“Your Highness? May I speak with you?” The fact Jocelyn’s request came in langue d’oil made Eleanor suspect it was something he didn’t want others to understand, and that in turn led her to suspect he was about to begin the conversation she had been dreading since Trempwick turned up at the gates. Feet planted, hands clasping his belt in a pose which thrust his elbows out to the side and made him appear more imposing, the count was going to talk whether she wanted him to or not.
Eleanor gave the mangy rag of parchment containing the inventory of Alnwick’s medical supplies to Aveis. “Gather as many people as you need and set to making bandages and such like.”
Aveis’ hand dropped to rest protectively on her daughter’s head. “You think there will be a battle, then?”
“I think it best to be prepared for that increasing eventuality.”
Her other companion, Hawise, Eleanor forbore to send away. In the first it would not be seemly, in the second it would be asking for trouble. Already long mired in speculation about her virtue she could afford no more doubt; need for a good reputation aside, soldiers had little interest in protecting someone they considered a harlot. She would have to trust Hawise’s discretion and her limited langue d’oil; as faithful as the maid had been Eleanor still felt it a foolhardy risk.
Jocelyn seemed to realise how threatening his body language was; he removed one hand from his belt and ducked a curt bow. “Thank you, your Highness. I’m not much good at speaking prettily, so with your permission I’ll speak freely instead.”
Eleanor perched on the edge of the backless chair near the fireplace. “I would prefer you spoke wisely.”
If the hint registered the count gave no sign. “Highness, I’m a loyal man, truly. I say what I say because of that.”
Eleanor declined to make the expected agreeing noises.
“I know you’ve got a plan. I don’t know what it is. I do know you need to do something, and fast. The men are about ready to mutiny, and I don’t bloody blame them – that’s their families out there.”
“You suggest I surrender, then?”
“Your husband’s willing to take you back, and that’s a bloody miracle after all you’ve done-”
Eleanor kept her tone level. “My husband is with my brother.” Fascinating how he now named Trempwick as her husband when previously he’d been content that Fulk held that dubious honour.
“By the time that one gets here you’re going to be out of options.” Jocelyn spread his hands. “If Trempwick wins he’ll take you back and you’ll have no bargaining power. If the prince wins then your throne is lost.”
“That throne is not mine.”
The count flung out an arm, matching his words with a gesture which felt like a crossbow being levelled at her forehead. “You are the heir! That’s why I am here!” The arm sagged, and dropped; Jocelyn moderated his voice. “I mean, it’s why I was sent here. It’s not the reason I choose to be here. Well, it is, but that’s duty, not ambition or something. I’m a loyal man, that’s why your father chose me-”
Eleanor covertly dug her fingernails into the palm of her other hand. If she gave him a nudge back towards the right path please God he would take it. “You are here out of loyalty to my brother, lending your forces to mine for my protection.”
“No.” Jocelyn advanced, halted again as though holding himself back. “I am here because your father sent me. He made me swear loyalty to his heir-”
“And so you serve my brother.” A droplet of sweat trickled down Eleanor’s back; she recognised the expression on Hawise’s face, calm and neutral – and deep in damned thought. The maid was understanding entirely too much of this.
“No. And so I serve you, your Highness.”
Nudge? The man wouldn’t get a hint if it was pounded into his skull with a mallet! “I am not the heir.”
“I heard him name you! I saw him take the ring off his own bloody hand to send to you!” Jocelyn took another step forward, face twisted with emotion. “He knew he was dying and he named you, and I was there!” Softly he repeated. “I was there. You are the heir.”
Hawise had gone sheet white, and Eleanor was none so sure she didn’t share the maid’s lack of colour.
Jocelyn took another step; he was close now. He held out his hand. “You have the ring,” he appealed.
Eleanor leaned back fractionally, away from him. “The ring was lost when my father’s belongings were looted.”
“He gave it to me. I gave it to you. You have it.”
“This is a very dangerous nonsense. My brother is the heir. The ring is lost.” Eleanor shifted her right hand so it lay close to the hilt of the knife on her left arm.
The count knelt in front of her, placing his face on a level with hers. “You’re in great danger.”
“Because of men who claim I am something I am not, sir.”
“Maybe you aim to have the prince defeat Trempwick, then your husband and your force here will turn on him and destroy what’s left of Hugh’s army?” The count stroked a hand over his beard. “Yes, yes, that might work. Bloody risky, but it might.”
Now Fulk was her husband again!? “I have no such plan!” Eleanor cried, pushing her chair back away from him and standing. “I am not the heir. I do not want the throne. I am not Trempwick’s wife. Cease this nonsense!”
Jocelyn rose to his feet, body straightening unhurriedly. “If there’s a battle the prince can’t hope to win it. Trempwick’s damned well picked this ground, he’s prepared it, he’s rested and supplied, and he’s got a bit of damned sense he’ll have been making the enemy’s advance difficult so they arrive worn out and bloodied. His men are a pack of desperate men with nothing left to lose and bloody all to gain – they can’t give up and go home because they’ve gone too bloody far to hope for forgiveness. They’ll tear anything your brother can muster to shreds. You’ve got to see that.” The count stepped around the chair. “Except it won’t come to battle, not for us. We’ll be tossed out those gates. The thirst’s beginning to bite those prisoners, and that’s got their family in here with their bloody balls in the hot coals. They’ve got to act or they’ll lose them, and no right thinking man’s going to sit idly by.” Another step. “It’s a wonder they’d kept faith so long. They should have been sallying forth when the first smoke cloud appeared, saving their families and their lands. But no, they kept faith with you.” Another step. “They kept faith while their homes burned, their friends killed and their womenfolk were raped. So you bloody owe it to us to do something!”
Eleanor stiffened her knees and refused to back away. A dispassionate corner of her mind observed that it was strangely easy to stand unquailing before this angry warrior; after her father Jocelyn was nothing. “Do you think I do not know this? Do you think it does not make my heart bleed?”
“They’ll throw us out those gates, and that army out there is bloody pissed off! They’ll kill me!” Jocelyn brandished a finger in Eleanor’s face. “Lady, I didn’t come to this miserable bloody island to die! I’ve got a family, lands, stuff I want to go back to!” He changed tack abruptly, having utterly betrayed his true motivation. “They’ll do worse to you. If my wife did a tenth of what you’ve done to your husband I’d bloody beat her to death the moment I set eyes on the mad bloody bitch, queen or beggar or whatever the fucking God she happened to be! So consider yourself bloody fortunate that he’s willing to take you back, and don’t make matters worse!”
With one smooth motion Eleanor drew a knife and levelled the point at the count’s belly. He was close enough the wool of his tunic brushed the point with each breath he took. A few steps off to Jocelyn’s side and rear Hawise drew her own knife and assumed a ready stance.
“Enough,” Eleanor said quietly.
Jocelyn’s lip curled as he eyed her weapon. “Sixteen sainted sardines, you’re not bloody natural!”
“A lady in my position must be able to defend herself.”
“Bloody Christ!” From the corner of his eye the count spotted Hawise and her own weapon. “Shit!” He held up his hands, empty and palm outwards, changed his tone to one more placating. “Look, I’m sorry. I got carried away, but with good reason. Please, you have to listen. They will throw us out. The prince can’t win. You need to do something. Before it’s too late. Highness. Please. Go back to your husband on your own terms.”
“Trempwick is not my husband. He is an ambitious man who would use me to rule.” Eleanor took several steps back and lowered her knife, still prepared to defend at an instant’s warning. “You do not like what is happening outside these walls? That will be all England if he shoves me onto the throne. Lords warring amongst themselves and the crown too weak to stop them. I cannot lead an army, so another would have to do it for me and they would serve their own ends, not mine. I cannot command respect in the traditional ways; I would always be challenged by one or another. There could be no peace.”
“The prince can’t win.”
Eleanor smiled faintly. “My brother is a seasoned general. Trempwick is not. I would not discount him so swiftly were I you.”
“That’s no damned use if we’re thrown out before he arrives.”
“As for that, I have plans of my own. You are right; I do owe my defenders a tremendous debt for their loyalty, and I intend to honour it.”
Jocelyn chewed this over. “I suggest you get on with whatever it is, and quickly. If it doesn’t work you’ll want returning to your husband and right quick. I’ll escort you. I’m your bodyguard, after all, and I pledged to your father I’d serve his heir.”
Eleanor pointed her knife at him and snapped, “What you mean to say, sir, is that if I fail you will throw me to the wolves to save yourself, and try to gain while doing so.” She sheathed her weapon. “If my brother is victorious you will abandon my father’s wishes in order to curry favour with Hugh, and that is well.” When the count would have protested she snarled, “Make no mistake, sir, I know your type. Did I not I might be deluded into thinking I might rule successfully.”
A very long time after the count departed Hawise broke the hush that had fallen upon the room. “So, it’s true. You are the named heir.”
It would be a poor thing to attempt to deceive her maid now, futile too. “Yes. For what that is worth. Not very much, I should think.” She smiled tightly, eyes hot with the absurd threat of tears. “He chose me at the last minute, thinking me his best hope for vengeance.”
“Yet you support Hugh.”
“Yet I support Hugh.” Eleanor sank into her chair and scrubbed the back of her hand across her eyes. “Brother or half brother he was raised to rule from the day Stephan died, and I to support him. Support him I shall. He has been accused of being inept. That is not true. He is finding his feet, discovering his confidence, and were he as inept as he is accused of being Trempwick would long since have run him out of power. Instead he is the one pressing Trempwick. I admit I am surprised at how well he has done; I did not think he had this much steel in him. Especially talented, no, Hugh is not that. Nor gifted, nor a born leader. He will not be an outstanding king, merely a good one.” That he had needed considerable help to stand on his own feet, and a mighty good push to set him staggering off in an attempt to walk, well that did not need to be mentioned.
Eleanor twisted her girdle about and freed the her father’s ring from its hiding place. The great sapphire set in the centre of the ring gleamed joyously in welcome of the daylight.
“The coronation ring of Saint Edward the Confessor,” Hawise breathed.
“Yes. From my beloved regal ancestor’s hand to mine.” Eleanor threaded it onto her right heart finger, where it hung next to her wedding ring like a great gold cartwheel. “See how well it fits? One cannot claim I would grow into it. It would have to be cut down, a fitting analogy, I find, for the whole damned thing.” She extended her beringed hand to her maid. “I am swearing you to secrecy. You will never speak of any of this again so long as you live, to anyone. Not a word.”
Hawise knelt, placed her hands in Eleanor’s and swore, “I shall not repeat a word of what I have learned here so long as I live, this I do swear upon my immortal soul and this sacred ring.” She set her lips to the centrepiece of gemstones to seal the oath.
Eleanor returned the ring to its hiding place with some reluctance. As one of the realm’s holiest relics and the symbol of the marriage between king and country it deserved better than being tucked in the belt of a renegade heir.
Varin drew his horse in level with Fulk’s. “It was a decent piece of work you made of the bridge.”
“Thank you.” Fulk viewed this sudden desire to speak with him with no small amount of suspicion; the German had thus far kept aloof, and he remembered what Hugh had said of the man.
“A pity about the leg.”
“It’s none so bad, and healing.” The wound burned like fire, constantly.
“You are an interesting man.”
Fulk used his mouthful of food as an excuse to delay his reply. He swallowed with difficulty, and took a drink of watered wine from the skin hanging from his saddle. “Twice baked bread: as dry as dust and hard as biscuit, mostly tasteless and completely disgusting. I look forward to a proper meal.”
“And a few other home comforts too, no doubt.”
Fulk ran a hand over the short beard he’d grown. “Yes – a razor!”
Varin laughed. “I also.” He dropped his reins, stood in his stirrups and stretched his arms above his head until the joints cracked. “Your wife also you will be glad to see again?”
“More than anything.”
In the distance horns brayed; another of the outriding parties had sighted potentially hostile forces. Both men fell silent as they waited. The horns rang out again, this time signalling the outrider’s advance to contact.
Varin resumed their conversation. “So then, you look forward to settling into domestic bliss.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Varin hitched his shoulders, made awkward by the shield hanging across his back. “Not all men are cut from the same cloth. Some do not stomach peace well.”
“I look forward to it. I’ve had little enough time to spend with Eleanor, and my lands need work.”
“Good then. I wish you the joy of it.”
“Thank you.”
“A word of advice, if I may?” He didn’t wait for consent. “My lady, the Empress, will have no quarrel with her sister if she accepts her place in this world and remains there. If she will not behave as she should the quarrel between sisters will grow, and then I would not like to say how things will be.”
“You may keep your threats,” Fulk answered curtly. “They’re pointless. She doesn’t want the throne, the claim was made in her name by those who would use her for their own ends.”
“Could the claim have been made if she had not made it possible? No. Her wilfulness placed her in a position where the unscrupulous could make use of her.”
“Beware. You come dangerously close to saying something I take exception to.”
Varin made a disgusted noise. “I am trying to help you. The Empress feels herself slighted, and I would not pretend that she takes overmuch to heart. She was passed over, people thought to deny her her due. Where the Empress is slighted the Emperor is doubly so. Wrong has been done them; I am here as a part of their effort to right that – and to prevent further … mishap. Provided from this point on your wife limits herself to the place which has been made for her there shall be no quarrel.”
“And what place would that be?” Fulk asked stiffly.
“The wife of a minor, newly made earl of dubious lineage, living in semi-exile in the graceless north.”
“That I could very easily take as an insult.”
“A man in your position might easily imagine the whole of God’s creation insults him.” Varin pulled at the reins and touched his mount’s flank with his spurs. Over his shoulder he said, “I would suggest a man in your position cannot afford to.”
Fulk let out the breath he had been holding. Bone weary, aching, wounded; the last thing he felt like doing was fighting for a reason which would bring him no closer to Eleanor, king’s request or no.
“You should have pounded him!” Richard’s face glowed with indignation, the first time the lad had looked fully awake in a long time. “He shouldn’t say such things.”
“There’s fighting enough to be done without seeking more within our own ranks.”
“But he insulted you!”
“He is far from the first, and shall be far from the last.”
The enthusiasm dimmed from the boy’s face. “But you’re a knight, a great lord.”
“Yes, and as such I should behave with civility. It is not right for a man to disrupt his lord’s household with brawling.” Noticing how his page was sagging under the weight of the shield Fulk leaned over and re-arranged it so part of the lower rim rested on the pony’s back. “Better?”
The child dragged his back straight and, face set, remained fully upright in his saddle. “Thank you, my lord.” Under the veneer of grime Richard’s face turned rosy.
Fulk bit the inside of his cheeks to keep his face straight; he remembered well how the tender pride of youth saw anything which did not treat them as a full adult as patronising, even where the reverse was true. If his page knew he thought well of him for his stolid endurance the poor boy would be horrified.
“Don’t be taken in by the stories. A knight need not answer every last ill-spoken word with his sword. That would make him nothing more than a thug. A true knight – a true man, for that matter – knows when to turn the other cheek.”
“But you were going to fight him.” Richard’s brow creased. “Weren’t you?”
“I was growling to warn him off. If he backed down then I’d won without needing to fight. And, you’ll notice, he did.”
“He insulted you some more as he left.”
“He would have lost face if he had not. I knew it, he knew it, anybody watching would have know it. To pursue him because of that would have made me less of a man. Always be gracious in victory, Richard, and always leave a way for people to back down. Else you find yourself with troubles you could have avoided.”
The boy was quiet for a moment. “I think I see, my lord.”
Fulk continued to eat his miserable lunch while listening to the distant sounds of fighting. He’d nearly finished the fist-sized loaf of bread when he spotted a messenger galloping back down the marching column.
The man dragged back on the reins, the animal turning about and slowing and pretty as you could please. “Sir Fulk, you are commanded to take your men and go to the aid of the fifth-right party of outriders. They have engaged the enemy party which has been harassing our flanks and are holding them. You are to encircle them and help finish them off. Quickly – before they escape.”
Fulk dumped the remnants of his bread into his page’s hands. “FitzWilliam’s men! Form up!”
Jocelyn: I’m possibly in some danger and I’m freaking out! Cooperate, damn you!
Nell: I’ve been waiting 1071 pages to pull a knife on a yelling idiot-man. Go ahead, make my day.
Jocelyn: Eeeek!
When I become supreme ruler of the universe I am going to ban noise! (This shouted over the sound of skirting boards being cut down to size and fixed to the walls in the house next door)
:watches all the heraldic musings: Well, that was fascinating. Unexpected, too.
Avernite, Trempy asks if you’d like some stake, Hugh’s offering some of his special naphtha barbeque sauce, and Fulk says he’s an expert at tenderising meat …
Chief, thanks to you I now have this enduring image of 10,000 Vikings in stereotypically inaccurate horned helmets and fur tunics descending on England while Wagner plays in the background and a guy with the voice of the Swedish Chef from the Muppets gives the orders. It’s a pretty cool, if utterly absurd, scene
Crusher, I say it should be. Word disagrees and keeps on quietly changing it.
:Celebrating passing the "Read 100 books this year!" mark: 102 to be precise.
