“I cannot bear people who revel in telling me they have drunk horse’s piss. Did you hear that I am now become a pirate?”
“You always were, Hugh.”
“I think I like this brawnier version of you, Geraint. The leather is tougher but everyone has their price and I know yours. Pour me another, my dear.” Hugh held out the chased goblet.
His ill will unconcealed, Geraint took up the elegant waisted jug and stepped across. Hugh grabbed his wrist as he poured. “He will withdraw his petition.”
The Bordeaux streamed and missed the cup, reddening the water for an instant. Forced by the surprising strength to bend his knee, Geraint smelt Hugh’s wine-perfumed breath upon his face.
The derisive smile that always assaulted him with its mockery was there now, curling the corners of the other man’s mouth. Like a candle, it could lure foolish moths to destruction.
This had to be a trap. Why would the old veteran Fulk suddenly be asking for terms when he held Agnes as hostage?
The wet fingers unmanacled themselves from his cuff.
“I can always read you, Geraint. You were not expecting this?”
“But?” the younger man prompted icily, retreating as honourably as he could and rising to his feet.
“Quite so.” Hugh savoured his wine, teasing him with the wait. “But,” he conceded eventually, “the old warhorse wants Conisburgh—no, that is further south.”
“Conisthorpe.” Geraint tried not to move, to betray any hint of emotion other than surprise. “Sir Fulk wants Conisthorpe?”
“He desires to be made the constable.” Hugh handed the goblet to his varlet, and at some unseen understanding between them, leaned forward so the youth could sponge his shoulders. “Enlighten me as to why Lord Alan is not here to kiss hands—and keep to the truth, Geraint, for you know I like to find out if people are lying.”
As if bewitched, Geraint dragged his gaze away with an effort and stared at the tasselled tapestry on the opposite wall. The truth would steal in under Hugh’s door eventually.
“The old lord is stricken down one side and cannot speak. His lady, Constance, has been hiding the fact because she does not want to be evicted and I suspect she believes there is some chance of her lord’s recovery, but it was a visitation from God. I doubt FitzHenry will make it through the summer, the lack of exercise will weaken him.” He shrugged. “The castle, however, is presently well maintained, no question of that. Our lord king would find no fault with Lady Constance’s management nor her loyalty.”
“Except she gave shelter to a rebel. Is that how you have concealed yourself, playing the returned lover?”
“You have been listening to the Mallet. What else does he want—my head on the tip of your sword?”
Hugh’s lower lip curled down indifferently. He began to shake his head and then smiled. “Oh, I forgot,” he raised his forefinger, “he wants his sister Edyth given a place in the queen’s household.”
Geraint’s sudden cynical laughter rang out. “I would have thought that even you—”
With annoyance, Hugh Despenser lifted a finger to his lips, hushing him. “Oh yes, I can arrange even that.”
Slow mocking applause from Geraint broke the silence between them. “You have grown mighty,” he sneered, his disgust at the older man’s prostitution of himself for royal power scarcely concealed. “Can you manipulate canon law too, my lord? But I suppose you can, a lucrative benefice here, a bishopric there, a carrier pigeon to his Holiness. Everyone has their price.”
“I intend you no harm, Geraint. Can we not set the past differences aside and begin again?”
Geraint rested his hands against the mantel of the hearth, staring morosely at the glowing embers.
“So where have we arrived?” pursued that clear, rich voice that he knew so well. “This Fulk pledges the withdrawal of his petition, and your witness—the old dun was smug about that—shall be returned, and that leaves you, my dear, and I have plans for you.”
So all was resolved. And the price? Nothing was free. He guessed now he would be leaving Conisthorpe within days. And what would befall Johanna? Must she accept the cloister and abandon the secular world? But he had a dice of his own to roll.
“Since you can order the queen’s household, my lord, arrange for the lady Johanna to be given a place as well. Let word be sent to her once the hearing is over.” He jerked his head round for an answer.
He watched Hugh whistle and waggle his fingers as if he had burnt them. “Ouch! Two placements, my dear? A little delicate. Our beauteous Isabella will baulk at that, especially since we have been advising her to economise. More hot!”
“But I thought you ruled England now, Hugh,” Geraint taunted, observing the obedient servant’s face, but it registered nothing as if its owner was not at home. “What is more, Lady Johanna’s dower land is to be returned.” He watched Hugh make a distasteful rosebud of his mouth, and added, to provoke him further, “And the boy Barnabas at Enderby is to be freed, alive and hale, to join the FitzHenry household.”
“What is the boy to you?” The acute interest appalled Geraint. It made him wish he had not spoken.
“I never saw him. It is but a sop to please the lady. Be thankful that I am not asking you for pigs and lapdogs.”
“I hate to inquire further.” With a delicate shrug, as if he sensed he had been baited, Hugh lapsed into a brief sulky silence. “No doubt all this may be accomplished,” he declared eventually, as if the matter now bored him, adding as a caution, “Provided I get you back.”
“Are you sure you want that?” Geraint’s expression was not friendly. “I do not approve of your methods. I never have.”
“But regard me now, Geraint. I am ruling England. The King needs me. I have my uses although men such as you are mighty swift to curse me, all muscle and chivalrous integrity you are, and what good is that to the economy of this realm? Despise me, if you will, for feathering my nest, but I have done England great service and I defy you to best me on that score, dear heart. Because of my counsel, the king still acts within the spirit of the ordinances although it irks him. I intend to check the power of the barons by ensuring that parliament must discuss all legislation before it becomes law, and what is more I have set in motion a complete revision of the entire exchequer system. Walter Stapledon is going to carry out a survey of all government practices within the next three years.”
“If the Scots do not manage to sink a crossbolt in you.”
“Ah, war, the bottomless grave into which we hurl coins and bodies. I could not give a mouse’s turd on which side of the border Berwick ends up. We need a truce not a poxy summer campaign but, no, my lord the king still scratches at the scars from Bannockburn. Fiery people the English, always have to be fighting someone. War is what ruins the economy.”
“Unless you are on the winning side. But you always are, my lord, even when you are banished. Daemon ut antefuit. What rates are your Italian bankers charging to store your funds off the shores of England?”
“Plenty, my dear, and, yes, I know the adage. I have always been a demon.” Hugh answered smoothly, shooting the soap straight into the fire’s heart. His visitor’s face tightened at the waste; a peasant could have fed his family for a month by selling that soft, eroded sliver. “Now, dear lad, about our little arrangement . . .”
He stood up and, taking his servant’s hand, stepped over the edge to stand dripping before the fire. Geraint moved aside as if a brush of flesh might give him leprosy, and yet his gaze was drawn mothlike to the beauty of the older man as it had been in the past. The firelight danced upon Hugh’s shimmering unblemished skin as the water pearled off him onto my lord of Richmond’s expensive imported carpet. The young manservant knelt, patting the moisture from his master’s legs.
“You do agree?” The blue eyes, hard as sapphires, evaluated him.
“What choice have I?”
“None.” The wet hand came down upon his shoulder. “I should not want to hear of y
ou being hanged in some small town square like a common felon. You must be with me in time for the late summer campaign. Is the bargain made?”
Geraint nodded, surly at the manipulation.
“Then go—freely. And Geraint?” At the door, he turned reluctantly. “Does this woman Johanna know the truth? Of what we once were to each other and may be again?”
His lower lip curling into a sneer, Geraint shook his head.
“Then you cannot take her a kerchief with a dragon?”
“No.” With a careful smile, he managed an unshared joke at Hugh’s expense. “As you have observed, she prefers horses.”
He said nothing to either of the Conisthorpe ladies on his return, though Johanna’s curiosity would have had her dragging him for an interrogation in the garderobe had he let her and he might have ended up with his head stuck down the latrine. He merely said he had answered questions from some of my lord of Richmond’s officers, and fell asleep.
Lady Constance received the expected summons to Hugh Despenser next morning. Johanna, philosophically accepting the inevitable, that her father was about to be removed from office, observed from her place at the women’s table that Miles had abandoned his fellow pages and was taking his meal beside a cheerful Gervase. Perhaps her brother imagined some of the large knight’s experience and manliness might rub off on him like pollen. The other Helmsley boys sidled over as well. The sight of Gervase surrounded like an uncle both delighted and saddened Johanna, especially when he looked across and gave her a heart-warming grimace. Thus encouraged, she rose and circumnavigated the hall to stand behind him.
He was ruffling her brother’s hair to a state that would annoy her mother. “No doubt we shall be gone before dinnertime, Miles.”
“Aye, I know. I wish you well with the hearing, sister. I am right glad that Gervase is pleased your haunches are broad enough. I think I should like a nephew before next spring. Isobel Clifford’s are pretty narrow at the moment, but I think Mother may be calling that arrangement off if she can since the Cliffords are in—Ouch!”
“Oh pardon, Miles, was that your toe?” Gervase lifted himself off the bench, his eyes upon the ceiling bosses. “Would you like to show me the combat yard before we leave?”
“Haunches?” Johanna pounced on the word.
“Aye,” exclaimed her brother, disentangling himself from the form and moving round behind her, as if he was demonstrating some new breed to the other boys. “It is of paramount importance that a prospective wife’s haunches are of sufficient width to foal easily. Now see, with my sister here—What are you doing, sir . . .”
Gervase turned him upside down and set him down behind him out of range of Johanna. “Removing you and I from trouble, Miles.”
“Foal easily!” she hissed. “Women are half of Christendom. Without us, none of you would exist and yet we are barred from the priesthood, from schooling, from high government. I tell you this, if it was your haunches, Miles, that did the foaling, our mother should be the constable at Conisthorpe and I should be next.” Actually to argue a point of law, her sister Petronella would be as she was the eldest.
“My lady—” Her so-called husband looked as though he would hurry her away at any moment.
“But, madam,” one of the pages suggested thoughtfully, “your sex has not the strength to wear armour and protect these northern shires against the Scots.”
“Protect! Ha, how many times have the Scots harried us since Bannockburn?” She was straying onto miry ground and caught Gervase’s warning frown. There were a few older heads tilted in her direction. “I-I will say this. Beating the enemy does not ensure victory but only nourishes the feud. There is no loss of face, no damage to honour, to sit down and talk the matter out around a board whether it is between two kingdoms, a father and sons or a husband and wife who are at odds.”
There was an embarrassed hush and then a single clapping came from a few paces away; it was the Sheriff of Carlisle, Sir Andrew de Harcla, who applauded and saluted her from where he sat.
“You have made the sun shine this day, raven-haired darlin’,” he exclaimed. The compliment to her hair had rather tainted the praise but no matter.
“And,” said Johanna, quick-wittedly grabbing Miles by the shoulders and addressing the three interested little faces, her voice carrying to anyone who dared argue, “a sister with a small brother is allowed to wallop his haunches on any saint’s day.”
“That is any day!” yelled one of the other pages, thumping Miles on the back, and the hall resumed eating.
“Your pardon,” she muttered to Gervase. “I should not have drawn attention to us.”
“No matter, but here is further meat for the chewing. Your mother comes with ill tidings, I fear. What say you to some privacy?” He grabbed Miles, dismissed the others and led the way to the garden.
Lady Constance’s perfumed skin was tougher than he had anticipated as she appraised her children of the news in a secluded corner of the herber. A gardener followed them in and set about weeding beneath the trellised roses and sweetbriar with a hook and fork.
Forewarned, Geraint bucklered himself for female tears and boyish tantrums, but there was a certain amount of acceptance there already. After all, it had been inevitable that they must leave Conisthorpe and Johanna’s mother, as always, had a retreat strategy. She had dower lands and Lord Alan held manors in Yorkshire and a castle in Herefordshire. It was Johanna Geraint pitied. She sat bleak-faced, fearful of what else her mother had to say.
“Is it already decided who is to have Conisthorpe, then?” Her voice was weary.
Lady Constance’s normally stalwart lip trembled. “Lord Despenser and my lord of Richmond have agreed that Fulk should be appointed constable in your father’s place.”
“God rot them!” exclaimed Johanna, springing up. “This is intolerable!”
“Sit down, my lady!” Geraint ordered, noting the gardener was observing her behaviour with uncommon interest. She drew her fur cloak tightly about her and subsided sullenly onto the stone seat.
“In return,” continued Lady Constance, “Fulk will restore Agnes to you and withdraw his counter-petition from the hearing. Johanna?”
The younger woman looked as though she could have spat arrows. “You mean, madam, that although Fulk admits he has abducted Agnes, he is to go unpunished, and my lord Despenser will ensure the verdict will be manipulated in our favour. Is this the king’s justice?” She threw off the restraining hand that Geraint settled warningly upon her shoulder.
“The king does not enter into this, madam wife, since it is a matter for canon law.”
“Do not quell me with your male pedantry, sir. King’s bench, archdeacon’s court, does it matter which?”
Lady Constance was more pragmatic. “For Christ’s blessed sake, Johanna, shall you run with the hare and hunt with the hounds? All it means is that Fulk is not disputing your marriage to Gervase. But the court will still expect you to prove that your earlier marriage to Gervase was lawful.”
“I see. So you are telling me it is not cut and dried after all. Fie, I was not born yesterday. To be sure they will dance to a certain great lord’s piping.”
“One lord or another’s.” Lady Constance nonchalantly played with a loose thread where the coney fur trim was stitched to the bodice of her surcote.
“God preserve us, madam,” whispered Johanna. “And so is this kingdom foully run by favours. Well, I would I had its ruling, I should appoint men of honour, not venal lily-livered weasels.” She paced away and wheeled round, her anger icy. “What else did you negotiate, Mother? A different heiress for Miles now that Clifford’s niece is no longer acceptable to know?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, Johanna. Do not scowl so. One must make the best of these opportunities. My lord of Richmond mentioned Margaret de Beaumont.”
“I knew it!”
“Then make sure she is not the daughter with the squint, madam,” Geraint threw in dryly. “And if you mention haunches,
Miles . . .” he stroked his gloves menacingly betwixt his thumb and forefinger.
The boy was glum. “You may jest, sir. It is not your father who has lost his office.”
“The greater the man, the bigger the drop,” Geraint answered cryptically. His skin crawled; were they being observed behind the closed shutters of the solar? He slapped his gloves against his palm. “Miles, I am sorry for it, but I suggest we should depart right soon. Be diligent at Helmsley.”
“I am not going to Helmsley. My lord Despenser asked if I should like to go to his household at Caerphilly.”
“No!” The exclamation exploded from the three adults in unison; the gardener decided to shape the ends of the hedge nearest to them.
Geraint recovered first. “If you agreed to that, I shall—”
“No, sir, if you will let me finish . . .” Miles protested. “I explained to my lord Despenser that I had already asked my lord of Richmond to request my wardship from the king, and my lord Despenser was not displeased to hear that, I assure you.” The boy drew himself up with a swagger and added, “Now my father is incapacitated, I need to look after my interests.” Johanna saw her mother draw a deep breath and glare suspiciously at her hireling as if he had been the inspiration.
In relief, Geraint threw an avuncular arm about the child’s shoulders. “You have done well, Miles, and acted wisely. My lord of Richmond is a most honourable man.”
An embarrassing pink heated the boy’s face and he kicked at the stone edging. “Well, Johanna always said this was a fine household to serve in and my lord is well thought of by our lord the king.”
So too was Hugh Despenser, thought Geraint, wondering to what lengths he would need to have gone as a brother-in-law to protect the boy’s innocence. He grinned at Miles afresh, and then regretted there was no time to take the brat aside and make him aware of the human dangers that still might confront him before he reached full manhood.
Johanna’s thoughts were hurtling down a different path. She rose, her tone freezing. “So, in summary, Fulk de Enderby is rewarded with Conisthorpe, our father’s horseshoes are removed and he is put out to pasture, Miles’s interests are to be managed providing he grows up to doff his cap to the Despensers, and you get pai—” Remembering Miles’s presence, she snapped her lips together, meeting his quizzical smile.
The Knight And The Rose Page 39