by Prue Batten
‘With you!’ I interjected. ‘Their own efficient information source.’
‘In the name of God!’ He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘In the name of your mother…’
‘Holy Mary! How dare you invoke my mother’s name…’
‘I dare woman, because if I don’t you will not listen and her last words to me will mean nothing.’
Silence, but for the hoarse breathing in the damp space. The light mellowed as the sun moved round the edge of the castle walls, sifting itself though the bars of the grille.
‘What - words?’ I glared at him, my face tight with hate and disbelief.
‘“Protect my Ysabel, Guy. Find her, keep her safe from her father’s misguided behaviour.”’
‘Oh.’
My anger deflated in a whisper, my mother’s words striking my heart and piercing it so that I shook my head and walked to the grille, rubbing my hands over the damp stone of this castle that should have been an inheritance. But my mood was sombre for less than a moment.
‘And why, Gisborne, would you pay heed to my mother’s words? You barely knew her. You were a mere steward.’ I emphasized the word ‘steward’ as if it was as dirty as peasant’s feet, the lowest of the low.
‘We had respect for each other. She trusted me.’
‘How fortuitous.’
I wanted to strike him where it hurt, my tone almost a sneer.
‘By God, you bitch. Rot here then with your bleeding head and shoulder. Try and avoid De Courcey. But as his net closes about, remember I could have helped.’
He took a step back.
But I needed to have the last word.
‘Gisborne! How did you get here before me?’
The question hung in the air like the sword of Damocles.
He shook his head, a marginal shake, barely there. ‘I know every inch of the demesnes. Every track, every swift and secret way. I broke the horse galloping here and the beleaguered animal is even now hidden in a coppice. His saddlery is thrown in a bog and he sweats as if he is ill. If he is found, there are no saddlemarks amongst the froth of his exertions. I made sure.’
He had an answer for everything. As cold as a winter wind, not a sign that he tried hard to convince me although others would say he merely told truths.
‘What about the castle? How did you know about the grille?’
‘I told you, I know every inch of this place, the domain and the castle.’
‘And sold the plan to De Courcey for a recommendation to moneyed knighthood, no doubt.’
Our whole conversation had been uttered in wrenched tones and he replied in a strangled whisper.
‘Cecilia showed me because your mother was too ill. Over time I was able to ascertain that the bailiff was unaware. If your father betrayed any of the secrets of the castle to any other of his staff then you can be sure De Courcey will know by now. Methinks however, that if they knew about this, they would be here with a guard and they are not. Cecilia trusted me to use the secrets for safety should I ever need to.’
Cecilia!
He disappeared out the door leaving me a beaten woman and I stood there for less than a heartbeat. I ran after him as he disappeared up a narrow snaking stair.
‘Where is she?’
Guy stopped, a darker shadow against the unlit walls. I could decipher nothing in his expression as he turned back. He was alarmingly neutral.
Got her, he must be thinking.
And poor unfortunate me, I had no choice but to let him.
‘She’s been placed…’
‘Placed?’ I interrupted, visions of cells and dungeons looming large.
‘In your mother’s chamber, the Lady Chamber. We can go via the passage.’
But of course I knew that and pushed past him to hurry away. I heard the scrape of flint and there was a flare of light and a flame followed me. Straight ahead I forged. Then up, up again, curling around the tower. My legs ached as I hauled them step after step, climbing all the time until I reached the heights of Moncrieff. The secret passage was narrow – fine for someone of my breadth but Guy’s shoulders scuffed against the stone behind me.
‘Ysabel, slow down. She may have a guard with her.’
I stopped and turned toward him, the flames casting jumping shadows across us both.‘ ‘Why would she be guarded? What has happened here? Does De Courcey hold the castle outright now, with none of Moncrieff’s men about?’
My breath came in ragged spurts.
‘It would appear so.’ Guy leaned against the wall, the torch flaring in the secret air.
‘And my father?’
‘I haven’t been here long enough to locate him. We must rely on Cecilia.’ Guy pushed past me, the flame brightening and then fading as he turned a corner. ‘Only a little further, come on.’
A couple more bends and we stopped just as the flame gutted, leaving us in a dank and close darkness. My breath sucked in. Within seconds, the claustrophobic walls pressed on me from all sides, my heartbeat stalled and the heat of panic steamed through my body.
I will not give in…
I quieted, breathing more slowly and the darkness eased so it was possible to discern light around a narrow aperture. Guy shuffled toward the infinitesimal gap, pressing his ear against it.
‘We’ll have to wait. She’s not alone,’ he whispered and his fingers squeezed. ‘Did you hear that?’
I thought I did – a rumble of voices, a door opening and then closing.
‘They’ve gone.’
Guy shouldered his way through the aperture that had been concealed by a yielding cover; a heavy rug that hung on the wall. My mother’s chamber was uniquely situated on the first floor in a round tower and was well lit by four commanding windows. At enormous cost, my father had shipped panels of glass from Normandy. Despite being distorted and thick, with bubbles of air trapped within the viscous layers, sun streamed in and it was possible to find thin, clear spots through which to gaze on a world below. Through these strange little viewpoints, one could observe the verdant beauty of Moncrieff – woods crisscrossed with ribands of narrow waterways for miles hence.
The remaining chamber walls were softened by a number of unusual carpets – massive, knotted rugs my mother purchased from itinerants when they passed through Aquitaine from across the Middle Sea. One of the rugs concealed an entrance to a secret passage – the slimmest opening. Wide enough for a man unafraid to compress his body to the thickness of a wafer and where lesser men might balk at the thought of being permanently stuck to wither and moulder through the centuries.
From inside the chamber all seven carpets hung innocently, betraying no secrets. No weaving looked any different to another except in the patterning and unless one had prior knowledge of the labyrinthine secret of Moncrieff, such deception would always remain undiscovered.
Cecilia was standing at the fire and when she heard movement behind her, she swung around, a small knife whipped from her sleeve. Her grey eyes widened and she almost shouted as her eyes settled on us.
But momentarily I did not see her. Instead I saw my mother seated at her tapestry frame, a needle trailing a flare of wool. She laughed at something a rambunctious eleven year old girl said as the child twirled around in a lined and embroidered cloak of her mother’s, tripping on the folds.
‘Ysabel,’ my mother had a honeyed voice of great subtlety. ‘You shall never be a lady if I don’t send you to Cazenay.’
‘When?’ cried the girl who was almost a woman, kicking the folds of the cloak out of the way.
‘Oh immediately,’ said Lady Alaïs. ‘When you reach twelve years of age.
‘But that’s tomorrow.’ The girl stood still, eyes widening. ‘Can we leave for Cazenay tomorrow?’
‘Not tomorrow, my daughter. We shall have a celebration here first. But we leave at the end of the week. In four more days.’
I saw the excitement in the younger Ysabel’s eyes, the anticipation. She could barely wait to leave Moncrieff.
; How I wish she had not.
Cecilia leaped forward, an expression halfway between joy and terror whilst I stood stockstill, frozen with memories. Her arms clasped me and she whispered but I could not hear. Only my mother’s voice, her Occitán accent, and all I could see was her lovely hair coiled and deliberately uncovered. My beautiful mother…
‘Ysabel,’ Cecilia spoke by my ear. ‘You risk your life.’
She pushed me back behind the rug, staying in the room herself as she cast a worried glance at the door of the chamber.
It was then that I focused on my mother’s companion, my godmother. She had grown gaunt and drawn, her hair covered by a wimple not unlike Thea’s, her bliaut dark-grey and unembellished. But the fine white linen of her chemise and the heavily wrought silver of her girdle betrayed her nobility. That and the rings upon her fingers – a twisted marriage band of gold and silver and a plain silver band studded with a ruby the size of a quail’s egg. It was so heavy that it fell to her finger joint, rattling there and looking out of place, the more so because Cecilia had been a widow for at least the twenty years of my life. Her husband, Sir Hugh Fineux of Upton, had been killed in some battle or other and as a child I couldn’t care despite that fact that I looked at my godmother now and wished I had.
Cobwebbed wrinkles fanned from the corners of her eyes and worry had ploughed two deep trenches between her fine eyebrows. In fact my mother’s friend had aged beyond belief and yet she held the knife in her hand with strength and familiarity. It was that above all else that brought the harsh message thudding home; Moncrieff was in a state of siege.
‘Cecilia,’ I could barely speak as the memories crushed my throat. I wanted to collapse into her arms in the belief that all would be well. ‘Where is she?’
‘She is in the chapel. Your father commissioned a sculpted tomb but…’ She grabbed my arm. ‘You must not go near because De Courcey has men everywhere.’
I hated that he was here as if he had the right. That he was in control.
Gisborne’s voice echoed my concern.
‘How many men?’
Cecilia clasped him like a mother with a son.
‘Lord but I am glad you are both safe,’ she said. ‘Well done, Guy. I knew I could trust you to bring her back. But things have happened between times and she is not safe now and we must conceive a plan.’
‘Lady Cecilia, I thank you for your belief in me…’
Your belief in me? Is this some kind of lesson, Gisborne?
He continued, ‘… but what has happened and how many men?’
‘De Courcey has taken over the castle, his now by law. A full garrison of a hundred men guarding the castle and Moncrieff village.’
A hundred men! It’s a king’s army! What has happened to Moncrieff’s tiny force?
‘By what right does he take what is not his? Where does he get the men?’ I was shocked.
But they ignored me. Gisborne swore, the language of the soldier’s camp betraying his surprise and fury that we should be so curtailed.
‘And the Baron?’
Cecilia sighed, her tongue clicking in a brusque ‘tsk’.
‘I know not,’ she said. ‘My own lack of freedom prevents me from knowing much at all.’
I broke in for it was as though they had forgotten I stood inches away inside the wall.
‘You didn’t answer me, Cecilia. By what right is he here? Where does De Courcey get these men that presumably guard my father as if he were a threat to king and country.’
The look she gave me was filled with sadness.
‘Moncrieff is his, my love. It was ceded to pay debts and that is the law. The men are De Courcey’s own; an army of Free Lancers who march across borders for money. Currently they are in England at the king’s behest…’
I turned away. All I could see was Halsham’s face above the livery of his Free Lancers surcoat.
Chapter Ten
‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘You must hide because they will be in and out with food and I am taunted by De Courcey and his officers as if they think to use me as bait.’
She reached again for my hand and gave it a little shake.
‘They know you stepped off near Great Yarmouth so they are on your tail. You know where you would hide up the stair in the hole as a child? You must go there and stay now, both of you, until I am able to talk with you. It will be late at night when they tend to leave me alone.’
I opened my mouth to question her but she interrupted.
‘In the hole there is a cover and cushion, for I hoped you would come.’
She hurried to a salver and grabbed early apples and some cheese and thrust the food into my hands.
‘I shall get some bread and…’ she reached for a stoppered leather bottle and threw it into Gisborne’s hands. ‘There, watered wine. Go quickly.’
She pushed at us and we had little option but to let her, allowing the thick tapestry to fall behind us.
‘Go!’ she whispered.
I headed toward the footsteps of my childhood. Ever upward, where darkness shut out today and touch focused on yesterday. The cheese was squashed to my chest together with the apples, and the smell of the orchard raised a dozen memories and threatened to stop me in my tracks. But I kept stepping up, aware of Gisborne close behind.
‘Here,’ I muttered, turning into the slim space.
Gisborne hovered, aware of the lack of room.
‘Oh for God’s sake, just come and sit where you can.’
An arrow loop bled a measure of light onto the floor upon which lay a rolled blanket and a tapestry-covered pillow. Perfect for one person. I flopped to the floor, exhaustion beginning to bite at my legs.
‘Have some fruit and cheese,’ I offered as he folded his height half in and out of the space. I threw an apple to him and he took his knife and sliced pieces, doing the same with the cheese. I ate because my stomach demanded it but in truth food mattered little as my mind went over and over the scenario outside the walls.
‘What are you thinking?’ he said after sucking on the leather bottle.
‘You don’t know?’
I hunched back against the wall, sighing and resting the back of my head against the cold stone. The light through the arrow slit lay on my toes, a measure of comfort.
‘De Courcey has the place,’ he said, mirroring my thoughts. ‘You wonder how it has happened so quickly. You wonder if you are safe; if Cecilia is safe. How you shall find your father. What you shall discover when you find your father.’ He held his knife between his hands, the point and haft pressing against the balls of two fingers, bridging a gap over no-man’s land.
‘Do go on. You have all the answers.’
‘If I tell you what I think, you must accept that I know a little more than you and that I have tried to prepare you for this eventuality all through our journey.’
There was an earnestness about him that dismantled my anger just a fraction.
‘I think your father has been imprisoned by De Courcey, Ysabel. Perhaps he hasn’t paid his gaming debts in full and De Courcey is angered. As to your role in this, I think he plans to have you as well. I believe he sees it as a neat way to tie up Moncrieff. Marriage takes the taint of robber-baron away.’
Blood pounded in my ears.
‘Good God, how can this man get away with what he has done? I will go to King Richard, I will…’
‘I suspect that De Courcey has supporters. Supporters who may have the King’s ear and there is little you can do.’
‘No. You’re wrong, my father was gulled.’
‘You and I know this but to others it would seem your father gambled away his estates in full knowledge of what he was doing.’
‘No one who gambles is in their right minds. Besides, you said they would get him blind drunk on their sorties. Is that not coercion?’
‘And how would you prove it?’
‘I…’ I threw a piece of apple at the wall.
‘Truth?’ He looked neither smug
nor righteous. ‘You cannot. Not when someone has proved himself invaluable to the king. Have no doubt, Ysabel, the mercenaries that De Courcey fields are earning the king’s notice and gratitude.’
I barely debated my next comment. I really didn’t care if I offended anyone right now. I wanted to kick out and kick hard.
‘And you think to be a Free Lancer? With De Courcey and Halsham as your senior officers? Your sense of purpose and self-preservation does you credit when your integrity does not.’
His expression did not change, his voice did not harden, but his fingers gripped the haft of his knife until the knuckles showed bone-white.
‘I have been charged with your safety. I must protect your interests and those of Cecilia, even if Moncrieff is beyond my care at this point.’
I dipped my head in mock deference.
‘Then we must thank you, my dear Gisborne, for such perceived loyalty.’
He stood up, the apple cores and cheese rind falling at my feet, and clipped away down the stair. I heard his boots tapping and his shoulders scraping the walls well past the entrance to my mother’s chamber. I wondered if he left me to cool his anger or whether he departed the castle and any further involvement with the Moncrieffs. Or if he left to sign up with De Courcey and divulge my whereabouts.
Whichever was the case he was gone and I was alone.
The sun drifted past the arrow loop and I lay down as I did as a child and peered through. In those far off days, I would pretend I was a bird on a sill about to take flight and I would gaze across the view imagining it from the bird’s eye … over the lake, trees and fields. Villeins working my father’s lands … tilling, seeding, weeding, scything, gathering in the harvest – colours changing from brown to acid green, to pale gold and to brown again – like some beautifully illuminated Book of Hours right before my eyes.
Now the fields were tinted bright green as the seeded crops grew to maturity. After harvest they would plough them again and then let them lie fallow until the spring thaw when the men, women and children would seed the soil with barley or oats. My childish memory recalled the rime-edged furrows, the crows swooping in flocks to feed when the fields were seeded and the children lined up with stones to keep the birds away until the crop struck.
