by Prue Batten
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.’
The floor tilted at that moment and I reached back to one of the hanging carpets. Its dense pile cushioned fingers that clutched in despair.
‘God but I am tired, Ceci. Tired of everything.’ I plopped onto a coffer against the wall, hanging my head in my hands. ‘I am done for. There is no way out now. De Courcey will have his way and I am powerless.’
I had not heard Cecilia move close and her hands ran through my hair. The tender brushing should have succoured me but instead it raised images of Gisborne and I making love and I knew in that minute that my heart had been completely shattered.
Broken into a thousand pieces.
‘Enough for now,’ she said. ‘A bath, food and sleep and then we shall talk. I shall not let De Courcey near until you are ready.’
I nodded my head; no words, just dryness on my palate like the ashes of a long dead fire, all flames and warmth quenched and done for now.
‘But Ysabel,’ Ceci took my chin in her hand, raising it so that I must look her in the eye. ‘You are wrong. Whatever you might think, Guy did not betray you.’
She let my chin go to move to the door and shout for a bath.
He did, Ceci, and I know hate now. Such hate. It shall stand me in good stead.
The bath cleaned me if nothing else. Cecilia washed my hair before I stepped in, lathering it in a herbal essence that gathered away the oil and sweat, and then I sank into the bath water feeling neither warmth nor succour, merely indifference. She tactfully left me alone to wash myself, dry and dress – retiring to another part of the chamber with distaff and a basket of wool, humming that same ethereal melody. It reminded me of the cantos in one or other of the religious establishments on my journey. Thoughts racketed immediately to Gisborne and hate brought forth a warm flush, a force to be reckoned with, a wild beast smelling blood, a madman seeking murder.
God!
‘The clothes,’ I slid my hands over soft woolen folds the colour of honey. ‘Where did they come from?’ The words raised memories of an inn and a midnight tinted gown and I shivered. I placed a woven girdle around, a knotted silk thing, and it reminded me of Thea’s bracelet which hung abjectly damp on my wrist.
‘Your mother.’ Cecilia dropped the spindle into the basket with the hank of wool she had spun and looked at me, assessing my body, grey eyes running up and down. ‘You are of a size. Now come to the fire and let me comb out your hair.’
As she combed, so I smoothed fingers over the folds of the gown, looking down at feet shod in embroidered kid slippers.
I walk in your shoes, my mother, and I need you to guide my steps.
Cecilia plaited the now dry hair, leaving it to hang down my back, placing a light linen veil over my head with a twisted filet of linen to hold it in place. She had left me to my thoughts as she worked and I was grateful because I had no wish to talk. Odd, because I wanted to tell her Father had died, wanted to talk about my mother. And most traitorously, I wanted to talk about Gisborne, to tell her that he had broken my heart and destroyed my faith.
The door rattled and a guard entered with a platter of food and I recognized the smell of frumenty and fresh griddle cakes and there was a jug of watered wine. The guard was dressed in the livery of the Free Lancers and as he bent to put the platter on a table, I noticed he was a fr
esh young man, pleasant of face, and it seemed strange because I expected every man in this place to be rough cut, to mirror Gisborne’s opinion of De Courcey … the ‘moneyed thug.’
‘Get help and carry the bath away,’ Cecilia ordered. ‘Do it swiftly. The Lady Ysabel would like to eat and then sleep and is unable to do that if the chamber is prone to people walking in and out as if this were the bailey.’
‘Yes milady,’ he backed out, somewhat tremulously I felt, and I laughed.
‘You have a way, Ceci. Even mercenaries are scared of your tongue.’
She smiled but slid the expression away and replaced it with a gorgon’s scowl as the fellow hurried back in with an older man. In moments the bath had gone, a little water slopped here and there, and the door locked once more.
‘You ordered food for me.’
I touched the top of the frumenty and a skin slipped along as I dragged my finger across the surface.
‘No, I didn’t.’
Not De Courcey, not yet.
‘No,’ she knew what I was thinking. ‘Not him. It can only be Halsham. Perhaps he sees you need nourishing, Ysabel.’
‘I would need no nourishing if he and his lord hadn’t chased me across France and half of England and stolen my home.’
My voice could have cut meat with its sharpness.
‘Eat the food, my dear. You are in need.’
My stomach could take very little but welcomed what I did eat. The frumenty comforted, sliding down easily, honey sweetening it. Cecilia poured wine from her own flagon, no water, better than most I had tasted lately and as I drank, the door rattled, the key turned and Ceci swung round with a vast sigh of exasperation.
The guard, my food deliverer, stepped gingerly into the room but before he could speak, she hammered him with her wrath. Come more from my situation, I thought, than the fellow’s apparent ineptitude.
‘I asked you all to leave the Lady Ysabel to sleep. She is ill and must rest undisturbed. Are you dumb as well as deaf that you don’t understand?’
He flushed. ‘I beg your pardon, my Lady Cecily…’
‘Lady Cecilia.’
He flushed.
‘Lady Cecilia, I’m sorry. But Sir Robert wishes you to join him in the Hall momentarily to discuss meal requirements for the castle.’
‘Well! I would be of a mind to say no if I wasn’t so sick and tired of being immured in here for the last few days. His manners are inexorable of course. He should have come himself.’
A weak smile traced across the guard’s face, discomforted and ill at ease with the termagant that was Cecilia. He indicated the passage.
‘My lady.’
‘At least Lady Ysabel can sleep undisturbed now, can she not, young man?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, my lady.’
Ceci called over her shoulder.
‘Ysabel, rest if you can. You are weaker than you think and I would that you had strength about you when the Baron returns.’
She swept out ahead of the guard, her manner regal, her rings clashing like a pair of swords, the folds of her grey gown undulating around her like a battle pennant.
The door closed, the key turned and I sat in my mother’s chamber making much of memories. Cecilia was right. Weakness unlocked every muscle in my body and I folded onto the bed, my head on a goose-down pillow. I pulled up a woven coverlet, listening to the pop and crackle of the fire. My eyelids drooped with exhaustion, weighted as if God’s hands rested there.
It might have been a breathing moment or a few bells, I don’t know, but a strange sense of unease woke me – a feeling that I was no longer alone and that it wasn’t Cecilia or silence that was present in the Lady Chamber.
I forbore to move, instead searching every part of the room with my eyes – reaching one of the windows where stood a man whose dark hair lay against his neck and who looked at me with distaste.
‘How dare you come in here after what you have done!’
I threw the coverlet back and leaped from the bed, my fists balled tight, hatred filling every secret niche of my body.
‘What I have done? My lady, you jest surely.’
He almost sneered as he looked at me. His eyes were dead, nothing of his soul was reflected. Flat – as empty as his voice. This Guy was almost magick, so different and yet similar did he appear. He could change in an instant and with apparent ease to suit the moment. All the while I looked at him my body vibrated like a drum that had been struck – the resonance articulating hate in its echo.
Despite that, I wanted to rush to him, grab hold of his hands, look into those eyes and defy him not to admit he cared as much for me as I did for him. Part of me wanted to drag him to the bed and seduce him. But such thoughts fired self-disgust and anger to the point of violence. Had a dagger been close by, I’d have pitched it.
‘Jest, jest? Goddamn you to hell, Gisborne. Why did you sell me? After so long, after so much effort to escape.’
He laughed, laughed, at my unease.
‘Madame, I made no secret of what it was that I sought for my life to move onward. It happened that after your father’s death I realized I had no loyalties to concern me. I was free to make a choice. To deliver you to freedom might have been good for my soul but to sell you was so much better for my purse and my purpose.’
‘I hate you! You are despicable!’ I could hardly bear to step closer and yet I did, wanting to gouge his face. ‘You might have status but you have no honour.’
‘Oh come now, Ysabel.’ He walked to the fire and poked a log, occasioning a flare and a skein of red sparks lifting toward the cavernous chimney space. ‘What is honour? One man’s honour is another man’s treachery. Quite simply I pick the men I deal with.’
I could feel myself splitting in two as deceit and damnation piled on me. I could barely believe that this was the same man who had made love to me not long since. He appeared no different.
Except for his eyes.
‘Guy,’ I pleaded. ‘You took my heart, my soul. Mary Mother, you took me.’
He played with the smouldering log, his back half-turned.
‘When cherries are offered on a platter, why should one deny oneself? I took a cherry that you offered. My gain, your loss. As to your heart and soul, Madame, you always said you knew which way the game would be played.’
The man in front of me looked like Guy of Gisborne and yet his words were the kind I imagined De Courcey might use. I picked up the nearest flagon and pitched it at him and hearing me grunt he turned in time for the hard-edged lip to strike him above the eye.
Immediately blood flowed and I gasped. He said nothing, didn’t even staunch the wound, just headed for the niche behind the carpet and left.
I whispered after him, ‘I asked you not to regret us. I did.’
I threw myself on the bed, lying with my head buried in the pillow. I didn’t give way to tears because the core that had begun to harden was now rock-solid. I just lay there, thinking of everything and then nothing until I slept.
I stirred much, much later – curtains had been pulled to enclose the bed end of the room and the space was made for nestling, soft and warm. I felt safe behind the draped folds and it was easy to lie comfortably. But voices sounded through the shielding screen.
‘She has slept near a whole day, sir…’
A day!
‘… and that must surely indicate to you that she is unwell,’ Cecilia hissed.
For a moment I wondered if I were in the castle passage again. At the memory, I truly knew pain. Almost enough to elicit a groan, but nascent cunning saw me silent – listening for the identity of the man to whom she spoke with such annoyance.
‘Lady Cecilia…’
De Courcey.
His was a voice roughened by shouting for attention – a voice that stripped and flayed.
‘It is only your relationship with the King that gives you any rights in this place. That is all, nothing else,’ he continued. ‘However, if you say she is unwell then she is u
nwell, in which case I shall send the field-surgeon to look at her.’
‘You shall do no such thing! At the very least, sir, you might send for the Abbey infirmarian who attends her father, but no field-surgeon will touch Lady Ysabel. Whilst you remember my relationship with the King, it may serve you to remember the Lady’s own standing with the King’s mother before you order a field-surgeon’s hands upon her.’
‘By God, woman,’ De Courcey made no pretence at quiet now. ‘You push too hard. What relationship?’
Cecilia gave an empty laugh. ‘Huh, you do not know? Then tread carefully Baron, for whilst I might be a godmother to the King, the Lady Ysabel’s mother was Queen Eleanor’s cousin which makes Ysabel the King’s cousin. Eleanor is also the young woman’s godmother and Ysabel remains loved by mother and son. If you hurt her, be sure the royal household shall hear of it.’
Footsteps moved, spurs jingling and I guessed the Baron prepared to leave the chamber. But no.
‘You threaten me, Cecilia Fineux, and I shall remember, be warned. And be careful.’
‘Sir,’ she said. I could imagine her drawing herself up to her fully diminutive height. ‘I believe it is you who must be careful.’
He left then. Two heavy strides and the door groaned a little as he pulled it open.
It nearly fell off its hinges as he slammed it shut.
I jumped up and wrenched the folds apart.
‘Cecilia! You are beyond brave.’
‘Pah, he is a common ruffian. It was time he learned of your connection to the Royal family. I am staggered gossip hasn’t already informed him. He was shocked I can tell you. He flushed red and then paled like he was being bled. Such a connection to Richard can only be to your benefit, my love. Now, do you feel better?’