FireSong

by Roberta Gellis

  Now and again they passed through villages and towns and stopped while Aubery asked questions about the road ahead, but though they were in a town at dusk, they did not seek out an inn in which to stay. Fenice turned to look at the road behind several times after that, fearing they were pursued, but the road was empty as far as she could see. Later, it grew too dark to ride safely, and they stopped and dismounted again. Dully, Fenice wondered whether they were going to sleep in the open, but when the moon rose one of the men urged her to her feet and lifted her to the saddle, and they went on.

  By then Fenice was in a trance of fatigue so deep that her conscious mind was withdrawn. Only instinct kept her from toppling from the saddle, her hands clung to the pommel, her knees to the mare’s sides. Aware of weariness himself, Aubery looked at her from time to time. Had she wept or begged to rest, had she shown any sign of womanly weakness, the shame he felt at being taken captive by those he thought of as churls and then being rescued by a woman would have been abated. But Fenice, who had earlier watched him constantly, was too far gone to notice now. She stared straight ahead, and Aubery was stung to anger anew by the assumption that it was indignation that stiffened her spine.

  That she had a reason to be indignant only added guilt to Aubery’s frustrated rage. By now, however reluctantly, he had acknowledged that no matter how disgusting her disguise, it had taken great courage to have assumed it and walked into the stronghold of the enemy. But guilt is more painful than anger, and Aubery buried his under a rehearsal of every disadvantage that had arisen from Fenice’s meddling, only neglecting the results, that he was free and King Henry would soon know of the plight of his subjects.

  When the moon set, it became too dark to travel farther, even at the slow pace they had maintained, and they drew off the road into a small wood where drifts of fallen leaves and dry bracken could be found to soften and protect sleepers from the damp, cold ground. Fenice could barely walk when she was taken from her horse. She tottered to the heap of leaves to which she was led and was unconscious before she could compose her body in the most comfortable position. Seeing her huddled into a heap, Aubery thought her cold but too stubborn to complain.

  First he turned his back on her, but after a few minutes he grew worried. Tired and chilled, she might take sick…and die. He found the blanket in which his armor had been wrapped and covered her, waiting with what he would not acknowledge as hope for a murmur of thanks. But no response came, not even a cold acknowledgment or an angry rejection. Then, immediately, he was too wrapped in his own angry hurt to realize she had not been fully conscious for hours and was not at all aware of his protective gesture.

  Everyone was exhausted, for although the men were more accustomed to long rides than Fenice, they had been awake most of the previous night, too. However, among the nine men, only short periods of guard duty were necessary in the few hours until dawn when the growing light would make it possible to continue their journey. In fact, Aubery took the last watch himself and let the others sleep until the sun rose. They were not far from Fontevrault, he was sure, because they had passed Poitiers just before the gates closed. Had they been traveling in daylight, they would already have reached their destination, and it could not be more than a few miles farther.

  Aubery had stopped in Poitiers to make sure the king had passed through, and was given to understand that the English king had left four days earlier, after lodging only one night. From that information, Aubery could estimate that since they had not overtaken the royal party on the road, the king’s cortege would have arrived in Fontevrault at the most two days before and possibly only earlier the previous day. And although his news was urgent, Aubery knew it was not pleasant and would be even less pleasant delivered before the king was properly awake. Henry would be better able to decide what was best to be done if he had gone to mass and broken his fast, Aubery thought.

  He did not, of course, spend all his time thinking about the best time to deliver his message to the king. Hard as he tried, Aubery could not avoid thinking of his own troubles and of Fenice. It was not like her to hold a spite, he felt, and then resentfully acknowledged that she might feel this time that she had good reason to be angry. He could deny that his behavior was ungrateful. He could blame her for degrading herself and for an action he insisted to himself was as dangerous as it was disgusting, but he knew she might feel differently. Aubery had a strong desire to justify himself, to force Fenice to agree that she had been wrong. As a first step in that direction, which was also a first step on the road to forgiving her, admitting his debt to her, and valuing her more highly than anything in life or after it, Aubery went to wake her himself.

  The extra hour of sleep Aubery had permitted his party did Fenice little good. In a way, she might have been better off had they not stopped at all. She had had just enough rest to prohibit her from sinking again into the semiconscious state in which she had ridden the previous day. Moreover, her exhaustion had been so deep that she had not moved at all after she lay down. Now her body, which the primitive bedding of leaves and dead ferns could not protect completely, was bruised from its long contact with the cold ground and so stiff that any movement was agonizing.

  Totally blind with fatigue and pain, Fenice did not see it was her husband who had shaken her awake and then pulled her to her feet. She was aware of nothing beyond her agony and the necessity to go on in spite of it, which had fixed itself in her mind the preceding day. The sense of dire necessity combined crazily with her overwhelming feeling of worthlessness to produce the insane notion that she would simply be abandoned if she could not continue, so she turned her head aside to hide her tears and bit her lips to hold back the whimpers of pain that rose unbidden in her throat. Mistakenly taking the gesture for a rejection of him, Aubery thrust her toward a man-at-arms, told him to lift her to her mare, and went sullenly to his own horse.

  It was fortunate that the horses, which had no better fodder than the dry leaves and bracken on which the men slept, did not recover enough to produce a pace faster than a walk. In the first half hour, Fenice would have fallen off. As it was, she gave the men-at-arms behind her considerable anxiety by the way she swayed and teetered in the saddle. Since Aubery was ahead and too angry and stubborn to turn his head, he was not aware of her difficulties. And once the huge abbey of Fontevrault came into view, Aubery’s attention was fixed on the problem of obtaining an audience with the king.

  Fontevrault, Aubery realized, was to the abbey at Hurley, with which he was familiar and mistakenly equated it, as the huge royal palace of Westminster was to the modest keep of Marlowe. Here was no simple guesthouse where all gentlefolk were lodged alike, but a massive complex of buildings with special accommodations for abbots and bishops, for kings and queens, for lords, monks, clerks, merchants, commonfolk, and even for beggars, all with their separate oratories, dining halls, and kitchens. And huge as it was, it was plain that the abbey was filled to bursting, as was the town that surrounded it, for in addition to the large entourage that had come with Henry and Eleanor, every French nobleman in the area who could afford it had rushed to the abbey out of curiosity or hope of settling some business that the change of overlordship from England to France had left in limbo for more than ten years.

  Nonetheless the fears Aubery had of hours of argument and explanation to penetrate the seeming chaos did not materialize. The stewards and servants employed by the prioress of Fontevrault were accustomed to incursions by royalty or those with nearly equal power and sometimes greater pretensions than royalty. Moreover, there had been a stream of messengers arriving and departing, some who had followed Henry all the way from England, some from Prince Edward or the officers of his new court, some from the King of France, who sent gifts and warm words of welcome. When Aubery said he had urgent business with the king, a servant was dispatched at once to an official, who recognized Aubery’s name and had him brought in at once.

  Resentful as he was, Aubery did not forget Fenice or the tired men-at-
arms who had accompanied him on the grueling ride. He was so tired himself that he could have wept with relief when he was shown into a chamber where John Mansel came forward to greet him. Brushing aside the clerk’s horrified comments on his battered appearance, he said at once that comfort must be found for his wife, who had been riding since dawn the preceding day, and for the men with her, and only after Mansel’s own secretary had been dispatched to see to that did he begin his tale of the attack and imprisonment of the Earl of Warwick and other English gentlemen in Pons.

  As they rode and Fenice’s muscles were warmed by the action, her pain diminished and she was able to take notice of her surroundings. She was as surprised by the size of Fontevrault as Aubery had been. Because she knew it to be ruled by an abbess, she had somehow expected an establishment much like the one from which she had escaped. And then she realized how silly she had been. Fontevrault had been the favorite religious house of the Plantagenets since Alinor of Aquitaine. She lay here, as did her second husband, Henry II, and her favorite son, Richard Coeur de Lion. Many, many others had chosen to be in their august company, and Fontevrault had grown rich on the gifts of the living and the great legacies of the dead.

  It was as large as or larger than the palace in Burgos, Fenice thought, and with the thought came the realization that she would doubtless be brought to greet the queen and speak to her, even if her service as one of Eleanor’s ladies was not renewed. Memories of Eleanor’s kindness and Fenice’s desperate need to explain why she had done what she had done, which Aubery had never permitted her to do, seduced her into wondering for a few seconds whether she could appeal to the queen to intercede with Aubery for her. But almost as quickly as the notion came, Fenice rejected it, shuddering with horror at the idea of admitting she had worn a soil gatherer’s clothing and covered herself with human filth. And then a cold horror clutched her. Would Aubery betray her and tell?

  Although she was in a mood to believe any disaster that had not already befallen her would do so immediately, she soon rejected that fearful notion. Aubery might have lost whatever fondness he had for her, but it was clear he felt her degradation reflected shame on him. He would not betray her, she thought, though that was cold comfort, which grew colder when Mansel’s secretary came with a servant to lead the men-at-arms to quarters and he himself showed Fenice to the private apartments of the queen.

  Instead of thinking that it was a good sign that Eleanor would receive her and that it must have been Aubery’s thoughtfulness for her that sent a court official to escort her, Fenice leapt to the conclusion that the secretary had come for her because Aubery did not wish to see her or speak to her. She really knew that Aubery’s first duty was to speak to the king, but her heart would not accept that practical explanation, and from despair and fatigue she tottered only a step or two before giving up and sinking to the ground.

  Fenice was dimly aware of the secretary’s cry of distress and of a growing furor as he summoned help, but her total misery made her indifferent for once to the trouble she was causing others. She lay limp, eyes closed and unresponding, even when the queen bent over her, asking anxious questions of those who had carried her in. It was better this way, Fenice thought fuzzily. This way no one would ask her for explanations, and she remained unstirring and uncaring while the queen’s maids undressed her and laid her in a soft bed. A few minutes later she felt the stab of a knife as a vein in her forearm was opened to bleed her. The warm trickle of blood seemed to drain away whatever strength had kept her half-conscious, and she slipped into the restful, unthreatening dark.

  Meanwhile, Aubery had explained to Mansel what had happened in Pons. He did not conceal the carelessness of Warwick and his friends in simply loosing their men-at-arms on the town and agreed when Mansel asked if it was not likely that some of the other knights might have been equally indifferent. Nonetheless, Aubery pointed out, he had come to the conclusion that the attack at the feast had been planned in advance. From some of the remarks he had heard himself and from those reported to him by Warwick, Seagrave, Mauduit, and Philip Marmim, it seemed clear that the disturbances caused by the men-at-arms had been only an excuse, not a cause, for imprisoning the English.

  Mansel frowned. “The king will not like this,” he said sourly.

  “None of us liked it much either,” Aubery snapped in return.

  After a glance at Aubery’s face, one side of which was still swollen and showed a remarkable medley of green, yellow, blue, and maroon bruises, Mansel made an apologetic gesture. “I am sorry,” he said. “I only wish to warn you. Pons was a favorite city of my lord the king’s, before he lost Poitou to Louis in 1243. He will not wish to believe that the commune has so quickly and completely changed their professed love and loyalty as to attack deliberately a group of noblemen just because they were his vassals. Moreover, King Henry has been treated with great courtesy, even with loving kindness, by King Louis, who is doing all in his power to satisfy my lord the king’s every desire insofar as seeing France, so—”

  “Will you take me to King Henry or not?” Aubery asked.

  Mansel eyed him for a moment and then pointed out, “It was their own fault, you agreed with me. You were no member of their party. Can you not simply pretend you never met them? I can arrange—”

  “No,” Aubery interrupted. “I passed my word to inform the king of their plight. I have a message from Warwick and his seal ring to deliver to King Henry.”

  With a sigh and a helpless shrug of his shoulders, Mansel beckoned to a page, to whom he gave instructions in a low voice. He noticed that Aubery made no attempt to listen to his orders to the boy and grimaced slightly. It was another mark of Aubery’s intelligence and determination that he did not care what Mansel was saying. It showed he knew that Mansel could not really thwart him. Though of no particular importance himself, Aubery had many paths to the king, and if Mansel would not set him on one, he would find another to open a gate. Aubery’s message could be delayed but could not be prevented, and delay would only endanger Mansel himself without helping the situation.

  Aubery, however, was not thinking along those same lines. The clerk’s protest had given a warning that Aubery would not ignore. Aubery knew how easily King Henry could become deaf to what he did not choose to hear or, worse yet, how he could turn the anger he could not vent on the actual maker of trouble onto those who urged him to remedy it. Although Aubery had sworn no oath to Warwick and the others, he was bound by honor to inform Henry of their plight in such a way that the king would attempt to help them.

  Fortunately there was some delay. The king was with his half brothers, Guy and Geoffrey de Lusignan, and they insisted on finishing some private business before Aubery could be shown in. At another time that might have produced some resentment in Aubery, but in this case he was rather grateful. He was tired, and his mind was moving more slowly than usual, so he was glad of the interval to work out what he intended to say, taking into consideration the different reactions Henry might display. Aubery was, however, annoyed when he saw the Lusignans still seated near the king when he was finally received.

  Still, he did not see that the half brothers could be in any way involved in the problem of dealing with Pons, so he went ahead without altering what he had planned to say. The result of his earlier cogitations was that the story was much shorter. Aubery told only what had actually befallen him in Pons itself. He made no mention of his meeting with Warwick or of the lack of any attempt at control over their men-at-arms by Warwick and his friends. Aubery started with the mayor’s unsolicited invitation to the feast, described the attack by a large number of armed commoners on the unarmed guests, and ended with his escape, after which he presented the shirt on which Warwick had scrawled his plea for help and Warwick’s seal ring to authenticate the tale. Aubery was aware of Mansel’s eyes on him and was both grimly amused and somewhat worried about the clerk’s reaction to the way he had used the warning Mansel had given.

  Taking into consideration the col
or of Henry’s face and the violent exclamations the king had made from time to time during his narrative, Aubery thought it safe to cover himself by adding, “There are some matters I have not mentioned because—” He was relatively sure the king was too angry to ask for any details and he was right, for Henry interrupted him before he could finish his explanation.

  “I do not need to hear more,” Henry roared. “The treacherous scum! How dared they lay their hands on my gentlemen? I will see to their lessoning, I assure you, Sir Aubery.”

  “You see,” Guy de Lusignan put in, “it is as I have been telling you all along. The sweet words and gifts from Louis are no more than a sly delusion. The action of the commune of Pons shows his true feeling. Even while you are his guest, those under his protection show their contempt—”

  “No!” Aubery exclaimed. “No, my lord king, I am sure this is not so. I am sure that the commune of Pons is as eager to hide their crime from the King of France as from you.”

  Aubery had suddenly realized why Mansel had not wanted him to tell the king about Pons. Apparently Mansel wished to encourage Henry to accept the French king’s friendly gestures as being sincere, whereas the Lusignans wanted the king to think Louis’s accommodating offers were traps. Aubery knew nothing about Louis except what Alys had written to his mother and stepfather, who had shared Alys’s letters with him from the time she left England, but he knew more than he wanted about Henry’s greedy, pompous half brothers, and his contradiction of Lord Guy’s accusation had been instinctive.

  Lord Guy and Lord Geoffrey glared at Aubery so furiously that he almost regretted his interference, but the king’s expression showed eager interest rather than anger. “You have some reason for saying this?” he asked Aubery.

  “Certainly,” Aubery replied. “If King Louis had been involved, surely there would have been some trained men-at-arms and perhaps even a French captain among those who took us prisoner. I fought them. I can tell you there were only Poitevin townsmen. And another thing. They took away our safe conducts. That must have been done only so that they could say no man they took prisoner had a safe conduct, and by that claim defend themselves against Louis’s wrath if their deed were discovered.”