Authors: Roberta Gellis
“My lord,” Alphonse said, showing no surprise at the sudden
change in subject, “you must do as you think best, of course, but if I knew
that you were at Wigmore and that you left on the day the prince escaped, I
would smell a long-dead fish being dragged across a trail to deceive. But, if
Leicester—puffed up with the false notion that he has defeated you—hears you
left your stronghold within a week of his coming, he will think you have run to
join the invaders or run from him. He will dismiss you from his mind.”
“Courtier!” Mortimer said, his lips twisting. “It was no
‘false notion’ that Leicester defeated me.”
“It
was
false because Leicester had the resources of
the king to draw upon, and you had much less. I am a courtier and not averse to
saying what I must in the most pleasant words I can find, but I am no liar.”
Laughing harshly, Mortimer said, “Well, I will go, and I
will send word to Clifford and the other Marchers to call in men and supplies.
Clifford is about six leagues from Hereford due west. His activity might lay a
false trail.”
“Very good, especially as the men and supplies will be
needed.”
“Who will give the signal to the prince to flee and lead the
troop that will block pursuit?”
“I, if you will trust that task to me,” Alphonse said.
Mortimer nodded. “You have been a good friend to us and with
nothing to gain for your risk.”
“I have more to gain than you think,” Alphonse replied with
a smile. Mortimer, like most men, was suspicious of generosity without a cause.
“Edward is lord of Gascony. My brother has wide lands in Gascony, and I hold a
small estate there. Raymond and I can only profit from Edward’s goodwill.
Moreover, I do not want for my brother such a lord as Edward might become if he
were kept leashed until Leicester dies—and I am sure Leicester’s power will die
with him. Not one of his sons could hold it. Henry is not ruthless enough, and
Simon and Guy… Well, you might have heard that I have a personal spite against
them.”
“Yes, every tongue in Northampton was wagging, and I still
have friends to tell me gossip.” Mortimer sounded amused. “I heard Guy has been
kept as close beside his father as if shackled to him ever since.”
Alphonse nodded, but he did not smile. “He will be loosed
when Edward escapes. And for that reason I hope you will agree to let me send
my wife east to her father.”
“But if she tells Norfolk about the plan to free the
prince—”
“She would not,” Alphonse assured him. “But I agree that one
must never trust a woman. We can set the time of her leaving so that no matter
how hard she rides she could not reach Norfolk before Edward is free.”
“Then to send her east is an excellent idea.” Mortimer spoke
with considerable enthusiasm. Sending Barbara to her father would free him of
responsibility for her safety. Then his enthusiasm faded and he looked
troubled. “But this is no time for a woman to travel across England with a maid
and two men-at-arms. Even if I or Gloucester could spare a troop, she would be
in worse danger with them than without. And, truthfully, I do not wish to send
twenty or thirty trained men-at-arms away at this time.”
“That was not what I intended,” Alphonse said quickly. “I
will take her to Wigmore Abbey and ask that the monks send an escort with her
to the next nearest holy place that is not…ah…tainted with rebellion against
Leicester’s rule. Her father can send for her, but I am not sure where—”
“Evesham Abbey,” Mortimer interrupted. “The abbot of Wigmore
will send his men that far if I ask it. It is well away from Hereford and
Gloucester, where I would suppose the fighting will center, and I have heard it
hinted the abbot is proud and will yield none who take refuge—even to
Leicester’s sons. She will be safe there until Norfolk’s men come for her, and
the abbey is rich and powerful, so Lady Barbara will have every comfort.”
Now all that was necessary was Barbe’s agreement. Alphonse
said nothing of that to Mortimer, merely thanking him for his help and advice
and returning to the subject of how the prince should be signaled to begin his
dash for freedom and where the troop to hold off pursuers should wait. Alphonse
knew Mortimer would have thought him mad to seek his wife’s concurrence rather
than simply giving her an order. But Alphonse did not at all object to the
prospect of wheedling Barbe into doing as he asked. To bend her to his will—and
make her enjoy yielding—gave him a pleasurable sense of power. More important,
although he did not like thinking about it, her initial objection to leaving
him would soothe that faint uncertainty he still felt about her. Barbe seldom
resisted him now, she came willingly, even eagerly, into his arms. Nonetheless
he was aware of some shadow on the brightness of her love—and there was that
token she hid from him.
Alphonse was, therefore, not altogether pleased to win an
easier victory than he had expected. He had managed, by asking Mortimer to take
him over the territory that would be covered in Edward’s escape, to delay their
return to Wigmore until the ladies had separated for the night. Barbe, who knew
they intended to return, had undressed but was in her bedgown, still sewing by
the fire in the small guest house when Alphonse came in. She jumped to her
feet.
“I heard horses some time ago. You are late. I was worried.”
Alphonse caught her to him. “If I had known you were awake,
I would have come sooner. I disarmed in the hall, not wishing to disturb you.”
“Then you have eaten already?”
“Yes, but I would like a cup of wine—” He felt her stiffen
in his arms and chuckled. “You are altogether too clever, my love. How do you
know that I do not really want wine but talk?”
She pushed him gently away and stared at him, heavy brows
level, lips flat. “If you do not want to leap into bed, there is trouble. You
never want food or drink when you have been away from me, unless this time you
are futtered out already—” She stopped speaking abruptly and walked to a table
near the wall where a flagon of wine, a flask of water, and two horn goblets
stood.
Alphonse made a small sound as he choked down joyous
laughter. She was jealous! But by the time she turned toward him, cup in hand,
his face was perfectly sober. “Not trouble,” he said, “but a problem I wish to
discuss with you without Mortimer overhearing.”
“You do not trust him?” Barbara whispered, stopping with the
cup of wine half extended.
“Of course I trust him, but there is something I wish you to
do that you will not like. Mortimer would never tire of the jest that I feared
my wife and pleaded with her instead of bidding her obey me and knocking out
her teeth if she did not. But,” he added plaintively, “I like you better with
your teeth, so—”
Barbara started to laugh, then frowned and thrust the wine
at him. “What is it that I will not like?”
“I want you to go to your father and stay with him until the
prince is free and Leicester makes terms.”
“You want to be rid of me.”
This time Alphonse let himself laugh aloud. “I will show you
soon enough whether that is true.” Then he sobered and came close, taking the
cup from her hand and setting it back on the table. He put his hands on her
shoulders. “Dear heart, I will miss you bitterly. You have no idea how
bitterly—”
“Then why send me away?”
“Because you are a danger to me. Edward will come here after
his escape. We hope, of course, that none will follow, but there is always a
chance that someone faithful to Leicester will espy him and pass the news to
those who will be sent out searching. The prince will stay here only long
enough to rest, but you know Leicester will not care. He will use word that
Edward stopped here as an excuse to attack Wigmore, and this keep will not be
well defended. Mortimer will take most of his trained men with him. If Wigmore
falls and you are taken in an enemy stronghold, when you are believed to be in
France—”
“I see,” she said, staring hard at him, but he wore no
courtier’s face for her. The fear he felt at the thought of her being taken was
written in his eyes and the tension of his mouth. And Barbara was herself
afraid. After what she had said to Leicester, she did not think being Norfolk’s
daughter would protect her. She looked down and sighed. “And I cannot go to St.
Briavels because that is another likely target for attack and also will not be
well manned.”
Alphonse was a trifle put out at hearing Barbara state his
arguments. He had expected her to refuse to be parted from him, as she had in
the past, and had been prepared to reason and wheedle her into compliance. Now
he had little left to say. “I am delighted that you see the situation so
clearly.” He hoped the compliment would be convincing, but his voice sounded
flat to him, and he thought he detected an amused spark of blue in the cold
gray depths of Barbe’s eyes.
“Only…” Her lips had no curve, no hint of a smile softening
them. “Would it not be even more dangerous for me to ride all the way across England
with armies marching about? Have you forgotten that Leicester is sure to call
up the whole knight service of England once the prince is free?”
“Ah, no.” Alphonse misunderstood the straightforward
question and thought that Barbe had pretended to agree only to cut the ground
from under his feet. He rebraced for argument with considerable pleasure,
making his first move by drawing her close, and kissing her. “We will have two
strings to our bow,” he began, and went on to tell her how Mortimer would arrange
with the abbot of Wigmore Abbey to have her escorted to Evesham. “I doubt any
captain of Leicester’s army would interfere with a lady escorted by holy
brothers, but if it should happen, you need only say you parted from mein
anger when you discovered I intended to join with the rebels.”
She pulled her head back, away from the lips that were
seeking hers again. “And then how could I protest if such a captain wished to
deliver me into Leicester’s hands?”
Alphonse laughed, her protest having confirmed his guess
that her agreement had been part of a design to circumvent his purpose.
“Mortimer will confide to the abbot Guy’s lust for you,” he said, “giving that
as your reason for seeking the protection of the Church. The brothers will not
give you up to any but your father’s men.”
While he spoke, Alphonse had slid one arm around her
shoulders, his other hand was busy unloosening the belt of her bedgown. He was
already aroused and turned so that his body was fully pressed against her and
she could not mistake the hardness of his shaft. She had been untying his shirt
strings, but she stopped and laid her hands flat on his chest as if to push him
away. Alphonse was a little troubled by a renewal of the resistance she seemed
to have abandoned, but his lips closed on hers, just as she said “My father’s
men!” and he was relieved, assuming she did not understand the rest of the
plan.
Shock at hearing her father brought into the discussion
first held Barbara immobile. In that instant she was convinced that the whole
purpose in sending her away was to involve her father in the rebellion against
Leicester.
“You will be safe in Evesham as long as you wish to stay
there,” Alphonse murmured, his mouth moving against hers, giving a sensual
effect to the practical words. “You can send Bevis and Lewin to your father and
ask that he send a troop to escort you. I cannot believe he will wish to be
involved in fighting against the prince, so he will be able to spare a strong
troop to take you safely to Framlingham, or wherever he is staying.”
Almost as the suspicion about entrapping her father formed,
she rejected it. There would be real danger for her if she were captured.
Still, doubt mingled with the intense pleasure Alphonse’s kiss created. The
movement of his mouth against hers as he explained made it very hard to think,
but that very fact renewed her suspicion. Resentment got all muddled up with
her need to draw Alphonse to the bed, where all doubts would be allayed as the
emptiness in her was filled. The need, growing with his caress, fed the doubt,
the doubt fed the need. For her own pride’s sake, to assure herself she was not
totally enslaved, Barbara found the strength to ask, “When?”
“I am not certain.” He bent his head and kissed her throat
where the loosened bedgown had fallen away. “We must first get the horses to
Thomas, and he must arrange that the prince be allowed to try them out where
there is room to gallop—that is, beyond the walls of Hereford.” He nibbled at
her throat again before he murmured, “Not less than a week or more than three
weeks from now, because the prince’s birth date is in June.”
Her arms were still braced against his chest but she did not
push him away. She could not. Her bones felt like limp strings, but she managed
to say, “I meant when must Bevis and Lewin leave Evesham?”
“The sooner the better after you arrive there.”
Barbara let her hands slide down her husband’s body, over
his hips, down to his firm buttocks. If he did not mean to set the trap for her
father at once, she could take what she wanted before beginning a quarrel.
Doubt of her own motives made her resist a moment longer to make sure. “You
mean,” she whispered, “you want me to send for my father’s troop after I arrive
in Evesham?”
“After…” Alphonse relaxed the guard he had been holding on
himself while he made sure she would not send her men out too soon. Barbe would
not deliberately betray the plan to free Prince Edward, but it was better if
she could not do so by accident, and did not suspect his uneasiness.
“Yes…after,” he whispered, his eyes half closed, one hand pulling her even
tighter against him as he moved his hips.
The very tip of his tongue made a little circle in the V
where her collarbones met, and she sighed and reached for his belt.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Four days later, the opinions of each had become fixed.
Alphonse was certain he had manipulated his wife into doing as he wished, and
Barbara had resolved on going to Evesham, but not one yard farther. In part,
her decision was influenced by the impossibility of remaining in Wigmore.
Mortimer had left his keep the day after he returned with Alphonse. What he
told his wife—or perhaps because he told her nothing—seemed to have turned her
to stone. She avoided Barbara and Alphonse whenever she could and hardly
squeezed a word between frozen lips when they were forced into proximity, as at
meals. The austere guest house of an abbey would seem a high revel in
comparison with the scarcely controlled fear and rage in Wigmore.
Barbara could not face that reminder of what she was concealing
from herself. Buried under layers of jealous fear that Alphonse simply wanted
to be rid of her, of angry suspicion that he had become
so
caught up in
the game of politics that he was willing to use his own wife as a pawn, of a
kind of pleasure in being clever and independent enough to go her own way
despite her love was her terror for him. To hide from herself the knowledge
that he would fight for Edward, that he might be injured or killed or captured
with the prince, she concentrated on her surface dissatisfactions.
Several times Barbara thought longingly of doing just what
Alphonse still believed she would do—seeking her father’s protection. Being a
guest in Evesham might be better than living with Matilda de Mortimer, but the
thought of going home to her father and to the loving support Joanna would give
her was a glimpse of heaven denied. She refused to think about it, knowing if
she consulted with Bevis and Lewin, they three could concoct a plan for getting
her to Framlingham without casting doubts on Norfolk’s loyalty. The truth was
she could not go so far away from where the fighting might be. She needed to be
where a day’s hard ride would bring her to her husband if ill befell him.
On May 26 a messenger on a lathered horse rode into Wigmore
soon after dinner. By nones, Alphonse was lifting Barbara down from Frivole’s
saddle in the courtyard of the guest houses in Wigmore Abbey. Out of deference
to the porter, who was waiting to show Barbara to her quarters, he did not kiss
her as he would have liked to do, only took her hand. Then the porter turned
his back, and Alphonse lifted her hand to his mouth and gently touched the tips
of her fingers with his tongue.
“How I will miss you,” he murmured.
“You could come with me,” Barbara said, closing her fingers
around his hand.
“You know I cannot,” he replied, frowning. “I have given my
word.”
Barbara opened her mouth to say “A word that can make you
dead,” but she knew the protest was useless, and said instead, “I know.”
“I will come for you as soon as I am freed from my promise,”
he said. “When you are settled, write and tell me where you are.” He leaned
closer and whispered so the monk could not hear, “Write to Gilbert. I will be
with him or he will know where I am.” He raised her hand and kissed it again,
then pulled loose. “God help me, I miss you already.”
He turned away quickly, as if he must wrench himself free to
make the parting briefer and thus less painful. It was a technique he had honed
to perfection, but this time he was caught in his own snare. When he was
mounted and looked back, Barbara was calmly walking away with the porter, not
standing and waving or weeping or simply staring after him. Doubt stabbed
deeply, presenting to him every likely and unlikely reason for her
indifference, except the idea that she was not indifferent at all and had
turned away to hide from him the tears streaking her face. Had the notion
occurred to him, he would have dismissed it as ridiculous. To his mind there
was no reason for Barbe to hide her fear and her tears, and thus her love.
They were man and wife and had a right to love openly. To
Alphonse that was one of the greatest joys of the married state. He had grown
very tired of concealment, of lies, of the uneasiness of needing to look calmly
into the eyes of cuckolded husbands. He did not need to vow he would seek no
other woman. Not once since Barbe had agreed to be his wife had he desired any
body but hers. So Alphonse was agonized because she had not watched him go, had
not tried to cling to the sight of him—as he would have turned and turned again
to cling to the sight of her—as long as possible. He suffered all the way to
Weobly, where another message from Thomas, which drove personal considerations
from his mind, was waiting for him.
“One of the horses sent by my brother has too hard a mouth,”
Thomas wrote. “I will send a man to return it to you on Thursday. He will meet
you west of Wydmarsh Gate where the land rises into little hills. Wear a white
hat so that my man may know you. If you wave it, he will come to you at once
and your business may be done quickly.”
Thursday. That did not give them much time. Alphonse spent a
minute wondering whether the early date for trying the horses and choosing one
had been set to gratify Edward’s impatience to have a new horse or to make more
difficult any plan of escape. In the next minute, he dismissed the question. He
and Mortimer had devised the plan before the horses were delivered, but there
was still much to do in a shorter time than expected. Parties had been leaving
and returning to Weobly for a week, as if a nervous Mortimer was scouring the
countryside. That did not change, except that the parties leaving were larger
and those that returned had fewer men and horses and most of the men rode
awkwardly.
Alphonse went out of Weobly with a party that headed east
after dinner on Wednesday, May 27. They traveled some distance, then turned
sharply north into a little wood. There they waited for anyone who was
following to take up their trail, but no one came to the edge of the wood or
into it. When they were sure there were no watchers, they found a group of
serfs mounted on farm horses and bade them ride back to Weobly manor. After the
serfs were on the road going west, they turned east again within the wood and
finally, before the wood ended, south. They crossed the road into another,
smaller wood and left a man where he could see a good way up and down the road.
Bearing southeast now, the party came out on hilly grazing land. Here they
stopped while men who knew the area examined the small wooded copses and hidden
valleys. They returned to report the land empty, except for a few shepherds,
and rode away again prepared to watch through the night in case Thomas’s
message was a trap. At dusk Alphonse, Chacier, and one other man rode south
toward the top of the final rise. To the north of the broad slope they saw a
boy seated on the ground beside a tethered horse. From his saddlebag Alphonse
took a broad-brimmed white traveling hat and put it on. The boy stood up and
waved.
“No change,” the boy said as soon as Alphonse and his men
had ridden close enough to hear ordinary speech.
“Do you ride back?” Alphonse asked as he dismounted.
“Now that you are here, no. If you had not come, I was to go
back at dawn.”
The boy’s face was alive with curiosity, but Alphonse said
nothing to satisfy it. He unloosened his saddle roll, threw the boy a blanket,
and pulled one around himself. Chacier and the man-at-arms also dismounted.
Chacier took bread and cheese from his saddlebags, which he shared with his
master and the boy. No one spoke at all, and after eating they all lay down. By
the time full dark had blanketed the hill, the boy was asleep. Alphonse sat up
and touched Chacier, who felt about until he found the small hollow he had
marked while they ate. He pulled most of the grass from it. On the bare earth,
he lit a little fire. The man-at-arms walked to the top of the hill and lay
down where he could watch the road below without being seen.
Through the night men came and went, reporting on the
gathering of the troop that had left Weobly in small groups and made their way
to a tiny copse, no more, really, than a windbreak, below the hill east of the
road. In the quiet of midnight, Alphonse heard the bells ring for matins and by
the time the faint peal for lauds came, together with the light of false dawn,
Alphonse calculated that at least fifty men were in place. Then he ate more of
the bread and cheese, washed it down, with a mild expression of despair at
English taste, with a few swallows of ale, and lay down to sleep. Chacier woke
him about an hour after tierce.
“A party of five has just ridden into the meadow and
dismounted,” he said softly.
Dadais had already been moved as close to the top of the
rise as he could be without showing up against the skyline. Chacier’s horse was
well down the hillside, ready for the dash to warn the troop to block the road
after the prince had passed. The boy and the man-at-arms were gone. Alphonse
climbed to the top of the hill, crouched behind some low brush, and looked out.
In the distance, he could make out the walls of Hereford. Just below was the
road, snaking back toward those walls. On the left of the road was the mingled
lush green, glittering wet, and tall brown stalks of rushes that marked
marshland. To the right the marsh had filled in to form a wide, flat meadow.
Between the meadow and the town was another of those little copses that dotted
the countryside.
The spot could not have been better chosen, Alphonse
thought. Most of what took place in the meadow would be hidden from watchers on
the walls, and any sounds they made would be blurred, too. In the time he had
taken to get into position, one man, taller than the others—obviously the
prince—had clearly tried one of the horses and found it wanting. He was
thrusting the reins of the magnificent animal into the hands of a much smaller,
slighter man—no doubt Thomas. The way their hands moved indicated that Thomas
was protesting Edward’s decision and urging him to try the horse again. Edward
gestured the animal away and moved to mount another.
He rode the horse in a circle, guiding it with reins and
knees to turn and lift. Then he seemed to call something to the waiting men and
spurred the animal into a gallop. He rode madly to the edge of the meadow, turned,
and rode back again just as the other four men started to mount to follow him.
But he did not dismount immediately; he rode the horse back and forth until
Alphonse, although he could not see it at that distance, knew the beast was
tired and lathered with sweat. Alphonse settled down to wait. Edward had two
more horses to wear out.
By the time Edward dismounted from the fourth horse,
Alphonse could see his four companions grouped together as if they were bored
and paying little attention to him. Thomas approached, leading the animal the
prince had first rejected. They seemed to have words, and Thomas turned away
sharply as if angry. He mounted the rejected horse and Edward mounted the last
untried animal. Both began to circle, as Edward had done with all the other
horses. The other men hardly looked at what was taking place.
Swallowing a burst of excitement, Alphonse flung himself
into Dadais’s saddle and rode to the top of the hill. Edward promptly set spurs
into his mount, which broke into a gallop. Thomas hesitated a moment, then
followed suit. Alphonse started Dadais down the hill, waving his hat as Edward
came to the edge of the meadow, where he had previously turned his horse to go
back. This time he headed into the road instead, crouching low over the saddle,
spurring and slapping the horse to wring more speed from it. A length behind,
Thomas’s big black stallion thundered. The last thing Alphonse saw before he
was too far down the hill for an overview was Edward’s three other companions
mounting the exhausted horses left with them.
Edward flew past, then Thomas. Alphonse turned Dadais into
the road and fell in behind, intending to keep his armored body between the
lightly clad escapees and their pursuers, if the pursuers ever caught up. He
could hear shouts behind him, but only a few voices, faint with distance. That
meant there had been no troop guarding the prince closer to the town. Even as
he shook his head in disbelief at the credulity of Leicester, the voices behind
him faded out entirely. Clearly they had seen the hopelessness of chasing
Edward on exhausted horses and were riding back to Hereford to summon help.
One patch of woods loomed up on Alphonse’s right. Beyond, on
the other side of the road, was another. On the grass verge between the wood
and the trees, Chacier waited, wearing a white hat. Edward rode on without
slowing, Thomas behind him. As soon as they were past, Chacier started after
them while Alphonse slowed Dadais to wait for the men who began to pour out of
the wood. Five men rode south out of the copse. They would go along the north
bank of the Wye until they could ford the river and continue south, laying a
false trail. The rest of the troop blocked the road completely, riding slowly
north. When the distance between the troop and the three was about a quarter of
a mile, Chacier spurred his mount, which overtook Edward’s and Thomas’s tiring
horses. Alphonse watched Chacier take the lead, then turned to signal, and the
first ten men rode off to the right, driving their horses up the hill as fast
as they could go. At the top they would divide, five riding due east and five
curving back as if to go around Hereford and head south.
The main body of the troop continued on the road for another
quarter of a mile. There a second signal sent another ten men left on a narrow
track. Alphonse knew that was where Chacier had led Edward and Thomas. They
would soon come to a branch of the Wye, which they would ford. At the ford, the
men following them would form two parties. Eight would cross behind them, three
would continue on along the south bank of the tributary west toward Wales.
Alphonse pulled Dadais aside and the troop rode past him. He
was relieved when the last man passed the track. To be too close might draw
attention to it. But he wanted to be in sight so that the attention of the
pursuers would focus on his troop rather than on the side path. He was just
wondering whether to order the men to stop when shouts from the rear warned him
that pursuers were finally coming.