The Knight And The Rose

by Isolde Martyn

  It was a wonder the archdeacon’s officer did not bristle at the insult, for it was known that my lord archbishop had disputed his right to hear cases in half of the shire. He ignored the criticism.

  “Sir Gervase.”

  Stephen de Norwood set the ribboned and sealed petition before the judge with a bow. It was unrolled and scanned.

  “Do you have anything to add, Sir Gervase?”

  Gervase bowed to the judge. Johanna was proud of him. Her mother had indeed chosen him well and the blue velvet tunic with its neck and sleeves bordered with yellow silk circles like interlocking suns emphasised his fair hair and handsome face, as if he brought the goodness of the open sky into the church.

  “Only this, my lord judge and worthies all, I pray you do not call into question the honour of this my noble and gracious lady. Let her rather receive your pity and compassion. It is I who must bear the full guilt for this unfortunate tangle. Circumstances compelled me to leave this place before I could inform Lord Alan that I had married his daughter, but before God I swear that the lady Johanna and I exchanged our vows lawfully before a priest and witnesses and straightway consummated our handfast. I understand Sir Fulk’s anger at the shame brought upon him, but I affirm most solemnly that in God’s sight the lady was married to me first and . . .” he swung round to face Johanna, “I honour her.”

  A sob broke from Agnes, Johanna’s vision misted and Yolonya was dabbing her eyes with her apron but the judge, even if he sensed the accusation levelled at Fulk, nodded to Geraint to resume his place, requested Johanna to answer the petition in two days time on Wednesday, the feast of St. Benjamin, and moved on to the next case.

  Veiling her face, Johanna rose and with her mother on one side and Gervase on the other started down the nave, but Fulk blocked her path, an ominous wall of metal.

  Johanna shook. She had forgotten how much he could terrify her but reassuring hands came from either side to steady her. Remembering Cob, she spat at Fulk’s feet and would have passed by, but he reached out a gauntleted hand to grab her painfully by the shoulder.

  “How now, wife! You hardly look like a woman suffering from Cupid’s bolts. What are you paying the boy here to lie for you? Certes, the coward can never lie with you.”

  Johanna’s cheeks flamed.

  Setting her to one side, Gervase was mocking as he looked eye to eye with him. “Now why do you say that, Fulk de Enderby, when all of Conisthorpe knows differently? I suppose you want to set your men on me again? Win this case and you will have a cuckoo’s egg in your nest for sure.”

  “Why you—”

  “On your way! All of you!” Sir Ralph thrust himself between them. “I will not have the king’s peace broken!”

  Fulk’s gaze crawled over Johanna, making her skin feel goosefleshed. “The examiner will break you, wife, you and the boy. As for your witnesses,” he eyed Agnes with icy malevolence, “if they are found to be lying, they will be flogged in the market square.”

  “You are intimidating the witnesses,” exclaimed Lady Constance.

  “Yes, I certainly am,” growled Fulk.

  “WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?” Geraint asked Stephen de Norwood outside the churchyard, once they were within the safety of a cordon of Conisthorpe’s garrison. The ladies were already seated in the litter and the entourage was waiting for his signal to return to the castle. The proctor drew him aside.

  “Well, after St. Benjamin’s Day, Sir Fulk’s proctor will present positions and I surmise he will allege a case of glossa ordinaria.”

  “Does it sound as dull in the vernacular?”

  “It means adultery, sir. That you misled the lady and your purpose was merely fornication. He will probably also plead that any abuse of the lady by himself was done for the purpose of ‘reducing her from errors.’”

  “Hmm, and am I right in thinking you will not see the questions that are going to be put to Sir Fulk’s witnesses by his proctor?”

  “Correct, sir. Sir Fulk’s advocate will not see the questions I have set either. Only the examiner does. As for yourself, you will not hear the cross-examination until the depositions are read out in court.”

  Remembering Johanna’s fears, he muttered, “Well, I hope the examiner is an honest man and no craven.”

  “Just tell your esquire to be sparing with his wit in case it annoys the examiner. The women are always more of a liability in cases like this. Clever questioning can tie their tongues in knots. There is one further matter that you must broach with your lady. How will she answer Fulk’s assertion touching her virginity when he lay with her on their marriage night?”

  “I have not discussed it.”

  Stephen de Norwood patted his arm. “Chicken blood. Since you had already had her maidenhead, I expect her mother or that huge tiring woman who gave me the pimpernel mixture for my digestion the other day told her how to keep a bridegroom feeling secure. Yes?”

  “My thanks.” Geraint inclined his head courteously. “I will tell her and warn Lady Constance.”

  Stephen de Norwood nodded. “By the way, I have informed the officers of the court and Sir Ralph about the violent demise of my lady’s dog. Take care, sir. All of you.”

  “You also, Stephen,” answered Geraint grimly.

  THAT IS NOT the arrangement, is it? As he rode back beside Sir Geoffrey at the head of their company, Fulk’s words jangled in Geraint’s head like folly bells. Somehow he did not think it was bluster on Fulk’s part; the man seemed damnably sure that he had committed no indiscretions with Johanna. Why was that? Even if Lady Edyth had assumed that there was no intimacy between them, she could not swear to her brother that she was certain. After all, Geraint had been seen to sleep in Johanna’s bedchamber on two occasions albeit he had been alone in her bed. Why was Fulk so sure? Was he certain of Johanna’s character—that she was over-virtuous or frigid? He can never lie with you. It was time, Geraint decided as he rode behind the swaying litter, that he got through to the skin of the matter.

  “I want to talk to you,” he murmured, assisting Johanna out after they arrived at Conisthorpe. She flinched when he would have put his arm about her.

  “No, please. I thank you for what you said this morning, sir, but I need to have some solitude. I will take my meal in my bed-chamber alone.” So he would not be able to make her eat, thought Geraint glumly.

  “If answering the libel on Wednesday bothers you, could you not plead you are indisposed? I gather that women can become, well . . . irregular at such times of stress.”

  “No, I will be there.” So she was not suffering from cramps or any of the ills that might afflict women at the time of their courses.

  Agnes made a sympathetic face at him behind her mistress’s back. Surely she must know what was going on?

  He followed the two young women across to the south tower and waited in his bedchamber for Agnes to descend the stairs alone, then immediately caught her hand and hauled her up to the small landing outside Johanna’s door. Caught off guard with no time to bar the door, his pretend wife stiffened her shoulders and faced him with a dignified control that a princess might have envied.

  “What do you want?”

  He stepped behind the maidservant, sternly setting her before Johanna like a mirror. “On your mother’s soul, Agnes. Tell me if your lady here still has her monthly courses.”

  “Yes, sir, but the way she is starving herself, ’twon’t be for much longer. Tell him, my lady. Or would you have him find out for himself?”

  “You have gone too far, Agnes!”

  “I mean no mischief, my lady,” the girl answered stoutly. “But I can’t bear to see you starving yourself to death.”

  It was Gervase who found a voice first. “Leave us, Agnes,” he said hoarsely, as if the words found trouble seeking life.

  His gaze did not waver from Johanna as Agnes, with a sob, her fingers to her mouth, ran out past him. The girl’s presumption that Johanna must inevitably surrender her body to him hung in the air between th
em.

  He used the weapons that men had ever used, standing there feet apart in his costly clothes, every inch of him proclaiming greater strength and male authority, affirming in his arrogant study of her that he had the right to bend her to his will and that his wisdom was for her good, but he kept his anger in its scabbard.

  She was not going to enlighten him. He was still the outsider. With dignity, she gestured to the open door.

  Geraint raised his arms, his hands open-palmed, and then despairingly dropped them to his sides with an angry breath. “I thank you for your trust, lady,” he told her cuttingly and left her standing forlorn and alone.

  “IT WEREN’T NO use, I suppose,” Agnes muttered, when h planted himself in her path as she brought her mistress’s meal from the kitchens. “An’ she’ll treat this as though it’s poisoned.”

  “She thinks Fulk is trying to poison her?”

  Agnes giggled at his shocked tone as though he had the intelligence of a wart on a dog’s nose. “No, sir, ’course not, she isn’t that daft.”

  “So you will not tell me.” He stubbornly folded his arms. “Well, I shall not wave a white clout yet. Ensure your mistress has a good night’s slumber. Ask Yolonya for some potion to settle her tonight and if she is to take her meals in her bedchamber, it will be in my presence. I intend to make sure she eats properly from now on.”

  “Aye, you can say so, sir, but lourin’ over her like old Fulk did won’t solve matters. But I tell you this, I have had enough, sir. If my lady won’t help herself nor tell you or madam her mother, maybe chaplain can advise. I’ll be off to him when I’ve given her this.” She bobbed him a curtsey and continued on her way.

  Geraint’s arms unknotted themselves. “In God’s Name, Agnes, tell me what is amiss with her. Upon my honour, I shall do what is needful.” He grabbed the platter. “You doubt my word? Look at me, Agnes!”

  The wench avoided his eyes, fumbling with her linen coif, straightening it needlessly. “My lips are sealed, sir. My lady made me take an oath.”

  “Agnes,” he coaxed softly, “there are ways to help a man guess.

  I will walk barefoot in the desert and surrender myself to the Saracens if your mistress desires it of me so long as she does not carry Fulk de Enderby’s seed within her womb.”

  “Oh no, sir, nothing like that.”

  Said easily, it had him as confused as a mouse in a cheese larder. He thrust the platter back at her. “Think, Agnes. How may I guess?”

  “Have you . . .” She blushed, pursing her lips, “Have you not put your hand lower, sir? You being her husband like.”

  “Lower? She wants me to lower my hand?” he asked in genuine innocence, not only wondering what Agnes was actually implying but whether any woman ever managed to make sense. Never tell me my lady icicle is weeping because I have played the chivalrous knight, he thought. No, God would present him with a halo and a pair of fluffy, feathery wings before that ever happened. Johanna had given him no encouragement whatsoever and he knew the wretched woman was set on becoming a nun.

  Agnes sniffed and he could not tell if the waggle of her head was a nod or a denial. “I promised not to say, sir, but them knaves in Florence have a lot to answer for,” she bleated, and bolted like a panicked ewe, her eyes saltwatery.

  Geraint was left standing alone, convinced he would never understand women. Where was their rational thinking? Knaves? Florence?

  Jankyn materialised at his elbow. “If I tie ribbons on you we could use you as a maypole as well as a husband. I merely inquire because you have been standing here stock still and such idleness is to be despised. Did the fair Agnes glue your feet to the flagstones?”

  “What do you want, Jankyn?”

  “I have been sifting through some of the exquisite movables that were stored in the tower and now risk the weather. Do you want to come and tell me if you want to salvage any of them?”

  “No!”

  Jankyn followed him up into his bedchamber. “So now you and the lady are shoved in the same bag, shall you claim the spoils? You might get the constableship.”

  “Who me?” Geraint sighed, inwardly wary at how much the jester read in him. He closed the door. “Lady Constance does not want me hanging around her castle like a stinking moat. The moment the verdict is given, she will forget she ever met me.”

  “And you might do better, eh? You still have not told me who you really are. The King of Elfland preparing to make love to the lady between the toadstools? One of Edward Longshank’s bastards—oh, wash my mouth out! I have it! You are a spy for Robert the Bruce and pray to the patron saint of sporrans.”

  The fool received a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “Aye, you may ask the Scots the next time they come raiding. I have a test for you, man. Tell me, what is Florence known for?”

  “Making barn lofts vibrate. Ouch!” he danced back at the friendly clout. “Oh, foolish of me, you mean the city-state. Glass, artists, girdles, although the latter is a false assertion.”

  “Perhaps we should hold this conversation in English. The words are shorter and I am obviously stupid. What are you blathering about?”

  “Florentine girdles, my friend. Why are you looking at me as though I have managed to change cowpats into gold?”

  His master triumphantly slapped his palms together, feeling like the conqueror Alexander must have when he sliced through the Gordian knot. Johanna was wearing a chastity belt.

  GERAINT DELIBERATED ON putting Agnes’s advice to the text, but the way Johanna was behaving he would be lucky to handle her fingers let alone the lady’s more alluring parts. Any touching other than in merest courtesy seemed now an anathema to her.

  Agnes was a different matter. He delayed her easily with a hand on her elbow. “I have solved your riddle, but it is a pity for my lady’s health that you did not hint at it sooner.”

  “So you may say, but my lady forbade me to tell anyone, least of all a man and a newcomer at that. It is chafing her right sorely. That is why she will not ride with you and she is trying to starve herself so she may be able to wriggle out of it.”

  Geraint cursed. Fulk of Enderby needed to be gelded. “How long has she been wearing it?”

  “Since we left Enderby, but ’tis not the first time. That monster,” she spat, “made her wear it whenever he was away.”

  “And you say her mother knows nothing of this?”

  “No, sir, Lady Johanna has been very discreet and she will allow no one else to bathe or robe her. Anyhow, sir, I am right glad you know now. We have tried filing it but she can hardly call in one of the carpenters or Bart the smith. It really is a matter for you, sir, as her husband.”

  By all the Saints! Geraint cast his gaze heavenwards. Was there no end to what was expected of him? But he had to do something.

  That is not the arrangement, is it? Fulk had sneered at him. As matters stood, the proctor’s advice was useless. His supposed marriage with Johanna would not stand. Fulk, damn him to Hell, knew he could not have carnal knowledge of Johanna even were he to stay a twelve month. But what could he do to help her? Nothing unless he knew the lie of the land, so to speak. He turned his head to the south tower, took a deep breath and braced himself to confront the little female dragon.

  AGNES LET HIM in, a finger on her lips.

  “Maman?” Johanna stretched and yawned delightfully like a kitten, until she opened her eyes and saw him. “What do you want here?” Despite her ill pleasure, he was relieved to see she had the crinkled, pillowed look of having slept deeply.

  “Nothing that you are not prepared to give,” he answered, signalling to Agnes to remain. “But you cannot, even if you want to. Supposing I want to touch you as a husband should? What should I find if I slide my hand up to explore your secrets, Johanna?”

  She was off the bed in a trice and had her hand on the door-handle. “Lay hands on me and I will scar your face with these nails, I swear it!”

  “Let me set you a hypothesis, my lady.” He gave a tight smil
e at her irritated puzzlement. “Just supposing, Johanna, that we had met before you were wed to Fulk and fallen in love.” He watched the wariness creep into her eyes. “If you were in love with me, you would surrender to me sweetly now, would you not?”

  She swallowed. “I . . . I have no understanding of these matters but yes, I suppose I would.”

  “But you cannot, can you, Johanna? You are locked into perpetual chastity.”

  She flinched. “You are saying that I have a crippled mind concerning fornication. Yes, you are right. I have no wish to have carnal knowledge of you or any other man. It offers no pleasure.”

  Well, he would see about that.

  “Lady,” he answered gently. “Time will heal your scars, I promise you. However, it was not the chastity of your thoughts I meant, it was the chastity that is enforced upon you.”

  Johanna’s gaze met his squarely and then her eyes widened in anger. “The Devil take you!”

  “I imagine he will, lady. You and I both.”

  “Did you tell him, Agnes? If you did, I shall—”

  “No,” he cut in, “Agnes has not betrayed you. If anyone, it was Fulk.” He warmed to his purpose. “A Florentine girdle, Johanna? Is that what that incubus forced you to wear?”

  Johanna tore her gaze away from his stern perusal, tears glistening. “I cannot get it off and it is hurting me.”

  He wanted to hold her, to draw her against his shoulder, but he knew that she was like a wild creature. If the twig cracked beneath the foot of the hunter, she would run.

  “Can I help?” It was offered with the most profound gentleness.

  Johanna saw him through a blur of tears. His presence shimmered as if he were an angel rather than a man and the change of image lessened her shame and added comfort. She closed her eyes, trying to staunch her weeping, and shook her head in despair.

  “Sir, the device is hardfast. If it was easy for a man to break the lock, there would be no point in forcing wives to wear this torture. He did not have to do this.” Her eyes were brimming afresh with bitter tears. “After what he has done to me, I would crawl to Jerusalem on my knees rather than lie down with any man.”