The Knight And The Rose

by Isolde Martyn

  “Sir Geoffrey, I will wager,” growled Geraint, remembering the empty cart trundling back across the drawbridge. “May they rot in Hell for this! If he should die . . .”

  “Any notion where they may have carried him?” Jankyn asked.

  The old woman shook her head. “If my lady discovers what a misery your friend is, she will be right loath to send him to annoy God afore his time. Shall you take the risk and go? I will have ale and bread ready for you in a trice and there is a bag of fodder you can take for the horses.” She hastened indoors at Geraint’s grim nod.

  “And I suppose you expect me to go with you like a faithful dog?” Jankyn glared glumly at the lengthening shadows.

  “Unless you prefer to end up spiked on one of the local swords,” retorted Geraint, checking the stallion’s girths. “Do what you will but I am going to seek out Edmund’s wife, Elizabeth Baddlesmere. Mayhap she can offer a ransom for him.”

  “Mayhap she will not want him back.” Jankyn made no move to accompany him even when old Christiana came back out with a leather bottle and a large kerchief of provisions.

  “Well?” demanded Geraint.

  “I think you are running away, friend.”

  Geraint’s knuckles whitened as he clenched the reins. “I am not going to be manipulated by a pack of women. If they think I am going to kick my heels in Conisthorpe for God knows how long, they judge me ill.”

  It had been the same as a lad at the monastery, this sense of being prodded down the wrong path. Straightening, he faced the smaller man. “I cannot stay here, Jankyn.” He had an audience of two now for Christiana had ranged herself beside the fool. He struggled to find words that would make them understand. “All my life people have tried to take control of me, force me into a mould and the only way out is to cut loose. I will be master of my own affairs. I only stayed with the Mortimer affinity because I chose to do so and, clearly, I can do more for Edmund now by leaving here. I have taken an oath to set Sir Roger at liberty and I can hardly keep it while leashed to Lady Constance’s wrist.”

  Jankyn stuck his thumbs in his belt and took a turn about. “Is it just that, friend?” he asked eventually. “I really wonder if you have thought the matter through sufficiently.”

  “Humph, best stay here tonight and sleep on it.” Christiana’s stare picked at him, as if she was looking for a hidden explanation. She reserved the provisions against her scrawny chest.

  And be escorted back to Conisthorpe by Sir Geoffrey and his men? Knowing they both meant well, Geraint stared helplessly down at the pair, his mind a maelstrom of confusion. Did they think him a coward? He could not explain that Conisthorpe was poking feeders into him like poison ivy, enmeshing him, or that, even setting aside the danger of being arrested for a rebel, someone else here threatened his independent spirit. “I am sorry,” he told them, his mouth tightening. “I must go.”

  AT CONISTHORPE, JOHANNA waited, ashen and tight-lipped. Two of the garrison, pickled as walnuts, had been retrieved from the town mayor, to be locked into cells next to the well below the keep until Sir Geoffrey was in a more merciful humour. The stranger styling himself Sir Gervase de Laval and his unusual esquire had not returned, and so a messenger had been dispatched to summon the proctor.

  Johanna toiled up the straight staircase of the keep and stood, glad of the miserable wind to dry the droplets on her cheeks, watching into the half-light. It was neither the treason of his spirit nor that the stranger had begun to expect more than she could give; these things Johanna forgave him, that was the way men were. No, what irked her was that she had felt the sunlight on her fingers, fleeting, unable to be caught within two cupped palms like a pretty insect. Knowing hurt. The loneliness was back, together with a dreadful destiny and now she could only wish she had not learned to smile again.

  “Johanna?” Father Gilbert had climbed the stairs, but she did not want to be found, not yet. “I know you are here, my daughter.”

  “Are you afraid I will cast myself down?”

  “No.” He waited until his breath was even again. “Young men do not think, forgive him that. The quintain, fetching your father down to watch, rescuing young Peter from the torrent . . . he acts impulsively but out of goodness of soul, and there are other reasons, I suspect, that cannot be laid at the door of anyone here.”

  “You mean that he deserves to be hanged.” The priest might sift the ambiguity of her words for her real meaning, but she had spoken without gall. She added with a puzzled sadness, “Gervase was adamant he was not helping us just for payment. Do you think we were merely a cave to shelter in until the wolves slunk off to hunt elsewhere? I know he felt himself part of the greater matters being played out in the kingdom.”

  “I honestly do not know the answer, my daughter, but trust in prayer. We shall find the means for you to give yourself to Christ and find peace of spirit. As I told you before there are abbeys in the south that will receive you. Come to the chapel now and forgive your enemies.”

  He drew a cross of blessing in the air and left her to follow, but lingering, she leaned back against the unfeeling wall and stared at a pincushion-size patch of distant stars. At the back of her throat tears queued up begging to be shed and she swallowed them with difficulty, trying not to wallow in self-misery. She had been an undutiful child, a barren wife, and now she had made no effort to bind the man who might have been her salvation. God probably did not want her either. The cloister? Plentiful prayers and starving herself had neither brought her closer to Heaven nor freed her of earthly torment.

  But while the cold wind might complement her heaviness of spirit, there was a limit to self-chastisement and gooseflesh. Eventually mundane physical discomfort overcame her.

  As she descended past one of the open embrasures, the glimmer of a light moving behind her father’s tower window made her pause. Surely Aidan would be fetching my lord’s dinner from the kitchen? He usually lingered a little in the noisy warmth, ribbing the young scullions and loading up with fresh gossip.

  Her curiosity alerted, Johanna hastened across the darkening bailey and stealthfully climbed the short staircase to her father’s chamber. She took a deep breath, placed both hands on the ring and flung open the door.

  “Merde!” exclaimed Edyth, springing to her feet and shrieking as she overturned a candle onto the rushes. The matting flared up easily around her skirts, but it was Johanna who grabbed the fur cover from the bed and threw it down, stamping out the flames. She glared at Edyth’s now pious composure. Why was she hiding her hands?

  “By the Rood, what are you doing here?”

  “Reading to this poor neglected soul,” replied her sister-in-law in the sanctimonious tone she usually dusted off for visiting bishops.

  “Reading!” scoffed Johanna, discovering the tumbled inkwell as she pulled back the singed covering. Edyth made a run for the door but Johanna caught her and wrenched a parchment from her hand.

  “What in God’s Name . . .” She cast an appalled glance at her father, watching her from the pillows, his breathing heavy. “But this is . . .” Her little knowledge of letters armed her sufficiently to decipher a word or two, but the numerals she understood. Her gaze fell in horror to the jagged cross above her father’s name. “You fiend! So that is why Fulk left you here. Not only to spy but to trick my father into signing away—”

  Edyth flounced across the room to the corner hearth.

  “—dowry money that is rightfully my brother’s. This miser,” she tossed a contemptuous look at the broken man, “cozened Fulk into taking you when no one else would and for what?” She swooped at the fire and faced Johanna. “Look at you—a barren, disobedient whore. My brother deserves every penny, and have it, he shall! Give that to me!”

  Johanna stared in horror at the brand smoking in the other woman’s hand; the shadow on the wall behind her was predatory.

  “Kill me for it then!”

  “Jezebel!” hissed Edyth, her face as malevolent as a sorceress’s. “Give it to
me or I will scar you.”

  Johanna edged along the bed, the document behind her back. She had to reach the stairs or—

  “Aggh!” The strangled sound from the bed was sufficient to distract Edyth. In that instant, Johanna flung herself across the bed and thrust the parchment into the candleflame in the wall bracket.

  “You interfering shrew!” Edyth made a snatch to save it but Johanna grabbed it away, waving it both in defence and to speed the burning. Then she tossed it through the half-opened shutter into the moat.

  Edyth shoved the brand at her face.

  The scream must have come from her as she grabbed her veil out of the path of the licking flame and suddenly a metal bowl came hurtling between them like Greek fire, its contents exploding over their kirtles.

  “My lady!” Aidan, no longer bearing a covered dish in his hands, stood on the threshold, his eyes bulging at Edyth.

  “Thank you, Aidan,” Johanna’s breath returned to normal. Mercifully she was unscathed. Not taking her gaze from Edyth, she backed across the room until she was next to the servant.

  Edyth, with a shrug, briskly thrust the faggot back on the fire as if she had been coaxing more heat. “Have you looked at yourself in a mirror today, sister-in-law?”

  “Get out!” snarled Johanna. She turned to the servant. “Escort this . . . this spawn of Satan back to the hall, Aidan, and then you had better bring my father some more broth. From this day forward, he must be guarded.”

  “Oh, you will rue this, never fear. Where is he, your swaggering bully? Gone, hasn’t he? Could not satisfy his lust, could you? Fulk saw to that.” Edyth picked up her skirts and, head held high despite the spills upon her bosom, she left the room like an outraged princess.

  Her father made a grunting sound and Johanna turned. “So I finally have something to thank you for, my lord father,” she said, drawing the covers back up beneath his arms. “For once you have acted charitably towards me. I wonder if you really understood what she was at.” The face on the pillow stared at her without emotion and with a sigh, she bent and gently kissed his brow before she set the stool back beside the bed.

  “LEASTWAYS, THANKS TO the lovely Christiana, We do not have to buy or pilfer,” muttered Jankyn, as they drew rein briefly at dusk to assuage their hunger. It was tempting to dismount, but Geraint was as jumpy as a warren rabbit that has had its burrow blocked.

  Jankyn wiped the crumbs from his mouth and scanned the road. “Pardon me, but I cannot help worrying that ere long we shall see the ladies Johanna and Constance on the horizon brandishing broomsticks. Lady Edyth might even manage to fly here.”

  Geraint snorted. “More likely some local bailiff will challenge us in a sudden belch of officiousness.”

  “This wife of Sir Edmund’s that you seek, would she be the daughter of Sir Bartholomew of Blean, hard by Canterbury?”

  “Aye, the very same. He was Constable of Leeds Castle until his wife denied Queen Isabella entry and the king made war on him.”

  “But will there be help from that quarter, my friend? I heard Sir Bartholomew was in prison.”

  “What are you implying, Jankyn? That I am a fool and we should go back and seek Edmund out?”

  “What if Lady Elizabeth is not at Ludlow?”

  Geraint sighed. He was not prepared to mention his acquaintance with the rebellious Bishop Orleton. “Then I will go to Kent and seek her. I have to be free of Conisthorpe.” He was repeating it so much it was like a litany but Jankyn merely raised an eyebrow and said no more.

  From the shelter of the trees, they could see the road they had journeyed. Apart from a man driving his laden donkey up the hill, his curses loud upon the wind, and a pair of mendicant friars, armed with staves, marching stalwartly in the opposite direction, there was no peril—yet.

  They crossed the sturdy Wharfe bridge at Ilkley by night and rode across Rombalds Moor. Weary, they exchanged the horses just past cock crow next day at a horse dealer’s. Such establishments extracted any news carried past them like tentacled sea creatures but Geraint, negotiating with the garrulous horse dealer, was anxious to keep his business brisk. Weary and mud-encrusted, he managed to be cheerful but concise and hoped that Jankyn, gossiping outside in the yard with a travelling chapman, would not let himself be hindered.

  The jester was unusually silent as they rode away and Geraint studied him with concern. Shadows of fatigue as large as scallop shells underlay the smaller man’s eyes, while the dark bristles burgeoning on his cheeks lent him a villainous mien. Geraint, rubbing his own itching chin and knowing he was rank with sweat—his own and the horse’s—supposed Jankyn was as tired of the muddy furrowed road as he was. They dismounted by a rill and broke their fast with the remains of Christiana’s saddlebag food, alone with the sad cry of the curlews and the distant caws of nesting rooks.

  Used to words tumbling and twisting from Jankyn as fast as acrobats, Geraint found the silence disturbing. The fool was sitting with his arms clasped tightly around his knees, his gaze downcast and gloomy as a paid mourner’s.

  “What is it, man? Have I offended you?” A splash of water plopped upon the jester’s wrist. Geraint questioned the grey indecisive sky. There was no rain. “For God’s sake, Jankyn, what ails you?”

  “Such ill tidings and the year not a day old. Think you my Lady Constance knew of it and did not tell us?” muttered his companion, blinking tearfully at the clouds. “I should have been there at Pomfret, not sitting on my hands at Conisthorpe. My master now is headless. As I am, him being so.”

  His current master for an instant was thrown off course and then his jaw slackened. “What! Has the king executed Thomas of Lancaster?” He crossed himself, despite his incredulity. “Come, are you sure it is not a foolish rumour?”

  The jester shook his head, sniffling back his tears. “The chapman was at Pomfret and saw it all. They brought my lord there with the filth that the honourable citizens of York had thrown at him still clinging to his beard. The king refused him clean garments or water to cleanse himself, and imprisoned him in the tower he himself had newly built. Ah, he was so proud of that castle.”

  “So the king was there?”

  “Aye, he was and appointed my lords of Pembroke, Kent and Brittany together with Sir Robert de Malmethorpe and Sir Hugh Despenser to sit in judgment.”

  “Which Despenser?” Geraint’s voice was sharp.

  “What of it? The older Hugh, I think the fellow said.

  “Anyhow, my lord was chained and clad in only a shirt and hose when they brought him down into his own hall to hear the charges. It was packed so tight that a woman was crushed to death as they surged forwards. Sir Robert proclaimed my lord must die even though he was the King Edward’s cousin and the most esteemed of all the lords. They were like pack dogs, the chapman said, baying and snarling at a noble courser. And it was no true trial, for the king,” Jankyn spat, “would not allow him any defence, so when they had delivered the verdict my lord faced them and spoke scathingly to them, saying that it was a powerful court and great in authority where no answer might be made.”

  “But how soon was Lancaster executed? They must have acted mighty swiftly.”

  “Immediately. Some Gascon, a friend of Gaveston’s, the chapman supposed, hung a tattered, dirty cap on my lord’s head, and they set him on a sorry white nag without a saddle, and led him to the little hill which lies south of the castle wall. I know it well. It is where they hang the thieves and murderers.”

  “But surely he was allowed a confessor?”

  “Aye, they summoned a preaching friar and my lord prayed all the while as they led him out, but then . . .” he wiped the moisture from his lip, “the townspeople—his own people, damn them—hurled pellets of dung at him. He knelt down and made his peace, but just as the executioner, some villein of London, raised his axe to take off my lord’s head, one of Sir Andrew de Harcla’s men, a fellow from Muston who had been one of his keepers, cried, ‘No, make the traitor face towards Scotland!’
and so he was forced to shift before they headed him. I should have been there.” Jankyn hid his face against his knees and howled.

  “And what could you have done, my friend?” argued Geraint. “Be thankful his end was swift and merciful. They could have given him the death for traitors.”

  But the fool shook away his hand and refused to be comforted. Geraint gave him privacy and stood forth a distance, his arms folded, and sternly stared at the scatter of sheep grazing their way across the tussocks. He could not mourn Thomas of Lancaster even though he had fought on his side. The earl had been no saint, despite his jester’s adoration, and his desperate attempt to bring King Edward finally to heel by calling on England’s enemy, the Scots, to help him had been a sign of weakness. It was also because of Thomas, who had failed to come to the aid of the Marcher lords when they needed him, that Sir Roger Mortimer was in the Tower.

  Geraint was sure he was not the only one on the eve of the debacle at Boroughbridge who had doubted the purity of Lancaster’s mouthings against his royal kinsman. On the road up from the Trent, Geraint had heard for himself how envious the earl had become, reminding them all constantly that he had Plantagenet blood and could rule England better. Rule better! King Edward had slithered away from his counsel at every turn. In a sense it had been inevitable, save that no one thought King Edward would actually execute his own cousin. Everyone in the kingdom knew the king blamed Lancaster for the execution of the gorgeous Gaveston. And Geraint guessed who had stiffened King Edward’s resolve and put fire once more into his belly—the younger Hugh Despenser who was hated by nobles and commoners alike. Mind, it would not have taken many carefully delivered calumnies to feed the royal rage.

  And so within the space of a little week, the flat earth had tilted. With a shiver, Geraint wound the liripipe of his hood more tightly round his neck. The abscess cavity needed repacking by a skilled hand and both his shoulder and his soul were aching.