Lords of the White Castle (4 page)

'Not particularly, but unlikely to advance the Prince's plea that he's sufficiently mature to be let loose on lands of his own—especially following the escapades of the eldest one, and we know how that ended.' Eighteen months ago, King Henry's heir and namesake, a feckless, shallow young man, had died in Aquitaine of dysentery during a petty war with his family over land and influence. Theobald made an irritated sound. 'John has no one to blame but himself.'

'Which is something he never does. It is men like us, Theo, who are the checks and balances to the excesses in the Angevin nature.' He plucked his mantle from the bed and donned it. 'Walk with me back to the abbey,' he requested. 'Your squire can tend the lad, and my lodgings are better than this.'

Theobald considered, then nodded. 'Jean, make up another pallet,' he instructed. 'Let Fulke bed down here for the night.'

'Sir.' The squire turned from rummaging amongst the baggage, his hands, occupied by a brass ewer and a linen cloth. 'What about dinner?'

'I will eat with the Archdeacon. You had best bring food to the chamber for yourself and Fulke.'

The squire's mobile features fell.

'That's an order, Jean,' Theobald said sternly. 'God knows there have been enough waves made already today to cause a tempest. Best if you don't dine in the great hall this eve.'

'Sir.' Jean's voice and manner were resigned. Theobald wagged a forefinger in final warning and stepped out of the room with his brother.

Jean swore as the door hanging quivered and was still.

Fulke cleared his throat. 'You go. I'll be all right on my own.'

The other youth snorted down his fine, thin nose. 'Have you ever seen a flayed corpse? It's not a pretty sight.' He tilted his head to one side and his dark eyes gleamed. 'Mind you, neither are you just now.' He approached with the ewer and cloth. 'I take it from what I heard that you've been brawling with Prince John?'

'We had a disagreement,' Fulke said cautiously. Since arriving at court, the generosity of trust in his nature had taken as much of a battering as his body.

'Looks more than that to me.'

Fulke tensed to resist pain, but Jean's touch was surprisingly deft and gentle as he wiped away the caked blood and made an examination.

'You're going to have a rare old kink straight across the bridge,' he pronounced. 'I wouldn't like to play your sort of chess.'

Fulke gingerly raised his hand to feel the damage. The area was swollen and pulpy, more than tender to the touch. He thought it was probably fortunate that there was not a gazing glass in the room. 'It wasn't my sort of chess,' he said wearily. 'It was John's.' In his mind's eye, he relived the moments of the brawl in sickening detail: the crunch of soft bone as the chessboard smacked him in the face, his lashing kick and John's slow reel backwards.

The squire rolled his eyes knowingly. 'I've seen his tactics on the practice field. Lord Theobald says that he has neither discipline nor honour.'

Fulke agreed entirely, but still his brows drew together. 'Is it wise to unbridle your tongue to someone you do not know? What if I go to John and tell him what you have said?'

'Jesu, I wouldn't be Lord Theobald's squire for more than a candle notch if I didn't know when to speak and when to draw rein.' He grinned, displaying a crowd of white teeth. 'I've seen you on the practice field too, remember. You have what John lacks. Here.' He thrust a cup into Fulke's hand. 'Drink this. It might not dull your pain, but it'll certainly pickle it.'

Fulke almost smiled. He took a swallow and heat burned in his gullet while sweetness lingered on his tongue.

'Galwegian heather mead,' said Jean. 'It'll kick you all the way into tomorrow.' He poured a measure for himself and toasted Fulke before downing the drink in a single swallow of his strong young throat. Then, lowering the cup and resting it on his thigh, he extended his other hand.

'I know you are Fulke FitzWarin, but since we have not been formally introduced, I am Jean de Rampaigne, squire and attendant to Lord Theobald Walter. If you think my French strange, it is because I speak with the accent of Aquitaine, my mother's tongue. She was from those parts but married an English knight—like Queen Eleanor married King Henry.' His smile flashed. 'Fortunately I don't have any brothers to dispute my inheritance.' He left a moment's pause for effect before adding, 'Unfortunately, I don't have an inheritance either.'

Fulke shook the proffered hand, a little bemused at the squire's garrulousness of which there had never been a sign on the practice ground. He took another swallow of the mead and felt its warmth spread through his body like liquid gold. Either Jean was right and it was dulling his pain or he was growing accustomed to the persistent throb of his damaged flesh.

'I have brothers,' he said, 'but none like John… Well, I don't think so. It's hard to tell with Alain, he's only four years old.'

'Perhaps there's a similarity because John acts like a four-year-old,' Jean said wickedly.

Fulke spluttered, his amusement rapidly cut short by the agony from his nose. 'Don't,' he said.

'But it's true. Lord Theobald's always saying it.'

My father says
. Fulke grimaced. It seemed that everyone needed a higher authority to quote, all the way up to the highest authority of all. He drank again and was surprised to find his cup almost down to the lees.

'I did not know that Lord Theobald's brother was the Archdeacon of York,' he said to change the subject.

Jean retreated to the coffer and picked up his lute. 'He'll be more than that one day,' he said as he straightened the red and blue silk ribbons around the neck of the instrument. 'I know for a fact that their uncle Ranulf hopes to bequeath the Justiciar's post to Hubert in the fullness of time.' He coaxed forth a ripple of notes.

'I thought it wasn't hereditary?'

'It isn't, but the one before trains the one to come, and like as not it's usually a relative. Mark me, it will be Hubert. He's had the education for it and he's got the brains. 'Jean tapped his head. 'And he'll need them, dealing with King Henry and his sons.'

Fulke nodded agreement. 'He won't need to be an archdeacon but a saint,' he said. His tongue stumbled on the words. A loud gurgle from the proximity of his belt reminded him that whatever the traumas of the day, he had not eaten since before noon. The strong mead had set his stomach juices churning as well as his head.

Leaping off the coffer, Jean took Fulke's empty cup. 'Food,' he said, 'or never mind the morrow, you'll be kicked well into the middle of next week. Come on.'

Fulke gazed at him owlishly. 'But Lord Theobald said that we weren't to leave and you said you would be flayed alive if you disobeyed him.'

Jean widened his arms. 'My lord meant that he didn't want us making an appearance in the great hall. Unless you have well and truly laid him up, John's likely to be there. My master won't object if we keep out of the way'

Fulke had doubts, but his hunger and Jean's enthusiasm reasoned them aside. His own nature thrived on challenge and, bruised though he was, Fulke was still capable of rising to meet the occasion. 'Well, where do we go?'

'The kitchens,' Jean said,' where else?'

Jean was clearly well known in Westminster's kitchens, to judge from the welcome that he and Fulke received. The flustered head cook told the youths to keep out of the way of the preparations for the court banquet in the great hall, but they were found a place in a corner by a more amenable, red-faced woman. Despite their noble rank, she presented them with a bowl of boiled eggs to shell—a delicacy for the high table, eggs being in very short supply this time of year.

'If you want your supper you can work for it like the rest of us,' she said good-humouredly, her French bearing a strong Saxon twang. She tilted Fulke's jaw on her fleshy, onion-scented fist. 'Saints on earth, boy, what have you been doing?'

Before Fulke could give a suitably innocuous reply or tell the woman to mind her own business, a youth who was assembling the dishes ready to be taken to the high table spoke out. 'He's the one I told you about, Marjorie, the one who nearly knocked Prince John's wits from his skull.'

'I didn't,' Fulke protested, wondering with dismay and curiosity how it was possible for news to spread so quickly.

'Mores the pity' Marjorie said acidly. 'And looks like you took a drubbing yourself.'

'I .. "

'The Prince smashed him in the face with a chessboard,' announced the youth with the relish of one with a tale to tell.

Jean grinned and tapped an egg on the side of the bowl. 'There's no need to listen at doors to hear gossip. You just come and sit here for an hour. They'll tell you everything: whose wife is bedding whom, who's in favour, who's out—even the colour of the King's piss in the morning.' He ducked the playful swipe of Marjorie's hand. 'And they'll feed you better than the royal table, even if you do have to shell eggs for it.'

'Might do Prince John good to shell eggs,' Marjorie said, nodding approval at Fulke. 'I'm sorry for your injuries, but right glad that you've had the courage to answer him back. Someone should have shaken some decency into him long before he left the nursery. If you ask me, Queen Eleanor bore one child too many'

'Rumour says that Queen Eleanor thinks so too,' Jean remarked. 'She was five and forty when she bore him and King Henry was sporting with a young mistress.'

'Oh aye, small wonder the boy's turned out a rotten apple,' Marjorie sniffed. 'The parents at war, the brothers at war. It's easy to believe that tale about them coming from the devil.' She crossed herself.

'What tale?' Fulke asked.

Marjorie set a trencher before the youths and ladled out two generous helpings of roast boar in a spicy sauce from one of the cauldrons, adding a small wheaten loaf each. Feeling almost nauseous with hunger, Fulke needed no encouragement to take up knife and spoon and set to, the only difficulty being that he could not breathe and chew at the same time.

Marjorie brought a second bowl of eggs to the table and sat down to shell them. 'A long time ago, one of their ancestors, a Count of Anjou, fell in love with a beautiful woman called Melusine.' She pitched her voice so that those around could hear. Songs and storytelling were an integral part of work in the kitchens. They helped to pass the time and made the work more pleasurable. 'She had the palest silver hair as if spun of moonlight and eyes so green and clear that a man could swim in them—or drown. The Count married her and they had two children, a boy and a girl, both as comely as their mother. All was well except that the lady was reluctant to attend church. If she did, she would never stay for the mass, but always slip out of a side door before the raising of the host. Some of the Count's companions became afraid that her beauty and her hold upon their lord was unnatural—that the lovely Countess was using the black arts . 'Marjorie paused for dramatic effect. Fulke belched softly into the silence and licked his fingers. Marjorie cracked an egg against the side of the bowl.

'Then what happened?' he prompted.

'They decided to test her by forcing her to stay in chapel throughout the mass. All the doors were barred and armed guards set before them. When the time came for the raising of the host, sure enough, the lady made to depart, but of course, she could not escape. The priest sprinkled her with holy water, whereupon she uttered an unearthly scream. Her cloak became the wings of a huge bat and she flew out of the window, never to be seen again. But she left her children behind and they carried her demon blood in their veins. The boy grew up and became Count of Anjou after his father, and he was our King Henry's great-great-grandsire.' She nodded her head in confirmation.

'You don't believe it?' Fulke said sceptically.

Marjorie swept the eggshells off the table into her apron. 'I only know what I've been told, and there's no smoke without a fire.'

'There's a family legend that my own grandsire fought a giant, but it's only a tale he invented to amuse my father when he was a child.'

'Aye, well, you'll not convince me, young man. You only have to look at them to know they're different. If there's not a demon in Prince John, I'll eat my apron, eggshells and all.'

She went to the midden bucket. Fulke scooped the last morsel of boar and sauce on to the heel of his loaf and demolished it.

Jean took his lute and ran experimental fingers over the strings. 'It would make a good ballad set to music,' he said. '"Fair Melusine".' A silvery cascade of notes like strands of moonlight rippled from the soundbox.

Fulke watched with replete fascination. Although he enjoyed music, particularly rousing battle songs and bardic Welsh sagas, his own skills were negligible. Playing a lute was beyond him. His voice had but recently broken and while it held promise of being deep and resonant when he attained full manhood, his notion of pitch was such that he knew his singing would sound like a dog in a dungeon.

'A lute will open doors that are locked to the booted foot and the sword,' Jean said. 'Men will welcome you for the cheer and entertainment it brings to their hearths. Folk will pay you with your supper; strangers will more readily accept you. And sometimes women will let you enter their sanctuaries.' His eyebrows flashed with innuendo.

Fulke reddened slightly. Women and their sanctuaries were of tremendous interest
to
his rapidly developing body, but they were a mystery too. The high-born ones were guarded by chaperones and kept at home until they married. Girls of lower degree kept their distance if they were decent. Those who weren't had designs on a royal bed, not the lowly pallet of a squire. The court whores preferred clients with a ready source of income. Other than what fitted where, Fulke had little notion of what to do, and no intention of exposing his ignorance.

Jean leaned over the lute, his fingers plucking a melody to pay for the supper they had just enjoyed. His voice was clear and true, pitched high, but strong as a bell and it chimed above the melange of kitchen sounds, telling the story of Melusine. Fulke listened in rapt and slightly jealous admiration. It was truly a gift and he found himself wishing that he had it. As his mind absorbed the notes and the words, he studied the reverence with which Jean treated his lute. The sight of the squire's lean fingers on the strings brought to mind another image: his own hands working with an equal reverence to smooth the scars from the surface of his shield.