Shields of Pride

by Elizabeth Chadwick

  Shields of Pride

  Elizabeth Chadwick

  The year is 1173. King Henry's efforts to crush his rebellious sons ignite bloody border skirmishes throughout the land. Yet it is a time of triumph for mercenary Josceline de Gael, bastard son of the king's most trusted ally. Victorious on the battlefield, de Gael suffers sweet defeat when his heart is conquered by the lovely Linnet de Montsorrel. But their love will find its greatest challenge as the torments of jealousy, suspicion, pride - and an enemy from beyond the grave - threaten all they hold dear.

  Review

  A whirlwind of a historical novel News of The WORLD The story is strong, the characters very believable, and the mix of touching romance and full-blooded adventure is just right Keighley News

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  The year is 1173. King Henry's efforts to crush his rebellious sons ignite bloody border skirmishes throughout the land. Yet it is a time of triumph for mercenary Josceline de Gael, bastard son of the king's most trusted ally. Victorious on the battlefield, de Gael suffers sweet defeat when his heart is conquered by the lovely Linnet de Montsorrel. But their love will find its greatest challenge as the torments of jealousy, suspicion, pride -- and an enemy from beyond the grave -- threaten all they hold dear.

  Shields of Pride

  by Elizabeth Chadwick

  Chapter 1

  Summer 1173

  Swearing through his teeth, Joscelin de Gael drew rein at the head of his mercenary troop and scowled at the covered baggage wain that was slewed across the Clerkenwell road, blocking the way. He had been in the saddle since dawn. It was late afternoon now, had been raining all day, and the comfort of his father’s London house was still five miles away on the other side of the obstruction.

  An assortment of knights and men-at-arms surrounded the wain like witnesses clustering around a fresh corpse while a crouched man examined a damaged wheel. His cloak was trimmed with sable, his boots were of red leather and the horse his squire held was clean-limbed and glossy. A handful of women huddled together, anonymous in mantles and hoods, and watched the men from beneath the dubious shelter of an ash tree overhanging the road.

  Dismounting, Joscelin tossed his reins to his own squire and approached the crippled wain. The soldiers stiffened, hands descending to sword-hilts and fingers tightening upon spear-shafts. The crouching man stood up and his gaze narrowed as he recognized Joscelin.

  Joscelin eyed Giles de Montsorrel with similar disfavour. The baron was distantly related to the Earl of Leicester and thus considered himself a man of high standing. He viewed Joscelin, the bastard of a warrior who had carved his own nobility by the sword, as dung beneath his boots. They had encountered each other occasionally on the French tourney circuits but no amity had sprung from these meetings, Montsorrel not being the kind to forgive being bowled from the saddle on the end of a blunted jousting lance.

  Forced by circumstance to be civil, Montsorrel gave Joscelin an icy nod which Joscelin returned in the same spirit before fixing his attention on the broken wheel. Not just broken, he could see now, but with a hopelessly shattered rim. ‘You haven’t a chance in hell of cobbling a repair here,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to hire another cart from the nearest village.’ He walked slowly around the stricken wain, examining it from all angles before halting in front of the three sturdy cobs still harnessed in line between the shafts. ‘How much weight do you carry?’

  ‘None of your business!’ Montsorrel snapped.

  ‘Oh, but it is,’ Joscelin said. ‘I cannot bring my own wain past while yours is obstructing the road. If it’s not too heavy, I’d be more than willing to help you drag it to one side.’

  Montsorrel glared. ‘You think I’m going to stand aside for hired scum like you?’

  Joscelin thumbed the side of his jaw. Suddenly he was very aware of the pressure of his sword-hilt against his hip. ‘Hired scum?’ he repeated softly.

  One of the women murmured to her companions and, detaching herself from their group, stepped forward to place herself between the two men. She faced Joscelin, forcing him to divert his attention from Montsorrel. She had delicate features and unfathomable grey-blue eyes that held his for a moment before she turned to indicate the broken wain.

  ‘Messire, by the time we have found a wheelwright or hired another cart, the city gates will have closed for the night.’ She hesitated. ‘Forgive me, but I notice your own wain is larger than ours and but lightly laden. I am sure if you lent it to us of a kindness, my husband would compensate you for your inconvenience.’

  Joscelin stared at her in surprise. He was accustomed to being propositioned by women but in different social circumstances and for different reasons, it had to be said, and never in front of their husbands. She looked down, a flush brightening her cheekbones. The rain continued to fall in a steady, cloth-soaking drizzle.

  ‘Linnet!’ Montsorrel’s anger diverted from Joscelin to his wife. ‘Do you dare to interfere?’

  She flinched, but her voice was steady as she turned to him. ‘I was thinking of your son, my lord. He must not catch a chill.’

  Montsorrel cast an irritated glare in the direction of the other women. Joscelin looked, too. One of the bundled figures under the tree was a small child. A little hand was held in the grasp of a nursemaid and Joscelin received the impression of wide, frightened eyes and a snub nose set in a small, wan face. Amid anger at finding himself trapped because he could not for shame refuse the woman, he felt a thread of pity for the infant.

  Montsorrel said stiffly to Joscelin, ‘Very well, you’re a mercenary. I’ll pay you the rate to deliver the goods to my house.’

  Joscelin bit back the urge to retort that he was not so much of a mercenary that he would allow the likes of Giles de Montsorrel to buy his obedience. ‘I’ll not serve you,’ he said derisively, ‘but your lady did speak of compensation. Perhaps we can reach an agreement.’

  Montsorrel clenched his fists and looked as if he might burst.

  ‘No?’ Shrugging, Joscelin started to turn away.

  ‘Christ’s wounds, just get on with it!’ Montsorrel snarled.

  Joscelin gave a sarcastic flourish and sauntered away to instruct his men to strip and reload his own sound wain.

  Linnet de Montsorrel rejoined the women. Her stomach was queasy with fear. Everything had its price and she knew she would have to pay hers later when she and Giles were alone.

  ‘I’m cold, Mama,’ her son whimpered, and abandoned his nurse to cling to Linnet’s damp skirts.

  She stooped to chafe his hands, noting with concern that his eyes were heavy and his complexion pale with exhaustion. ‘It won’t be long now, sweetheart,’ she comforted. She folded him beneath the protection of her cloak like a mother hen spreading her wing over a chick.

  ‘Madam, I know that man.’ Ella, her personal maid, jutted her chin towards the mercenary whom Linnet had just shamed into helping them. ‘It’s Joscelin de Gael, son of William Ironheart.’

  ‘Oh?’ Linnet knew of William Ironheart by reputation. They said he was so hard he pissed nails, that he was stubborn, embittered and dangerous to cross. Linnet studied his son. ‘How do you come to be acquainted with such a one?’

  Ella blushed. ‘I only know him by sight, madam. He was at my sister’s wedding in the spring as a friend of the groom. They were both garrison soldiers at Nottingham Castle.’

  Linnet assessed de Gael thoughtfully. She judged him to be in his late twenties. ‘What is he doing in the mercenary trade if he’s Ironheart’s son?’

  ‘He’s only Lord William’s bastard. His mother was a common camp-follower, so rumour says.’ Ella folded her arms, hugging her shawl against her body. ‘Apparently when de Gael’s mother died in childbed, Lord William went m
ad with grief and tried to kill himself, but his sword shattered and he was only wounded. After that, men started calling him Ironheart because his breast was stronger than the steel. I’d say Brokenheart was more appropriate.’ Ella’s gaze returned to their reluctant rescuer, who was now standing back from the wain, one hand on his sword-hilt, the other pushing his rain-soaked hair off his forehead.

  Linnet, all romantic notions literally knocked out of her head by six years of marriage to Giles, said nothing, her feeling one of irritation rather than pity. She knew what it was like to be usurped by another woman in your own hall and how much that other woman’s status also depended on arrogant masculine whim.

  Two panting men-at-arms struggled out of the broken wain carrying a large, ironbound chest between them.

  ‘Make haste!’ Giles snapped, and Linnet saw him scowl at de Gael, who was eyeing the chest with open speculation.

  ‘I see now the kind of weight you carry,’ de Gael remarked. ‘Small wonder that your wheel broke.’ In his own good time he withdrew his scrutiny and approached the women.

  Linnet retreated behind downcast lids, knowing she would be the one to suffer if de Gael chose to take his impertinence further. Giles might think twice about assaulting a man of the mercenary’s undoubted ability, but no such restraint would prevent him from beating her. She heard the men puffing and swearing as their strongbox was manoeuvred into de Gael’s wain. Giles’s voice was querulous with impatience and bad temper, and inwardly she quailed.

  De Gael crouched on his heels and gently peeled aside a wet fold of her cloak. ‘And who have we here?’ he asked.

  ‘My son, Robert.’ She flashed a rapid glance at her husband. He was still occupied in ranting at his guards but in a moment he would turn round.

  De Gael did not miss her look. ‘You have a high courage, my lady,’ he murmured. ‘I won’t make it harder for you than it already is.’ Plucking the child from beneath her cloak, he swept him up in his arms. ‘Come, my young soldier, there’s a dry corner prepared especially for you in my cart.’

  Linnet stretched her arms towards her son with an involuntary sound of protest. Robert peered at his mother over de Gael’s shoulder, his eyes wide with shock, but the move had been so sudden that he had no time to cry and by the time he belatedly found his voice, he was being placed on a dry blanket in the good wain with a lamb-skin rug tucked up to his chin.

  Linnet, following hard on de Gael’s heels, found herself taken by the elbow and helped up beside her son. Robert stopped crying and began to knead the lamb’s wool like a nursing kitten. Linnet stroked his brow and looked at de Gael. ‘You have my gratitude,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  The mercenary shrugged. ‘No sense in keeping him out in that downpour when he can be warm in here. I expect your husband’s compensation to reflect my care of his goods.’ He started to withdraw. ‘There is room for your women, too, my lady. I’ll tell them, shall I?’

  Rain pattered on the roof of the wain. She looked out through a canvas arch on a tableau of hazy green and brown. The smell of her wet garments clogged her nostrils. De Gael walked across to her maids. He moved with a wolf ’s ungainly elegance and she did not think that the similarity stopped there. And yet he had been considerate beyond the bounds of most men of her acquaintance.

  Linnet eyed her husband and felt queasy at the sight of his fists clenched around his belt. She had tried to be a good wife to him but he was difficult to please and she dwelt in a constant state of trepidation, wondering from which angle of his nature the next small cruelty would come. He always found a scapegoat to blame; nothing was ever his fault, and in the household that scapegoat was usually her.

  Behind her, at the other end of the wain, their soldiers were depositing the clothing coffers with much bumping and cursing. Robert’s eyelids drooped and closed. Linnet leaned her head against her son’s, her arm around him, and wearily shut her own eyes.

  Chapter 2

  ‘Joscelin, you rogue!’ Maude de Montsart swamped her nephew in an embrace he remembered from childhood. His nostrils were overpowered by mingled scents of lavender, sweat and the sweet almond marchpane she adored. For the last five years she had been a widow and dwelling in the de Rocher household as a companion and housekeeper to the lady Agnes, his father’s wife. ‘What brings you to London?’

  He returned her hug and smiled. ‘I’m here for the horse fair. I have to replace some war gear, and I need a new palfrey.’

  ‘I thought you’d be in France by now, doing the round of the tourneys.’ She handed his saturated cloak to a servant and drew him down the hall to the dais where there stood a wine flagon and some fine glazed cups. Filling one from the other, she watched him drink. He took four rapid, deep swallows, and then breathed out hard. His shoulders relaxed and his smile this time was less perfunctory.

  ‘Not this season. I’ve a contract to serve the justiciar until Michaelmas at least. He may send me and the men to Normandy to join the king but we’re more likely to be used for garrison duty.’ He refilled the cup and gazed around the hall. Two servants were lighting the candles and closing the shutters on a thickening but calm dusk. The rain had stopped an hour since and the sun had glimmered through the clouds in time to set. Another woman stirred a pot of soup over the central hearth and the smoke rising from the fire was savoury with the aroma of garlic and onions. There were some hangings on the wall he had not seen before and he noticed that his father had finally bought a new box chair for himself. The old one, through a combination of splinters and woodworm, had been lethal. The cups were new also. He recognized Maude’s taste in the cheerful horse-and-rider scenes painted in thick white slip on the red background.

  ‘It’s a bad business, the king’s own sons turning against him.’ Maude folded her arms beneath her ample bosom and clucked her tongue. ‘I’m old enough to remember how it was before Henry sat on the throne, and I never want to live through the like again. What was he thinking to have his eldest son anointed? Bound to give the boy ideas beyond himself.’

  ‘He already had ideas beyond himself before that, feckless whelp.’ Joscelin took another long swallow of wine and felt it glide smoothly down his throat with a slight after-sting in his nostrils. ‘When his father had him crowned he thought that by confirming the succession in so strong a manner he was creating stability. Little did he know.’ He shook his head. ‘I do not suppose he expected the discord to come from the very son he has anointed, but he was always going to store up trouble. The boy’s realized that for all the frippery and promises he’s no closer to power than he was as a swaddled infant. As far as his father’s concerned, he can be a king all he wants as long as it’s king of nothing. I’m inclined to agree.’ Grimacing, Joscelin twitched his shoulders. The rain had soaked through his cloak and there was an uncomfortable clamminess across the back of his neck. ‘At least it keeps me employed. What does my father say?’

  ‘The same as you, but he’s less polite.’

  Joscelin’s hazel eyes brightened with amusement. ‘Where is the old wolf anyway? I’d have expected him to have bellowed my backside off by now.’

  ‘He’s dining with the justiciar.’

  ‘Is he now?’ Joscelin looked thoughtful as he sat down in his father’s new chair. Richard de Luci was the nominal ruler of England while the king was absent in Normandy. Fiercely loyal to Henry, he was a skilled administrator and warrior. Joscelin’s father and Richard de Luci were friends of long standing and similar interests, but their socializing was usually a matter of business as well as pleasure.

  ‘Apparently the Earl of Leicester and others are in London for the purpose of asking de Luci’s permission to leave England with troops and money for King Henry’s army.’ Maude ordered a servant to bring food.

  Joscelin raised his brows. Robert of Leicester was self-seeking and arrogant, without an honest bone in his body. If he was going to war, it was to feather his own nest at the expense of weaker men. King Henry was certainly not weak - but his son w
as. ‘I saw some of that money today,’ he told his aunt. ‘Indeed, I helped bring it into the city. It was in the custody of one of young Henry’s lick-boots and if I have not walked in here with Giles de Montsorrel’s blood all over my hands, it is one of God’s miracles.’

  Maude sat down beside him, leaned her elbows on the trestle and gave him her full attention as he told her about his encounter on the Clerkenwell road, his tone growing vehement with disgust as the tale progressed. ‘De Montsorrel looked at me as if he had a stink beneath his nose that he was too highbred to mention. I tell you, if it were not for the women and the little boy, I’d have struck him in the teeth and withdrawn my aid. You should have seen his men struggling with his strongbox. There was more in it than a few shillings to buy himself a couple of nags at Smithfield and trinkets for his wife.’

  ‘He’s lately come into an inheritance.’ Maude screwed up her face as she strove to remember. ‘His father died of a seizure at Eastertide, although he’d been having falling fits for almost a year.’

  Joscelin nodded. ‘So I’d heard.’ He did not add that Raymond’s final seizure on Easter Sunday, immediately before Mass, had taken place between the thighs of a servant’s daughter at the moment of supreme pleasure. The incident had been the source of much ribald comment in alehouse and barracks. Giles de Montsorrel had either a family reputation to keep up or one he was never going to live down. That thought reminded him of his own half-brothers and he grimaced.

  ‘Are Ralf and Ivo here?’

  A servant mounted the dais and set a steaming bowl of the soup before Joscelin, and a simnel loaf with a cross cut in the top.

  ‘I’m afraid they are.’ The pleated wrinkles around Maude’s mouth deepened. ‘Not that we often see them, the amount of time they spend carousing in the stews. Your father says they’re just sowing wild oats and that they’ll tire soon enough.’