Knight's Honor

by Roberta Gellis

  "What work?"

  "Tomorrow," Hereford had glanced at his markings although it was not necessary. He knew every mark on that parchment by heart. "You must move on Burford. You have not more than a week to reduce it. What will you need in men and arms?"

  "You want to know now? Just like that? I have never seen the place."

  "You have as much information as I have about it. For God's sake, Walter, bend your mind to the task. I have troubles enough guiding the others by the hand. Do not put me to that labor with you."

  "Very well, very well," Walter snapped, flattered and on his mettle, although he knew quite well that it was that reaction Roger was trying to achieve. "Give me at least half an hour to think. You are unreasonable."

  "Good enough. I must write to Salisbury. He is to take Stockbridge. That does not touch my men, however, since he takes it to hold for himself. John Fitz Gilbert, too, needs to be spurred a bit to attack Hungerford more seriously." Hereford groaned as he got up. "You would think there was a law against sleeping a night through in this country."

  He took pen and parchment but did not begin to write immediately. His news really had been of the first importance. Arundel had passed on a message in Henry's own hand and bearing his seal naming his date of arrival as the first of May. Hereford knew, of course, that the date was subject to change, depending upon winds and weather, but even if Henry was delayed, he himself must be ready. It was necessary to choose carefully what to say, and though plans and needs were clear in Hereford's mind, words were less ready.

  The Earl of Salisbury and John the Marshal were probably completely trustworthy, they had been attached to Henry's cause for a number of years, but the fewer people who knew the time and place of the pretender's arrival the less chance there was of the news spreading where it should not. Hereford's brow furrowed with worry. He wished wryly that he himself did not need to know. It was hard to urge people to hurry and yet guard against a slip of the tongue that would explain the need for that hurry. It was hard, too, he thought, looking at a flask of wine, that he was not to be able to celebrate a victory or drown a defeat for fear of a wagging tongue.

  Hereford began to write slowly. His skill had improved greatly, but his hands were still clumsy with a pen, forming each letter painfully, and he ordinarily preferred to have a scribe write for him. In this case, however, the messages needed to be in his own hand and in a certain sense his lack of ability was an advantage, for he needed to think as he wrote. Finished with that task he leaned back for a moment to consider two questions nagging at his mind and then, with an exclamation of impatience, set the problems aside while he wrote to the master of Wallingford keep. They were, if possible, to engage the king's forces in that district closely. If they needed men or arms, he would help as he could. That he hoped would be another diversion to keep men's eyes from the sea coast.

  Dawn was lighting the sky when Hereford looked up from his last letter. Walter had long since gone to begin preparations for the attack on Burford and should be returning in a short time to give him word of when he and the men would depart. It was time to take out one of those nagging questions and find an answer for it. Should he or should he not go with Walter? He would be of no particular value to his brother, who doubtless knew almost as much about taking a keep as he did, since he could not yet fight, but …

  What was troubling him? Distrust of Walter? No. This was the kind of work Walter liked and would do for the love of the task alone. He pulled his ear and smiled a little, knowing that what drew him was a protective concern for his younger brother. If Walter knew, Roger thought, not so blind after all, he would have a fit. Even when they were children and Roger had sought to protect him, Walter had angrily rejected his care. Blessed with the saving grace of humor, even when he was the butt of the jest, Hereford laughed at himself. He could not resist; he would never learn and would probably go on infuriating Walter and hurting himself until they were both old men. The laughter was quickly quenched—if they lived to be old men.

  He would go. He had known he would from the beginning and could have saved his time, but as he squinted at the growing light Hereford knew that he had been thinking about Walter to stave off a far more important and more painful decision. Chester would have to be notified to make ready to ride with Henry and himself to Scotland. Certainly his father-in-law would need three weeks to a month to summon his vassals and other forces, but how to tell him and what to tell him troubled Hereford deeply.

  Two weeks earlier he would simply have written the whole to Elizabeth and left dealing with her father to her discretion. Now his faith in her discretion was shaken, and he sat rubbing his left arm and the fingers of his left hand gently, frowning at the rosy glow coming into the room. How pale she had been when he left her, how subdued. How violent her protestations that she meant him no harm.

  After all, he thought, it was more bad luck than bad management that she was caught. An hour earlier or later and she would have won safe to Corby. Hereford shook his head. Chester was too difficult to deal with in any other way, too vacillating and curious; he would have to employ Elizabeth. She was chastened and would follow his instructions, he hoped, without asking to know the whole of his plans as she usually did. He drew pen and parchment to him again with a certain feeling of satisfaction in having a reason to write to his wife without raising the subject of what had last passed between them.

  Hereford asked Elizabeth briefly to induce her father to make ready to ride and fight in Henry's cause by the second week in May at the latest. He asked further that she arrange for Chester to wait in his own keep when he was ready, offering no reason and giving no indication of where the fighting would take place or who they were to attack. That was quickly done, but then Roger sat a good while longer with the pen in his hand. His impulse was to add softening words of affection to make up for the obvious gaps in information, but Hereford found that to caress his wife and whisper endearments to her was one thing, to find words to put in a letter that would not sound foolish was something else. Eventually he contented himself with saying merely that he was in good health, his shoulder and other wounds healing, and that she should not concern herself for his welfare.

  CHAPTER 12

  ONE DAY SHORT OF THE WEEK ALLOWED HIM, WALTER OF HEREFORD stood panting in the main hall of the small keep at Burford. It was a neat piece of work, he congratulated himself, particularly since the place was far better garrisoned and more strongly fortified than he had expected. He had diddled them nicely though, having his men dam off the stream that fed the moat and then burrow under the wall in the soft earth instead of attempting an assault over the walls. Walter smiled, his eyes resting on the castellan and his family huddled together under the guard of a half dozen men-at-arms, remembering the expressions on the faces of the defenders when the ground under their feet had collapsed and their enemies had poured out of the hollow in the earth.

  That had been Roger's only contribution to the fight. He had suggested the artifice of raising the tunnel bit by bit, supporting the earth above by planks held up on wooden posts. When a large enough area had been excavated, they had set fire to the posts and the whole had collapsed. Meanwhile Walter had diverted attention by making half-hearted attempts on the walls and gates. The plan had worked as if charmed.

  Walter's eyes had been resting on the eldest daughter of the castellan, a pretty enough maid of fourteen summers, as he smiled, and the conquered man was growing more and more restive. As a matter of fact Walter hardly saw her. He was not particularly interested in women, finding an occasional serf or harlot sufficient to his needs when he was not keeping a mistress, but the castellan could not know that.

  "What do you want of us? You have my keep, will you not treat us with honor?"

  Walter shifted his eyes to the man but did not reply. Instead he spoke to one of the men-at-arms who promptly opened a wall chest and brought him a cloth. It was a fine piece of wool, meant for a shirt or shift, but Walter used it to wipe his
sword before he sheathed it. Then, still smiling, he directed the man to order the gates opened so that Hereford could ride in in comfort. Finally he redirected his glance to the nervous father.

  "You should have yielded when we came as I bade you. Then you could have asked anything within reason. There is naught left for you now but to obey or die, and it matters not at all to me which you choose."

  "I have yielded already. What more do you desire?"

  Walter laughed but did not answer, issuing instructions instead that the kitchens be set into operation. There was no reason not to have a good meal when everything was available. For a time he watched the men collecting plunder, silently evaluating it, and realizing regretfully that it was not his to do with as he chose. That was the rub in serving someone else, even though it was convenient to have a full-scale army and plentiful supplies to fall back upon. Recognizing Hereford's step, Walter turned just in time to be seized in a tender if painful embrace. Instinctively he strained away at first and then yielded, allowing his brother to kiss him and hug him, and kiss him again.

  "Enough, Roger. We have been parted only for a few hours, not ten years."

  "Blessed Mary be praised, you are safe. Safe. My God, how I have prayed."

  Walter pulled loose, frowning disgustedly, torn as ever between pleasure and irritation at his brother's open display of affection and concern. "Why should I not be safe? Roger, you have addled wits, I swear it. Do you call this fighting? You make me think ill of your experience."

  Laughing with relief, Hereford tousled the brown hair exposed when Walter pushed back his mail hood. "Ay, you may growl all you like, you ungrateful cub, but it is one thing to fight for yourself, or to fight with someone, another to stand helplessly by and watch. God grant I need not have that experience again."

  "You have found that out, have you? Mayhap you will be less eager to thrust yourself always into the forefront to shield those who do not wish to be shielded then." Walter made an impatient gesture and changed the subject. "What are we to do with these—and the plunder?"

  "Are the strongboxes here?" Walter pointed. "Take what you want first then, within reason, and set the clerks on to the rest. As to the men—are there any mercenaries here?"

  "No."

  "The serfs may go back scatheless to their fields. If they do not till, we do not eat. The men-at-arms—how many?" Walter shrugged. "Divide them and send them under guard to various of our own keeps." His eyes moved to the small group of nobles. "It is a pity he is alive. Frankly I would like to cut his throat and be rid of the problem." The wife and daughter began to weep, and the man himself turned an ugly shade of gray. "It is always these petty vassals who are the most bother. He is probably not worth much ransom to his overlord and is of no value as a hostage either. What is your name?"

  "Sir Robert Trevor."

  "Trevor, Trevor—" Hereford shook his head. "The name means nothing to me. Do you know it, Walter?"

  "No."

  "Well—"

  "My lord, I yielded in expectation of mercy. If I needed to die, I could have done so fighting and cost you a score of good men."

  Hereford looked bored. He was bored. The whole thing was a nuisance and not worth the time he had already spent on it. His inclination was to have the man executed and send the women away, but if mercy had been promised he was honor-bound to give it.

  "Did you promise him mercy, Walter?"

  "I did not strike when he knelt to me, but I promised nothing."

  "He is yours then." Hereford shrugged. "Mayhap Oxford will pay a few crowns for him. Do as you will."

  Some time after full light the next morning, Hereford wakened with a grunt of pain and a startled expression. Fully conscious a moment later, however, he burst into laughter at the outraged expression on his brother's face. There was only one good bed in the keep, that of the castellan and his wife, and the brothers had elected to sleep together as they had done often enough in their youth. Hereford's bed companions in the last years had usually been of a far different type, though, and apparently, from the way Walter was looking at him, the feel of another body in the bed had stimulated him to make advances.

  "I do not usually sleep with men," Hereford offered in explanation, still laughing.

  "I should hope not! If you have such disgusting inclinations, it is just as well to keep out of the way of temptation."

  That convulsed Hereford anew. "No, no. I meant I thought you were a woman."

  "Thought I was—so I feel to you like—" The words came out almost in a shriek, but as he spoke a look of realization came over Walter's face. At that point he too began to laugh. "All I can say to that is that you must have had some queer bedmates in your time. I am not particular myself, but a woman with chest, arms, and legs like a bear, even I would think twice about bedding."

  "Ugh," Hereford grunted, revolted, "what a thought to start the morning on. Come on, we had better get up. Look at the light."

  "You get up," Walter replied. "I have been up all night fighting you off. May I be damned if I ever share your bed again. Even when you do not make indecent advances, you want to climb all over your companion. Your poor wife."

  By the time Walter joined his brother in the hall, Hereford's good temper was completely gone. His look was so black that Walter, still in a merry mood, backed away in pretended terror. "I do not wish to know," he said hastily as Roger opened his mouth, "with an expression like that as an introduction, I had rather you told me nothing. At least wait until I have eaten. I am braver on a full stomach."

  Ignoring his brother's remarks, Hereford pushed two parchment rolls toward him. His mother's letter had irritated him because in his hurry he did not clearly understand what it was she was pressing him so earnestly to do, but the other, in Lord Radnor's strong square script, had frightened him enough to make him furious. Walter began to read slowly, making out a word at a time, his lips moving with his concentration, but Hereford could not wait and broke impatiently into speech.

  "You will be till next week at that. Gaunt is dead. Dead! I saw him not two months ago hale and hearty."

  "So what is the to-do? He was old. I hope I may live so long and die in so much comfort."

  "Can you not see what this means? I feel as if God had set His face against this venture. With Gaunt dead, RadnorI mean the present Gauntdare not leave his lands. Certainly not until all the vassals have done their homage, and that will take months."

  "So what again? You never expected him to aid in the fighting. He will honor his father's word in the other help he will give you, no doubt. What ails you? Sit down and eat."

  Hereford opened his mouth and shut it again almost with a snap. Two years ago he would have burst into tears and had a temper tantrum, but he had been in a hard school since then. Of course Walter could not understand what was troubling him. He knew nothing of the plans for Henry's arrival and nothing of the fact that Lord Radnor was supposed to have met him. Arundel would still do his part, Hereford assumed, but he did not trust Arundel the way he trusted Radnor, and, furthermore, Lady Alice was so zealous in Henry's cause that she was totally indiscreet.

  Without Radnor to say him nay, Arundel might well bring her along or allow her ... God knows what she might say or do? What was the use of making things worse by imagining horrors, Hereford thought, biting his lips. He recognized the fact that he was doubly furious because of his carelessness. In his rage he had very nearly told Walter what it would not be safe for him to know. Swallowing tears of rage, he then began to wonder why he worried about Lady Alice when he was almost as bad himself.

  Hereford called the emotion from which he was suffering rage, and the reactions he was displaying were very similar to those of anger, but the truth was that Roger of Hereford was frightened. Again and again since he had begun this affair, his plans, so carefully made, so near fruition, had been twisted awry. And always it seemed that the damage was done without ill will to him by those he trusted most. Every time his spirits rose through som
e success that permitted him to throw off the cloud of depression he labored under, a new misfortune took the savor from the victory. Every time he took one step forward to his goal, he was dragged two steps back.

  It was as if he were being warned to go no further in this venture, as if a great voice was crying out that the harder he strove the greater would be his final defeat. The pattern seemed clear enough; he would be defeated by desertion. He did not believe it would be a desertion that a shift in policy might cause in Gloucester or Chester—that would be too easy to guard against. Perhaps it would be a desertion by death, Hereford thought, staring out at the tender green of new grass in the bright spring sunshine.

  Alan had already left him in that way, left him with Walter as his right hand, a right hand he could not have faith in. Alan's grave would still be raw in the earth of Hereford churchyard, but soon it would be green with new grass. Hereford's throat tightened and he pulled at the mail as if it were that which was choking him. Perhaps his own death … He jerked his mind away. That was a sick fancy. If he must die, he must die, but to fear it beforehand when there was not even a real danger present was to destroy his own usefulness.

  At that idea, a cold sweat broke out over his body. "O God," he prayed, "forgive me for not heeding Your warning. I hear, and I would obey, but I cannot. I have passed my oath on Your Name to help Henry to the throne. It is a just cause. Have mercy upon me and upon my bleeding land. God, O God, if I must fail, let it not be through weakness and dishonor. Let me fail through death, if that need be, but not through the desertion of my own courage."