Awaken My Fire (6 page)

"Shhh," Vincent said, motioning to where the woman slept. "The lady is still asleep."

"Lady?" Bogo questioned, incredulous. "Where does milord see a lady? Is that harlot not Elsbeth MacClenan, the one and only?"

Vincent looked up to see the small man's finger pointed at the bed and he sighed, having long since resigned himself to Bogo's impertinence, trying as it was. "Bogo, did you come to offer comment on the sorry state of my personal affairs, or do you have something of import to say?"

"Indeed. His Majesty's courtier, Sir Gilgood, awaits you in the hall. He says 'tis a matter of the utmost importance."

Vincent's gaze shot to Bogo's face to ascertain the truth of it, his expression darkening instantly. "Curse my good king to hell, I will not send more knights to his wretched war!" The exclamation caused the sleeping lady to sink into the rich velvet quilt as if for protection, but neither man noticed now. "He has my worthless excuse of a brother and one hundred of my men of arms, and that is enough. I will give him not one more man for this vain and foolish quest of a French title—"

"And I, milord, am not asking for any. However—"

"Bogo, go off and prepare him for my descent." Vincent dismissed his steward as he pulled a gold velvet doublet over his broad shoulders, belting it with a thick black belt, as was his habit. "I shall attend him in the hour."

Knowing when to exit, Bogo shut the door behind him. Vincent pushed his large feet into knee-high black boots before standing to his full height. His back was ramrod-straight, a lingering remnant of an otherwise forgotten boyhood tutor, and this impressive posture pronounced an already unconventional height. A formidable presence, at least formidable enough to give the king's courtier a piece of his anger with his absolute refusal to participate a single man or coin more in Henry's little game of war.

The Duke of Suffolk maintained an adversarial friendship with his king, the only lord of the realm with that claim. Adversarial because he often disagreed with King Henry's policies with emphatic, if not violent, eloquence that more than once had disastrous effects on Henry's solicitation for support from his lords for this foreign war for the French throne. While he was a ferocious debater, merciless when he wanted to be, the Duke of Suffolk presented well-reasoned arguments, which everyone, including the king, found himself listening to, if not agreeing with—except, of course, on the dominant issue of France.

Unlike other lords, particularly Henry himself, Vincent did not care a whit about his French neighbor's troubles: its inept and often disastrously insane succession of dauphins or its covetous, power-hungry dukes, its famines or its religious schisms. He cared nothing for these catastrophes except as they affected his land and his people, which only happened when Henry wanted something from him. He alone among the lords seemed to understand what the startling English battle victories meant. Unlike everyone else, King Henry especially, he did not think the victories supported the idea that God Himself was arbitrating for Henry's claim to the French throne. Rather the French losses reflected the dismal state of French knights and their pathetic leadership.

Yet Henry loved no one of his lords better. He had even given Vincent the duchy and made him a duke, done in a generous sweep of an enormous land grant that joined the two separate properties of Vincent's family. This had made Vincent one of the most land-rich dukes in England. The generous gift was a reward, not for Vincent's unsurpassed battle skills or for his past support in three of Henry's war efforts, or for his far-less-frequently-sung "domestic" policies, farming and taxing policies that created the wealthiest holdings in the realm and, more important, the most content populace anywhere—no peasant revolt ever brewed in Suffolk. Rather, Henry rewarded Vincent with the duchy because Vincent gave him the one thing no one else could—a friendship of equals. Not only did Henry depend on Vincent's mercilessly frank counsel, which was stripped of flattery, lies and deceptions, but Henry enjoyed Vincent's company the most for what little private life he managed as king: weekend hunts, long precious nights of nothing more than drunken revelries, embarrassingly frantic wenching and well-matched games of competition, games of wrestling, archery, sword fights and, of course, chess.

It started years ago when a courtier unwittingly mentioned to Henry that the young, eighteen-year-old Vincent de la Eresman, the Lord of Suffolk, could not be beaten in the game of chess. Since Henry owned the title in his realm, he immediately demanded that the young man be brought to him for a match. Presented at court, Vincent received his first instructions.

These instructions were simple: "Let the king win."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You must let Henry win. The king does not like to lose."

"What a coincidence! Neither do I!"

The courtier only smiled and mumbled something about kings and their God-given rights, before presenting Vincent to Henry. After an hour of pomp and fanfare, Vincent soon sat opposite his young king, the chessboard between them. Soon after that, Henry heard two words he had never heard from another's lips. "Check and mate."

The king, along with two dozen courtiers, stared at the jeweled ivory pieces on the checkerboard with great shock. "No one hath ever beaten me before!"

"Indeed?" Vincent's dark brow rose, an amused light filling the darkly intelligent eyes. "If one did not know better, one might suspect there was an unspoken conspiracy afoot to grace your Majesty with the unearned title of chess master. Imagine treating you like a spoiled child, as if you, Henry, king of all England and Wales, were not strong enough to accept a fair loss!" He shook his head, appearing to scoff at the preposterous idea. "Of course that cannot be true. Your loss is no doubt a reflection of my own unnatural luck."

All gazes flew to the king's face to await his reaction-many a man had died for less. Vincent alone appeared utterly unalarmed by the silence, which stretched taut like the strings of a deadly bow. Then tauter still, until the moment filled with the fine, deep sound of Henry's laughter. "Only a shallow man believes in luck. The strong man believes in cause and effect."

"Aye." Vincent grinned. "The power of luck is confessed to by the miserable; the happy impute success to merit."

"And you?" the king inquired.

"Happy, milord. Very."

Everyone laughed at that, Henry most of all. "So, young Vincent de la Eresman, I am also told you cannot be beaten with the sword or lance either?"

"Is this-an inquiry, your Highness?"

"Indeed."

"Does your Majesty demand modesty, which I must say feels as unnatural as priestly vows, or shall I confess? It is true—I've yet to be beaten."

The king's audience laughed nervously at the young man's boldness, but Henry just stared at Vincent: for here at last was a refreshing change from the tiresome obsequiousness he had endured his whole life. The thinly veiled challenge did not go unanswered. Henry was young and strong and just as proud of his athletic achievements—their friendship had begun.

Presently, Vincent was of a mind to end it.

Two long-robed bishops accompanied the king's messenger, Sir Gilgood of Manchester. The duke entered the hall without formality, fully prepared to blast the silver-tongued Gilgood and his puppet bishops back to Westminster at the first mention of his fealty to King Henry, the subsequent demand for more knights from Suffolk. This was it.

Gilgood jumped up from the cushioned bench, bending his corpulent frame in deference. "Milord, Duke of Suffolk, and most noble signature to—"

A scowl on his face, Vincent waved his hand impatiently as he came to stand before the table where they had been waiting. "Dispense with the formalities, and get ye to the point. And God save you if Henry wants more of my knights. I say enough—"

"Nay, milord, please. 'Tis tragic news we bear all the way from Reales."

"Reales? Now what has my brother done?"

"The French hath seized the castle back. A rebellion is spreading, one I fear has been brought on by the tragic death of Edward, your dearly beloved brother, the Lord of Suffolk and overlord of Reales."

Gilgood paused to let this sink in, watching Vincent's dark eyes search the terrible truth from the solemn faces of the three men Henry had sent to tell him.

"Edward? No." A simple matter. It could not be Edward, his only sibling and half at that, the younger Lord of Suffolk. Not now. Not after he'd lost his second sweet wife in childbirth, a tragedy that had left him no heir. Vincent hadn't been bothered much by this situation until Edward announced he had married Lady Terese of Flanders.

Married Rodez Valois's famous whore. He still could hardly believe it. He had watched Edward grow from a whining, quarrelsome, and resentful lad given to violent tantrums to a man of worse vices and greater vanities: greed, drunkenness and cruelty among them. As low as his opinion was of Edward, he had never considered him stupid. Until this marriage. Only the most dim-witted idiot would be blind to the obvious ploy to transfer the Suffolk duchy into Rodez Valois's hands! And Edward had said he thought himself in love with the harlot, a woman already famous—well known throughout all of Burgundy, Vincent's agents had reported!—for marrying well, and as luck or evil would have it, finding herself happily widowed months later. And Edward had married her without his permission or even his knowledge. Without Henry's permission or knowledge. And now Edward was dead.

Vincent went to the mantel, leaning on it for support, his mind rushing over the magnitude of this disaster. "Curse you, Henry! I told you Edward was a no-good lecher, best sent on a faraway Crusade or a mission to a godforsaken place of disease and warring mongrels. I told you!"

The fool! Against his righteous pleas, Henry had insisted on giving Edward the lordship of Reales, certain as Henry was that Edward's problems were simply the result of living a life overshadowed at every turn by his famous older brother. "Huh!" Vincent had scoffed. "Even if that is true, in a world full of sorrows, that is a slight one indeed." Henry had refused to hear Vincent's long list of grievances, insisting that all the "boy" needed to show his colors and find his manhood was the care and responsibility of faraway Reales.

At first Henry had been so pleased with Edward's performance, waving letter after letter from his stewards in Reales in Vincent's face, letters that described all the good things Edward was doing for those people: building a new mill, tilling twice as many crops, increasing the livestock and so on. Vincent had remained quietly skeptical. For each letter also had ended with a request for more monies, which Henry had sent and sent until the very day word arrived of Edward's marriage.

Henry had been furious for not having been asked permission, more furious because, "Dear God, I do indeed know that woman! A claim true for every red-blooded male on the Continent—that hussy is like a great welcoming choir for every landed staff in France. We need to pray your new sister-in-law is barren. We cannot have your lands passed on to her whoreson, her French whoreson. I need to find you an innocent gentlewoman to marry quickly and get with your sons."

Like a mushrooming cloud of doom, it had got worse still. Word had soon arrived that both of Henry's stewards had died suspiciously in a flux at Reales. Vincent had immediately sent his own man, Saladyn, to Reales to investigate just as word had come that Terese had given birth to a son seven short months after her marriage, a son christened with Rodez's hateful name and a boy even Edward had known was not his. And now Edward was dead.

The only thing standing between Rodez Valois and Vincent's duchy was his next breath. The idea that Edward had been assassinated led to the important question: "How?"

Gilgood's eyes narrowed as he said the startling words, "I am afraid to say Edward, the Lord of Suffolk, hath been murdered."

A surge of dread filled Vincent's chest. From somewhere far away he heard himself demand, "Murdered?"

"Aye, milord. Countess Roshelle de la Nevers hath murdered your dearly beloved brother most cruelly before going on to lead a rebellion that Henry fears might grow and spread across all of the kingdom of Brittany. And this, your Grace, is our problem."

The river Reales etched its way through the center of the tree-lined valley where the shadows of the castle's towers fell over the English camp. Tents stretched on the southern side as far as the eye could see. The fields surrounding Reales were just being prepared for planting. First, the wheat fields—the bulk of its yield to go to the estate and the church—then finally the fields of barley and oats, peas and beans. All able-bodied men labored arduously behind the plows—since all the oxen had many years ago been sold off or killed in these depressed times.

Little food remained in the peasants' cottages by springtime. All grains, fruits and vegetables had long ago been consumed; water had replaced ale, and even the wild berries, roots and nuts—the wild supplements on which many of the people were forced to subsist—had long since been eaten. The peasants' spring labor was done with bodies weak from hunger.