Gisborne: Book of Pawns (30 page)

I edged along the riverbank, pushing through sedge. One more bole of an enormous beech to skirt around and I was…

‘Lady Ysabel of Moncrieff!’

An iron grip fastened on my arm as someone growled and a blade was held to my throat.

No, no, no!

‘Are you running away? What
will
Baron De Courcey think?’

I hated that voice. Hated it beyond belief. Hate was here, by my side. It was my friend; it would support me. I struggled and the point of the dagger nicked my throat.

‘Enough.’

Both my arms were grasped and twisted behind my back.

‘Cedric, give me rope!’

Rope was passed and my wrists were tied and I was turned toward my captor.

Robert Halsham grinned at me.

‘Hello,’ he said, his voice falsely friendly. ‘I’ll wager you didn’t expect to meet me here.’

I deigned not to reply.

‘Oh come now, Ysabel. You can’t play the high and mighty lady now. You’re trussed and ready to be dispatched to the Baron. Time to step down off your high horse.’

Still I refused to be drawn.

‘I have to say the Baron will like your dutiful silence. He hates opinionated women.’

How did you find me? How did you know?

He walked around me, still grinning and I recalled once again that painted image of Beelzebub.

‘Do you wonder how I found you? How I knew where you were?’

I closed my eyes and turned away but he grabbed me and twitched me back.

‘You’ll like this, Ysabel. I ran into Gisborne. I gave him a last chance, blood being thicker than water. I said to him that if he told me where you were, I would allow him to ride away on a mount provided by me, with money provided by me to a position provided by me. If he did not then I would make sure the Baron knew of his perfidy and his attempted murder upon myself. And that dear Cuz, says I, will be the end of your onward and upward journey, end of everything.’

The bastard grinned at me before continuing.

‘He debated for the time it takes to lengthen a stirrup leather. As he did exactly that, he told me about you and then left for London with a bag full of money tucked in his belt and a spot of duty as one of the King’s best.’

Gisborne, you did not. Please God, no.

My heart cracked but I would not give Halsham the pleasure of seeing me so hurt. I drew myself up and sneered at him.

‘Gisborne is cut from the same cloth as you, Halsham. What you say is no surprise. It is why I have been running. I knew he would betray me. It was a given and I knew I must get away.’

‘You say.’ Halsham’s sarcasm stripped bark off trees. ‘Horses, Cedric,’ he called.

A horse was led up and I was bundled into the saddle, feet thrust through stirrups. As I had been thrust up and over, the hood covering my knotted hair fell off and the horse’s hooves shifted and ground it into the muddy riverbank. Halsham grabbed the reins, passing them to Cedric who was not a Moncrieff man that I remembered and for a mere moment I wondered what my father’s men thought of this new situation or if they had cleverly vanished into the backdrop of village life, subtly withdrawing their services from men that they surely could never respect. Suddenly the thought that there might be a hidden group of dissenters who might help me gave me strength.

‘Lead her,’ Halsham ordered. ‘I shall follow behind.’

Cedric clicked his tongue and jerked the reins and the horse tossed his head, following irritably.

I gripped with my knees, my balance wrong with hands tied behind, an ignominious position that began to fuel something nasty. Fury began to flow like spring sap. At Halsham. At God.

How can You allow this? Whatever have I done to deserve such things as You have delivered?

Brother John had always spoken of the magnitude of God’s love, of how we, His sheep, were cared for and protected by the majesty of such affection. I swore.
If
God loved me
, He’
d never have allowed my parents to die or Moncrieff to be lost. Such ‘m
ajesty’ would never have allowed a lamb to fall foul
of wolves like Halsham o
r
De Courcey
.

‘You’re the very picture of a woman scorned, Lady Ysabel,’ Halsham mocked. ‘Do you fret for the loss of Gisborne?’

Gisborne. The traitor

‘You are wrong,’ I straightened my shoulders until they were as straight as a pike. ‘I do not pine over the loss of men like Gisborne, just as I would not fret over your loss should it happen. There are some things simply not worth
fretting
over. My freedom and property are entirely different.’

‘
Your freedom is in De Courcey’s hands and I for one would not fuss myself if he uses those hands to induce a change in your manner.’

Halsham’s voice betrayed such arrogance, it was all I could do not to rant. But his next comment stepped on the burning wick of my temper.

‘As to your property, as you say, that is another thing entirely.’

I tried to turn but could only glimpse his horse’s nose on my hindquarter.

‘What say you, Halsham? Your comment is tiresomely oblique.’

He laughed.

‘By God De Courcey’s in for some sport with you.’ He kicked his horse up by my side. ‘I mean simply that you need not be concerned about your position.’

I had learned in a short space of time to hide any expression from this loathsome boil and replied in a barely interested manner. ‘You say. Really,’ shifting my body away from him as we rode.

‘Indeed, Lady Ysabel. I
do
say. And whilst I would that I could tell you more, I must not. The Baron and your father will make it clear to you…’

My father! Halsham doesn’t know! He doesn’t yet know my father is dead
.

He also seemed unaware I had been within the castle. Not unless Gisborne had held forth and it seemed he had not.

As if it mattered.

We had regained the road to Moncrieff by now and its ramparts loomed ahead. The sky had darkened still further and dampness began to eat into my clothes. Mizzle drifted down like a veil, blurring the outlines of my home, of the place where lay my parents. I cursed Fate and Guy of Gisborne. I cursed God.

By now, I should be galloping on horseback through the woods and westward, ever further from the home that wasn’t mine anymore. We clattered along the stony way, the hooves beating a dirge, until the sound changed and we moved onto the wooden bridge so lately passed beneath. Moncrieff’s pale stone appeared grey and uncompromising and its foursquare shape with rounded corner towers, so dearly loved in the past, now threatened another sort of life.

We walked under the raised portcullis, men gathering as we halted. All were in the hated black surcoats of the Free Lancers and I could see no familiar face, not one, my heart sinking as I gazed at the rough cut henchmen before me.

Cedric dismounted and held my horse. Halsham threw his legs over his horse’s wither and slid down, approaching me with a knife in his hands, reaching up to cut the bonds that had begun to chafe.

‘Is the Baron returned?’ he asked as he took me by the arm and helped me dismount.

‘No sir.’ Some lackey who held a saddled horse, spoke up. ‘None are back yet.’

‘God’s blood, Ysabel. He’s going to be livid when he finds he has ridden to Saint Eadgyth’s for nothing.’

He held my arm tightly as if he thought I should make a break for the bridge and freedom.

‘Aidan, to horse man, and get onto the road to Saint Eadgyth’s and inform the Baron that Lady Ysabel has joined us at Moncrieff.’

At that, a low burble filled the courtyard as men eyed me curiously. Some nudged each other and lewd comment bandied about.

‘Enough!’ yelled Halsham. ‘Show the lady the respect she deserves as chatelaine of the castle in her departed mother’s place. Aidan, get you gone! Did you not hear the order? The rest of you to your posts. And lower the portcullis until the Baron returns.’

He pulled me after him and all I could hear were the hoof beats of the departing mount, the grinding of the gear that lowered the portcullis and men shifting to their duties. No children running to and fro, no banter and laughter, no poultry and dogs, no women, nothing of Moncrieff life as I remembered. This was now a stronghold, a place where armies met and melded and I shook my head as we climbed from the bailey to Moncrieff’s Great Hall on the first floor.

Each step took me back one year and then another. By the time we had passed through what my father called the Triumphal Arch, I was revisiting all the memories of a childhood. The arch was my father’s folly – carved and fluted as if it were an entrance to a great Norman cathedral. He added it to the Hall on marrying the Lady Alaïs because he believed bringing her home to Moncrieff was tantamount to a triumph. But it was a pretension that arch, like so much of my father’s life.

Even after so long away, I found the Hall glowing with light. My mother was a creature of the sun, and unaccustomed to the subtle light of England and the fens in particular, she had the walls of all the chambers within the castle whitewashed. She hated the rushes strewn across other halls and would require the staff to wash the timbered surfaces daily. She burned dried herbs in the giant hearth, insisting that aromatic wood be used to ameliorate the smell of bodies and food. She banned dogs from the Hall and expected a degree of manners and behavior at her table. In all she gave Moncrieff an air of sophistication and gentility that it may never have had otherwise.

Sadly that is where her legacy now ended … with the whitewashed walls. The floors reeked of rancid food and waste and no one had cleaned them for some time. The tables were littered with the remains of God knows how many previous meals and the hearth was filled with a detritus of cold embers, no fire having been laid. Mercifully, the walls seemed clean, the giant shutters hanging wide, the opaque glass my father had insisted be fitted to each and every casement in the Hall shining dully.

Beyond the Hall was a passage not unlike a cloister, vaulted by simple stone arches and leading to two chambers; one was the lord’s room, the Master Chamber and the other, the Lady Chamber. Halsham led me to my mother’s door and I prayed that Cecilia, no doubt still immured there, would not give away my secrets.

‘There is a friend of your late mother’s in residence, the Lady Cecilia Fineux of Upton. She stayed on after your mother died to help your father.’

‘But not enough to prevent your garrison from soiling Moncrieff’s Hall, obviously.’ Tart rhetoric was bound to find its way out sooner or later. ‘Or is it that the Baron will not let her maintain my mother’s high standards. Then again, perhaps the Baron and his cohorts are unsophisticated and would not know the difference between a dog’s kennel and a clean Hall.’

Halsham flushed red.

‘Be careful, Lady Ysabel. You tread on thin ice.’

He ordered the armed man at the door to turn the key and I was pushed inside, the door locking behind me.

Cecilia sat at the window, an embroidery frame on her lap and she turned as I stumbled into the room. That the door was shut was a mercy because her face collapsed and she whispered ‘No!’

She ran to gather me into her arms and hold me tight. I wondered if I would cry but in fact another sensation began to climb from my toes. I could feel it hardening blood in my veins, choking emotion, almost strangling life. I became an ice maiden in those few short moments in Cecilia’s arms. Not because of her – not at all. If not for her, I would have had no chance. She kept a tiny corner of the ice-maid’s heart warm – just a miniscule patch of life that would sustain me when there was nothing else.

She rocked me back and forth and hummed a beautiful melody that rose and fell with her movement. Finally I held her away and moved to look out the window into the bailey. It was indeed home to a garrison. Men passed before my sight, all in livery, all busy, leading horses, carrying saddlery and armour, carting water and fodder. A small group lined up and faced an archery butt, shooting with long bows that they handled like the kings’ archers they were.

As I watched them, I recalled Harry’s murder, the arrows shrieking through the air to pierce his body. I turned around.

‘The man is wily.’

‘De Courcey?’

‘No. Halsham. De Courcey I do not know. But Halsham is a born traitor. He will sell half his soul to the Devil and half to God and then bankrupt them both.’

‘Strong words, my dear, and I confess you might be right.’ She moved to the fire and kicked at a smouldering log. ‘But tell me, I was resting in the knowledge that you were safe and free. How came you to be caught and where is Guy?’

‘Huh,’ an empty laughed echoed from my corner. ‘Halsham’s cousin, the Gisborne, sold me out. For a bag of money and a position of note in London.’

Her veined hand flew to her chest, rings clinking against each other.

‘I do
not
believe you.’

‘It is true. Halsham took immense pleasure in expanding on the detail and as you know the Devil is in
that
. Halsham found me west of the hermit’s hut and no one but Gisborne knew I was there. Not even you.’