The Scarlet Lion (34 page)

   He looked into John's face where the spite glittered like broken glass. William thought of the numerous occasions he had parried blows on the battlefield and in training bouts. Heft the shield, stay low, hold in tight. Give nothing away. "I am deeply grieved to hear such news, my lord," he said without emotion. "The death of these fine men is a great loss; they were your vassals as well as mine and have fought well for you in the past. Such a waste makes it an even sorrier affair—if it is true."

   John glowered at him. The fur edging of his robe rose and fell as he breathed heavily. Finally he turned on his heel and stalked off, Suzanna wiggling sinuously in his wake.

   William gazed at the merels board but didn't see it. He moved a counter without the slightest notion of strategy.

   FitzWarin's flint-grey eyes were full of pity and shock.

   "If you have any touch of mercy in your soul, keep playing," William said hoarsely.

   FitzWarin pushed a counter, taking no advantage of William's blind move. "Can it be true?"

   William shook his head. Knowing he was being watched for his reaction, he kept his face straight, but inside he could feel John's words twisting in his heart and entrails like a knife. "How could it be?" he said. "There has scarcely been time for Meilyr FitzHenry to arrive in Ireland, let alone conduct a battle campaign. He is trying to unsettle me and I'll be damned if I'll give him that satisfaction." He looked at the other baron. "You know how it is, Fulke, you've ridden the tourneys; you've been on the receiving end of John's displeasure—more so than me, because he made you an outlaw and hunted you through forest and field for three years."

   "He didn't win, though," Fulke said with a wolfish smile.

   "Because you're a good commander. You know how to play the game and keep yourself intact."

   FitzWarin shook his head. "Because I know how to make it up as I go along," he said.

   William laughed and, to those watching, it seemed as if he didn't have a care in the world and that the King's barbs had slid off a polished shield. "Ah," he said, "then we are men of similar experience, but that doesn't mean it is the way I like things to be. At my age, I want peace and order…and no surprises."

   FitzWarin raised a sceptical eyebrow. "There is always hope," he said.

                             *** William slumped on to the bed in his lodging house. He had dismissed his men and his servants. A violent headache crashed from one side of his skull to the other. The sheer iron control that had carried him through the rest of the day after John's taunting news was now a constriction upon him. He had retreated, rammed down the portcullis, yanked up the drawbridge, and locked himself up so tightly he felt as if he was being crushed. He couldn't put this pressure on anyone else: not his men; certainly not his sons. It was his to endure and to withstand without cracking. The pain intensified, shooting up from the rigid muscles in his shoulders and neck and into his head until his eyes watered with the pressure. There was no Isabelle to cajole him, ease his tension, put everything in perspective, lie with him and give him comfort. She was engaged in her own battles, physically more dangerous than his and demanding the same strength of will. Groaning, William put his head in his hands and sought the detachment to cope, aware that in so doing, he was piling up a debt that might beggar him when the time came to pay.

                             *** Jean sat before the turf fire in the cowherd's lodging on the road to Drakeland Castle. The turves gave off a soft red glow on the underside and the fragrant smell of burning peat filled the long room. Adjacent to the living quarters, under the same roof, the cattle pens were empty, the cows having been driven into the keep for safety. Not that Drakeland was impregnable; indeed, compared to the great Norman castles where Jean had cut his teeth, it was an easy target, almost a hovel, but that didn't matter. Meilyr FitzHenry wasn't going to receive the easy kill he was expecting.

   Outside the weather was grim, cold, and misty. A day to believe in crones conjuring over their cauldrons, and to wonder if the sleek dark heads bobbing in the coastal inlets were in fact selkies: enchanted young women wearing the sinuous garb of seals. He warmed his hands around his cup of hot mead, blew, and sipped. His knights and serjeants were doing the same, hunkered down near the fire, waiting in silence. The trap had been baited. Meilyr's raiders had been led to expect that Drakeland would not resist an attack and that Jean and his men were dealing with another assault away to the north. What Meilyr did not know was that the bulk of the Marshal knights were here, waiting for him, and that the northern situation was being mopped up by Hugh de Lacy, who had sixty-five knights under arms and more than two hundred soldiers behind his banner.

   As Jean drank, an Irish scout slipped into the hut and, stooping to him, murmured that Meilyr's troops had been sighted approaching Drakeland. "His son is with him too," the scout said. "And Philip of Prendergast."

   The information lit a gleam in Jean's eyes. "Three birds for the price of one slingstone, then," he said and, rising to his feet, summoned his squires and captains to his side. Some of the younger men who had lost comrades in the raids on Newtown were eager to mount up and charge out to meet the enemy, but Jean cautioned them with raised hands. "Your chance will come," he said, "but not if your zeal overwhelms you. It's like bedding your bride on your wedding night. Too eager and you will spill on her thighs and not in her womb."

   His words induced a ripple of ribald laughter, particularly when he drew his sword and polished it up and down on a soft leather cloth, but the warning had been made clear in terms that were well understood. Jean's heartbeat quickened and he forced himself to take measured breaths, as his lord would have done. Each man knew his part and everyone had confessed and been shriven ready for battle. All that remained was for Meilyr to close in and take the bait.

   As Jean mounted his horse and donned his helm, Jordan joined him, his fox-brown eyes aglow. "If we can capture Meilyr, then we've won," he said. "No one's coming to prise him out of the dungeon. He'll be finished."

***

Meilyr had brought carts laden with siege machinery to Drakeland, including two stone-throwers and a dozen ladders. His troops were a motley assortment of Welsh, Irish, and Norman, some of them drawn from his vassals, many more of them hirelings. Philip of Prendergast and David de la Roche, who had returned on the same ship as Meilyr, had supplied men too, from the estates recently bestowed on them by the King. They were none too happy that William's deputies had chosen to stay and fight and voiced their unease to Meilyr as they drew nearer to the castle.

   "No matter." Meilyr shrugged. "They have forfeited their lands in so doing and who do you think will benefit? They cannot be everywhere at once. Drakeland's a simple enough nut to crack." He scowled at Prendergast. "You were content enough to do homage to John for your grants here."

   Prendergast stiffened haughtily. "And I hold to that oath. Don't tangle with me on the matter of loyalty."

   Meilyr began to retort but the hot words turned to ashes in his mouth as he saw the troop advancing down the road to meet them and recognised the silver scallops of D'Earley, the D'Evereux blue and silver, the de Saqueville chevrons. "God's holy feet," Prendergast croaked. "They're not in the north, are they? Your scouts must have their eyes in their arses."

   Meilyr tugged his hand axe out of his belt and twisted the loop around his wrist. "We'd have had to meet them sooner or later," he growled. "They're English; they know nothing about fighting the Irreis."

   "They knew in the autumn," de la Roche said grimly as he drew his own sword. "We've been lured here; this is a trap."

   The Marshal array broke into a gallop, stirrup to stirrup, shields close, lances forested in horizontal symmetry. There was no time. Meilyr swung his shield on to his left arm and bellowed at his men to stand firm.

   The shock of the impact was like a fist punching into a face. Meilyr had ridden against the Irish with Richard Strongbow and knew all about making a stand, but in those days his stands had been against Irish chieftains who rode barelegged with rope bridles and no stirrups. This time he was up against heavy cavalry, mailed to the teeth; men blooded on the tourney and battlefields of Flanders and Normandy and whose issues with Meilyr and Philip of Prendergast were bitter and personal.

   Meilyr dug spurs into his stallion's flanks and, howling, rode at Jean D'Earley. He chopped down a footsoldier, struck aside a serjeant, then found himself close enough to launch his axe at D'Earley's horse. It took the beast in the neck, above the protection of the wide leather breast-band. The destrier pitched and went down, legs threshing. Meilyr had hoped that D'Earley would be pinned under his dying horse, but he was thrown clear and scrambled to his feet. A mercenary swung his axe at the knight, but D'Earley parried with his shield, kicked the man's legs from under him, and made a swift killing thrust with his sword. Meilyr spurred in to take him, but the knight hurled his shield into the destrier's face. The stallion reared and shied and Meilyr in his turn was thrown. The impact dazed him and before he could gather his wits and launch to his feet, Jean D'Earley's sword was planted at his throat.

   "It's over!" D'Earley gasped. "I will have your unconditional surrender, or I will spill your life on this soil. It won't take much for me to do it, I swear. And your son's too."

   Meilyr glared at him with narrow-eyed malevolence. "I yield." He spat the words like a curse. "But you and your kind will never prosper in this land."

   Through the red freckles of blood dappling his face, the knight gave a derisive grin. "I would be afraid," he said, "except all your other schemes and predictions seem to have gone disastrously awry."

                             *** Isabelle looked with revulsion at the fettered man who had been flung at her feet in Kilkenny's great hall. She had ignored the stabbing pains in her back and the threatening contractions of her womb to come from her chamber and greet the victory. Meilyr was bruised and bloodied—apparently caused by a fall from his horse in the thick of battle, although Isabelle wondered. With a flick of her fingers, she commanded the iron shackles on wrists and ankles to be removed. They were as much about humiliation as keeping Meilyr from escaping and they had served their purpose. Isabelle knew that no matter how much she desired to do so, it wasn't wise to keep the King's justiciar in chains.

   He lurched to his feet, rubbing his chafed red wrists. "This is an outrage," he spluttered.

   "Indeed it is, and you are paying the price for the perpetrating," Isabelle retorted. "What you have done to me and mine, I will not forgive." She drew breath through her teeth as a band of pain gripped across her mid-section. "Take your life and be glad that I choose to spare it, but I will have your son as surety for your behaviour, and I will have the sons of your kin and the same from all your allies. Set so much as one foot outside of my tolerance, and their lives are forfeit."

   Meilyr looked at her with disgust in his eyes. "I never thought when I followed your father that it would come to this. His own daughter…"

   Her eyes flashed. "Yes," she retorted, "his own daughter. Strongbow's heir—a fact you conveniently forgot in your rush to be lord of all Ireland. If you had cooperated with my husband instead of raiding and damaging and burning, you wouldn't be standing before me now in defeat." Her voice was excoriating. "How do you think the King will react to a justiciar who finds it impossible to keep order?"

   A sheen of sweat dewed Meilyr's skin. "He will come himself, and then you will smile on the other side of your face…Countess." The last word was not a courtesy.

   "I am not smiling," Isabelle said with loathing. "Ah, enough, take him away and lock him up where I do not have to see him. Jean, I trust you to see the letters written demanding hostages… and to send word to my lord as well. He should know as soon as he may…I…" She bit her lip as another contraction, stronger than the last, dug through her loins.

   "My lady?" Stephen D'Evereux held out his hand in concern.

   Isabelle made a gesture of negation. "You will have to celebrate this victory without me," she said, breathless with pain. "I…I must retire. I am…I am in travail."

   Her women, who had been waiting at the back of the dais, hurried to attend her and between them bore her to her chamber while the knights dragged Meilyr FitzHenry to a locked room, there, under house arrest, to await the arrival of hostages as surety.

                             *** Within the hour Isabelle was delivered of a baby boy who slid from her body in a slippery rush that caught everyone by surprise, not least Maeve who almost dropped him. The cord was tangled around his feet and the bag that had encased him in the womb was wrapped around his body.

   "Ah," said Maeve with satisfaction. "That's lucky—very lucky. Means he cannot drown." She unwound the cord and, parting the baby from his caul, lifted him up. Smeared with blood and fluid, he roared his indignation to the world. He had a thatch of thick, dark hair, black brows and eyelashes, and long, sturdy limbs. Still gasping, stunned by the swiftness of the birth, Isabelle found herself laughing almost hysterically with relief and overwhelming emotion as she held out her arms for her new son. "Ancel," she sobbed. "His name is to be Ancel as my husband wished."

   Maeve bundled him in a warm towel and gave him to Isabelle while the women prepared a warm bath for him and laid out swaddling bands by the fire. "You should suckle him awhile, my lady," the midwife said. "It will help compress your womb."

   Isabelle knew the lore already, Ancel being her ninth child, but she made no comment and, lowering her chemise, put him to her breast. He was going to resemble his father, this one, she could see it already, and the thought brought a sudden rush of tears to her eyes. William should be here to greet his newborn son, not trapped miles away at the hostile English court. Will and Richard should be here as well to welcome their baby brother. Instead, their family was fractured, striving to hold together in the face of the storm. With a determined sniff, she wiped her eyes on the back of her free hand and felt her womb contract as the baby took strong suck. There was no point in thinking of what should be and wasn't. Here in Ireland they had won a victory. Meilyr was vanquished; and even if there were more battles to fight, they would not happen today. Let now be for rejoicing, even if it was for a brief, imperfect moment.