The Scarlet Lion (36 page)

Twenty-seven

GLASCARRICK, IRELAND, SPRING 1208

William landed in Ireland at Glascarrick, a wild place with a few low-roofed fisherman's huts near the shore. There was a priory— a daughter house of Saint Dogmell's in Pembrokeshire—and William was pleased to rest there in the small guest house whilst word of his landing travelled to Kilkenny and his churning stomach had a chance to settle down. The crossing had been reasonable for the Irish Sea, which meant he was still capable of standing and able to keep down the spring water and bread and honey the monks served to him and his men.

   The late spring dusk was streaking the sky with amber and turquoise and the sun was a melting ellipse on the horizon when Jean and Jordan arrived with a troop from Kilkenny. William had been sitting on a bench outside admiring the sunset, but now he rose to his feet and strode to greet his men, his chest suddenly tight with emotion.

   Jean dismounted and clasped him fervently, his shoulders shaking. "My lord, welcome back," he said in a breaking voice. "We feared for you…"

   "How now, enough of that or you will have me weeping too," William said gruffly and turned to embrace the more phlegmatic Jordan. Then he stepped back and frowned at Jean's attire. "Why are you wearing your mail? Is the trouble not finished?" He glanced at Jordan, who was clad in a padded tunic and belted with his sword.

   Jean made a face. "My lord, not all keep the peace. You always taught me it was better to be safe than sorry."

   "Yes, I did, didn't I? Should I have mine unpacked from my baggage?"

   "It wouldn't harm," Jean said ominously.

   William studied him. New lines seamed Jean's eye corners, and the raven hair held glints of silver. He wore his responsibility like a glimmer of polished steel, and he wore its price too. "No, I do not suppose it would, Jean." Retiring into the guest house he sat before the slow-burning turf fire. "My wife and new son are well?"

   Jordan nodded. "The Countess was desirous of riding to greet you herself but Jean said she should wait. He had a hard time persuading her though. It was almost like the battles that you and she sometimes—" he broke off, looking embarrassed. "She is eager to see you, my lord," he amended.

   William smiled. "As I am eager to see her too, and my son."

   "Should I have brought her?" Jean said anxiously.

   William looked him up and down. "Not if you saw fit to wear a hauberk on the journey."

   The men gathered to talk over everything that had happened since the autumn. Listening, William was unsurprised by the detail. He was angry too, but he held that down because it created nothing but fire across the path leading to a solution. He needed to be dispassionate in order to manoeuvre, take advantage, and compromise. Concerning his own experiences at the English court he was reticent. He had no doubt that others would gladly fill in the detail over wine in the guardroom once they were settled at Kilkenny.

   Jean was on the point of removing his hauberk—indeed, had unfastened his swordbelt to begin doing so—when they heard the clatter of shod hooves on the road and the sound of voices at the priory gate. Jean's breath caught. Drawing the blade from the scabbard gripped in his hand, he went to the door. William reached for his own sword and the room became filled with the soft rustle and clink of men taking up weapons and preparing to fight.

   "Surely can't be travellers this late," Jordan said. "No one will have casual business here."

   "How many?" William demanded.

   Jean cracked open the door and slipped outside with a lantern. Almost instantly he returned, his expression one of angry distaste. "It's Philip of Prendergast and David de la Roche," he growled, keeping his sword bared. "Prendergast's son is at Kilkenny as hostage for his father's good behaviour."

   William considered this and, sheathing his own blade, gestured Jean to do the same. "I doubt they've come to attempt murder on holy ground," he said. "Let them come. I am well guarded."

   Reluctantly Jean did as he was bid, but he buckled the belt back around his waist and laid his hand to his weapon hilt in a businesslike manner.

   Prendergast and de la Roche left their mounts and their small retinue at the gate and approached the guest house on foot. A soft rain had begun to whisper down and when they arrived at the door, their cloaks were dewed in silver hoar and their hair tightening into curls.

   On entering beyond Jean's pose of narrow-eyed guard dog, both lords bowed deeply to William and greeted him effusively, as if his return were the most welcome thing on earth.

   "May God save you, my lords, if I have the right to wish you that," William said sardonically.

   De la Roche studied the floor as if it were of great interest, but Prendergast was bolder. "My lord, you do have that right. We have sought you out in token of our loyalty to you."

   "Indeed?" William arched one eyebrow. "How strange,

because apparently you did not show it during my absence. The harm you did to my interests is known far and wide."

   "My lord, they are proven traitors," Jean spluttered, unable to contain his indignation.

   "We are here to give our oaths of allegiance," Prendergast repeated, his jaw thrust out in the manner of a man steeled to take his punishment and get it over with.
See, I am no coward
, his attitude declared.

   Jean choked and had to be restrained by Jordan. "Which on past performance is worth less than a pot of piss!" he raged.

   De la Roche flickered a single upward glance then returned to staring at his shoes. Prendergast ignored Jean and, red-faced, addressed himself to William. "If we have wronged you, my lord, then we humbly crave your forgiveness."

   "
If
you have wronged him?" Jean's voice rose with incredulity.

   "Be quiet, Jean." William held up his hand. "No man's oath is ever damaged beyond repair. Even if I am not disposed to forget, I may find it in me to grant that forgiveness—providing it is craved hard enough. I will give you the kiss of peace because you ask it of me, but do not seek more than that."

   Relieved, chagrined, smarting with humiliation, Prendergast and de la Roche knelt to renew their oaths to William and receive the kiss of peace from him, but they did not stay, for despite their oaths and the words of conciliation, there was no welcome for them at the guesthouse hearth.

   "I hope they pitch their tent in a bog and it swallows them," Jean growled after they had departed. "I am sorry, my, lord, but I do not have the same nobility as you."

   William snorted. "It wasn't out of nobility that I granted them their request. It cost me nothing. They know they are on probation and that the knights of my mesnie will rebuff them. Sometimes forgiveness is worse than being whipped. I have

their measure."

"And their sons," Jordan said with grim relish.

William looked bleak. "Yes, and their sons," he said.

***

The heralds at the gate raised their horns and blew a fanfare.

   "Mama, they're coming." Six-year-old Sybire raised hazel eyes to her mother, her face rosy with excitement. She hopped from foot to foot. Her warm brown hair was bound back from her brow by a chaplet of silver wire.

   Belle, eighteen months older and possessed of a big sister's dignity, told her in a superior tone to stand still. "People will think you're still a baby like Eve," she said scornfully.

   "I'm not a baby," Eve piped up, stamping her foot. "I'm not a baby, am I, Mama?"

   "No, you're not," Isabelle said in a distracted voice and automatically moved to smooth her youngest daughter's amber curls. "All of you be good now. Your father doesn't want to come home to find you squabbling among yourselves."

   "Yes, he's had too many squabbles at court," said Belle, who was something of a know-all.

   "Your father never squabbles at court," Isabelle contradicted her. "But he is home for a rest, not to be bedevilled by you."

   Belle assessed her mother, then gave her a sweet smile. "I promise I won't," she said.

   Isabelle was not taken in by the innocence in her daughter's gaze, but allowed it to pass. Only let the girls behave for as long as it took their father to arrive and dismount. Walter and Gilbert she could trust. Her sons were level-headed boys, very much the men of the family and not given to giggles and exuberance at inappropriate occasions like their sisters. The boys stood side by side, Gilbert dark-haired like William, Walter sandy and freckled, showing his de Clare heritage.

   Isabelle's breathing quickened as William's standard-bearers rode into the bailey, green and gold banners flying, the scarlet Marshal lion snarling across the field of silks. She was caught on emotional tenterhooks. In the public domain she had to play her role as Countess and chatelaine—be dignified, stately, and calm. But she was also the wife of a husband six months absent in fraught circumstances for both. She was not the same person he had left, and she knew that he must be changed too. You couldn't go through the fire they had experienced and emerge unscathed. She was hoping against hope he would have Will and Richard with him; she knew it was probably in vain, but was still unsettled by that tiny glimmer of optimism.

   And then William was riding through the gateway on the dappled stallion that Jean had brought to him at Glascarrick. As always, he controlled his mount with the consummate ease of a born horseman, but for the first time in almost nineteen years of marriage she saw his age before she saw the man, and it was a shock. He had lost weight; there were grey shadows of exhaustion beneath his eyes and the skin that usually sat so tightly against the strong bones of his face was slack and dull. He had chosen to wear his hauberk, which she supposed was Jean's doing, but he looked burdened by the weight of it. A swift search amongst his men told her that her hope to see her sons had indeed been in vain and she had to swallow the painful lump in her throat.

   She watched William dismount. His movements were easy enough; there was no sign of injury, but then perhaps the damage wasn't physical. Forcing down her apprehension, she went forward to meet him, her steps slow and measured so that no one would guess how much she was trembling inside. She wanted to run to him; she wanted to run away. He stood looking at her and, for a fleeting, unguarded moment, she saw the same emotions cross his own face. It was unbearable, all this formality. "William…" She spoke his name on a tight-throated whisper. "Jesu, William!" She hesitated, reached a brink, and suddenly she was clutching her skirts above her ankles, running to him as if pushed by a giant hand, and he was taking her in his arms, binding them around her, kissing her as if they were alone in their bedchamber. The rivets of his hauberk were a hard shock against her body, as were his lips, and she trembled with the impact.

   "Enough," he muttered against her ear as he broke the kiss. "Enough, love, or I swear you will undo me here, in my own keep, when I have held myself together for six long months."

   She laughed brokenly. "My keep," she said. The words were like astringent balm on a wound and, with the tension broken, she was able to resume her role as Countess while William set about greeting the grinning audience in the courtyard. Belle was less than impressed by the kissing, Sybire insisted on holding his hand, and Eve was shy and not quite certain that she remembered him. Walter and Gilbert were serious and on their best behaviour, already trying on the coats of the men they would one day become.

   "And this is Ancel," Isabelle said, placing a swaddled bundle in William's arms. "Born on the same day that I received the surrender of Meilyr FitzHenry here in the great hall."

   He lifted his gaze from his new son and looked at her, his eyes filled with a mingling of admiration and censure. "Yes, Hywel told me."

   "It was a close-run thing," Isabelle admitted, "but I would not have missed it for all the cloth in Flanders, travail or no travail. It meant too much to me."

   "Christ, Isabelle."

   "We have a son born and bred in Ireland," she said proudly. "And born in the caul, so his sea journeys should be easier than yours."

   Her words drew a wry, heartfelt laugh from him, as she had

known that they would.

                             *** When William and Isabelle retired it was late into the night, but in the great hall the carousing continued, his men not being ready to relinquish the joy of celebrating their lord's return from England and their own part in saving the Leinster lands from the depredations of Meilyr FitzHenry and his allies. William and Isabelle had played their part to the hilt, smiling, toasting, praising, even dancing a few measures like a bridal couple. And like a bridal couple they had retired, pursued by grins and knowing looks.

   William dismissed his attendants, Isabelle her women. When the door had clicked gently shut behind the last one, William sat heavily down on the bed and pushed his hands through his hair. "God, Isabelle, I need to rest. If we are intact, it is by a miracle."

   She gnawed her lip, torn between wanting to give him the tranquillity he needed, and her own desires. "You have said nothing about what happened at court," she said after a moment, "or about our sons. Was it as bad as that?"

   "Yes," he answered after a long pause. "It was bad, and in the hall I didn't deem it the time to speak of such things." He lowered his hands and raised his head, visibly summoning the strength to answer her. "Will and Richard are doing well enough there."

   "But they did not come home with you. I am their mother; I need to know more than that they 'are doing well enough.'" She sat down on a bench, removed her veil, and unpinned her hair, her movements jerky with agitation.

   He sighed. "The King chooses to keep them for the moment, as he is keeping the sons of other men. What can I do? Open rebellion would not restore them to us—in fact the opposite." He knitted his brow, seeking to assuage her hunger for news. "Both of them have grown." He suddenly looked amused. "Richard is very proud of his beard but it looks more like dandelion fluff. His weapons skills are coming on apace and I'm pleased at his accomplishment. When the time comes, he will do well for our Norman lands."