Lords of the White Castle (27 page)

'So he has admitted. I suppose it must be a family trait.'

'He has told you that he is to resign the post of Justiciar to Geoffrey FitzPeter?'

She nodded.

'I'm to carry the message to King Richard as soon as the scribe has made fair copies.'

Giving him a more thorough scrutiny, Maude replaced his clean-shaven visage with a cropped black beard and dressed him in a tunic of bright red wool instead of the plainer tawny robe he wore now. She snapped her fingers. 'I remember you at Lancaster! You played a lute and you sang a song about a woman called Melusine.' She smiled at him. 'I thought you were very accomplished.'

'Thank you, my lady.' The white flash of his smile gave him the face of a handsome rogue. 'I do sometimes travel in the guise of a troubadour. Singing for my supper is a useful skill to have.'

'I did not realise you were a member of Hubert's household.'

He shrugged. 'No reason for you to do so. I served as a squire with your lord husband, but I took the Cross with Lord Hubert.' He tilted his head to one side and a gleam that was almost mischievous entered his eyes. 'When I came to Lancaster it was in the company of Fulke FitzWarin. He was once one of your husband's squires too.'

'Yes, I know.' Maude's tone lost its warmth and she drew herself up.

'He's a good friend, but I haven't seen him in a while.'

She gave him a stony look. 'Then perhaps you should ride the tourney circuits and frequent the taverns,' she said, and then closed her mouth, realising that she must sound censorious and angry when it was none of her concern what Fulke FitzWarin did with his life.

His smiled widened. 'Ah no, my lady. I have enough excitement in my life as it is.'

The door opened and Theobald emerged from the sick room. Maude was pleased to see that he had cast off the anxiety he had worn when they arrived. Clearly, he too was convinced that Hubert would live.

'Jean!' With a cry of delight, he strode forward to embrace the young knight. 'How are you faring?'

'Well, my lord. And you?'

Murmuring her excuses, feeling unsettled, Maude went to organise her maids and begin sorting the baggage Coffers.

Mounted on his dun cob, Fulke le Brun listened to the whistle of the autumn wind and felt its sharpness not only about his face, but also in the right arm holding the reins. There was a tight band across his chest, constricting his breathing. The autumn woods surrounding the keep at Whittington wore a dying treasure of gold, bronze and verdigris copper against a sky of knife-blue and the beauty was so powerful that it cut him to the core. But still the pain was not as great as that engendered by the sight of the castle, his birthright, standing on the marshy ground beyond the woods. Close enough to touch, unattainable as a star. He gazed upon the limewashed timber palisade and gatehouse, on the roofs of the wooden structures within its outer defences; the smug twirls of blue domestic smoke rising through its louvres; the guards pacing the wall walks, sharp sunlight reflecting off their spear tips.

'My lord, it is not safe,' said the knight Ralf Gras, whom he had brought for company. His father was a FitzWarin tenant and Ralf had served his apprenticeship as one of le Brun's squires.

Le Brun smiled bleakly, without taking his eyes from the keep. The pain had eased a little, becoming a dull ache. 'I'll take the risk.'

The young man said nothing, but le Brun sensed the unspoken question. 'A messenger arrived from the court yester eve,' he said. 'Hubert Walter has yielded the post of Justiciar to Geoffrey FitzPeter.'

Ralf raised his brows. 'Is that bad news, my lord?'

Le Bran grimaced. 'Hubert Walter granted me the right to Whittington in the royal court, pending the granting of an alternative estate to Morys FitzRoger in compensation for his loss, but now I doubt how much further it will go. I have no rapport with FitzPeter and, as John's man, he will not be interested in advancing the judgement.' He spoke quietly, the bitterness present but controlled.

The night before he had not been as restrained. Fortunately, owing to the lateness of the hour, the messenger had delivered the letter in his private solar and only Hawise had been present to witness the destructive force of his rage.

'A lifetime of waiting and lies and broken promises,' he had snarled, hurling a goblet across the room, following it with the flagon, kicking a coffer so hard that he had almost broken his toes. 'It is over three years since Whittington was adjudged to me, and still I am made to wait for it and look like a fool!' He had sent the candlestand crashing over to accompany that remark and Hawise had shrieked at him to stop. He had roared at her like a goaded bull, raised his fist, stared at it in horror and all the fury remaining in him had imploded across his chest in a band of fiery lead. He had a vague recollection of sitting on their bed, doubled over with pain, of Hawise's arms around him and the terror in her voice. Mercifully, the pain had ebbed, but the undertow had dragged something of himself with it, leaving him hollow with loss.

Hawise had not wanted him to ride out from Alberbury this morning, but she could not stop him any more than he could stop himself. The need to see Whittington was a compulsion that drove all other considerations from his mind. Now, from the shelter of the trees, he sat and gazed until his eyes watered with the staring.

'My father spent all his life in dispute over this place,' he murmured. 'I was fourteen years old when we lost it, but I can still remember standing on the wall walk and looking out towards Wales.'

'How did you come to lose it?' Ralf asked curiously.

Le Brun spoke with the flatness of a tale told so often that it emerged by rote. 'The Welsh raided Whittington in the last years of King Stephen's reign while we were at Alberbury. By the time my father arrived with our soldiers, they had taken the keep and slaughtered the garrison.' Le Brun's lip curled as if the tale was souring his mouth. 'Roger de Powys was their leader. He was half-Norman, half-Welsh with a few scattered holdings, but gaining Whittington gave him prestige.' He made an angry gesture and his horse sidled. Le Brun drew the reins in tight, controlling himself as much as his mount.

'King Stephen and Prince Henry had no time to spare for war in Wales as well as war with each other. De Powys was left in possession of Whittington and we were given Alveston as a temporary measure with the unwritten promise that Whittington would be restored to us when Roger died.' He looked at Ralf. 'All
men
on whatever side they fought were supposed to have the lands that had been theirs in the time of the first Henry before the conflict began. But a royal promise is not worth the quill with which it is written.' Le Brun almost spat the last word. 'So now I come to look at what
is
mine by right and held in the hands of a thief at the behest of an oath-breaker.' For an instant longer he gazed upon the timbered keep and the banners fluttering from its battlements then pivoted his horse and dug in his heels.

They trotted single file through the woods, intending to meet the road that linked Oswestry to Shrewsbury. But as they crossed a small charcoal burner's clearing, a party of huntsmen with dogs and hawks barred their path. The wind roared through the trees like an ocean on the turn and le Brun felt its surge within his body. Pounding, taking and threshing him in its tumult.

A beautiful peregrine falcon perched on the gloved fist of Morys FitzRoger, preventing him from drawing his sword. His companions, however, including his sons, freed theirs from their scabbards with alacrity. Morys held up his left hand to stop them, the movement slow and controlled to avoid frightening the hawk.

'I presume you have come to look at what you cannot have,' he said to le Brun in a contemptuous voice. 'For a man who bears the teeth of a wolf on his shield, you have nothing left with which to bite.'

Le Brun had reached to his own sword hilt but refrained from drawing the weapon. Partly it was because they were two against ten, but mostly in response to the terrible pain that was ripening in his chest. 'Whittington is mine, as adjudged in the King's court,' he gasped through clenched teeth. It was hard to breathe, as if he were sucking air through a cushion.

'Face the truth,' Morys sneered. 'That judgement was a sop from Hubert Walter's office to keep you quiet and off the Justiciar's back. They've forgotten you and they've abandoned the judgement. You are trespassing on land that is not yours and never will be.'

'This is not the end.' It took all le Brun's determination, all his stubborn pride to keep him in the saddle. A grey haze veiled his eyes.

'Oh, I think it is. If ever you trespass on my territory again, I will kill you out of hand. Go home, old man, and nurse your bones by your own hearth instead of coveting another's,' sneered FitzRoger, as if the ten yean by which Le Brun was older than him was a lifetime. He gestured. The knights in the hunting party closed around le Brun and Ralf Gras, disarming them while two of the huntsmen set out with dogs to make sure that there were no hostile troops hiding in the forest. Finally, FitzRoger had le Brun and his companion escorted through the woods to the Oswestry road.

Le Brun leaned over his saddle as the pain crashed over him, wave upon wave, surging, grabbing him, dragging him away from the shore and out to sea.

'Sir?' In consternation, Ralf grabbed the bridle of his lord's mount.

With a last conscious effort, le Brun exerted pressure on the reins and brought his horse round so that he was facing the road to Whittington. 'Tell Hawise…" he said, fighting for breath, 'tell Hawise that I'm sorry.'

Ralf's instincts and reflexes were swift. He was off his horse and managed to catch Fulke le Brun as he toppled from the saddle.

But there was nothing he could do.

Snow had covered the land in a white shroud, and in the bitterly cold air a leaden sky threatened to turn the light covering into a full blanket. The peasants huddled close to their hearths and housed their beasts in a partitioned section of the same room for warmth and shelter. Folk obliged to be out in the weather wore their warmest cloaks and hoods, and travellers made haste to reach their destinations.

Fulke rode into Canterbury on a freezing December dusk to seek shelter and audience with Archbishop Hubert. His Grace, however, was absent on business, although his elder brother and wife were in residence.

'It grieved me to hear of your father's death. 'Theobald Walter offered Fulke his hand in sympathy. 'He was a fine man and, as I came to know him, a good friend.'

Fulke returned the handclasp. Theobald's fingers were warm. His own were frozen claws from gripping the reins. Even with gloves, the cold still penetrated. 'It was a full month before the messenger found us with the news,' Fulke said grimly, his eyes dark with pain. 'The tourney season was good and the weather held so fine that we stayed longer than usual. If we had come home at the appointed time, I might have been able to prevent what happened.'

'I thought your father died because his body failed him.'

Fulke gratefully took the hot wine that Theobald offered. They were alone in the warmth of the private solar, the shutters barred against the inclement weather and several charcoal braziers giving off a luxurious heat. There was no sign of Maude, and he assumed that she was keeping to the women's chamber since a high proportion of celibate—and supposedly chaste—clergy occupied the Archbishop's residence.

'That is partly true,' he said. 'But I believe that his heart not so much failed as broke within him. He could neither eat nor sleep for thinking of the injustice done to us over Whittington. The knight who brought him home to my mother said that my father was humiliated by FitzRoger and it was the final blow to shatter him.'

'Humiliated?' Theobald's gaze sharpened.

Fulke told him about le Bran's visit to Whittington and the incident in Babbin's Wood. 'Perhaps my father was foolish to go there, but I can understand the frustration that drove—and eventually killed—him.'

Theobald sat down with his wine and lapped his fur-lined cloak over his knees. 'I cannot say that I understand the depths of your father's striving for I have never been deprived of something I consider my birthright, but nevertheless I sympathise.' He looked shrewdly at Fulke who had remained on his feet, his tension palpable. 'We are all driven by our demons—ambition, hatred, love.'

Fulke took a swallow of wine. 'He wanted Whittington above all things, perhaps even above my mother who was the light of his life. I have often wondered if Whittington was his darkness. Certainly it destroyed him.'

'You must not let it destroy you,' Theobald said, his gaze troubled.

Fulke paced to the shutters, stopped and swung round. Candlelight shone on his hair like a reflection in black water. 'I have no intention of letting it do so, but still it is my legacy. For my father's sake I have to see this matter through to the end.'

Theobald was silent, considering. 'Can you not just let it drop?' he said at last.

Fulke shook his head. 'The Curia Regis has granted our entitlement to Whittington. We have a ruling that confirms our claim, but the order commanding FitzRoger to quit has never gone out from the Justiciar's bench. The matter has to be settled and, as head of my family, it falls my duty. Besides, Whittington is not some small, insignificant manor. It encompasses more than seventeen geldable hides, including more than a league of woodland, and land for twenty-five ploughs.'

'So that is why you are here to see my brother?'

'He was the Justiciar at the time of the ruling, and he still has contact with that office and the officials. He trained Geoffrey FitzPeter as his successor.'

'Do not expect miracles,' Theobald warned. 'Hubert does have a certain influence, but Geoffrey FitzPeter is not a man to be pushed without strong reason.'

'Is justice not a strong enough reason?' Fulke demanded on a rising note.

Theobald gave a slight shake of his head. 'You know the world of court politics as well as I do. Justice is always subject to personal loyalties, favours owing, debts called in and bribery. None of us is exempt'