The Stone Rose

by Carol Townend

  Izabel listened, and the blood drained steadily from her withered cheeks as Gwenn’s tale drew to its appalling conclusion.

  ‘But why should anyone want you stoned?’

  ‘They want to frighten me, Maman,’ Yolande said, coming down the stairs. Katarin was balanced on one hip.

  ‘You, Mama?’ This from Raymond.

  Nodding, Yolande set her youngest down and put a gentle forefinger to the congealing blood on her son’s temple. She looked immeasurably sad.

  ‘But why, Mama?’

  A man had followed Yolande downstairs. He stood in the doorway listening. The man was upstanding. He had a young-looking body, fit and strong, but the lines around his eyes and the grey strands which threaded through both hair and moustache betrayed him to be in his early forties. ‘Your kinsman, Count François de Roncier’s been sowing seeds, if I judge it aright,’ he said tersely.

  Gwenn’s head shot up, and she stared into dark brown eyes that mirrored her own. The eyes were angry, burning eyes, like a banked-down fire which was likely to flare up at the slightest draught. ‘Sir Jean!’ Climbing to her feet, Gwenn made a valiant attempt to curtsy, her legs wobbling. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I...I didn’t mean to bring them here.’

  Jean St Clair put his hands on his daughter’s shoulders and smiled gently at her. ‘Don’t apologise, Gwenn. Where else would you come but to your home?’

  Gwenn realised his fury was not directed at her but at those who might have harmed her, and at himself for not foreseeing this. It had gone ominously quiet in the street.

  ‘Shouldn’t they have got in by now, sir? I thought they would have had the door down in no time, they were baying for blood. What’s keeping them?’

  The knight took Gwenn’s elbow and steered her to the window. When he reached for the shutter, she flinched and strained back. ‘All’s well, Gwenn,’ he soothed, and flung back the shutter. ‘I have men out there. Look. No one’s going to break in.’

  Four men-at-arms wearing St Clair’s red and green colours ranged across the street. Their tunics might be shamefully moth-eaten, the dyes might be faded, but the March sunlight sparkled on carefully polished steel. Facing them, at a distance of not more than two yards, was the crowd. They were silent, and now that they had been robbed of their prey, they looked sullen. The heat had run out of them like water from a sieve. Some stood awkwardly, guilt etched into their features, while others sneaked away, shamefaced.

  ‘See, Gwenn, how four can hold back an army,’ St Clair said with a tight little smile.

  Yolande came across and took her daughter in her arms. ‘It’s over. Over and done with.’

  ‘Is it, ma mère?’ Raymond murmured.

  Yolande eyed Izabel. ‘Maman, please take the children upstairs. There’s water in the ewer. They’ve mud in their hair, and Raymond’s cheek needs attending.’

  ‘It’s not mud, Mama,’ Raymond said. ‘Can’t you smell it? It’s fish entrails and horse-sh–’

  Izabel’s age-spotted fingers stopped his mouth. ‘Hush, Raymond. Your mother’s in the right. You look like a pair of beggars. Upstairs with you both.’ She held her hand to Katarin, and the child scurried towards her.

  Raymond thrust out a lip above which a fuzz of adolescent hair was evident. ‘I’m not a child. I’m fifteen.’ Nonetheless he permitted his grandmother to shepherd him towards the stairs. Gwenn followed.

  Yolande kept up the calm pretence until her mother and children were out of earshot. ‘How could you, Jean? How could you? You keep your ears to the ground. You must have got wind of what de Roncier was planning. You know what Gwenn’s like. Why did you not warn me to keep a particularly sharp eye on her?’

  Jean flushed. ‘Father Jerome keeps a sword where other men keep their tongues. I did warn you–’

  ‘Warn me?’ Yolande’s voice cracked. ‘All you said was that if you were me you wouldn’t let her fill her ears with the monk’s nonsense. You didn’t tell me our daughter would be risking her life if she ventured onto the streets!’

  Jean moved towards Yolande, hand outstretched. ‘Yolande, I’m sorry. I swear I didn’t realise the extent–’

  Yolande batted the hand away. ‘Liar! You knew. You suspected something was going to happen. Why else bring your men today?’ She read her lover’s silence as guilt. ‘Holy Mother, you did know!’

  ‘No. No. I misread the signs.’

  Yolande took a pace or two round the chamber while she fought for calm. ‘We shall have to leave.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Leave.’

  ‘But Yolande–’

  She spun round, green skirts swirling. ‘I insist, Jean. The sooner the better. I won’t stay in a town where the people terrorise thirteen-year-old girls!’ Glaring at the knight, and gripped with a clear, cold fury, Yolande wondered whether she could persuade him to take them to his manor at Kermaria, a small hamlet to the west of Vannes. She had put up with the little town house while her family had been safe, but now that the Benedictine had infected all Vannes with virtue, that had changed. She swallowed down her bile, wise enough to realise that she did not want Jean on the defensive. An enraged man never gave a woman anything. ‘I’ve had enough of this life,’ she said, testing the waters. ‘You have to choose.’

  ‘Choose?’

  Yolande ground her teeth. Those innocent brown eyes looked warm as melted honey, but they didn’t blind her for a moment. Her lover was playing for time. ‘You know what I mean. If you don’t decide soon, by the Rood I’ll decide for you!’ She had always been generous with her love, never withholding an ounce of it from Jean, despite the fact that he had never married her as he had promised. It was not that Yolande questioned his love for her. No, she was certain of that, but she had never known whether his love was out-ranked by his ambition. It was vaulting ambition that had kept him from marrying her all these years. She must play the concubine while he affected to chase after a Frenchwoman. He had it all planned out. He had maintained that he never intended to marry Louise Foucard and Yolande had believed him. He would never have married the Foucard woman, not while marrying Yolande Herevi might bring him better gains. If Izabel’s old claim to the family lands was ever ratified, Yolande Herevi would be worth her weight in gold. As ever, Jean kept his feet in two camps.

  He jerked his grizzled head towards the ceiling. ‘Do the children know?’

  ‘Know what? That they’re yours? That they’re bastards,’ her lover flinched, ‘and that, though you swore you’d marry me years ago, you’ve not honoured that promise? You made me what I am, Jean, and now...now I begin to think you’re ashamed of me.’

  Jean reached out a finger and gently touched her cheek. ‘Not ashamed, love, never that. Politics has dictated my actions. The time has not been ripe.’ Jean lowered his eyes to stare at the ring which adorned the little finger of his left hand. ‘If only Waldin would retire from the lists.’

  ‘Your brother?’ Yolande snorted. ‘The moon will turn green before that happens. Everyone knows how the great tourney champion Waldin St Clair is married to the lists. He’ll not leave the circuit till age or infirmity drive him away.’

  Mournfully, Jean agreed, ‘I know.’ He brightened, ‘but when he does retire we could use his name to drum up support. Men might not like to ally themselves with a poor knight, but with Waldin at our side...’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Yolande murmured softly, ‘I wonder if you are afraid.’

  Jean shot her a sharp look, bridling, but her smile had disarmed him, as she hoped it would. To Yolande, and Yolande alone, Jean St Clair could confess to fear. His shoulders drooped. ‘Who would not be afraid?’ He smiled. ‘As a mere knight I’ve never had the manpower to uphold our claim to your mother’s inheritance. De Roncier would have wiped us out before we had begun. No, love, I believed it to be safer for you and the children if he thought you were no threat. As my mistress you pose no threat. As a wife who could provide me with a legitimate male heir, an heir to those lands of your mother’s, it becomes
altogether a different kettle of fish.’

  ‘So I believed, until today.’ Yolande drifted away from him. ‘Have you heard the latest gossip concerning your Frenchwoman?’

  ‘La belle Louise?’ He grinned and smoothed his greying moustache. ‘You’re not jealous? I thought you understood I’ve been ingratiating myself with her family in order to lull de Roncier’s suspicions. If he believes I am considering an alliance with the French, he’d not harm you. Come, sweet. Don’t be angry. You know I’ll never marry her.’ He directed a smile she recognised as one of his best at her.

  ‘Why do you think he took it into his head to loose his dogs on Gwenn?’ Yolande asked, eyeing him closely.

  ‘I’m blessed if I know.’

  ‘Perhaps he heard that Louise has got tired of waiting and has married another.’ That was the rumour that was flying round the town.

  He stared, moustache drooping, face ludicrous with dismay.

  Yolande had to laugh. ‘It never occurred to you did it? You never stopped to think that your French flower might not wait for ever. You’ve been dangling her on a string for years. Of course, it might not be true, but my source was good.’

  ‘Source?’

  ‘Father Mark, who married her.’

  Jean’s eyes looked cloudy and confused. ‘Christ, I go away for a week’s hunting and look what happens. She kept that dark. I thought she’d wait.’

  ‘Such arrogance needs humbling, my love.’

  ‘So that’s why he moved today,’ Jean murmured.

  ‘Don’t test my loyalty to the limit,’ Yolande said. ‘Don’t be certain I’ll wait forever. I, too, may get tired of waiting.’

  He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Nay, love. What of our ambitions?’

  ‘Our ambitions?’ Yolande knew her laugh was brittle. ‘The only ambition I have ever had is to be able to tell my children and my mother that I am your lawful wife. With all my heart I wish that our children were legitimate, but it would take a Papal decree to accomplish that.’

  ‘Do they know I’m their father?’

  ‘No. Aye. Oh, I don’t know. Jean, my life is becoming a tangle of lies and deceit. Raymond heard the townsfolk tattling – you can’t keep a fifteen year old boy in the dark – and I had to admit the truth to the boy.’

  Jean’s eyes were bleak. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘There must be an end to the lies. Take us to Kermaria.’

  ‘Kermaria?’ Yolande’s lover shook his head. ‘I’ve neglected it sadly. Kermaria’s a backwater.’

  ‘I’d live in hell if it meant my children would be safe! And my mother longs to leave Vannes. Izabel is conscious of great shame here. She has always hated it.’

  ‘I doubt she minds,’ Jean said with a flash of dark humour. ‘Shame is a cross your mother likes to bear. There’s something of the martyr in her.’

  ‘Jean!’

  ‘Believe me, she enjoys it.’

  ‘You say that because it suits you. You say that because you don’t want to take us.’

  ‘It’s no use your turning those green eyes on me,’ Jean said stiffly. ‘It’s not a time of my choosing.’

  ‘Not a time of your choosing!’ Yolande lost grip of her temper. ‘I’ve been waiting sixteen years for the time to be right! When will it be right, that’s what I want to know? When?’

  ‘It could spoil every–’

  ‘It could kill our children, if that thieving vulture strikes again!’ She saw Jean’s jaw harden.

  ‘Be reasonable, woman,’ he said, striking a fist against his thigh. ‘It’s for the best. Think of our children’s future.’

  ‘Our children’s future?’ Yolande spoke so quietly that Jean had to bend his head to hear her. ‘If you sacrifice any more of the present, they’ll have no future left.’

  Sighing, Jean draped an arm round her. ‘It won’t be for much longer. I’ll write to Waldin.’

  ‘Waldin? Pah! You’ve not been in touch for years.’

  ‘I’ll write,’ Jean insisted, ‘and enlist his aid. We were close before he left to fight his way through the tourneys. He may be a champion, but I don’t think he will resist a call to arms from his brother. Waldin will come home, and you, my love, will be forced to eat your scornful words. Soon we’ll be in a position to strike. Soon.’

  ‘And you’ll take us to Kermaria?’ If Jean refused her, Yolande would be forced to sell the gem and flee.

  The knight stared at her, brown eyes shielded, and Yolande stared back at him, balling her hands so that the nails dug into her palms. ‘Sometimes, Jean,’ she muttered, ‘I think that I hate you.’ She had come to the end of her tether.

  He capitulated. ‘Of course, my love, we’ll go to Kermaria.’

  Yolande closed her eyes, unaware that the intensity of her relief made her face haggard. ‘Thank the Lord.’ She let her head rest on Jean’s familiar shoulder. ‘I pray this tangle can be unravelled soon. I’m tired of living in fear. Our children have a right to be safe.’ Moving out of her lover’s arms, she crossed to the shutter and fastened it with a snap. She glanced up at the rafters; she could hear movement upstairs. ‘Jean, when shall I tell them we’re going?’

  He shrugged. ‘Whenever you like.’

  Yolande smiled.

  ***

  That evening, without consulting Izabel, Yolande decided to remove the diamond from its resting place in the cedar wood base of the Virgin.

  Gwenn’s ordeal had been a poignant reminder of the vulnerability of their position; and until her family was safely housed at Kermaria, Yolande was taking no chances. The gem was all the security she had, and she wanted it safely in her personal keeping. The jewel had once belonged to de Roncier’s grandmother, Andaine, and he might know of it. He might strike again.

  Waiting till her mother’s bedchamber was empty, Yolande crept in and twisted the wooden plinth from the statue. A leather pouch fell from the secret cavity. Opening the pouch, Yolande removed the gemstone and dropped it into the purse at her belt.

  There was a danger that Izabel might decide to look at the diamond, but Yolande had thought of that. She had a substitute in the pocket of her bliaud. It was a sunstone, or sailor’s stone, so named because pieces of quartz like it were once used in navigation. Its shape roughly resembled the gem’s. It would not bear close inspection, for the sunstone was cloudy and chipped – it had none of the sharp brilliance of the valuable jewel. But if her mother were to make an inspection, she would most likely to do so at night when there was less chance of Raymond or Gwenn discovering her. Weighing the sunstone in her hands, Yolande smiled with satisfaction. Its weight matched that of the real gem. Carefully, she put the sunstone in the pouch and tightened the strings. As long as Izabel didn’t look too closely, she might not remark on the difference. The exchange would give Yolande a little time, and would save her from lengthy and tedious explanations. There was little to be gained in alarming her mother with her fears. Once they reached Kermaria, Yolande would replace the real gem.

  Pushing the pouch into its neat hollow, Yolande re-fixed the base and returned the statue to the shelf in front of Izabel’s prie-dieu. Then she tiptoed from the chamber.

  Chapter Four

  Five miles outside Vannes, Count François de Roncier’s favourite residence glowed in the moonlight like a monstrous egg nestling on a wooded hilltop. Once part of the de Wirce patrimony, the castle was known as the Château Ivoire to the French-speaking section of the population. The name derived from the fact that an earlier lord, Dagobert de Wirce, had whitewashed every wall of his castle, inside and out. Keep, bailey wall, curtain wall – everything down to the last pebble had been painted white. ‘My château,’ Dagobert had declared, ‘will shine bright as a beacon. It will be visible for miles, and all who look upon it will be reminded of my authority. No one will dare to challenge me.’

  And now, though the ancient paint was cracked and peeling, and the wash was more grey than white, Château Ivoire still clung to its ancient name. A
different lord was master now, but when the moon floated full and bright in a clear, cloudless sky, the old grey walls continued to blaze their defiant challenge into the encircling darkness.

  The native Bretons had a less romantic name for the Count’s château – to them it was simply Huelgastel, or High Castle.

  The castle solar was lit by four flaring cressets. It was close on midnight, but the Dowager Countess, Marie de Roncier, had not retired. She sat before the stone fireplace, in the loose black garment she considered suitable for her newly widowed status. A tapestry warmed her knees. The mother of François, Marie had seen the old Count, her adored husband Robert, buried less than a month ago.

  Marie de Roncier was tired. She longed for the comfort and privacy of her bed, but she had a bone to pick with her son and was waiting up for him. Her vigil was a lonely one, for her daughter-in-law, Eleanor, and her granddaughter by her son’s first marriage, Arlette, had said their goodnights hours ago and she had only a tongue-tied young maid for company.

  The Countess was making a poor pretence at working on the tapestry. Always a slender woman, grief had wasted away what little flesh she had, and the hands that rested on the tapestry were skeleton thin. Notwithstanding, she kept her back as straight as a spear. Her head was as high and haughty as a queen’s. Marie de Roncier gazed at the world past a splendid beak of a nose, and her jet-black eyes glared with a habitual defiance that the years had done nothing to diminish. Only the red circles faintly rimming her eyes betrayed human weakness. She had been weeping, but the set of eyes and head were fierce enough to keep sympathy at bay. Sagging folds of skin covered her cheekbones; they had a bruised look to them, which even the wavering cresset lights could not obscure. Bitter lines were firmly etched about a pale, thin mouth. Marie de Roncier had the air of a woman who had not laughed in a century.

  Two iron firedogs held the burning logs in place in the great stone fireplace, preventing them from rolling onto the rush-covered floorboards. At the Countess’s side her maid, Lena, crouched on a stool. The girl was working on the tapestry despite the gloom. Being newly promoted from the laundry, she was in awe of her mistress. The tapestry, several yards long, was half worked. It depicted a hunting scene and bore the family coat of arms, of cinquefoils on argent in a circlet of black thorns. It had originally been destined for Marie de Roncier’s bedchamber, but now that her husband was gone, both bedchamber and tapestry must of course devolve to her son – and his Countess, Eleanor.