Gisborne: Book of Pawns

by Prue Batten

  The next day I woke with an ache in my belly.

  Cecilia sat next to me and looked up from her spindle when I stirred.

  ‘You have slept long, my love.’

  ‘Will…’ I went to ask.

  ‘They are gone. Leagues hence by now. Peter, the blacksmith’s son, has gone as well. He would not let Gwen leave without him and Brigid said she will send word when she is safely in Wales.’

  She ‘tsk-ed’.

  ‘How we shall interpret the loss of three of De Courcey’s villagers, I am unsure. There will be hell to pay.’

  Hell.

  ‘I have no child, Ceci.’

  ‘Now, now. You do, but just not in your arms. Better he lives far and safe than here and doomed. I trust Brigid and Gwen to care for him. They love you and are loyal.’

  ‘But my child sustained me.’

  ‘Well you shall have Sorcia to sustain you instead. She has laid her head on your bed through all of yesterday. Ysabel,’ Cecilia said in her matter-of-fact way, ‘Brother John buries the ‘babe’ later today. I shall go to Saint Agatha’s but the lie would be enhanced if you stay abed.’

  I turned my head away but Sorcia burrowed under my fingers and I loved her warmth and succour.

  The ‘child’ was buried and Cecilia ordered a small stone slab to be laid, with the name William De Courcey chiseled into the stone and the date. Not many days later and with his habitual angst, De Courcey galloped across the causeway and into the bailey. I heard him and lay back, weak and anxious. The door slammed open and he stood there aflame with wrath.

  ‘Leave,’ he hissed at Cecilia.

  ‘How dare…’ Cecilia began to steam.

  ‘Ceci, go,’ I grabbed her hand. ‘And take Sorcia.’

  She frowned but grabbed Sorcia by the collar and skirted around the Baron’s figure. He slammed the door after her and walked to the wine flask to pour.

  ‘So wife, you birthed an heir. They say he is dead.’

  ‘He lived long enough to be christened…’

  ‘Weakling…’ he roared and threw the goblet against the wall. ‘What does it take to birth a live babe, Ysabel? If pigs and sheep can do it, what is it that prevents you? You’re a mewling imitation of your father.’

  I jumped from the bed shouting like a shrew, feeling the sweat of weakness trickle between my breasts.

  ‘How dare you! I carried that child. Do you think, sir, that I take joy in not being able to hold it in my arms? God’s Blood, you know nothing. A quick rut and your responsibility is done.’

  The hem of the linen chemise fell around me as its folds untangled and a warmth ran down my inner thigh. I noticed the blood, as did De Courcey and I dove in for the kill.

  ‘Yes Baron, look you. It is blood from the birth, a birth that was timed by every bell that rang through the day. It split me in half and even now bleeds and bleeds.’

  He took a step back and for the first time ever was speechless and I tell you I gloried in it as he turned and left, slamming the door so hard I swear the stones trembled.

  I heard the horses’ hooves clattering back over the causeway and for the horses’ sakes some part of me hoped he’d changed mounts before leaving. If he went to Saint Agatha’s I’d have been surprised and yet Brother John informed me later that he had done so. He’d stared at the tiny slab.

  ‘William?’ His voice rose with each syllable. ‘God damn her to perdition! Why William? Strike the name, priest, get rid of it. He was to have been John if the bitch had asked, after Prince John. Strike this name I say because the child is nothing. There shall be no name. Do you hear me? No name!’

  Chapter Fourteen

  If I had been a great trobairitz, I would have composed a ballad the like of which had never been sung, about Ysabel De Courcey lately Moncrieff, about this young woman of the winsome face and hair the colour of a Canterbury-minted silver penny. The men might have sighed and the women cried at the words of love and loss that took place over a year. How she had become an orphan and then a mother who held her own babe but once.

  There would have been verses about what might have been but now would never be, words that tore into the heartstrings of the nobles who listened in rapt attention. And at the end, those same nobles would have dried each other’s tears and nodded sagely about her courage, determination and forthright nature as Fate played its hand.

  Ah yes, that’s what I would have sung about this woman I barely recognized as myself. But what I would not have sung is how she began to concoct a plan, an idea that when the crusaders left for the Holy Land she could re-shape her life and shrug off what she was and become something new and altogether unrecognizable.

  And yet maybe part of that new story may have had the nobles sitting on the edge of their seats; the women in awe, the men perplexed that a fair maid should have such outrageous courage.

  I counted each bell that marked each hour of each passing day as the date of that holy departure grew closer. None the wiser on the fate of those of meaning in my life, William of Nowhere and Ulric of Camden, I refused on any account to succumb to more grief. To be sure, I cried in secret when Cecilia or Brother John could not see me for I am not made of stone, but that hard streak inside me had deepened and widened to give me strength when I might have had none.

  I sat against the sun-warmed stone of Alaïs’ garden, admiring the freshly weeded paths between beds of herbs and fruit trees heavy with Spring’s promise. A garden seat corrugated my bottom and I noticed dirty knee marks on the green gown. I brushed at them and spread the stain further.

  Bees buzzed around the blue flowers of borage and rosemary and I wondered why they so liked blue flowers when there were other brighter colours – saffron, ivory and yellow. They bumbled heavily back to the woven willow bee bothies and I decided it would be a good honey harvest.

  Cecilia entered the garden behind a leaping Sorcia who punched her head under my arm, leaving a further stain on a chemise that had unrolled its dagged sleeve to where it was fair game for a dog.

  ‘There you are,’ Cecilia puffed. ‘Lord but I have looked for you everywhere.’ She wiped a hand across her wimpled head. ‘I’m getting too old, Ysabel. I should be sitting in a solar, stitching pretty threads. Now listen. I must away to Upton for a week. It seems there is tension between my bailiff and a tenant over dues to be paid and it requires a sorting. I am assuming you are enough yourself these days not to need me to prop you up?’

  Ever the plain speaker, she put me quickly in my place so that I wondered if my new strength was really so self-made after all.

  There had come a point one night between the bell for Compline and the bell for Matins that I had decided I could no longer be rolled back and forth like a twig in an ebb tide. Life had the capacity to end when one least expected and be damned if I was going to waste any more days. That was my epiphany.

  With a faintly snoring Ceci on the other side of my parents’ bed, I nodded at the darkness.

  A new day.

  A new Ysabel.

  A plan.

  ‘Of course I shall be perfectly well. Have you not noticed I take my role as the Lady Ysabel quite seriously? And with much loved charm?’ I mocked.

  She snorted.

  ‘Yes. Well. I shall be back before you can get yourself into trouble because I can see you are brewing something. We shall talk when I return.’

  No we shan’t, Ceci. But I love you anyway.

  Cecilia and two Upton retainers left immediately, rattling over the causeway, and were barely gone for two bells when a clattering of horses sounded back the other way. I took little notice because horses came and went and the bailiff would send for me if I was needed.

  I stood naked before a bowl of water, washing away the exertions of the morning, my dirty laundry piled high. Sorcia slept curled in a dark shadow, almost hidden. I undid my hair and reveled in the silken swish as it slid down my back, running a comb through and then I reached for a fresh chemise…

  The door crashe
d open, my head flew up and De Courcey, hated husband, burst in upon his wife as if she were in flagrante delicto.

  ‘Now that is what I call a homecoming, wife!’

  His unbuckled sword and scabbard crashed to the floor.

  I backed away holding my chemise against me as he advanced, ripping a travel-stained surcoat over his head, a chemise following. I stared at the powerful torso where the auburn hair sat lightly, his chest rising and falling with excited breath. He managed to pull his chausses, braies and boots away and still move with animal grace toward me, his manhood purple with intent. The stones bit into my back and my small oratory, the cushion littered with parchment, quills and a quill-sharpening blade, prevented a sideways step.

  His hand reached out and grabbed me.

  ‘Great minds, wife, that you should so prepare yourself for my quick homecoming. You knew I would want to sire an heir before I left for the crusade, didn’t you?’

  He ran a hand over my breasts and it was at that very minute that the new streak inside me spread to my heart, pumping the final dark syrup through my veins.

  He nudged my legs apart.

  ‘You do not speak to me, Ysabel. Are you not glad I am home to wish you a touching farewell?’

  His hands moved to wrap into my hair and he tugged brutally. I cried out and heard an answering growl from Sorcia in the corner.

  I twisted my head away from his lips and he grasped my arms to shove me hard up against the wall, pushing inside, thrusting against an unwilling entrance.

  ‘Open to me, you bitch. Open to the new seed of my heir else you shall suffer.’

  He began to grunt furiously and with each grunt I was slammed against the stone and a base streak exploded in my head as his hot breath filled my face.

  I will kill him.

  ‘Open to me!’

  His hand hit my face with bone-jarring force, my head whipping so that the heavy stone sill bit into the flesh near my eyebrow. Blood ran down my cheek and I could taste it on my lips and tongue as I fell sideways against the oratory with him on top, glued to me like a rutting dog. My fingers closed over something sharp as black, insistent words filled my mind.

  I am Ysabel of Moncrieff and you shall not!

  I shrieked and Sorcia came running, launching herself into his back at full-force. Enough to knock him out of me to roll onto the floor where his head hit the wooden frame of the oratory and where my hand rose and fell.

  He lay still, his eyes closed and the quill sharpening blade sunk deep into his left breast.

  Sorcia stood over the body of my husband. In the bailey, men’s voices shouted, a cock crowed, horses neighed and a dog barked, Sorcia rumbling deep in her throat in reply.

  ‘Shush,’ I whispered.

  A dark shape flew past the window, its threatening shadow swooping over De Courcey’s inanimate frame. I shivered.

  Think.

  I grabbed my chemise, tugging it on.

  Think!

  I rubbed the blood from my face, wincing at the bruise left by his palm and gingerly patting around my eye. It felt fleshy and broken beneath the tentative fingers.

  Think Ysabel!

  De Courcey lay in a pool of his own blood, Sorcia reaching to smell it and then backing away.

  The plan…

  I raced to a chest filled with embroidery accoutrements, digging beneath to extract the youth’s clothes from a year before, pulling them on, dragging hair back to stuff under a hood, wadding a kerchief to staunch the still flowing blood. I pushed my mother’s comb and the small Book of Hours into the purse at my waist with one hand and thought how I would have killed to possess the Saracen book as a form of insurance.

  Would have killed? Ysabel…

  ‘Sorcia, come!’

  I hushed the order, one frantic glance at the prone form of my husband, then leaped for the secret way, making sure the large tapestry hung back cleanly behind us.

  We had no light but we raced round and down – Sorcia by animal insinct and me by memory. Reaching the grille, I heaved it up. Outside, dusk cast long shadows.

  ‘Sorcia, hup, good girl.’

  I dragged myself after her and we hunkered in the sedge, she sniffing the damp air of a spring evening, me holding her collar with one hand whilst pressing my face with the bloodied cloth.

  Think.

  We waited till it was fully dark and as I began to move across the stones and through the sedge, Sorcia padding by my side, I heard a shout from the bailey.

  ‘Sound the alarm!’

  They’ve found him.

  We ran over the boulders, across the causeway to the far side of the lake. In the village, Saint Agatha’s bell rang for Vespers and we sped to the church, meeting no one. I slipped inside, Sorcia’s and my feet silent on the paved floor. The priest stood at the altar, a taper in his hand.

  ‘Brother John,’ I whispered, wiping at the blood.

  He turned quickly, the taper flaring.

  ‘Who goes?’

  ‘Ssh. It is me.’

  ‘Ysa…’

  ‘Hush,’ I glanced back over my shoulder. ‘I need help.’

  He said nothing more, snuffing out the altar candle and the taper, the smell of tallow heavy on the air. He ushered me out the door and into the small stone and thatch dwelling that was his quarters.

  Then, ‘I need to see to your face…’ He looked closely. ‘Jesu, Ysabel, it’s opened almost to the bone. It’s a wonder you still have an eye.’

  ‘I’ve killed him. Listen, they raise the alarm.’

  From the castle, the sound of shouts, horns and alaunts started a stormfront of shivers down my spine.

  He lit a candle and stirred the fire, filling a bowl from the kettle that hung over the coals. He gently peeled my hood back and grabbing a clean piece of linen, began to bathe the wound.

  ‘Curse the man for the devil spawn that he is, he has really done some damage this time.’

  I jerked away as he probed the flesh.

  ‘I need to see there are no bone splinters there, Ysabel, be brave.’

  He poured some wine onto another cloth and blotted away and I sucked in my breath as it stung and I wished he’d hurry. The noise from the castle had freshened and then drifted away as if the search party had left in another direction entirely but I knew they’d be back.

  ‘I need to cobble this together Ysabel, else it’ll never heal.’

  Cobble together?

  ‘You mean sew?’

  He threaded a bone needle with a piece of thread and as he reached for my skull, I jerked my head away.

  ‘Have you done this before?’

  ‘Yes, many times to the villagers when there was no time to get to the infirmarian.’

  ‘I did not know you were a barber-surgeon, Brother John.’

  The first piercing of the needle through my face was like a branding iron.

  ‘We are all of us many things other than what we seem to be, Ysabel.’ He dug in again and tugged and I moaned. ‘People have had wounds stitched together since before Time and whilst I am not trained like some from the Middle Sea countries, I am competent enough.’ Tug and tug again, stitch after stitch. ‘That said, my child, I am afraid you will most likely have a big scar.’ He tsked and pulled once more.

  ‘There.’ He cut the thread with a sharp dagger and picked up a small stone bowl. ‘I shall apply a paste of honey, it helps the healing, and I shall wrap your head with this linen. Lord knows who you shall get to remove the stitches when it is time.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Half a month.’

  ‘I shall find someone. Just help me get away, I believed I might have time but I don’t…’

  ‘Time? What say you? Ah but of course! You planned to run away to Wales, didn’t you? Well run you shall. I’ll not see you stay here to be convicted of a brute’s death. But Sorcia must stay behind because she will indentify you too well.’

  ‘No…’

  But I knew he was right, my most perfect man
of God. How many such priests would there be who would help someone guilty of murder?

  I knelt and hugged her.

  ‘Stay, Sorcia, and I shall not be long. Sit. Good girl.’

  She sank onto the floor and tilted her head as Brother John guided me out the door and I resolutely tried not to turn back to look at the dog that had taken the place of my child, the dog who was my shadow in so many ways.

  My head ached and I longed to wait till the throbbing passed but there was no time. We pressed against the outside wall, listening for noise but the alaunts howled from far away and I breathed out.

  ‘I shall keep Sorcia hidden until this is over,’ my dear monk said, ‘and then give her to Lady Cecilia when she returns. She will be well cared for, do not fret.’

  I knew this to be true and had no fear for my giant hound. I would miss her but there was no time to indulge in such grief. I had made a promise with myself on the night of the epiphany and nothing would change it.

  Brother John continued. ‘And there’s one thing you can be grateful to the Baron for, Ysabel. There are few of his men to hunt you … even if they use the villagers, none will help willingly. It is to your benefit!’

  We walked swiftly through the dark, our feet finding neither obstruction nor bulwark to hinder us. I thought we headed west away from Moncrieff and I felt nothing as it disappeared behind my back; nothing but fear that I might be found and elation that I might escape. The moon shadows dimmed as we entered the heavily wooded ways of the forest and for a moment I was confused.

  ‘Where are we?’

  I touched my head as a sharp pain pulsed around eye and ear. Underneath the bandage the wound snaked from eyebrow to cheekbone and into the hairline.

  Bigger than I thought.

  ‘Brother John? Tell me where we are.’

  ‘We are well into the Moncrieff woods heading northwest in the direction of Lincoln. I will leave you with an old friend of Moncrieff’s and she will take you further. She is adept at finding her way hither and yon through the forest without being seen. She’s a rare creature.