Geoff leant back in his cushions, crooked his finger at his steward to pour more vin rouge for both of them. Having had his fill of wine and Cluny, he placed his chalice down upon his fine Egyptian linens. This idiot might be John’s newest bootlicker, but he had not the slyness to survive long amid John’s cunning. “Over the past eleven years, I have risked life and limb and sanity to tell our King his rightful duties, Cluny. My advice has fallen on deaf ears. John gave me this domain for the service I rendered and when he did, it was a swamp. I have reclaimed it at much expense of time and labour to myself and my people. I paid John his land tax in December. If he wishes to have more, he must come and take it from me.”
Cluny twitched his nose, his hell-black eyes damning Geoffrey. “Your friend Dumond and his comely wife refuse the tax. So too does your other brother-in-arms, De la Poer, and his wealthy countess. Does our king smell a conspiracy among you three to deprive his coffers of his due?”
Geoff stared at the man as if he were crazed. When Cluny blushed and blinked, Geoff gave him the best answer to their King’s troubles. “John’s nose has too oft been out of joint over minor matters. He needs to put his nose where it belongs. In his own household.”
Cluny stilled in his chair, some fight left in him. “Do I detect an accusation?”
“Of malfeasance?” Geoff chuckled at the shock on this idiot’s face.
“You are too bold, St Claire.”
“I match my arrogance to my opponent’s. But he must beware. He needs my support more than he needs to collect moneys from a new and usurious tax. If he continues to harass those of us who have tried to advise him in the right, he may try us too far. And then, Cluny, who will support him in his adventures against France and Ireland, hmmm?”
“He demands what is his.” Cluny sat back, his greasy fingers poised over his trencher, his gaze on Geoff’s. “He is in need of money, St Claire. What new solutions to that lack do you suggest? He cannot run England on good wishes.”
“There’s righteousness in fairness. Happiness for his subjects.”
“Bah! There’s poverty in that.”
“Better the King make a stricter budget, Cluny, than fight rebellion.”
“Now you talk treason?”
“Cluny, Cluny.” Geoff shook his head. “You jump to conclusions. Persist in that and you yourself will soon be without your sanity.”
The man’s eyebrows twitched.
Have I got that through your thick brain?
Geoffrey sighed, then rinsed his fingers in a bowl of rose water. As he wiped his hands dry on a cloth offered by his steward, he spoke of his reasoning. “John must cease this constant greed, these terrible wars, the need to take women to his bed who are not his to claim. It brands him an outlaw.”
Cluny opened his mouth to reply.
Geoff got to his feet and pushed back his chair. “Finish your supper, man. I expect you and your escort gone by sunrise.”
“He will send me back here with a larger retinue,” Cluny called after him. “Perhaps with a trebuchet, as well.”
“Can he spare one from his fight with the French?” Geoff strode towards his solar and flicked a hand at his steward to remain to serve their guest. “I doubt that, Cluny.”
“I have taken an assessment of your strength here,” the man warned.
Geoff swung around. Hands on his hips, he glared at the impertinent oaf who still sat, fingers into the good roast deer Geoff had been so kind to serve him. “Look all you wish, Cluny. None of this can be taken from me easily. I have earned it. Bought it with my own blood shed in the service of our good king Richard and in years toiling for his young brother, John. Come with what force John will grant you. He has few to spare from his many conflicts. This you and I both know well. But understand, too, that this castle, this fiefdom, these proud people do me the honour to give me their loyalty. You may try to change their minds. I wager you will not be able. So by all means, come. Do as you are ordered. But none of this will fall to you by wishing it so.”
He nodded, leaving the messenger to scowl at him as he spun towards the outer stairs.
* * * *
Once in his private rooms, Geoff slammed the heavy door so violently it shook in its frame.
“Martin!” he yelled to his body servant.
“Aye, milord.” The older man scurried from Geoff’s solar. “Here, sir!”
“Bring me more to drink, Martin. My dinner wine was good but not enough to wash away the taste of merde.” He halted. For decades he had tried to hold his tongue, not saying anything in anyone’s presence that they might find themselves a victim of John’s malevolence for simple association with Geoffrey. Lately, he had failed more often than he had succeeded.
His man scowled at him and tipped his head towards the solar. “Milord, you have a visitor. I showed him in there and seated him.”
Geoff’s gaze shot to the doorway to his sitting room where an old friend appeared, tall and smiling. He gasped. “Good Christ.”
“No,” offered the blond giant who filled the portal. “But I aspire to that daily.”
“Will? What in hell are you doing here?” Geoff strode forward, clasping the man in his arms. “I understood your lady is to be delivered of a baby soon. Why leave home to see me? Surely, you are not escaping the birthing pains?”
William Dunwick, the Earl of Greystone, burly creature that he was, had never shrunk from any pain, physical or other. He’d gone to Richard’s service along with Geoff and their dear friend, Simon de la Poer, more than twenty years ago. Will must have been at least forty-five years old now, but he looked younger. Married to a woman whom he had saved from John’s machinations and whom he had loved within a week of meeting, Will boasted a quiet life that Geoff and their friend Simon de la Poer had helped him secure.
“I promised Blanche my journey here would be brief. I come to you to talk tonight but I return to her on the morrow.”
“A hellish trip for you, my friend. Martin, bring us food and—”
“Nay, Geoff, thank you. Your man did see to me. I am well fed. But I could do with more wine while I tell you of my reason to come here.”
Geoff frowned at his friend’s words, then nodded to Martin to leave them. After his man had shut the door, Geoff led the way into the solar and motioned for Will to reclaim a chair before the hearth. “I will have Martin prepare you a pallet here for the night. My garrison is filled with Ranulf Cluny’s men. If they resemble their blustering lord, they will snore and fart to wake the dead. You need much better than their fetid company.”
“I thank you for the courtesy, Geoff.” Will smiled half-heartedly. “Martin told me of your visitors from the King.”
“Cluny,” Geoff growled out the name. “What an ass.”
Will murmured his distaste. “I met him last year at court. John never tires of hiring these godless mercenaries from Gascony to do his will.”
Geoff ran an index finger over his lower lip, fretting over the number of French routiers accompanying Cluny who now bedded down alongside his own men. “He brought a retinue of five with him.”
”John could spare that many?” Will asked with a sarcastic twist of his lips.
“Enough to make a point—or a threat.”
“Which is exactly what?”
“John taxes me for a new barony he granted me in November. ‘Tis more title than land. More bribe than prize. Plus he wants two of my young retainers.”
“Which two?” Will asked, his alarm showing in his tense shoulders.
Geoff cocked an eyebrow. “Reginald and Matthew.”
“He would demand your dearest, the bastard.”
“Nevertheless, I have refused the land, the title, the tax—and the men.”
“Risky.”
“Aye,” Geoff agreed, “but if I give in, he will name a host of new barons and demand the same and more from them as well.”
Will rubbed one hand over the black leather patch on his left eye, then leaned towards Geoff. �
��For the refusal of money alone, John still has a warrant for the arrest of William de Braose.”
“Who hides somewhere in France far from John’s reach.”
“You can never be certain of that. Tread carefully, my friend.”
“De Braose told tales of regicide.” Rumours had spread from de Braose and his wife Maud that John had ordered him to cut John’s nephew Arthur’s throat. The young Arthur had had precedence as heir to the throne after King Richard died. Arthur had been the only son of John’s next older brother. But no trace had been found of the prince, whom John had seized soon after Richard’s death and imprisoned in France. De Braose claimed he knew and had been ordered to dispatch the boy. More to John’s detriment, many readily believed he would gladly torture and dispense with anyone who stood in his way to the throne. “John can tax him until the Second Coming, but no gold can free de Braose from the sting of his accusation of regicide.”
“It cannot free his wife or his oldest son.”
“Aye, John starved them in that miserable oubliette in Corfe Castle without mercy. The day will come when God has no mercy on him. My neighbours, de Clare and Hormsley, talk of it whenever they visit. Unless John changes his ways, there will be rebellion. I know it. ”
Will stilled, his expression sinking further into a despairing look.
Geoff noted in his friend’s body his weariness. On his face his pallor. “You have no desire to talk of de Braose, the barons or John. Indeed, you look like the wrath of God.”
“I feel it as well.”
Geoff leaned towards his friend. “What has happened? Why are you here?”
Will skewered him with sorrow in his one blue eye. “Geoff. What I have learnt may well turn you into God’s wrath.”
Will was no alarmist. A quiet man, one to assess his state, Will was ever the contemplative knight. A soldier quick to arms, slow to strike until his goal was in reach. Geoff sat back in his chair, his fingers cupped around the lions’ heads carved into the armrests. “Let me hear it.”
“‘Tis not a short tale.”
“I am settled,” Geoff assured him. “Proceed.”
“A serving woman arrived at my gatehouse two days ago. She came in a carter’s wagon, headed to our town for the court session. She was near starved, had been beaten by highwaymen who had robbed her of her only coin. Or so she says.”
“What has this to do with me?”
“She comes from the Honour of Harleigh.”
The name, the land brought forth a grief that was old but yet bitter as bile in Geoffrey’s throat.
“She claims she is maid to Lady Katherine Harleigh.”
Geoff startled at the maid’s claim. “Impossible. The woman is mad.”
“That is what I thought, too. At first.”
Geoff frowned. A grief rose from his guts. He had thought he had come to terms with the ravages of Katherine’s death months ago. “You changed your mind? Why? Lady Harleigh died in her bed in March of ague.”
“This old maid says not.”
Geoffrey stared through his friend. The claim of this old woman had touched his heart. Fool to wonder, idiot to care, he told himself he was stupid to raise Kat from the dead and relive once more his anguish at her loss. Yet he must hear the rest. “Go on.”
“She claims her lady was imprisoned by Edmund Ferrer in her own dungeon. That he walked into the Harleigh solar with ten armed knights, subdued the lady at once and shoved her down into her own oubliette.”
“Absurd!”
“Nay, I think not.”
“Will, her neighbour in Sheldon, Lord Moreland, told me himself that his sheriff had confirmed with the curate of the village that she was shriven and buried.”
“This servant in my hall says that woman who was laid in the Harleigh crypt was another.”
“Who then?”
“She claims the one who was put to rest was the countess’s chambermaid.”
“What treachery is this?” Geoff retorted, his mind running rampant through logic that defied his friend’s statements. “You cannot believe this, Will. I certainly cannot. Nay. This woman in your hall is delusional.”
“She gives no outward sign of it, save the gaunt look of one starved and abused. She speaks well and tells stories of the lady Katherine which have a ring of truth to me.”
Geoff scoured his friend’s expression for signs of fantasy. Will had heard Geoff speak of Katherine when both of them were young, when the wounds of her rejection of Geoffrey were a stigma to any joy in life or service to his friends or King. Aye, Will knew stories of his beloved Katherine. “What tales are these?”
“The mightiest is one I will recount with no words.” Will struggled to his feet and strode to the far table. There, he unrolled a silken cloth and brought forth a curved metal blade, the circumference as large as his chest. He held it before him like a shield.
“Christ in His Grave,” Geoffrey rasped, stuck in his chair as if pinned by a sword. “Could that be Ibrahim’s?”
“Aye, the Arabic proclaims it so. It was his gift to you.”
“And mine to Katherine. I gave it to her after I returned from Jerusalem many years ago.” He shot from his chair. “Let me see it.”
With both hands, Will carefully surrendered the blade.
Geoff traced his trembling fingertips over the inscriptions on the broad flat metal handle. They were each one as he remembered them. All were prayers that Allah would bless the holder of the blade and smite the owner’s enemies. Marvelling that he could see this once more here and with this appalling story, he found the voice to ask, “How does this maid say this came into her possession?”
“She says she knew the importance of it to her lady and to you. Knew if she brought it to you, you would help her lady. Free her.”
Is that not fantasy to think I have that power? He worried his lower lip. “Does this maid have a name?”
“Old Bess.”
Geoff’s head spun. Bess. Bess of the owl’s eyes. Bess of the wagging tongue. How could he forget the woman who had discovered Kat and him in bed together? How could he forget the person who had told Katherine’s father of how they had spent nights and days bound as one? Bess. Aye, Bess was the old maid’s name. Geoff’s blood boiled. “This is my scimitar. I gave it to Katherine when she ordered me to leave and I cursed her. I would have thought she had buried it soon after. Heaven knows, she wanted to bury it in my back.”
“You could have done nothing for her then. She was already married.”
“Aye. But she blamed me for forsaking her.”
“She was young, untutored in the ways of power. What could she expect of you? You had no land or title then.”
“True.” Geoff frowned, memories swirling, lost in yesterday’s failures.
“Listen to me, for time is of the essence. The maid Bess says Katherine was at first imprisoned in her own castle. But days later, her Welsh friends along the border attacked it to set her free. To do John’s will and probably to protect himself from persecution, Ferrer’s men secreted her out from her own dungeon and spirited her away. They put out the rumour she was dead.”
“I could believe that the Welsh came to save her. Their princes liked her. Kat purposely kept good relations with them and Ferrer is a new unwelcome neighbour planted there by John. But Will, no one in the Marches believes Kat is still alive.”
Will pursed his lips. “This Bess does. She says her lady has been removed to a cloister of Benedictine nuns. There, they are ordered by Ferrer to starve her.”
Geoff cursed the man Ferrer who bowed and scraped to John like a foolish boy. “If this be true that she is imprisoned, why am I not surprised that he takes the coward’s method of murder?”
“More to the point, Geoff, if it is true Katherine is in the nuns’ hands and they follow orders to deny her sustenance, that means she will die within a week or two. Time is short. Unless, of course, you decide to do nothing to save her.”
Geoff glared at his friend. He wou
ld not leave a woman to starve, least of all one he had loved. The only one he had ever loved. “She damns my name.”
“For taking her son from her? That she knows was John’s doing. The King wished to set her blood to boil. What finer way than to make her older boy hostage in the home of the man she once adored?”
“The man whom she curses for taking him.” Geoff recounted how he had argued with John, then realised there was no better place to protect the Harleigh heir than close at his own side.
“Can that man ignore the possibility that she lives?”
Geoffrey stared at the sparks flashing in the hearth. For what they had been together—fire and heat, sweet savage succour—he could not ignore the possibility that Katherine lived or that she might be saved from a hideous demise. “Where is this abbey?”
“St Augustine’s. In Bristol.”
“Northwest of Bath.” When Will nodded, Geoff’s heart raced with a small hope because he knew the man who presided there over a monks’ quarter. “Is that not where our old friend Henry Gervais now wears the cloth?”
Will nodded, warmth in his one blue eye. “The very same. He will give you aid.”
“I’ll ask for more than that.” His mind racing with a plan, Geoff thrilled to the task and quickened to the goal. “Better yet, this St Augustine’s is close by a river, is it not?”
“You know it is.”
“And Bristol is not far from Chepstow.” He would need a large castle, impervious to attack by a small or inexperienced force. He’d need a safe place to lay Kat down, nurse her, coddle her, cajole her towards recovery.
“William Marshall’s household would welcome you, Geoff.” Will cocked an eyebrow, a sly smile teasing his lips at the mention of their friend, the most powerful man in the realm save John. “Plus, as I recall, you do favour escapes by water.”
“Aye. Would that this once I could walk on it!”
“Take a strong retinue, Geoff. Your best men. I know you would wish to surprise them, but you cannot risk tricks by John. We know not who goes there at his orders.”
With Her Kiss (Swords of Passion) Page 2