The Lords of Arden

by Helen Burton

  Geoffrey Mikelton took Henley High Street at the gallop, two of his men valiantly trying to keep pace with him over the mud-spattered cobbles, their blue cloaks flying, hair already plastered down with rain. Mikelton cornered sharply, so that they almost overshot him, and ducked under an archway into the yard of the White Lion. Hitching his lathered mount, the old man strode into the tap room and the smoke billowed out from the chimney as the door slammed to in his wake. He scanned the faces glancing up at him, white in the torchlight or rosy from fire glow. Eleanor, mine host's amply endowed and very pretty wife, cradling an ale pot, lifted a hand in greeting and jerked her head towards the group of men sprawled about a scrubbed table, where bright coins lay glinting in silvery piles and the dice tumbled, bone-white, from eager hands.

  A young man in plain grey fustian, one eye on the proceedings, was idly plucking a citole; a tall youth in russet perched on the end of a bench, had a dark-eyed girl on his knee and was whispering nonsense beneath the curtain of her hair. For the rest, heads were bent over the game in progress, a hand stretched out now and again for the nearest mug of ale.

  Mikelton, breathless from his ride, passed them all over until his roving eye came to rest at last on the young man reaching out to grasp the dice with a brown hand that suddenly captured a spurt of fire in the heart of a fine emerald. His jupon was of dark blue velvet, cut in the favourite style of courts and kings just then; it hugged his hips, elaborately scalloped at its hem to match the long depending sleeves thrust back from the slim wrists and lined with yellow silk. He had unfastened the top buttons of the tunic and the whiteness of fine linen showed at his throat. Mikelton only noticed that the thick blue mantle, flung carelessly over a settle, was still too damp and that droplets of water glittered in the auburn hair, a sign that he had not graced the inn long enough to have dried out or, mercifully, to be very drunk.

  The farmers, the Henley Burgesses, the lesser gentry, were known to shake their heads, brows drawn together, and call this young man John the Bastard and John Lackland; their wives and daughters to lower their gaze and smile over their embroideries and forgive John de Montfort whatever his latest trespass may have been before it was spluttered out by their menfolk.

  Geoffrey Mikelton had been Constable of Beaudesert for over twenty years now, but he could still remember the day when Peter, Third Lord Montfort, had proudly installed this young man's mother at the castle; there was little he did not know about Lora Astley's son. He moved round the table, almost unmarked, until he was standing at Montfort's back, and put a hand on his shoulder. The dice spilled out onto the table - a double six! Montfort laughed and without looking up said, ‘Geoffrey? What direful calamity brings you here? Insurrection in the wards? No? The Welsh hammering at the gates perhaps? Or has my brother lost another of his milk teeth?’

  Geoffrey permitted himself the pleasure of letting iron-hard fingers bite into the smooth muscles of the young man's shoulder and said grimly. ‘Your Great Grandmother is dying. It is thought doubtful she will survive the night. Unaccountably, she wishes to see you.’ He swept up the mantle and went to drape it about Montfort's shoulders but the young man snatched at it impatiently and, tossing it over one shoulder, walked out of the inn without a word.

  ~o0o~

  Guy de Montfort, small frame enveloped in a dark frieze cloak, black hair clinging in limp strands to his thin shoulders, stared out across the benighted, rain-slashed countryside. Water lay glinting in all the hollows, low cloud shrouded Liveridge Hill, blotting out the stars, and the stone crenellations atop the Mellent Tower were clammy to the touch. He turned away almost thankfully at the sound of de Lobbenham's voice. Peter's chaplain laid a hand upon his son. ‘I've come from Lady Maud, she wishes to speak with you, child, and with John too. I've despatched Mikelton to find him. Go down to her, Guy, she has so little time left with us.’

  The child hesitated. ‘Come with me, Father.’

  The chaplain shook his head. ‘Don't be afraid of death. It must come like a welcome benediction to one of Madam Maud's great age.’

  John had joined them, silent as a cat. ‘How trite and comforting. I'll never believe that, Father! She'll die fighting for breath as she's fought for everything she ever wanted. I think you mean that her death won't be stark tragedy. You and she were always at loggerheads, after all. I can't think she has ever approved of a priest who was once his Lord's drinking partner, a frequenter of dark taverns and much, much worse.’ He laughed and caught Guy looking up at them, puzzled and worried. He ran a hand through his small brother's dark hair.

  ‘Are you staying up here all night, Guy?’

  Jack de Lobbenham watched them leave the battlements for the stair-well. It was with a sense of wonderment at God's workings that he had seen John de Montfort grow to young manhood with more than his fair share of the Montfort independence of spirit - John the bastard son - whilst young Guy upon whom the line was to evolve, showed not a trace of his proud ancestry, of the men who had fought for and against kings and sat at table with queens. Guy had the looks and temperament of his gentle, placid young mother who had given Peter his legitimate heir and slipped unobtrusively away before her twentieth birthday.

  The two brothers, Lora's son and Margaret's, entered the old lady's bedchamber. The torches were low in the sconces, the shadows huge and mobile, flickering grotesquely on painted walls and ceiling. Peter's younger sister rose from her vigil beside the sick woman. Elizabeth Freville was quite stout now and the bronze hair, Maud's legacy, was here and there streaked with grey.

  ‘Don't tire her, boys, and Guy, don't remain here too long. This is no place for a child,’ she added, flashing John a warning look.

  ‘She asked to see him, Aunt.’ John rebuked her. Bess nodded and swept out of the room in an aura of rose-water and green camlet. He sauntered over to his Great Grandmother's canopied bed. She seemed so small and lost, her skin wrinkled and dried. A half-smile cracked the parchment mask of her face. John's six foot towered above her; he leant over and took a withered hand in his strong brown ones. The violet eyes were half mocking, half concerned as they penetrated her own dull gaze; the lids were almost closed over the faded green of her eyes. ‘Anything I can do, Grandmother?’

  She snorted. ‘You can keep that fool of a hedge priest out of here for an hour or so and let me die in peace. I want to speak with Guy. Where is he?’

  ‘He's here.’ John turned to his young half-brother, standing transfixed in the centre of the room.

  ‘I can't come nearer, John!’ the boy whispered. ‘She looks so awful; I couldn't touch her.’ He was near to tears. John propelled him towards the bed in merciless exasperation then left him and wandered to the window.

  ‘Guy?’ the old voice quavered.

  ‘Yes, Great Grandmother?’ At last he crept near and knelt beside her, hands clasped tightly together on her coverlet. He looked so much younger than his years.

  ‘A great many hopes are centred on you, child. You won't be able to live up to them all of course, no-one ever does. Your Great Grandfather and I had our hopes before Evesham. They did teach you about Evesham, child?’

  ‘Yes, Grandmother - when the Royalists fired Beaudesert and you were left in charge with only a handful of servants…’

  ‘How old are you, Guy?’

  ‘Six years, Great Grandmother.’

  ‘I was thirteen then, but I survived the horrors of sack, the total reversal of all our fortunes. Always remember, the brave man is not he who has no fear but he who hides it, learns to overcome it. Will you remember that and try not to dishonour our name?’

  ‘I will try, Great Grandmother, really.’

  ‘Go now, I want to speak privately with John and time is running away. Where are you, John?’ But Peter's bastard was at her side. ‘Pull me up against the bolster. That's right, now listen. You and I understand each other, boy, that is why I have to speak. I was a fool when I stopped your father from marrying your mother. Oh, before you came on the scene. Have yo
u hated me for cheating you out of your birthright?’

  John shook his head. ‘I don't miss what I never had. I can stand on my own two feet and Guy will grow up. What do you expect at six? But he'd make a good little priest; he's meek and mild for a Montfort.’

  ‘Ha!’ Maud snorted. ‘We tried to make a frocked priest of your father. Montfort's don't look well in the cloth. Come closer, John.

  ‘Sixteen years ago, at Pinley Abbey, your mother gave birth to another of your father's by-blows. It was expedient that the birth be kept from him at the time. To this day he is ignorant of it; your mother produced another son...’ She paused, eyeing him, awaiting the effect of her words.

  ‘And I suppose you had it strangled at birth?’ hazarded John with a crooked smile.

  Maud almost chuckled. ‘Bless you, lad, this is no romance. No, your brother was reared by a London acquaintance. I later had him apprenticed to a Master Craftsman in Bishopsgate but it will rest with you whether he's to be brought to Beaudesert.’

  ‘It is your dying wish,’ stated John tonelessly.

  ‘It is a choice I am leaving with you. Let sleeping dogs lie or share the considerable perquisites of being a noble's bastard with a low-reared stranger. I'm making no more decisions, John, I'm weary. I must say goodbye to your father - there's much he'll be changing when I'm gone, no doubt.’ The old hands wandered restlessly over the blue coverlet and she began to talk in jumbled sentences, rambling back to the days after Evesham.

  John got to his feet and dropped a kiss on her forehead, turned on his heel and left her.

  Beyond the arras covering the door Peter de Montfort waited. John shook his head and held the curtain aside. Maud de Montfort died several hours later, the entire family at her bedside. Peter kept a vigil throughout the night but Bess sent Guy to bed and John went alone into the deserted chapel where only the altar candles lent light to walls crowded with everyone's favourite saints, picking out their haloes, dappling the wings of ascending angels. The gentle scent of early spring flowers, suddenly heavy and pungent, filled his nostrils.

  ‘I can't have him here, Great Grandmother, you know it’s impossible. After all this time - and besides, an artisan - he wouldn't be fit for anything.’ He wrinkled his nose with eighteen year old hauteur. A painted devil leered at him from behind the altarpiece. ‘You said I had a choice but I think you made it for all of us years ago.’

  There was a silence everywhere, a quiet emphasised by sound; the night wind and the rain beyond the mullions of the windows; the spluttering of the candles; the skittering of the mice. John stood, looking out across the courtyard towards the dark towers of the gatehouse, etched against the stormy sky. Tomorrow, and it was almost tomorrow now, would begin a new chapter in the chronicles of the Montforts, and for the first time in over eight decades Maud would have no part in their trials and tribulations. John turned back into the light and the saints mocked at him with their painted eyes. St. Michael was particularly derisive.

  ~o0o~

  The woman on the grey palfrey, motionless amongst the blossom, twisted her hands nervously in their fine leather gloves and pulled the hood of her cloak closer about silver-fair hair, glancing this way and that, conscious of the sound of her own breathing, oblivious of the springtime carolling of a hundred songbirds, heedless of the scent of the heady white blossoms all about her.

  This was no maid, fled from her mother's side and her tapestry work to tryst in the woods with her lover. Lady Brandstone had been a virtuous wife and mother for fifteen summers. Her husband, Sir Hugh, was Lord of Lapworth; respected by his neighbours, admired even, prosperous but dull. His wife clutched at the reins of the grey mare and her heart thudded beneath her blue gown and her pale cheeks flooded with colour.

  Lady Brandstone was trespassing, and that was the least of her crimes. Sir Hugh's demesne marched with Archer land and the man who spurred his mount along the woodland rides towards her was returning from an errand for his own Lord to Archer of Umberslade. The rider, in Warwick's red and gold livery, the twin badges of bear and ragged staff clear upon his breast, was young and tall. He slid down from his trotting sorrel and, in a half dozen long strides, was beside the woman's mare. He put up his arms and she slipped easily down into them.

  They stood for a moment, the woman's light blue eyes searching the young man's face. It was a long face, almost Byzantine in its proportions, sliced by a straight nose, and the eyes, which were narrowed against the dappling April sunshine, were green and clear, fringed with fair lashes; it was the face of a stained-glass saint, of a stone archangel.

  ‘Christine,’ he said and the mask fell, the angel's face closed over hers and the hands of a horseman and a soldier were firm and strong upon the dark blue stuff of her gown. The lock of hair which had escaped from her golden net matched his strand for strand, silver-blonde, fine and straight.

  Christine Brandstone pushed at his shoulders. ‘Not here. Tether the horses and I will show you where. I know the Archer woods as well as I know our own.’ Then she took his hand and pushed a way through the young leaves until they parted of their own accord to form a tiny dell, carpeted with lush, dark grass and scattered with late windflowers, wood sorrel and speedwells. She turned then to face her lover, her hair about her shoulders and her skirt caught up over one arm to reveal the silver kirtle beneath. She reminded him of a tapestry in the solar at Warwick, stitched by a long-dead countess - Guinevere awaiting the coming of Lancelot.

  ‘This week has been seven days too long,’ said Nicholas Durvassal with conventional gallantry. ‘Warwick has kept me close.’

  ‘Does he suspect? Can he know?’ Christine was shivering, glancing about her.

  ‘No, I'm sure of it. Oh, we are underlings, you and I, but he would regard my duplicity as a chink in his armour and I should have been hauled up before him days ago. Christine, I love you.’ He dropped down amongst the soft grass and the wood anemones and tugged her gently to his side.

  ‘Nicholas…,’ she pulled away from him, ‘I lie awake at night with Hugh at my side and I long for you. I spend days pacing the solar, listening for the thud of hooves on the road and your coming, afraid that I betray what I do by a word or a look. I tell myself that I will end what is between us and when I see you I cannot do it!’ She shrugged helplessly.

  ‘And I will not,’ said Durvassal with finality.

  ‘It is not a woman's place to be strong but I should be thinking of my daughters and of the shame I will be bringing upon them. I should be thinking of Hugh's honour....’

  ‘To hell with your daughters! To hell with Hugh! Umberslade is lovely in the spring. There's a green bird up on the cherry, tell me what it is.’ He lay on his back in the windflowers, confident of his own irresistibility.

  ‘Nicky, I won't be side-tracked.’

  ‘Nor I. Is it a popinjay?’

  ‘Nicky, you will have to let me go!’

  ‘If you abandon me, Christine, I will come for you in arms beneath the nose of the admirable Hugh and the three little girls and the assistant cook and the man who cleans out the garderobe and…’

  ‘Hush, I'm not going to leave you.’ Lady Brandstone let his lips fasten hungrily upon hers and above them, from the cherry, a greenfinch bobbed away towards Lapworth, the sun on his wings.

  Chapter Eight

  May - 1341

  The early morning sunshine had hardly penetrated Master Scarlet's yard when Stephen Bosco, eyes narrowed with sleep, groped his way across the cobbles, swinging a leather bucket. When he returned from the conduit, struggling two-handed with his burden, slopping water across his path, the enclosed square beside the craftsman's three-storied house was full of light.

  Stephen stood down his bucket, wiped a damp hand across his brown forehead and paused to glance up at the west wall which overlooked Master Gessel's shop next door and where their own apple tree, squat and stunted, was shedding its prolific blossoms to carpet the alley between. With a cry of horror Stephen spurted for the door and to
re up two flights of stairs until he was pushing his way by the moth-eaten curtain which covered the attic doorway. He pounced upon the sleeping figures sprawled on the row of straw pallets, shaking one, darting to another and pummelling him into consciousness.

  ‘Dick, Harry, get up! Wake up, please!’

  Harry Holt stirred, squinted at the light shafting in through the tiny window in the eaves, scratched his red head and yawned. ‘You're not sleep-walking again, young Stephen? No? Then stop prancing about at this unholy hour. If I've caught two hours sleep I'll count myself lucky!’ With that he lapsed into silence. In desperation and with the conclusion that Harry was sleeping again, Stephen punched his master's eldest apprentice. Richard Latimer, once awake, was wide awake; he lunged out with a right hook. Stephen backed away to dance excitedly at the foot of the bed.

  ‘Come out into the yard, quickly! It’s our back-drop for the last scene; they've ruined it! It’s been slashed to pieces! It’s all in ribbons!’

  Harry was awake again and even Wat Stringer, the new journeyman, was knuckling his eyes, resigned to the fact that it was time to rise. Latimer grabbed for his clothes and, still belting his cote, followed Stephen down the dark tunnel of the attic stairs. In the yard the boy was jigging up and down, pointing wildly. The backdrop, so carefully stitched by Wat, so lovingly painted by the apprentices to grace the Mystery Play of the Master Fletchers' Guild in two day's time, had been wilfully destroyed. Stephen was nearly in tears over the tree on which he had painstakingly daubed a pan of violent green paint only the day before.

  ‘Oh, who'd do such a thing?’ he wailed.

  ‘Someone with no cause to love the Fletchers; someone who acknowledges the superiority of our plays over theirs,’ Harry began as Richard Latimer leant forward and plucked a nail from the tattered cloth, holding it up for his companions to see. Impaled upon it, rotting before the eyes, was a small kipper.