“I have told you already that possession is nine-tenths of the law,” Adam assured her.
There was, however, no relief in her expression. “Possession of me as well as of Tarring,” Gilliane pointed out. “If by some ruse Osbert should seize me when you are gone—he is sly as a snake—would not the men be constrained to obey him, either by my forced consent, as I was forced to consent to marriage, or even for fear that hurt would be done me and they would thus violate their oaths?” She looked blankly out into space. There was no future, not really. “Not so long as Osbert lives,” Gilliane whispered. “I can never be safe while Osbert lives.”
Adam stared at her, his mouth going dry, his hands cold. Because he had decided Gilliane was a strong woman and she, striving desperately to be what he desired, had acted the part, Adam did not realize Gilliane was only frightened. It seemed to him that she was inciting him to kill her husband. He swallowed. If Osbert had treated her as she said, he deserved killing. Still, if hate led Gilliane to scheme the death of this second husband, had greed led her to scheme the death of the first? Careful, Adam warned himself. With this woman it is needful to go most carefully.
Chapter Eight
Had Gilliane known of Osbert’s experiences since he left her, she would have been considerably less frightened of him. In truth, Osbert was stupid as well as sly. He had misunderstood the courtesy with which his father was treated for fear and obligation. Louis had granted readily all that Saer asked because what Saer asked of him cost him nothing—his name and seal on parchments giving away rights that were not his to give. Because Osbert wanted more, he found Louis equally polite but far less accommodating. Although Louis did not deny Osbert’s plea outright he offered no more than vague promises for the future.
Not knowing what else to do, Osbert joined Louis’s party. After his first disappointment, however, Osbert became rather pleased with his choice. He left his men to forage for themselves by theft or violence so that they were no charge upon him. For himself, he found it quite easy to borrow money on his expectations as overlord of Tarring. Also, for Saer’s sake, he was welcome as a guest in many a French lord’s lodging. No one seemed to think it odd that he had been driven from his land. It was too common a happening in a time of civil war. Indeed, it seemed to bring him into a circle of similarly disappointed gentlemen, some of whom he found remarkably sympathetic.
However, Osbert soon discovered that his new situation was not all pleasure. On the third day an assault was made upon Hertford and Osbert found, to his horror, that he was supposed to lead his men in person. He could not refuse outright. To refuse to fight for the prince might induce Louis to go back on his promise and refuse to help Osbert regain his own keep. Sweating and trembling, Osbert agreed. In fact, Osbert never did mount any ladder. Just as he approached the foot—somewhat later than most of the other scaling parties—a nearby ladder was thrust outward from the wall by the defenders. Slowly, almost gracefully, it rose upright and then arced backward, spilling men who screamed in terror as they fell. Osbert, struck unconscious by fear more effectively than by a missile, pitched forward on his face and lay still.
Fortunately for Osbert the assault was unsuccessful, and he did not need to explain his absence in the fighting on the walls. Luck continued to favor him. Within the week, Walter de Godardville asked for a truce to consult his overlord. If Faulk de Breauté could not bring him help, he must yield soon on terms or be defeated. Louis was very happy to grant the truce. He knew that Sir Walter’s appeal to his overlord for help must be denied. If Faulk could have brought help to Hertford, he would have done so long before. Louis’s estimate of the situation was perfectly correct; the expected answer—Breauté’s permission for his vassal to yield the keep—soon arrived. If Sir Walter and his men were allowed to leave in safety with their arms, their families, and their horses, Hertford could be given up. Faulk was a realist. It was senseless to lose the men as well as the castle. This way, he would have the use of Sir Walter and his troops and not be obligated to pay ransom for them. He hoped, too, that Louis would stop to enjoy his victory for a month or two.
This latter hope was not to be fulfilled. Louis was wise enough to strike again while the iron was hot and one success might lead to another. Another motive spurred him to continue his attacks on the king’s strongholds. On the eve of their securing Hertford, Robert FitzWalter, Lord of Dunmow and chief of the rebel barons, presented his claim to the keep and town, saying that the charge of it belonged to him by ancient right and had been reft from him by King John. Louis was furious, however, he was not Philip of France’s son for nothing. No spark of temper showed in his placid face. It would be necessary, he said, to consult his council of French knights on so serious a matter.
He did raise the subject, confident of the advice he would receive, and he was not disappointed. In fact, he got rather more of a good thing than he desired. FitzWalter did not deserve to have so valuable and important a stronghold in his hands, the council decreed, because he was a traitor to his own king already and could not be relied on to keep faith with any man.
Naturally, Louis did not repeat this decision to FitzWalter in the words in which it was given. What he said was that he could not spare so valuable a supporter when he was in the middle of a campaign. As soon as the kingdom was subdued and FitzWalter’s military acumen and ability were no longer so necessary to him, he would give FitzWalter every one of his rights and more besides.
This diplomacy did little to satisfy FitzWalter, who guessed all too easily that Louis did not trust him enough to let him out of his sight. But he had to accept the decision. As one of the initiators of the rebellion against King John, he could not expect a welcome among King Henry’s supporters, even though many men who had changed sides were being accepted back into the king’s fold. Two days later, Prince Louis started his army toward Berkhamsted, carefully skirting Geoffrey’s territory where reports warned him a substantial army would contest any attack. Louis had no intention of fighting so strong a force if they did not move against him. When the force at Hemel was surrounded, they might well yield without battle.
Geoffrey and Ian were not indifferent to the plight of Hertford and whomever else Louis was moving to attack, but they dared not attempt a battle against what they knew to be a superior force without any hope of support or reinforcement. They had inquired more than once of Faulk de Breauté whether, if they harassed Louis and thus managed to prolong the siege, he would be able to come to their assistance and had been told it was impossible. They would best serve the king’s purpose, Pembroke wrote, through Faulk, by holding their own land secure.
The king’s party was not yet ready to fight. In fact, they were winning without fighting a single battle even while keeps fell into Louis’s hands. Every time Louis let his men loose to live off the land, he made enemies; every time he took a keep and refused to return it to its English overlord (when that man was of his party), giving it instead into the hands of one of his French adherents, he lost support. No one believed that Louis could be driven out completely without a battle, but his own actions were weakening his hold on England.
Another group of men-at-arms was on the move. When Cuthbert and his troop left Tarring, they marched directly north, intending to go to London where the concentration of noblemen promised the best chance for employment. By the time they arrived, however, the major portion of Louis’s army was settled in around Hertford, and those French knights who remained had no need for more men-at-arms. What was worse, Cuthbert found that he and his English-speaking troop were regarded with contempt and distaste. One gentleman to whom he applied told him to seek employment with the English turncoats who could understand his men’s pig-grunting.
Disheartened and somewhat frightened because he was a Sussex man and had served in that shire most of his life, and even those who spoke English in the London area spoke it with a different accent, Cuthbert took council with the oldest and steadiest members of the troop. It did not occur to
him that those men were also the least adventurous and had the strongest ties to Sussex. Some suggested an immediate return to their native place; others, incensed at the attitude of the French, wished to strike westward and find an adherent of the king who would hire them.
A compromise was reached. They would travel both south and west, hoping to find a patron before they were too far from the border of their native shire. They found no employment, but they soon came across information of great interest. Adam Lemagne, his stepfather, Lord Ian de Vipont, and his brother-by-marriage, Lord Geoffrey FitzWilliam, had most excellent reputations. A man-at-arms could not be better situated than in one of their retinues. They were told this more than once, and each time Cuthbert’s unease grew. He had always felt it was wrong to leave Lady Gilliane, but he had his men to consider and it had seemed the best and safest move. Now it appeared he had been wrong. He should have known better than to listen to the ravings of wounded and defeated men. They would have done much better to yield and put themselves at Lemagne’s mercy.
By the end of the second week, when they still had found no one who wished to hire a whole troop of unknown men, Cuthbert proposed that they return to Tarring. Lemagne might refuse to hire them and might order them to leave the area, but he would not order them imprisoned or killed if they did no harm. Cuthbert’s suggestion was accepted with great relief by the majority of the men. Even the younger, more daring members of the troop were growing homesick. The few who were not native Sussexmen objected, but they were told they could cut loose and seek employment as individuals if they did not wish to return to Tarring. It was always easier for a single man to find a position than a whole troop, but the troop had stuck together because that advantage was offset by the fact that a single man was much more at the mercy of his employer and of the older, established men in the troop.
Thus, just as Adam was explaining to Gilliane that her next move must be to send Neville’s men formal notice of Neville’s death and her accession to the honors, Cuthbert and his men were no more than an hour’s march away from Tarring. Gilliane had no idea what such a formal notice should be like, but she had absorbed so many shocking ideas since she had come down to breakfast that she simply nodded. There had been a clerk in the castle before Saer came—Gilliane had heard the servants speak of a Father Paul. Perhaps he had taken refuge with the priest in the town. She would send one of the serving men to find him, if possible. Likely he would know the forms.
“And what do you think would be best to do? You know the men. Would it be best to send a summons at the same time as the notice, or do you think the notice will bring the men without a summons?” Adam asked.
“Some might come of themselves,” Gilliane answered slowly. “But…it would not be wise to trick them into coming and force them to swear. I must also tell them that Saer is dead and that you have conquered Tarring.”
Adam smiled down, his eyes warm. She might be greedy to own the lands and she might well try to wheedle him into killing her present husband (she would not have to wheedle very hard), but he did not think she had had any part in killing Neville. She was too clever to want to end Neville’s life. If she understood so easily that forced oaths were worthless, she was not likely to have overlooked the advantage of keeping her witless husband alive. As long as the poor creature lived, Gilliane would be as much mistress of the estate as she would be when a widow. More, in fact, because the men owed obedience to Neville and there would be excuses enough for them to break their ties with her if they wished to do so.
“Then you must send a summons to them also.”
“Very well,” Gilliane agreed, “but what am I to say to them, my lord? It is unreasonable to tell men to walk defenseless into the arms of their enemy. They would say I was a witless woman and break their bonds if I bid them come and yield themselves with no warranty for their safety. You say you will help me rule these lands, but if I am to do so, the men must trust both my wisdom and my honesty.”
“Tell them the truth,” Adam suggested, grinning wickedly, “that your father was John’s man, that you had no love for Louis. Thus, when I, King Henry’s man, came, you yielded gladly upon terms.”
“What terms?” Gilliane asked, looking up. “I asked for nothing beyond the safety of my people.”
Her eyes were soft, her lips a little parted; she did not look as if she really knew what she was asking. With an enormous effort Adam looked away. He did not know whether the expression was genuine or whether the half-dazed invitation in her eyes was an invitation only to agree to her terms. He cursed himself impatiently. So many women had looked at him with the same invitation in their faces, and he knew they desired only him, not their own advantage. Why had those other swooning looks left him indifferent beyond the eagerness to exchange a little easy pleasure? The answer was not far to seek. He was indifferent because he was bored, because he did know exactly what those women thought and desired. Gilliane was a challenge.
“They will be easy enough terms,” Adam muttered, intensely relieved that it had always been his intention—to which Ian and Geoffrey had agreed—to ask no more than to have their costs repaid and make Tarring a vassal state to Lemagne. He tried not to wonder whether, had he desired harder terms, he would have had the strength to demand them. “Tarring must pay for the hurt done my people and for the costs of the men and supplies we expended in coming here.”
Gilliane was already shaking her head, and Adam was torn between delighted amusement at her boldness and chagrin to think she had read him so clearly that she believed he was ready to do as she desired in everything. The chagrin made it possible for him to speak sharply.
“What do you mean, no?”
“Only that there is nothing with which to pay,” Gilliane replied. “You have examined the keep from base to top and the outbuildings also. You know there is no coin, no piece of jewelry—unless you count the seashell cross. You may have that, if you think it of sufficient value to take. With what can Tarring pay?”
“I would not take your only ornament, no matter what it was worth,” Adam said indignantly, and then burst into laughter at how neatly she had almost caught him again. By filling him with guilt over the idea of robbing a poor, defenseless widow of a trinket more fit for a villein’s woman, she had nearly tricked him into saying the costs would be little or nothing.
Delighted that she had pleased him, and completely ignorant of how, Gilliane continued in the same vein. “Indeed, you might have it with my good will. I only wish it was worth taking, for I do not think it will be possible to wring anything from the demesne serfs nor, I would guess, from the people in the village. Saer did not permit me to know, but he was not a good master in France and I cannot believe he was much changed by a passage over the narrow sea.”
“You are quite correct,” Adam agreed dryly. “I have been in the town and over the estate and a more wretched—”
“Then how can Tarring pay?” Gilliane interrupted anxiously.
“Not today, but over the years,” Adam responded firmly, determined not to let Gilliane push him into accepting a loss.
In truth, he was less concerned with the money than with retaining his pride. Gilliane could not help but feel scorn for him—no matter how pleased she was at her victory—if he yielded all to her.
“Which brings me to my next condition,” Adam continued. “Neville, if I remember correctly, held directly from the king. Now that I have taken this place, you will hold of me—that is, I will be overlord of Tarring and you will pay tribute to me. It will be necessary to gain permission from the crown—but that is my affair and will be easy enough to accomplish.” He said it quick and hard, expecting protest. The king was a far-off overlord, which allowed vassals much greater freedom than an overlord who was a near neighbor. Instead of protest, a faint blush rose into Gilliane’s cheeks, and her eyes were raised adoringly.
“Does that not mean, my lord, that you will be pledged to protect me always?”
Adam’s mouth opened,
then closed. He thought of overlordship in terms of being able to draw upon his vassals for men or money when he was called to do some service for the king or when he needed to discipline a rebellious vassal or castellan of his own. It had not occurred to him before, but the contract worked the other way also. If a vassal was in trouble, he had the right to call on his overlord for aid. Suddenly it became clear to Adam that, in this case, Gilliane was getting the better of the bargain by far.
She knew, Adam assumed quite wrongly, that it would be useless to call upon Neville’s overlord—the king—for help. The king’s guardians could barely protect the king’s property. It was obviously impossible to obtain help from that source. But here he was, with an army all ready, which, if not large, was certainly sufficient to bring Neville’s men to heel. And all for nothing! It would not cost Gilliane a penny because she had not a penny to pay. He must carry the cost in the expectation that it would be repaid in the future. Meanwhile, she doubtless hoped she would find a way to squirm out of paying anything—perhaps thinking if she had time enough she would be able to work her will on him.
Naturally, she wanted to do him homage. She had nothing to lose, everything to gain. Helplessly, Adam began to laugh again. Worst of all, swearing homage would probably mean nothing to her. A woman had no honor to sustain. When it suited her, she would go back on her swearing as lightly as she had sworn in the first place. Witch that she was! With all his care, she had trapped him. He had already agreed that Neville’s men should be induced to swear fealty directly to her.
“Dear lord,” Gilliane breathed, “how glad I am that you do not mind being burdened with me. I have been greatly afraid that, seeing there was nothing but ruin here, you would abandon me. I will be a faithful liege woman, so far as it is in my power to be.”
Lightly, lightly, all thought of cost and pride flew out of Adam’s head. “And I will be a good liege lord to you and faithfully protect you against all harm,” Adam murmured, and bent forward and gave his new vassal what was not quite a kiss of peace.
Gilliane (Roselynde Chronicles, Book Four) Page 14
