Ian turned away from showing Adam how to adjust the hang of his cloak so that it would not impede his sword hilt. “My squires, too?” he said uneasily.
“They must stand behind you. I would have all meet and fitting. You did not leave the boys’ baggage with me, and even if the clothes were once fine enough, I can imagine the condition of dirt and raggedness they are in now. It was easier to make all new than to think of cleaning and mending what they had in the midst of the guests.”
“Very well, but their fathers are well able to afford new finery for them. I will charge them with the expense.”
“Oh, Ian, let me gift them. They are so kind to Adam—are they not, Adam?”
“Yes,” Adam the irrepressible replied, “but if you want to gift them, Mama, I know what they want more than clothes.”
“Do you, love? How clever. Tell me.”
“Owain wants a jeweled eating knife, like the one Ian used the night he wore the green gown. And Geoffrey is crazy to have a lute. He has been borrowing the minstrels’ when they would lend them. He plays very well.” Adam lowered his voice. “The queen took his away. She said it was not fitting. Ian, is it not fitting to play the lute? Mama has told me that King Richard played and sang, too.”
“That silly boy!” Ian exclaimed. “Why did he not tell me?” Then to Adam. “Of course it is fitting. If I had the smallest ability, I would play and sing myself. Perhaps Geoffrey did not understand just what Queen Isabella meant. Perhaps he played at the wrong time or place.”
But Ian’s eyes were furious when they met Alinor’s over Adam’s head, and she knew he had excused the queen only so that Adam would not hear something he was too young to estimate wisely.
“Can you keep a secret, Adam?” Alinor whispered. The boy nodded excitedly. “Very well. Perhaps Owain will have his knife and Geoffrey his lute for Twelfth Day presents. Now, do not tell or you will spoil their pleasure, and that is a bad way to repay their kindness to you. Ah, here are our attendant gentlemen. Well, Ian? How do they look?”
Ian grunted approval, more interested in correcting the carriage of weapons than in appearance. Alinor straightened the folds of the tunic at Owain’s back and pulled at Geoffrey’s to even the hemline. Ian promptly undid Alinor’s work by resettling both sword belts, but eventually he was satisfied and stood back. Owain was tastefully attired in two shades of soft blue; Geoffrey in shades of green. Both looked well and would neither conflict with nor outshine the principal actors.
“Thank you, lord,” Geoffrey said, going to his knee to kiss Ian’s hand.
Owain echoed the gesture and the words.
“No thanks to me,” Ian remarked, tousling both heads gently. “To my shame, I did not even think of having your clothes sent back to the keep to be cleaned. Thank Lady Alinor for both thought and labor.”
Both went to kneel, but Alinor forestalled them by drawing them into her arms. “I am very happy to welcome you into my family and into my heart. I know you are too old to need a mother, yet there are some things a man wishes to tell or to ask a woman, and a mother is a safe person to listen to tales and troubles. If I can help you, remember I am most willing.”
Ian gathered the group with his eyes. “You go first, Adam. Then Joanna and Alinor. Owain, lend me your shoulder. I can stand but I am not sure of the stairs. Geoffrey, do you follow, and be ready to grab my belt if my knee should fail. I do not desire to enter the hall on my face.”
Chapter Fourteen
It was a marvelous ceremony, marred only for Alinor who had to struggle frantically to control her tears when Adam took the vows of his men. He was so very small, his tiny hands engulfed in the large ones of the men who knelt to him. A pain stabbed from Alinor’s throat down into her breast until she felt literally that her heart would break. Simon, her painful heart wailed, Simon. But there was no answer, not even the vision of him that, in the past, used to rise in her mind’s eye to calm her when she was frightened or sad. There was only Ian’s voice, following Adam’s treble affirmation of the vows of fealty, Ian’s voice, sure and strong, repeating again and again, “I, Ian, Lord de Vipont, do warrant and stand surety for my son by marriage.”
Fortunately, Alinor had taken the fealty of her dependents so often that the words and gestures flowed from her without need for thought, and however forgetful Ian had been in the matter of his squires’ dress, he had obviously not failed to instruct them in their duties. As each vassal or castellan swore, Owain or Geoffrey, by turns, came forward to receive and carry to safety the token of homage. Sir John of Mersea’s offering of five fish, three eels, and two oysters; Sir Giles of Iford’s two couple of hunting dogs; Sir Henry of Kingsclere’s tall lance; and Sir Walter of the Forstal’s sparrow hawk had been accepted before Alinor really was conscious of anything beside her own misery. She had not even heard the roars of “Fiat! Fiat!” that shook the rafters after each swearing.
She came to herself swiftly enough, however, when she detected an odd note in the voice of her castellan from Clyro Hill. In the moment, she was aware of Ian, who stood just at her left shoulder. Although his right hand did not move, his left slid down to grasp the scabbard of his sword as if to ready it for drawing. Even Joanna, who Alinor saw had remembered her part and came to stand at her mother’s right hand, noticed something amiss and stiffened. Alinor said her say, leaned forward and gave the man the kiss of peace, but it made her no easier that he would not meet her eyes. He waved his squire forward with his token, a clutch of pheasants’ eggs and five leeks, and Alinor accepted them with the formal words. The witnesses shouted “Fiat!” Sir Peter stepped down from the dais, but Alinor’s eyes followed him speculatively until she had to give her attention to Sir Alfred of Ealand.
Then she was free to step back. It was Ian’s turn. This taking of homage was, of course, totally unnecessary in the sense that nothing had changed Ian’s social position or his relationship with his vassals. However, it was a good idea to renew oaths of fealty as often as possible on general principles; the repetition seemed to increase loyalty. Moreover, renewing the oath at this time would obviate the complaint that Ian would be busy with his wife’s lands and might neglect his own without warning his vassals of his new responsibilities. Alinor paid little attention. Although technically she was Ian’s heir, because he had no other family, she was not yet concerned with the idea of holding his lands if anything happened to him.
Midway in the swearing, there was a disturbance at the back of the hall. Alinor’s head lifted sharply, but apparently the men-at-arms crowded into that section had either explained what was going forward or had otherwise silenced the intruder. Completely freed from her earlier oppression, Alinor’s heart leapt with expectation. If this was the king’s messenger, God had favored her in a most singular way. There could not be a better time for his arrival.
Alinor had, of course, hoped it would happen this way, but there had been no way to arrange it surely. She knew her huntsmen would not leave the man in the forest until it was light, for fear the beasts that roamed there would harm him, but after that all was conjecture. How long would he take to free himself? How long would it take him to find Roselynde? How long would be needed to convince the castle guards to let him enter, all ragged and dirty as he must now appear? Alinor’s eyes rested on Ian a little ahead of her and to her left. If this was the king’s messenger, God had truly given his blessing to this marriage. Ian would be shielded by the evidence of strong witnesses from having had any desire to flout the king’s wishes. After all, how could he know that the king had other plans for the lady he had married if the messenger carrying the information had not arrived until after the wedding.
A quick survey of other possibilities for the disturbance left Alinor with little doubt as to how she must act. As soon as the last “Fiat!” died away, she stepped forward.
“Who broke the peace of this swearing?” she called sharply. “Let him be brought forward.”
Ian, who had been looking at his vassal, had not
noticed the brief swirl of activity at the end of the hall. From the surprised looks and random head turnings, Ian judged that few others had noticed either. He put a hand on Alinor’s arm.
“Be gentle,” he warned her. “This is not a day for severity.”
“I am not angry,” she declared, not loud, but in a clear voice that would definitely carry to the important witnesses who stood just in front of the dais—the three bishops, the earls, and Lord Llewelyn. “I am concerned. Yesterday, during the entertainment after dinner, one of my foresters brought me the king’s seal and a demand for ransom for a king’s messenger. He said a man he did not know had caught him from behind and, at knife point, had bid him carry the seal to me and ask two marks for the man and the message that went with the seal.”
“What?”
The startled word was no indication that Ian had not heard her, only that he did not believe his ears. Alinor could only hurry on, hoping that Ian would have sense enough not to contest anything she said in public.
“I gave him the money, and a guard to see that he did lay it where he said he was told to leave it. I did not tell you. I—I did not wish to look a fool, if I had been choused out of my money.”
Ian’s eyes opened as wide as they could go, and he swallowed convulsively. The idea of Alinor doing or thinking anything so simple-minded and passive was inconceivable. It was plain as a clear day to Ian that she was up to some deviltry, but he dared not say or do anything to mark his suspicion. In any case, the man had already been brought forward. Ian listened, silent and totally incredulous, to the tale that poured out of him.
He had been seized by outlaws. What outlaws? Ian knew he had cleaned out the only nest of men in the area and had cleaned it out before the messenger had been taken. Of course, it was possible that there was a small group living in the forest off game and the few pence they could wrest from low-born travelers who were afraid to complain of their experiences at the castle. It was possible, but not likely. The idea that Alinor’s huntsmen or foresters would miss such a group was very farfetched. The idea that they would deliberately betray their mistress, as King John’s foresters in Bere had done, was laughable. King John was far away and very unapproachable; he might come to Bere once in a year, if so often. His men were in little danger that the king would discover their dishonest doings. Alinor was close at hand, a good mistress who listened to her people’s complaints readily; she had many faithful servants who would run to her with news of another servant’s cheating.
He had been stripped of his clothes, his money, his horse and arms, the messenger cried passionately. Even the message had been defaced, the seal torn from it. Alinor interrupted to confirm this last and to say for all to hear this time that the seal had been brought to her as a token and she had paid the ransom required, not daring to refuse when the king’s messenger and the king’s orders were at stake. She received tearful thanks. They would have killed him to conceal their crime if she had not paid, the messenger said. The large ransom, they had told him, was to enable them to flee the country. They had laughed at him when he told them they would be hunted high and low for interfering with a king’s messenger. Not in France, they said contemptuously; King John’s power did not stretch to France.
Eventually, having unburdened his soul of its fears and frustrations, the man handed over his defaced scroll. Alinor begged that her guests would forgive her while she opened and read it at once. It had been overlong in coming, and she desired no more delay before the king’s wishes were attended to. Ian bit his lip until he was able to control his mouth. Then he gave low-voiced instructions to Owain to see that the messenger was cared for, allowed to wash, fed and rested, and provided with decent garments instead of the foul rags he was wearing. Ian was happy to have something to hold his attention. He was not sure whether it would have been possible for him to control his expression when Alinor displayed the consternation and regret almost certainly called for by the message. Ian was not even sure what his expression would display because he was so torn between horror, anxiety, relief, and amusement.
He did miss Alinor’s first fulsome regrets that it was impossible for her to obey the king’s order, but he could not escape it all. She turned to him to grasp his hand with a pretty display of feminine appeal.
“He cannot break our marriage, can he, Ian? He could not part us now?”
Ian could have murdered her in that moment, not for what she said but for the way she was lying with her voice and her body, playing on the sympathies of the witnesses to make them believe she was a weak and frightened woman. There were a few faces, he knew, that had set like stone. Those men knew Alinor for what she was—William of Pembroke, Sir Giles of Iford, perhaps even Robert of Leicester—but none of those men would betray her. What was worse, she had maneuvered him so that he was forced to draw others into a tangle he had made himself with open eyes and felt was his to struggle with alone. Nonetheless, she had been too clever for him. If he did not fall willingly into the trap Alinor had set, he could destroy them both.
“I am no churchman,” he replied stiffly, “but I am sure marriage is an affair of the Church and not of the king.”
“Is this true, my lords?” Alinor cried to the three bishops.
Before Ian could guess what she would do, she had released his hand and run down from the dais. Ian could feel the color rise into his face. He thought he had been clever enough, answering without requiring confirmation from anyone. Now he saw he had played exactly as she expected, into her hands. All three bishops were assuring her aloud that what God had joined no man, save God’s vicar on earth, the Pope, could part asunder.
“And there must be a real reason, must there not? Such as consanguinity or some other holy cause of wrong for the Pope to annul a marriage? It cannot be just for a political purpose?”
Peter des Roches of Winchester looked into the eyes of the woman he had just been—as he thought—comforting. It was fortunate for Alinor that he was a clever man with a marked sense of humor and a keen eye for a beautiful woman. He, too, saw the corner into which he had been backed. Before this crowd of witnesses, it was impossible for him to say aloud—what everyone knew—that political considerations annulled many more marriages than holy causes ever did. He shook his head infinitesimally, knowing Alinor would understand the signal. This once she had caught him, and he would do as she wished, but she was not to play such a game with him again.
“There is no reason of consanguinity or other holy cause to annul this marriage,” he said, yielding graciously since he had yielded. “And no fate of nations—which, although political in a sense is also a holy cause in itself—can possibly rest upon it. Therefore I can say, and I believe London and Ely will confirm my words, that the king has no cause to ask that this marriage be set aside.”
“I am most humbly grateful to your lordships for giving me this reassurance,” Alinor said clearly so all could hear. “I hope I am a faithful and loyal subject; thus, it gives my heart ease to know I will have no occasion to contest the king’s will. I am not sure he has the right to name a husband to me, but even so, I would have preferred to obey him and—to speak the truth—I could not have done so. However good and devoted servants Fulk de Cantelu and Henry of Cornhill are to the king, I could not have accepted either as a husband.”
There was a gasp that echoed around the whole audience of men and women. Ian ground his teeth. That was what she had been aiming for from the beginning. Obviously she could not read the king’s message aloud to the group. She had to find a way to communicate to them a piece of information that would enrage every well-born man and any woman who had any feeling softer than hatred for her. Sir Fulk and Sir Henry were the king’s lickspittles and dogsbodies. They were low and brutal, lechers and sadists who were employed on those tasks any man of honor would flatly refuse even from the king.
In the minds of Alinor’s guests, it was an offense that stank to heaven, that such men should have been proposed as suitable to marry Alin
or. True, most of the male guests were indifferent to the brutality of the proposed grooms. What was offensive to them was that the men were outsiders, crude and common, whom, nonetheless, the king preferred to themselves. It was upon Fulk and Henry that favors were heaped. It was to them the king turned in his idle hours. And, if they realized that it was so because Fulk and Henry obeyed John without question, without remonstrating about honor and legality, so much the more offensive was the king’s act. After all, the king’s nobles were his natural advisors. It was his duty to take counsel with them and to act according to their advice.
The women, except for Isobel, were simply horrified by the thought of the life Alinor would have led. Isobel, who knew Alinor very well indeed, thanked God that such a marriage had not brought the sin of murder upon her friend. She might have wept and prayed and endured. Alinor would, Isobel knew, either kill the man herself or arrange to have him removed out of her way. Yet Isobel was in no way offended by Alinor’s pretense of fear and frailty. Weakness was a woman’s rightful weapon. Isobel had rather see Alinor using that than a knife.
The initial shock over, the guests crowded forward to offer oblique sympathy and, a few, open support. Alinor’s vassals were at one on that subject. Many of them were fond of their overlady, but that was not their reason. The thought of having Fulk de Cantelu or Henry of Cornhill as their liege lord increased their loyalty to Alinor and Ian to fever pitch. Neither their wives and daughters nor their lands would be safe with such a lord.
Ian’s vassals were less happy. They did not desire the enmity either of the king’s favorites or of the king. Nonetheless, they came forward to pledge their support to Ian. It occurred to them that, Alinor now irrevocably being Ian’s heir, if harm came to him they would be inherited along with her by any man to whom the king chose to give her. They had no more sympathy with the king’s apparent choice than Alinor’s own vassals; de Vipont was a good lord, honest in his dealing and quick to come to the defense of a man in trouble. Had they known the king’s pleasure, they would have protested against this marriage, which would be contrary to it. However, none had known because of those accursed outlaws—and those, mostly, existed by the king’s fault—so now it behooved them to stand firm behind their lord.
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