The Knight And The Rose

by Isolde Martyn

  With Lancaster gone, the rebels were not only scattered but headless in truth, seeing that the only other man capable of rallying them, Roger Mortimer, was immured in the Tower. The news was ill. The vengeful king might sweep all his enemies from the board. Certes, Edmund Mortimer’s future was not worth a farthing for the nonce. And if Sir Roger was executed, what should he do then? Seek a new lord? Or abandon principles and grip hold of the wheel of fortune that had thrown Hugh up to glory?

  A greedy world now for any to survive in. Was it worth struggling through to the Marches? Somehow he doubted that Edmund’s young wife would be able to find the ransom to buy her husband’s life from Lady Constance. Oh, he would wager a very earldom that Despenser’s notaries were already knocking at her door and Bishop Orleton’s to make their inventories. And Wales would lie like a dog at Hugh Despenser’s bidding now. No question of that. The Despensers would punish all who had opposed them—lords, bishops and women.

  What had he told Johanna? There was no chivalry. To further his prospects he needed a powerful patron—and a wealthy heiress. And contrary, bruised Johanna, her dowry in dispute, could not compete but at least he might free her. He had been wrong to leave.

  “Let us return to Conisthorpe, Jankyn!” he shouted, whipping round, his conscience pricking sharp as demons’ forks, but Jankyn was huddled miserably in his cloak, on his side like a babe, his breath regular not ragged as it had been before. Sleep on a little longer, thought Geraint wryly, displeased at being left alone with his fears. Sleep on.

  SILENCE RODE WITH them like a third companion as they struck north back across the moor towards Conisthorpe and the greyness closed around them filling their breathing. Without the sun for a signpost, the thin, stony road they eventually found looked unfamiliar. Lured by an alewife’s candle lighting the gloomy morning, they stopped in the next village to learn direction. What they heard between gulps of mulled ale blunted their thirst—the village was Enderby. They had stumbled into Fulk’s demesne.

  The news that Sir Fulk’s men were visiting all the villages asking questions about travellers of their mien and stature was given freely; but it took another coin beside the payment for the meal to buy the alewife’s silence. They did not speak of their blunder afterwards but grimly left the road, fording the ditches from field to field where the ivy and tangle of thicket permitted, skirting the undergrowth until the towers of Fulk’s keep were beyond their sight. The wind rolled the clouds away like tumbled corn bales and they journeyed with a tearful sun behind their left shoulders, trusting that they should come to the River Wharfe eventually. They would need to follow it along to find a crossing.

  “A most excellent strategy this—returning,” remarked Jankyn dryly. “At least the Mallet will not have posted scouts to watch the bridges if he thinks we are running away. They will be making inquiries further south.”

  “Please God!” Geraint crossed himself. “Unless the alewife betrays us.”

  The bridle track delivered them onto a churned but broader road and a steep rise. About a furlong on they came upon a forge. Jankyn spun a story that they were seeking service with Sir Ralph de Middlesbrough. The smith shrugged at the name, shook his head then stared fishlike at the road they had toiled up. Beyond a cooper’s wain, men-at-arms in yellow and black were whipping their steeds up the hill.

  Geraint drew his sword, spurred down and hacked the rope that held the wain’s barrels. Thundering down the hill, the rotund missiles drove panic into the oncoming horses, dispersing the riders in all directions, and giving the fugitives the chance to outpace them for a further mile across the open country. But the horses were tiring.

  “We need sanctuary,” panted Geraint, wincing with pain. “Some abbey altar to crouch behind and, please God, a healer.”

  “Mayhap a crowd will do instead. It’s a river crossing we’re coming down to and a town besides. Be cheerful, sir, see!”

  With a prayer on his lips, Geraint spurred his horse onto a bridge already perilously jammed with carts.

  The town with its dark grey stone clearly owed its existence to the bridge and some of its prosperity to the exorbitant toll they paid to cross it. The market square was jaunty with pennons, its air redolent with the tantalising aroma of sucking pig. They dismounted and tugged their horses with them past the stalls. The itinerant vendors were there—the usual basket stalls, piemen, conjurers and sellers of elixirs and pastes for boils and pustules.

  Goosed, Geraint swung round with haughty demeanour to see only a thin little bawd, not long past childhood judging by her small breasts. She gave him a smile that was somewhat toothless and, rebuffed, spat at their heels.

  “She might have found us a hiding place for the afternoon.”

  “Against a wall?” snapped Geraint. “You go after her then.”

  “I wish I could but—”

  Geraint followed his gaze and swiftly ducked down to hide his height, feigning to check a spur fastening.

  “Dear God in Heaven! Jankyn, save yourself! It is me they want.”

  Eight or so knights were forcing their horses through the crowd. The people, surly until they felt the leather thongs bite against their faces, fell back, the flow of their curses turned off to a dribble of mumbles. A child whimpered and was hushed.

  “Sirs!” Presumably it was the mayor who stepped bravely into the space that had grown about Geraint and confronted the cordon of horsemen. “Sir Edgar, I pray you, do not break the king’s peace.”

  At a sign from their leader the men dismounted and the knight, still astride, pushed up his visor. The gingery beard and narrow eyes meant nothing to Geraint but the mocking tilt of the head reminded him of Fulk’s man who had attacked him by the flooding river. Oh, by the Saints, they had been tracked like wayward lambs and here were the dogs slavering to rip out their bellies.

  “Master mayor, we have been seeking these traitors for the past day. They are rebels from Boroughbridge.”

  The crowd muttered. “Where’s that?” asked someone.

  Geraint surveyed the sea of faces with a cheerfulness he did not feel. “Do I look like a rebel to you?” he asked, grinning as he took an apple pie from the stall behind him and bit into it with gusto.

  “You look like a stout joist that needs laying!” chortled a female voice and Geraint kissed his hand to his unseen admirer.

  “Do I?” asked Jankyn saucily, flicking his wrist behind his cap.

  One of the armed men stepped up to the stall and with a violent heave sent it onto its side. The crowd gasped and drew back, leaving the scattered pies untouched. The mayor swallowed, rubbing his thumbs against his fingers uncertainly. Sir Edgar swung himself out of the saddle and his men flanked him and moved forward one at a time as if with some premeditated strategy.

  Geraint seemed unperturbed by the menacing enemy ring as if they were merely flies buzzing around him. Then he aimed his pie straight at their captain. It hit Edgar’s breast, leaving a trickle of apple upon the hauberk. Sticking his thumbs in his belt, Geraint laughed and addressed the townsfolk. “He misleads you, good people. Ignore them, mayor. ’Tis but a quarrel over a woman.”

  “Told you,” said someone.

  “I will prove myself by trial of arms but not against a host of cowards who think themselves above the laws of Holy Church.” He plucked his glove off and tossed it disdainfully at Edgar.

  “Aye, here’s sport,” shouted someone. “My purse on the young braggart.”

  Edgar de Laverton ground it into the dust with his heel and then he clicked his fingers. The first clash of the men’s drawn swords against their shields was out of unison but by the third beat they had it perfectly.

  “St Jude, help us!” muttered Jankyn, as the people fell back and the men in armour, drumming malevolently, closed in.

  There were angry growls from the back of the crowd directed at Edgar, as though the besieged strangers shared with them a common enemy—the beleaguered against the privileged. But the swashing of the blades again
st the bucklers had not faltered.

  The mayor gave a stifled twitter of protest, his hands in the air, as two of the men-at-arms ceased drumming and turned their swordpoints towards him.

  “Ignore them?” spluttered Jankyn, with a dry laugh, “Oh surely not.” But they were coming too close for humour. “You might at least take two to the Devil with us.” The jester’s voice was sharp with fear. “Oh, God save me, who comes here?”

  The villagers’ eyes goggled at the menacing armoured figure who calmly rode his horse through the crowd, the visor glaring straight at Geraint. The people parted as swiftly as the sea before Moses. The knight reached the space and slowly, with the timing of a skilled interlude player, removed his helm. It was Sir Fulk de Enderby himself.

  Someone hissed and a glob of spit was heard landing.

  “At least the town is on our side.” Geraint folded his arms tightly and stood back-to-back with Jankyn, still not drawing his sword.

  “Aye, and about as useful as a basket of whelks. Shall we walk crablike across to the potter’s stall and shy jugs at them?”

  The drumming was finding its mark; Geraint felt his nerves wearing as thin as a beggar’s breechclout but still he did not unfold his arms and suddenly the pattern of noise stopped. The silence was worse. His heart was doing the drumming now. The crowd had fallen back further, pressing against the stalls.

  Fulk’s horse daintily danced about them. “I will be merciful. I will give you a safe escort out of the riding now and we will forget the whole matter.” Aye, and no doubt they would slit his throat before they heaved him into the county palatine of Lancaster.

  “But I have swyvved my wife right lustily, Sir Fulk.”

  The cold metallic eyes met his enemy’s cheerfulness without blinking. “I doubt it. That is not the arrangement, is it?”

  The assumption shook Geraint unaccountably. The calculated cruelty that Johanna had spoken of was now believable. This man was a reptile—an amphisbaena beyond the reach of God.

  “You wish to risk rearing my bastard for your heir? Rather foolhardy, Sir Fulk. I now see they do not call you ‘the Mallet’ for naught. Blunt and stupid withal. Let the archdeacon’s court decide or else let us fight it out man to man.”

  For answer, Sir Fulk signalled to the leader of his men and they surged forward. Geraint had barely time to draw his sword. He sent one fellow crashing to the ground and another stumbling back before they fell upon him. Jankyn was easily down but rolled and went somersaulting, kicking one jaw before he sprang on another man’s back and clung like a hump. Outnumbered, it was hopeless. Two of the men set on Geraint from behind and hung on to him with their full weight. His wound protested. Biting back the pain, he swung around trying to shake them off, but two more came at him.

  Sir Fulk dismounted. Geraint braced himself as the knight’s fist drove into his belly. At the second blow, he doubled up, tears of pain blinding his vision as the men hauled him up again for their master’s gloved fist to send his lower jaw upwards, jarring his head back.

  “Hold!” There were suddenly horses everywhere.

  “Hell’s teeth, man!” roared a voice that was miraculously familiar. Sir Ralph de Middlesbrough reined his horse in beside Sir Fulk. “What are you at?”

  Hands let Geraint go and he crashed face first on the ground.

  “To Hell with you!” growled Sir Fulk. “I will cut off his manhood and send my lady the thing she prizes.”

  “Lay a further fist into this man and you can cool your heels in my dungeon for ‘writ of trespass,’ sir. I will have justice in this shire. You have broken the king’s peace with force and arms, and on a holy day too.”

  “Justice?” Sir Fulk spat. “Then none of our wives and daughters are safe. Any knave may ride in and lay claim to them. Take him!” He drove a mailed foot into Geraint’s ribs. “I will soon have him by the balls whether he kisses the archdeacon’s arse or not.”

  Geraint struggled back to consciousness as strong hands turned him onto his back.

  “Is his neck snapped?” asked someone.

  A hand felt for a pulse. “Nah, don’t be a daffe. He’s alive.”

  Wishing he was not, Geraint opened his eyes to see a half-dozen faces bent over him, including the deputy sheriff’s.

  “I thank you,” he gasped and struggled to sit up, his head ringing, and felt his jaw. His lip was cut and bruised, his mouth awash with blood. “Where is my esquire?”

  Jankyn, his face bloody, dropped to his knees beside him. “Oh Lordy, that was close. They are going to trundle you back to Lady Johanna like a sack of horsedung.” He understood. Not a traitor’s hurdle then—yet.

  Another pair of legs stopped and stooped and Geraint blinked dazedly into the face of the stranger who had diced at Bainham alehouse.

  “Sheriff’s man, you, wasn’t it?” He tried to jab a finger belligerently into the man’s boot.

  “Aye, and Agnes’s brother besides. But ’tweren’t you I and another were bidden to track. It was Edgar de Laverton. Been stirrin’ up trouble, evictin’ FitzHenry’s serfs, pillagin’ ’n burnin’. Followed you t’ Bainham, he did, wi’ his Enderby brigands not far off, skulkin’, so I sent the other fellar back to warn Sir Ralph. Led us all a fair chase you did. Lucky though, eh?”

  Which happy saint was the patron of numbskulls and harpies? They must have had half of Yorkshire on his tail. At least the Lady Edyth had not manifested herself, but in this infernal shire anything was possible. Geraint groaned. His problems were queuing up like soldiers outside a harlot’s tent.

  Agnes’s large brother grinned with a fiendish glee that Lucifer himself could not have emulated. “I tell you this, Sir Gervase,” he chortled, setting his gauntleted hands beneath Geraint’s armpits and levering him to his feet. “Upon my soul, I’d not like to be in your shoes when you get back to Conisthorpe.”

  Seventeen

  JOHANNA, THE CRACK in her self-esteem at Gervase’s leaving plastered over to withstand common viewing, finally found the courage to see if he had awoken. Her mother had dosed him the previous night with enough syrup of scarlet corn-roses, mixed with honey, to put a carthorse to sleep. Horizontal and with his eyes shut, he looked reasonably manageable if she kept about four paces from her bed and put a fence around it.

  She was expecting hostility—a temper sheathed in a scabbard of aloofness; he would be waiting for a tongue-lashing from her mother and tears on her part. Instead she found him dozing beneath the fur coverlet like a great . . . no, not a bear . . . a proud, battered destrier exhausted by battle.

  “Well, I am back, my lady,” he spoke drowsily, opening one dangerous eye, and before she could draw breath, added, “The king has executed my lord of Lancaster, did you hear?” It was as if he was asking her opinion, and for an instant she was deceived until he spoilt it by adding, “I should be grateful to know if there are other tidings.”

  Arrogant whoreson! That told her what little importance her feelings rated. No contrition, not a word of apology, no plumping up his features into a sheepish grin, no flash of charming teeth and softening of gaze. The only shred of his character that she could salvage was honesty. At least he was not making a show of something he did not feel.

  Or—a new suspicion occurred to her—was this a device to suffocate her recriminations? Well, two could play this nonchalant game; she had her anger safely folded away for a later airing.

  “Yes, a messenger did ride in with a proclamation from my lord high sheriff yesterday. The king has given orders that the leading rebels be . . . be dispatched in their home shires.”

  She watched him lift out a hand from beneath the sheet and rub the corners of his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. The languorous movement belied his sharp interrogatory tone.

  “Did you hear it?”

  “Who did not?” she retorted. “It was proclaimed by the mayor in the square and then Mother had it read out to the entire castle.”

  “Were there any names given?” He was employing
the impatient tone that her father and Fulk always used but she stifled her resentment; maybe he was acquainted with some of those sentenced.

  “Henry de Montford and two other Henries. De Wilingford and—”

  “Wilington. Those two were with the force from Bristol.” He was gravely silent as if he were praying for them. “You are doing well, my lady. Any other names?”

  “Henry de Tyeysat and John de Gifford. One I had heard of, Bartholomew Badles—”

  “God ha’ mercy! Badlesmere!” Geraint sat up, wincing. Edmund’s father-in-law!

  “Yes, he was to be dragged by horses out of Canterbury—”

  “But he was nowhere near . . .” His hand masked his face from her. “I need to see your mother,” he said darkly.

  “I should like to understand,” she answered gently.

  “I have promised you I will explain why we committed treason, my lady, but not today while the news is raw. Forgive me that, at least.”

  Fulk’s chaplain had told her that women could not feel the same depth of spiritual suffering as men. A nonsense, but she kept silent as Gervase stared unseeing at the coverlet, running his fingers absent-mindedly through the fur as if the touching must be balm to his imagining, and then shook his head in disbelief.

  “And Rome abandoned its republic and created an emperor. The fools!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, my lady, we can be ruled by a donkey if he wears a crown.” Forehead creased, he shook his head further, staring at the ceiling beams. Then as if he suddenly remembered her presence, he turned his face to her.

  Her hands plucked at the gris edging of her surcote beneath his hard scrutiny. Greater matters had been dealt with; now it was her turn on the list. “Are you not going to ask me how I am feeling?” He was going to squeeze the bitterness out of her as if she were a pustule.

  “No.” She inspected a loose thread on the tippet of her sleeve, hiding her face from the blue gaze. “I am trying not to be predictable.”

  “Then you have succeeded. I expected . . .” He looked away, like a wicked but adorably sinful rogue, “. . . well, what I deserve. But if it please you to stopper it until later when I no longer feel . . .”