The Lords of Arden (8 page)

 Katherine punched him lightly with a
small fist. ‘I love you, Tom. I love you and we'll never be together again,
never.’

 ‘Of course we will. You ride to Warwick with your mistress; I'll seek you out. We'll find a way, I promise, Kate. I'll
swear it; swear to be your true knight.’

~o0o~

Thomas kept his promise. He wed Katherine
Mortimer in the doorway of St. Mary's the following morning. The groom wore
royal purple, sombre and rich, a golden circlet on his dark head. Katherine
wore cloth of gold and a heavy veil. Neither glanced at the other as they stood
side by side, the words of the marriage service going over their heads, each
sunk in his or her own gloomy thoughts. And when the priest, officiating,
intoned, ‘you may kiss the bride.’ She turned towards him and he lifted his
hands to her veil.

 ‘You!’ gasped Katherine and

 ‘You?’ said Thomas in delight.

 The marriage feast was an embarrassment. The
bride would not speak to her handsome young groom. She tossed her head whenever
he tried to tempt her with some morsel from the high table and she wouldn't
share a loving cup with him before they rose for the dancing.

 ‘Her mother,’ whispered Juliana, ‘would
whip her. It's a little too late to play hard to get and everyone has gone to
such trouble with the pastries!’

 Katherine should have led the dancing
with her husband. Instead, she took the hand of Thomas's young esquire. Sixteen
and rather exquisite, with lint blond hair and green eyes, Nicholas Durvassal
was growing up. He made her laugh a lot. Thomas scowled from the sidelines and
drank too much wine.

 ‘What is the matter with the pair of
them?’ moaned John Durvassal. ‘I'd like to bang their heads together, I really
would.’

 ‘The marriage bed will mend all,’ said
Will Lucy practically and with more conviction than he felt. ‘The sooner we
pack them off upstairs the better for all of us. Have a word with the
trumpeters and the flower-girls. Let's get the bride's procession going.’ So,
with drum and pipe they led Katherine up to her husband's chamber and disrobed
her and left her naked in his bed. Thomas and the groom's procession arrived a
discreet while later but he wouldn't allow them further than his dressing-room
where they stripped him and thrust him through the doorway with much laughter
and many a ribald comment. Thomas bolted the door and turned, splendidly naked,
to face his bride.

 Katherine was wrapped in his fur-edged
bed gown, bundled up like a turnip sack. She looked him up and down, aimed low
and hurled the bedside candlestick. Thomas deflected it adroitly and ducked as
a pewter cup followed after and then a drinking horn.

 ‘Girl, stop this! At least let's talk.’

 ‘Talk!’ shrieked the White Wolf's
daughter. ‘What about? Here I am - the brood mare. The woman good for nothing
but to father your children upon - preferably in the dark. Come and try it, My
Lord!’ She hurled the bolster next and a pair of his boots, darting from corner
to corner, tripping over the hem of his robe. Not everything missed its target,
Thomas was marked red where she had struck home.

 ‘Yesterday, you enjoyed it!’ he bellowed.

 ‘Yesterday, I didn't know you were my
husband,’ said she illogically.

 ‘So I was to get a bad bargain? How many
other men did you bed with in the woods? There are a lot of woods round Ludlow.’

 ‘You were the first, you know you were.’

 ‘How do I know?’

 ‘Then you're an insensitive clod.’

 ‘And you were playing the hot little
harlot!’ This time she found a book of hours, beautifully illustrated. It had
belonged to Black Guy; it was priceless. ‘Put that down!’ thundered Thomas. ‘If
you throw that I'll...’

 ‘What will you do?’ Katherine halted,
hand half raised and he was across the room. She fled towards the window,
jumping up onto the sill. The shutter hung from one hinge. He backed away in
case she meant to jump but she sprang down again and ran into the Z-shaped
passage that led to the garderobe, but there was no escape that way; it was a
dead-end though she managed to build a barricade with a curtain pole and a
packing case.

 Thomas left her and went to bed. If she
wanted to spend the night in the privy she was welcome to it. He lay awake for
two hours, imagining the scene next morning when the assembled company arrived
to waken the bride and groom and found the room in disarray, one shutter
hanging off and the bride barricaded in the garderobe passage. It could not be
allowed to happen. He got purposefully out of bed, donned his boots and his
shirt and, tearing down the curtain pole, leapt the packing case and stood over
his wife. Katherine sat on the floor, huddled in his robe, face tear-stained,
shivering. He scooped her up, swung her over his shoulder and tossed her onto
the bed. She lay on her back, unwrapped, staring up at him.

 ‘Are you going to rape me?’ she said in a
small, tight voice.

 ‘No,’ said Thomas. ‘Any other questions?’

 For answer, she turned her back on him,
keeping to her side of the vast bed, aware of the distance between them, aware
of his breathing.

 ‘Thomas, I'm cold, it’s freezing in
here.’

 ‘It wouldn't be if you hadn't dragged the
shutter off its hinge!’ Was his retort but she had slithered nearer to his
stubborn back, as if seeking the warmth of his proximity.

 ‘It is our marriage night. Make love to
me.’

 ‘After the dance you've led me? I've neither
the energy nor the inclination.’

 ‘That isn't true,’ she pouted.

 ‘Prove it.’ He slipped onto his back and
turned to face her. At once, she had slid into the curve of his body, her round
breasts pushing against his chest, her mouth upon his, her hands leading his
where she wished them led.

 ...Thomas's son was born nine months to
the day after his parents had become so well acquainted in the Bordesley Woods.
They called him Guy, after his grandfather.

John de Montfort set his straight,
well-bred, if freckled, nose in the direction of the gentle green hills which
sheltered his father’s domains, and deliberately tried to force Henry of
Lancaster, Earl of Derby, out of his mind. But the green hills were formless
still, dusky with shadow, and pictures of life in the service of Lancaster’s son would not recede.....

 An armada of brilliant sails on a
green-grey sea; a vision of Henry, restless in the forecastle of the Salle du
Roi - the great cog Thomas; decks crowded with bowmen or men at arms, jostling
for position at the rails; the captain, dark and bearded, standing at the prow,
issuing orders to his seamen....

 The landing on St. Martin’s Eve at
Cadzand, the beleaguered isle off the Zeeland shore; the battle cries were
ringing in his ears still -
Lancaster, Lancaster for the Earl of Derby
! It
had been heady wine for a sixteen year old, finding himself part of it all, of
the valour and the victory......

 Montfort flicked at his roan’s neck,
impatient for speed, though why he should wish to be home his escort could not
imagine. He had spent five years serving one of the greatest of the third
Edward’s commanders. Only last year, he had been with the Court at Windsor, had seen the wild
splendours
of Pomfret, Derby’s favourite northern
residence, and had squired the Earl on the long road south to the sea before
the embarkation for Flanders. Now, he was riding home to his father’s midland
fastness; the adventure was over.

 Looking back, it seemed too short a time
since he had arrived at Kenilworth aged eleven, as one of a veritable army of
pages serving the Earl of Lancaster; already a sick, blind old man. He could
smile now at the resentful, sullen, spoilt imp who had had no wish to leave
Beaudesert, who had spent his first week hellishly homesick and had then set
out in the October drizzle to walk home. Of course, there was no alternative; a
search had to be mounted. It would never have done to have lost Beaudesert’s
brat! Then, two days later, the boy stepped firmly onto the causeway which
snaked its way towards the Lower Guard and checked in at the gatehouse, naively
confident of a welcome.

 He should have known his father would be
away. As Commissioner for Conservation of the Peace between Beaudesert and the
March, he was rarely at home these days but John’s great-grandmother was
waiting with no doubts but that he would turn up given the fullness of time and
an empty belly. Maud de Montfort rarely left her chamber. It was said that she
was a venerable old lady, content to wander through her memories; her
grandchildren Peter and Bess Freville knew otherwise. She had a finger on the
pulse of Montfort’s rambling fortress and nothing passed without her hearing of
it.

 Today, she had left her canopied bed and
was sitting, straight-backed, in a chair by the window, a warm fur-lined
coverlet over her knees. The eyes that looked out from beneath her heavy,
veiled headdress were still a remarkable green, hard as agates. She received the
news that her great grandson had been found, or rather, had arrived at the
gate, as bold as may be, without emotion. Geoffrey Mikelton was not to be
fooled by the inscrutability of her gaze. The timbre of her voice gave more
away.

 ‘Send the truant to me!’ she rasped.

 Mikelton was privately thankful that he
was not eleven years old. He went down to the kitchens where the child was
unconcernedly tearing off a hunk of bread from a new-baked loaf.

 ‘Put that down. Lady Maud wishes to see
you.’ When the boy took no notice he extricated the bread from his fingers,
slapped it down on the table, pulled his Lord’s son before him, straightened
and dusted off his mud-spattered suit of Lancaster’s livery and said,
‘Upstairs, at the double, and mind your manners unless you want a good
switching!’

 John only smiled and shrugged his
shoulders, sauntering out of the kitchen. Then, he ran for the nearest
staircase and eventually arrived pell-mell at his great grandmother’s doorway. He
yanked aside the heavy dark tapestry which covered the opening and gave her a
practised and elaborate bow.

 Maud looked up. In spite of Mikelton’s
best efforts the boy still looked like a feral child; hair wild, he was
breathless from his ascent of several staircases.

 John de Montfort was an attractive lad,
more like her older grandson, his namesake Lord John, who had fallen at
Bannockburn Fight, than his stockier, dark-eyed father.

 ‘You had better come here!’ Maud’s voice
was still strong; not the quavering tones to be expected of eighty seven
summers.

 Her great grandson crossed the room
warily and regarded her from under a flop of dark auburn hair.

 ‘Nearer. That’s better. Now, what goes
on? Why are you here?’

 ‘I won’t go back. They all hate me!’

 Maud smiled into the wings of her veil. ‘Well,
I wonder why?’

 ‘Bastard John, they called me, Lancaster’s pages, Lancaster’s squires. I’d rather be a bastard Montfort with our
matchless lineage, our descent from the great King Alfred, than some petty,
parvenu princeling; all yes, My Lord and no, My Lord!’

 ‘You told them that?’

 ‘Of course!’ He gave her a dazzling
smile.

 ‘Oh, Johnny, what shall we do with you?’

 ‘You won’t send me back?’

 Maud was silent for a time, tapping the
ends of her fingers together. Then she said: ‘There are reasons why you are
better away, for the time at least.’

 ‘What reasons, Great Grandmother?’

 ‘In a few weeks your father is to marry. Oh,
I know there have been names put forward before, ever since your mother took up
the Religious Life, but this time it will happen. A man needs sons.’

 ‘He’s got a son. He’s got me!’ flared
John.

 ‘Don’t be so obtuse, Johnny. He needs a
wedded wife with a sizeable dower and legitimate sons to succeed him here.’

 John said, ‘He could have married my
mother.’

 ‘Yes, he could have done but it was too
late after you were born. He wrote to Rome, petitioned to have you legitimised
so that you could stand as his heir. The Pope, in his dubious wisdom, would not
have it. Had your father married Lora Astley, had she given him ten more sons,
you would still have been barred from the entail. I never liked your mother,
John, but she could see the unfairness of it all and the effect it might have
on your life.’

 John sniffed volubly. ‘I don’t want
another woman here. You won’t want it, great grandmother; a new chatelaine
ordering us all about. You’d hate that!’

 Maud laughed. ‘Margaret Furnival is
fourteen years old. I expect she’ll mould to our ways.’

 ‘How can I stay now? And how can I go
back to Kenilworth?’ John’s violet eyes were bright with unshed tears.

 Maud sighed. ‘Your mother had that
trick.’ She put up a finger to flick a glistening droplet from the curling dark
lashes. ‘Whenever she failed to get her way, down would come the rain. Your
father could never withstand the showers but it doesn’t work with me, my lamb. I’ve
told you, I never liked her.’

 John glanced up again from under the
heavy fringe. He was smiling now. ‘Geoffrey said she was a manipulative little cow.
I wasn’t meant to have heard. I shouldn’t have told you, should I? I wouldn’t
like to cause trouble for poor old Geoffrey.’

 ‘Wouldn’t you? I wonder. Now, listen to
me. You can stay the night and travel back to Kenilworth in the morning – with
poor old Geoffrey. Once you arrive you will keep your arrogant nose and that
belligerent chin well down, those Astley eyes demurely covered, that mutinous
mouth tightly buttoned…’ here she tapped his lips with a long forefinger ‘and
you will submit to whatever punishment you’re due.’

 John felt safe to pull a face at her.
‘You could write a letter…’

 ‘I could, but I shan’t. No Montfort, not
even a bastard Montfort, would expect his womenfolk to fight his battles for
him. Now, you may kiss me and go and forage in the kitchen. There should be
roast pork left from yesterday. I expect you’re hungry; boys always are. In the
morning, I don’t expect to be up and abroad before you leave.’ She saw the leap
of hope and the bright flash of an idea in the violet eyes and cuffed him
lightly about one ear but he took her face between his hands and kissed her
forehead dutifully.

 ‘Thank you, Great Grandmother,’ adding
‘for not being as mad as you might have been.’ Then he was running for the
doorway, turning once to give her another of his disarming smiles before
disappearing round the arras.

 Maud sighed and sent for Peter’s
Constable. ‘Watch him like a hawk tomorrow or he’ll be half way across the
Shire!’

 ‘Oh, he knows better than to try anything
with me,’ grinned Geoffrey. ‘Very good at weighing up the odds is Master John!’

~o0o~

The drizzle of the previous day had
dissipated with the night and Beaudesert awoke to a true October morning. The
ride to Kenilworth through soft green pasture land and the shivering gold of
hazel coppices should have been a pleasant outing for Mikelton and the four men
who made up John de Montfort’s escort. They stopped to breakfast along the way;
John and Mikelton side by side on the bole of a fallen tree, the men in a
comfortable huddle a discreet distance away.

 John, wiping butter from his freshly
pressed livery, glanced at the Constable. ‘You would know that my father is
about to take a wife?’

 Mikelton nodded. ‘Aye, I had heard. The sight
of a pretty young woman about the Wards will probably do us all good.’

 ‘It seems I’m no longer wanted,’ said
John, sneaking a sidelong look at the old man and playing for sympathy.

 ‘Gracious, lad, why do you think your
father went haring off to the Welsh Marches the minute you left us? He couldn’t
stomach the silence. He was a lonely man without you.’

 John took time to assimilate this,
hugging his arms about him as though he took some comfort from the words.

 Mikelton was talking, almost to himself. ‘The
food goes much further, of course, and we don’t have to mind out for all your
dreadful practical jokes. And old Jobus is likely to run to fat now there’s no
more trekking down to Turkill’s Copse for a bundle of stout hazel twigs. I
daresay when you’re home for a holiday your behaviour will be so impeccable
there’ll be no need for them.’

 John laughed at that, violet eyes merry. ‘Pigs
might fly, Geoffrey. I don’t intend to change my ways for any man, least of all
his high and mightiness the Earl of Lancaster!’

 But after they mounted up again he was
docile enough until the red towers of Kenilworth hove into view. Then he made a
last and desperate attempt to outride his gaolers. Geoffrey reined in his own
mount and sent the two younger, more agile members of the escort off after him.

 ‘That was particularly stupid,’ said the
Constable severely as they rode him back between them, flushed and glowering.

 ‘I had to try.’

 ‘Dismount. Come on!’

 ‘Why?’

 ‘Don’t argue. Just do as you’re told!’

 John stared him out for a while before
jumping lightly from the saddle and backing up against his mount, one hand
feeling for the velvet muzzle of his patient grey pony.

 Mikelton said, ‘Jack, Robert, I’ll have
him up in front of me. That way I’ll know exactly where he is. Would you?’

 ‘You can’t!’ mouthed John. ‘I won’t be
treated like a baby. You know I can’t ride in like that. It’s just too
humiliating!’ He waved vaguely towards the red towers. But Mikelton ignored
him, clicked his fingers and watched as the two men took the boy by the arms,
urging him forward. He spat and scratched but he was too slight to do them any
real harm and neither of them was of a mind to manhandle him more than was
necessary.

 Geoffrey had one hand for his reins and
the other clamped tightly across the boy’s chest. He said into the nearest ear,
‘Did it ever occur to you that you are your own worst enemy? You could be
riding bravely up the ramp upon Hector, as befits your father’s son.’

 ‘His bastard son,’ said John through his
teeth. ‘I just don’t care any more.’

 ‘Oh, you do care.’ They were riding towards
the main gate now. The Ward beyond was full of horsemen and baggage wagons,
squires, pages and ostlers, all milling about.

 Dismounted, John spat anger and defiance
and something a good deal more tangible at the brocaded robes of the
fair-haired nobleman springing out of the saddle at the nearest block. Henry of
Derby looked down with annoyance at his soiled velvet and into the face of the
small figure in blue and white, his own father’s colours, auburn hair plastered
to his neck, violet eyes defiant. He saw the mutinous set of the lips and the
red mark on the small stubborn chin where someone had just caught him a buffet
to silence his tantrums. Harry called for fresh robes to be brought to his
closet and the boy too.