A Knight's Tale: Kenilworth

by Gabriella West

  A Knight’s Tale: Kenilworth

  by

  Gabriella West

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2017 by Gabriella West

  (v.1.0)

  Cover design by Angela Haddon at www.AngelaHaddon.com

  Love is the flower of life, and blossoms unexpectedly and without law, and must be plucked where it is found, and enjoyed for the brief hour of its duration.

  —D.H. Lawrence

  Chapter 1

  England, 1260

  I grew up near Kenilworth, a small town in the county of Warwick. It was in the middle of the green month of May that Richard de Havering, Earl Simon de Montfort’s steward, rapped on our manor door with a big stick. I had glimpsed him from afar for the past couple of years as he rode over to collect the annual rents from my lady mother, Alice. When my father was alive he had attended the joyous Christmas revels at Kenilworth Castle, where the Montforts lived. I had been told about them, but by the time I was old enough to go with him, Father had died.

  Sir Richard was coming to collect me. At fourteen years of age, rather late to start, I was bound for the castle, to learn the life of a squire in preparation for knighthood, as my father had wished. It helped that my mother had recently remarried, and our house and lands were now in the possession of her new husband, Sir John, as the laws dictated.

  During the beginning of our journey, I chatted politely to Sir Richard. As we neared the castle walls, though, which seemed to glow with a rosy hue in the sun, I fell silent.

  “Don’t be afraid, boy,” Sir Richard said.

  I was more awed than afraid at that moment. Instead of a moat, there was a lake surrounding the castle, vast, calm, peaceful, with two white swans floating on it. Oddly, they were followed by four little dark cygnets. “That’s the Great Mere,” Sir Richard told me. “Keeps attackers at a distance. This is a very well-defended castle, you know. It was built more than a hundred years ago and then reinforced by King John, the present king’s father.”

  The present king was King Henry III, that I knew, and his youngest sister, Eleanor, was the lady of this castle. It had been granted to her and her second husband, Simon de Montfort, around fifteen years previously, in the early years of their marriage. Now the Montforts had six children, five sons and a daughter. I would see the sons in the Great Hall; I would probably serve them, train with them, and attend to their horses.

  “Will they know who I am, up at the castle?” I asked. It bothered me that I would have to introduce myself, that they might see me as a scullery boy.

  “Just mention your father’s name,” Sir Richard said. “You are William Talbot, son of Geoffrey, a faithful vassal of Earl Simon.”

  Will I be well treated here, was what I wanted to ask him. But I bit my tongue, because it sounded fearful and peevish. I was an only child and had rarely played with boys my own age. If I had been more bookish, I might have been sent to the friars in Coventry to become a scholar or a clerk, but my parents had not pushed me in that direction and I’d not been drawn to it. I was active, strong, a good horseman. My eyesight was excellent. But I was also curious and, in my mother’s words, sweet-tempered. “You expect the best of everyone, child,” she’d always said.

  We clattered up a long, narrow bridge that led to the outer castle walls. The sun was shining on the reddish facade and I gazed up at the tall sandstone keep. My father had described it many a time. Most castles were gray and grim, like Warwick Castle, not far away, which I’d glimpsed once, but Kenilworth had a warm beauty, a charm.

  The portcullis drew up (’twas natural, since we were being watched by the guards whose job it was to man the walls) and Sir Richard and I trotted through the gate. He placed a protective hand on my shoulder, this gray-haired man of my father’s age. He would have been fifty or so, I see now, looking back as I do from the same age he was then. His body was still vigorous, but he seemed aged to me.

  I smiled at him, which caused him to look slightly taken aback at my familiarity.

  “I promised your father I’d deliver you to Kenilworth,” he said gruffly. “But from here on, it’s your job, boy. To prove yourself, to show your worth to your masters. Indeed, you may not see me for another year. But I’ll be watching out to see how you do.”

  He clapped me once more on the shoulder and dismounted onto a wooden block that was provided for him by a groom. I slid off my own smaller horse, Lucy, a chestnut mare, not waiting for any assistance, should any be offered. I clutched the leather traveling bag my mother had given me and awaited further orders.

  “His horse will go in the stables,” Sir Richard said to the groom. “In case he has to go back home for some reason, it’s better to keep the animal here. Don’t worry, she’ll be well kept.”

  The man nodded silently and led Lucy away.

  There was constant, bewildering movement within the walls as I looked around, people calling to each other, windows opening and closing. The kitchens must be close, because I could smell the aroma of roast meats. I also smelled the kitchen fires. But the courtyard was oddly bare.

  Sir Richard pointed to an opening in the wall. “There’s a staircase inside there. Go up, and you’ll be on the first floor, where the Great Hall is, and there should be a solar there for you. You’ll have to share with another lad, I forget his name.”

  “A solar?” I repeated.

  “Yes, a solar, a bedchamber,” he said impatiently, looking around. “Ah, good,” he said, as another man approached with a tankard of ale for Sir Richard. The servants wore aprons, I noticed, both men and women. They were neatly dressed and polite, I would discover in the days to come, unlike the knights, both young and old, who were rowdy and loud.

  “Bring some ale for my young friend here,” Sir Richard told the man, who scurried away.

  “Nay, sir, there’s no need,” I told him, for I was not used to ale. The water in our well was pure enough, and I sometimes drank a little red wine with dinner.

  “You’ll want to fit in with the others, won’t you?” he said as if it was obvious. “Might as well start now.”

  The serving man returned and I drank from the pewter tankard until Sir Richard appeared satisfied. I wiped my mouth rather uncertainly.

  “There. Good. Well, I must get on. Just go up the inside stairs, as I said, and you’ll find yourself in the Great Hall, where some woman of the household will be there to assist you.”

  He mounted again, and I watched rather incredulously as Sir Richard rode away through the open gate.

  “He’s a busy man,” a curly-haired boy of my own age said, appearing at my elbow. “Who’re you?”

  “I—Will Talbot. My father was Geoffrey Talbot,” I stammered.

  “Will. I’m Thomas Despenser. You’re a squire too?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, what is it? Cat got your tongue?”

  “No, it’s just...” I looked around. “I don’t have any idea where to go.”

  “He told you to go up the stairs, didn’t he? That’s the way to get inside this place. I’ll show you.”

  Thomas wore a tunic and bright scarlet leggings. I assumed as I followed him up some winding stone stairs that I would probably be sharing a room with him, most likely sleeping in the same bed. The thought didn’t alarm me, and I was glad he was friendly, but I felt watchful.

  The dark stairway opened out into a beautiful long room with a massive fireplace at one end and two trestle tables covered in white cloth. This would have been the room my father saw every Christmas. I looked around in awe at the thickly woven wall hangings, more fancy than any I had seen, depicting ladies and unicorns and battle scenes. The floor was covered in rushes. It was deliciously cool after the he
at of the day outside. No doubt in winter it would be freezing, but then there would be a roaring fire.

  “Stop dreaming,” Thomas said, nudging me. “We sit at the lower table, you know. The family sits at the high one, nearest the fire. The round one.”

  He smiled, and I smiled rather awkwardly back.

  Since we were alone in the room, I whispered, “Are they good people?”

  He grinned. “Aye. Henry and Simon in particular, the two older sons, they’re able fighters. You’ll see a lot of them. Earl Simon and Lady Eleanor travel around a lot. They’re gone now, in Paris. About ten years ago they spent most of their time in France. Earl Simon was seneschal of Gascony then, at the King’s command.”

  This information rolled off his tongue proudly. I felt dazed.

  A comely damsel of perhaps sixteen approached, her brown hair neatly tucked under a cap.

  “This is Christiana de Craiwell,” Thomas said. “She serves the Lady Eleanor.”

  “I’m Will,” I told her.

  She smiled. “I can bring you to your solar.”

  “You’d better tell him who he’s with,” Thomas muttered.

  “You’ll be with Stephen,” Christiana said, lowering her voice. “He’s...”

  “The chaplain’s clerk!” Thomas said in disgust.

  “Now, Thomas.” The girl’s voice was cool. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “There wouldn’t be anything wrong if he was more normal.” A sneer tightened Thomas’s features. “But he’s not, and we all have to suffer his foreign ways.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with him,” Christiana said stoutly.

  “You don’t think so,” Thomas told her, “because you’re a girl.”

  It was an argument they had probably had a few times. And I could see how fond he was of her as they stood close together, bickering. Meanwhile, from the other end of the room, a boy approached.

  He seemed to float through the room towards me. The tall windows were letting in golden slants of sunlight, and the sun flashed on his blond hair as he approached. His paleness was in marked contrast to Thomas’s tanned skin; he was also very slender.

  He happened to have my mother’s coloring, along with her pale blue eyes. My father had passed down to me his brown, shaggy hair and blue-green eyes, though my own hair was more of a healthy mop. I ran my hand through it in a nervous gesture. This was the boy, then, that I was going to be sharing a chamber with? He seemed older than me. He probably was, I guessed, but not by more than a year.

  For some reason my breath caught in my throat. I waited for the couple by my side to introduce me. They said nothing.

  “Are you Will?” Stephen said, as he got closer. There was a sort of smile in his voice that marked him out as different from the other two I stood with, more of an adult.

  I nodded.

  “Stephen.” He held out his hand and I took it. I expected it to be cold and clammy, but in fact it was warmer than mine, and he gave my hand a good squeeze.

  “Just as we were speaking about him. I’ll see you later, Will,” Thomas said over his shoulder as he strode away. Christiana exchanged a polite smile with Stephen and hurried after him.

  I was glad they were gone. It was difficult for me to understand the way they treated him, and I didn’t want him to see me as part of a group who excluded him. But I wasn’t quite sure what to do next, either, so I hoped he would take the lead.

  Which he did. His English was perfect, but he spoke with an odd, slightly lilting accent that seemed as if it wanted to break into French any minute. So that was what Thomas had meant by foreign, I supposed. Yet Earl Simon himself was of French birth, and no one held that against him...

  “Come this way,” Stephen said. His walk was graceful, fluid, but I saw what Thomas meant. He seemed more like a courtier than anyone I had ever met, fit to be at a royal court. This was lavish enough, but not quite the place for him. I wondered how he had come to be here.

  “How long have you been at Kenilworth?” I asked, clearing my throat. My words seemed blunt compared to his.

  “Oh...” Stephen seemed to consider this as he led me through a doorway at the top of the room, beside the fireplace. “A long time. Earl Simon brought me back from France around ten years ago, after one of his campaigns.”

  “You are an orphan?” I blurted it out and then stopped to think how it must have sounded. “I’m sorry, I just assumed...”

  “Yes, an orphan.” He turned to face me and we stood close together in a little passageway. “So I’m told.”

  I could feel his breath on my face. It was actually sweet, as if he’d been chewing mint, which he probably did, I thought. Maybe they all did that here... I was conscious that my own breath no doubt stank of ale, and that I was sweaty from the ride.

  “We sleep here,” he said, turning again, gesturing to a stout door that swung open to reveal a little room, the walls whitewashed, with one narrow slit as a window. He showed me how the door bolted from the inside.

  “So there’s no way out,” I mused.

  “Except the door. That’s right,” he said.

  A shaft of light from the window shone on the flagstones, which were covered sparsely with rushes. A simple wooden pallet, topped by a straw mattress and bolster, lay in each corner. I spotted two chamber pots and a deep cedar clothes chest, which we would share, I supposed. It was more like a monk’s cell, or what I imagined that to be, than I’d expected.

  “They had one proper bed in here years ago, but then someone became sick...” he murmured. “I’ve not had a chamber-mate for the whole time I’ve been here, though.”

  “I wonder why they changed it now?” I asked, lowering my bag onto the bed that was clearly mine. Then I sat down myself.

  “Don’t know,” he answered. “Perhaps because the room is so small, they didn’t fill it...”

  “Oh,” I said, worried that he might have preferred to stay alone.

  “No, no,” he said quickly. “Don’t misunderstand. I’m glad to have you.” He curled up on his bed, still looking at me. “It’s lonely.”

  His smile was unexpected and disarming. I smiled back, since the way he talked to me actually made me feel more comfortable than I’d felt when the other men, Sir Richard and Thomas, had spoken to me. His friendliness seemed more genuine, perhaps. Deeper.

  “I’ve never met a French lad,” I said. “Is the name Stephen used over there too?”

  “It is,” he said. “Etienne is what we say, or Stephane.”

  “Which do you prefer?” I asked.

  He thought. “I don’t know. I don’t remember what my parents called me, I mean, I don’t remember their voices, speaking to me. But I think Etienne is probably the name I was christened with.”

  He looked down rather shyly, and I blurted out, “My father is dead too.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” After a moment, he asked, “What did he die of?”

  “Smallpox.” As I said it, the last dreadful image of my father on his deathbed three years previously passed through my mind, and I grimaced. “My mother caught it too. She survived. I nursed her through it.”

  “You must be very brave,” he whispered.

  And that, I supposed, was what Thomas meant by not normal. Because even I knew that it was unusual for a boy to say that to another. Yes, his manner seemed more like a girl in some ways. I could see how he could be tremendously flattering.

  I gulped. “I... don’t know about that. It was my mother. The servants were afraid to come near. But I didn’t catch it. I think they thought we were all going to die...”

  He gazed at me intently. “I’m terrified of it. Smallpox. My face being marred.”

  I almost laughed. “You shouldn’t say that sort of thing, you know. Admit that.”

  “I know,” he murmured. “But it’s true, and perhaps you won’t judge me.”

  “I won’t judge you,” I said. “Would you like to come see Lucy, my mare?”

  He gave me a surprise
d look and his face brightened. “Yes, of course.”

  ***

  I didn’t know if he liked them, horses, and this was a test that he passed with flying colors. As I watched him feed Lucy a carrot, his hand up close to her teeth, I wondered if there was anything he did that wasn’t graceful, deft.

  “You must ride, then,” I said at his elbow.

  “A little. I like it, when I get the chance.”

  “Do you dance too?” I teased. He regarded me oddly.

  “You seem like a courtier. You seem like you would dance.”

  He said nothing for a moment. Then, “The women are taught to dance here. Not the men.”

  Lucy stood still while I stroked her ears. “Good girl,” I told her.

  “You can come see her whenever you miss home,” Stephen said quietly.

  “I hope I will be too busy to miss it,” I mused. I didn’t feel like telling him about my mother’s new husband, Sir John, how things had changed so dramatically for the worse since he had appeared in our lives. It was something I was not able to put into words, even for myself.

  And she was with child, her belly already swollen.

  “Is your mother dark, like you?” Stephen asked.

  “No, she’s fair.”

  Like you, I almost said. It was on the tip of my tongue. We stood there side by side in the quiet, warm stable smelling of hay and dust, our shoulders almost touching.

  There was one good thing about this new life, I thought: I would never tire of his company.

  Chapter 2

  The Great Hall was where Stephen and I were first parted. He sat across the table from me, which seemed far away because of the table’s width, next to an older man with a bald pate—a tonsure, I believe it was called—who glanced at me with a cool, dismissive look. But sharply, I thought.

  Thomas elbowed me. “That’s the chaplain, Michael of Coventry. You don’t have to worry about him, but he likes to keep Stephen under his wing.”