The Lords of Arden

by Helen Burton

  ‘If he has sense in his head he will abandon me to my fate,’ hissed Richard. ‘He knows nothing of me. Am I worth the risk of a confrontation with an old enemy?’

  ‘Oh, I should pray that you are,’ murmured Warwick silkily, almost into his ear. ‘But, until he comes, a few days close-confined may help to cool your hot head. Nicholas, have him taken away, and I shall see you held responsible for his safe-keeping!’ He turned on his heels and left the hall.

  ~o0o~

  The Lady Rose de Brandstone never cried except on those occasions where she felt a display of helpless femininity might bring about her desired ends, and then it was spectacularly done. She sat upon the chapel steps a good half hour before Milord Warwick was due to make his daily, solitary devotions. Lady Rose wore violet which was becoming, she had torn away her veil which was not, and sat twisting it between her small hands whilst her greatest glory, the untameable red hair, cascaded joyously about her. At the sound of his footsteps she buried the red head in her lap, took a deep breath and began to sob.

  Thomas Beauchamp found her thus, leant down gently, and took her shoulders between his beringed hands.

  ‘Why, sweetheart, what is it?’

  She lifted her face and her blue eyes, deep pools of misery, spilled their tears down her pale cheeks. She was an irresistible combination of child and woman. Thomas put out a hand to lift one teardrop from its trembling brink. ‘Is it Nicholas? Speak out child.’

  ‘Oh no, My Lord. I had to see you, to ask your mercy. I knew I should find you here and I have waited long.’ She slipped to her knees and knelt before him, hands raised in supplication.

  ‘Suppose,’ said Warwick, ‘that you forget all you have heard of the beautiful women of legend and romance, clasping their hands and tearing their hair. Suppose that I sit upon the steps and you may perch upon my knee, pretending I am that worthy father of yours, or some elder brother, and that will make all easy.’ He set her aside, sat down upon the folds of a sumptuous black cloak and pulled her down. She nestled very close to his shoulder, tracing the patterns of leaf and scroll upon the figured velvet of his jupon with her forefinger.

  ‘Oh, My Lord, I know he has played you false, that he is miscreant and unworthy to serve you but…’

  ‘Who? Girl, you're talking in riddles!’

  ‘Richard, My Lord, Richard de Montfort.’

  ‘Ah, what is he to the Lady Rose de Brandstone, the soon-to-be-bride of the handsome Nicholas?’

  Rose pouted, ‘Oh, Nicholas is to be my husband, it has been decreed and how can I gainsay your wishes, My Lord?’ She smiled at him archly. ‘But Richard is to be my knight - my true knight in the ways of the Courts of Love. He will wear my favour and charge through the lists and…’

  ‘Richard, my poppet, has a fight to stay in the saddle with dignity and I doubt if he's ever had a sword in his hand. I fear he will be a sad disappointment. When did you strike up this attachment? Didn't your mother give you a lecture on what befits a young girl so close upon her wedding day? If there have been trysts in stable or linen closet with that young scoundrel…’

  ‘My lord, how could you suggest such a thing? We met only on the day he left here and incurred your displeasure. He rescued me from a ditch when my pony bolted. I opened my eyes and there he was as a true knight should be.’

  Warwick grinned. ‘I hardly feel Nicholas will approve of this one-sided affaire. He had better find you occupation more suited to a young matron and keep you at your needle.’

  Rose tossed her head. ‘Nicholas does not even know I exist. But, My Lord, you must not side-track me. You see why I make plea for Richard, and ask that you free him from his captivity? I know he played you false but he's not so very much beyond being a boy and boys are fools and hotheads all. My father would have whipped him till he couldn't sit but, that over, all would be forgotten. But to starve a man of light and air and warmth and...’

  ‘Rose,’ said Thomas severely, ‘the rooms in the Bear Tower are usually set aside to house our guests: my ageing aunts, my soft-living nieces, and I receive no complaints from them!’

  Rose jumped from his knee and faced him in a fury. ‘Do not cozen me, My Lord; he is not in the Bear Tower. You do well to be ashamed of his lodging but Nicholas was happy to boast of it. Nicholas dislikes him.’

  Thomas took her hands. ‘You are a termagant. What has Nicholas told you? He tells me very little.’

  Rose stamped her foot. ‘That Richard is in Tartarus, the old oubliette at the base of King Alfred's Tower, where a man can't stand or sit or lie, where he can take no account of day or night, week or month - and you ordered it out of a petty revenge on his father. And that, My Lord, is unworthy!’ And, surprised and frightened finally at her own presumption, she burst into real tears.

  Beauchamp took her arms and shook her lightly. ‘Is this the truth?’

  ‘I only know what I've been told. Why should he lie?’

  ‘Very well, dry your eyes and run along to your bed. I will check on this story myself and have him out of hold. Will that satisfy you?’

  She smiled up at him, bobbed a curtsey and fled down the passage, a blur of violet silk, her veil fluttering from her hand.

  Beauchamp crossed the courtyard, calling two of his garrison to his side, sending one to the guardroom for the key to the cell, the other to summon Nicholas Durvassal from the hall.

  King Alfred's Tower was a ruin; it remained perched precariously above the river cliff, open to sun and air. The lowest floor was intact, a cellar prison, damp and unused, walls dripping with slime and cold enough to eat into the very marrow of the bones. Tartarus was reached by an iron trap in the floor, the only air filtering through a small grating in the trap from the damp, noisesome cell. The man who had sprinted away for the key came back with Alex Kemel, Captain of Bowmen. On Warwick's orders, they prised open the iron door, letting it fall back with a crash which shook the cold tower to its foundations.

  Tartarus had been carved out of the bedrock and cruelly fashioned. As Rose had said, no man could stand or sit or lie, but only crouch until his spine grew numb and he gained a little relief from his suffering. No light filtered in with the foetid air. Beauchamp had left his torch in a rusted sconce and the flames licked upwards, ruddy and spiteful. The cell took on the aspects of hell. Here and there the runnels of green slime glowed, iridescent. Kemel and his man dragged their prisoner out into the torchlight. Kemel said, ‘Whatever lesson he is to learn, he will have learnt!’

  Richard de Montfort was blind, his limbs contorted, rigid with cold. The foul dank air pervaded the tower room and Kemel let the trap spring back. It would have been purgatory for a small man; to a long-limbed youngster it was a special torture. Richard's eyes became accustomed to the wavering torchlight; he was shaking now with ague, breath coming harshly. The life returning to his contorted limbs brought violent cramps and painful spasms and he clamped his teeth onto the sleeve of his surcote, one hand clawing the beaten earth of the floor in an effort to still the shuddering which had taken over his whole body. Thomas sent his two henchmen away and, stooping beside the boy, unpinned his own cloak and placed it over him, one hand firm upon his shoulder.

  ‘Take your time, Richard.’

  ‘Be damned in hell, My Lord!’ were the first words Montfort had been able to utter and they cost him dear as another muscle spasm took him.

  Durvassal appeared in the doorway, impeccably groomed, effortlessly elegant from spun-silver hair to the buffed tips of his boots. He did not come close, as if the sight of his prisoner were a contagion that must be avoided.

  Beauchamp flared up at him, ‘How dare you abuse your authority. This was not called for; I have never used it, not on the most hardened felon and you have always known it!’

  Durvassal shrugged. ‘Hold him safe, were your words, My Lord. Where safer? He should prove malleable enough when he's thawed out.’

  Thomas turned to his prisoner. ‘For what has happened here tonight, I am sorry. It was not i
ntended but, nevertheless, the ultimate responsibility is mine. Can you rise? I think we should go from here.’

  They walked out into the starshine. It was an incredibly beautiful night, where the clear air magnified every silver aster and tricked the eye into believing that each constellation hovered so close to the earth that a climb up to the battlements would enable a man to put out a hand and pluck an orb as he would reach for an apple on a tree.

  The room in the Bear Tower was clean, if sparsely furnished, with furs upon the bed and a candle. There was a fire in the grate and even a bath tub, buckets standing by. Nicholas hovered indolently in the doorway.

  ‘My Lord, you would pamper him!’

  And Warwick had to reach out a hand to haul Richard back, set as he was to take Durvassal by the throat. ‘Nicholas, out of my sight. Do not let me set eyes upon you again until summoned. Your services will not be required tonight. Out!’

  ‘No,’ spat Richard, still restrained by Warwick's hand on the breast of his cote, ‘you won't be needed to warm his bed tonight, he has a new plaything!’ But Nicholas had felt it expedient to leave.

  Warwick had slammed the door shut behind him and grimly rounded on Montfort. ‘Then you'd better start earning your keep, Richard. There's a full tub, provided at great inconvenience as we’re two flights up. Get stripped! I like my whores clean and compliant.’ He saw the scarlet mantling the boy's face from the roots of the fair hair to the hollow of his throat above the narrow band of his shirt.

  Beauchamp grinned. ‘You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself. Happily, I enjoy a reputation which frees me from that particular taint. You have an unfortunate tongue on you, boy.’

  ‘I'm sorry, but I was sorely tried down there. I imagined I was left to rot; the total illogicality of the thought would not take hold…’ the fine sheen of perspiration sprang out upon his brow.

  ‘The water's getting cold; make the most of it and I'll see food is sent up to you. Can you understand? This is not a punishment, but I cannot leave you free and lose you again. You are merely a hostage until your father and I have concluded our business together.’

  Richard said, ‘I would have come back. I did not know then that I had any reason to fear you.’

  ‘And do you fear me now?’

  ‘I don't think so.’ He was an honest young man, the dark eyes did not waver as he fixed them on Warwick but there were violet hollows beneath them, the imprints of stress, and a bruise high up on one cheekbone.

  Thomas Beauchamp put out a finger and touched it lightly. ‘I think you should fear me, Richard.’

  ‘The Lady Orabella thought so too, all those years ago when she sent me packing back to London.’

  ‘Lady A cannot help you now. And no man here can be bribed; I would hang a man for such disloyalty. Do you enjoy a cold bath? Goodnight, Richard.’

  ‘Your cloak, My Lord.’ Richard reached to take the costly black velvet from his shoulders but Warwick shook his head.

  ‘Keep it. I owe a debt to a dead man.’

  ‘My lord?’ Montfort could not know the tortuous ramblings of this man's mind.

  ‘Don't trouble your head about it.’ He opened the door and closed it softly behind him. The rasp of the key grating in the lock sent a frisson of fear along Richard's spine and, when he had washed away the taint of Tartarus, he wrapped himself in the thick folds of Warwick's cloak and sat for a long time upon the window sill, looking up at the stars.

  Chapter Nineteen

  October - 1343

  Nicholas Durvassal had left the warmth and shelter of the hall fire for the withered briars of the rose garden and the cold ceiling of stars.

  ‘So the happy bridegroom is pacing out the days and hours beneath his bride's chamber window, eager for the wedding day?’ Lady A, mocking him from beneath the claw-like branches of an ancient mulberry, left the shadowy embrace of its withered arms and came towards him.

  ‘Orabella, for Christ's sake! What do you want of me?’

  She glided forward on soft slippered feet and a galaxy of stones sparkled in her jewelled crespine. ‘I wish I did not despise you, Nicholas. Why do you stay here and let Thomas rule you, let him marry you to red-headed Rose? Why don't you set off, knight-errant, for the tournaments of Europe? I don't think you are content to remain Beauchamp's faithful hound or Kate's lap-dog. Why, Nicholas? Because you love Christine, because of Thomas, because once you loved Kate? Oh, Kate is easy to love and Thomas's service can become a compulsion.’

  ‘If I baulk at this marriage, I shall pay with the loss of Spernall,’ said Durvassal as they began to climb up the old Saxon mount, nearer to the flaring stars.

  ‘Then get yourself other lands, fight for them. Carry Christine's favour from tourney to tourney, or better still, woo an heiress on your own account - preferably one unrelated to Thomas,’ she added dryly.

  ‘I will stay here, My Lady, and wait for Spernall. It is my right; and who are you to hint at vacillation in me? One night the dark sister dolorosa, black gowned and Madonna-like, untouched and untouchable, and next morning, up with the sun, bedecked and bejewelled in scarlet silk and floating gauze and come-hither smiles. And all the women ape your fashions so that any man looking about him catches only your image in a dozen mirrors and turns away from the shadow to search for the substance. You flit from one identity to another, from trusted confidant and dusky familiar to glittering harlot. But you cannot make or shape my destiny. Find another acolyte for your witchery, I am not the man!’ He turned swiftly from her and he heard the whisper of her gown as she left the hill.

  ~o0o~

  John de Montfort was home from Ludlow, his arrival at Beaudesert coinciding with the return of his small brother from a sojourn with his Butler kin at Sudeley, and preceding his father's homecoming from Worcester by more than three weeks.

  John had found himself crowned victor in more than one event during a spectacular week of pageantry and jousting, but had sustained a leg wound in the grand melee which had been the culmination of the festivities. He had ridden slowly along Henley High Street, with that disordered elegance which was his hall-mark, in cinnamon velvet and with a hat of tawny silk upon his head, lavishly embroidered with gold acorns. He scattered largesse as the mood took him, though he could ill afford the gesture even with a fat bag of prize money stitched into his saddle cloth. Simon Trussel, his graceless young squire, following closely, was doubled up with laughter on the neck of his bay and the escort, bringing up the rear with the sumpter mules, were grinning broadly.

  Beyond the High Street and making for the castle, Montfort set spur to Ferraunt and took the causeway at a gallop, clattering over the planking of the lower bridge, thudding across the frost-hardened earth of the bailey and setting the chestnut, arrow straight, for the upper guard and on through the gatehouse tunnel into the courtyard.

  Trussel was out of the saddle and obedient at his master's side. Elizabeth Freville moved from the shadows with young Guy, exited and impatient, at her side. Montfort slid from his saddle but leant for a while against his mount's flank, one hand twisted into his horse cloth, knuckles white. There were beads of sweat upon the handsome face.

  ‘I told you, sir!’ hissed Trussel furiously.

  ‘So you did.’ Montfort had recovered his usual indolent composure.

  ‘My Lady,’ Trussel said, by way of explanation, ‘he took a hit during the melee. It's worse than he'll have anyone suppose. He should have made the journey in easy stages but he would not.’

  ‘No,’ said his Aunt, ‘when the gods handed out cradle gifts to my nephew they were prodigal with good looks and quick wit but niggardly when it came to common sense. John, can you walk?’

  They processed through the hall and it was a prince's progress with servants appearing from every recess to pump the young man's hand, to ask how he did or welcome him home.

  ‘I hope you trounced the borderers,’ said Guy, skipping alongside his half-brother. ‘Nothing exciting happened at Cousin Butler's, nothin
g at all.’

  A few yards from the solar door and Montfort faltered at last to find Geoffrey Mikelton there with a strong arm under his elbow. He pushed aside the arras with the other. ‘Easy, lad. So the conquering hero must never be seen in moments of weakness? You'd better sit down before you fall down.’

  Montfort smiled wryly. ‘Don't you think they're aware of all my weaknesses out there?’ He sat in his father's chair and let Trussel find a stool for the injured leg.

  Guy said, voice full of awe, ‘His boot's full of blood, buckets of it!’

  And Simon Trussel, looking furious, bit his lip and said, ‘If you're crippled don't blame me!’

  Elizabeth tutted, ‘No-one is going to blame you for John's habitual foolhardiness but if you're looking for a long career attached to a fixed star there are steadier orbs in the firmament; shooting stars burn brightly but they soon come to earth. Now, shall we have some order here? Guy, you could supervise the pack-horses. I don't want what appear to be the entire contents of a camel caravan littered about your father's courtyard. Simon, you can fetch a bowl and clean linen. That will be all Geoffrey, I know why you're hovering like the Angel of Death but our news can come later. Now, out, all of you!’ She clapped her hands like a housewife shooing chickens.

  ‘News?’ said Montfort.

  ‘It will keep. By the way, we have the mummers here, on their way to Warwick to entertain the Countess for her birthday a couple of weeks from now; some romantic nonsense the Earl has devised to please her. Guy prevailed upon them to play for us for just one night so I asked them to stay. Do you mind?’

  ‘Of course not, why should I?’

  ‘You look incredibly pale.’

  He ignored that. ‘Something has happened here, hasn't it?’

  ‘Later. Here's Simon, I'll leave you to his competence.’ She rose and passed behind his chair, pausing to place cool fingers on his hot, damp forehead. ‘Burdock,’ she said.