The Knight's Conquest

by Juliet Landon

  By this time, Eloise’s unhappiness was obvious, her supper only picked at, her eyes shadowed by tiredness. Little by little, Jolita drew out the crux of the problem which was that her dearest sister was in love, though that was the easy part. The rest was unbelievably complex, being to do with Eloise’s inexplicable capitulation which, they both agreed, verged on madness, Sir Owain’s record of absconding at critical times, his association with Sir Piers’s death and Eloise’s insistence that to be seen as his newest lover was too near the bone, even for her. That both sisters were sharing a physical experience for what seemed to Eloise like the first time was their only common ground, apart from love, which was almost irrelevant in its simplicity. Jolita had little to offer except a sympathetic ear, which was better than nothing, and Eloise’s misery continued as far as Thame in Oxfordshire. Here, both sisters were in complete agreement that prolonged riding and prolonged sexual intercourse did not make the best of partners, though this did have the advantage of making them both laugh. On this topic, dear Sir Henry was left out in the cold as spasms of giggles overtook them throughout the next day for no obvious reason.

  It was dusk by the time they reached the deep curve on the River Thames where the king’s favourite palace of Sheen stood on the water’s edge within easy distance from the city of London. King Edward and the Flemish Queen Phillipa spent as much time at Sheen as they did at their other palaces of Eltham, Westminster and Clarendon and at Windsor Castle, and though Sir Crispin could easily have been accommodated in the palace complex, he had a house of his own that nestled within spacious gardens outside the eastern wall.

  As the sun set, the light from the river bounced off the windows, setting them ablaze and flooding over the whitewashed pattern of stonework and timber. But the palace itself took on a fairy-tale unreality, taking their breath away. Towers and turrets pierced the pink-streaked sky with shafts of silver and gold while streaming pennants waved to the last malingering rooks seeking refuge around the chimneys. Windows winked like jewels in a crown.

  With the last of the daylight came the closure of London’s city gates, too late for Sir Henry’s large retinue to reach their house on the Strand that night. He sent two mounted messengers on ahead with his warrant to herald the morrow’s arrival, while here at Sheen House the pack-horses and carts clattered into the cobbled courtyard, and guests staggered wearily into the comfort of well-prepared rooms.

  Savouring their last evening together for some time, Eloise and Jolita strolled arm in arm through the extensive gardens where, in the soft Surrey climate, the fruits were already forming on trees and bushes, the vegetables inches higher than in Derbyshire. Above them, swifts scooped up beakfuls of insects over the rooftops, and Eloise mused on her two days’ respite before she would be snared by the king.

  ‘Tomorrow and Sunday for rest,’ she said, quietly, ‘then Westminster on Monday to plead my case. Shall you and Henry meet us there?’

  ‘We’ll be there,’ Jolita promised. ‘But, Ellie, tell me something.’

  ‘What, love?’

  ‘Well, you must have thought of it. What if…?’

  ‘What if I’m breeding? Yes, I had thought of it.’

  ‘What will you do? Did you think it might let you off the hook?’

  ‘It might. But that’s not what I had in mind.’

  ‘What did you have in mind?’ They stopped at the wicket gate to scratch the sleepy head of the donkey in the next field.

  ‘To be honest, my mind wasn’t functioning at all.’ Eloise smiled. ‘Later, when I could think, I suppose I was glad that, if I bear a child at all, it will be his. That’ll be the next best thing to marrying him, which I could never do, of course. With a bit of luck—no, a lot of luck, I might be able to pass it off as my next husband’s. But then again, I may not be breeding anyway. Who knows?’

  Jolita returned her smile. By what Eloise had said about her night of loving, it would be surprising if she were not. ‘But it’s sure to complicate matters, isn’t it?’ she said.

  Eloise was silent for a time, her mood once more melancholy as they turned along another pathway. ‘I can’t help it, Jollie,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t think of anything else. Only him. I can scarcely believe he’d do this to me after…’ Her voice cracked and faded.

  ‘Does he know how you feel about him?’

  ‘No, I could never tell him that. Besides, he’ll have heard it all before ad nauseum. I swore I’d never be added to his list, and here I am, within a couple of days, mooning about like a lovesick calf. What’s happening to me, Jollie?’

  ‘Ellie, you’re missing something out, love. He offered for you once, didn’t he? And how many other women has he offered for, I wonder? None, or he’d have been married long before now. Has it not occurred to you that he might really want you and no one else? That he might even be in love with you? That he accepted Father’s invitation to the tournament so that he could get to know you again, to start afresh? Why else would he have singled you out if not for that? It makes no sense, does it, to insist that he cannot be serious?’

  ‘Then why did he leave so abruptly again?’

  ‘Isn’t that what you said you’d intended to do?’

  ‘I thought of it, briefly. I decided I couldn’t.’

  ‘Well, you’ve put yourself beyond his reach just as effectively by coming down here, love. I assume he knew the king has sent for you?’

  ‘He knew, but nothing was said about my leaving Handes so soon. And by the time I return home it will all have been decided. As for his being serious about marriage, I’ve no way of knowing what his intentions are. I suppose I made it difficult for him to tell me. He knows more about my intentions than I do about his.’

  ‘Then perhaps it’s your insistence on doing things your own way that’s made him keep quiet about the alternatives.’

  Eloise broke off a twig of rosemary and held it to her nose, breathing in its pungent aroma. ‘That’s how it has to be,’ she whispered. ‘There are too many reasons why it cannot be any other way, Jollie. And while I’m here in London I shall make it my business to find out what happened this time when Sir Piers met his death. Perhaps when I discover the truth, things might begin to simplify.’

  ‘By which time it will be too late to matter.’

  ‘Then nothing will have changed except my peace of mind. Sir Owain admitted to me that he was involved, but I don’t want a one-sided version. I want the truth.’

  ‘Even if it hurts?’

  ‘It cannot hurt me any more than it already has, love.’

  Jolita persisted, in spite of the finality in her sister’s voice. ‘Ellie, wait! Are you telling me that you want Sir Owain to be implicated, as well as Sir Phillip Cotterell? Do you really think that the truth will simplify matters between you, even if it’s what you fear? Surely that’s taking things to unnecessary lengths, love. Why not let it be?’

  ‘Oh Jollie…for pity’s sake! I thought you’d be the first to understand. I’d not have told you otherwise. Of course I don’t want him to be guilty of anything concerning Piers’s death. Quite the opposite. For my own peace of mind I want him to be entirely innocent, don’t you see? How can I allow him to stay in my life without knowing? I’m not blaming him for disliking Piers. I’d begun to dislike him, too. But I’d like to be given the chance to clear my mind of this barrier they’re all creating by not telling me. You cannot blame me for wanting to find out for myself. I pray it’s not as serious as they’re making it out to be.’

  Jolita’s sisterly embrace satisfied her that the intention was understood. ‘Tread carefully, love. Men have their own reasons for doing what they do, and we don’t always agree with them, or understand. Think only the best of him, dearest.’

  ‘I do, Jollie,’ Eloise whispered, her eyes welling with hot tears. ‘I do. Why is it that my younger sister is wiser than me, d’ye think?’

  Her sister’s smile was concealed by darkness, but she felt it on her cheek. It had been as well for Jolita
to ask, forcing her to look harder at her reasons for doubting Sir Owain, for her anger at the way her marriage had been curtailed so abruptly. True, she had begun to dislike, even fear, her new husband, as would any woman plunged into a permanent relationship which changed so suddenly from congeniality to a shocking crudity, even before the wedding ceremony. Then, she had accepted with blushes what passed for the eagerness of a bridegroom, believing in her innocence that it was all for show and not for real. She had been quite mistaken. The real Sir Piers was worse, far worse. She had wept bitter tears in the privacy of her chamber, too proud to allow her parents or family to see her bruised heart, or her arms and thighs, her bleeding tender parts. There had been enough of her problems to concern them in the past without adding more.

  But none of that was reason enough to want him killed, whether by accident or design. Like many other wives before and since, there were methods of keeping out of the way, setting up a cushion of friends around one whose love would be an antidote to the husband’s neglect. It had not quite happened in Eloise’s case, Sir Piers’s relatives and hangers-on being difficult to bypass. But she’d had hopes and plans, her own home at last, and a certain amount of freedom during Sir Piers’s absences. She had adopted a superficial contentment that appeared to satisfy most people, deluding even her parents. She had not expected anything to worsen after the first few months, though looking back she had seen the money dwindling as fast as his respect for her.

  His sudden death had numbed her, severely testing her resilience. In one fell swoop he had gone, leaving her free but with problems of property and debt that she had no idea how to handle. Her parents had rushed to her aid, helping her through the nightmare created by her husband’s avaricious relatives who did their best to prevent her acquiring anything. No one could have blamed her for being angry at that, angry at the added catastrophe, angry at the mountainous indignities of having to fight tooth and nail for what was rightly hers, angry at yet another failed attempt to do what other normal women did, to be wifely and motherly to somebody. And if Sir Owain had had a hand in that, however reluctantly, well then, yes, she could be angry with him, too, and then some more for being the one to set her heart aflame. Now, as if that were not enough, when she had been given her freedom with one hand, the king was intent on taking it away from her with the other, for he granted women permission to keep his property only if they had a man to render his dues, as a tenant-in-chief must. In other words, she must marry. The penalty for refusal would be a fine of crippling proportions, or a forfeit of the tenancy and all that went with it. Widows of child-bearing age were expected to marry after one year; holders of his estates must vacate within three months; holders of castles must vacate immediately. Eloise’s father had pulled strings for her, but most widows were not so fortunate. And Eloise herself thanked the heavens that Sir Piers had not received permission before he died to add the crenelations to Haughton Manor which would have made it into a small castle. Yes, that had been a blessing, but a small page of relief in a catalogue of anger.

  With Jolita’s departure next morning, the two days that followed stretched interminably through the warmth of late June which Eloise tried to fill with any activity that would keep her mind away from her forthcoming meeting with the king. She did not find it easy, for the problems of a possible refusal squeezed into every gap between household discussions, whether of beds, mattresses and linen, silver and kitchenware, checking the garden or instructing the stewards and chamberlain. A constant stream of visitors arrived as soon as it became known that Sir Crispin had returned to duty, and invitations crowded into the weeks ahead as if Eloise’s visit would last as long.

  She dressed for the great occasion in a deep mulberry-coloured kirtle with a sideless surcoat of mulberry silk shot with green that changed colour as the light caught upon its folds. Saskia braided her mistress’s hair in an intricate nest of plaits which she crowned with a gold circlet sitting low on her forehead, glinting with garnets. The effect was of rich mulberries, red wine and copper-beech, ripened peaches, hints of green-shadowed foliage and moss-lined pools. She wore no other jewellery but, because the river journey was cool, she threw a soft woollen cloak around her shoulders, two tones paler than her hair and trimmed with strips of fox-fur that her father had obtained for her.

  The wide river was cooled by a breeze that skimmed the surface, but the elegant barge sped easily down the current with the merest dip of eight oars towards the city. Even now, Eloise could not cease her rehearsal. ‘Your Majesty, is it?’ she whispered to her father. ‘Or is it your Grace?’

  ‘Relax,’ Sir Crispin smiled. ‘You know what the form is by now. He’s not going to eat you, love. Not with me there, anyway.’

  ‘All I ask is that he listens to my plea.’

  ‘Oh, he’ll listen,’ her father assured her, restraining the unhelpful opinion that that was probably all the king would do to please her.

  Her fingers closed over the soft leather pouch at her girdle where, deep inside, a blue velvet bag nestled with its priceless contents. Whatever Sir Owain’s reasons for leaving it with her, it could never be put to better use than as a fine with which to buy her release. If the king was not impressed by the sum of money and the lands she intended to offer him, then this would surely make a difference. And for the hundredth time, she wondered if that was what Sir Owain had intended her to do, after all.

  They came to the Palace of Westminster from the riverside steps where boats were tied up at the wharf and where, even at this early hour, men had already begun their business of the day. Beyond the sprawling complex of hall, apartments, government offices, gardens and yards, the great abbey towered over the site in a confection of flying buttresses like a tangle of delicate scaffolding, carved stonework, white, elegant and massive.

  Through swarming crowds of market traders heading for the selling area within the abbey walls, it was only a short walk to the North Gate and past the amazing Clock House and another courtyard with a large circular fountain intended, Eloise suggested, to calm one’s nerves.

  ‘No,’ said her father, smiling. ‘It’s used by most men to cover up their private chatter. Look at them.’

  Tonsured clerics stood clutching at bundles of papers, deep in conversation with their clients and lawyers while, all around them, red-liveried servants escorted others through archways, down steps, along passageways, through courtyards.

  One of them caught up with Sir Crispin, breathlessly. ‘Ah…sir! There you are, sir. They told me at the wharf you’d arrived. You’re not in the Court of Common Pleas, sir. His Grace wishes to see you and the lady in his apartments.’

  Heads turned to stare, and Sir Crispin flicked one eyebrow which, for him, was a sign of surprise. ‘Has his Grace not started yet?’ he said.

  ‘No, sir. He’s waiting for you.’

  ‘Father,’ Eloise said, ‘we were going to meet Jolita and Sir Henry here.’

  ‘Don’t worry, m’lady,’ the man told her. ‘I’ll come back here and tell them. They’ll no doubt be waiting for you when you return.’

  There was no time to admire St Stephen’s Chapel as they passed across its western end, nor to stop and pass the time of day with Sir Crispin’s many curious acquaintances. The atmosphere was quieter where the red liveries mingled with the occasional blue and white of Lancaster, the voices lower, the pace more leisured.

  At the top of a flight of wide steps, they were halted at a large door which their escort opened quietly, ushering them into a tapestried antechamber with a view across a private garden where ladies strolled.

  Nervously, Eloise turned to her father. ‘Do I look all right? Am I tidy?’ She smoothed her kid gloves over her fingers and twitched at her girdle.

  ‘Stunning,’ he said, kindly. ‘You can remove your cloak if you wish.’

  She hung it over one arm. ‘I wish Jollie had been here.’

  ‘Got all your papers?’

  ‘You’ve got them.’

  ‘Ah, so I ha
ve. Good luck, love.’ The door beyond them opened.

  There had never been the slightest chance of Eloise being able to conduct her business with the king in private; such matters usually came before the Court of Common Pleas in an atmosphere of public scrutiny. This private audience was a privilege few could expect and due only, she supposed, to her father’s special place in the king’s service. But even as they entered the spacious and colourful chamber, her privacy had already been diminished by the presence of several noblemen who stood together at one side. A group of ladies stood near the king, and a bevy of cleric-monks from the abbey hardly lifted their heads from their scribbling at a nearby table piled high with rolls, books, ink pots and quills, seals and caskets.

  Unexpectedly, the king left the group to meet the pair with both hands outstretched towards Eloise, giving her no opportunity to examine faces other than his own. He was as he had been at their last brief meeting many years ago, tall, good-looking and brown-haired, wearing quantities of gold over a mid-length gown of red and blue woven with rampant leopards. His manner was gracious, though she was not deceived into thinking that this would make him any less covetous where money was involved.

  His blue eyes expertly absorbed every detail of her appearance. ‘Lady Eloise,’ he said, supporting her as she rose from a deep curtsy, ‘we have had progress reports on all your doings.’ He glanced at her father and winked. ‘Sir Deputy Keeper of the Wardrobe, so you are getting your daughters off your hands at last, thank heaven. But this one merits some special attention, I believe. Time we had a chat about it, then.’

  Sir Crispin bowed. ‘Your Grace is too kind.’

  The king kept hold of one of her hands, swinging it to one side as if about to dance. ‘And your reputation as a beauty has not helped you in this, lady?’

  ‘I know of no such reputation, your Grace,’ Eloise replied, keeping her eyes suitably lowered. The floor was of patterned tiles, the walls richly painted with scenes of a distant king’s coronation. ‘I believe my problems are more to do with Fate than with anything else, Sire.’