Robin’s expression brightened. “She will be free?”
Eleanor laughed softly. “She is free now, Robert. A convent is not a prison, it is a place of peace and tranquillity. Marienne will be free to leave any time she wishes.”
Robin muttered a hasty pardon and, snatching up Marienne’s hand, pulled her to one side where they stood with their heads together, a flurry of whispered promises passing between them.
Still smiling, Eleanor tilted her head slightly to acknowledge the source of another bemused sigh. “Lady Ariel?”
“Your Highness?”
“I must needs thank you as well, for more than you can possibly imagine. With the exception of Marienne, I have never had the pleasure of female companionship before—none that I would care to call ‘friend’ by any rood. And I would so like to think of you as my friend, and to know that you might smile with fondness sometime when you happen to think of me.”
“I … we … shall think of you all the time, my lady,” Ariel insisted, tossing protocol to the wind as she leaned forward and gave the last Angevin princess a fervent hug.
Startled, and overwhelmed to the verge of tears, Eleanor squeezed Ariel’s shoulders just as tightly, her voice ragged against her ear. “I had almost forsaken all hope of Eduard ever finding a woman willing, or surely even able, to convince him he is worth loving. Indeed, the most fearsome opponent he ever defeated on or off the battlefield could have crushed him afterward by uttering but a single word: bastard. Love him, Ariel. Love him with all your heart and you will not regret it, not for one single moment.”
“I do not regret it now,” Ariel said earnestly. “Nor will I ever.”
Beside them, Eduard cleared his throat and glanced up at the abbey. “The abbess is waiting to admit you.”
Eleanor and Ariel stepped apart, and in a halting voice, the princess bade a final farewell and thanks to Dafydd ap Iorwerth, Jean de Brevant, and Sparrow, astonishing the diminutive seneschal by bending down and brushing his rounded cheek with a kiss.
“Promise me you will see them all home safely. It is a charge I bestow upon thee most solemnly.”
Sparrow puffed a chest already wadded with bandages and gave the balance of his arblaster an imperious adjustment. “You may count upon me, Little Highness. As always.”
“Give my love to Mistress Bidwell. Tell her I shall pray daily for her continuing perseverance.”
Sparrow started to reply, realized it might be a veiled reference to his own recalcitrant nature, and accorded the request a muffled, “Harrumph!”
With Eduard on one side and Marienne on the other, Eleanor went willingly to her fate. She paused at the low, arched postern and, after a last word with Eduard, pressed something into his hand and walked through the portal with Marienne and was swallowed into the dark silence of Kirklees.
Eduard continued to stand alone, in the shadows of midnight, his head bowed, the dark waves of his hair blown forward over his temples. He turned slightly, angling his hand into the moonlight and uncurled his fist from around the object Eleanor had given him.
It was a pearl. A single white pearl, as large as a robin’s egg, as lustrous as the smile of joy that had been on Eleanor of Brittany’s face as she had walked to meet her destiny.
EPILOGUE
The safe return of the Wolf’s two sons to Chateau d’Amboise was cause for a week of feasting the likes of which the castle and village had not witnessed in years. The arrival home of Eduard FitzRandwulf with a new bride by his side sent waves of shock recoiling throughout the countryside, with tremors reaching as far as a cold, drafty room in a castle keep in Falaise. There William the Marshal sat before a crackling fire, a cup of mulled wine warming his hands, a wide and (truth be known) not altogether surprised grin warming his heart.
Behind him, snuggled under layers of fur to ward off the winter chill, was his wife Isabella. The countess and their ten children had arrived at Falaise only a few days earlier, led by an exhausted Sedrick of Grantham, who had packed the gaggle aboard a fast ship and sailed from Pembroke within hours of his arrival there.
Jean de Brevant had accompanied FitzRandwulf back to Amboise, claiming he had aught better to do than to pester Sparrow into an early grave. He had heard of Eduard’s famous sire—who of warm blood and living flesh had not? He took an oath of homage to Randwulf de la Seyne Sur Mer and was, in due time, made captain of the Wolf’s personal guard, a duty which, in turn, would include protecting his firstborn son and heir, Robert d’Amboise, when he gained his gold spurs of knighthood and declared his intent to return to England to fetch Marienne FitzWilliam home.
Dafydd ap Iorwerth played the part of Henry de Clare so well, an assassin’s arrow felled him not a month after their return to Amboise. As it happened, he was in the village at the time, pacing along the banks of the river Loire, trying to stoke up the courage to cast a friendly smile in the direction of the miller’s widowed daughter. Luckily the arrow struck the meat of a thigh muscle and the young Welshman was not only able to loose off an arrow of his own to kill his attacker, but he won the wide-eyed interest of his original quarry, Gabrielle, when she brought him back to her tiny cottage to nurse his wound. She proved to be an excellent care-giver, more so when she judged, by the frequency and intensity of his blushes, that he was yet a virgin.
Ariel had cause to suspect by the grin on her husband’s face as he recounted Dafydd’s plight that there was more to the story than met the ear, but she wisely kept her suspicions to herself. She had no reason to be jealous or envious of Eduard’s past liaisons, not when she had the heat of his body to warm her every night, and his unflagging energy and passion to guide her breathlessly through every day.
Which is not to say their union was perpetual bliss and contentment. Their battles were monumental and the entire household came to be wary of the sight of flaming red hair and flashing green eyes stalking through the baileys and keeps. They came to watch, expectantly and with bated breath, at just what point during a meal or muted conversation the Wolf’s cub would fling his patience aside and snatch up his bride by the hand or sling her like a sack of grain over his shoulder and carry her up to their apartments, there to remain until they both emerged, subdued and markedly weaker about the knees, their differences either resolved or forgotten.
They remained at Amboise until Ariel was delivered of their first child—a daughter, Eleanor, born with flame red hair and eyes so green they were like crystals plucked from the sea. The day of her birth marked the second time Ariel saw tears spill freely from her husband’s eyes—no match for the flood that poured from her own when he presented her with the pearl their daughter’s namesake had given him, mounted in a necklace of fine gold circlets, each containing a perfect cabochon emerald.
Baby Eleanor was born in the late summer, the same time Philip’s armies overran Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and most of Poitou. He met no resistance from the black and gold devices of La Seyne Sur Mer, for in March of that year, the dowager queen had died at Fontevraud. Philip, relieved he would not have to face Lord Randwulf’s army, nevertheless cut a wide berth around Amboise and its surrounding territories, preferring to leave sleeping wolves lying undisturbed.
With Normandy under French rule, John’s search for Eleanor of Brittany effectively ended. It galled him to know she had been stolen out from under his nose, but it was not as if she could ever challenge him for possession of the throne. He reacted to the loss of his niece and the loss of Normandy by spending the next year in an orgy of feasting and debauchery. He was all but convinced William the Marshal was behind the rescue, but with no direct proof, he had to settle for seizing any and all estates deeded to the De Clare traitors. Most of these, he discovered to his further rage, had been placed in trust with the Countess Isabella of Pembroke, who was just as adamant as her husband in decrying the youthful passion and misguided zealousness that had led her niece and nephew astray.
As to Guy of Gisbourne’s description of the scarred knight who
had left him a cripple, there was little doubt in the king’s mind it was Eduard FitzRandwulf d’Amboise, even before he heard of the marriage of the Wolf’s cub to Ariel de Clare. Realizing he must have passed within arm’s length of them on the road to Corfe threw the monarch into such a frothing fit, he was nearly a month in bed recovering his senses.
Having seemed to simply vanish into thin air, Eleanor of Brittany was referred to thereafter as the Lost Princess of Brittany. Stories, songs, and legends of what really happened to her were rekindled occasionally, each with eyewitness accounts of either her demise or her appearance as a ghostly spectre in the king’s chambers. All of the stories were related by the tawny-haired monk who visited Kirklees faithfully each and every week for the next seventeen years. So familiar had he become to the peasants who worked the fields around the abbey, that after the first few months he rarely troubled himself to change out of the drab brown cassock he wore. A stranger passing through the greenwood might have thought it odd to see a monk practicing with a sword and bow, odder still to see the collection of outlaws and misfits he collected into his fold. But there were few strangers who ventured into the heart of Sherwood, and none who emerged if the forest residents did not like the look of them.
Occasionally, messages arrived from Normandy and were also shared in the sunny garden of Kirklees. News that Ariel and Eduard had moved to a fine castle of their own near Blois, where two strapping sons and another daughter were born in successive springs, put smiles on their faces and joy in their hearts. News of Robert d’Amboise’s rise through the ranks of knighthood set a third face blushing more hues of red than a summer sunset.
Marienne FitzWilliam had blossomed into a beautiful young woman. Because she had not taken any vow of seclusion, she was often sent to the market in Nottingham to trade the linens woven by the nuns of Kirklees. It happened one day, she was caught in a circlet of sunlight, frowning in concentration over a selection of needles and spindles, when the bored and lecherous eyes of a town official happened to settle on the abundance of glossy chestnut curls. His name was Reginald de Braose and he was in the service of the new sheriff of Nottingham …
But that, dear reader, is another story.
BOOK THREE
THE LAST ARROW
PROLOGUE
Marienne FitzWilliam had blossomed into a beautiful young woman. Because she had not taken any vow of seclusion, she was often sent to the market in Nottingham to trade the linens woven by the nuns of Kirklees. It happened one day, she was caught in a circle of sunlight, frowning in concentration over a selection of needles and spindles, when the bored and lecherous eyes of a town official came to settle on the abundance of glossy chestnut curls. His name was Reginald de Braose and he was in the service of the Sheriff of Nottingham, Guy de Gisbourne.
An ugly man, short of height, over-bulked in stature, de Braose’s face was ravaged with the scars of a childhood disease. One eye was coated in a milky-white film, red-rimmed, and leaked fluids that more often than not were left to dry to a yellow crust in the corners. His hair, brown as dung, lay in greasy spikes against his neck and poked out from beneath the battered iron dome of his helm. His armour was not the finest. He wore no coif to protect his neck—not that any common man would be fool enough to attack him. His mail hauberk bore definite signs of combat and was ill repaired in the sleeves and hem; a sorry chain of broken links hung like a frayed iron thread down his thigh. The surcoat he wore was dull blue with more patches stained from food and drink than were clean. His hose bagged at the knee. The blade of his sword was pitted and chipped and betrayed no gleam, not even in the bright midday sun.
He looked to the left and to the right, casually nodding to the half-dozen soldiers who lurked in the shadows. Only one was too preoccupied to nod back. He had a hand down the front of a blowsy wench and was too busy fondling and pinching to notice his captain’s glare.
De Braose and his men had been at the market since dawn. It was the fourth Saturday they had been up before the crowing of the rooster, turned out of warm beds with empty bellies and foul tempers; this day, like most others, they had positioned themselves at various vantage points in the market square watching for strangers, following them, hoping one might lead them to rich rewards. This was not the first time de Braose had seen the little dark-haired maid. She lived and worked for the nuns at Kirklees Abbey, but she was the most interesting morsel to come into view so far since the villagers had taken to hiding most of their wives and daughters—even the ugly ones—whenever there were soldiers around.
Yeomen and peasants had started taking to the forests as well, especially those likely to be picked up by the soldiers and dragged off to the castle for work details. Overtaxed and half starving, they hid what little of value they had; it was up to the king’s men to find it and pry it out of them by whatever methods they deemed necessary. Men forced to work in the castle could pay a fine and free themselves. Women forced to whore could pay a fine—after their usefulness was fully exhausted—and return to their mud-and-wattle homes. Those who thought to struggle or resist found themselves missing ears or fingers, toes or tongues by way of example to others. It was the same everywhere in England. The king’s treasury was empty and he demanded it be filled. Whether he had to steal taxes from the rich or bleed it from the poor, it mattered not so long as his stores of jewels and gold were replenished.
In the eleven years since he had taken the throne, John Plantagenet had emptied the treasury many times over. He had lost the hereditary Angevin lands in Normandy and Brittany to his ineffectual leadership, and turned most of the English barons against him by using cruelty, repression, and murder as a means of ruling. Anyone who possessed anything of value found himself robbed of it, or fined for having it. The king’s men scoured the land, inventing new tortures, confiscating properties, ravaging women, and more and more nobles were questioning their wisdom all those years ago in having supported John’s claim to the throne when they might have had the young and malleable Arthur of Brittany.
Their self-doubts only raised more rumbles of dissent. Where was Prince Arthur? What had happened to him? What had happened to his sister Eleanor? They were the offspring of John’s older brother Geoffrey, and, by right of succession, Arthur should have inherited the throne upon King Richard’s death. Instead, John had snatched the crown for himself and had thrown Arthur and his sister in prison. Neither had been seen since. There had been rumors and speculation, of course. A body had been found floating in the River Seine not six months after Arthur’s disappearance. Badly decomposed, it could not be readily identified, but it had bright golden hair and the scraps of clothing it wore were of the finest, richest quality. Then and now there were murmured convictions that John had had his nephew murdered, even that he had committed the abhorrent crime himself in one of his fits of rage.
As to the fate of Arthur's sister, Eleanor, she had simply vanished off the face of the earth. There was one whispered tale of her confinement in Corfe Castle, of a daring rescue staged by unknown knights, but the whispers faded when it came to the end of the tale. If she had been rescued, where had she been taken? Who could have possibly kept her hidden for so many years, and why, why, when England was embroiled in civil unrest, would she not have been brought forth out of obscurity to lay her rightful claim to the throne?
The king was well aware of the resentment and hostility brewing around him. He had tried, and failed, to gather an army this past spring to cross the Channel and reclaim his lost territories in Normandy from King Philip of France. Less than a third of his barons had answered his call to arms, and to repay them for the insult, he had sent them home in disgrace and hired mercenaries in their stead at a great cost to England’s treasury. Defeated by indifference before he began, he had suffered an abysmal loss in Flanders, at the Battle of Bouvines, and had once again been sent scurrying back to England, his tail firmly tucked between his legs.
His rage was then focused on his barons, namely those who had refused t
o join the ill-fated venture. He was the king! All of his subjects—nobles, clergy, knights, and peasants alike—were at his mercy, and he was determined to prove it, even if it meant fining every noble, burning every castle in England, and placing their inhabitants in prison!
To that end, he put vicious, brutal men in positions of power, giving them free rein to rape, steal, murder at whim. Guy de Gisbourne was one such tyrant who laid no claim to the possession of either a conscience or a willingness to show mercy. One of his first tasks, upon taking command of Nottingham Castle, had been to fill the donjons with men and women who owed a tax or were suspected of hoarding profits. His was a garrison of misfits and brutes, his authority was fire and sword, and few who defied him by word or deed lived to see another dawn. Those meager few swelled the ranks of the outlaws who had begun to live in the surrounding forests. Gisbourne had put high prices on their heads, and when they were caught, he had their bodies drawn and quartered, their various parts hung in the village square until the flesh turned black and fell off the bones.
Only last week Reginald de Braose and his men had caught an outlaw trying to visit his blind sister in the village of Edwinstow. They had taken both the outlaw and the sister to the sheriff’s court, where one had been sentenced to hang, the other to service the men of the garrison by way of an example to those relatives who might think to offer succour to their fugitive kinsmen.
Reginald de Braose watched the maid, Marienne, move away from the milliner’s stall and signaled his men. She would not waste time returning to the abbey now that her linens were sold and her purchases made. Kirklees was a two-hour walk from the village, most of it through forest thick enough to tint the air green, dense enough to muffle the loudest screams from unyielding virgins.
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