“Open in the name of Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury!” Jean bellowed, thudding his sword hilt on the iron-studded wood.

The only response was the sound of a key grating in the huge lock.

Fulke turned in the saddle and gestured to Alain. “You’re the tallest,” he said. “Make haste and have a word with that porter.”

Alain maneuvered his mount up to the wall, then, while Richard held the bridle, he stood on the destrier’s back, secured hand and footholds in the gritty stone, and hauled himself over. There was a quavery shout, the sounds of a scuffle and once again the key grated in the lock.

“Enter, brethren,” declared Alain, grinning at his own joke as he swung the gate open and ushered them within. The porter sat dazed on the ground, his head in his hands and a great graze on his forearm where Alain had wrestled him down.

He glared balefully at the dismounting knights. “You will be declared excommunicate for this!”

“Let God judge as he finds,” Fulke snapped. He gestured Baldwin de Hodnet to help Ivo into the lodge. Philip, the best at tending wounds, followed.

Fulke turned back to the monk. “Give me your robe.”

“I’ll give you nothing but God’s curse!”

Fulke’s patience, already strung gossamer thin, snapped. Striding to the porter, he seized a handful of the dark gray habit and hauled him to his feet. With William’s help and the victim’s considerable hindrance, Fulke finally succeeded in divesting the porter of his gown. Shivering in his white alb, the man cursed them in the language of a street trader rather than a holy monk until William and Richard bore him squawking inside the lodge and parked him under guard in the corner. Removing his helm, Fulke donned the monk’s voluminous garment and secured it at his waist with a rope girdle, then drew up the hood of the habit so that his features were cowled in shadow.

“What in God’s name are you doing?” demanded Jean who had watched the entire incident with a mingling of amusement and disapproval.

“Trying on your clothes for size.”

“What?”

“Disguising my appearance to change the perceptions of others.” Seizing the porter’s quarterstaff, Fulke went to the gates. “Keep your ears open and be vigilant lest I need help, but do not come out unless I shout.”

Jean eyed him dubiously. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“What I must,” Fulke said shortly. He crossed himself and went out onto the highway, leaning on the quarterstaff for support as if he were injured.

He did not have long to wait before a group of pursuing knights came hurtling toward the abbey in a cloud of dust. Their leader halted his lathered mount and, scarlet with the exertion of the chase, leaned down to speak to Fulke. “Tell me, brother, have any armed knights passed this way?”

“Indeed they have, and in a mighty flurry.” Fulke pointed down the road with the quarterstaff. “Almost rode me down in their haste, the villains. I pray you bring them to justice, but I fear you will have to belabor your horses.”

“Their horses will be tired too,” the knight replied and Fulke saw the glint of battle in his eyes, the hope of glory at being the one to bring the FitzWarin brothers to account. “My thanks, brother, for your help.” He clapped spurs to his mount’s flanks and rode on with his troop, the autumn sun dazzling on mail and weapons.

Fulke inhaled and his nostrils were filled with the rank smell of the habit’s customary occupant. The porter had a penchant for garlic. Having bought them a small amount of time, he turned to go back inside the abbey, but as he laid his hand to the door, more riders arrived, obviously stragglers from the party that had just galloped off. Their leader was Girard de Malfee, whom Fulke knew well from his squirehood. The cowl preserved Fulke’s anonymity, but he was still vulnerable to being discovered as de Malfee quickly proved. Leveling his spear, the knight poked it through Fulke’s habit, where it grated on the telltale resistance of mail shirt and gambeson. “Well, well,” grinned Girard. “Here’s a well-stuffed monk. I wonder what will happen if I prick him to make him leak.” He leaned on the spear haft.

“You’ll regret it more than I.” Raising his voice in a cry for aid, Fulke lashed the quarterstaff round in an arc to deflect the spear, and gave de Malfee a tremendous buffet beneath his helm.

As de Malfee reeled, the Abbey gates swung open. Fulke’s own men poured out, brandishing weapons, and, after a brief, bloody skirmish, took the stragglers prisoner.

“No killing,” Fulke warned as he put down the hood of his tunic. “Not on holy ground.”

”We could always take them outside to finish them,” William said as he tied a victim’s hand with vicious thoroughness.

Fulke shook his head. “That would be obeying only the law, not its spirit. Girard, if you’ve any sense left in your skull, greet King John for me and thank him for the morning’s entertainment.”

De Malfee glared at him, one eye framed by rapidly swelling flesh. “It is not a game, FitzWarin,” he snarled.

“It is, and I’m winning,” Fulke retorted. “If John doesn’t want to play anymore, all he has to do is yield. You can tell him that I was always better at chess.”

“Tell him yourself!”

Fulke gently rubbed the bump on his nose. “I will, when he’s prepared to listen. For the moment I think it safer for you to be my messenger.”

Trussed up like bedraggled fowl, de Malfee and his companions were dumped in the porter’s lodge where the porter too had been tied to prevent him from raising the alarm. Fulke instructed his men to take the best of their victims’ mounts and weapons.

“Are you fit to ride?” Fulke asked Ivo as they prepared to leave. Philip had stuffed a makeshift linen bandage between Ivo’s helm and cheek, concealing the wound on the left side from view.

“Since the alternative is staying here to be tended by the monks, I’ll manage to be fit,” Ivo answered with a mirthless grin. “I doubt that the Abbot is going to be much impressed by the gift you’re leaving in his lodge.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the monks, who were pouring out of the chapel.

“That cannot be helped,” Fulke said, “but perhaps we can offer him some compensation. I’ll make sure he receives a fine bolt of silk damask for his altar… After all, it is cloth fit for a king.”