A Place Beyond Courage (7 page)
Swallowing on panic, Aline advanced to the hearth and, keeping her gaze on the tiles around the firepit, dropped a deep curtsey. ‘My lord,’ she whispered, before her throat closed.
She felt her arm taken in a firm grip, drawing her to her feet, and then a finger beneath her chin, tilting her face towards the light from the unshuttered window. ‘Aline,’ he said.
She raised her lids, met his gaze and felt it burn her. It took every iota of her will to hold her ground but she stiffened her spine and clutched the comforting smoothness of the prayer beads he had given her.
He lowered his hand and gestured. ‘I see you have the gift I sent to you.’
‘Yes, my lord,’ she answered in a high, strained voice.
‘She treasures them,’ her mother intervened again. ‘They are never off her person.’
He walked to the window and looked out, arms folded.
Pale with anxiety, Aline glanced at her mother. The older woman shook her head and made a calming gesture.
John turned round and gave the sigh of a man reaching a decision. ‘I am of a mind to make a marriage of this wardship and join the Pipard lands to my own. If your daughter is willing, then I desire to make a formal betrothal.’
Aline gasped, feeling as if she had been punched in the solar plexus.
‘My lord, forgive us, this is sudden,’ Cecily said.
Through her shock, Aline saw his lips curve in a grim half-smile. ‘Not that sudden. You have known of the possibility for more than two years. Nevertheless, I am prepared to wait a while longer and give you time to adjust.’ Returning to the women, he took Aline’s hand. ‘Are you willing?’
Aline swallowed and darted a frantic look at her mother. Was she willing? The latter made a shooing gesture behind John’s back and nodded. ‘Y . . . yes, my lord, you do me great honour,’ Aline said. There was no other possible answer. When she wasn’t dreaming about being a nun, her thoughts were both pleasured and troubled by images of this man who had arrived out of nowhere and was now proposing to make her his wife.
‘Then I am content.’ He raised her captured hand to his lips and kissed her fingers in the manner of a courtier. ‘Do you go and dress in your finest and I will give you a ring and a vow to go with it.’ He released her, but Aline stayed where she was, rooted by shock.
‘Go to, child.’ Her mother stepped forward and propelled her towards the stairs. ‘My lord Marshal will think you a lackwit!’
Aline managed another abashed curtsey to John, then fled towards the stairs.
‘Best go with her,’ John said with a tilt of his head, ‘or else she’ll be bolting herself in her chamber and refusing to come out.’
‘I am sorry, my lord. My daughter . . .’
‘...is shocked, I can see that.’ He looked rueful.
‘You say you are willing to wait . . . for how long?’
John briefly pondered. ‘Depending on the whereabouts of the court, let us say next summer?’
Cecily let out a sigh of relief. ‘You are generous, my lord. It has been one of my greatest fears - and hers - that you would sell her marriage to a stranger on the moment. You do not know how grateful I am.’
‘It is not generosity but common sense that stays my hand. I would no more take her to wife now than I would ride a colt into battle. It is as clear as daylight she needs time to prepare.’
‘Nevertheless, thank you.’
She curtseyed and hurried away. John returned to the window and sat upon the cushioned bench beneath the sill. Aline Pipard was a frightened girl, plainly less adult than her actual years. Tongue-tied, nervous. Yet despite his reservations at her lack of maturity, he acknowledged that it was part of her appeal. There was no artifice in her blush and utter innocence in the darting glances she cast at him from those wide eyes. She stirred the part of him that was jaded by the pretence of the court and the subtle ways of the women who made their living by stalking its corridors. There would be neither pretence nor artifice with Aline. He spread the silk tassel of the cushion and studied the fanned-out threads. If he made a marriage with her, it wouldn’t be all of his life, either. Far from it. The court was his work, his prestige and his livelihood, but to have her purity in which to cleanse himself of the murk appealed to him. Give her a little longer to grow up and she would have to do. He was sufficiently pragmatic to realise that a greater marriage was unlikely to happen.
5
Oxford, March 1133
An hour before sunrise, John quietly left his bed, his movement stirring a faint aroma of musky perfume from the sheets. Earlier in the night it had been occupied by one of the new concubines - a chestnut-haired girl called Celeste who was still on probation. She was unpolished, but a fast learner with endless legs, a dazzling smile and a sharp wit. Another one who would go far and no doubt wind up as some man’s mistress, perhaps even the King’s. Rumour had it he was starting to tire of Isabelle de Beaumont - although not of the company of her twin brothers who were still deep in his counsel.
He swilled his face in the ewer, dressed, and left his lodging which huddled in the shadow of King Henry’s new tower. A stiff breeze blew from the north, making the day seem more like winter than the first week of spring and he shivered as he crossed the bailey.
The gates were still shut, but a greening light tinged the eastern sky and the porter was poking his fire to life in order to put his frying pan over the coals. John’s gaze sharpened as he saw that Brian FitzCount, lord of Wallingford, was keeping the man company. Being Henry’s constable, FitzCount was nominally overseer of the marshal’s department, although to all intents and purposes he let John run it as he wished. FitzCount was the bastard son of Alain Fergant, former Count of Brittany, and had been raised at the Norman court where Henry treated him like a son.
John approached the fire and bowed in greeting. ‘You are abroad early this morning, my lord.’
‘I must be if I am ahead of you,’ answered FitzCount with a dry smile. ‘I have never known a man to need so little sleep - except perhaps your father. I still remember him wagging his finger at me when I was a squire and telling me sleep was for the grave.’
‘It was a favourite saying of his.’
‘He spoke a deal of common sense.’ FitzCount rubbed his hands together then held them out to the fire with a sigh. ‘Even so, I wouldn’t usually abandon my bed this early, but I have duties at Wallingford.’
John nodded but said nothing. Brian was lord of Wallingford in respect of Maude his wife. Despite being more than six years wed, they had no heirs and conducted their marriage from a distance, but John supposed FitzCount had to put in an appearance now and again and hope sons would come of it. Everyone knew FitzCount was devoted to the Empress and she to him, even if their behaviour towards each other was exemplary. Not even the hardened court gossips could find a trace of scandal. But the way they looked at each other was revealing: the acknowledgements, the things that did not have to be said, because they were already known.
‘I hear you are to be married, Marshal,’ FitzCount said.
John watched the light brighten in the east. ‘Yes, my lord, before the court returns to Normandy.’
‘Will you bring your wife across the Narrow Sea with you?’
‘Would you bring yours except on necessary occasions?’
FitzCount made a face. ‘Probably not. Court and domestic hearth are like drinking ale and wine together. They don’t mix.’
The sudden beating of a fist on the outside of the great doors caused both men to jump. Cursing, the porter abandoned his breakfast preparations and went to slide the bolts and unlock a small door cut into the bigger one. The royal messenger, who had been waiting outside, stepped over the threshold leading a blowing nag, its saddlebags fat with sealed parchments. John knew him well. He was nicknamed Absalom because of his silky long hair, although unlike his biblical namesake, he had yet to come to grief by getting it tangled in a tree. Currently he was wearing it in a neat, almost feminine braid, but there was nothing feminine about the sword at his left hip or the jut of his jaw. Absalom was as tough as a peasant’s toenails. FitzCount had stiffened at the sight of him, which didn’t surprise John. There could only be one reason for this dawn apparition after an obvious ride through the night.
Absalom gave them a dazzling grin. ‘Great news, my lords! The Empress was delivered of a son at Le Mans on the fifth day of March. He has been christened Henry, for his grandsire. My lord the King has an heir, as he desired!’
‘God be praised!’ Colour flushed FitzCount’s throat and face. ‘The Empress herself, she is well?’
John’s gaze flickered to his companion as he heard the betraying anxiety in his voice.
‘Yes, my lord,’ Absalom replied. ‘She is in good health and recovering well. The baby is not big, but he’s robust and strong. I saw him in the cradle before I set out. The Empress desired me to see him so that I could make report to the King her father. He has red hair like his sire . . .’
‘Such hair runs in the Empress’s family too, on her father’s side,’ said FitzCount.
‘That explains it then, my lord.’ Absalom chuckled. ‘Norman lion, not Angevin fox.’
FitzCount laughed, and taking a ring from his little finger gave it to Absalom in token of thanks. The messenger bowed, touched his forehead, and led his horse towards the stables.
‘Good news indeed.’ FitzCount blew out between puffed cheeks. He clapped his hand to John’s shoulder, visibly struggling with emotion.
‘It makes the road ahead a little more certain,’ John replied. ‘You will excuse me, my lord. With such news abroad there is bound to be high celebration. I had better warn my men.’
FitzCount swallowed and withdrew his hand from John’s shoulder. ‘Of course,’ he said and busily adjusted the fastening of his cloak as if it were a closure on feelings he should not have revealed. ‘And I have a day’s ride to Wallingford ahead of me.’
‘Then God speed you, my lord.’
With a brusque nod, FitzCount departed, and John turned to his own duty.
6
Winchester, Midsummer 1133
In a small private chamber in Winchester castle, Aline suffered her attendant women to make the last tugs and tweaks to her wedding gown before she went to chapel. The fabric was a soft blue wool, embroidered at the hem with a pattern of circles worked in silver thread. Her hair, unbound as a symbol of her virginity, had been combed and smoothed until it shone like polished pinewood. A chaplet of fresh white dog roses and columbine crowned her brow and her cloak was pinned with a beautiful brooch of delicate blue enamel work. She had been sick twice already that morning and her mother had dosed her with a ginger tisane to settle her stomach before pinching her cheeks hard to give them some colour. ‘You can’t go to your marriage with a face like a new cheese,’ she had said, fussing around Aline like a housewife about to take a heifer to market.
John’s position as the King’s marshal meant that the marriage was being celebrated at court. Aline had never been to Winchester and had been overwhelmed at the size of the town and the constant hurry and bustle, so different from her own quiet existence at Clyffe. Winchester was the seat of England’s treasury and John had told her the town was second only in size and importance to London. Rather than filling her with wonder, the detail had made her feel small and inadequate. Her only experience of such large gatherings had been occasional visits to Salisbury Fair and the cathedral, which hardly compared to Winchester with the court in residence. Aline felt like a stranger in a foreign land peopled by assured, sophisticated inhabitants, who could see straight through her, knew she was not one of them and scorned her for it. She was trying her best not to disgrace herself or her future husband, but knew her best was not good enough.
‘You look beautiful,’ said Sybire of Salisbury, who had stopped by to wish Aline well.
Aline swallowed and thanked her in a tight, small voice.
Sybire laid a compassionate hand on Aline’s sleeve. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said with a maternal smile. ‘John knows what to do; he’s been at court since he was a squire. Let him guide you and everything will be well. It’s daunting, I know, but it will pass.’
Aline whispered her thanks, grateful for the reassurance. Behind Sybire, she saw two women exchange glances and smirk at each other as if Lady Salisbury had said something amusing or ironic. Their looks, their barely concealed titters, knotted her stomach. She wondered what it was they knew that she didn’t. Women had been offering her advice all morning, and much of what they said had increased her fear. To be certain of conceiving a son on her wedding night, she should eat plenty of parsnips and sleep on the right-hand side of the bed. But it wasn’t parsnip season and what would she do if the right-hand side was the one preferred by John? Ask him to move? Holy Mary, she was not sure she dared ask him anything!
Her mother had had a quiet word with her concerning the physical obligations of a wife and Aline was not entirely naive. She had seen animals mating, and even people once, although her glimpse of the latter had been fleeting and the couple fully clothed with most of their congress hidden. She was anxious about that aspect of marriage, but more worried about pleasing John and doing the right thing. Her mind was a vast empty space when it came to thinking about things to say to her new husband. What kind of conversations were they going to have? She needed someone to tell her what to do, to murmur instructions at each stage of the game, but instead she was being launched, oarless, on to a heaving ocean and expected to stay afloat. The thought that she would soon be mistress of her own household filled her with dread. She knew she was going to make some terrible mistakes.
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