Innocent's Champion

by Meriel Fuller

  * * *

  Shielded by a heavily embroidered screen, Matilda sank deeper into the hot water, a small sigh of pleasure escaping her lips. She listened to the sounds of her sister’s maidservants, two of them, fussing around Katherine. They sounded like hens, clucking with their tongues, sympathising, commiserating, whilst they bustled and rustled around the chamber, placating her sister with their soothing words.

  Matilda leaned back in the wooden tub, the water swilling across her exhausted limbs, easing her muscles. Katherine had insisted that she take a bath, practically ripping the destroyed dress from her shoulders, and for once, Matilda had agreed with her. The hot water, dried rose petals scattered across the surface, was gradually soothing her frazzled nerves, calming her. In the corner, coals glowed in a charcoal brazier, sending out more heat, and she welcomed it, rolling her tired shoulders forwards. Through the glazed window, swallows, wings like black knife blades, sliced across the deepening blue. A bright fingernail of a new moon appeared in the sky through the leaded grid of the window, the herald of evening.

  There was enough daylight for her to return to Lilleshall, Matilda thought. That way she could meet with her bailiff this evening and make—

  The door to Katherine’s chamber crashed back on its hinges, swinging back against the wood-panelled wall.

  It was John.

  ‘Do you know who you’ve brought here, you stupid cow?’ he roared at his wife.

  ‘John! John? Whatever’s the matter with you?’ Katherine twisted up on to her side, half rising from her recumbent position on the feather mattress.

  Her husband plonked his portly girth on to the side of the bed, stuck his hands in his grizzled hair, distraught. ‘You’ve only gone and brought Henry of Lancaster into our home! Henry, Duke of Lancaster! Have you any idea who he is?’

  ‘I…er…’

  ‘No, you don’t, do you? Because you have no idea about anything!’ Clenching one fist, he knocked the side of Katherine’s head, not gently. ‘Because you have nothing up there, do you, my sweet one? Nothing at all, just sawdust.’

  Adrenaline thumping through her veins, blood rushing, Matilda rose quickly out of the water, grabbed at a voluminous chemise and pulled it swiftly over her head, down over her wet, bare body. She had no intention of John seeing her naked in her sister’s bathtub. The scum of soap adhered to her knees as she stepped out on to the curly sheep’s fleece that covered the bare floorboards and soaked up the wet trickles from her toes. Her breath snared; she knew what John was capable of, knew how he treated her sister when he was displeased. Catching up the thick, linen towel, she threw it over her shoulders, anxious that not an inch of flesh was on show for John to ogle at. She moved out from behind the screen, her unbound hair swinging in long, curling ropes down her back.

  John turned, squinted nastily at her. His top lip curled down into a sneer. ‘Ah, you! I want to talk to you, too! What were you thinking?’

  ‘We were attacked, John,’ Matilda explained, keeping her voice low and calm. She would not allow John to rile her. ‘Those men saved us. If they hadn’t come along, then the outcome might have been a lot worse. We had to thank them somehow.’

  He shook his head. ‘If it had been anyone else…’

  ‘I know, John,’ Matilda said, deflecting his attention away from her frightened sister, cowering back on the pillows with her eyes large, round, luminous with fear. ‘I know who they are. But they have no idea of your allegiances, where your loyalties lie. Keep quiet. Give them board and lodging for tonight, and by tomorrow morning, I’m certain they will be on their way.’

  ‘Spoken like a true diplomat,’ replied John. ‘Well, I praise the Lord that at least one sister has a head on her shoulders.’ He placed his tubby fingers flat on his bulging thighs, pressing down so that he rose from the bed, throwing a mocking glance down at his wife. Katherine hadn’t moved, pressed up in terror against the pillows, her mouth partially open, breathing shallowly. She looks like a wild animal, thought Matilda, an animal who is trapped and vulnerable, unable to move, or to think, for itself.

  ‘Get dressed, both of you. I want you downstairs to help me entertain our guests.’

  ‘Oh, but I need to…’ Matilda stepped forwards.

  John pushed his face up close to his sister-in-law. He was about the same height as her; she could smell his fetid breath, see rotten teeth crowd the interior of his mouth. ‘No, Matilda, not this time. You cannot run away to your precious estate, to your mother. You brought these men here, you entertain them. And if they find out who we support, then God help you both.’

  * * *

  The great hall at Neen was situated unusually on the second floor, with the kitchens and servants’ quarters on the floors beneath. The dressed-stone walls, pale limestone, glowed in the evening light that spilled down from the huge windows, striking the swirling dust motes rising from the wooden floorboards.

  ‘Not bad,’ said Henry, reaching for another chicken leg, chewing hungrily. ‘Not bad at all.’ He looked around him appreciatively, at the fine tapestries hanging down from the walls, the expensive carved furniture, the plentiful food. His eye caught on two banners, hanging down from the wooden gallery at the opposite end of the hall, sweeps of blue-and-red cloth impaled with the golden arms of royalty. ‘Although a bit too much evidence of King Richard, I think.’ He smirked at Gilan, sitting next to him. ‘Do you think they’ll murder us in our beds tonight? Or clap us in arms?’

  Gilan crossed his huge arms across his chest, leaning back into the oak chair. Then leaned forwards again as the ornately carved wood poked uncomfortably into his spine. ‘No, they wouldn’t dare. I’m sure John of Neen realises how weak King Richard’s rule has become. It wouldn’t be in his best interest to thwart us.’

  ‘No, I suspect he’s the type to change sides at the drop of a cloth,’ Henry mused. He leaned past Gilan, lifted a floury bread roll from an oval pewter platter. ‘I don’t think we have anything to fear from this household. And good food, too. Not quite like the fare we’re used to, eh?’

  No, indeed, Gilan thought, staring out across the busy hall. Henry’s soldiers clustered along the ranks of trestle tables, talking, laughing, joking with each other, piling the food into their mouths. They deserved it, these loyal men. They deserved a taste of this good life. Having ridden on many of Henry’s crusades, they had endured all manner of harsh conditions, days on meagre food rations, days when the air was so raw it froze the tears in their eyes and turned their fingers black. He looked along the happy laughing faces, dishevelled hair released from helmets now resting by their feet, their faces ruddy and flushed from the strong sun. A sense of utter loss pierced his heart. There should have been another face amongst them. A face that looked like his, hair the same startling blond, the frame a little leaner and shorter. His older brother. Pierre.

  Grief, bitter, unrelenting, scythed through him, and he wrenched his gaze from the men, glowering down at the table, his plate, the piles of food spread out along the pristine white cloth, anywhere that wouldn’t remind him of that horrible time. His heart tore at the rift so deep, he wondered whether it would ever heal. Guilt cascaded through him, a numbing black bile, clagging his chest. He gripped the stem of his pewter goblet. If only he hadn’t insisted, if only he hadn’t goaded his brother, pushed him on, teased him. Then the accident would never have happened.

  ‘Come on, Gilan, eat up!’ Henry jostled his elbow. ‘Once the lady of the manor arrives, we’ll be forced to talk, not eat. Get something down your throat at once! That’s an order!’ Henry began to pile food in front of his friend: a couple of slices of ham, some cooked vegetables, a hunk of bread. He raised his eyebrows towards the door, a flicker of movement catching his eye. ‘Too late.’

  Gilan looked up.

  Framed by the stone archway with Katherine at her side, Matilda hesitated, as if stunned by the crowds
of men in the great hall. Her appearance arrested conversation, reduced the bursts of laughter to soft murmurs of appreciation. She ducked her head, a stain of colour creeping across her pale cheeks, not wanting the male eyes upon her, embarrassed. Her hair was dry now, coiled in intricate plaits on either side of her neat head, the wisps contained by a silver net, delicately wrought. Her circlet, etched silver, gleamed as she moved forwards tentatively, her sister hanging on her arm.

  She wore a simple overdress cut from a rose-coloured fabric, shot through with threads of silver; the material shimmered against her slender frame as she walked. The wide, angular-cut neck exposed her collarbone, the shadowed hollow of her throat. As was the fashion, her sleeves were fitted on her upper arms, before hanging down loose from her elbows, revealing the tightly buttoned sleeves of her underdress, a rich scarlet.

  ‘My God!’ murmured Henry as the two women approached, John bustling up behind them, chivvying them up to the dais as if they were cattle. ‘What a beauty.’

  ‘My lords, both of you, so sorry to have kept you waiting…’ John practically shoved his lumbering wife up the wooden steps. Katherine clutched at the wooden bannister for support, dragging herself up. Matilda led her sister to the empty chair between Henry and Gilan, intending to help her into the seat.

  ‘No, no, what are you thinking?’ John protested, grabbing Katherine’s arm and forcing her down between Henry and his own place. A pained expression crossed his wife’s face; she paled suddenly, biting down hard on her bottom lip.

  ‘My lady?’ Gilan quirked one blond eyebrow up at Matilda, who hovered behind the backs of the chairs. ‘I believe this is your seat?’ He indicated the empty chair between himself and Henry.

  Her toes curled reluctantly in her pink satin slippers, stalling any forward movement. Every muscle in her body, every nerve tightened reflexively at the sight of him, bracing, readying themselves for some further onslaught. She needed to arm herself against him, to shield herself from the devastating silver of his eyes, the implacable force of his body.

  He read the reluctance in her face, and smiled. ‘Have no fear my lady, I’m not about to shove you into the nearest pond.’

  ‘No…I…’ Her voice trailed off, mind incapable of finding any explanation for her hesitation. He thought she was frightened of him, but that wasn’t it. She couldn’t identify the strange feelings that pulsed through her body. Odd feelings that flooded through her veins, making her heart race. Not fear. Excitement.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Matilda, sit down!’ John bawled at her from the other side of Henry, lines of strain stretching the fleshy skin on his face.

  She slipped between the two chairs, carefully, avoiding any contact with the man on her right, sliding down on to the hard, polished seat, thinking she would rather be anywhere but here. Gilan lifted the heavy jug, pouring wine into her goblet.

  ‘Thank you,’ she murmured, staring straight ahead.

  ‘Tell me, my lady, have you recovered from your ordeal this afternoon?’ Henry said conversationally on her left. ‘It sounds like you were extremely brave.’

  ‘Or extremely stupid,’ Gilan muttered under his breath, so that only Matilda could hear.

  Eyes blazing with blue fire, she shot him an angry look, grazing the sculptured lines of his face, the corded muscles of his neck. He had dispensed with his breastplate and all other visible signs of armour, but the pleated tunic that he wore served only to emphasise the huge power of his shoulders, his chest.

  She swallowed hastily, her mouth dry, arid, then turned back to Henry.

  ‘I didn’t have time to think about it,’ she replied, honestly, smoothing her hand across the white tablecloth. To her surprise her hand shook, fingers quivering against the soft fabric. The skin on the right side of her neck burned—was he staring at her? She clamped her lips together, annoyed with herself, with her unwanted reaction to him. Men meant little to her; scornful of their appreciative glances, mocking even, she was not in the habit of paying them any attention and had no wish to marry, especially after witnessing John’s treatment of her sister.

  ‘Where did you learn to shoot like that?’ Henry took up his eating knife and began cutting thin slices of roast pork that he popped into his mouth at intervals. Grease slicked the sides of his mouth and he rubbed at his mouth with a linen napkin, throwing the crumpled fabric back into his lap.

  ‘My brother taught me.’ Matilda rubbed at an errant spot of spilled wine on the cloth, frowning.

  ‘Your brother?’ Henry raised his eyebrows. ‘And where is he?’

  Where was he, indeed? Matilda fixed her eyes on the colourful banners at the end of the hall. As far as she knew, Thomas was with King Richard, fighting his cause in Ireland. Her brother had no idea that their mother had given up all intention of running the estate at Lilleshall, that the responsibility had fallen to his younger sister. He had been away for over a year now; she had heard nothing from him.

  Bringing her hands into her lap, she twisted her fingers together. What could she say to Henry? She couldn’t tell him the truth, because that would underline John’s allegiance, their allegiance, to Richard. ‘My brother…er…he’s…at home.’ Her answer stumbled out. ‘Dealing with things,’ she added vaguely.

  Beside her, Gilan shifted in his seat. His forearm lay along the wooden arm of the chair, his hand rounding the carved end, strong fingers splayed. She could see the raised sinew on the top of his hand, the lines of blue veins tracing beneath the skin, knuckles roughened, scratched. The hands of a working soldier, a knight.

  ‘My lady?’ Henry was speaking to her.

  ‘I’m sorry? What did you say?’ She blushed furiously, a wild scarlet chasing across her cheeks.

  ‘I asked you where your home is, my lady?’

  ‘Not far from here,’ she answered lamely.

  The little chit’s lying through her teeth, thought Gilan, lifting his pewter goblet to his lips and taking a large gulp of wine. The heady liquid slid down his throat. Not that it was any of his business, but it was intriguing, all the same. Her shoulder was turned rigidly away from him, her manner overly attentive to Henry; it made him want to laugh. He wanted to tell her it didn’t matter, whatever she did would have no effect on him. She could be as rude or as coquettish towards him as she liked. She could fall all over him or slap him in the face. He was immune to the many wiles of women, to their tempers and their masquerades, his body remaining in a constant state of numbness, of bound-up guilt and grief, unable to love, unable to give. His brother’s death had removed the very spirit of him, driven out his soul so that only the shell of him remained. A husk of a man.

  Chapter Five

  As the sun dipped low in the sky, inching away from the long, rectangular windows, servants moved around silently with flaming tapers, lighting the thick wax candles in their iron holders, thrusting lit torches into the iron brackets secured around the walls. The cavernous chamber filled with a flickering luminescence, dreamlike, which cast odd shadows, illuminated chattering faces with rosy glows.

  ‘And our last crusade was up around the Baltic…’ Henry droned on, his nose reddened, cheeks flushed from too much wine. ‘And, oh Lord, I can’t even begin to tell you how cold it was…’

  Crumbling a soft bread roll between her fingers, paddling the cooked dough into a smaller and smaller piece, Matilda forced herself to concentrate on the story Henry was telling her. She had smiled and nodded all through this interminable evening, aware that for the whole time Gilan sat to her right, silent, and that she was ignoring him. The muscles in her cheeks ached with the constant effort of maintaining an impressed, amenable expression towards Henry.

  ‘But how did you keep yourselves warm, if there was so much snow?’ To be fair, Katherine was doing a very decent job of listening to Henry, prodding him with a question now and again to show interest and keep his storie
s flowing.

  Henry grimaced, lowering his eyebrows in an exaggerated frown. Coarse russet hairs straggled out from his brows, haphazard, messy, giving him the look of a farmhand, as opposed to a cousin of the king. A roar of ribald laughter broke out from the soldiers below and he paused, allowing the noise to die away before he answered, ‘Well, my lady Katherine, I have to tell you, it wasn’t easy, was it, Gilan?’

  Matilda sensed, rather than saw, Gilan’s slight shake of his head. Then saw her sister’s face, her profile clenched, delicate jaw rigid with pain.

  ‘Katherine…?’

  Henry’s story faltered to silence as he turned to observe his hostess. Katherine’s face was set in an expression of sheer horror, her mouth screwed up, as if braced against an unknown onslaught, her eyes squeezed tight. The blood had drained from her lips.

  ‘Katherine…!’ Matilda shot up from her seat, turning abruptly to push past Gilan in a desperate attempt to reach her sister. Her hip brushed against him, the soft curve of flesh beneath her gown yielding against his upper arm. He drew a sharp unsteady breath.

  ‘For God’s sake, woman! What’s the matter with you?’ John shouted at his wife, at her rounded eyes that stared unseeing straight ahead, at her skin: red and sweating. He threw down his napkin into the middle of the table, a flare of annoyance crossing his portly face. ‘I’m so sorry about this, my lord…’ he inclined his head towards Henry ‘…she’s not normally like this. It must be the shock of today.’

  Rushing to Katherine’s side, Matilda saw the growing puddle of water beneath her sister’s seat, the sopping hem of her gown, watched her hands grip the armrests of the chair. ‘She’s in labour, John,’ Matilda bent down to murmur in John’s ear, laying one hand on her brother-in-law’s forearm.

  ‘What? What are you talking about? It’s too soon, isn’t it?’ John babbled, his fetid breath wafting over her, his face contorting into a look of sheer horror. His lips curled at the water spreading across floorboards, staining the wood. ‘What on earth is that horrible mess?’