by Jo Beverley
It did no good. She couldn’t escape the call. With a sigh, she returned to the manor, to confront her husband, her enemy, and to argue for clemency.
He was not in the solar, so she went to the office, where she found him with Brother Nils and Peter the Woodsman.
“Yes, my lady?” Renald’s expression was unwelcoming and the atmosphere in the small room hung like icicles.
Claire fought against a pressing instinct to flee. “I wish to speak with you, my lord. Privately.”
“I’m busy at the moment. I will come to you when I can.”
Two weeks from now? “It is urgent, my lord.”
His lips tightened, but then he said, “Brother Nils, take Peter with you and check the true state of the coppice wood.”
Both the clerk and the woodsman seemed grateful to escape.
“Yes?”
He was sitting on a bench beside the window, broad and dark against a bright tapestry.
“I want to talk to you about Josce.”
“No.”
This time she would not let that flat no stand. “Yes.”
He stared at her. “You are a very foolish woman.”
Tremors were starting, but she made herself ignore them. “I am doing what I have to do. As my father did. As Josce did.”
“Hardly. You are only breaking an oath in the most marginal sense. For which you should be grateful.”
Claire took a deep breath. “I wish you to mitigate Josce’s punishment.”
“Did he seek you out to ask for this?”
“No! As far as I know, he has obeyed you and is in the church.”
“As well for him. I would be within my rights to whip him before sending him home. As you see,” he added, “I am already being merciful.”
She didn’t trust her legs, so sat on a small stool by the unlit brazier. “Renald,” she said, deliberately using his name, “please cloak your anger and listen.”
He shook his head, but spoke more gently. “You are a woman, Claire, with a woman’s soft heart and strange sense of right and wrong. Josce understands that what he did was unforgivable.”
“He did not follow your order. Are your orders always right?”
“They are always to be obeyed. As I obey the orders of my liege.”
Like orders to kill. “Orders aren’t always right,” she said, and she wasn’t entirely talking about Josce anymore.
“Then the blame rests on the one with authority.”
“Even before heaven?”
“Even before heaven.”
Was that his excuse, his salvation? That the lord took on the sins of his vassals following his orders, just as the husband took on the sins of his wife?
She wanted to ask if he felt that made murder right, but she remembered that she’d come here to plead for Josce. “Forgiveness is at the heart of our faith, Renald. Can you not forgive?”
“Perhaps I have. But I cannot have one so close who does not obey my word.”
“So you would do whatever your king commands?” She spoke without thinking, for she could answer herself. Her father’s death was answer. Of course he would. Angrily, she threw at him, “Would you kill me if he ordered it?”
His gaze fixed on her, completely blank. “No,” he said at last. “But I would expect my death from it.”
“Please,” she said, knowing tears were swelling in her eyes. “You are supposed to be teaching not destroying. Is there no other way you can handle this?”
“I thought you didn’t want violence in Summerbourne.”
Claire shuddered, hoping she was right about Josce’s wishes. “I’m not a fool. Sometimes punishment is necessary.”
Suddenly he rose and stalked over to open the door, to order a man to go to the church and command Squire Josce to attend him.
Here, thought Claire, swallowing. Renald was going to make her witness the punishment, knowing it would be punishment to her, too.
He sat again on the bench and they waited in silence.
Chapter 20
With a knock, Josce came in, pale and with reddened eyes. “My lord?”
Renald jabbed a finger at the floor in front of him. “Kneel.”
Clearly startled, Josce obeyed.
“My gentle wife has begged clemency for you. No, you can thank her later, if you’re still inclined. As she pointed out, I’m not infallible. Nor is any man. What then, do we do if we think our lord’s commands are wrong?”
After a moment, Josce said, “Discuss it with him?”
“With some lords that alone could command your death. Did you discuss Ulric with me?”
“No, my lord.”
“Look at me.”
Josce raised his bowed head. Claire could only see his back, but throat aching, she suspected he was fighting tears again.
“Why not?” Renald demanded.
Even from the back, Claire could tell Josce swallowed hard. “I didn’t think you’d change your mind, my lord.”
“And you think me stupid?”
“No, my lord!”
“Therefore I had good reason for my orders. You think me cruel?”
“No, my lord.” Josce’s voice was dull now, and his head started to bow again.
“You think Ulric could not have made his way home with the provisions we gave him?”
“He’s an old man … No, my lord.”
“Look up. Face me. Why then, did you think yourself so much wiser and kinder than I?”
Claire swallowed tears at having to watch this mental flaying. How she’d bear the physical punishment that would surely follow, she did not know.
“Well?” Renald prompted.
Josce’s back straightened. “I see now that I was wrong, my lord. I sincerely beg your pardon and accept your punishment.”
“Do you have choice?”
“No, my lord!”
Renald leaned back against the wall. “My wife thinks I should whip you and keep you in my service. What do you say to that?”
Claire saw the shudder that ran through the young man. Pleas for mercy fought at her lips, but she kept them back. She had done the most she could.
“I would rather you thrash me than dismiss me, my lord.”
Renald studied him, expression shielded. Then he straightened and held out his hands. “Put your hands in mine.”
Hesitantly, the young man obeyed.
“You are going to swear your oath to me again. You are going to think about each word, and only say them if you mean them. Do you understand?”
Josce nodded. “Yes, my lord.” Claire thought he trembled, and wondered if he might, at this point, refuse. But he spoke steadily. “I, Josce of Gillingford, son of Ralph of Gillingford, do swear to honor and serve my lord, Renald de Lisle, Lord of Summerbourne, to keep his counsel and obey his word.”
Renald looked at the young man in silence, then said, “There will be no further punishment. But if you break your oath again, Josce, I will show no mercy. Do you understand?”
“Yes, my lord.” The youth’s voice wavered.
“Unless we are in desperate straits you may always discuss my orders with me, but ultimately my word is law to you. Yes?”
“Yes, my lord!”
“Now”—and Claire thought she saw a brow quirk—”what would you do if I ordered you to kill the Lady Claire?”
Even the young man’s ginger curls and straight back expressed shock. “I … My lord?”
“Well?”
Josce’s head slowly sank and tears choked as he said, “I would refuse, my lord. I am clearly not worthy—”
“No.” Renald seized his squire’s chin and raised it. “That is the right thing, if that is how your conscience speaks. But then you accept your death with dignity.”
“I see, my lord … I think.”
“Put simply, Josce, in the end our soul is our own, and no man, not even the king, can steal it. But we are ruled by earthly powers as well as spiritual, and sometimes our choices will cost our life. S
uch a death is not to be feared. It merely takes us to heaven the sooner. Far worse to do evil and live, only to end in hell.”
“I see, my lord.” Josce’s voice was thick with tears as he added, “I am pleased to serve you, my lord, who is unlikely to order me to do evil.”
Renald cuffed him. “Even if I do expect you to let a man make his way home penniless. There’s another lesson there. Be very careful, lad, to whom you swear allegiance. Now, go and find that rascal Thomas and teach him to clean my mail.”
Josce rose, looking slightly unsteady. Claire saw tears on his cheeks and knew she had some escaping her eyes, too.
“I thank you, my lord, for your mercy,” the young man said, “and for the lessons I’ve learned today.” Suddenly, he turned and knelt before Claire to kiss her hand. “And I thank you too, lady, from my true heart, for gentling my lord’s mind toward me.”
Though she was of an age with him, Claire touched his head. “God’s blessing on you, Josce. And may you be as wise one day.”
The squire flushed, then rose to leave the room, a spring in his step.
“It was your wisdom,” said Renald, his feeling shielded.
“I know nothing of oaths and allegiances.”
“But something of teaching.” He rose and looked out of the window, rubbing the back of his neck. “Josce is my first squire. Before becoming Lord of Summerbourne I was not of a status for it. And growing up as I did, I never had such formal training. You have taught me a useful lesson.”
It was dangerous to sit here talking like this. Perilous. She stayed. “Then you learned quickly, my lord, and out-stripped your teacher.”
He glanced back. “Be careful, Claire, or you’ll be thinking me less of an ogre.”
“I don’t …” But she must.
“Do you still think I killed Ulric?”
She shook her head, grateful for something simple. “No. I see that you had no reason.”
“Thank you for that at least.”
“But you did kill my father.” She placed it like a shield between them.
“Yes.” He watched her steadily.
“And you feel no guilt.”
“And I feel no guilt.”
Hand to mouth, she asked, “Can you not make me see it as you see it? Just now you said a man of honor must choose, even if the choice means his death. How can you not feel guilt when you chose to kill my father and win Summerbourne?”
She’d tried to keep all bitterness from her words, but still it rang through. It was hopeless. She rose, but he put out a hand. He did not touch her—he was half a room away—but it made her stop.
“Stay, Claire. Talk to me. Let’s try to defeat this together.”
“Can we?”
“We can try.”
Slowly, she sank back onto the bench.
“Claire, I killed your father. Nothing, God help me, will ever change that. But it was not for Summerbourne, and there was nothing about it to lie darkly on my soul.”
She swallowed. Defeat this together. Her life lay in this room, vulnerable as precious glass as they fought an over-whelming foe. “I can’t see that,” she said. “I can’t see how it can mean nothing.”
“I didn’t say that. It was the most painful thing I have ever done. I will carry its shadow all my days. But I will live despite it, and find joy despite it. It is my own shadow. I won’t let it fall on others. Your shadow is your own.”
And truly it felt like that. A shadow on all her days. “It would be easy to put it aside.” She rubbed at her temple. “I love you …”
She stared up at him. She’d meant the words as simple explanation, only realizing a moment later the weight they carried.
His eyes darkened, but he did not move. “Then why haven’t you put it aside?”
“Because it is not so easy,” she admitted with a sigh. She looked over at his sword, lying darkly on top of a battered chest, as always, close to his hand. “That sickens me.”
He stood and picked it up, holding it in front of him on his palms like an offering. “It is a gift of the king. It carries a holy relic. Would you have me cast it into the forge? It has done no wrong, but if it had, it would only have been as my tool. No blame attaches to a tool.”
“You are the killer.”
“Yes.”
She rose. “What good can this do when that can never change!”
“I am a warrior and I fight for what I want. Claire, stay. Stay and fight by my side.”
Summoned by his plea, she sat again and tried. “You were the tool of the king,” she offered as excuse.
“No. Remember what I said to Josce. I am a tool with mind and soul. Even at Henry’s behest, I would not kill if I believed it wrong.”
“But—”
“But I killed your father. That is the point that can never change. Never.” Abruptly, he switched his hold and drew sword from scabbard, drew it with the ease of familiarity and the grace of honed strength. The blade seemed huge in the small room, and ominously dark.
“Let us have truth,” he said implacably, pointing the sword tip at her, so it lay between them like a river of darkness. “I used this sword to kill your father, to sever soul from body. If you cannot accept the sword, you cannot accept me.”
Claire stared at it, heart beating like an urgent drum. She wanted to say something, something hopeful, but her tongue stuck silent in her mouth.
Heavy though it must be, the sword never wavered. “I will kill again,” he continued. “It is my trade. I will never kill where I think it wrong, but I will kill. If you cannot accept the sword, you cannot accept me.”
Claire swallowed and made herself speak. “I accepted the killer. You know I did. It is the one death I cannot live with, and that can never change.”
He drove the blade back into the scabbard. He put it on the chest and stayed there, braced on the wall by rigid hands. “You’re right. It can never change. And you must accept me, your father’s killer. I will not live a lie. That would be worse than no life at all.”
He turned sharply to face her. “You think me cold, but I’m no stranger to love, and trust, and laughter. If we are to make anything of this, it cannot be as a sacrifice. You must accept me as I am, without reservation.”
“Without reservation? But—”
“But I killed your father. Yes. As long as that lies between us, there is no hope.”
She stared at him. “How can it not?”
He sat down again, sat in her father’s big chair and she knew it was deliberate. “Listen,” he said. “Listen as I tell you why your father died. I don’t know if it will help. I fear it won’t, but I can’t live like this, and neither can you.”
Claire couldn’t see how it could help either, and she’d long since decided that she didn’t want to have the picture too clearly in her mind, but she said, ‘Tell me, then.”
He laced his hands, thinking, then said, “Your father was a traitor to the Crown.”
She opened her mouth, and he said, “Don’t interrupt. He opposed the right of Henry Beauclerk to be King of England, and that is treason as far as Henry’s concerned. Very few died in the rising, and the king had no desire to make matters worse by severe punishment. Your father, like everyone else, was offered the chance to pay his allegiance to Henry and go home burdened with nothing more than a fine.”
She frowned over that. “He was offered that, like everyone else?”
“You thought he was given no choice but to face me?”
She nodded. “But then why didn’t he—”
“He would not swear the oath.”
She remembered, so long ago, talking to Thomas about that. “There must have been many others in that state. Who could swear to the king they believed unrighteous?”
A brow twitched wryly. “Everyone else seems to have had a miraculous change of heart.”
“Everyone else? My father alone resisted?”
“Apart from those who fled into exile.”
“Then why
wasn’t my father allowed to flee? At least we would still have him!”
He leaned forward slightly. “Because he wouldn’t go. He insisted on staying, and on saying that the king had no right to the throne. Friends, churchmen, even the king, all tried to talk him out of his stubborn stance.”
She shook her head. “You cannot talk a person out of what is right.”
She saw the knuckles of his laced hands whiten. “You’re just like him, except that he smiled more in his stubbornness.”
Hand to unsteady mouth, she said, “And made up jokes and riddles about it. I suppose.”
“Yes.”
“But he didn’t have to die. Even if the king had kept him in the Tower, what harm could my father do?”
He loosed his hands then, and laughed bitterly. “What harm? He could try to destroy a kingdom singlehanded. The king made a mistake. He had your father brought to a banquet. The king hoped that when he mingled with so many people who were willing to accept the situation—good people, honest people—”
“Cowardly people!” Claire flung at him, fearing that something was coming that would break down all her walls.
“Cowardly people, some of them, yes. Your father was no coward. But among so many, the king hoped that your father would see the error of his ways.”
Renald looked away then, doubtless into a past made vivid by his gift. “He kept the company enthralled with stories and riddles. He truly had a precious gift.”
“So why …?”
His eyes met hers. “Because he was both clever and resolute, and he had resolved to bring down a false king. At the end of the evening—the merriest evening the court could remember—he faced Henry and demanded his right to put the question of his guilt to ordeal by battle.”
Claire stared at him. “He demanded it?”
“On my oath. Henry couldn’t refuse. He couldn’t even try to argue him out of it, because it would look as if he did not believe in the justness of his cause.”
“And you were chosen to be his opponent.” Claire’s heart began to race, as she saw a tiny glow of hope. Her father had demanded it, and Renald, the champion, had been ordered to the task …
