The Knight And The Rose

by Isolde Martyn

  She folded her lips and tried to find words to repair their lives. “Yes, of course, but you were risking our future. His you cannot change.”

  His grin was not particularly reassuring. “My practical wife.”

  The words garlanded him, barring him from her like a funeral wreath. Was there no tomorrow to share?

  “Did you have time to make your peace with him?”

  “I asked forgiveness, yes.”

  “You did.” Was she hearing aright? “I know you will despise me for saying this but why?”

  “Because he is my blood.” The blue eyes were stern. “You think that wrong?”

  “No, but . . .”

  “Oh, aye, I opposed him but I do not hate him.”

  “You misunderstand me,” she told him gently. “I . . . I, try as I might, do not dislike him. He has such a charm about him.” She turned away. “What am I saying? The serpent of the tree of knowledge was charming and so, they say, is the Devil.”

  “Certes, he is charming. Put a blade to poor Nell de Clare’s throat, Johanna, and she will tell you she loves him still.”

  “Do you?”

  “My brother is a greedy miser, Johanna, worth thousands—all with the Italian bankers, and not a penny given to the poor. I despise him but I do still care for him even if his soul is black as Hell.”

  She rested her head against his back. “It is too sad. His abilities misspent.”

  “Sodomy and extortion. What an epitaph. The idiot! He thought if the barons rose against him, it would be merely the matter of arranging for a ship to carry him to France or Ireland. He thought he could arrange everything.”

  “Except the wind.”

  “Yes.” His laugh was bitter.

  “Then after tomorrow?”

  “Still harping on the future, sweetheart. What if there isn’t one?”

  She dragged him round to face her. “You were a rebel at Boroughbridge, remember. We all know Kent and Norfolk have fought against their brother the king but they are not beating their breasts in remorse.”

  “Only because they cannot even spell the word.” He set her from him. “Do you not see? I cannot make any promises.”

  “But I will have income. Come with—” Dear Heaven, that was the wrong thing to say. Her riches depended on Hugh’s execution. “Your pardon. I . . .”

  Geraint’s fingers caught her chin. “I suppose the irony of it is that it is my inheritance in a sense and if I want to have it, I have to dance to your tune.”

  Johanna jerked her face away. “How dreadful for you, my lord. I suppose you would prefer to play the tourneys until you finally grow feeble like a rogue dog and lose with a lance through your helm and,” she blew on her fingers, “out goes the candle and what is left? Nothing.” She caught his hands. “Come with me tonight. I want you to hold me in your arms and give me a child, our child.”

  “So you love me, Johanna, in spite of everything?”

  She felt the rough bark pressing against her back as his fingers slid under her veil.

  “No, I hate you heartily.” Her arms slid up around his neck and she drew his head down towards hers, wishing it daylight again so she might see his face. He was pulling her down, down onto the rough ground and his lips were demanding her surrender.

  “I want you, Johanna. We have no bed, no privacy. Will you let me take you here on the ground, shamefully like a beast?”

  There were half a dozen dead acorns hatching beneath her but Johanna was past caring. She needed possession, to know that he was hers. She felt his mouth upon her throat and his hand upon her breast.

  “Every night I was in France, every night since we parted, I have lain burning for you.”

  “Liar,” she whispered. “Perjurer.”

  “Is that a no then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Perjurer. I am your husband. The law requires that certain duties should be carried out.”

  “Ha!”

  “I DO NOT care if you do puke, Elizabeth Baddlesmere,” snapped Isabella.

  Elizabeth typically was in rebellion and Johanna set an arm around her shoulders. She did not want to watch the execution either but she was going to do so because she knew Geraint must and it was necessary to be cautious for his sake; a second refusal to attend the queen at an execution might rouse suspicion.

  The Queen and her ladies rode their palfreys to the market square in the High Town where a stand for the royal spectators had been swiftly thrown together. It was opposite the gibbet, if one could call it a gibbet. A horizontal beam, hoisted in the night, was half thrust out of the upper window of the highest house in the square like a giant phallus. Knotted around the deep groove near its tip was a hangman’s rope and alongside it, propped against the roof, were two thatchers’ ladders, each at least fifty feet high.

  “Does Hereford breed the tallest crowd in England, my lord bishop?” chortled Mortimer. “At least no one will complain they cannot see.”

  “It was the best we could manage in the circumstances,” apologised Orleton, assisting the queen to her chair beneath the scarlet canopy. “But it may be recorded that the greediest man who ever lived was hanged on the highest gibbet ever built.”

  “I hope this will hold, my lord bishop.” John, Lord of Richmond, tested the rail of the stand as the ladies slid along the form behind the queen and Prince Edward.

  “Feeling queasy?” It was not the sort of question Mortimer should have asked the royal lad, but he liked pulling tails. Isabella set a hand on her lover’s knee to hush him but the boy, wedged between his mother and his host, gave Mortimer an almost sly look.

  “I uphold the law, my lord,” he answered.

  “I shall be sick, I know it,” whimpered Elizabeth, and Mortimer, who was sitting in front of her in a jupon that would have bought three destriers, swivelled round and gave her a menacing look.

  Boisterous as a choppy sea, the crowd was being thrust back against the walls of the stand as more people fought their way in. There must have been hundreds, cramming up through the Shambles, and filling every other street and alley leading in, packing all the casements, pigeoning the roofs. Thank Heaven it was November. The stench of sweaty villeins and the omnipresent odour of the city sewers was sufficient to make the queen vigorously waft her nosegay of dried lavender.

  “Shall we have this over with?” asked Orleton, and at her nod gave the signal. The nearby trumpeter blew a summons and the crowd hallooed gleefully. An answering horn came from St. Ethelbert Street, sending a message to the castle that all was in readiness. The crowd waited in anticipation and then Johanna heard the distant jeering. A river of kettle-hatted soldiers could be seen forcing the crowd back with their halberds, and finally two galloping horses hurtled into sight, jarring the hurdle over the stones and cobbles of St. Owen Street.

  “God ha’ mercy!” whispered Johanna.

  The crowd shrilled and whistled. The two prisoners bound to the wicker panel were covered in filth and bleeding from the stones cast at them. No wonder the horses had been whipped to go fast; the executioners wanted their victims conscious. One of Simon de Reading’s heels was almost skinless, his blood already colouring the yard. He had not been able to draw it clear of the cobbles.

  Naked except for underdrawers, Despenser’s body was gaunt, almost unrecognisable. His rib cage made furrows of a body suffering from self-imposed starvation and his hollowed belly and the crown of nettles rammed down across his brow gave him the mien of a martyred saint instead of a rich extortionist. Strangest of all were the ink writings all over his body.

  “What is it?” asked the prince.

  “Scriptures, my young lord,” answered the bishop. “This evil creature will carry God’s words to the grave with him,” and he signalled to the chief executioner to untie Simon de Reading.

  Dear God, thought Johanna, he was to be the first course fed to the crowd and Hugh Despenser would have to watch and know that he must suffer the same agonising death. She craned to see where
Geraint stood, but despite his height she could not glimpse him.

  He was brave, Simon. He spat at the jeering faces before they forced him up the ladder, but only halfway, sufficient to set the noose around his neck. Johanna had seen men hanged before, murderers and thieves condemned by her father. She knew how long it took, what might happen. Before the executioners’ assistants could force him off the rungs with their steel-tipped pikes, Simon flung himself off the ladder with such violence that they only just grabbed his thrashing body in time. His attempt to thwart them had failed and they lowered him down to the brazier and the knives.

  Johanna could not bear to watch the agonised contortions of the man’s face and the shudders of his body as the chief executioner set about his appalling duty. She saw Hugh had his eyes closed. His lips moved as if in prayer, but he must have smelt the burning flesh and heard the tormented scream. The stink of the victim’s flesh reached the stand.

  Elizabeth fainted into Cecilia’s arms and another lady started retching. Against all common sense, Johanna rose and fought her way to the edge of the stand to find Fulk barring her.

  “Despenser lover!”

  “Get out of my way!” she snarled, fearful that his hatred of her might make him turn the crowd against her, but the people about them were too intent on relishing the traitor’s agonising demise. It was impossible to force a way through the throng or to return to her place. She could only cling precariously to the stand and try not to be shaken off into that sea of bodies. Fulk’s face was menacing. He could easily unpeel her fingers from the rail and toss her down to be trampled, or stick a dagger in her when they dispersed.

  “Lady Johanna, for the love of Heaven, stay where you are!” John, Lord of Richmond’s voice reached her. Too far within the stand to protect her, at least his warning checked Fulk. She forced herself to face down the living blight upon her life.

  With a roar the crowd surged forwards again. A couple of brawny men at arms were thrust up against the rail between her and Fulk as they tried to keep the apprentices from climbing the stand and the pressure of the mob from threatening the wooden supports. Johanna’s knuckles whitened, it was all she could do to hold on and not be swept out.

  It was Hugh’s turn to die. There at least was a confessor beside him as he was hauled to his feet to sag between his guards. He tried to speak to the people but the jeers were deafening. Even the drummers could barely be heard.

  Where was Geraint? Could he too feel the hatred emanating from the whole square, fetid and ugly? Had God sent an archangel to intercede, it would not have saved Despenser.

  Fifty feet high. Dear God, pardon all sinners! Geraint’s brother was paying for Gaveston’s sins too and for twenty years of rule by an unworthy king. Hugh was as much a scapegoat as a scoundrel. No one dared drag a king to a public execution; the precedent was too dangerous.

  “Sodomite! Catamite!” hissed hundreds of voices. Johanna hid her face, trying to block her hearing with her arms, not caring who saw her cowardice. The pattern was horrible. Each ugly, hoarse shout from multiple throats followed a terrible silence as they all strained to hear the victim’s anguish.

  “My sweet, gentle Johanna.”

  Strong, protective arms enfolded her. With a tiny cry of relief, she hid her face against her husband’s silken surcote.

  Holding her like a talisman, a cross against terror, gave Geraint strength to endure his older brother’s agony. He kissed the parting of her hair and stroked her neck beneath the linen veil as a distracted parent might soothe a child, but his eyes were on Hugh’s face so that he would know when that tortured soul was finally severed and freed. Could it take so long? Tears blurred his vision and the bitter awareness of what might have been soured him. The waste of such talent. His brother could have been the greatest counsellor a king ever had, if it had not been for his sinful love of money. You fool, Hugh! A few years of luxury bought by eternity in Hell.

  “Look at me, Johanna.” She was his anchor to sanity.

  “Is it over?”

  “Not yet, but he is gone. Hold me with your gaze, my darling. Do not let me look anymore.”

  “I love you,” she whispered, her gloved fingers touching his cheek. “I could never stop loving you.” The laughter, the awful laughter drew him—they were tearing Hugh in four—but her fingers gripped him. “Fulk knows who you are. You must leave Hereford.”

  “Fulk has lost Conisthorpe to me.” He broke the news to her now, trying to keep his consciousness from recording what they were doing to his brother’s body.

  “Dear God! Look at me! Keep looking! You mean—”

  “I went to my lord of Richmond. It was Miles’s suggestion, and I told him everything—our marriage and the estrangement from my father. Fulk has been dismissed. I am the new constable and I am going to take you home.” One of the women in the crowd close to them whooped and she felt his great frame shudder.

  “Upon my soul, Geraint, no wonder Fulk is baying for your blood. We must be gone from here today if the queen will give me leave.”

  “My darling, Fulk is nothing. I have Orleton to vouch for my loyalty.”

  “No, believe me, that monster is like a wasting disease waiting to destroy us.”

  Geraint stared over her head to the bloody cobbles and the wain with its ghastly staked cargo. She looked then and saw the executioners with their spattered leather aprons cleaning their knives and hooks.

  Her bloodless lips spoke as if she was entranced by some magician. “Christ protect us! The wax images! I saw him tear himself.”

  He was unaware of what she meant but held her close, his face against her perfumed hair, trying to keep the smell of his brother’s blood from his breathing, striving to be unaware of people fighting to dip cloths in the bloody puddles for mementoes.

  “Geraint, listen! I could not bear to tell you before. Edyth made images of him and your father and he tore his and threw it in the fire just like . . .”

  She shook with the horror of what might still happen to them both, trying to concentrate her gaze on Geraint’s face.

  His hands on her forearms kept her upright. “It means nothing. Believe me, my love, it was not ripping his own image but his actions that doomed Hugh long before you encountered him.”

  “But they are both destroyed now, Hugh and your father.”

  “God’s will, Johanna.”

  “But I never told you. There were two other images. Yours and mine.”

  For an instant, Geraint stared at her.

  “It was Edyth’s doing. Your brother had her killed for it.”

  He let go of her with one hand and crossed himself. Was there no end to it, he thought? Another sin left for him to deal with; yet another reason for Fulk to want him hurdled to the scaffold.

  “Johanna, you do not believe such nonsense?”

  “I am trying not to.” Her lower lip trembled.

  “Trust in God, dearest.” He gathered her to his heart once more as the crowd dispersed around them. “Does not your mother still stoutly swear that it was God who brought me to the wild wood?” He watched her knuckle the tears away and nod. “Then be not afeared, my love.”

  Curses or foolish images caused him no dread, but madness was another matter; for he saw Fulk watching them and read the crazed hatred in his face.

  TO HAVE LAIN alone that night with the memory of Hugh’s dreadful death and fears for their own future haunting them would have been anathema. Geraint bespoke them a bed in a merchant’s house hard by the bishop’s palace in George Street. The messuage backed onto a tavern but even the drunken brawling in the yard did not keep them awake.

  Agnes’s shriek woke them. “It is Sir Fulk, my lord.” The girl had entered their bedchamber and was struggling to bar the door.

  Expecting some assault, but not so soon, Geraint flung himself out of bed and drew his sword. Johanna sprang up to help Agnes, but a half-dozen soldiers thrust the door open, with a mob of townsfolk behind them, the terrified merchant and his w
ife held in their midst.

  Fulk, his sword drawn, pushed through. “That’s him, Despenser’s brother, and bring his whore as well. We shall hang them both.”

  “Out the window!” Geraint bawled at Johanna, slashing at his nearest assailant. Agnes thrust her towards the casement. “Come on, madam!”

  It was the only way to find help. Johanna flung open the latch, squeezed through, and trusting, sprang out. She landed on a thatched outhouse. Agnes thudded into her and the impact sent them skidding off the roof to land sitting in the muddy inn yard. Somewhere a horn was blowing.

  Johanna stumbled to her feet. “Fetch Bishop Orleton, Agnes! I will go to the queen. Make haste!”

  “But, my lady—”

  “Go!”

  Not worrying about the straw snared in her unbraided hair, or the mud spattering her chemise, Johanna ran barefoot across the yard, and hid behind the wall as they dragged Geraint out struggling. There were some twenty of them.

  She sped across the street to the bishop’s palace. One of Fulk’s soldiers saw her and gave chase.

  “You cannot enter here!” bawled one of the startled royal guards, not recognising her.

  “Grab her. She’s gone berserk!” puffed her pursuer. The royal guard swung out his halberd to bar her but she ducked beneath it.

  “Where is the queen?” she demanded, bursting into the royal apartments and shaking Elizabeth on her pallet. “Is she at mass yet?”

  An astonished Elizabeth blinked at her.

  “Still abed, but—”

  “Get Sir Edmund!” exclaimed Johanna, jerking the blanket off her. “The mob has seized my husband.”

  “But—”

  Johanna pulled her up and thrust a cloak at her. “He saved your husband’s life! Tell Edmund the mob is about to execute Geraint—or is it Gervase—but for God’s sake, fetch him!”

  She ran towards the door of Isabella’s bedchamber and beat frantically upon it, shaking the iron handle. Cecilia tried to drag her back.