Love and Chivalry: Four Medieval Historical Romances

by Lindsay Townsend

  "My lords!" Calling out, she stepped away from the low table, unfurling the huge circular sheepskin she had brought down with her as she swept a deep courtesy to her lord and everyone in the room. Briefly as she bowed she saw Hugh's deep blue eyes, darker than the lapis lazuli she used in her work, fix upon her and stay with her. He was frowning, whether at her or for her she could not tell.

  There was no time to tell: she must be swift and faultless and win the attention she had commanded.

  "Look, my lords. Witness and observe." She whirled the sheepskin about her where it draped across her narrow shoulders in folds of shimmering gold. She moved to catch the light from the half-open shutters and heard the muted gasps at her sparkle.

  "My fleece of gold, my master-work," she intoned, feeling the men in the room sublimate to her—be ignited and changed by her—a heady feeling, if she allowed it to take hold. She raised her arms, holding the pose for an instant.

  The fleece shimmered about her, seeming to draw the day and candle light to it. It was a real golden fleece, its wool drenched in gold that Joanna had painstakingly gathered from many streams in a bare, treeless land far to the south west of here, where she and her father had spent a joyous free summer between patrons. Following the advice of an ancient copper miner for whom she had made a pain-relieving slave, Joanna had taken a sheepskin and pegged it in a stream. The following day she had lifted out the dripping fleece and found it had snagged small nuggets of gold.

  There had been many other strips of fleece and other streams since then and now this cloak was the result: heavy with gold and iron pyrites—fool's gold—and painted over by Joanna herself with liquid gold. It gave her presence and weight and wearing it always gave her confidence, as if some of the spirit of that great female alchemist Maria the Jewess, had passed into her.

  She knew Bishop Thomas was already entranced—he always was, at the sight of her cloak. Breathing out with relief that her intervention had indeed been well-timed, she glided quickly to the first small bowl on the low table, arranged five candles in a tight circle and lit them.

  "See the first sublimation." She placed a tripod over the candles, then a metal sheet. She placed a glove over her hand—Hugh's glove, she realized, astonished at herself for bringing it with her, instead of her own. His glove was loose on her fingers, the wool warm and dry, much as his fingers were.

  But she needed her wits about her now. Resisting the temptation to glance at Hugh Manhill to see if he recognized the glove, she found the red dye cinnabar in her carrying basket.

  "Behold." She disliked that word, thought it too showy, but her father always used it in his demonstrations. For Solomon's sake she added the flourish but it was Hugh who watched her now: she could sense his dark eyes on her, tracking her every move.

  Raising her gloved hand high and using a golden spoon she poured some volatile oils onto the warmed metal plate. Instantly the oils burned off in a rich perfume and, when she brought a lit candle close, green flames.

  Now she sprinkled the cinnabar onto the plate, hearing gasps as the powdered red dye melted and changed, becoming silver, becoming a perfect round sphere of—

  "Mercury," she intoned, lifting the plate from the tripod and tilting it for her lord and the others to see. "One of the two elements that makes our world. It looks fluid, does it not? Yet, it is dry to touch."

  "Jabir calls it the beautiful element," remarked David, an observation which although accurate Joanna wished he had not made: it broke the mood. Indeed, her lord was on to his remark like one of his hunting dogs after game.

  'Jabir? An Arab scholar?" he demanded, beckoning Joanna to approach for him to study the new mercury more closely. "One of those Arabs who even now pollute our holy places?"

  "A learned man, who lived long ago but whose work on alchemy is much revered in Outremer," David persisted, in that quiet, stubborn way he had. Joanna longed to tell him to be silent: Bishop Thomas was looking his way now and his glance was not kind.

  Crossing the sweet rushes on the floor, she brought out Thomas' potion for "manly vigour" and handed it to him with a bow, relieved when he received it with a tiny smile. Convinced she had succeeded in distracting him, she returned to her place and raised her hands. "For my second sublimation —”

  "Alchemy and what other secret arts?" Thomas cut across her. "What dark arts, Templar? You know a great deal of magic for a simple knight."

  Magic! Hugh had heard enough. Amazed at David's own academic idiocy—when would his brother learn to keep silent?—he pulled out the roll of parchment at his belt, presenting it seal-first to the bishop.

  "These are the names and pedigrees of the horses I will exchange for the release of my brother. If you look, there are some famous chargers. And this —” Hugh pulled out another parchment from his jerkin—"is a letter from the prelate of all England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in which he vouches for my brother and gives me his support."

  That final piece of paper with its heavy seal made the bishop pause; Hugh saw his hesitation and rejoiced.

  The audience chamber was silent except for the small crackling of the candles. The girl Joanna had flitted back into the shadowed part of the chamber and shed her sparkling cloak. She already knew the show was over for today, although she still wore his glove. When he had seen that first, Hugh felt as guilty as when his father first told him that he had caused his mother’s death. Seeing his glove again, on Joanna, he was mortified afresh, his victory over Thomas damped down in shame.

  “I will need to study this,” said Thomas at last.

  “Of course,” Hugh agreed. “Keep both: I have copies. I shall come again tomorrow.”

  He knew it was the right time to go. Leaving the treasure to emphasize his wealth and pique Thomas’ interest and greed, he turned on his heel. With Beowulf shadowing and his men trailing behind, he strode away without looking back, thinking of the girl, the wonder-worker, Joanna.

  Tomorrow I will seek her out and apologize.

  Chapter 4

  Her lord bishop was pleased with her for the moment and, when she reminded him that she needed more supplies, he graciously allowed her to leave the household and go out into the city. Now, accompanied by two guards—a further sign of favour—Joanna almost ran through the main gate of Thomas’ palace. The day was bright, the sun was shining, she was out and free—

  But for how long?

  Hugh prowled about West Sarum, returning often to the high-walled stone enclosure that marked the bishop’s palace. He had sent his men and Beowulf on, into the dense oak woodland outside the city, while he lingered. He was, he admitted, watching the place, spying it out, looking for a weakness he could exploit. He had little faith in tomorrow’s meeting: he wanted a back-up plan.

  He marked the comings and goings. A fish-seller with a handcart; a sweeper pushing away piles of horse and pig dung from the streetside entrance; an old man with an arm-load of clothes to sell greeting the guards as he passed into the palace courtyard. The morning was drawing on and the early dawn crowds had slackened to a trickle as people hurried back to their homes for the midday meal. Hugh inhaled the scents of boiling pork and pottage and told his grumbling belly to be silent.

  Directly outside the palace gate were the city stocks and pillory—no doubt erected there for the bishop's entertainment, Hugh thought grimly. He bought a venison tart from a passing pie seller and ale from a brewster selling it by the door of her freshly re-thatched house and continued to stare.

  Shooing away a browsing pig that seemed determined to befriend him, Hugh almost missed Joanna tripping through the palace gate. He saw the guards first, large, simple-looking fellows in their father's old mail and helmets, strutting over the deeply rutted main street with an air of nervous belligerence. One cackled at the mouldering grey wretch in the stocks, stopping abruptly as if he had been admonished.

  By whom? To see more clearly, Hugh crouched down under the roof eaves of the house where he was standing and smiled. His guess w
as right: it was Joanna.

  Watching her, he forgot to watch the entrance. She was carrying a basket, swinging it along. She looked happy to be outside and she had dressed for the occasion. There was no grubby glove on her hand now and her gown was freshly brushed, with new sleeves attached in a rich, subtle scarlet. Her pretty brown hair was caught up in a golden net and her belt was new. Wound twice around her slender middle, it was still long, with golden tassels that drummed against her legs as she walked.

  The old man with the second-hand clothes came beside Hugh and sat down on a house-step.

  “Pretty, is she not?” he observed, in a clear accent that revealed he had been more than a clothes-seller once. He scratched at the sore on his arm and two others on his bare legs. “Been with the bishop now for a year.”

  Hugh gave the old man a coin. “What else do you know?”

  “Of Joanna?” The old man tucked the coin into a ragged glove and leaned back against the wattle house-wall. “Rumour says she’s the bishop’s leman. Some call her a necromancer.” His voice dropped. “She visits houses no decent woman would go near.”

  “Not the stew,” the old man added, following Hugh’s glance at the public bath house at the top of West Sarum’s main street, where even now off-duty guards cavorted outside with girls in soaking wet tunics. “She is no whore.”

  “So?” Hugh prompted.

  “Do you not want that pie?”

  Silently Hugh handed it across. His companion took a huge bite and spoke with his mouth full. “She reads books,” he said with relish. “Strange books.”

  Hugh tracked the small graceful figure down the street. Joanna was going away from the bath-house, walking down the slop-filled lane in the direction of the southern city gate and the river. As she moved he saw a sparkle on her right wrist: slim metal bracelets. Given to her by Thomas?

  Nodding to the old man, who was intent on his pie, Hugh stepped out into the road. Seeing the girl again, learning about her place in the palace, had given him an idea—a nasty, furtive idea, one that went against all tenants of chivalry. Whether he would act on it depended on opportunity but for the moment he would follow Joanna and see where she went.

  Whether she was a necromancer or magic-worker, she was certainly no fool, he conceded, keeping close to the guards as they wound their way down the steep main street. She remained with the pair as they spent a long time trying their hands at the city's archery butts ranged on a pitch of spare ground by the square, squat Saxon cathedral—a place where Bishop Thomas never preached, Hugh wagered. She bought them both pies, but ate nothing herself and waited with seemingly endless patience as the thicker-set of the two haggled with a cobbler over the repair to a shoe.

  Down the long street they went, Joanna scarcely looking at the many clothiers' stalls or the brightly-coloured puddles outside the dyers' workshops. She was obviously bent on leaving the city though the southern gate—To ford the river? Or to visit the small narrow settlement that had grown up just outside the walls?

  Away to the south, beyond the meandering Avon, were hills green with woodland and beyond that, his father's castle. That thought gave Hugh no pleasure as he drew a shabby cloak over his tunic and draped a hood over his head, grunting an acknowledgement at the gate-keeper as he followed his quarry through the open entrance-way.

  Here the ground levelled off into water-meadows grazed by horses and cattle. There were stables and a hamlet of tumble-down houses with long stripes of garden and more rooting pigs. Grubby children playing close to the river called after Hugh and a few bolder ones tossed pebbles in his direction. None cast stones at Joanna, he noticed, although they jeered at her guards in a dialect so thick he could not understand it.

  He assumed she was making for the ford, so was startled when she swung away from the well-worn track into a mess of old gardens and derelict house plots. Weaving through brambles and patches of nettles and tall grass, she led the way and the guards trudged after, perhaps wondering, as he did, where she was headed. None looked back although he trailed them at a long distance, skulking through this old warren of former dwellings like a burglar.

  She had a saucy walk, he decided, watching her sway over a wreck of fallen house-beams with the poise of a dancer. They were coming to more recent and crowded habitation: the grass path became small cobbles, the houses larger and the gardens of greens well-tended. Here were people, sitting out of doors on benches, some eating their lunches, others making baskets of reeds.

  Suddenly, where the houses were packed closest together so that the very sky became a mass of jostling thatch and roof jetties, Joanna spun about.

  “What is it you want, Hugh de Manhill?” she called out, pointing directly at him so that every householder in the district stopped what he or she was doing to stare. “Why are you following?”

  The girl had spotted him! By all the light of heaven, how had she done that? Her own guards were standing blinking in the dabbled shade of the houses, fidgeting with their sword hilts. They had known nothing of his pursuit. How had she?

  With so many witnesses, he was forced to dissemble. "If you see my brother again today, will you give him a message?"

  "It is no grief for you that I speak to him then, Sir Hugh?"

  She had not forgotten or forgiven the glove. More justice to her, Hugh thought, amused at her twist of his own words, while he answered, "I am most sorry for our earlier confusion. But for David's sake, I ask this favour."

  His appeal worked. Joanna put her basket down on the cobbles and spread her hands.

  "Will you tell him I never forget him? Not at any moment? That I love him?"

  She raised her brows at that while her guards relaxed, smirking at each other. The onlookers were wiser, saying nothing as Hugh closed the gap between them.

  "Anything else?" she asked.

  He was near enough to her now to pluck her basket off the ground and hold it out. "Only this: what do you think of my brother's imprisonment, Mistress Joanna? Do you think it right?"

  He had startled her afresh: a rush of colour stormed into her eyes and face.

  "I cannot speak for my lord —” she began.

  "But you, yourself?" He wanted to know. If she was the bishop's mistress, he wanted to know if she agreed with his brother's captivity. "Do you truly think David is an evil man?" he asked softly. "A blasphemer?"

  "I do not think so, but I am no expert."

  "But you have spoken with him, eaten with him," Hugh continued relentlessly. "Do you consider him a witch?"

  "No!"

  Her denial was sharp, causing her guards to stop their gawping at a young woman outside one of the houses who was washing her long red hair in a pail, and glance at her instead.

  Blushing deeply now, Joanna added swiftly, "No, what I mean, is —”

  Hugh stepped forward, closing the last of the gap between them, and touched the narrow copper bracelets on her left wrist.

  "How many of these has your master bought for you with the blood of innocent men?" he asked, speaking in French so only she would understand.

  She snapped her arm out of his reach, putting it behind her back, as a child might. "You have no cause to say that to me," she said, also in French.

  "Why not answer my question?"

  She said nothing, merely shook her head and looked at him in pity.

  Sympathy from the bishop's whore was too much—Hugh's already fragile hold on his temper severed.

  "You will not use the Manhills this way," he said, through a clenched jaw, as the blood and his rage pounded in his head. For an instant he wanted to take on the guards, take on this whole settlement. But these folk he had no quarrel with, even the moon-faced guards he had no dispute with, but her, Joanna, the bishop's thing—

  "I will have satisfaction." Making his words a promise, he tore off his brooch pin, tossing into the cobbles between them. "I will be back to redeem this, mistress, and when I do, you had best not be in my path."

  For the second time that da
y he turned his back on her and left, his shoulder-blades prickling in expectation of a stone or dagger that never came.

  But he knew, now, what he would do. She would be his key that would turn the lock on David's prison and bring him out of the donjon. He would pick his moment, the time and place, and then he would kidnap Joanna, the mistress of Bishop Thomas. He would hold her and keep her as his prisoner, until Thomas agreed to a hostage exchange.

  Smiling grimly at the thought, Hugh strode away.

  Chapter 5

  Joanna looked over her new supplies, bought or bartered from Joseph of West Sarum in the hamlet that morning. Joseph, a herbalist and secret alchemist, had no suggestions for her. He had looked at her with pity when she admitted that Solomon was still in the donjon. "That is why I live and work here," he said, "outside the city walls and the keen greedy eye of the bishop. But I know that is no comfort to you."

  "No," agreed Joanna, as she gathered up her things and left the cottage to find the guards watching a cock-fight in the alleyway outside.

  Sitting now at her work-bench with her elbows braced amidst glasses and earthenware pots, she tried to concentrate on a parchment Joseph had loaned her. It was called "The Cure of Mercury," and claimed many things for that element, including the prolonging of life. The crabbed letters and symbols kept blurring on the scroll as she fought and failed to pay attention.

  At length she went to the top of the staircase and sat down on the top step, listening out for David's voice from the floor below. What must it be like to have a brother like Hugh, so protective? So determined?

  She glanced at Hugh's glove at her belt—she felt it to be hers, now, although she did not know why she did not burn it in her furnace. He had handled her twice now, without her permission: once over the glove and then today, in the hamlet, a brief, disturbing caress of her arm as he brushed her bracelets. Even through her sleeve she had felt his fingers, warm and strong and steady. Her whole arm had been changed by his contact, tingling and feeling lighter, as if some inner dross had been burned off by his touch. She wished she could have answered him honestly when he asked her what she thought of David's imprisonment. Were her father not also captive, she would have said, roundly, that the holding of a man such as David was an abomination. Except for her father, he was the kindest, gentlest, most learned man she had ever known.