King John was known throughout Christendom for his cruelty. Few doubted that he had murdered his young nephew, Arthur of Brittany, and everyone at Corfe knew that over a score of the lad’s Breton knights had been starved to death in the castle dungeons. Even the king’s former friend, William Briouze, had fled to Ireland with his family earlier in the year because he and his lady had provoked the king’s displeasure and feared for their lives.
I am not his bondwoman! Adela repeated silently to herself like a catechism as she forced herself along the passageway. The childhood memory of a neighbour’s daughter thrown to the ground by a pack of youths from another village was sharper than ever. One of the youths had stuffed a cloth in the girl’s mouth to muffle her screams, and then they began to fall upon her, one by one, with their tunics thrust up and their braies down. Even at eight years old, Adela had known this was no game and she had run to inform her father, the village priest, and he had charged into the boys’ midst, fists flying, and armed with righteous anger like St Michael come to Earth.
‘God smite you, you lily-livered weaklings!’ he’d roared at them. ‘No man, be he prince or peasant, should ever take a woman against her will.’
Adela had never forgotten her father’s brave words. However, would a king listen?
At the top of the familiar spiral, she paused, listening for the warning slither of the king’s wool mantle further down or the hiss of breath. The darkness was silent. John must have returned to the hall by the other stairs, yet it still took courage to venture down the twisting steps. The wall cressets were not lit and only a scant wafer of light halfway down relieved the danger.
Reaching the last landing unscathed, she gave a soft sigh of relief, but before her senses could alert her, two hands gripped her shoulders painfully from behind.
‘Ha! Snared you!’
‘By the saints, cousin, you must see this!’ Tibaut burst into the guest chamber in a rare haste.
‘Unless I am to witness King John being carried out in a coffin, spare me!’ Richart growled. He had only just managed to make his excuses to the queen and quit the great hall and now he needed to finish his dispatch to his grandsire. The royal steward had informed him that a cog at the local port of Wareham would be sailing for Bordeaux on the morning tide. A cursed pity that he could not take ship himself with the alliance made, for he was out of all humour.
‘But it is the king! Out of my way, man!’ Tibaut pushed aside Richart’s clerk and began unclipping the shutter of the narrow window light. ‘Quickly!’
‘This had better be worth my while,’ Richart grumbled and strode across to the embrasure. ‘So?’ Leaning a sleeved arm across the deep sill, he slid an impatient gaze down over the scaffolding in the upper bailey. Then he saw her—a slender maidservant, delicate-featured—rushing up the stone steps to the ramparts. Braids as fair as corn were escaping from her linen cap and she had her brown skirts fisted in each hand. It was the same wench, and struggling up the steps behind her—his long shadow staggering malevolently across the wall like a monster from Hell, tottered a dark-haired man—John Plantagenet, King of England, Lord of Ireland and Duke of Aquitaine.
‘Cunning slut, eh?’ Tibaut chuckled, edging in so they could both see. ‘Ratcheting him up all through the feast, I reckon. Had her eye on you as well.’
For a fleeting moment, the young woman leaned against the crenellated wall as though her side ached and dashed a frantic glance behind her.
‘That’s not cunning, Tib, it’s fear!’
She sped towards the door of the half-roofed annex and desperately shook the ring handle.
‘It’s locked,’ muttered Tibaut. ‘I tried coming in there earlier.’
‘She has nowhere left to run.’ Richart was calculating whether he could somehow forestall John. It would take a miracle. The king was already fumbling to free his prick.
‘Whoa, cousin!’ Tibaut sensed his urge to intervene. ‘Would you jeopardise our purpose here?’
‘I am not a fool, Tib.’ He shook off his cousin’s hand.
The trapped girl swung round, her panicked gaze darting from side to side as the king closed in.
Tibaut whistled. ‘He’s going to have her.’
Richart could not answer. He was too transfixed by the futile courage of the girl. Her palms were up, trying to keep the king at arm’s length and now she gave the royal drunkard a fierce shove that sent him sprawling, but as John stumbled to his feet and came at her again, she did the unthinkable. She sprang up onto one of the crenels. For a moment, she teetered upon the steep wall, her body so fragile, so small against the soaring keep, and then she jumped.
* * *
Adela sprang off the wall, grabbing the rope left dangling by the masons, and found herself plummeting at a dizzying speed. A half-laden wooden platform of stones, linked to the rope via a pulley, banged her shoulder fiercely as it hurtled upwards from the ground. She screamed as her body smacked against the buttress at the foot of the keep and then, lungs bursting, she found herself sprawled on her back.
The rope fled from her hands. High above her, the king yelled and the platform tipped. A mason’s stone slammed into the ground, just missing her leg, and with a shriek, she jerked her feet back as another fell. The platform was coming down. She flung her body sideways and before she could stop herself, she was rolling down the steep, freshly dug escarpment. She came to a halt in a heap of soft earth not yet cleared from the lower bailey. Over her head hung the empty pincers of another hoist. A mercy she had not smashed into the huge wooden wheels or the pile of nearby stones.
Struggling onto her elbows, she twisted round. Not more than twenty paces from her heels the scatter of labourers working on the new defences were staring at her like slack-jawed Bethlehem shepherds encountering the angel. A rumble of guffaws broke forth only to hush as they realised that up on the battlements it was the king roaring at them to snare her.
God ha’ mercy! Shoulder throbbing with pain, Adela stumbled to her feet. Already she could hear the shouting in the upper bailey. She took a pace forward and braced herself to be set upon; the workmen stood inert. There was a gap in this uneven horseshoe of witnesses. She recognised one of them.
‘Are ’e daft?’ he growled. ‘Run!’
Gasping, she obeyed, sidestepping the marble chippings, the hoes and barrows, amazed that her bruised body could still function, and then she scrambled across the open grass, expecting a crossbolt to pierce her back. She slid round a cart loaded with soil and leaned against it, gulping in great breaths of air. Why had God left that rope for her to seize? To die a worse death? Ducking the queue of wagons offloading Purbeck stone, she reached the shadow of the lower wooden gatehouse.
‘Hey, Adela,’ called one of the guards. ‘What’s going on up there at the keep?’
‘I dunno, Gil. Evening, Tom.’ Her bruised side ached. It was an effort to flash a smile and walk across the drawbridge as though everything was normal.
‘What in …’
She looked round. They had noticed the soil still freckling her kirtle.
‘F-Fell over a spade, Gil. Can … not stop. Her grace is poorly and … bade me seek herbs before sundown.’
Gil grinned, nudging his companion. ‘Ha, a spade, was it? Give you a better tumble later. Adela? Adela?’
Her scream would haunt his sleep tonight.
With a muttered prayer for the poor girl’s soul, Richart turned away from the embrasure, away from seeing ‘Jean-Sans-Terre’, the King of England, like some madman, spitting his fury over the battlements and knocking his hapless attendants aside as they hastened forth to appease his anger. There was little point in joining the hubbub. Planting a fist in the face of the man that Mirascon needed as an ally would have done no good for either of them.
‘So much for the majesty of princes,’ he exclaimed, and seeing the uncomprehending faces of his chaplain and clerk, he added, ‘A poor wench has just killed herself rather than be ravished by King John. By Heaven, I hope
to God one of you will tell me if I ever come to such a pass. Leave that!’ He gestured to his clerk to set aside the writing board. The girl’s death had blown his thoughts asunder. The image of that lithe body broken-necked at the foot of the wall like a pathetic little bird stayed in his mind. ‘Per Crist! I only smiled at the wench. If I had known that …’
‘My son, you could not have prevented this.’ Père Arbert, his chaplain, rested a hand upon his shoulder, and Tibaut, perceiving how moved he was, poured him some wine.
‘Stow this, cousin, for the sake of our people,’ he advised, passing across the drink. ‘If the king orders her body to be strung up, best hide your anger. In the sodden state his highness was in, the wench might have killed him.’
Richart’s hand halted in lifting the cup to his lips. ‘Christ ha’ mercy, Tib!’ he muttered in disbelief as the noisy baying of the hounds reached them. ‘Must this king hunt to assuage his anger? Is that how they calm him?’
‘Aye, maybe. Remember my lord of Toulouse advised us to bring hunting dogs as a gift.’
Richart curled his lip in distaste. He sat down on the bed and took a mouthful of wine. ‘Faugh, even this tastes like a sewer.’ He looked up at his kinsman across the rim. ‘Oh, rest easy, man, I’ll not imperil tomorrow even if breathing the same air as that whoreson makes me puke. Here!’ Setting the vessel aside, he unhooked the keys at his belt and tossed them over. ‘There’s a purse of English coin in my coffer. Take it! Find out who is to bury the girl and see the business is done with prayers and decency. Be subtle about it. Go along with him, Father, I pray you.’ The elderly chaplain was looking troubled and Tibaut was wearing his argumentative expression.
‘They’ll put her in unhallowed ground, cousin. She took her own life. I can’t see that we …’ Seeing Richart’s determined face, Tibaut shrugged and reluctantly unlocked their travelling chest. ‘Faugh, there’s enough here to bury an army,’ he muttered, weighing the drawstring bag in his hand.
Richart waved a dismissive hand. ‘Bring back what you don’t need and tell the priest that the girl’s death was an accident. She fell. Tell him I will bear witness.’
‘Your pardon, my son.’ Père Arbert intervened. ‘Your compassion does you credit, but what you ask may not be possible. I spoke yesterday with the king’s confessor and he told me His Holiness the Pope has placed an interdict on this entire kingdom. Save for the baptism of newborn babes and absolution to the dying, the clergy here are forbidden to perform any services.’
‘What!’ Richart shook his head in disbelief. ‘Jesu, what a godless country! The sooner we leave this damnable realm, the better. Nevertheless, both of you, go, see what you can do. And, Tib, one last thing!’
‘My lord cousin?’
‘Discover who she was.’
The marshy land of Middlebere Heath might save her. It had claypits and wallows. Yet how in Heaven could she outrun the pack across the fields? As she halted alongside the hedgerow, her side aching, Adela heard the rumble of wheels—the Saturday wagon returning light to Wareham. Once round the next bend, the carter would whip up his horses for home. Struggling through a hedge of blackthorn, she sprang across the ditch onto the track. The cart passed her at an amble. She chased it, grabbed the back rail, and tumbled in among the empty bouncing pipes and firkins.
The hairy carter had already stung his beasts into a gallop before he realised he had company. ‘No free ride for ’e!’ he snarled, twisting round from the driver’s board, but then with a leer, he added, ‘Yer can spread your legs for me. That’ll get you to Wareham.’
‘For the love of God,’ cried Adela, struggling upright. ‘Can you not take me to the town bridge like an honest man?’ He shook his head, though at least he did not rein the horses in. ‘You miserable ale-swilling pig of a whoreson,’ she shouted. Despite the hurtling pace, she managed to get onto her knees and grab the side. She must keep him talking, strike a bargain, anything so long as the cart kept moving. ‘Haven’t you got a wife to make you happy?’
‘Not with legs like yars, cunny.’ He started to slow the horses.
It was the empty firkin that kept rolling into her thigh that brought inspiration. And with all her strength she smashed it down upon his head.
Richart recognised the female perfume before he turned his head. The queen had decided to join him on the ramparts. He was standing at the very place where the servant had jumped, but her body had been taken away. Would her ghost haunt these ramparts?
Isabella was smiling. Was the dead girl no more worth to her than a fallen leaf easily forgotten? ‘See, my lord,’ she said, her gaze proudly sweeping the splendour of the Purbeck hills. ‘Is this not a view to be envied?’
If pressed, Richart could acknowledge the magnificent hauteur of Corfe with its lofty walls, but he could hear the baying of the royal hunting pack, and below him the castle’s bailey was silent, lifeless. The masons and labourers were gone now and the half-finished towers were like jagged teeth in a jaw of grass. Only a lone, hungry buzzard soared above the mangled ground.
‘My lord? Richart?’ Isabella murmured in Occitan, the tongue of his homeland, and on her lips his name was a caress—breathy with the first syllable, warm with the second. ‘You do not join the hunt?’
It was necessary that he should turn and carry her hand to his lips. ‘No, madame.’
‘Nor do you share your presence with us.’
‘Your pardon, my lady.’
With a pretty pout, the queen exchanged glances with the two handmaidens attending her. ‘Do our English minstrels not please you, then?’ she asked lightly.
‘Perhaps I miss Mirascon, madame.’
Too much time wasted. The journey south from Westminster to find the king had taken his party almost a week and now he was expected to tarry and flatter.
Isabella’s lips were glistening as though she had moistened them, and although the tail of her veil was modestly wrapping her throat, she now tucked it closer into her bodice, as if drawing his attention to the curves of her young breasts.
He did not feel like flirting. ‘May I offer my condolences? I believe Your Highness may have lost one of your household in unfortunate circumstances.’ He gestured to the distant ground below the wall.
‘Oh, you mean that wretched hairbraider. The king himself caught her thieving in my chambers. A pity, because she was very skilled at dressing my hair. I daresay I shall miss her.’
Staring down at Isabella, he tried to fathom how she could be so brittle. Not that he cared. Maybe she knowingly swallowed her lecherous husband’s lies.
‘Your servant died.’ He made it a statement.
‘Oh no, my lord, the cunning vixen grabbed one of the hoist ropes. She did not die.’
Not die? In utter amazement, Richart stared down at the wooden pallet that lay tumbled against the foot of the steep wall. But then, like a fist in the gut, a second truth winded him. Swinging his gaze from her highness’s complaisant face, he stared in horror at the hounds streaking round the steep green contour of the cleared hillside across the valley. The stark beauty of Purbeck offered scant woodland to shelter a hind let alone a woman.
‘Jesu mercy,’ he whispered in disbelief. ‘It’s the girl they are hunting?’
‘No, a liar and a thief,’ corrected the young queen archly. ‘Now, if you please, accompany me to the great hall. The king is asking for you.’
Chapter Two
Let the strength of the crown and the misery of war bring them back to the truth.
Pope Innocent III to King Philippe-Augustus
At least he would not have to kneel before John’s throne like a vassal, Richart thought with relief as the royal steward conducted him into the king’s council chamber after mass next morning, yet it would require considerable willpower not to show contempt for the man who awaited him.
The poor young hairbraider was dead. He had been in the presence of the king and queen just after the huntsmen had returned to assure their royal master that the dogs
had found the thief. John had informed Richart that unfortunately the men had not reached the wench in time to call off the dogs and what was left of her had been disposed of in the marsh. Both their graces seemed content with the conclusion and the rest of the court looked relieved that the matter was done with.
For his part, Richart had felt compelled to light a candle in the castle chapel for the girl’s soul. Her lovely face still haunted him. God forgive him, today he was hoping to make an alliance with her murderer.
Although King John was sober now, he seemed exceedingly irritable. Complaining that his eyes hurt, he ordered his servants to shift his cross-legged chair away from the end of the table out of the shaft of sunlight and gestured to his guest to seat himself opposite.
That augured well. Richart sat down on the bench, forcing himself to appear at ease, and let his stare rise indifferently to the wall-hanging behind the king. It portrayed John the Baptist’s head staring balefully from a platter held by a plump, overdressed Salome while King Herod leered down at her from his throne.
As the royal councillors took their places behind this English Herod’s chair, Richart shifted his gaze from the greedy expression of the tapestry king to the pallid face of the living man who sat before him. Would any promises made today be kept tomorrow? This ageing runt of the Plantagenet litter had already lost a third of his empire. Yet whenever this man shook off the darkness that so much burdened him, he could strike hard. Or so John’s officers had assured their visitor.
God make it true, Richart prayed. Having journeyed to England at great cost, he needed a hopeful outcome. Be careful, Richart’s grandfather had warned, these Plantagenets are known for taking hostages.
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