The Lords of Arden (10 page)

 Relieved, John said, ‘I do swear it, but
that’s a light enough oath on present showing.’ He was laughing at her now and
the shadows were starting to lift. Bess began to realize that the time for
truth had gone with his tears. She would get nothing out of him now; nothing
worth believing.

 ‘Oh, go up to bed, Johnny. I’ll have a
tray sent up. You look half starved.’

 ‘And you’ll come and tuck me in – like
you used?’ He was playing with her now, flirting shamelessly.

 She rose from her chair. ‘Out!’ she said.
‘If I do come up you’ll get a good slippering – like you used!’ She watched him
saunter out and wondered what in heaven Peter would do with him now. Then she
went down to the solar and thought of something suitable to say to Derby’s men.

 Their Captain bowed low over her hand. ‘I
was sorry,’ he said, ‘to bring him home in disgrace. He’s generally well-liked.
My Lord isn’t a man to hold a grudge. No doubt the lad will be re-instated soon
enough.’

 Bess smiled and didn’t say she thought it
most unlikely. She saw them out into the Wards and watched them ride away.

Peter de Montfort's tiny namesake had only
survived his girl-mother by a few weeks. Peter's grandmother, Madam Maud, clung
tenaciously onto life for three years more and finally left the world on Lady
Day when, in spite of the rain, there was a sniff of spring in the air and a
blur of daffodils in many a sheltered hollow among the Alne Hills.

 Geoffrey Mikelton took Henley High Street at the gallop, two of his men valiantly trying to keep pace with him over
the mud-spattered cobbles, their blue cloaks flying, hair already plastered
down with rain. Mikelton cornered sharply, so that they almost overshot him,
and ducked under an archway into the yard of the White Lion. Hitching his
lathered mount, the old man strode into the tap room and the smoke billowed out
from the chimney as the door slammed to in his wake. He scanned the faces
glancing up at him, white in the torchlight or rosy from fire glow. Eleanor,
mine host's amply endowed and very pretty wife, cradling an ale pot, lifted a
hand in greeting and jerked her head towards the group of men sprawled about a
scrubbed table, where bright coins lay glinting in silvery piles and the dice
tumbled, bone-white, from eager hands.

 A young man in plain grey fustian, one
eye on the proceedings, was idly plucking a citole; a tall youth in russet
perched on the end of a bench, had a dark-eyed girl on his knee and was
whispering nonsense beneath the curtain of her hair. For the rest, heads were
bent over the game in progress, a hand stretched out now and again for the
nearest mug of ale.

 Mikelton, breathless from his ride,
passed them all over until his roving eye came to rest at last on the young man
reaching out to grasp the dice with a brown hand that suddenly captured a spurt
of fire in the heart of a fine emerald. His jupon was of dark blue velvet, cut
in the favourite style of courts and kings just then; it hugged his hips, elaborately
scalloped at its hem to match the long depending sleeves thrust back from the
slim wrists and lined with yellow silk. He had unfastened the top buttons of
the tunic and the whiteness of fine linen showed at his throat. Mikelton only
noticed that the thick blue mantle, flung carelessly over a settle, was still
too damp and that droplets of water glittered in the auburn hair, a sign that
he had not graced the inn long enough to have dried out or, mercifully, to be
very drunk.

 The farmers, the Henley Burgesses, the
lesser gentry, were known to shake their heads, brows drawn together, and call
this young man John the Bastard and John Lackland; their wives and daughters to
lower their gaze and smile over their embroideries and forgive John de Montfort
whatever his latest trespass may have been before it was spluttered out by
their menfolk.

 Geoffrey Mikelton had been Constable of
Beaudesert for over twenty years now, but he could still remember the day when
Peter, Third Lord Montfort, had proudly installed this young man's mother at
the castle; there was little he did not know about Lora Astley's son. He moved
round the table, almost unmarked, until he was standing at Montfort's back, and
put a hand on his shoulder. The dice spilled out onto the table - a double six!
Montfort laughed and without looking up said, ‘Geoffrey? What direful calamity
brings you here? Insurrection in the wards? No? The Welsh hammering at the
gates perhaps? Or has my brother lost another of his milk teeth?’

 Geoffrey permitted himself the pleasure
of letting iron-hard fingers bite into the smooth muscles of the young man's
shoulder and said grimly. ‘Your Great Grandmother is dying. It is thought
doubtful she will survive the night. Unaccountably, she wishes to see you.’ He
swept up the mantle and went to drape it about Montfort's shoulders but the
young man snatched at it impatiently and, tossing it over one shoulder, walked
out of the inn without a word.

~o0o~

Guy de Montfort, small frame enveloped in
a dark frieze cloak, black hair clinging in limp strands to his thin shoulders,
stared out across the benighted, rain-slashed countryside. Water lay glinting
in all the hollows, low cloud shrouded Liveridge Hill, blotting out the stars,
and the stone crenellations atop the Mellent Tower were clammy to the touch. He
turned away almost thankfully at the sound of de Lobbenham's voice. Peter's
chaplain laid a hand upon his son. ‘I've come from Lady Maud, she wishes to
speak with you, child, and with John too. I've despatched Mikelton to find him.
Go down to her, Guy, she has so little time left with us.’

 The child hesitated. ‘Come with me,
Father.’

 The chaplain shook his head. ‘Don't be afraid
of death. It must come like a welcome benediction to one of Madam Maud's great
age.’

 John had joined them, silent as a cat. ‘How
trite and comforting. I'll never believe that, Father! She'll die fighting for
breath as she's fought for everything she ever wanted. I think you mean that
her death won't be stark tragedy. You and she were always at loggerheads, after
all. I can't think she has ever approved of a priest who was once his Lord's
drinking partner, a frequenter of dark taverns and much, much worse.’ He
laughed and caught Guy looking up at them, puzzled and worried. He ran a hand
through his small brother's dark hair.

 ‘Are you staying up here all night, Guy?’

 Jack de Lobbenham watched them leave the
battlements for the stair-well. It was with a sense of wonderment at God's
workings that he had seen John de Montfort grow to young manhood with more than
his fair share of the Montfort independence of spirit - John the bastard son -
whilst young Guy upon whom the line was to evolve, showed not a trace of his
proud ancestry, of the men who had fought for and against kings and sat at
table with queens. Guy had the looks and temperament of his gentle, placid
young mother who had given Peter his legitimate heir and slipped unobtrusively
away before her twentieth birthday.

 The two brothers, Lora's son and
Margaret's, entered the old lady's bedchamber. The torches were low in the
sconces, the shadows huge and mobile, flickering grotesquely on painted walls
and ceiling. Peter's younger sister rose from her vigil beside the sick woman. Elizabeth
Freville was quite stout now and the bronze hair, Maud's legacy, was here and
there streaked with grey.

 ‘Don't tire her, boys, and Guy, don't
remain here too long. This is no place for a child,’ she added, flashing John a
warning look.

 ‘She asked to see him, Aunt.’ John
rebuked her. Bess nodded and swept out of the room in an aura of rose-water and
green camlet. He sauntered over to his Great Grandmother's canopied bed. She
seemed so small and lost, her skin wrinkled and dried. A half-smile cracked the
parchment mask of her face. John's six foot towered above her; he leant over
and took a withered hand in his strong brown ones. The violet eyes were half
mocking, half concerned as they penetrated her own dull gaze; the lids were
almost closed over the faded green of her eyes. ‘Anything I can do,
Grandmother?’

 She snorted. ‘You can keep that fool of a
hedge priest out of here for an hour or so and let me die in peace. I want to
speak with Guy. Where is he?’

 ‘He's here.’ John turned to his young
half-brother, standing transfixed in the centre of the room.

 ‘I can't come nearer, John!’ the boy
whispered. ‘She looks so awful; I couldn't touch her.’ He was near to tears. John
propelled him towards the bed in merciless exasperation then left him and
wandered to the window.

 ‘Guy?’ the old voice quavered.

 ‘Yes, Great Grandmother?’ At last he
crept near and knelt beside her, hands clasped tightly together on her
coverlet. He looked so much younger than his years.

 ‘A great many hopes are centred on you,
child. You won't be able to live up to them all of course, no-one ever does. Your
Great Grandfather and I had our hopes before Evesham. They did teach you about
Evesham, child?’

 ‘Yes, Grandmother - when the Royalists
fired Beaudesert and you were left in charge with only a handful of servants…’

 ‘How old are you, Guy?’

 ‘Six years, Great Grandmother.’

 ‘I was thirteen then, but I survived the
horrors of sack, the total reversal of all our fortunes. Always remember, the
brave man is not he who has no fear but he who hides it, learns to overcome it.
Will you remember that and try not to dishonour our name?’

 ‘I will try, Great Grandmother, really.’

 ‘Go now, I want to speak privately with
John and time is running away. Where are you, John?’ But Peter's bastard was at
her side. ‘Pull me up against the bolster. That's right, now listen. You and I
understand each other, boy, that is why I have to speak. I was a fool when I
stopped your father from marrying your mother. Oh, before you came on the
scene. Have you hated me for cheating you out of your birthright?’

 John shook his head. ‘I don't miss what I
never had. I can stand on my own two feet and Guy will grow up. What do you
expect at six? But he'd make a good little priest; he's meek and mild for a
Montfort.’

 ‘Ha!’ Maud snorted. ‘We tried to make a
frocked priest of your father. Montfort's don't look well in the cloth. Come
closer, John.

 ‘Sixteen years ago, at Pinley Abbey, your
mother gave birth to another of your father's by-blows. It was expedient that
the birth be kept from him at the time. To this day he is ignorant of it; your
mother produced another son...’ She paused, eyeing him, awaiting the effect of
her words.

 ‘And I suppose you had it strangled at
birth?’ hazarded John with a crooked smile.

 Maud almost chuckled. ‘Bless you, lad,
this is no romance. No, your brother was reared by a London acquaintance. I
later had him apprenticed to a Master Craftsman in Bishopsgate but it will rest
with you whether he's to be brought to Beaudesert.’

 ‘It is your dying wish,’ stated John
tonelessly.

 ‘It is a choice I am leaving with you. Let
sleeping dogs lie or share the considerable perquisites of being a noble's
bastard with a low-reared stranger. I'm making no more decisions, John, I'm
weary. I must say goodbye to your father - there's much he'll be changing when
I'm gone, no doubt.’ The old hands wandered restlessly over the blue coverlet
and she began to talk in jumbled sentences, rambling back to the days after
Evesham.

 John got to his feet and dropped a kiss
on her forehead, turned on his heel and left her.

 Beyond the arras covering the door Peter
de Montfort waited. John shook his head and held the curtain aside. Maud de
Montfort died several hours later, the entire family at her bedside. Peter kept
a vigil throughout the night but Bess sent Guy to bed and John went alone into
the deserted chapel where only the altar candles lent light to walls crowded
with everyone's favourite saints, picking out their haloes, dappling the wings
of ascending angels. The gentle scent of early spring flowers, suddenly heavy
and pungent, filled his nostrils.

 ‘I can't have him here, Great
Grandmother, you know it’s impossible. After all this time - and besides, an
artisan - he wouldn't be fit for anything.’ He wrinkled his nose with eighteen
year old hauteur. A painted devil leered at him from behind the altarpiece. ‘You
said I had a choice but I think you made it for all of us years ago.’

 There was a silence everywhere, a quiet
emphasised by sound; the night wind and the rain beyond the mullions of the
windows; the spluttering of the candles; the skittering of the mice. John
stood, looking out across the courtyard towards the dark towers of the
gatehouse, etched against the stormy sky. Tomorrow, and it was almost tomorrow
now, would begin a new chapter in the chronicles of the Montforts, and for the
first time in over eight decades Maud would have no part in their trials and
tribulations. John turned back into the light and the saints mocked at him with
their painted eyes. St. Michael was particularly derisive.

~o0o~

The woman on the grey palfrey, motionless
amongst the blossom, twisted her hands nervously in their fine leather gloves
and pulled the hood of her cloak closer about silver-fair hair, glancing this
way and that, conscious of the sound of her own breathing, oblivious of the
springtime carolling of a hundred songbirds, heedless of the scent of the heady
white blossoms all about her.

 This was no maid, fled from her mother's
side and her tapestry work to tryst in the woods with her lover. Lady
Brandstone had been a virtuous wife and mother for fifteen summers. Her
husband, Sir Hugh, was Lord of Lapworth; respected by his neighbours, admired
even, prosperous but dull. His wife clutched at the reins of the grey mare and
her heart thudded beneath her blue gown and her pale cheeks flooded with
colour.

 Lady Brandstone was trespassing, and that
was the least of her crimes. Sir Hugh's demesne marched with Archer land and
the man who spurred his mount along the woodland rides towards her was
returning from an errand for his own Lord to Archer of Umberslade. The rider,
in Warwick's red and gold livery, the twin badges of bear and ragged staff
clear upon his breast, was young and tall. He slid down from his trotting
sorrel and, in a half dozen long strides, was beside the woman's mare. He put
up his arms and she slipped easily down into them.