The Lords of Arden

by Helen Burton

  ‘And you, Kate, what do you wear under your smock?’ The bells of doom were tolling for tomorrow and here before him was a girl ripe as an autumn hedgerow, fluttering dark eyelashes at him like a demented night-moth.

  ‘Only maidenly blushes, sir,’ said Katherine and darted behind the table, only to lean perilously forward, breasts swelling, to ask conspiratorially, ‘Thomas Beauchamp, is he handsome?’

  ‘Men do say so,’ admitted Thomas.

  ‘Men!’ scoffed Katherine. ‘What do the women of Warwick say?’

  ‘Yes, mostly, when asked,’ said Thomas with a lack of modesty.

  Katherine sighed. ‘I don't suppose My Lady will say it all that often.’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘It doesn't matter. It wouldn't matter if she looked like the rear end of a cow. In fact, the broader hipped the better. As long as she can produce his heirs at regular intervals she can keep her veil. My lord has a score to settle with the lady's father, of many years’ standing; to be kind to her would seem a weakness. Oh, she'll be endowed with every trapping his countess could wish for, but in the bed-chamber she'll play the brood mare or nothing at all!’

  ‘Will she?’ said Katherine, breathing faster. ‘Will she! Do you think that the Lady Katherine Mortimer, the White Wolf's daughter, the toast of the borders, the rose of Ludlow, is going to flatten herself like an old straw mattress and let the Warwick bear-cub force himself upon her! The boy my - her father used to curb with a horse-whip!’

  ‘Pretty Kate, don't be angry with me. Forget about your mistress. It’s a warm May evening; the woods are thick with bluebells - will they let you out?’

  ‘Let any try to stop me!’ said Katherine through her teeth.

  ~o0o~

  She met him in the woods beyond the abbey fish ponds, where the grass was lush and sweet. The darkness had fallen softly and completely and he could not see that she had been crying and she did not know that, for all his bravado, he was disappointed and inwardly rebellious, rejecting the veiled saint with the pudgy hands and the lack-lustre voice.

  ‘What is your name?’ she asked.

  ‘Tom,’ he said, ‘like My Lord's.’

  ‘Then Tom, if you want me you shall have me. If you can catch me first!’ And she set herself zigzagging through the trees, darting through the new young ferns until the briars of roses wrapped themselves about her skirts and the sticky burrs of goose-grass clung to her silk stockings. Eventually, he brought her to earth in a tiny, natural hollow, inlaid with the green fronds of windflower leaves. She lay breathless, panting, and he knelt beside her, just as winded. Behind them the dogs were barking; the abbey was roused. What did it matter?

  ‘Did you mean - what you said?’ gasped Thomas.

  ‘I think so. I don't know - perhaps not.’

  ‘You're beautiful, Kate.’ He let his own body down beside her so that its long line pressed against her side.

  ‘Kiss me, Tom, until I'm certain.’

  Beauchamp obliged, covering the heart-shaped face, finding the full red lips, the hollow of her throat, whilst his hands scrabbled with the fastenings of his own clothes before peeling away the layers of gown and kirtle and smock until there was nothing to come between flesh and flesh. Long afterwards she cried her heart out into his shoulder.

  ‘I'm sorry,’ said Thomas, ‘you were meant to enjoy it. What did I do?’

  Katherine punched him lightly with a small fist. ‘I love you, Tom. I love you and we'll never be together again, never.’

  ‘Of course we will. You ride to Warwick with your mistress; I'll seek you out. We'll find a way, I promise, Kate. I'll swear it; swear to be your true knight.’

  ~o0o~

  Thomas kept his promise. He wed Katherine Mortimer in the doorway of St. Mary's the following morning. The groom wore royal purple, sombre and rich, a golden circlet on his dark head. Katherine wore cloth of gold and a heavy veil. Neither glanced at the other as they stood side by side, the words of the marriage service going over their heads, each sunk in his or her own gloomy thoughts. And when the priest, officiating, intoned, ‘you may kiss the bride.’ She turned towards him and he lifted his hands to her veil.

  ‘You!’ gasped Katherine and

  ‘You?’ said Thomas in delight.

  The marriage feast was an embarrassment. The bride would not speak to her handsome young groom. She tossed her head whenever he tried to tempt her with some morsel from the high table and she wouldn't share a loving cup with him before they rose for the dancing.

  ‘Her mother,’ whispered Juliana, ‘would whip her. It's a little too late to play hard to get and everyone has gone to such trouble with the pastries!’

  Katherine should have led the dancing with her husband. Instead, she took the hand of Thomas's young esquire. Sixteen and rather exquisite, with lint blond hair and green eyes, Nicholas Durvassal was growing up. He made her laugh a lot. Thomas scowled from the sidelines and drank too much wine.

  ‘What is the matter with the pair of them?’ moaned John Durvassal. ‘I'd like to bang their heads together, I really would.’

  ‘The marriage bed will mend all,’ said Will Lucy practically and with more conviction than he felt. ‘The sooner we pack them off upstairs the better for all of us. Have a word with the trumpeters and the flower-girls. Let's get the bride's procession going.’ So, with drum and pipe they led Katherine up to her husband's chamber and disrobed her and left her naked in his bed. Thomas and the groom's procession arrived a discreet while later but he wouldn't allow them further than his dressing-room where they stripped him and thrust him through the doorway with much laughter and many a ribald comment. Thomas bolted the door and turned, splendidly naked, to face his bride.

  Katherine was wrapped in his fur-edged bed gown, bundled up like a turnip sack. She looked him up and down, aimed low and hurled the bedside candlestick. Thomas deflected it adroitly and ducked as a pewter cup followed after and then a drinking horn.

  ‘Girl, stop this! At least let's talk.’

  ‘Talk!’ shrieked the White Wolf's daughter. ‘What about? Here I am - the brood mare. The woman good for nothing but to father your children upon - preferably in the dark. Come and try it, My Lord!’ She hurled the bolster next and a pair of his boots, darting from corner to corner, tripping over the hem of his robe. Not everything missed its target, Thomas was marked red where she had struck home.

  ‘Yesterday, you enjoyed it!’ he bellowed.

  ‘Yesterday, I didn't know you were my husband,’ said she illogically.

  ‘So I was to get a bad bargain? How many other men did you bed with in the woods? There are a lot of woods round Ludlow.’

  ‘You were the first, you know you were.’

  ‘How do I know?’

  ‘Then you're an insensitive clod.’

  ‘And you were playing the hot little harlot!’ This time she found a book of hours, beautifully illustrated. It had belonged to Black Guy; it was priceless. ‘Put that down!’ thundered Thomas. ‘If you throw that I'll...’

  ‘What will you do?’ Katherine halted, hand half raised and he was across the room. She fled towards the window, jumping up onto the sill. The shutter hung from one hinge. He backed away in case she meant to jump but she sprang down again and ran into the Z-shaped passage that led to the garderobe, but there was no escape that way; it was a dead-end though she managed to build a barricade with a curtain pole and a packing case.

  Thomas left her and went to bed. If she wanted to spend the night in the privy she was welcome to it. He lay awake for two hours, imagining the scene next morning when the assembled company arrived to waken the bride and groom and found the room in disarray, one shutter hanging off and the bride barricaded in the garderobe passage. It could not be allowed to happen. He got purposefully out of bed, donned his boots and his shirt and, tearing down the curtain pole, leapt the packing case and stood over his wife. Katherine sat on the floor, huddled in his robe, face tear-stained, shivering. He scooped her up, swung her over
his shoulder and tossed her onto the bed. She lay on her back, unwrapped, staring up at him.

  ‘Are you going to rape me?’ she said in a small, tight voice.

  ‘No,’ said Thomas. ‘Any other questions?’

  For answer, she turned her back on him, keeping to her side of the vast bed, aware of the distance between them, aware of his breathing.

  ‘Thomas, I'm cold, it’s freezing in here.’

  ‘It wouldn't be if you hadn't dragged the shutter off its hinge!’ Was his retort but she had slithered nearer to his stubborn back, as if seeking the warmth of his proximity.

  ‘It is our marriage night. Make love to me.’

  ‘After the dance you've led me? I've neither the energy nor the inclination.’

  ‘That isn't true,’ she pouted.

  ‘Prove it.’ He slipped onto his back and turned to face her. At once, she had slid into the curve of his body, her round breasts pushing against his chest, her mouth upon his, her hands leading his where she wished them led.

  ...Thomas's son was born nine months to the day after his parents had become so well acquainted in the Bordesley Woods. They called him Guy, after his grandfather.

  PART TWO

  FLEUR DE LUCE

  Chapter Six

  Autumn - 1338

  John de Montfort set his straight, well-bred, if freckled, nose in the direction of the gentle green hills which sheltered his father’s domains, and deliberately tried to force Henry of Lancaster, Earl of Derby, out of his mind. But the green hills were formless still, dusky with shadow, and pictures of life in the service of Lancaster’s son would not recede.....

  An armada of brilliant sails on a green-grey sea; a vision of Henry, restless in the forecastle of the Salle du Roi - the great cog Thomas; decks crowded with bowmen or men at arms, jostling for position at the rails; the captain, dark and bearded, standing at the prow, issuing orders to his seamen....

  The landing on St. Martin’s Eve at Cadzand, the beleaguered isle off the Zeeland shore; the battle cries were ringing in his ears still - Lancaster, Lancaster for the Earl of Derby! It had been heady wine for a sixteen year old, finding himself part of it all, of the valour and the victory......

  Montfort flicked at his roan’s neck, impatient for speed, though why he should wish to be home his escort could not imagine. He had spent five years serving one of the greatest of the third Edward’s commanders. Only last year, he had been with the Court at Windsor, had seen the wild splendours of Pomfret, Derby’s favourite northern residence, and had squired the Earl on the long road south to the sea before the embarkation for Flanders. Now, he was riding home to his father’s midland fastness; the adventure was over.

  Looking back, it seemed too short a time since he had arrived at Kenilworth aged eleven, as one of a veritable army of pages serving the Earl of Lancaster; already a sick, blind old man. He could smile now at the resentful, sullen, spoilt imp who had had no wish to leave Beaudesert, who had spent his first week hellishly homesick and had then set out in the October drizzle to walk home. Of course, there was no alternative; a search had to be mounted. It would never have done to have lost Beaudesert’s brat! Then, two days later, the boy stepped firmly onto the causeway which snaked its way towards the Lower Guard and checked in at the gatehouse, naively confident of a welcome.

  He should have known his father would be away. As Commissioner for Conservation of the Peace between Beaudesert and the March, he was rarely at home these days but John’s great-grandmother was waiting with no doubts but that he would turn up given the fullness of time and an empty belly. Maud de Montfort rarely left her chamber. It was said that she was a venerable old lady, content to wander through her memories; her grandchildren Peter and Bess Freville knew otherwise. She had a finger on the pulse of Montfort’s rambling fortress and nothing passed without her hearing of it.

  Today, she had left her canopied bed and was sitting, straight-backed, in a chair by the window, a warm fur-lined coverlet over her knees. The eyes that looked out from beneath her heavy, veiled headdress were still a remarkable green, hard as agates. She received the news that her great grandson had been found, or rather, had arrived at the gate, as bold as may be, without emotion. Geoffrey Mikelton was not to be fooled by the inscrutability of her gaze. The timbre of her voice gave more away.

  ‘Send the truant to me!’ she rasped.

  Mikelton was privately thankful that he was not eleven years old. He went down to the kitchens where the child was unconcernedly tearing off a hunk of bread from a new-baked loaf.

  ‘Put that down. Lady Maud wishes to see you.’ When the boy took no notice he extricated the bread from his fingers, slapped it down on the table, pulled his Lord’s son before him, straightened and dusted off his mud-spattered suit of Lancaster’s livery and said, ‘Upstairs, at the double, and mind your manners unless you want a good switching!’

  John only smiled and shrugged his shoulders, sauntering out of the kitchen. Then, he ran for the nearest staircase and eventually arrived pell-mell at his great grandmother’s doorway. He yanked aside the heavy dark tapestry which covered the opening and gave her a practised and elaborate bow.

  Maud looked up. In spite of Mikelton’s best efforts the boy still looked like a feral child; hair wild, he was breathless from his ascent of several staircases.

  John de Montfort was an attractive lad, more like her older grandson, his namesake Lord John, who had fallen at Bannockburn Fight, than his stockier, dark-eyed father.

  ‘You had better come here!’ Maud’s voice was still strong; not the quavering tones to be expected of eighty seven summers.

  Her great grandson crossed the room warily and regarded her from under a flop of dark auburn hair.

  ‘Nearer. That’s better. Now, what goes on? Why are you here?’

  ‘I won’t go back. They all hate me!’

  Maud smiled into the wings of her veil. ‘Well, I wonder why?’

  ‘Bastard John, they called me, Lancaster’s pages, Lancaster’s squires. I’d rather be a bastard Montfort with our matchless lineage, our descent from the great King Alfred, than some petty, parvenu princeling; all yes, My Lord and no, My Lord!’

  ‘You told them that?’

  ‘Of course!’ He gave her a dazzling smile.

  ‘Oh, Johnny, what shall we do with you?’

  ‘You won’t send me back?’

  Maud was silent for a time, tapping the ends of her fingers together. Then she said: ‘There are reasons why you are better away, for the time at least.’

  ‘What reasons, Great Grandmother?’

  ‘In a few weeks your father is to marry. Oh, I know there have been names put forward before, ever since your mother took up the Religious Life, but this time it will happen. A man needs sons.’

  ‘He’s got a son. He’s got me!’ flared John.

  ‘Don’t be so obtuse, Johnny. He needs a wedded wife with a sizeable dower and legitimate sons to succeed him here.’

  John said, ‘He could have married my mother.’

  ‘Yes, he could have done but it was too late after you were born. He wrote to Rome, petitioned to have you legitimised so that you could stand as his heir. The Pope, in his dubious wisdom, would not have it. Had your father married Lora Astley, had she given him ten more sons, you would still have been barred from the entail. I never liked your mother, John, but she could see the unfairness of it all and the effect it might have on your life.’

  John sniffed volubly. ‘I don’t want another woman here. You won’t want it, great grandmother; a new chatelaine ordering us all about. You’d hate that!’

  Maud laughed. ‘Margaret Furnival is fourteen years old. I expect she’ll mould to our ways.’

  ‘How can I stay now? And how can I go back to Kenilworth?’ John’s violet eyes were bright with unshed tears.

  Maud sighed. ‘Your mother had that trick.’ She put up a finger to flick a glistening droplet from the curling dark lashes. ‘Whenever she failed to get her way, d
own would come the rain. Your father could never withstand the showers but it doesn’t work with me, my lamb. I’ve told you, I never liked her.’

  John glanced up again from under the heavy fringe. He was smiling now. ‘Geoffrey said she was a manipulative little cow. I wasn’t meant to have heard. I shouldn’t have told you, should I? I wouldn’t like to cause trouble for poor old Geoffrey.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you? I wonder. Now, listen to me. You can stay the night and travel back to Kenilworth in the morning – with poor old Geoffrey. Once you arrive you will keep your arrogant nose and that belligerent chin well down, those Astley eyes demurely covered, that mutinous mouth tightly buttoned…’ here she tapped his lips with a long forefinger ‘and you will submit to whatever punishment you’re due.’

  John felt safe to pull a face at her. ‘You could write a letter…’

  ‘I could, but I shan’t. No Montfort, not even a bastard Montfort, would expect his womenfolk to fight his battles for him. Now, you may kiss me and go and forage in the kitchen. There should be roast pork left from yesterday. I expect you’re hungry; boys always are. In the morning, I don’t expect to be up and abroad before you leave.’ She saw the leap of hope and the bright flash of an idea in the violet eyes and cuffed him lightly about one ear but he took her face between his hands and kissed her forehead dutifully.

  ‘Thank you, Great Grandmother,’ adding ‘for not being as mad as you might have been.’ Then he was running for the doorway, turning once to give her another of his disarming smiles before disappearing round the arras.

  Maud sighed and sent for Peter’s Constable. ‘Watch him like a hawk tomorrow or he’ll be half way across the Shire!’

  ‘Oh, he knows better than to try anything with me,’ grinned Geoffrey. ‘Very good at weighing up the odds is Master John!’

  ~o0o~

  The drizzle of the previous day had dissipated with the night and Beaudesert awoke to a true October morning. The ride to Kenilworth through soft green pasture land and the shivering gold of hazel coppices should have been a pleasant outing for Mikelton and the four men who made up John de Montfort’s escort. They stopped to breakfast along the way; John and Mikelton side by side on the bole of a fallen tree, the men in a comfortable huddle a discreet distance away.