“They look like worm eaten stumps,” William remarked with a shiver.
“Limestone, I think,” Bronson replied. “The fog’s lifted, but this place is eerie.”
“And damp, despite the heat of the day,” William said resignedly, getting off his horse. “Let’s get the men organized to pitch camp.”
It didn’t take long for the infantrymen to pitch tents and pavilions.
Bronson wandered off to take a closer look at the circle of stones.
The August evenings were long and the fog had cleared, but mystery and magic hung in the still air. He wasn’t afraid of standing stones, but knew enough to be wary. He’d heard tell of strange inexplicable events at some circles. He wondered about the men who’d placed these stones here, long ago. What was their purpose?
“They’re the King’s Men.”
He whirled around, caught off guard by a voice he didn’t immediately recognize. Leicester stood behind him, in the company of Rodrick and his father. It was Leicester who had spoken. He supposed it was to be expected the earl would know the legend behind this local landmark.
“And over there, the bigger one, it’s the King Stone.” He pointed to a taller rock Bronson hadn’t noticed before, preoccupied as he was with the circle.
“Underneath the King Stone and the King’s Men there are supposed to be caves that are the haunt of faeries. At midnight they come out of a hole in a bank and dance around the Stones by the light of the moon. If the hole is blocked up with a flat stone it will have been turned over by the time the morning sun rises.”
An owl hooted, raising the hairs at Bronson’s nape. He sensed the uneasiness of the other men, all except Leicester who simply laughed.
“There are reports of people disappearing into faerie holes for what seems like many years. When they emerge, however, they discover they have only been gone for a matter of hours.”
“Folk tell the same kind of tales in Northumbria,” Bronson said.
Leicester played with the lobe of his ear. “Then you likely have the tradition of leaving a token gift for the faeries, for good luck.”
Rodrick cleared his throat, grinning at Bronson. “I’ve heard tell some of these standing stones promote fertility if you touch them.”
“Don’t mock, young Rodrick,” the earl chided. “Such is true of the King Stone. It’s rumored young maidens come here on a certain night to touch their breasts to it, then make merry with cakes and ale.”
“Hope it’s tonight.”
They turned to see William and Stephen. William’s red face and Stephen’s stern look betrayed who had made the jest. Gallien scowled at his middle son.
Leicester walked away. “Further along, you’ll see the Whispering Knights.”
They followed and came soon to a group of five upright stones.
“Legend has it the Knights are guarding a burial chamber, thousands of years old. They are so named because of the conspiratorial way in which they lean inwards towards each other as if they are plotting against their king.”
Heads swiveled to look at him. He grinned back. “Close to the bone, eh lads?”
Their laughter relieved the tension in the air. Gallien slapped Leicester on the back. “I admire a man with a sense of humor.”
Leicester put a finger to his lips, a twinkle in his eye. “Hush, listen. Young men and women come to hear the Knights whisper the name of their future wives and husbands.”
The others listened for a few minutes, then wandered back to the camp, laughing and jesting. Only Bronson and Rodrick remained, stock still, staring at the silent stones as darkness crept into the meadow.
Grace had often accompanied her father on visits to Uncle Edwin at Shelfhoc. She called Edwin uncle, but he was actually her half cousin once removed. Edwin and her father were great friends, and his dogs were always excited to see her. Today had been no exception. She and Swan had romped with the dogs all afternoon in the field behind the manor house after visiting the church. Prior to that, they’d discussed with Tybaut a few changes they thought the new master would require. It was apparent it had been the home of a bachelor, and they’d planned and plotted as to how to introduce feminine touches without offending Swan’s brother.
She’d always enjoyed coming to Shelfhoc, but now she saw it through different eyes—as a home. It was presumptuous of her, since Swan had more right to be regarded as lady of the manor than she did. She pouted when Swan suggested things she didn’t believe would work, quickly countering them with ideas of her own.
They’d each gone to their chamber after an exhausting day, still friends, but Grace sensed impatience in her cousin. Swan had claimed the master’s chamber, which clearly Bronson should have.
She tossed and turned for many hours, wondering how the men fared. She presumed all was well. If disaster had befallen her twin she would have known, and she sensed nothing of the sort.
At last she fell into a fitful sleep. And dreamed.
She was standing next to a tall, weathered stone, then suddenly she was in the center of a grassy circle of smaller stones. Hundreds of faeries danced around her, giggling. Uncertain, she glanced back at the tall stone. A man stood beside it. His face was shadowed, but his hair was long—and red.
And he was naked.
The faeries giggled again, and she looked down at her own body. What had happened to her clothes? She looked back at the stone. The red-haired man was striding towards her, hands held out.
She reached to welcome him, as he pressed his body to hers. Desire blossomed in her woman’s place. She moaned and arched her back.
The faeries fell silent and fled. She gasped at the advent of a black-winged angel that flew around the circle then alit on the large stone. The man shook his head and withdrew into the fog. “Don’t go,” she pleaded. “Please, don’t go.”
She startled awake, sweating, ashamed to discover her hand in a place it should not have been.
Henry Fitzempress
While the men were striking camp in the predawn darkness, Rodrick wandered off to find somewhere he might wash his face and hands and see to the call of nature.
Beyond the King’s Men he stumbled upon a pond. Concentrating on his ablutions, he was startled by a movement—something white. He looked across the water as the sun rose, astounded to see a beautiful white swan preening the feathers of its long neck. It stopped when it caught sight of him, and stared for a minute or two. As they gazed at each other, another swan glided towards the first. Riding on its back were six fluffy cygnets.
He fell to his knees in the marshy ground and thanked God for this sign. Swan would be his.
His heart full, he hastened back to camp, gathered his gear, donned his armor, and mounted in time to join his father, brothers and cousin as they set off for Wallingford.
The trek took the better part of six hours. No one sang. Rodrick assumed the men’s thoughts were on the looming battle, as his were. But the sign he’d been granted gave him hope. He would survive and return to wed Swan.
Their father and Leicester spent the better part of the last hour of the journey preparing them for their meeting on the morrow with Prince Henry Plantagenet.
“Remember,” Robert reminded them, “Henry was only sixteen when he landed on the shores of Devon and declared himself leader of the Angevin cause after his mother’s retirement. She had filled his head with the notion that the throne of England was his birthright and even at such a tender age he burned with the fervor of his mission.”
“I was told he doesn’t speak English,” William said.
Leicester chewed on his lower lip. “Non, but he understands our language. I followed him as he traveled throughout the Midlands this past spring campaigning to convince people of his cause. Instead of ravaging lands, he held court and invited nobles to come in peace. Rather than burning crops, he issued charters guaranteeing our land rights in England and Normandie.”
Rodrick’s father continued. “When he was nine his mother had him brough
t to England, before her escape from Oxford. He studied in Bristol for fifteen months and met the famous astronomer and mathematician, Adelard of Bath who dedicated a treatise on the astrolabe to him, so impressed was he with the young man’s learning.”
“But he returned to Normandie,” young Stephen observed.
“He did,” Leicester confirmed. “England was a dangerous place with his mother and King Stephen chasing each other from town to town and from castle to castle. And his father wanted him back in Normandie to aid in his campaign to claim the duchy.
“He’s an odd looking young man, Norman blood from his mother, Saxon from his grandmother and Angevin from his father. But beware of his temper. He can change in seconds from good humor to fierce anger.
“He’s a keen rider, often galloping off at breakneck speed. He’s been involved in his father’s military campaigns and political maneuverings since he was eleven. Geoffrey taught him how to conduct business and war in a treacherous land.”
“Sounds like the right person for the job of king in this troubled country,” Rodrick observed.
Standing in the royal pavilion with the Montbryces and a dozen other barons, Bronson peered over Gallien’s shoulder to study Henry FitzEmpress Plantagenet who sat upon a wooden camp stool, meaty legs splayed, hands on hips.
He pressed his knuckles to his mouth as a yawn threatened. They’d been roused at dawn and summoned. Sleep on the road had been fitful at best, especially after a dream of standing naked by the King Stone near Chipping Norton. He’d spent most of the final leg of the journey trying to recall other details of the unsettling dream.
In the camp at Wallingford sleep had been impossible. With a massive force already assembled, they’d had scant space in which to pitch their tents. He and his cousins had been forced to share their accommodations with several other loudly snoring knights. There seemed to be activity of one form or another going on all night. King Stephen’s army was close at hand outside the walls of the beleaguered town. The reek of smoke from campfires over which game had been roasted earlier filled the air.
Leicester had been right—odd-looking was a good way to describe the Plantagenet prince. He had a large, round head. His ruddy face was covered in freckles. He was broad and square in the chest, his arms strong and powerful. Grey eyes had widened when their party first entered the pavilion. Bronson wasn’t certain but he thought the prince nodded at him while tapping his own red hair.
“This land is war-weary,” Henry announced to no one in particular in an unexpectedly harsh and strident voice. “Oncle Stephen and I have sat here for days on end, facing each other outside Wallingford, neither wanting a clash of arms. What’s to be done?”
Leicester and another man stepped forward. Bronson assumed from their resemblance this must be Robert’s twin, Waleran.
Leicester cleared his throat. “My prince, if I may be so bold, there is one thing the people of England resent more than anything else in this senseless conflict. They despise and fear the foreign mercenaries who have torn their land apart. We urge you to send home your foreign soldiers as a sign to your people.”
The prince reddened further and he thrust his neck forward from his shoulders. Neither Robert nor Waleran flinched, though Bronson feared one of the famous Plantagenet rages was about to be unleashed on them.
“You are not the first to suggest this, Robert of Leicester, and I have already given orders for five hundred of my hired men to be sent back across the Narrow Sea.”
Bronson noticed Gallien’s rigid spine relax.
Leicester and Waleran bowed their heads in acknowledgment of the concession.
The prince grinned, slapping his thigh. “Not all the tidings are dire. I have already begun negotiations with Stephen through Archbishop Theobald and Bishop Henry of Winchester. Many barons have come over to our side since my triumphant tour of the Midlands. I am pleased beyond measure to see the Montbryces here.”
Gallien and his sons bowed deeply.
“And a cousin from Northumbria, if I’m not mistaken.”
Bronson bowed his head. How had the would-be king known that?
“Later, when we are done with this siege, you and I must discuss the situation in the north, Bronson FitzRam.”
People turned to see who this unknown person was the prince knew by name. Gallien too looked back over his shoulder, his smile full of pride.
The prince came to his feet. “Good barons of England. I sense the end is near.”
Bronson doubted he was the only one who hoped the prince meant the end of the conflict.
Glad Tidings
A fortnight after the men’s departure, Grace and Swan were in the weaving shed. Grace was explaining warp and weft and the use of shuttles and heddles. Swan feigned interest.
Tybaut bustled in, a sweating messenger in tow. Grace’s heart stopped for a moment when she recognised him as an Ellesmere man who had obviously ridden hard. He bent the knee before them. She gripped Swan’s hand as the color drained from her cousin’s face. “What tidings, Rolf de Grise?”
Rolf licked his lips, still panting. “Glad tidings, milady. King Stephen and Prince Henry have settled upon a truce.”
Swan’s fingernails dug into her flesh. “Without a battle?”
The messenger smiled, handing her a parchment. “Aye, milady. The earl sent word.”
With trembling hands she unfurled the document, recognizing the hand of the scribe who had accompanied her father. She read the message out loud.
“The king marched a splendid army out to meet the prince, but what happened at Malmesbury was repeated. Fellow countrymen shrank from a conflict that would likely mean the complete desolation of our beloved England. Everyone recognised victory for one side or the other would mean massive land confiscations and continued bitter divisions. Stephen’s army refused to fight.”
Swan swayed, grasping for the wooden loom.
“The king and the prince had a conference alone together, across a small stream, about making a lasting peace.”
Grace crumpled the parchment to her breast. “Praise be to the saints. They have woken up at last.”
“But did Stephen acknowledge Henry as his heir?” Swan asked, her eyes welling with tears.
Grace scanned the creased parchment once more. “Father writes that the terms of peace are obvious to everyone. Stephen will have to recognize Henry as his heir.”
Swan grabbed the parchment. “But what of Prince Eustace?”
Swan had never been a good student. Sitting still while the monkish tutors her father provided for all his children droned on had been torture. As a child she never understood the purpose of learning to read. She was elated that she grasped most of the missive as her eyes danced over the symbols. At first, she thought she had misunderstood, but then she laughed out loud, gripping the parchment.
“You’ll tear it,” Grace admonished, frowning sternly. “What is amusing?”
Swan inhaled deeply. “Eustace is dead.”
Grace stared.
Relishing the moment of smugness—she knew something Grace didn’t—she paused before continuing slowly. “Angered by his father’s truce with Henry, he set about raping and pillaging again. He fell ill one afternoon and was dead by nightfall.”
Only the sound of the smiling messenger’s breathing disturbed the silence as both women stared at the document. There was no mention of the cause of Eustace’s death, and Swan wondered if she dared give voice to what she supposed many suspected.
Poison?
Grace looked at her. “Rotten food perhaps?”
“Probably,” she murmured.
Signs And Warnings
“You’re not setting a good example for our younger brother,” Rodrick yelled at William over the din of celebration, wishing they had chosen a seat further away from the musicians playing shawms and hurdy-gurdies.
William tightened his grip on the waist of the village wench on his lap in the overcrowded hall of Wallingford Castle and laugh
ed. “The people are relieved we’re here, especially the women. I am merely taking advantage of their hospitality. Because you’ve sworn off the fairer sex doesn’t mean—”
Rodrick banged the table with his fist, sending ale slopping over the lip of his tankard. “I haven’t sworn off women. I consider myself betrothed to Swan and I don’t intend to betray her with any of these doxies.”
The wench giggled and thrust out her ample bosom as William nuzzled her neck, both apparently oblivious to the insult Rodrick had offered.
His brother would soon celebrate twenty years, an age when young men’s thoughts often turned to matrimony. He supposed he shouldn’t judge William too harshly. After all, he hadn’t given a thought to marriage, despite the entreaties of his parents, until Swan had come along. And William didn’t have the responsibility of the earldom, unless Rodrick fell. Grace would make a better job of running Ellesmere than William, but sadly she would never be given the chance.
He wondered idly what would happen if he and his two brothers died in battle. Perhaps Ellesmere would devolve to his father’s brother, but Étienne had no children of his own and lived with his long time paramour Tandine. Mayhap the titular head of the family, Comte Alexandre, might decide Ellesmere should go to his son, Barr, or to his brother, Romain. Whatever happened in such dire circumstances would lead to dissension within the family, and unity had ensured the survival and prosperity of Montbryce family when others had fallen beneath the weight of political intrigue.
Dragging his thoughts back to the present, he eyed young Stephen at the other side of the hall, carousing with a group of rowdy knights, enticing a young lass onto his lap. “Be careful, William, not to sow any wild oats. Papa won’t be happy if you get any of these women with child. It’s frustrating being stuck here, but—”
William leaned close to Rodrick’s ear, grinning broadly. “Don’t worry,” he whispered.
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