Johanna gave a tight smile. Perhaps John de Dreux, Duke of Brittany and Constable of Richmond, was subtly reminding the royal favourite which of them was veined with princely blood.
“I see you are still with us in spirit after all, sir. I know you fear to encounter so many noble lords and ladies, but try to feign some cheer from now on.” She found herself wincing beneath the disgusted look he gave her.
“We are the objects of scandal, not to mention fornicators and traitors, and you are worried I might be gauche?”
“I did not mean that. And I am sure I can find somewhere to hide you if there is any danger. I lived here from my eighth until my seventeenth year.” Dear God, she did not mean to sound so trite.
“How reassuring. Perhaps you should have given me a charcoal sketch showing the secret passages. Blocked? Then, thank you, Johanna, you are worth the entire crusader force put together. No wonder they never regained Jerusalem.”
“At least I might manage to find out who you really are,” she retaliated, and lapsed into a silence punctuated by tiny sniffs.
He curbed his foul temper and became more conciliatory as a boy of no more than ten years ambushed Miles in the outer bailey. It was one of the Helmsley pages.
Her mother wistfully watched the two boys scamper away into the keep. “I will miss him sadly when he returns to Helmsley. Still, he will make useful friends and they will give him discipline.”
“So long as it is deserved,” growled Geraint. His painful memories had kept pace with him across the moors, regurgitating in his mind like bile.
If he expected to be shown the dungeons as a welcome, his relief when he reached Scolland’s hall unfettered was hidden beneath the irritable shock of facing a garrulous throng of Yorkshire nobility. The tumult was oppressive; the air was stifling; most of the shutters were fastened; smoke misted the rafters; and, at chin level, the odour of lavender, musk and ambergris vied ineffectually with finery that had been coffered too long and the stink of those who had preferred not to wash during winter. Added to which he could see that the flagons were moving in the opposite direction and that Sir Fulk had already gained the guest of honour’s attention.
“It seems we shall be sleeping with our boots on,” he growled testily.
“Aye, sir,” quipped a nearby knight in samite, wearing a disgusting excess of peacock feathers in his hat, “but the good news is that my lord of Richmond is two hours tardy with supper so at least we shall be fed first.”
The man would have been friendly had his wife not dug him in the ribs and whispered behind her hand. She was not the only noble lady who drew her skirts pointedly aside as if he and the Conisthorpe ladies carried the pox, but when the courteous Lord of Richmond greeted Johanna with a kiss on each cheek, and shook him by the hand, the Yorkshire worthies began to thaw rapidly, oozing almost.
Johanna noted the coquettish smiles that were darted across the hall at her hireling husband—lips bitten to appear more red, here the judicious adjustment of a neckline, there the silky glance beneath the lashes, but Gervase, thank the Saints, was far more interested in the lords. As if stalked, he was giving little away and listening much.
It was uncomfortable being the centre of attention. She never discovered which aging baron goosed her, but she did manage to foil the gossipmongers and meddlers who tried to manoeuvre her so that she was face to face with Fulk. She was not providing a spectacle.
Nor it seemed was Gervase. No armed retainers came to haul him forth, no one greeted him as a long-lost bastard, and when Sir Ralph was pleased to introduce him to the lord High Sheriff, Sir Roger de Somerville, it was merely to cajole him to tell his jest about the Irishman, the Welshman and the Scotsman.
She was ravenous by the time they were finally seated at the board, knights along one side and the ladies on the opposite side of the hall, congratulating herself that she had a satisfactory view of the high table and especially of Hugh Despenser the younger.
Knowing his reputation clouded her perception. She had always felt sympathy for the poor queen, said to be the loveliest woman in England yet yoked to a king who shunned her for a man in his mid-thirties who did not look, well, particularly remarkable.
Oh he wore his light brown hair fashionably parted at the centre and it was still plentiful as it curled at chin length but she did not like the cut of his small beard; together with his almond eyes, it gave him a fey look. Otherwise he appeared rather ordinary in stature—slight compared to the tall, thin Lord of Richmond on his right. He inclined his head charmingly as he listened to Lord John, but his looks went everywhere. For an instant he mirrored Johanna’s stare. In panic, she coloured and busied herself with her trencher, before she dared peep up again and observe his sanguine splendour. Half of her wished she could manage a close look at the motifs on his sleeve and note the seams and type of stitches. The other half of her wondered how the man could sleep sound o’ nights; it was common gossip that he had had a young widow tortured into yielding up her lands, and there were many such tales.
Her burgeoning fears were mercifully halted when one of the de Scriven ladies from Knaresborough leaned across her mother. “Is that a Sicilian brocade you are wearing, Lady Johanna? Such an exquisite blue . . .” The talk of fashion unfrosted her mother’s tense demeanour and by the time Gervase strode across and set his hands upon Johanna’s shoulders, the older ladies had settled into comparing flood damage. Soon they would alarm each other as to whether the Scots would raid their demesnes during the summer.
Her temporary lord was at ease and smiling.
“No hudder-mudder?” she asked as he escorted her from the board.
“No secrets, but much conference. Fulk has been trying to bend le beau Despenser’s ear all evening, that is whenever he has been able to escape the attentions of Maud de Roos. She is taking an uncommon interest in the progress of our little matter. Ah yes, and Sybilla de Wysham wants to know where you purchased these buttons.” He flicked one of the cobalt glass buttons that peapodded the openings of his perse jupon. “Aye, and Alice de Raby loves the oak-leafed edging to my gorget. She examined it extremely closely. Tall demoiselle, is she not? The one with the brooch between her—ouch! You will ruin the rose windows on my shoes.”
“But no one has challenged you?”
Geraint did not share his conclusions with her, instead he carried her fingers to his lips reassuringly, watching the gems of her caul catching the candlelight. Her soul was glowing in her eyes tonight. Her loveliness drew out the rusty poet in him. The patterned brocade moulded her sweet breasts and her sleek hips were enhanced by a glistening girdle of samite embossed, orphrey-like, with little horses prancing in cusped leaves. God ha’ mercy, he was beginning to sound like a needlewoman in full prattle. He gave up at that point, content to just enjoy feasting his eyes on her, but her fingers fluttered restlessly on his wrist.
“You will dance with me? Please.”
“It will cost you extra,” he replied with mock gravity. The musicians could scarcely be heard yet for the servants were noisily propping the trestle boards and reversing the forms against the side of the hall.
“I have not trod any measure since I was last at Skipton when we were bidden to a feasting,” Johanna exclaimed happily, pushing the danger away for a beautiful moment. Her golden husband turned heads even if he was rented. If all else went awry, she would keep this memory fresh until they ordered her shroud. He was hers, just hers, for a little space.
Geraint, his instincts sensing that whatever danger threatened him was covert and subtle, surrendered to the moment. He knew that her vivacity was drawing attention but he wanted to indulge her. She had lost her hollow-eyed mien and was tantalising him with her mischievious green eyes as they linked hands and whirled down the clapping set. He desired nothing better than to unfetter those braids and rope that sweet lithe body hard against him and caress her until she was aflame with passion for him. And where were they? Cursed Richmond and the only sleeping space was on a dog
if you were lucky enough to be a flea.
Johanna was startled as the music stopped when he curved one of his large calloused palms against her cheek.
“I want you.”
The hubbub of conversation receded and time drew breath.
“It is the danger,” she explained breathlessly. “It changes people. You start to think this might be your last night on earth and—”
“It might be.” He led her gently by the wrist into a shadowy recess. There he took her fingers and drew her across the very air. His arms fastened about her and he pressed his body hard against hers, as if he was Adam straining to absorb Eve’s flesh back into his. “If it was not snowing,” he murmured against the gilded net of her hair, “I would take you out into the castle garden and make love to you.”
“Well, it is and this is foolish. The coin you offer is too dear. I cannot afford it.”
“Shrew! A bucket of words to defuse a wet squib, hmm?” In the dim light, there was a bitter lining to his bashful grin as if for an infinitesimal instant he had been in earnest, but he did not set her free. “Should we not make the best of every precious moment? I know there is unfulfilled desire in you.” But even as he spoke with teasing lightness, he knew that beneath the exhilaration she was afraid, for him and for Agnes. Talk must suffice, it was hazardous to venture further.
“And I know naught save you are an onion, sir.”
“Onion!”
She felt the rumble of laughter. “Yes, truly, the real man is layers deep.”
“I am not so sure. Perhaps Gervase de Laval should kill off all his other persona and live for the moment.”
“Dear God! How many have you got?”
Hiding behind her shield of words, Johanna had seen how much he wanted her. Whenever Fulk had looked at her like that, she had trembled at what she must be expected to perform, but this man made her feel precious, like a jewel that he wanted to take alone to his bedchamber and uncover.
“If I promise not to rearrange your embroideries, will you walk with me? I need sweeter air.”
Somehow they found her cloak among the many and he arranged her furred hood around her face and followed her out to the neat garden.
“Here is one way of withstanding the weather.” He took her in his arms but turned her so he could watch who entered the garden.
The duke would not want him bleeding over the rose bushes and breaking the lavender.
She laughed, unafraid of him, clasping her tight-cuffed wrists behind his neck and he burrowed his arms into her perfumed hanging sleeves and felt her, fragrant and desirable, within his hands.
“Was disguising yourself as a student only to throw off pursuit or is that also one of your faces?” Tonight he might tell me who he is.
“I was not that kind of scholar. Come, you know what happens to younger sons, lady mine, the poor asses are branded as church fodder the moment they draw their first breath. My father sent me to the Benedictines but there was one monk who made my life . . . unendurable, so I ran away, dishonouring my family. I have earned my own pay as an esquire ever since.”
“Ha, so that is how you came to be lettered. But why were you dressed like a poor student when Father Gilbert found you—to evade the bounty hunters?”
“It is a bloody tale.”
She shook him. “Nevertheless, tell me.”
“Here? Are you not freezing?”
It was worth the cold seeping up through her thin soles to hear some truths. For an instant she thought he would baulk at the telling but instead he tugged his fur collar closer and searched for a beginning.
“My company,” he began finally, “some half-dozen of us, escaped from Boroughbridge the night before Thomas of Lancaster surrendered and we happened across a man lying dead beside his meagre fire, a poor scholar by his garb. His purse was cut and so was his throat, poor wretch. It was agreed that I should put on his apparel, such as it was. No, do not look askance, it was not bloodstained. It was decided I was to go to the nearest village at dawn—I am not quite sure where we were—near Markington, perhaps—to seek news. I was on the road when a dozen horsemen passed me. They did not give me a second glance, thank Heaven, but it was evident they were following our tracks. I turned back running, but it was all over by the time I reached them. The bounty hunters, God rot them, were stripping the bodies like carrion. I thought to hide, but the whoresons heard me and dragged me forth and took my purse. I knew it was the end of the road for me, I can tell you, but they actually believed I was waiting to see what pickings they might leave, and that I must be a scholar even though my hair was not cropped.”
“Why did they not take your boots?”
“You would make a worthy examiner, my lady. The jest of it was that they found my boots with my armour. ‘Here,’ they said, in a fit of generosity, ‘these would fit you. We would be hard put to find a man with feet as big as yours to buy them. Have them!’ Then they loaded our horses with the booty and left me with the bodies. I had no spade to bury my friends, God rest their souls, nothing. It was like some imagining of Hell. They were all dead save . . .”
“Your friend Edmund.”
“Aye, they had thieved every piece of his armour and he was lying there, his shirt bloodied, but he was still alive. I had my cloak still so I wrapped him in that and carried him on my good shoulder out along the king’s highway. A carter took us up an hour later, thinking us poor scholars who had drunk too much, and so I came to the woods near Conisthorpe.”
She slid down her palms to nestle against his velvet breast, not in defence, but giving instead. “And then two women forced you to play a husband. My problems must have seemed so trite to you.”
“No, never trite, Johanna, but I wanted no part. You may have cursed me for a coward when I fled from you, but I was trying to escape to Edmund’s kin so that they could ransom him from your mother and send him to Ireland or France. His safety was more important than mine.”
She neither passed judgment nor questioned him on Edmund. “And is that where you will go?”
“France, if God wills it.” But he sighed, and looked towards the hall windows as if the lights were luring him like wreckers’ beacons.
Her fingers touched his cheek and she smiled mistily at the snowflakes spangling his beaked hat.
“By the Saints, lady, your fingers are like icicles! We must return.” At the steps, he hesitated. “Johanna, if aught perilous befalls me tonight, you must take no care for me. I am not afraid.”
Before she could find an answer, drunken and belching roisterers with flaming torches stumbled out from the hall to relieve themselves on the pathway.
There were still too many hours until morning.
ALL THE BEDCHAMBERS were so crammed with Despenser’s courtiers that the rest of the visiting entourages slept in the passageways and recesses, or in the hall if they were fortunate. Rolled in her cloak, Johanna lay with her fears, between her mother and Gervase, but when his arm scooped her into the curve of his body, she made no protest but set her feet against his warm body in wifely fashion and fell asleep.
It was past midnight when she heard the soft creak of expensive leather and, looking up, found two pairs of legs within a hand’s grasp. They were pulling Geraint to his feet, taking him from her. Johanna drew breath to scream but he dropped on his haunches and swiftly set his fingers across her lips.
“I will be back, I swear it. Go to sleep.”
It could have been a false promise.
HUGH DESPENSER THE younger opened his eyes and looked up lazily from his bath. A spatter of dried rose petals bobbed languidly in front of him, nudging the wet hairs plastered to his chest.
“So, twice the size and beefier, but still with that honest wholesome gleam I always liked in you. And no beard, my dear. How many years is it?” He raised a dripping hand and with the flick of a glistening forefinger dismissed all the servants save for his comely varlet. “More hot!”
Wordlessly, Geraint lifted his palms, only three
of his fingers curled down.
“Seven years! Was I nigh thirty when we last met? This conversation begins to age me already.” The hot water cascaded from the jug into the miniature sea between Despenser’s knees and belly. The rose petals disappeared beneath the waterfall and vapour rose. “Be seated.”
“I prefer to stand. Will this take long?” Geraint was careless with his tone. This silky scrutiny, the batting of words with catlike glee, reminded him too much of facing the novicemaster for the first time and suffering the slimy appraisal that had made his flesh crawl.
“That rather depends on you, my dear Gervase de Laval.”
“Do you mind?” Geraint indicated the jug of wine. It was a mere courtesy, something to say, but given permission, he poured himself a generous goblet and was grateful for it. Something to hold, something to fortify him against this unwelcome audience.
“The wench in blue with the horses stitched on her girdle?”
“Yes, the lady’s own work. Johanna, Fulk de Enderby’s wife.”
“But your wife too, I believe.”
Geraint picked up Despenser’s crimson and gold coat and ran a thumb across the stiff threads. “She gave me orders to inspect your dragons,” he lied.
“Be plain with me, Geraint. What is this woman to you? She has no lands save those which are in dispute and her fecundity is questionable.”
Geraint began to enjoy himself. He tossed aside the tunic and taking up his winecup again, watched Despenser over the rim. “It is a temporary arrangement.”
Hugh squeezed the expensive soap so it shot up into the air and fell into the water again. “I am relieved to hear it. You need to improve your prospects . . . and maybe I want you back where I can, shall we say, use your talents.”
Raising the goblet, Geraint savoured his wine. “I see,” he said slowly. “I noticed the Mallet of the English managed to speak with you. Putting you right about Bannockburn, was he?” The verbal jab produced an angry hiss.
The Knight And The Rose Page 38