The Lords of Arden

by Helen Burton

  ‘Now is as good a time as any.’

  ‘Don't I get my sausage first?’

  ‘Fasting is good for the soul, Richard. I'll get you some tackle from the armoury.’

  ~o0o~

  Johanna de Montfort set sail for Spain. Gone was the forthright chatelaine of Coleshill, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, arms freckled and brown; gone the boy-girl of the Windsor tournament whose legs were the sensation of the week and whose morals had been called into question. Here was a modest young matron gowned in silver-grey, hair completely covered by veil and filet, attentive to her mistress. Eleanor Beaumont was a tall, sweet-faced young woman with eyes the blue-violet of periwinkles. She clutched at her saffron mantle to prevent it being whisked away across the foredeck, and laughed like a schoolgirl when one honey-coloured plait of hair sprang free from its coil and tumbled down to her hips. Eleanor was Harry Derby's favourite sister - and he had a decent clutch of them. Her husband, the Lord John Beaumont, had been killed jousting at Northampton but Eleanor, tired of her widowhood and ripe for a second marriage, had set her cap at Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, one of the country's most powerful magnates and a firm friend of her brother. Arundel had fallen neatly under Eleanor's spell and their affair was probably the worst kept secret of the decade. The King wished Derby to revive the flagging spirits of his faint-hearted subjects in Gascony so the indefatigable trio of Derby, Arundel and Eleanor were set to help in a roundabout way; first, by travelling to Spain to ensure the neutrality of the three Iberian Kings: Alfonso of Castile and the rulers of Portugal and Navarre, and thence to Pope Clement at Avignon to plead for a divorce for Arundel who was married to the uninspiring Isabella Despencer. Eleanor had found in the ranks of the Countess of Salisbury's demoiselles a kindred spirit in Johanna de Montfort, which was how that young woman found herself standing on the deck of the Barnaby, a painted ship with a scarlet sail on a blue-green sea; bound for Spain, for the Moorish arches and the orange trees and the light-dappled fountains of Castile.

  ~o0o~

  The rose garden had been Alice de Montfort's solace. After the Battle of Evesham where her husband had been slain upon the field, supporting his namesake, Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, and after the sack of Beaudesert which had followed, whilst her son, a second Peter who had married the child, Maud de la Warre, began to rebuild the fortress, the Lady Alice Audley - for whom the Audley Tower had been named - had begun upon the garden. It had been a formal enclosure in the middle wards, sheltered between high, crenellated walls but set to catch the path of the afternoon sun. There was a sunken lawn surrounded by grass benches, a pleached avenue of fruit trees and trellised screens to support the vines of her favourite white roses. When Alice died, her garden sanctuary was kept up in a desultory fashion by the Montfort women who had followed her, for most were happy to sally forth with their sewing baskets on a warm summer's afternoon, veiled to avoid the sun of course.

  None had loved and cared for Alice's Eden like Margaret Furnival who would work with her own hands to plant fragrant herbs: thyme, lavender, balsam and rue; who had transported seedlings and begged slips of roses wherever she visited until the tiny corner became a perfumed paradise haunted by bee and butterfly. Since Margaret's death there had been none to care for the garden. (Even Johanna had baulked at such a task and was creating her own purely practical herb garden in the Outer Bailey.) The lawn had grown long and rank, scattered with the seeds of Timothy Grass and dandelions. There were weeds shooting up among the herbs and the pleached walk was a dark tunnel of tightly knotted branches, too low for any but a child to run along beneath its shadowed vault. And everywhere, the roses ran riot, hiding the trellis which supported them, clustering thick upon Margaret's little arbour, interwoven with honeysuckle and the necklaces of bryony.

  Rose Durvassal clasped the iron ring in the stout wooden door, set in the wall at the foot of the tower stair. It turned easily and silently, the door opening inward. So someone still frequented Margaret's garden and kept the hinges oiled. Perhaps her small son, seeking a bolt-hole from his tutors, perhaps her widowed husband? But no, if rumour did not lie, his thoughts were still with yellow-haired Lora and the White Ladies of Pinley. Rose stepped out into the August sunshine and felt the wash of heat beating down from the walls, suffused in the honey-hued stone; she was dazzled by the colour - roses crimson, scarlet and white cascading from every side; incandescent waterfalls; curtains of blooms throbbing with bronze butterflies and the vibrations of tiny bees; heady with an unimagined perfume. Rose caught her breath, emitting a startled, enraptured 'Oh!' and moved out into the light, unaware of the picture she herself painted; a small figure gowned in moss green, golden slippers peeping from the hem of her kirtle as she stepped between the clasping briars. Her neat, small head of flame-red hair was bound up beneath a simple fillet, a row of green beads at her slender white throat. She moved about the overgrown pathways with a sense of wonderment, exclaiming at each new discovery: the little bronze statue of Persephone on her crumbling plinth, wreathed in Travellers' Joy, the silent fountain, its basin dry and cracked but seamed with the fluorescence of emerald moss and overshadowed by the listless hands of an old willow. Reaching down to disentangle her skirts from the sticky baubles of goose-grass she straightened to the clutch of a crimson rose upon her bound hair, and twisting to free herself brought the glowing river down about her shoulders. Freed of its restraints it fled about her into the waiting tentacles of Margaret's Rosa Alba and the more she twisted the further she became entangled as if the dead girl, long tired of being alone, sought to end her solitude by confining this bright captive here in the Paradise for ever.

  Rose fought about her wildly, tearing her overdress, flapping at the small wild bees alighting with curiosity upon her skirts, half sobbing in panic until a hand upon her shoulder caused her to squeal in real terror and a clear young voice with more than a hint of amusement said: ‘Gently, lady, keep still and I'll have you freed in a trice. Don't you remember, the first time we met I had to twist the brambles out of your hair? It's becoming a habit.’

  ‘Richard!’ said Rose on a sigh of relief, ‘where did you spring from?’

  ‘I live here. Had you forgotten? I was watching you from the arbour; I didn't want to disturb your reverie.’

  ‘Spying?’ snapped Rose. ‘Would you have kept silent?’

  ‘Probably. Hold still or we shall be here all night.’

  ‘Would you mind?’

  ‘No, but Nicholas would. Why is he here?’

  Rose shrugged her shoulders, ‘Private talk with your father, that's all I know; too much secrecy. All the way here he was glancing over his shoulder. He sent a man over from Spernall a few days ago asking to speak with My Lord your father. Take care, Richard!’

  The young man said, ‘He cannot harm me now and why should he wish to? He dare not; Warwick set me free.’

  ‘Still, I do not like it. Are you finished yet?’

  ‘Almost. Won't you be missed?’

  ‘I doubt it. I was not to be included in this matter; I had my dismissal. Your father suggested I might go up onto the leads and I had a bird's-eye view of this place so I set out to look for a door.’

  ‘I come here often, to escape.’

  ‘Poor Richard, still a prisoner?’ She turned and slipped from the hands which had toyed with her hair for too long. ‘We are all prisoners. At Spernall I am watched: his father, his mother, his brother. Nicholas's wife must never put a foot wrong or speak a word out of turn. She is to be groomed, she is to be pampered, but she can never be free!’

  ‘I should free you, were you my captive.’ They had reached the shelter of the arbour with its canopy of single, snow-white roses, each set with a tasselled, golden heart.

  ‘Then free me now,’ said Rose, taking his shoulders and reaching up to kiss him on the mouth, ‘and I shall never belong to him again.’

  Richard shook his head. ‘You know it isn't possible. You're Nicholas's wife.’

 
‘His property, oh yes. What do I care a fig for that! Does that make me a wanton?’

  Richard kissed her forehead. ‘I'm rather afraid it does.’

  ‘Oh, you …!’ She stood on tiptoe and boxed him soundly on the ears, turned and fled along the walks until she reached the door, stopping only to bundle up her hair and smooth her skirts before slipping out of his life.

  Richard grinned ruefully after her, finally seeking the long grass of the sunken lawn, to fling himself down on his face amongst the couch grass and the clover, tearing at the stems of sorrel spires until his hands were stained with their juice. ‘You fool, oh you fool! You could have taken her, made love to her; one afternoon among the roses, one afternoon to last a lifetime.’ But that would never have been enough for either of them. Better that he should lie here and ache for her now and then forget - and he must forget. Time, after all, heals all....

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  August - 1344

  Thomas Beauchamp was in London when the messenger came from Pinley Abbey. The man was a lay brother on a worn hack. He asked to speak with John de Montfort and was conducted to a small guest chamber in the gatehouse. John approached him with caution, curious as to what news the man might be bringing from the mother he could not remember. He wondered if Lora was dead, unsure of his feelings were it so; to his knowledge she had never asked to see him or made enquiries as to his well-being.

  ‘The Mother Abbess thinks you should come,’ was all the man would say. He was devouring a pie with somewhat unholy greed. He hardly glanced up at the tall young man standing before him in Warwick’s livery.

  ‘Then I will ride back with you,’ John said. ‘You can tell me more as we travel.’ He went up to his room and discarded the Beauchamp colours for a plain jupon in dark purple silk which did not identify him with either Warwick or Beaudesert.

  He mounted Ferraunt, pleased to find an excuse to ride out into the late summer sunshine. It was a perfect afternoon and, as they rode through Arden and out amongst the golden fields, there were larks trilling invisibly, high above them in the hot blue air. In many places the harvest was all but home and there were signs of industry all about them.

  John’s guide said little; knew little. He ran errands for the Abbey, that was all. The young lord would have to speak with the Mother Abbess. John gave up.

  It was becoming unbearably hot and a little humid and, when they turned to take a short cut through Greycoat Spinney, the cool green air came as a welcome respite. Somewhere, a gentle breeze set the hazels shivering, gave them a life of their own. But there had been no wind at all that afternoon….

  Before John could draw sword from scabbard he found himself surrounded on all sides. They were mounted men; no forest foot-pads or hunted outlaws these but men-at-arms, blue surcotes diagonally striped with gold; Montfort men!

  ‘My Lord, we have him!’ It was Geoffrey Mikelton’s voice and he was nudging his horse forward. It would have been madness for John to have tried to make a break for it; the wood was thick with armed horseman. The lay brother seemed to have melted away without anyone apprehending him. All too clearly John realised he had ridden neatly into a trap and not even a very clever one at that.

  The men were edging away now, allowing Mikelton to approach without hindrance; Mikelton whom John had last seen lying senseless across the neck of his bolting horse.

  ‘I’ll have your sword, if you please,’ said the Constable without expression, ‘and your dagger and whatever else you may carry.’

  ‘If it please him!’ roared Peter. ‘He’ll have no say in the matter. He’ll dismount and you’ll search him thoroughly.’

  John said nothing, he handed his arms over to Mikelton but his face, impassive, was upon his father. He swung a leg over his pommel and jumped lightly to the ground, letting Mikelton frisk him without a word of protest.

  ‘There’s nothing…’ The Constable glanced up at Peter then turned to John. ‘Very well, lad, you can remount.’

  ‘What!’ rasped Peter, suddenly out of the saddle himself. ‘Let him ride home in style – a common felon? One of you lead that animal. He can walk. Geoffrey, bind him; I’ll not lose him again.’

  John watched Ferraunt being led away. Someone had produced a length of rope from a saddle bag.

  ‘Your wrists,’ said Mikelton gruffly, moving betwixt father and son. ‘And keep a civil tongue in your head, boy. You’re deep in trouble,’ he muttered as he bound his prisoner’s wrists together competently.

  Peter, beside his massive bay, indicated that the end of the rope be attached to Mikelton’s stirrup leather.

  ‘No need to take the shortest route on such a glorious afternoon. Let them see in every village we pass that the traitor is taken.’

  ‘Christ, he’s going to enjoy this,’ muttered John. ‘He’ll milk it for every ounce of melodrama.’

  Peter, glowering, said, ‘You will get your chance to defend yourself in law, like the meanest of my villeins. Until then you will keep your mouth closed or have it shut for you!’ He jabbed the young man beneath the chin with a vicious stab from the handle of his crop, forcing his head up. ‘Can’t look me in the eye, can you, bloody little Judas! Let’s be about it, Geoffrey.’ He mounted and set off to head the snaking cavalcade as they broke from the woodland and moved out into the merciless august sunshine.

  Once, they had to halt because a flock of sheep was blocking the highway. The Constable silently handed down a flask of water and John drank gratefully until Peter, riding back along the column, knocked it from his bound hands with a flick of his crop across the knuckles.

  Mikelton said equably, ‘If we’re to be home by cock shut he’ll need to ride.’

  ‘He’ll need to set a faster pace!’ said Peter grimly. At that he lashed out at Mikelton’s horse so that the unfortunate beast, unaccustomed to such usage, side-stepped and then lunged ahead, dragging its unwilling burden with it so that he stumbled and was jerked forward, fighting to keep to his feet until Mikelton could sooth his mount.

  ‘By God,’ said Peter, ‘I’ll have you on your knees before I’ve finished with you, you treacherous young bastard!’ The pent up anger of the last few months was brimming up inside him now and there had to be a release. He hit out indiscriminately with his crop John tried vainly to protect his face with his bound wrists, taking the brunt of the storm upon his upper arms and shoulders. The exquisite silk of his jupon sliced into ribbons like thin tissue and hung in rags, exposing the fine lawn of his shirt.

  Geoffrey, who had reined in his sorrel mare, felt sympathy for both of them. Peter had been sorely tried and devastated by this young man’s perfidy. He was not a man to have found the words to express his feelings. This uncharacteristic show of violence conveyed better than anything else would have done the sheer weight of despair and anger which had been crushing him for so long.

  And John, the unfortunate, if deserving, object of his wrath, would have expected, as their Lord’s son, to have suffered whatever chastisement he was due in private, away from the eyes of the men he was used to ordering.

  Finally, strength and spleen spent, Peter wheeled his bay about and galloped off to the head of the column again.

  Geoffrey glanced down at his prisoner. John, trying to staunch a cut across his right eyebrow which was now bleeding freely, grinned at him ruefully from his torn mouth, though he looked satisfyingly white and shocked.

  ‘God, I thought he meant to kill me!’

  Geoffrey, easing his mount forward, said dryly, ‘It was only a riding crop, not a stock whip; you’ll live. Am I supposed to be sympathetic after what you did to him, to all of us?’

  They were approaching Henley now. There was neither man, nor woman, nor child here who would not recognise Bastard John, who had not watched him grow from babyhood, related his childhood pranks, exclaimed over the sins of adolescence. Every tavern keeper, every pot boy, knew John de Montfort and few girls had not sighed, daydreaming, over his handsome face, those perfect Astley eye
s. This was to be his greatest humiliation. For a brief second John glanced up at Geoffrey, a flash of fear in the violet eyes:

  ‘Geoffrey, I can’t do it!’

  ‘Yes, you can. Just concentrate on keeping on your feet and pretend you’re someone else. Here, wipe your face. I daren’t slow down. If your father turns round and sees we’re lagging behind you’ll get another thrashing. Is that what you want?’ John flashed him a lop-sided grin and handed back the soiled kerchief.

  But, though many came out to stare, none were moved to jeer. He was still his father’s son and who knew which way the wind would blow. There were many who remembered this young man galloping along the High Street on Ferraunt, bedecked like a maypole, returning from some tournament or other, hair a bright aureole about the slender face. How are the mighty fallen indeed!

  Peter de Montfort was known for a fair overlord. Oh, he would bluster and threaten at times but a man would always get a hearing. It was widely known that John had set upon his father’s own men and stolen from them items of some value. A grave crime; but what father hadn’t had a serious falling-out with his offspring and meted out just punishment and forgiven all at the end? Peter should not be blamed but there were none to crow over his son’s misfortunes.

  Geoffrey Mikelton was remembering a sunny day, half a lifetime ago now, when the Lords of Arden had dragged another young man on foot to his trial at Warwick Castle and, ultimately, sent him to a terrible death on Blacklow Hill; a tall handsome young man not yet out of his twenties, the late King’s hated favourite, the Gascon adventurer, Piers Gaveston. In the end, they had to let him ride as he was slowing them down too much. Peter’s elder brother had later been pardoned for his part in Gaveston’s murder. Mikelton wondered if Peter was remembering that day, if it haunted him still, as it had haunted all the participants down the years. But, remembering, how could he then use his own son with equal savagery?