by Jo Beverley
So that was the mighty and feared FitzRoger of Cleeve. Claire had expected someone bigger, someone rather like Baldwin of Biggin. She should have known Renald’s confrere would not be of that type.
He stood beside his wife but slightly back, clearly giving her the lordship here. He dominated all the same. He wasn’t a monster of a man, but Claire wasn’t sure she’d be able to drive any sort of bargain with him.
Something in the way he stood, in the lines of his body and face, said hard, said ruthless. He reminded her of the first impression she’d had of Renald—the war-wolf ready to kill. With Bastard FitzRoger, however, she doubted there was a softer, gentler side. She had no trouble believing that he would whip a rebellious wife. She pitied Imogen, even if the young woman did seem to be happy with her fate.
Had Imogen really knocked him out? The man looked as invulnerable as Carrisford’s stone tower.
But then, as the horses stopped and Claire waited for Renald to help her down, she remembered how easily her own husband had been thrown into danger. Strong men and good fighters though they doubtless were—perhaps some of the best—they were only flesh and blood, and thus vulnerable.
Even, it would appear, to a determined young woman with a rock. Or a stick. Her blow behind the knees would bring down even FitzRoger if she had chance to use it.
With some surprise she realized what had happened today.
Renald was setting her on the ground. “You look troubled.”
“I’ve just realized that I helped kill.”
She expected some kind of debate on the rights and wrongs of it—wanted it—but he simply said, “I’m very glad you did,” and led her toward their hosts.
Killing, she thought. All in a day’s work.
But he’d said she must accept the sword and now she did. Or at last, she accepted that when her loved ones were threatened, she too could become a wolf.
Chapter 24
Claire tried to decide whether FitzRoger was a handsome man or not. There was something about his elegant features and dark hair that said yes, but the harsh overlay and a scar or two made him something else.
If Renald was granite, FitzRoger was black marble.
His smile was pleasant enough, however, as he greeted her, and turned startlingly warm when he spoke to Renald. Claire winced at her own misjudgment. Like brothers, she remembered, as she watched them embrace.
Then Imogen pulled Claire in for a greeting kiss. “Is everything all right now? It must have been terrible.” She wrapped an arm around Claire’s waist and led her up the wooden steps that climbed the outside of the stone keep. “Everyone was upset about your father. And your hair! Isn’t it strange? I’m growing mine, of course, but I must admit it’s a great deal easier to have so much less of it. The queen is so excited.”
“About your hair?” Imogen hadn’t changed entirely. She’d always been a chatterbox.
Imogen chuckled. “No! About your wedding! Or your wedding night. She loves weddings. Come and make your curtsy.”
In all the turmoil, Claire had forgotten to prepare to face Henry Beauclerk. She was glad to have her vow to Renald to guide her. She curtsied low before the chair upon which the king sat, then raised her head to look at him. On the surface he hadn’t changed. Dark hair framed bright eyes in a comely face marked quite distinctly with ruthlessness.
“Lady Claire, we are pleased to see you. Rise, and sit beside me.”
Claire obeyed, taking a stool by his chair, as he greeted Renald. “How goes Summerbourne, my lord?”
“Well, sire. May I present Thomas, son of Lord Clarence.”
Thomas looked flushed, though whether with excitement or nervousness, Claire couldn’t tell. She worried still that he might suddenly turn rash, but he knelt properly.
The king leaned forward to raise his chin. “Young Thomas. You’ve grown into a fine lad. Will you like being a page in my household?” Claire saw the king’s searching look, and knew what he checked for. Rebellion.
Thomas frowned and hesitated, and Claire’s heart missed a beat. Then he said, “I don’t know, sire. I don’t know what to expect.”
Henry laughed. “A sensible answer. Do you like horses and hawks? Swordplay and fighting?”
“Oh, yes, sire.”
“Then you will like my household as long as you are obedient and work hard.” The king crooked a finger and a lad of about Thomas’s age hastened forward to kneel.
“Bruno, this is Thomas of Summerbourne. Take care of him.”
In moments, Thomas was gone, swallowed up in the king’s enormous household. Claire resisted a weak urge to reach out and hold him back.
“I will have a mind to him,” said the king, clearly seeing her concern. She looked at him, remembering Renald’s words. He probably meant what he said, though she was still sure he must have an uneasy conscience over whatever he’d done to be sure that her father could not win.
“The Summerbourne angels,” Henry said, studying her. “I called you two that, you know.”
“Yes, sire. As in the story about Pope Gregory.”
“Indeed. That was how I felt when I saw you at your father’s knee. Such pretty children, and so very English in your looks. I was born in England, you know, and I have an English wife.” He patted the hand of his fair-haired queen. “Perhaps our children will be little angels, too.”
Before Claire could think what to say, he frowned. “I am not pleased, however, by this new fashion for ladies to chop off their hair.”
Claire couldn’t help but share a glance with Imogen.
“Nor,” said the king, “with a certain boldness we detect among the young women of the kingdom. Lady Imogen, at least, should have learned her lesson.”
To Claire’s surprise, at this casual reference to her whipping, Imogen just smiled.
Henry shook his head and raised his queen’s hand to his lips. “You would both do well to take the example of my sweet wife.”
With soft fair hair—properly long—and large, gentle eyes, Queen Matilda did seem sweetly docile. “It is a shame,” she said, “that your hair is so short, Lady Claire. But hair at least grows. Poor Imogen is blemished.”
Claire hadn’t noticed, but now she saw a pale scar down Imogen’s cheek. Her mouth went dry. More brutality of her husband’s?
Suddenly she wavered with doubts. This was a world as unreal as the pictures she drew on parchment. The king seemed gentle and benign, but everyone knew him to be ruthless. He’d proved it when he’d arranged an old friend’s death.
The queen seemed content, but she, too, was a forced bride. The only reason for the union was that she carried the blood of the old royal house of England in her veins.
Imogen seemed to be a happy bride, but she couldn’t be, could she, when she’d been beaten and scarred, and had tried to escape. Perhaps she had to pretend for fear of more of the same?
So, what did this say about Thomas’s fate, and her own?
“With your leave, sire,” said Imogen, “Lady Claire must be exhausted after such a long journey. May I take her to rest before we eat?”
Claire realized that she must have sat in dazed silence for far too long.
The queen leaned forward to pat her head as if she were a dog. “Of course. We certainly want the bride well rested before tomorrow night.”
Claire rose and curtsied, happy to escape.
Tomorrow night. And now doubts were coming back to crush her.
Imogen led Claire and her maids up a wide inner staircase to the upper floor, then through a maze of rooms to a small chamber in a corner of the keep. It could just hold one large, curtained bed and a bench beneath a narrow window. Herbs hung in bags to sweeten the air, however, and the hangings were rich.
“I’m afraid with the king and his court here, we’re desperately short of space. If this wasn’t going to serve as your wedding bower, you’d be five to a bed like the rest of us.”
Claire sat on the bench, suddenly exhausted. “I’m still not sure
…”
“No?” Imogen’s glance was sharp. Oh yes, she had definitely changed. “The king is set on it.”
Was that fear in her voice?
Claire dismissed her maids. “Imogen, what happened between you and your husband?”
Imogen perched on the edge of the bed. “Happened?”
“Your marriage. Was it forced?”
“Not exactly … Oh, do you think I was dragged to the altar screaming? No. I needed a man to protect me, and FitzRoger was an excellent choice.”
“So you could have said no?”
Imogen grinned. “No. But by then I didn’t really want to.”
“You love him?”
“Of course.”
“But he whipped you!”
Imogen wriggled back to sit cross-legged on the bed. It was a childish position, but there was nothing naive about her manner. “Who told you that?”
“Isn’t it true?”
“Yes and no. I simply wondered what form of the story was out there.”
“I was told you knocked him out, and in retaliation he locked you up and whipped you.”
“Interesting. And mostly true.” She looked astonishingly cheerful about it. “The long story will have to wait, but the short one is that we were imprisoned by Arnulf of Warbrick. De Bellême’s brother?”
Claire nodded with a shudder. She’d heard Warbrick was as bad as his monstrous brother.
“It was awful. But when we had him at our mercy, Fitz-Roger was set upon fighting him to the death. One of these man things. No one else would stop him, so I knocked him out.”
Claire blinked at the prosaic words. “You didn’t think he’d win? Renald says he never loses.”
“Normally, he doesn’t. But he was wounded. When we had Warbrick in our power it seemed wrong to give him even the smallest chance. But you know men …” She shrugged.
Claire wasn’t sure she did, or not the wolfish sort of men, but she could see that Imogen’s interference wouldn’t have gone down well. “What happened?”
“Well, after I’d had Warbrick killed—”
“What?”
Imogen dismissed that with a wave of her hand. “I simply ordered our men to fill him full of arrows. So, after that, Renald carried me off to Cleeve. That’s FitzRoger’s castle—”
“Imprisoned you, you mean.”
Imogen laughed. “Oh, poor Renald. How can you think it? He just wanted me out of reach of FitzRoger’s first rage. It was probably as well, though I wanted to nurse him.”
Claire rubbed her head, feeling dizzy. “But then when FitzRoger did recover, he put you on trial and whipped you.”
“No. The king put me on trial, pressured by the other barons. They really wanted my skin. For some reason,” she added with a wicked glint in her eye, “men don’t like to hear of a woman knocking out her husband to make him see sense.”
Claire couldn’t help but laugh. “But surely Lord FitzRoger didn’t have to whip you.”
“It is a grievous offense. Attacking a husband is bad enough, but attacking a vassal of the king is the same as attacking the king himself.”
Claire crossed herself. “But even so—”
“But even so, he managed to make it symbolic. Only one stroke, and over my clothes.” She rolled her eyes. “He was so angry! He wouldn’t have had to do that if I’d taken the oath.”
“The oath?”
“Never to do such a thing again. Henry and he had set it up, you see. A way out. But I would do it again. Better a whipping than to see him dead. I couldn’t take a false oath.”
“No. Of course not.” Claire stared at a hanging on the far wall. How close this was to her father’s case. He hadn’t been able to take a false oath, either, but Henry hadn’t tried to make the punishment symbolic.
Or rather, she realized with sudden insight, Henry had again come up against someone who wouldn’t take the easy way out.
Henry and Renald. Now she understood Renald’s anger at her father.
Just as FitzRoger had been angry at his wife for making him whip her, Renald was angry at her father, angry at being forced to be an executioner.
What’s more, if Claire had thought to stop her father, stop him physically as Imogen had stopped her husband, all this might never have happened.
Imogen slid to her feet. “I’ve chattered too much and tired you even more. I’ll send your ladies.”
“No.” Claire put out a hand to stop her. “It’s only that your story makes me think. About my father.” She wasn’t ready to pursue her interrupted thoughts openly, so she addressed another. “I love Renald, but I’m still uneasy in my mind about the fact that he killed my father.”
“As I would be. But it was a court battle.”
“But such an unequal one!”
“Before God, that doesn’t matter.”
Claire searched Imogen for a trace of doubt. “Do you believe that?”
“Of course. Don’t you?”
“Yes. So I can’t see how my father lost.”
Claire knew she should keep her counsel, but she had to talk to someone and Imogen seemed to have a sharp insight. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I still feel that the king murdered his brother, so if God had a hand in that battle, my father should have won.”
Imogen pushed a tendril of hair out of her eyes. “But that wasn’t what the trial was about.”
Claire stared at her. “It wasn’t? What then?”
“Your father’s treason, and thus the king’s right to the throne.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“Not really. It’s all to do with elections and consent and things. I don’t pay much attention. But would you rather have Duke Robert ruling England through de Bellême and his like?” When Claire didn’t answer, Imogen shook her head. “I’m chattering again. I’ll call your maids.”
Stunned by the new idea, by a light as hopeful as dawn, Claire had to know one more thing. “Stop a moment! How did your cheek get scarred?”
Imogen turned at the door, touching the long pale line. “Do you think FitzRoger did it? Poor man. Everyone thinks he’s harsh, but truly, he isn’t. Or not unless he has to be,” she added carelessly.
Oh yes, Imogen had changed.
“He’d never willingly hurt me,” she continued, without a trace of doubt. “This happened when I was escaping Warbrick’s men. I smashed the lanthorn and a jagged piece of the horn cut me.” She smiled, still stroking the mark. “I was afraid he’d be disgusted by me. It looked awful when it was healing, and there was my hair as well. But he pointed out all his scars. He’s a good man. So’s Renald. And Renald’s a great deal sweeter.”
She disappeared, calling for the maids. Claire stayed on the bed, buffeted by a dozen new thoughts, all of them hopeful.
Renald and FitzRoger were up on the wall—one of the few private places in the crowded castle. Guards patrolled, but they were not many in a time when no danger threatened, and they knew to keep their distance.
Renald gave his friend a brief account of the last few months.
Leaning back against the battlements, FitzRoger asked, “Do you regret taking the task for me?”
“No.” After a moment, he added, “I love her.”
“Clearly.”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Perhaps only to a friend. What worries you?”
Renald grimaced. “Terrifies, more like. I’ve made her swear an oath, but … She believes that the king had his brother killed—”
“So does most of England.”
“But she thinks that means her father’s cause was just. Therefore the fight was unfair. She hates everything about it.” He told his friend about the betrothal banquet and the sword.
“Salisbury, as you say, trying the indirect route.”
“And Claire has made me promise not to act against him over it. He’s her godfather.”
“It’s probably as well. Henry wants things to settle, not be stirred.”
&n
bsp; “At least that attack on the road may have convinced her that fighting skills are not all evil. But what if her beliefs overwhelm her promise, and she accuses Henry to his face?”
FitzRoger winced. “She’s sworn not to?”
“I forced her.” Renald pulled a face. “I threatened to break her leg if she didn’t.”
“A bit crude.”
“What else was I to do? Refuse the king’s ‘invitation’? Claim she was ill and lock her up? Even if we could pull off the deception, her people would release her.”
“Could you have done it? Injured her?”
“Could you?” Renald countered.
After a thoughtful moment, FitzRoger shrugged. “Yes. Just as Imogen would knock me unconscious again. Love drives us to strange behaviors. And speaking of love …”
Little in his face showed his feelings as Imogen climbed the wooden stairs to join them, holding her veil against the breeze.
“Oh, pest,” she said, and pulled off both headcloth and circlet, leaving her cinnamon curls to be tossed by the wind. “Renald, I think you’ll be pleased to know that I’ve told your bride all about my folly and punishment, and blown away some of her fears. She seemed to think poor FitzRoger had split open my face.” She went into Renald’s arms for a hug and a kiss. “You, however, are looking weighed down by cares, my friend.”
“While you are blooming, little flower.”
She smiled and went to stand by FitzRoger. “Three months’ blooming, though it hardly shows yet.”
“Congratulations.”
FitzRoger moved a finger to play in her hair and she smiled. Renald watched, wondering if he and Claire could ever achieve the peaceful connection he saw between these two. They’d started in acrimony, but not with a father’s death between them.
“I think she’ll consummate the marriage tomorrow,” he said.
FitzRoger’s brows rose. “You don’t look particularly happy about it.”
“It won’t mean much if she still thinks it’s wrong.” He laughed wryly. “If I’d had any sense, I would have taken her into the bushes and done it when she was exalted by battle fever on the road.”