Lords of the White Castle (75 page)

Fulke nodded and murmured the words of the blessing, signing his breast as he did so. They ate companionably and discussed other matters—family, the weather, hunting -observing the conventions but also renewing friendship as the world outside darkened to a soft, sapphire blue, and the occasional flashes of gold on the river were of reflected torchlight instead of the broad sweep of the setting sun.

Finally, they sat back with a flagon of sweetened wine between them and, with a certain reluctance on both sides, came to the point of their meeting.

'I was disappointed to discover that you had joined the rebels,' Salisbury murmured with reproach. 'I thought you had put the past behind you. I know that you and my brother will never be bosom companions, but I truly believed that you had come to an understanding.'

'Oh, we understand each other well, that is not the difficulty,' Fulke said. He took a fig from the dish of dried fruits in the centre of the trestle and nibbled on the sweet, dark flesh. 'John restored my lands because he needed my sword on his side of the fence and I was costing him too much. Even then, I doubt he would have acted without the pressure brought to bear by yourself, Ranulf Chester and Hubert Walter. I surrendered to him because I knew the opportunity would not come again and I was desperate. It was a compromise and one that was bound to strain at the seams.' He wiped his fingers on a napkin. 'I couldn't not support this charter, Will.'

'It is a list of impossible demands, made by malcontents and troublemakers.'

'So is it wrong to demand that a man cannot be arrested and flung in prison without due cause? Or that a widow should remain in her widowhood or remarry as she pleases without having to pay a massive fine for the privilege?'

'It is wrong to demand that a select group of twenty-five barons should share powers with the King,' Salisbury snapped. 'Such a clause is unworkable.'

'But you see what happens when John has sole governance. Look at what happened to de Braose. In the name of God's pity, look at what happened to his wife and son.'

Salisbury's eyes slipped from Fulke's. 'That was unfortunate, I'll agree,' he murmured, 'but John was provoked.'

'And that makes it all right to starve a woman and child to death?' Fulke said with disgust. 'To leave them in a dark oubliette until the boy died and his mother gnawed on his corpse to try and keep herself alive?'

'No, of course it doesn't.' Salisbury's complexion darkened until he reminded Fulke of old King Henry when one of his famous rages was imminent.

'It certainly adds fuel to the rumours that he murdered his own nephew and cast his body in the Seine, weighed down with a stone.'

Salisbury looked as if he might choke. 'You sail dangerously close to the tolerance of friendship,' he said hoarsely.

'So do you,' Fulke retorted. 'It is our friendship that has brought me to you tonight and it is because of the value I set on it that I have not walked out. I know what John means to you… and you know what he means to me.'

Salisbury took a deep gulp of wine, swallowed and sighed. 'Every man has his demons. John may have more than most, but he is not wicked through and through. If only he were given a chance, he could prove his worth—and I am not just saying it as his brother.'

'He is being given a chance—this charter.'

'Thrust under his nose by his enemies.'

Fulke shrugged. 'How did they come to be enemies, Will?'

'All I am saying is that it is not entirely John's fault, and if you will not join the lords that are backing him, I hope you will look on the negotiations with a degree of common sense.'

It was the nearest Salisbury would come to pleading for John by asking Fulke to be moderate. He could hardly make the request of FitzWalter and de Vesci who were determined to press forward with a vengeance. Last week they had taken the city of London without a finger being lifted against them. Salisbury must be worried too that many of the uncommitted barons were inclining towards the rebels' side rather than John's.

'I will bear your concerns in mind, Will.' Fulke rose to take his leave. 'I need this to be ended too.' He made a rueful face. 'And I want my wife and daughters to stop scowling at me.'

'You should find yourself a house like this,' Salisbury said as the maid lifted Fulke's cloak from the peg. 'Home comforts without the drawbacks.'

Fulke laughed, i have enough trouble coping with the women I've got, without adding to the burden. I will see you at Windsor.'

In a marshy meadow called Runnymede, on the road between London and Windsor, rebels and royalists met beneath the shade of striped awnings and King John put his seal to the charter of liberties. There was forced civility on both sides, and the atmosphere was rife with tension. John met the rebel lords with loathing in his eyes and found his black looks reciprocated.

When his gaze lit on Fulke, his lips pursed as if he just drunk from a cup of vinegar. Fulke returned the stare, jutting his chin, planting his feet wide, as if preparing to resist a blow. He knew that Salisbury's hopes were dust in the wind. There was a saying from the bible that a leopard could not change its spots. And Christ, it was true—of both himself and John.

When the King had put his seal to the great charter, thus agreeing to its terms, the tenants-in-chief came to kneel in turn before him and renew their oaths of fealty. Fulke swallowed as he watched fellow barons go forward and bend the knee, putting their hands between John's, swearing their allegiance. His father-in-law was rubbing his hands together, looking both nervous and triumphant—like a small child caught up in the worrying exhilaration of a grown man's game. Only it wasn't a game at all. FitzWalter and de Vesci had attended the negotiations, but had not remained to see the charter sealed. Now Fulke realised that he should have gone with them.

He knew he could not do it. He could not go forward and put his hands between John's again. The contact would poison him beyond recovery. He felt physically sick. Turning on his heel, he pushed his way back through the witnesses, heading for his canvas campaign pavilion and his horse line.

Le Vavasour stared in blank astonishment, then hastened after him, ignoring the growls of protest as he trod on men's feet. 'Where do you think you're going?'

'To join de Vesci,' Fulke said grimly. Damp patches of sweat darkened his pale linen gambeson. He wrenched his banner out of the ground and cast it down. 'Get the tent down,' he commanded his wide-eyed squires.

'But you'—le Vavasour gestured back towards the crowd and the King—'haven't given your oath of fealty.'

'Because it would be as false as John's promise to honour that charter. You can see it in his eyes. The moment he is quit of this place, he will go to the Pope and demand that it be annulled because he was forced to agree to its terms under duress.'

'He has sworn he will not do so.'

'John would swear on his mother's soul to get himself out of a scrape.' Fulke threw his eating bowls and two cups into a coffer, followed it by two candlestands, and began to dismantle the bench on which they had stood. 'You do as your conscience bids you, Father, and I will attend to mine.'

Le Vavasour gnawed his thin underlip. 'John has sealed the charter, I can do no other but swear for him,' he said.

'Good, then go and do so.' Fulke kicked the bench legs viciously out of their sockets. When he looked up, his father-in-law had gone.

'I do not believe it!' Maude stared at her father in growing dismay and rage.

'You must, because it is true. Fulke would not give his fealty and now he has an outlaw's price on his head.' Le Vavasour shook his head. 'I could not persuade him to give his oath and he rode out as soon as he had packed his tent. Now John will have him excommunicated and his lands declared forfeit.' He spoke with a certain gloomy relish.

'If he does, then I hold you to blame as much as Fulke,' she snapped. 'You were the one who came to him, full of this talk of a charter.'

'And a good thing it has been, only now it has gone far enough and it is time to call a halt. I'll not have you talking to me in that tone, Daughter.'

Maude clenched her fists. She wanted to do more than just talk. Making an effort, she controlled herself. 'And where is Fulke now?' she asked hoarsely.

Her father looked at the ceiling and then at the floor. 'Do you not have hospitality in this household?' he demanded.

'Where is he?' Maude shrieked.

Le Vavasour made a throwing gesture. 'If you must know, he's gone to a tourney in Oxford.'

'A tourney!' Maude saw red. 'Our lands are forfeit, I could have royal officials in the bailey at any moment and he's gone jousting without so much as a message to me!' She felt sick, she wanted to weep.

'The barons who had refused to swear are keeping an army in the field. It is just a way of honing their skills'

'Honing their skills!' She nodded with vehement fury. 'And what of other duties and obligations? What of me, what of his children? Has he no thought for us?' It was not a question she gave her father time to answer, even had he possessed the wit. She stabbed her chest with her forefinger. 'I am no Maude de Braose to be cast into an oubliette with my offspring for nourishment. When you set out for the north on the morrow, you will take me with you. It
is
time I paid a visit to my dower lands.' Turning on her heel, she left him standing in the hall, a stunned expression on his face.

Clarice brought him wine, sat him in a chair by the hearth and sent his two grandsons to entertain him. Then she hurried after Maude.

Maude hurled back the lid of a travelling chest and felt pleasure amidst her rage to hear it crash against the keep wall. She tossed in two shifts, two gowns, a sleeveless over-tunic and several rectangular wimple cloths. 'A tourney!' she spat as Clarice entered the room, breathless from her run. 'Did you hear him, a tourney!'

Clarice dipped into the travelling coffer and carefully folded the gowns that Maude had hurled within. 'I heard,' she murmured. 'Perhaps it is necessary for him to remain with the other lords.'

'About as necessary as it was for him to go with them at the start!' Maude snapped as she dug a pair of shoes out from beneath the bed.

'You cannot expect to make a hearth dog out of a wolf,' she said. 'Nor would you want to, I think.'

In that moment, Maude came very close to loathing Clarice. The composure, the gentle expression. She itched to slap it from her face. 'Allow me to know Fulke and myself,' she seethed. 'You hide in your corner and pretend you know more about life than anyone else when you know nothing.'

The girl looked at her steadily, without flinching, although the grey-gold eyes were wounded. 'Mayhap because I sit in a corner, I am overlooked and I see and hear more than most. I know that despite what you say, you love him beyond measure and that he would give his life for you.'

'Would he?' Maude flung a braid belt into the chest. 'I no longer know. I cannot reach him across the void that is John.'

'You truly intend to go then?' Clarice asked softly.

Maude compressed her lips. 'I will not be taken for granted,' she said. 'Let him know what it is like to be deserted.'

Autumn winds were stripping the branches of leaves when Fulke rode into Whittington. The estate pigs foraged among the beech mast in Babbin's Wood where the villagers were out gathering kindling to store for their winter fires, and hunting among the tree roots for fungi to augment their diets. Fulke found himself envying them their lives, but quickly quashed the notion. If the winter was bad then they faced the threat of starvation. If there was war, they risked being burned out of their homes or slaughtered. Their wealth was measured in one cow, three pigs, five chickens, not in acres of land and numbers of manors. Doubtless they envied him his fine horse and fur-lined cloak.

The castle gates were open to admit him; smoke twirling from the louvres and giving an extra pungency to the autumn air. His brother William came to greet him as he dismounted. Fulke had written to him, asking that he should come from Whadborough and take the position of constable at Whittington until the dispute with John was settled.

'It's good to see you,' Fulke declared and clasped his brother's taut, wiry frame.

'And you,' William said wryly. 'Llewelyn's young men have been growing restless. We've had more than one raid since the summer. It doesn't matter that you're supposed to be on the same side.'

Fulke gazed at the fabric of the keep. From a besiegers viewpoint, it was a gift. He was glad that the fighting between John and his opponents had not spread to this part of the Marches. But if Ranulf Chester should take it into his head to descend on Whittington, its capture was a foregone conclusion, no matter the skill of its commander. Llewelyn did not have the sophisticated siege equipment, but fire would do just as well for a timber keep, especially if the summer had been warm and dry.

'He's raided Pantulf's lands too, although the Corbets have escaped. I carried out a couple of counter-raids -drove off some herds. It's been quiet the last two weeks.'

Leaving his horse in the care of a groom, Fulke headed for the hall. 'I've agreed a truce until the spring—although my promise was given to William Marshal. If I'd given it to John, I wouldn't be here now.'

William strode at his side. 'Llewelyn won't like you signing a truce.'

'Llewelyn wants what is best for Wales,' Fulke said shortly. The back of his neck was cold, as if someone had just blown upon it. Entering the hall, he stared around. It was a bachelor's mess, the floor rushes soft and greasy, old candle wax overflowing the sconces, crumbs and spill stains on the trestles.

'Has Maude not returned from Yorkshire?' he demanded, although the evidence of his own eyes told him that she had not. He had received a curt note from his wife on a trimming of parchment no larger than the size of his hand to say that she was going to their northern estates. From the brevity and tone, he knew that she was angry, but he had thought it might have worn off by now.

Richard glanced up from toasting a heel of bread over the open fire. 'Not yet,' he said uncomfortably.