By which the tactful lady meant that she would not ask him to join the family table where he would have to face Madame la Gouvernante.
Wulfstan told the Monseigneur that he had decided to visit his relatives at Hyam St Ebba before making any decision about his future as a soldier.
‘Well done, you’re showing yourself to be as wise as you are brave!’ said Duclair approvingly, and added, ‘Remember that you’re going to see Cecily’s children, not old Master Blagge who may accuse you of causing his wife’s death. Hold your head up high – and give my salutations to the Count and Countess de Lusignan – you’re related to them, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, sir, my sister Ethelreda married their second son. I’ll certainly be seeing them.’
‘Very well. Will you take Troilus with you?’
‘Yes, sir, though I’m sorry to subject the old fellow to a sea crossing. I shall leave next week from Honfleur, and sail for Southampton.’
‘May God go with you, my boy. Madame Duclair and I will pray for you and await your return as for a son.’
After a crowded, stomach-churning crossing of the Narrow Sea on a cog carrying two other horses on their way back to England, Wulfstan was thankful to reach the busy English port. There seemed to be an expectancy in the air, with crowds everywhere, mariners and militia alike swarming around its inns and brothels. Wulfstan decided to take a meal at one of the pie-shops before setting off up through Hampshire to where the hundred of Hyam St Ebba lay on its border with Surrey. A crowd of laughing soldiers gave a roar as he entered a shop where pies were sold to eat straightway, and he felt conscious of his youth. Having bought his dinner, he went outside to where Troilus was tied to an iron ring in the wall, and ate standing up, wondering why the town seemed so busy.
‘It can’t be – it is! Sir Galahad himself!’ he heard an eager voice declare, and turned to look into a familiar face – his friend who had trained with him at the Maison Duclair, Eric Berowne! They gave each other a rough embrace, and Wulfstan offered to share his pie.
‘No, thanks, I’ve dined already – but tell me about yourself, old chap! Will you be sailing on this tide, or do you wait for tomorrow? Splendid if we can go together!’
Seeing Wulfstan’s puzzled expression, Eric quickly explained that Edward, the Prince of Wales, was about to take a small army over to France, with the intention of putting down an incipient rebellion in Gascony.
‘Just what we’ve been waiting for, Wulfstan! This is what all our training was about, to make us true professionals in the service of the King. Have you not heard of it?’
Wulfstan replied that there had been rumours, but no definite news. ‘But Eric, this is a great misfortune for me, for I can’t come with you!’
‘Why in God’s name can you not?’
Explanations followed, but Wulfstan’s duties towards his family did not convince Eric. ‘But of course you must come with us! Are you not a loyal subject of the King and his son? This is what we’ve been waiting for, all that time at the Maison Duclair!’
Wulfstan was sorely tempted to believe that his primary duty was to follow the Prince to Gascony, but here he was, a devoted admirer of the young prince, going in the opposite direction, to visit a place he no longer looked upon as home. He was about to change his mind when he remembered Madame Duclair and her motherly advice, so gently given: and he could not go back on his word.
‘When I’ve got through the visits I have to make at Hyam St Ebba, and settled my business there, I shall return to France and join the Prince’s army as soon as I can, wherever it is. I can say no more than that, Eric.’
‘I can only say I’m surprised, but it’s your decision,’ said Berowne with a shrug, and Wulfstan thought he heard a certain contempt in the words.
‘Is Jean-Pierre Fourrier with you?’ he asked.
‘He’ll be joining the army at Bordeaux. So, I wish you joy of your business with your relations, Sir Galahad – to get your legal affairs settled and be sure of your portion.’
He remounted his horse and turned away. Wulfstan watched him go, and suddenly wondered what had happened to Ange the dairymaid, whether or not she had carried Eric’s child; he had not asked Eric about her, nor had he told him about the chevauchée; how would Eric have judged him if he knew? It made no difference now, he had made up his mind, and turned Troilus’s head towards the road north.
The sun was westering down to the horizon when Troilus raised his handsome head and sniffed the air: did he remember Hyam St Ebba after five years away? Wulfstan wondered. There was the valley again, and the demesne of Ebbasterne Hall, the harvested cornfields, the orchards bearing ripe fruit, and beneath the trees the pigs foraging; the cows and sheep grazing in meadowland, the great field divided into strips belonging to the tenants who farmed them for their own families’ sustenance. Here lived Sir Oswald Wynstede, knight and landowner, married to Janet Blagge, sister-in-law to Wulfstan’s beloved sister Cecily, and there, down in the town stood Blagge House where Cecily’s children lived with their widowed Aunt Maud and grandfather, old Master Blagge. Some ten miles further up the valley, perched on a rocky outcrop stood the Castle de Lusignan, home of the Count and Countess whose elder son had fallen at Crécy, and whose younger son’s marriage to Ethelreda Wynstede now united the two families. The Count kept a home-trained army ready to depart at any time to fight the king’s battles, and put down insurrections at home and in Scotland.
And there, on the opposite side of the valley, its stonework bathed in the rosy glow of evening, stood the Abbey of St Ebba where the holy monks prayed for the world outside its walls. The brotherhood had almost been wiped out by the plague, now being referred to as the Black Death, some seven years ago, but the community had built up again under a new Abbot. He remembered that his sister Cecily had nursed the stricken monks in the Abbey, where no women were usually allowed, and that there had been a monk, a Franciscan friar who had toiled alongside her, both miraculously untouched by the dreaded plague which claimed lives all around them.
And now Wulfstan rode down towards Ebbasterne Hall, his childhood home where his brother Oswald was now the master, and elevated to Lady Wynstede was Mistress Janet Blagge, whom Wulfstan had not been able to bear seeing in his mother’s place. Dear Cecily had used her influence with the de Lusignans to obtain a place for him at the Maison Duclair – and had insisted on accompanying him there. It was on her return journey across the Narrow Sea that she had drowned in a shipwreck; and this was the reason that Wulfstan had never been back to visit Hyam St Ebba.
Until now, as he contemplated going to fight in France with Edward, Prince of Wales. He patted Troilus’s side. ‘Come on, old fellow, take me down to face them all!’
Everybody remarked on the change in Wulfstan, from a rather sulky boy of twelve to this fine, strong, tall young man – though he observed with a smile that it would have been strange if he had not grown in five years.
Oswald greeted him with a brotherly embrace, and Janet held out a cool cheek for him to kiss. It was strange to see Ebbasterne Hall and its estate again, somehow not as grand as he remembered it from his childhood.
‘The bailiff acts as go-between with the tenant farmers,’ Oswald told him. ‘They grumble at having to pay tithes to the Abbey, and I have to take rent for their houses, but they know when they’re well off, and there aren’t many protests.’
Remembering how their mother, Lady Katrine Wynstede, had visited the homes of their tenants with food, kindling and other comforts, and allowed the old and infirm to live in the great hall, to sleep near to the glowing embers of the fire and be fed from the kitchen, Wulfstan innocently asked if this still happened. Lady Janet was quickly on the defensive.
‘What time have I got, with four young children to bring up?’ she demanded. ‘The twins are delicate, and the others very young. I certainly don’t allow riff-raff to make a bed here for themselves overnight, nor do I take in the old and crazy, making messes in the straw – there’s no telling what
fleas and fevers they’d bring into the Hall!’
The twins were girls, six years old, with a brother aged three and another not yet a year old. Janet soon made it clear that he was a stranger to them, and not to frighten them by attempting to play the familiar uncle. Feeling constrained and unwelcome indoors, he chose to walk with Oswald and the two dogs on the estate.
‘It must seem strange to you after being away for so long, Wulfstan,’ his brother began. ‘The unfortunate circumstances of my . . . of our sister’s death was a bitter blow to us all, and of course there are those who said, and still say, that had she not accompanied you to Lisieux, she would be alive today, a happy mother to little Kitty and Aelfric. Her loss was felt keenly by the Wynstedes and the Blagges . . .’ He spread his hands and sighed.
‘Do you blame me for leaving Hyam St Ebba and going to learn the art of warfare in France?’ asked Wulfstan bluntly. ‘And does Lady Wynstede blame me?’
‘Oh, no, not at all,’ said Oswald quickly, for his wife had been extremely thankful to be rid of her young brother-in-law. ‘But perhaps you’d better avoid speaking about the past, comparing how it was in our parents’ time from how it is now,’ he added apologetically.
‘You don’t mind, do you?’
‘Of course not,’ Wulfstan replied, in fact feeling sorry for his brother.
‘I just like to keep my head down and avoid upsets,’ said Oswald, and to change the subject spoke of the management of the demesne of Ebbasterne Hall, and how he relied on his excellent bailiff, Dan Widget.
‘Dan Widget? Is he your bailiff now? Dear old Dan, the best groom we ever had – and he came with Cecily and me on that journey to Lisieux. How did he escape the shipwreck?’
‘Sheer good luck, it seems. He was the only survivor, and found himself floating among the wreckage – managed to climb on to part of the ship’s timbers, and used it as a raft, until he got picked up by a fishing-smack. He had to come and tell us all that Cecily had drowned. He wasn’t thanked for it.’
‘I didn’t know all this,’ said Wulfstan thoughtfully.
‘No, and we thought it strange that you sent no word of condolence when you heard what had happened and . . . er . . . there were those who blamed Dan for saving his own skin and letting Cecily drown.’
There seemed to be no answer to this, and Wulfstan was silent for a minute. Eventually he asked where he could find Dan.
‘He’ll be on the demesne somewhere, but his wife’s about to give birth to their third child, so he may be at their cottage on the estate.’
Wulfstan could not imagine Dan as a husband and father; he remembered him as a good-humoured young groom, a favourite with all the family, and devoted to Cecily. He had accompanied Oswald to France at the time of the Battle of Crécy, and had brought his master back, half out of his mind with terror, and drunk more often than sober. Another memory that had to be conveniently forgotten now, thought Wulfstan wryly.
‘I’d like to see Dan when it’s convenient,’ he said, ‘and at some time I must go to Blagge house and see my niece and nephew there.’
‘Hm, you’ll get a cold reception from old Jack Blagge,’ said Oswald, turning down the corners of his mouth. ‘He’s become more of a tyrant since he’s grown older, and we don’t know how Mistress Keepence puts up with him, but they say he’s devoted to the children.’
‘I’ll go to see Kitty and Aelfric this afternoon,’ resolved Wulfstan. ‘I am their uncle, after all, just as much as you are, Brother.’
‘Janet and I don’t see much of them’, confessed Oswald. ‘We have our own family to consider, and all the business of managing the estate, and . . . well, it’s awkward for Janet, being his daughter, just as much as Mistress Keepence is, but he resents her marriage to me, and can be quite offensive. By all means visit them, but steel yourself against his ill temper.’
The warm September sunshine made even the forbidding stone face of Blagge House look mellow as Wulfstan approached the front door, flanked by heavy columns on either side. A serving maid answered his knock, and nodded when he asked for Mistress Keepence.
‘If you be young Master Wynstede from up at the Hall, I’ll show you into the waiting room,’ she said with a conspiratorial look, and he followed her into a small parlour. ‘Sit there, sire, and I’ll fetch the mistress.’
A pleasant-faced woman came into the room and held out her hand. ‘Master Wulfstan! What joy to see you again after all this time – and grown so tall! Kitty and Aelfric are playing out in the field beyond. Come, let’s go to them!’
It was the warmest welcome he had received so far. Maud Keepence shared the same birth year as Cecily, and her twin brother, Cecily’s husband, had died of the black plague, as had her own husband. Childless herself, she had willingly devoted her life to caring for Cecily’s children, and as soon as Wulfstan saw them he felt an affinity he had not felt towards his nieces and nephews at Ebbasterne Hall. Now aged ten and nine, Kitty and Aelfric clearly felt similarly drawn to this tall young man; their Aunt Maud had prepared them for his visit, and they ran towards him with cries of ‘Uncle Wulfstan!’ He opened his arms to gather them close to himself, and caught his breath at seeing Cecily in Aelfric’s bright eyes, and the sweet curve of Kitty’s mouth. He went down on one knee to be level with them, and at first was unable to speak; his reluctant homecoming now seemed worthwhile for this moment alone.
Touched as she was by their meeting, Maud felt duty-bound to warn him of their grandfather’s rejection of everybody connected with the Wynstede family.
‘If he sees you with the children, he may invite you into Blagge House to dine with us, but on the other hand, Wulfstan . . .’ She shrugged apologetically.
Jack Blagge, grey-bearded and hard-eyed, was waiting at the kitchen door when the four of them returned, Wulfstan holding Kitty’s hand and laughing at Aelfric’s attempts to turn a somersault. At the sight of him, little Kitty said, ‘He’s our Uncle Wulfstan, Grandsire!’
Blagge looked at his daughter Maud. ‘What kind of foolery is this? Who let him in? Kitty! Aelfric! Come to your grandsire this minute!’
The children obeyed, but with a backward glance at Wulfstan. Blagge sent them indoors, and indicated to Maud that she should follow them. Then he turned on Wulfstan.
‘What makes ye think ye can come here now, ye bare-faced, unbreeched son o’ Wynstedes? Don’t ye dare look at Cecily’s children and make them call ye uncle when if it wasn’t for you, their mother would be alive today. Go back to that brother o’ yours, him who took away my daughter and gave her Wynstede airs and graces! And that wily groom Widget who left Cecily to drown, and then came back and bedded my best serving wench. Ye’ll not take away my grandchildren, damn your eyes!’
Wulfstan coloured angrily, and his heart pounded. ‘It was not my intention to cause my sister’s death, sire, nor did I ask her to—’
‘Shut your mouth and get out o’ my sight!’
There was no choice for Wulfstan but to obey, and he left the house, resolving never to call there again. Yet it was not anger that consumed him now, but only sorrow for Cecily’s death. There was no longer a place for him in Hyam St Ebba, he concluded, and the sooner he returned to France as a soldier of the King, the better.
On his return to Ebbasterne Hall, he found his brother and sister-in-law talking about the Widgets; Dan’s wife Mab was in travail with their third child, and Oswald was restless, wanting to know how she was progressing, and being told by Janet in no uncertain terms that a birthchamber was no place for menfolk.
‘The midwife and a sensible neighbour will be attending, and Dan will be pacing up and down, annoying them,’ she said. ‘He’ll send us word when they’ve got the baby, whatever time of night it may be to disturb us. It’s her third, so it shouldn’t take too long – and now for heaven’s sake, come to supper.’
It crossed Wulfstan’s mind that if this had been in his mother’s time, she would have been down at the Widget cottage, giving what encouragement she could to th
e mother. Times had changed, and he had learned to stay silent – well, almost.
‘How did you get on this afternoon at Blagge House?’ Oswald asked somewhat diffidently, and Wulfstan remembered that Lady Janet was Blagge’s daughter.
‘Katrine and Aelfric are very sweet children, and we got on well for the short time that I was there,’ he answered, ‘but Master Blagge was not so pleased to see me. He blames me for the loss of his wife – our sister Cecily.’
Oswald and Janet made no reply, and he continued in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘And he also blames Dan Widget for surviving the shipwreck when Cecily drowned, and then for bedding his best serving wench.’
‘And he wedded her soon after, she who is now in travail,’ said Oswald quickly. ‘And their marriage has been happy.’
Lady Janet said nothing, but pursed her lips, clearly annoyed by this unflattering talk of her father, and at the same time ashamed of him. Wulfstan remembered that old Blagge had said Oswald had taken her away and given her ‘Wynstede airs and graces’.
At nine o’clock that evening, Dan Widget came up to the Hall to announce the good news of a little daughter, Grace, and that both mother and child were well. As soon as he caught sight of Wulfstan, he stepped forward to shake his hand vigorously, a move which Lady Janet clearly considered a liberty, coming from a bailiff, though she said nothing.
‘Blessings on ye, Master Wulfstan, I heard ye’ve come home, and at just the right time!’ Dan said happily. ‘I hope ye’ll come with Master Oswald some time to see our little girl – she’s going to be pretty, like her mama!’
Wulfstan smiled his congratulations and promised to do so, remembering his friends Jean-Pierre Fourrier and Eric Berowne, only too eager to get away from the girls they had so carelessly deflowered.
The next day was fine and sunny, and he decided to ride over to the Castle de Lusignan to see his sister Ethelreda, married to their second son, Charles; the eldest, Piers, had fallen at Crécy, nine years previously. It had been thanks to Count Robert de Lusignan that Wulfstan had been recommended to Monseigneur Duclair. Lady Hélène, the Countess, had been a friend to the Wynstedes, especially after the tragic death of her son, and when asked by Cecily to use her influence with the Count, had willingly done so. Now Wulfstan knew that he must show how well he had used the past five years at the Maison Duclair. The Count and Countess gave him a cordial welcome.
Every Noble Knight Page 5