Gisborne: Book of Pawns (40 page)

A
n inner circle of
very different men surrounds the King.
Master Gisborne is one
;
although he comes and goes
…
’

M
y cheeks flush
ed as I realized he was no longer in Sicilyand I was glad I sat by the fire so that Cecilia needn’t employ her dry wit.

‘
However he is n
o longer Master,’
I continued reading Ulric’s words aloud.
‘He is
knighted
a
nd has had estates gifted,
a favourite
you see, and the B
ar
on chafes to see it is so. The B
aron however has been ordered to ready
his men for a departure
. He is to
take his men as an advance cohort
to the
Middle Sea and t
hey sh
all billet in a location that must remain undisclosed. I can inform
you
of nothing more except that the K
ing plans the crusade for
July and of course we are now in January.

The Baron returns
to Moncrieff
to see yourself and
to issue instructions for the estate
for the next few months
.
Keep you safe, my lady and beware.
I wish you
…
and so on, signed
Ulric of Camden.
’ I looked up. ‘He has dated it. A week ago, Ceci. The Baron must be so very close … argh!’

I dropped the parchment and grabbed at my stomach as a wave of pain clutched it and squeezed. At the same time, warmth ran down my legs and I glanced floor-ward to see a trickle emerge under my gown and soak the edges of the letter. Another pain as I reached to throw the document in the fire. I held to the stone surrounds.

‘Cecilia, the child! Gwen, get your mother!’

It seemed that a whirlwind of activity occurred but I withdrew into a small space defined by the scope of my pain. I walked, I cried, I screamed and swore. I sweated and eventually allowed myself to be stripped to the chemise and laid on the bed.

‘The plan, Cecilia. We have no plan.’

I grabbed her hand, my voice husky with exertion.

‘Hush, just save your breath.’

But her expression was grim.

‘Madame,’ Gwen’s mother, Brigid, spoke to Cecilia as I writhed. She wiped my face with a damp cloth and took my hand.

‘Listen to me. I can see the head right now and it’s covered in black hair which aint goin’ ter please the Baron too much.’

I groaned.

‘Milady, you listen. I’ve a sister in Wales and as I’m on me own, I was thinkin’ I would as like to live with her as here. I’d take Gwen too if you’d allow, as I think she’s unsafe when the Baron’s here. I remember yer face, milady, beggin’ yer pardon. Shush, you jus breathe. Nice an’ easy. There. Now rest. Next one’ll be a big un.’

‘Well for God’s sake, Brigid,’ Cecilia wrung out another cloth and passed it to the villager. ‘What’s your idea? Lady Ysabel’s life is forfeit if we have no plan.’

‘I’m sayin’ I take the babe to Wales as soon as it is born. I can suckle it with goat’s milk as it’s too dangerous to have a wet-nurse and you jus tell the Baron the babe died.’

She looked at Cecilia and for a moment I held my breath, storing my energies for the last purge.

‘Gwen, get Brother John.’

Cecilia’s voice took on such a tone that I knew she saw this as the only way the child could live.

‘Put it around that there is a sickly babe like to die and that the Lady Ysabel is weak and it’s in God’s hands as to whether she or the babe survives or neither. You, Brigid, deliver this infant and then you will leave undercover of night with Gwen and the child. I don’t know how you will get to Wales but it is the only plan and better this child lives than dies.’

My breathing began to build to a roaring crescendo and I pushed with every bit of strength left. There was a slithering sensation between my legs but I just lay in a pool of exhaustion, letting it drag me to an oblivion I craved.

‘Ysabel,’ my cheek was slapped. ‘Hold your child! He’s a fine boy.’

Brigid lay something over me and I opened my eyes to see a waxy face and scrunched eyes and little fists crunched tight. My hand crept to his back and he arched under my touch and then his fist opened to the tiniest star and lay upon my flesh. He snuffled and sniffed and at one stage gave a tiny yawn which ended in slight cry, but in essence it was as if he knew the need for secrecy.

He was indeed his father’s son.

‘William,’ I croaked, lifting my head to kiss him. ‘His name is William.’

Cecilia took him away to a bowl and washed him and wrapped him in a cloth of fine wool as the afterbirth slithered out. Brigid cleaned me and wadded some cloths to soak up the blood and Cecilia, the infant in one arm, passed me a warm, spiced wine.

Brother John hussled in with plain swaddling in his arms and gave me a kiss.

‘Well, Cecilia. And what skullduggery do we pursue now? Lord I hope I am forgiven for all this.’

‘Rubbish, you silly man,’ Cecilia thrust William into his arms. ‘You dote on the subterfuge.
Your
God will forgive
you
, of course he will. De Courcey’s might not. Bless him and name him and intercede with God for him because he must leave immediately.’

He tickled the babe under the chin. ‘And I suppose I am burying a phantom babe on the morrow?’

‘What a clever priest you are.’

Brother John laughed softly and I felt the warmth of relief; my son, named and blessed, to be delivered beyond De Courcey’s wrath.

All will be well.

I slept through his naming, the Latin words sonorous and soft and fading in and out of my hearing. And then he was wrapped like a dead child.

‘We go, Ysabel,’ the priest whispered to me. ‘Our visiting merchant is an old friend and heads toward the Welsh border. He will take Gwen, Brigid and William as far as he can. Rest easy now.’

I heard the door click and even then the fact that I had lost my child didn’t register. I just imagined the little rescue-party as I dozed – Brother John carrying the ‘stillborn’ babe with a measured tread, Gwen and Brigid following with the piles of bloody laundry, all of them knowing they would meet in Saint Agatha’s later.

The next day I woke with an ache in my belly.

Cecilia sat next to me and looked up from her spindle when I stirred.

‘You have slept long, my love.’

‘Will…’ I went to ask.

‘They are gone. Leagues hence by now. Peter, the blacksmith’s son, has gone as well. He would not let Gwen leave without him and Brigid said she will send word when she is safely in Wales.’

She ‘tsk-ed’.

‘How we shall interpret the loss of
three
of De Courcey’s villagers, I am unsure. There will be hell to pay.’

Hell.

‘I have no child, Ceci.’

‘Now, now. You do, but just not in your arms. Better he lives far and safe than here and doomed. I trust Brigid and Gwen to care for him. They love you and are loyal.’

‘But my child sustained me.’

‘Well you shall have Sorcia to sustain you instead. She has laid her head on your bed through all of yesterday. Ysabel,’ Cecilia said in her matter-of-fact way, ‘Brother John buries the ‘babe’ later today. I shall go to Saint Agatha’s but the lie would be enhanced if you stay abed.’

I turned my head away but Sorcia burrowed under my fingers and I loved her warmth and succour.

The ‘child’ was buried and Cecilia ordered a small stone slab to be laid, with the name William De Courcey chiseled into the stone and the date. Not many days later and with his habitual angst, De Courcey galloped across the causeway and into the bailey. I heard him and lay back, weak and anxious. The door slammed open and he stood there aflame with wrath.

‘Leave,’ he hissed at Cecilia.

‘How dare…’ Cecilia began to steam.

‘Ceci, go,’ I grabbed her hand. ‘And take Sorcia.’

She frowned but grabbed Sorcia by the collar and skirted around the Baron’s figure. He slammed the door after her and walked to the wine flask to pour.

‘So wife, you birthed an heir. They say he is dead.’

‘He lived long enough to be christened…’

‘Weakling…’ he roared and threw the goblet against the wall. ‘What does it take to birth a live babe, Ysabel? If pigs and sheep can do it, what is it that prevents you? You’re a mewling imitation of your father.’

I jumped from the bed shouting like a shrew, feeling the sweat of weakness trickle between my breasts.

‘How dare you! I carried that child. Do you think, sir, that I take joy in not being able to hold it in my arms? God’s Blood, you know nothing. A quick rut and your responsibility is done.’

The hem of the linen chemise fell around me as its folds untangled and a warmth ran down my inner thigh. I noticed the blood, as did De Courcey and I dove in for the kill.

‘Yes Baron, look you. It is blood from the birth, a birth that was timed by every bell that rang through the day. It split me in half and even now bleeds and bleeds.’

He took a step back and for the first time ever was speechless and I tell you I gloried in it as he turned and left, slamming the door so hard I swear the stones trembled.

I heard the horses’ hooves clattering back over the causeway and for the horses’ sakes some part of me hoped he’d changed mounts before leaving. If he went to Saint Agatha’s I’d have been surprised and yet Brother John informed me later that he had done so. He’d stared at the tiny slab.

‘William?’ His voice rose with each syllable. ‘God damn her to perdition! Why William? Strike the name, priest, get rid of it. He was to have been John if the bitch had asked, after Prince John. Strike this name I say because the child is nothing. There shall be no name. Do you hear me? No name!’

Chapter Fourteen

If I had been a great
trob
airitz,
I would have composed a ballad the like of which had never been sung, about Ysabel De Courcey lately Moncrieff, about this young woman of the winsome face and hair the colour of a Canterbury-minted silver penny. The men might have sighed and the women cried at the words of love and loss that took place over a year. How she had become an orphan and then a mother who held her own babe but once.

There would have been verses about what might have been but now would never be, words that tore into the heartstrings of the nobles who listened in rapt attention. And at the end, those same nobles would have dried each other’s tears and nodded sagely about her courage, determination and forthright nature as Fate played its hand.

Ah yes, that’s what I would have sung about this woman I barely recognized as myself. But what I would not have sung is how she began to concoct a plan, an idea that when the crusaders left for the Holy Land she could re-shape her life and shrug off what she was and become something new and altogether unrecognizable.

And yet maybe part of that new story may have had the nobles sitting on the edge of their seats; the women in awe, the men perplexed that a fair maid should have such outrageous courage.

I counted each bell that marked each hour of each passing day as the date of that holy departure grew closer. None the wiser on the fate of those of meaning in my life, William of Nowhere and Ulric of Camden, I refused on any account to succumb to more grief. To be sure, I cried in secret when Cecilia or Brother John could not see me for I am not made of stone, but that hard streak inside me had deepened and widened to give me strength when I might have had none.

I sat against the sun-warmed stone of Alaïs’ garden, admiring the freshly weeded paths between beds of herbs and fruit trees heavy with Spring’s promise. A garden seat corrugated my bottom and I noticed dirty knee marks on the green
gown
.
I brushed at them and spread the stain further.

Bees buzzed around the blue flowers of borage and rosemary and I wondered why they so liked blue flowers when there were other brighter colours – saffron, ivory and yellow. They bumbled heavily back to the woven willow bee bothies and I decided it would be a good honey harvest.

Cecilia entered the garden behind a leaping Sorcia who punched her head under my arm, leaving a further stain on a chemise that had unrolled its dagged sleeve to where it was fair game for a dog.

‘There you are,’ Cecilia puffed. ‘Lord but I have looked for you everywhere.’ She wiped a hand across her wimpled head. ‘I’m getting too old, Ysabel. I should be sitting in a solar, stitching pretty threads. Now listen. I must away to Upton for a week. It seems there is tension between my bailiff and a tenant over dues to be paid and it requires a sorting. I am assuming you are enough yourself these days not to need me to prop you up?’