The Scarlet Lion (25 page)

   "Why this sudden increase in his suspicion?" Jean D'Earley looked puzzled. "You have done nothing to warrant it."

   "Going to Ireland is warrant enough," William said. "Meilyr FitzHenry has warned John that his authority will diminish if I set foot in Leinster and he has sent the King a large bribe in silver to keep me away. Now John says I must send him Richard if I want to go to Ireland."

   Jean's mobile mouth curled with disgust. "You shouldn't do it, my lord. One son is more than enough. It's like bandaging a finger that isn't wounded."

   Isabelle could no longer contain her emotion and catapulted to her feet. "I say let us load the carts and the sumpter horses and be on our way. We can be safe in Ireland within the week—all of us, including Richard."

   De Saqueville and Musard looked at the ground and then covertly at William. Jean opened his mouth as if to agree with her, but no words emerged. As often as he took her part, he was more cautious than she was.

   William shook his head. "How far do you think we will get if we choose open defiance? John was lord of Ireland long before he had anything else to his name. If we flaunt our banners too close to his face, he will do no more than bring his army to Dublin. He desires us to leave our deputies to cope as best they can but it is no good to us. You will have no dower lands to speak of very soon if the lord Meilyr continues to have his way. The lands have to be secured, especially the new port and the abbeys." He folded his arms. "John has demanded Richard. So be it. I say we hand him over, thus obeying the King's word, and then we leave."

   "No!" Isabelle bared her teeth. "I will not do it. God save me, William, I will not!"

   He opened his hand. "You have no choice unless you are prepared to stay here and allow Meilyr FitzHenry to swallow Leinster whole and decimate the lands your father—and mother—left in trust to you."

   "I will yield him neither Richard, nor Leinster." Isabelle's voice was raw with emotion. "They are both mine. I'd rather walk from here to Jerusalem upon sharpened knives than give up either of them to hellspawn like John!"

   "You are speaking from the spleen, and that is of no use to anyone," William said impatiently. "The situation has to be reasoned through. If we stay here and keep Richard, the King will have achieved his purpose. If we go to Ireland taking Richard with us, it gives John the excuse he needs to turn us into fugitives for disobeying his will. I won't give him either satisfaction. Richard must go to court."

   "No!" Isabelle stared at him, appalled.

   "The answer has to be yes," he said grim-faced, "for all our sakes."

   "He is our son! How can you sit there and speak as if you're discussing the sacrifice of a sheep?" she demanded incredulously.

   William's men stared at the floor, at the rafters, anywhere but at him and Isabelle. The emotions were too raw, too intimate for a council chamber.

   He pinched the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb. "Christ's bones, Isabelle, do you think this is easy for me? My heart bleeds at the decision I have to make, but it is the only one."

   "No, it isn't and you know it!" She made a flinging gesture at him. "You are the Earl of Pembroke. In God's name, use that title for what it means!"

   He spread his fingers and drew his palm down across his face as if donning a mask. "And who gave me that title?" The look in his eyes was bleak. "Either put on a brave face to our son, or stay here if you cannot. Richard is going with Thomas Sandford and you will not send him on his journey with wailing and tears."

   "So help me," Isabelle said, quivering with passion, "if anything happens to him, I will hold you responsible and…and hell will seem cold in comparison to my wrath!" She stalked from the room, her head carried high, her eyes brimming with unshed tears.

   An uncomfortable silence fell in her wake.

   Jean cleared his throat. "The Countess will come round," he said much too heartily.

   "That remains to be seen," William replied in a tired voice. "She is right. The responsibility is mine, and while I am prepared to shoulder it, that doesn't mean it isn't one of the heaviest burdens I have ever had to carry."

                             *** William studied Richard, trying to gauge his reaction. They were in the chamber where the boys slept and he had just told him that he was to go with Thomas Sandford on the morrow and join his brother at court. "It'll be a chance to polish up your own skills, hmm?" He was aware of the false bonhomie in his voice and knew that Richard had sensed that all was not well.

   "You mean I'm not going to Ireland?" Richard raised wide grey eyes.

   William picked up the practice sword that his son had been using earlier to such good effect. So much promise, but all precariously balanced on the whim of a King who had shown himself capable of great misjudgement and cruelty. "Your grandsire, your mother's father for whom you are named, went to Ireland and carved himself an inheritance out of nothing," he said. "He was a fine soldier and an honourable man of high courage who would always looked you in the eye. I met him several times when I was a young knight—he even asked me to come to Ireland with him, but I was already in the service of King Henry's eldest son by then—otherwise I would have accepted his offer, and who knows where my life would have gone from there."

   "You would have known Mama when she was little," Richard said.

   The comment drew a surprised smile from William. "Yes," he said ruefully, and put down the sword. "I need you to be like your grandsire now."

   Richard nodded. "I'm going to be a hostage," he said, stating the obvious with a practical forthrightness that tugged at William's heart and conscience.

   "You can see it like that, but it is also an opportunity to learn the ways of the court and see your brother again. When you come of age, your life will be in Normandy, at Longueville and Orbec, hopefully out of the reach of King John, but it is still necessary for you to learn the way of the court. I know it is daunting, but I need you to have wisdom beyond your years in this matter."

   Richard frowned and rumpled his coppery hair. "I can do it," he said. "I…want to go." His voice was nervous, but tinged with anticipation.

   William considered him thoughtfully. "You have been something of a fish out of water since Will and your sister left. Walter and Gilbert are not the same company for you, are they?"

   Richard mutely shook his head.

   William suspected that Richard had also been a little jealous of his older brother riding off into the world and leaving him behind. Now, for better or worse, he had the opportunity to join him.

                             *** Isabelle stood beside William to watch Thomas Sandford ride away with their second son. Her smile and her stance were as rigid as if she were practising to become her own effigy. The King was set on destroying her family for protecting what was theirs. She suspected he was angry that they still had their lands intact whereas he had lost great tracks of his patrimony.

   She had always known that William had a steely, pragmatic side. One did not rise to the heights he had achieved without that element, but until recently and despite eighteen years of marriage, she had not realised its true extent because he had never exposed its full measure at home with his family.

   "Now both of our eldest sons have gone to couch with wolves," she said desolately. She loved all of her children, but the two eldest boys were particularly precious. They had been born during her first flush of adoration for their father at a time when she was tasting the joy of freedom and the exercising of power after many years mured up in the Tower of London as a royal ward.

   "They will return," he answered, his gaze centred on Richard's back.

   "Yes, but changed, and how do we know for the better? John will take them and turn them into what he wants. They should be here with us, or placed with men we trust to look after them. When we have gone, they will be our heirs for Striguil and Normandy and Leinster. What happens to them now will determine the kind of men they become. You are missing the point."

   William's eyelids tensed. "I miss nothing," he replied curtly. "I know what we have lost, and what we would have stood to lose without yielding our sons. Do you have so little trust in the way we have brought them up? Do you think so little of them and us?"

   She shook her head. "No," she said before her throat closed with anguish. "It is what I think of John that gives me cause for grief."

                             *** John raised his head from the illuminated copy of
Historia Regum
,
Brittaniae
, his forefinger halting upon an illuminated capital bearing the image of a crowned king. "Well?" he demanded of Thomas Sandford and gestured him to rise from his kneeling position.

   Sandford did so and ran his fingers nervously around the brim of the felt riding cap between his hands. He had ridden hard to reach Winchester before curfew and he was hungry and tired—not that those were considerations when it came to reporting to the King. It was late dusk now, the dinner hour over and he would have to make do with leftovers from the kitchens. "Sire, the Earl of Pembroke has sent you his son Richard as you requested."

   "Has he, by God?" John removed his finger from the image and closed the book. His gaze was as sharp as amber glass.

   "He…he said that since you had given him permission to cross the sea, he was still of a mind to do so—that for good or ill he had to tend to his affairs in Leinster, and in token of his good faith, he sends his boy to you."

   "And did you make it clear to him that I did not wish him to go?" The King's voice was a soft snarl.

   Sandford increased the rate at which he drew the brim of his cap through his hands. "Very much, sire, but he would not be swayed. He said he was sorry you did not trust him but he gladly trusted you with the welfare of his heirs." Even as I set out to bring the boy to you, the Earl's servants and grooms were loading up the carts and packhorses to leave for Pembroke."

   "Hah, he trusts me, does he?" John asked savagely. "What did his Countess say? The virtuous Lady Isabelle?" He could not have spoken with more contempt had he been talking of a common prostitute, and Sandford inwardly flinched.

   "The Countess agreed to be bound by her husband's will. She had a mother's reluctance to let the boy go, but she was dutiful in the end."

   John sprang to his feet, took three paces towards the hearth, swung round, and turned back. "Christ on the Cross, William sainted son-of-a-whore-and-a-thief Marshal. All my life I've had to swallow people telling me what a paragon he is, a preu
x chevalier,
the greatest, most chivalrous knight in Christendom. My mother thought the sun shone out of his shit, and Richard laboured under the same delusion. But not me, I can see his shit for what it is." Spittle flecked John's mouth corners.

   Thomas said nothing. He supposed that if he were John, he'd be irritated too. William Marshal had cut the meat of honour to the bone to retain his lands in Normandy. He was so popular with his peers and so powerful that John was bound to be disturbed. William could choose to ally with the French monarch or build himself a nice little kingdom in Ireland since his wife's grandfather was Irish royalty. Thomas doubted William would ever do such a thing: the honour that John so scorned would rein him back; but the King's suspicious mind and his own way of conducting business might make that hard for him to believe.

   "Where's the boy?"

   "Waiting outside, sire. If it's too late I can take him—"

   "You make a fine nanny, Sandford," John said scornfully, "but don't overstep your bounds. The hour is not that late, and you won't slip him past my attention that easily. Bring him in."

   "Sire." Feeling anxious, Thomas left the chamber, returning moments later with his young charge.

   Richard knew what was expected of him. He had been well taught by his parents and Thomas had given him additional schooling on their ride to Winchester. Keeping his gaze firmly on the floor, he knelt at John's feet. The latter grabbed a fistful of Richard's tunic and hauled him upright.

   "So, you are my beloved Marshal's second pup, eh?" John said. "Well, barring the red hair and freckles, you've a look of him, but that's not necessarily to the good. Do you know why your father sent you to me, boy?"

   "Because you asked it of him, sire," Richard answered calmly, although his heart was thundering in his throat.

   "And do you know why I asked it? Did he tell you that?"

   Richard flushed. "No, sire." He had overheard some of the discussion between his parents and the senior knights of the mesnie, but no one had told him in detail, except that he was to be brave and remember what he had been taught at home. "He said it would be an opportunity to polish my skills and that I was to make the most of it."

   John's laugh was unpleasant. "Well, your father certainly seems to have a knack for making the most of anything, whether it's sanctioned or not. Welcome to my household, boy, and let us hope for your sake that you polish up fast. As for your father…" He half closed his eyes. "Perhaps he needs a reminder that if you bite the hand that feeds, you don't get fed, eh, boy?"

   "Sire." Richard glanced swiftly at John, then down. The look on the King's face made him feel afraid. Something terrible was going to happen, either to him and Will—or to their parents.

Twenty

KILKENNY, LEINSTER, APRIL 1207

Resplendent in the full dignity of a new saffron-coloured gown, gem-encrusted, embroidered with gold, and made especially for her return to Ireland, Isabelle presided over the feast in Kilkenny Castle's great hall. As the Countess of Leinster, she sat in state at the centre of the table on the high dais, with William, her consort, beside her, garbed in the tunic of cloth of silver from their daughter's marriage, coronet at his brow. More prosaically, he wore his sword as a symbol of his ability and willingness to uphold her authority.