Elizabeth Chadwick (43 page)

“I—”

“I won’t be dissuaded,” she added fiercely. He shook his head and laughed as he latched the belt at his waist. “Jesu, Maude, you are priceless! You’re still the little girl with a stolen ball in your hands, determined that you are going to play whatever the cost. You attacked me with your blade of a tongue before I had a chance to speak. I was going to say that if you can bear the journey and the damp and the mists, there is nothing I desire more than to have you by my side.”

“Oh,” she said, torn between anger at being patronized and chagrin that she had indeed leaped down his throat before he could make his meaning clear. Partly she was fighting her own fear in insisting so vehemently that she accompany him.

His lips twitched. “Perhaps I would rather be bedeviled out of my mind than bored out of my skull.” He pulled her into his arms. “Don’t scowl. Life is too short to sulk.”

“I’m not sulking,” Maude said, not quite truthfully. Sometimes the line between wanting to shower him in kisses and wanting to belabor him with her distaff was very blurred. “I’m just packing chests of cloaks in my mind.” Then she smiled. “Although if you are by, they won’t be necessary to keep me warm.” She kissed him, nipped him with her teeth to show that he should still be wary, and went to finish dressing.

Limerick, Ireland, Summer 1206

Maude and Fulke knelt side by side at Theobald’s tomb in Wotheney Abbey and prayed for the repose of his soul, although neither had any doubts that he was at peace. The quiet wilderness of the place, the soft chanting of the monks were lullabies to soothe the most troubled slumber.

The only regret, Maude thought, in the midst of her prayer, was that they had not brought their children to lay their small hands on his effigy and light their own candles in his honor, if not his memory. Theobald would have liked that, would have liked to know that she and Fulke had offspring.

Not knowing what he would find in Ireland, Fulke had insisted that the children remain in England where they were safe from harm. Besides, the journey across the Irish Sea was a trial for adults, let alone infants of four, three, and two. Clarice might have managed, but there was no point bringing her without the others. They were staying in the household of Ranulf of Chester, and while they might be missing their parents as much as their parents were missing them, they had the maternal cosseting of Clemence of Chester to compensate. Maude would not countenance sending her children to their grandfather. Le Vavasour might have mellowed since his marriage to Juliana and the birth of their son, but, remembering her own childhood, Maude would not trust him with her own offspring even though he was their grandsire.

She had not told Fulke yet, but her flux was more than two weeks late. She had suffered no queasiness, but her breasts were tender and she suspected that she was again with child.

Together they lit candles and left the chapel, escorted by a young monk, tall and handsome, with the powerful bones of a Viking rather than an aesthete. Maude felt that she ought to know him, but it was not until Fulke was helping her into her saddle and the monk looked up to bid them farewell that recognition dawned. It was the eyes that nudged her memory, almond-shaped and of a startling cornflower-blue.

“You entered the novitiate here just before Lord Walter died,” she said as she gathered the reins.

“Indeed I did, my lady.” He bowed and seemed pleased that she had remembered. “I had a vocation and my mother said that it was fitting that one of her sons should pray for the others.” His French bore a lilting Irish accent, soft as rain. “She remembers Lord Walter with affection. I know she would be pleased to receive your visit.”

Maude murmured a polite response and clicked her tongue to her mare.

“Your mother?” Fulke asked, looking intrigued.

The young monk nodded and smiled. “The Lady Oonagh O’Donnel. De Chaumont was the name of her second husband, my father. She’s a widow now. Her third husband died last autumn, God rest his soul.” He crossed himself. So did Fulke.

Maude rode on without waiting, her spine as straight as a lance. It was a few minutes later then Fulke came trotting up to join her, the look on his face one of keen interest and curiosity.

“I did not realize that you knew the Lady Oonagh.”

“I don’t know her,” Maude answered, tight-lipped. “I only met her the once when she came to bring her son to the monastery. Theobald died just after, so my mind was occupied with more important matters. Certainly I am not well enough acquainted to go visiting or even to want to go visiting.” She twitched her cloak into place like a bird smoothing ruffled feathers and eyed Fulke sharply. “You are not considering doing so?” In her mind’s eye she saw again the slanting blue eyes and heard the feline purr of the voice.

His gaze slipped from hers and focused somewhere in the region of his mount’s pricked ears. “She is widowed,” he said, “and her late husband’s lands at Docionell border ours at Glencavern. For reasons of policy if not compassion, I ought to go.”

“For reasons of policy, I see,” she repeated, nodding vigorously. “It has nothing to do with the lady herself then?”

“You’re not jealous, surely!” he teased.

“Not in the least.” She tossed her head. “I don’t want you to make a fool of yourself, that is all. I met her when she brought her son to Wotheney shortly before Theo died, and I saw what she was like. The troubadours have a word for such women:
Belles
dames
sans
merci
. Beautiful women without mercy.”

“Ah no, I’ve only met one such in my time.” He reached across the space between their mounts to grasp her hand.

She snatched it away. “You need not try and cozen me!”

“I wouldn’t dare,” he said wryly. “But I think that for ‘reasons of policy’ and to protect me from myself, you had best accompany me.”

“I would rather beat myself with nettles.” She narrowed her eyes. “I have been trying to remember what she said to Theo, but it was several years ago. Something about you being a fine young stag that she was tempted to go after and bring down. That she had always regretted letting you get away when you were a squire.”

“I’m older and wiser now.”

“Not as old and wise as Theo, and even he was hard pressed to hold her.”

“She will be older too.”

“And likely more desperate.”

Fulke made an exasperated sound and rode off in front for a while. Maude looked at his broad back, protected by a gambeson thickly padded with raw fleece. Did it matter? she wondered. Either she trusted him or she did not. Either he had the wit to see beneath the surface, or he was a dupe. Not once had she questioned his fidelity during their months apart. Why now? Because she had seen Oonagh O’Donnel and the glamour she exuded. Because the woman had spoken of Fulke with husky amusement and the lingering regret of a lioness that had declined to feed and was now hungry.

She kicked the mare’s flanks, urging her forward in a trot to join Fulke. “Go if you wish,” she said on a more placatory note, but with shadows in her eyes.

He looked at her. “I think I have to,” he said, “but not out of longing or lust. I outgrew those pangs years ago—except where you are concerned.”

She smiled briefly. She couldn’t call him a liar on that score, but she could call him a flatterer. “Then out of what?”

“It has to do with laying the past to rest. With standing before her as an equal, not some patronized squire.”

“But she will only patronize you as a grown man now. If you had seen how she treated Theo…”

He shrugged. “Even so, if I do not face the challenge, I will always wonder.”

Maude eyed him with exasperation. The penchant for facing challenges was one of the strongest elements in Fulke’s nature but not always to his advantage. “Just have a care,” she said.

“And you will not accompany me?”

Maude shook her head. “I will be cutting nettles,” she said.

***

“Does it never do anything but rain in this Godforsaken place?” Jean de Rampaigne grumbled, drawing his hood over his ears and grimacing at the low gray sky. On Hubert Walter’s death, he had left the Canterbury household and become one of Fulke’s permanent retainers.

“It’s what makes the grass green,” Fulke answered. “And I’d hardly call it Godforsaken, the number of monasteries and convents that have sprung up.”

“Under our Norman influence.” Jean guided his mount around a deep wheel rut in the muddy track.

Fulke grinned. He wondered if Oonagh would make any impression on him. The thought of her irritated like an itch he could not reach. He knew that Maude was against him paying her a visit, but it was the only way of alleviating the itch.

“So what are we going to do when we arrive? Sit and talk about the state of the weather?”

Fulke snorted. “I doubt it,” he said feeling slightly apprehensive. “She’s a recent widow—by misfortune rather than design this time. As her neighbor, I need to know her intentions—find out if she’s intending to remarry and, if so, whether it’s to someone likely to start a war with his neighbors.”

“Then you had better hide behind your shield while you’re asking her,” Jean said. “If she could arrange a ‘hunting accident’ for de Chaumont, she won’t balk at dealing with anyone else who stands in her way.”

“And I won’t balk at dealing with her.” Fulke glanced over his shoulder at the solid troop of men at his back, their mail silver-sleek in the rain. Although his voice was filled with confidence of authority, he could not prevent the twist of tension in his gut. Oonagh O’Donnel was unpredictable and ruthless.

They crossed the boundary between Docionell and Glencavern, the only evidence of this being a boundary stone, lichened over and covered with thinly grooved lines, coiling like a spider’s web. There were many such stones adorning the wild greenness of Limerick, some standing in circles like huddled old women, others lone sentinels, leaning as if blown by the wind.

As they drew nearer to Docionell, the lush smell of greenery and soft drizzle was overlaid by the more acrid scent of woodsmoke. The men became aware of a billowing cloud that did not belong to the blanket-gray sky. Fulke and Jean exchanged glances.

“Seems as if we’re not the first visitors to pay our condolences,” Fulke said and slid his shield from its long carrying strap to the shorter hand grips, bringing it around onto his left arm.

“Could just be a barn fire,” Jean said, but not as if he believed it.

“It could.” The Irish, like the Welsh, were always conducting fierce clan wars and smoke from one burning settlement or another was almost as endemic as the rain. When a lord died, mayhem often followed, usually created by the lord’s own relatives, all keen to grab their share.

Fulke and his troop approached cautiously. They were of a sufficiently large number to defend themselves, but there was no point in taking risks.

The stockade gate and the posts on either side were ablaze and the attackers were on the verge of breaking through. Barelegged, they brandished spears and hurled insults and missiles at the defenders who were desperately trying to douse the flames with cauldrons and buckets of water.

Fulke drew rein on the crest of a ridge, overlooking the struggle which appeared to be one-sided in favor of the attackers. He gnawed on his thumb knuckle. “Either ride away or become embroiled,” he said to Jean. “Do you have a coin to toss?”

“When you go to visit a lady, it’s unchivalrous to turn away your respects unpaid,” Jean said. “I’ve been waiting twenty years to see Oonagh O’Donnel again.”

“Then we had best go and join the mêlée,” Fulke replied and spurred his mount down the slope toward the fighting.

As Fulke and his troop came on toward the battle, shields forward on their left arms, horses lined up stirrup to stirrup, a herald galloped out to meet them, a spear brandished in his right fist. Ten yards from their line, he yanked his Hibernian pony to a halt. “I greet you in the name of Padraig O’Donnel, rightful lord of Docionell,” he declared in mangled Norman French. “What is your business?” His under-tunic was of Irish plaid but he wore a good Norman helm and short mail shirt.

“And I greet you in the name of William Marshal, overlord of Glencavern,” Fulke responded. “What is your business that you should be assaulting this place with fire and sword? Where are Lady Oonagh O’Donnel and her sons?”

The scout’s gaze flickered along the line of horsemen. “This land belongs to Lord Padraig,” he reiterated.

“He can prove his right to it? He has sworn an oath of homage for it?”

“This is none of your business. I’m warning you to leave while you still can.”

Fulke’s smile was humorless. “No, I think I’ll stay. Besides”—running his hand along his belt, right to left, he drew his sword and contemplated the blade—”it’s a while since I used this. I would hate to think of it rusting in the scabbard. Tell that to Lord Padraig.”

The scout abruptly whirled his pony and lashed the reins down on its neck. He galloped up to a mail-clad knight who was directing operations with a mace, and gesticulated toward Fulke’s troop.

“Now the fat is in the fire,” Jean murmured, drawing his sword.

Fulke narrowed his eyes. At the Irish knight’s left shoulder stood a man kitted out in the mail and surcoat of a professional mercenary. He towered head and shoulders above everyone else. A bushy black beard jutted on his chin, and a fearsome Dane ax rested casually over one shoulder. Fulke had seen the destruction of which such weapons were capable. A single stroke could shear a man’s arm or split him from skull to sternum like a bacon pig. “Either they must fight or yield. They’ve had enough time to make up their minds. If they’re going to fight, I do not want to give them space to organize.” He signaled the men to prepare to charge.

Jean cast off his cloak and leveled his lance, his banner fluttering from the socket beneath the spear. Down the line, harness jingled as men adjusted and waited the final cry. Below them, pinned on the flat ground between the burning stockade and the ridge, the men of Padraig O’Donnel dithered and were rallied by the bellow of their leader to stand firm on the stockade slope.

“FitzWarin!”
Fulke roared, and spurred Blaze. Through his body, he felt the powerful motion of the horse and the shudder of the ground as twenty destriers surged forward. He fixed his gaze on Blackbeard. Bring him down and Padraig O’Donnel was naked. Uttering a yell, he spurred in to engage.

Blackbeard whirled the ax, a weapon that Fulke’s great-great-grandfather had faced on the field of Hastings. Light glittered on the blade, and its motion made a song of the wind. The action was so slow that Fulke could see the fragments of upward air it sliced, and the smooth effort of the arms that wielded it, and yet so fast that the terrifying delivery was inevitable.

Down it came, decapitating the accurate thrust of his lance head, shearing, slicing, on into muscle, sinew, and bone. Fulke heard himself roar a denial. He tore on the reins and Blaze responded through a fountain of lifeblood, galloping on, forelegs still reaching for the ground ahead, back legs creasing, buckling.

Fulke flung himself from the saddle, hit the ground, and felt his ribs crack. Someone stabbed down at him and the sharp silver edge of a spear pierced his flank. There was the whump of a sharpened sword blade and his attacker toppled, ripping the spear out as he fell.