Knight's Honor

by Roberta Gellis

  "My love," he replied at last, to her gentle prodding, "do not distress yourself. Of course I will go, but I need time to summon my troops. Come, you shall see that I am in earnest. If you are strong enough we shall pretend that you are still in your old state as a daughter of this house, and you shall help me write the summonses."

  She was certainly strong enough for that and agreed with alacrity. As she bent over her parchment, her quill automatically tracing the standard words of summons, her mind was busy with a different problem. The initial meeting between Lincoln and Chester was always difficult. After some time in each other's company they seemed to settle into a fairly workable relationship with only mild and periodic flare-ups, but if some ameliorating influence were not present when they first came together, they might part very rapidly.

  Elizabeth did not wish to travel halfway across England, but she felt that she must. She had not much spirit or inclination for argument either, but she saw no other way to convince her father rapidly enough that she was completely recovered. The campaign was opened with the flat statement that she would go too because her men were fresh and she wished to show her gratitude for Lincoln's help at Nottingham.

  "No, dear," Chester denied gently, stroking his daughter's hair. "You are not well. You will stay here and rest. If you insist, I will take your men, but it will not be needful."

  "I am much better, Father. Indeed, I begin to think that perhaps I have not been sick at all, only bored and distressed by all this bad news we have had. Now that there is something to do, I am stronger already."

  "I do not doubt that you feel better in the first excitement, but this strength will not last and you will be weaker than ever when it passes. I cannot permit you to take that chance."

  "But, Papa, I am not excited. Why should I be? I am only interested."

  "That is enough, Elizabeth. I will not take you, so do not tease me. Why, child, can you not see that if you failed midway you would be a terrible danger to me?"

  Elizabeth did see it, but she did not think she would fail. There was a chance, of course, that so much riding would make her miscarry, but she thought it too early in her pregnancy to cause her more than a day's delay. The thought distressed her; she wanted very much to bear Roger's child, but she comforted herself with the thought that if God had granted her prayers to have an heir to Roger's land, He would not permit her to lose it. Therefore her father's remark that he had heard enough was very far from the truth. He had not heard even the beginning of the argument. For the next three days Elizabeth reasoned and pleaded; after the receipt of Roger's letter she began to rail.

  Poor Chester had not a chance. His only reason for objecting to his daughter's company was that he believed her too weak to make the trip with ease, and here she was displaying far more energy in pressing her point than he had in resisting it. In less than a week, before all the men Chester had summoned had assembled, she had won.

  Another week saw Elizabeth dressed once again as a boy, but with somewhat less success. Always voluptuous, Elizabeth's figure was responding quickly to her condition, and now her breasts strained at the russet tunic in such a way as to make clear, even from a distance, her womanhood. She sighed, removed the garments, and reclothed herself in her most sober-colored and loose-fitting gown. She could not take the chance that someone would notice the change in her body and remark upon it to her father, who, no fool, might put her sickness together with that change and come up with the fact she was with child.

  CHAPTER 17

  DE CALDOET HAD BEEN REALIZING FOR SOME TIME THAT HE HAD MADE a serious mistake. Like a cornered rat, however, he bared his teeth at his enemies, unwilling or unable to disgorge what he had swallowed. The mistake lay not in the seizure of the Earl of Lincoln's keeps but in the belief that the city of Lincoln would accept his rule once he had shown them the way to be free of their earl. Without the slightest compunction the rich burghers had turned him out, written a charter for themselves, and sent it with their promises of fealty to the king.

  The manors de Caldoet had taken, all near the city with the idea that they would reinforce his great prize, were all now virtually useless to him for two reasons. First, whoever held the city of Lincoln could swallow everything in sight of those great, gray stone walls. The burghers themselves were no threat, but they would not control the armsmen of Lincoln for long. Either the king or the earl would win that power, and both were bad for de Caldoet.

  Second, if the city withheld its truage, he was destitute. Not a mil more could be wrung from the people in and around the manors now his. Lincoln did not leave his people more than a mil and de Caldoet had already taken that. The only money in that county was in the purses of the burghers of the city of Lincoln and in the Earl of Lincoln's strongboxes, which were also concealed in the city. Those de Caldoet had been unable to find before he had been ejected. He had been so sure they would be yielded to him too.

  Although it was true that the strongboxes were beyond Lincoln's grasp also, thus preventing him from immediately hiring the men he needed to win back his own, Lincoln was not, like de Caldoet, without other resources. Now de Caldoet could see that even if Lincoln's other vassals, most of whom hated him sincerely, remained neutral, giving excuses for not answering their overlord's summons, time was Lincoln's friend and his enemy. Doubtless time would bring Lincoln's sons to his aid, and his half brother, Chester, and—here de Caldoet's face turned purple with a mixture of rage, hate, and fear—that accursed son-by-marriage of Chester's, Hereford.

  All his troubles had begun with Hereford. Unconsciously de Caldoet's lips lifted in the snarl of a vicious dog as he thought that his life would be a cheap price to pay if he could take Hereford with him. He forgot, distance and rage bolstering his courage, the paralysis of fear that those ice-cold blue eyes could engender in him. He told himself Hereford would be nothing, a frail puppet, without Radnor's demonic presence, and just then he believed it, forgetting also how hard it was to die.

  It was in that mood de Caldoet awaited his doom, knowing it was coming, knowing that he should gather his men and run. If he ran, possibly he could find another warlord unscrupulous enough and trusting enough or stupid enough to use him. Still, he could not. Knowing he must lose all if he stayed, still he could not leave land that he now considered his by right of conquest, so strong was his sense of possession and his need for land of his own. Land was the power, the security, the bringer of all good things to him who possessed it. Even gold was nothing in comparison with land, for once spent gold was gone, while the land remained forever, yielding gold, food, and men year after year. He had lost his land through greed for more land and would now probably lose his life because of his greed for land. He knew it, but still he could not go.

  Elizabeth swallowed her nausea and smiled sweetly at her uncle. "You must not take too seriously what my father says, Uncle William. You know how he is. He will never believe you are a grown man, just because he knew you when you were a child. He treats me the same way, although I am long since a woman grown—"

  "I asked him for help, not advice," Lincoln said heatedly.

  Elizabeth raised a deprecating hand. "I know, Uncle, I know. But with elder brothers the two come together. Have patience. You know he means well for you. Indeed, you must forgive me for smiling, but it is the same with my husband and his brother Walter. They never come together but they quarrel; Roger can never learn to let Walter make his own mistakes and live his own life, nor can he resist the urge to tell Walter how much better things would have been had he followed the advice of his elder brother. Let not a few sharp words turn you from great gain."

  Lincoln opened his mouth to answer sharply, still angry, and then slowly closed it. He looked with steadily increasing amazement at his niece who was standing demurely before him, hands clasped, eyes lowered, a little pale, but smiling sweetly. The pose should not have been surprising, it was that which all modest and docile women were supposed to assume, but Elizabeth? Not Elizabeth! Lincoln
searched his memory but could find no precedent for this behavior, neither for the physical attitude nor the soft words. Elizabeth would be more likely to offer unpleasant advice of her own than to salve the wounds made by her father's.

  Then she must want something. But what? Surely he was in no position just now to grant her anything, and, to the best of his knowledge, neither Hereford nor Chester needed anything either. The pause had grown awkward and Elizabeth had flashed a glance at her uncle that told her much. She was well prepared for his next question.

  "Very well, my dear niece, I will not fence with you. What do all these sweet words mean? What do you want?"

  "You misunderstand me, Uncle William. I desire nothing except your well-doing, my father's, and my husband's. I have learned a bitter lesson through my own bad temper and willfulness, and I am most anxious that those faults, even in others, should cause no more trouble."

  Elizabeth maintained her manner with some little difficulty now, for she had an almost irresistible temptation to laugh. It was so easy when one knew how. These men, one could mold them like wax—all except Roger. Look at Lincoln, she thought. Not a spark of anger or resentment against Chester remained. His whole being would now be taken up with suspicion of her and with wondering what she wanted; yet she wanted nothing really, and she had spoken the truth. Merely because she had not spoken in her usual manner, Lincoln saw the truth as a lie or a concealment, and would spend what time he had for thought planning how to circumvent her nonexistent plots. Probably, she thought, murmuring some modest answer to another probing question, he would now run to her father to ask why she had come.

  She choked with laughter and changed it to a cough, thinking what his face would be like when Chester reported that she had insisted with all her strength on bringing her men to repay his "kindness" in helping her husband rescue her. Elizabeth's body curtsied a good-by almost without volition, and her eyes followed Lincoln as he walked away; it would be perfect. Lincoln's suspicions would set her father worrying, remembering how peculiar her behavior had been, how insistent she had been about coming, and when they were not planning some military action they would talk about her and about what she was after and forget to quarrel.

  It was funny, and Elizabeth did smile as she strolled through the well-tended paths of the garden, but her pleasure in mischief and management was not what it had been. The sun beat down and the scents of herbs, rosemary and thyme, rose from the beds beside her. A patch of shade from a mulberry tree, heavy with the red promise of ripe, mahogany-colored berries in the autumn, dappled the path. Beyond that lavender grew in purple spires.

  Elizabeth paused, the gentle scent bringing to mind her gentle friend Leah. Perhaps Leah's was the better path. Her heart held room only for her family and her friends. She cared nothing for power and, in spite of her cleverness, desired nothing more than to manage her household and live in peace with her husband and child.

  Such an attitude, Elizabeth had always regarded as a mere weakness, cowardice, a lack of spirit which made a woman tamely yield to the rule of the men around her. Now she was not so sure. There came a time, apparently, when every woman wished to sit with folded hands or with her sewing and her dreams. Certainly Elizabeth did not feel afraid nor weak. She had even accomplished a state of vassalage, yet looking at her feelings honestly, she wished she had not; peace was what she desired.

  What Elizabeth had to face, however, were plans for war. It was true that Lincoln and Chester both continued to regard her a little queerly, which made her choke with laughter from time to time, but she had seven hundred good fighting men at her orders, and it was necessary for her to agree with their plans. Elizabeth made no objection to anything her father and uncle suggested. They were long experienced in this type of fighting and she listened only to be sure that her men would not be used for any particularly dangerous activity. Beyond that she had little enough interest in precisely how they managed their attack.

  As it happened, Elizabeth's faith in their skill was justified, for de Caldoet's gains were swept away before the strength of the few vassals who responded to Lincoln's call, the small forces his sons brought, and the substantial army that came with Chester and Elizabeth. The last keep to fall was that which sheltered de Caldoet himself, but it fell in the end, no help coming from the city of Lincoln to which he sent in his extremity a reminder of what he had done for them and a desperate appeal.

  The great gates, ironhard oak, remained shut. The burghers had no intention of helping de Caldoet, although they preferred him as a neighbor sufficiently to send several anxious and urgent messages to Stephen reporting the fact that Chester was ravaging Lincolnshire and threatening the city itself with siege and destruction.

  De Caldoet was dragged finally, screaming curses, and still struggling, from the mass of dead men he had first slaughtered and then hidden behind. By right he should have suffered the same fate as his brother, he should have been hanged, but when Elizabeth and Chester indifferently cast their votes for that end, Lincoln slammed his fist down upon the table before him.

  "No! Grant him confession and send him to God? No! With such an easy end, who would not dare to try the same. What has he lost, a man without family, without honor? The shame can be nothing to him. I say it is too easy."

  "Brother, be calm,” Chester said. “I care nothing what you do with him. He has done me no hurt. Whatever you say, I will agree to and Elizabeth also, doubtless."

  Terrified to the borders of insanity, de Caldoet struggled for a moment more fiercely and then fell quiet. Strangely, he did not look either at Chester or Lincoln but at Elizabeth, whom he associated with her husband. He made no attempt to plead for mercy, but in the pause in which Lincoln was obviously considering the most painful and lingering death he could demand, the doomed man began to laugh weirdly.

  "Confession? You need not worry. Confession will not save me, but it will not save you, Lady Hereford, or your accursed husband either. The longer it takes me to die, the longer I will have to call on the master I have served so well. So faithful have I been, surely Satan will grant my one wish. I will come back, I swear it by the Evil One Himself. I will come back and foul the fruit of your womb and destroy Roger, Earl of Hereford."

  Elizabeth turned livid, speechless. Instinctively Lincoln thrust his shoulder before her, as if his bulk could shield her from the curse, and Chester took his rigid daughter into his arms.

  "You need not die at all, de Caldoet," Lincoln said, his voice shaking. "I cannot think of an end fit for such as you. Take him out," he snarled to his men, "and lop off his right hand. Cut off his ears and his nose, and his hangars, and brand him as a thief and a runaway serf. See that he does not die. Then turn him loose."

  "No!" de Caldoet shrieked. "No! Let me die and I will recall my curses. Let me die and I will pray for you and her, even for Hereford, with my dying breath." But the men were already dragging him away.

  Elizabeth drew herself upright. "Satan is a notably ungrateful master," she managed to say steadily with an attempt at lightness. "We must hope that he will fulfill his promise in his usual way—by ignoring it." A brief shudder passed through her body. "God, what an evil thing it is! Mayhap we should have destroyed it altogether."

  "We have destroyed it," Lincoln replied. "Without a right hand, he cannot wield a sword or defend himself. No honest man in the land will even give alms to a man so marked, and not even a band of outlaws will harbor him. What good is he to them who cannot fight or work or spy?"

  Regaining complete control of herself, Elizabeth apparently dismissed de Caldoet with an impatient gesture. "Yes. No doubt you are right. What is much more important is what we are next to do. It is true, Uncle William, that your keeps are your own again, but their condition makes it beyond hope that they will yield you anything this year. As long as the city of Lincoln holds against you, then, you are in bad case."

  "Those fat burghers! I will roast them over a slow fire and watch the fat drip off and then eat them like roa
st suckling pigs."

  "Ay," Chester put in wryly, "if you can get at them. Elizabeth is right. While they hold your strongboxes we are somewhat pressed for money—that campaign in the north sucked me nearly dry, and Hereford is in the same case. If those pigs hold firm against us, I do not believe we have a force strong enough to take the town. We need money to buy more men."

  Lincoln growled and bit his nails. "For money, there is another way: Why should I waste my substance on lessoning them? Look you, hard by is Tuxford whose master holds by Stephen. You have no love for him. We may refill your coffers and mine—which is only right, since it is his fault yours are empty and his promised support of those rebellious hogs of mine that has given them courage to withstand me."

  Chester hesitated somewhat because he was still not decided upon his future course, but his half brother's persuasion was hard to resist. Especially when Lincoln pointed out how easy the taking of that previously peaceful keep would be and that it would serve the double purpose of terrifying one of his own recalcitrant vassals who counted on his unwillingness to cross the lands of Tuxford, Chester began to waver. By the time they had dined and been well fortified with reasonably good wine, Elizabeth could see that her influence would scarcely be necessary to prod her father into action. If they were successful in this first raid, her men would not be needed much longer either, and she would be able to move south as Roger had ordered.

  ***

  Hereford looked up from the letter that recounted this information with a faint sense of satisfaction. He would feel much easier when Elizabeth was safe behind the stone walls of Hereford Castle. Less and less as the days passed and the rains of late summer gave way to the golden days and nipping nights of autumn, did he like the idea of her being out in the open.