Bond of Blood

by Roberta Gellis

  The blow had fallen—the final rejection of the prize she had offered. At the moment, for all Leah cared, Cain was welcome to kill her as well as Sir Harry. She got slowly to her feet and met his eyes. Even that night in Oxford Castle when she had fainted, Radnor did not remember her being so white. He turned on his heel and left the room. Below in the guardroom, Beaufort came face to face with him, white as Leah, wordless but not defiant, offering himself for the punishment he knew he deserved. His presence hardly impinged on a consciousness filled with a far deeper agony.

  Lord Radnor struck him down with a single blow, and flung orders at Cedric to hold him in close confinement. He left the house, rode through the howling wind bare-headed and without his shield, rode back to the hospice where his father was, and lay down on the floor beside his father's bed.

  Chapter 21

  When the Earl of Gaunt woke in the morning, he almost stepped on his sleeping son. Without a flicker of expression, he lifted his feet and gazed for a long time at Cain's ravaged face. When he was satisfied, he kicked Cain awake and, without comment or question, began a long and involved discussion about future political plans and arrangements for circumventing the effects of the coming famine. His only response to his son's abstraction and deep expression of trouble was a spate of irritable insults and several sharp blows.

  The hours dragged by. From time to time a particularly cruel remark or painful bruise would rouse Radnor and he would apply himself to the topic in hand, but his mind soon slipped away, and when he rose from the dinner table to escape, Gaunt made no attempt to stop him. Cain did not know what he wanted. The pain he had run to, which in the past had eased or erased all other troubles, had failed him. Perhaps somewhere dark and quiet he could find the shaft that was tearing at his gut and wrench it out.

  There was a chapel, empty and silent, but Radnor found that this fear was not like the arrow he had once torn from his own flesh, fearing to die but knowing he could not live with it in him. This fear could not be torn out, nor conquered, nor destroyed; he must live with it in him. He burst from his solitude into his father's presence crying aloud for work.

  The old man looked impassively at his son and shook his head. "There is nothing more to do. You must see the queen and find if you can bend her to our will before we can even plan our next move. Sit down and stop behaving like an idiot. I will give you a game of chess."

  They played equally badly. The Earl of Gaunt should have been more satisfied with the situation than he was, for politically matters were going in his favor, but some disaster had overtaken his son, and for the first time in his life he did not know what it was that troubled Cain or how to help him. He thought again of the bitter recriminations thrown at him the night before. Had he been wrong to have forced the boy, beating him and frightening him, into an absolute pretence that his deformity did not exist?

  Honestly Gaunt admitted that he had begun the process because he could not help himself, because he hated the child for the death of the mother and less for the death of the perfect twin. As the years passed, however, and the boy showed the promise of the fine man Cain had become, Gaunt had continued his harshness to protect the child from the cruelty of others. And when his son was finally a man, it was he who would not let the matter rest, he who returned again and again to the bitterness between them.

  He had done right; Gaunt was sure of it. Why then was his heart so heavy? Why did he long to speak and be spoken to—to receive the kiss of peace from his child? He was getting old, he thought, nearly three-score years, old and soft. He shook himself, as if to free himself from a physical encumbrance, and knocked the chessmen out of place.

  "Go," Gaunt snarled, "you are useless to me and the dinner hour is passed. Go to the court and hear what people say. From one hour after the sun sets until dawn I will wait for you at the main gate."

  The court was very gay and everyone was glad to see Lord Radnor. A dozen men fell upon him with questions—jesting questions, idle questions, and desperately perceptive questions. He dared not let his tongue slip, and the fear in the foreground of his mind sank into a steady twisting misery in the background. It was very late before Radnor was able to seek his audience with Maud, because he wished to be sure she would be free of Stephen. When he sent a page up to her quarters with his request for admission, however, he was not refused. Lady Shrewsbury came out into the antechamber to tell him that Maud would soon be with him. She had offered to go out to Radnor, this being the first opportunity she had of private communication with him since the tourney, and Maud had agreed very willingly. To watch Joan being refused in the way Radnor was likely to refuse her was one tiny bit of salve that Maud could safely apply to her lacerations.

  "Tell him," Maud said dulcetly, "that I will receive him in a few moments." Joan nodded and moved towards the door quickly with the eagerness of triumph. Maud bowed her head to conceal her bitter smile, reopened the door that Joan had closed, and stood listening.

  "Did you receive my letter?" Joan of Shrewsbury came up close enough so that her scent reached Radnor. His nostrils spread as he breathed it, and his body stiffened as he resisted the impulse to step back.

  "Ay."

  Joan misread the stiffening and the restraint of the voice. "You need not fear to speak. Our voices will not carry." She glanced upwards at the frozen face archly. "Well, first you must say your thank you for the risk I ran—then—"

  "What risk? You told me little enough."

  So he was angry still. "Will you never forget a mistake? What more can I do to redeem myself? You have never given me an opportunity for even a word with you."

  "Mistake?" The face was blank, the voice indifferent. "Oh, I have forgotten everything. My mind is washed clean of all such matters now."

  Color flew into the smooth white cheeks and the blue eyes glittered. "You think that mawkish idiot you married—"

  Radnor's eyes narrowed and his lips twisted with pain. He would gladly have let matters rest, for if the woman had hurt him once the fact was insignificant to him now, but if she dared even name Leah— Radnor cleared the huskiness from his voice and raised it so that it traveled quite clearly.

  "Do not do it, Joan. Say nothing to me of my wife. So long as you talk about yourself or me or on indifferent subjects I can force myself to bear you. I will not have you soil my Leah's name by speaking it with your mouth. My temper is not to be trusted, Joan, and it would make for peculiar explanations if you make me lay you out with a blow. I assure you," he added, cruelly and crudely, convinced that there was no other way to deal with this woman, "that I have no desire to lay you out any other way. Hold your venomous tongue—and keep it and yourself away from my wife."

  Behind the door Maud smiled. Joan of Shrewsbury had met her match and it had been a privilege to hear it. The smile faded quickly and she prepared herself to go out. It was entirely possible that she too had met her match. When, without even replying to her courteous greeting, Lord Radnor plainly and bluntly asked for Chester's release and told her that his prisoners and Hereford were beyond her reach, she knew the worst. She stood silent for a moment, her eyes on the floor, whipping up her courage and her rage. When she spoke at last, her words were uncontrolled and vivid. She used every expression a long life and exposure to all kinds of people had taught her, but her fury beat unavailingly against the big man's stolidity. Finally she talked herself silent, gasping for air and searching for a single sign that she had pricked a raw spot. Radnor's expression, however, held nothing but a mild distaste for her gutter language, a mild regret that a great lady should so demean herself.

  "Have you done, madam? Are you through with my manners, morals, and ancestry? Can we speak of the Earl of Chester now?"

  "Chester, Chester. I will hold him till he rots. Do not tell me you will bring those men into council to lie for you. You have outmaneuvered yourself by sending them away to be safe. Even if you have lied again and they are indeed within recall, you cannot use them, for they will name Pembroke also
. Moreover, to raise such a noise would be a great act against the king."

  "I never said I intended to bring your killers into council, although they will not name Pembroke. They know only of Oxford, madam, and of you. The act is one of self-defence, which no oath binds a man against and, moreover, if those men speak in council they will not speak against the king who is, indeed, blameless. If your unwise actions should topple him from his throne, what fault is that of mine? Ay, madam, you look strangely now. In future it might be well to remember that it is not so easy to remove 'that devil of Gaunt' from your road."

  Maud gasped at his effrontery and insolence. They were standing some distance from her ladies and gentlemen, and Radnor had kept his husky voice too low to carry. Still, Maud could not remember being so spoken to by any man except her husband since she had become queen.

  "What I will do," Radnor continued calmly, "if I do not have my way, is to go to your husband with my tale."

  "You would not dare!"

  "You know me well. Can you say there is anything I would not dare? Moreover, what do I dare? I report a treachery against myself—all saw it happen—and against the king also. Your husband, madam, is too good a knight to appreciate efforts on his behalf made in such a disgusting way. Especially when those efforts have recoiled and are about to intensify his troubles. Nay, nay, I am but a good subject doing my duty. I could have brought the men into council to make trouble for my king, and so I will tell him. It is out of consideration for him that I withheld this knowledge for his private ear. Do you think he will disbelieve? Do you think he will credit that I set those men upon myself, or that Pembroke, my father-by-marriage, did? Does he know you so little?"

  Radnor's face was a hard mask of revulsion and bitter determination. It was not against Maud alone that his feeling was directed, but the entire system and situation. His own behavior disgusted him as much as hers, for he recognized that she was driven by necessity as he was. Hereford's way was clean, at least, even if disastrous. This keeping of the word of an oath and disregarding the spirit would never cease to distress him.

  "Give me Chester," he cried finally, "and it will be quits between us. I am sick with this planning and plotting."

  Maud had met her match, and her terror of Stephen's anger far more than the fear of political repercussion had defeated her. "Lord Radnor," she replied quietly, a barely perceptible note of pleading in her voice, "I cannot. To allow him who has so openly plotted against the king, who has not even denied the plot, to go scot free … Even you must acknowledge that to be impossible!"

  This, then, was the beginning of the end. Radnor sighed. "If you please, madam, let us sit down." He covered his eyes with his hand. "I did not mean that you should allow Chester pardon without punishment. Indeed, that is as evil for my cause as for yours. Such easy pardon will make a rebel of every petty warrior in the realm. Hear what I propose."

  In rapid outline he detailed the castles Chester would offer as forfeit and the truage he would be expected to pay. In return, however, Fitz Richard's lands were to be returned to the young man and both Chester and Fitz Richard were to be allowed to depart in peace.

  Maud baulked at that. "Fitz Richard was a warranty for Chester. It is our right—and no man will say us nay—to keep his lands in our hand!"

  "That is the price which must be paid, or I will have no peace in Wales. Madam, it cannot matter to you. What you planned in Wales is finished. Pembroke will not fall into your hands again. Hereford guards the north between Chester's lands and Gloucester's. There is no way now for you to put a knife to Gloucester's back."

  "You say you desire peace and you tell me to release a man who, no sooner gone from here, will raise up an army and make war."

  Lord Radnor shrugged and shook his head. "What can I do? What influence I have will be brought to bear for peace, and I can promise the same for my father. I will be warrant for Fitz Richard's behavior, but who can manage Chester? You should not have spited Lady Elizabeth; she can do more with him than any other. He is my godfather. I may not leave him to languish, even in the loose confinement of mandatory attendance at court."

  "How can I know what you promise will be given? We have not Chester's word—for whatever value that has—that he agrees."

  The pot calling the kettle black, thought Radnor. "I will also be warranty for the delivery of the castles. Those you may have before Chester leaves London. The truage I cannot hold myself responsible for. I will urge him to pay. Part may, no doubt, be had from Lady Elizabeth, but you know yourself that he must go to his lands to collect the remainder. What he does then is beyond my ordering, and I will not raise my hand against my godfather."

  "It will take a little time," Maud finally replied sullenly. "I must talk Stephen round."

  "If that is all we need to wait for, it will be done quickly enough. We are agreed on the price of Chester's freedom then?"

  Maud looked up at him, startled, "There is more?"

  "Ay, more. I have had news—needless to say I will not name my source for it—that Henry of Anjou is here." The brief anxiety faded from her eyes and was replaced by caution and curiosity. "I thought you knew and I see that I was right. Did your husband tell you what letters I wrung from him concerning the Angevin?"

  After the faint flush of relief, Maud's sudden pallor made her sallow skin look greenish. "Letters?"

  "Ay. Assuring him the succession as agreed. In Stephen's own hand, madam, and dated."

  "They are not sealed with the Great Seal." Maud had recovered swiftly and she answered with narrowed eyes.

  "No." Lord Radnor's lips twitched. There was, after all, a certain amount of humor in the situation. He and Maud knew each other so well that the moves of the game might almost be called in advance. Briefly Cain regretted that he had never played chess with her. "That I could not quite manage. But something else I can and will. I will promise you that both the letters and Henry himself will go back to France without any major engagement of arms—for a price."

  "Dirty usurer," she jeered. "You are rich enough, I hear, to buy the kingdom and you are content to grow filthy begging and stealing more. I would not put a copper mil into your hands that sweat with greed. Who do you think you are to ask for gold—Philip of Gloucester? You promise for a price what even he could not perform."

  That touched him. Radnor's complexion darkened and his hands knotted together as he fought the impulse to strike her. How Maud would have loved that. Such a simple way to end all her troubles. No excuse could have saved him if he struck the queen, and she had a dozen witnesses present. Up until now she had despaired of making him angry, for she had already insulted him in every way she knew how. Possibly, she thought, with her own flash of humor, this hurt more because it was perfectly sincere and uncalculated; she had only said the first thing that came into her head.

  Maud was a good judge of men, but she had miscalculated this time. Radnor's rage was in response to the slur cast upon Philip, his poor dying Philip. What she said about him was not true and was of no account. "I never promise what I cannot perform," he said when he had his voice under control. "The price is for Henry to pay off his French adherents in lieu of English land. I care nothing one way or another. If you do not pay, they will loot, and it will not be my vassals' keeps they will raid."

  "Why not take it and let others believe that is its use, Philip of Gloucester did no less and we have continued to content him. It is an easier life than one of war, and leaves a man more time to lie abed."

  Radnor's face went as white as it could go, and the scars stood out like two newly burnt brands. Maud sought desperately for something else to say. The last gibe about his uxoriousness, she thought, not realizing that he believed her to be sneering at Philip's recent behavior as if she did not credit the excuse of sickness, had hit him hard. One more remark about his wife and he would be completely out of control.

  "I do not deny, Lord Radnor, that I have a score to even with you, and it gives me pleasure to tell you thi
s. You doting husbands are all alike. She drips honey on your neck, and you can taste nothing but the sweetness. Well, it is venom she drips into my ears. You should hear what she says of you. You should see how she looks at William of Gloucester—and what she says of him."

  Instantly, Cain saw what the queen had meant all along. He shut his eyes completely and took a breath so deep that the seams of his surcoat strained to open. Leah had been trying to make Maud believe her indifferent to Cain and Cain's watchfulness to be mere distrust. She understood that if Maud thought her valueless to her husband, it would be useless to abduct her. For a flushed triumphant second, Maud believed she had won, but what Radnor was fighting now was a laughter close to tears, not wrath. He had to drop his head into his hands to conceal his face, and a strangled sound worked its way out of his tortured gullet in spite of himself. He must not laugh; it would give all away—but why William?

  Could Leah not have fixed on a more likely object? One more convulsive shudder and Lord Radnor lifted a face drained of all emotion.

  "You finished my character earlier. If you are now done insulting my wife, we can discuss the price further."

  "I am not helpless and undefended. You are a fool, also, to come here unsupported." The challenge was bravely flung, but Maud's eyes were hopeless.

  Radnor smiled and shook his head, almost with sympathy. "You know I am no fool, madam. My father is returned and waits for me beyond the gate; my men wait in the hall below. They will rouse every Marcher lord in the whole city if I come not forth."

  "What do you want?" Maud asked dully. There was nothing more she could do.

  When the gates of the White Tower opened to release Lord Radnor, his father had but one word for him, "Done?”

  “It is done."

  "You sound ill content. Is it as we would have it?"

  "Yes." The voice was drained, empty.