Lords of the White Castle (79 page)

'What is it?' Maude came anxiously to his side, her head tilted to read the script.

'John has confiscated my lands at Alveston because he does not believe I will hold to the letter of the truce,' Fulke said furiously. 'Apparently it's a warning to keep me loyal—a hostage for my good behaviour.'

'What does Marshal say?'

'Entreats my patience! Says that John trusts no one just now because even Salisbury has deserted him.' Fulke laughed harshly. 'Whatever patience I had, the last grains have run out like sand through an hourglass. John has just drawn a sword and cut me loose!'

Maude compressed her lips. She did not weep; she did not argue. The time for all that was over. 'Wherever you go, I go too,' she said and, without giving him a chance to argue, went to pack the baggage chests.

Fulke joined the rebels, but when the first glut of his fury wore off, he found himself discontented. He had no burning desire to fight for the King of France or see French lords acquire English lands by right of conquest. William Salisbury, after a minor toying with the rebels, had clearly thought the same and returned to his brother. There was a siege at Lincoln where the castle was held for the King. John descended on the city, raised the siege, and scattered the rebels.

Fulke was not at Lincoln. He joined neither side, but spent the time coddling a severe and serious bout of ague at his manor of Whadborough in Leicestershire. It was mid-October, a damp day, the leaves whispering from the trees and clothing the ground in slick brown and yellow patterns. Braziers burned in the main chamber, fragranced with aromatic herbs, and Maude had dosed him with horehound syrup and a tisane made from blackcurrants, honey and wine.

She saw his malaise as one not so much of the body as of the mind. Unable to see a way out of the vicious circle in which he was bound, having loyalty to neither Philip, nor John, nor for that matter Llewelyn, he had retreated into a feverish state where he did not have to think about any of them. Maude left him to sleep for the best part of the day, finally taking him a bowl of meat broth and two wastel loaves as the mid-afternoon began to descend slowly towards dusk. A maid replenished the candles and the braziers and quietly left the room.

Maude gently nudged Fulke awake. He pulled himself upright and leaned against
the
bolsters. His eyes were hazy with sleep, but the glazed look of fever seemed to have diminished a little. His chest still rattled like a coffer of rusty swords, though. He was not on the mend yet.

'I'm not hungry,' he croaked.

'Just drink the soup then.' She broke the bread, dipped it, and ate a morsel herself, feeling rather like a mother trying to cajole a picky child.

After a moment, he raised the bowl to his lips and sipped in a desultory fashion. 'I have been thinking,' he said. The deep power of his voice had been constricted to a smoky whisper. 'There is something I have been meaning to do for a long time—since my mother died.'

'What?' Maude eyed him cautiously.

'I want to sponsor a religious foundation on my land. At Alberbury, where my mother and father are buried.'

She felt a jolt of queasy fear. She wondered if he thought he was dying and wanted to make provision for his soul. Her fear must have shown on her face, for he shook his head and found a smile.

'I am not sick unto death, I hope,' he whispered. 'But matters such as Hawise's marriage and the
fact
that I have taken to my bed at all lead me to realise that I should set my affairs in order.' He paused to cough and Maude took the bowl of broth so that he would not spill it on the sheets.

Her anxiety abated somewhat as she remembered Theobald's preoccupation with his monasteries in the latter part of their marriage, a growing need for the spirit to be comforted rather than the body.

'Yes,' she murmured, 'I think it is a good idea.' Perhaps if he went home and threw himself into the building, his discontent would ease. That was part of it too, she thought. While temporal leaders failed, God was a constant.

'I have thought also to make provision for Mabile,' he said, taking the broth from her again and cupping the bowl in his hands. 'Without a miracle she will never be fit to wed and she cannot enter the Church because she does not comprehend the meaning of worship. If—God forbid—anything should happen to us while she lives, I need to know that she is protected by law.'

Maude nodded and folded her arms. It was a defensive gesture and one that she immediately reversed by unfolding them again and sitting beside him. She often wondered if she had done something during her pregnancy to cause Mabile's condition. It was said that women who gave birth to babies deformed by a harelip had been startled by that animal during their pregnancy. However, she could think of nothing to account for Mabile's misfortune unless it was the difficulty of her birth. Mayhap it was God's punishment for her parents' sins. Either way, the guilt and uncertainty gnawed at her. 'What do you intend?'

He sipped the broth and set it aside. 'I am going to give Lambourn and all its revenues to maintain her for as long as she lives.'

Maude stared. It was his richest manor, the plum of his de Dinan inheritance. It was guilt, she thought, like her own, for which he was over-compensating. Then again, not all the riches in the world could compensate for their daughter's tragedy.

'It is the least I can do,' he said, as if reading her thoughts. 'That and a chapel for prayer.'

In the morning Fulke was well enough to leave his bed and sit before the brazier, wrapped in his warmest tunic and fur-lined cloak. He had developed a harsh, rattling cough, but he was bright enough to be considering plans for his religious house.

He dictated to the scribe in a hoarse, scratchy voice. Another three or four days' rest, he thought, and he would be well enough to think about leaving Whadborough, but for which destination was a question he did not want to consider. Home to Whittington, or south to rejoin the rebels? He had no idea. Last they heard, John had been at Lynn, organising supplies for his army of mercenaries, but where he was now and what his intentions were, Fulke did not know.

It was obvious now that John would never honour the charter he had signed at Runnymede. It was the same problem, grinding round and round in Fulke's head until it ached beyond bearing. John or the French. The price demanded was too high to support either. Look to God instead. He smiled with grim humour.

The quill scratched across the vellum. Fulke could have written the missive himself, but a formal letter demanded formal writing, and Fulke's hand was apt to sprawl and lean alarmingly to the right. He rubbed his forehead and Maude brought him a cup of spiced wine. Earlier she had massaged his chest with aromatic herbs and goose grease. The smell was revolting but it had eased his breathing.

There was a thump on the door and Fulke's squire, Walter, poked his head around to announce that a messenger had arrived from Earl Ranulf of Chester.

'Admit him,' Fulke commanded.

Maude's expression had frozen. 'What do you think he wants?'

'I know not, but for him to send a messenger here, it must be important.'

Maude bit her lip. He could imagine the scenarios racing across her mind because they were doing their best to gallop through the wool occupying his own. John was on his way here with an army, squashing resistance as he went as he had squashed it at Berwick by butchering everyone in his path. The royalists had seized Whittington and were holding their children hostage. The French had retreated and John was demanding surrender of all rebel barons.

The messenger was ushered into the room and bowed to Fulke. He was a florid man of middle years with a thatch of grey hair and a full moustache.

'You look as if you have ridden hard,' Fulke said in greeting and gestured the man to rise.

'That I have, my lord, and with momentous tidings.' He gratefully took the wine that Maude gave him and drank deeply.

Fulke was aware of Maude's hand returning to his shoulder and gripping. 'Yes?' he prompted.

'The Earl of Chester bids me greet you and deliver the news that King John is dead at Newark Castle of a grievous flux of the bowels.'

'Dead?' Fulke repeated blankly. The word rang in his ears but seemed unable to pierce further.

'Aye, my lord. He took ill of the gripes on the morning he left Lynn and they worsened. 'The messenger licked his lips. 'He was making for Swineshead Abbey and sent his baggage train the short route across the estuary. It was caught by the tide and all the gold with which he was going to pay his soldiers was lost. When he heard that news, it worsened his plight. My lord rode with the King to Newark and sent for the Abbot of Croxton when it became plain that he was mortally ill. But there was nothing to be done.'

Maude crossed herself. 'God rest his soul,' she whispered.

Fulke followed her lead, responding by rote as he struggled to assimilate the news. John had loomed over most of his life. He had expended years fighting him, pushing at him as if he were an insurmountable object in his path. Now suddenly there was nothing, and he was free to go forward, except that the removing of the object seemed to have brought him to his knees.

'Earl Ranulf has been named an executor of his will and co-guardian of the young King with the Earl of Pembroke. They ask that you come and swear your fealty as soon as you may.'

Fulke rubbed his jaw and felt the prickle of stubble like small needles against his palm. John's son and heir was a boy of nine, so in effect his guardians would rule the country. He had every respect for Chester and Pembroke. 'And the Great Charter, what said they of that?'

'That they will honour the terms, my lord,' the man said.

Fulke thanked the messenger and dismissed him to seek food and rest. Rising to his feet, he walked haltingly around the room until he came to a chess set arranged near the window. Suddenly he felt incomplete—as if half the pieces were missing. 'I should be leaping for joy,' he said to Maude, 'but I feel naught but emptiness. All these years….' He swallowed. He was not going to weep because John was dead. He was not! But against his will, the tears came anyway.

She put her arms around him. 'A freed prisoner has to grow accustomed to the daylight,' she murmured.

'There are only two years between us in age.' He continued to gaze at the chess pieces through a blur of moisture. 'I thought….' He swallowed. 'I thought he was going to be my enemy for ever.' He bunked hard. It was as though his hatred for John was a skeleton around which the flesh of his life had been modelled. Now, without that solid backbone, he was dissolving. Perhaps he should have died of this ague even as John had died of the flux.

'Game's end,' Maude said. Leaving their embrace, she picked up the heavy wooden chessboard, pieces and all, and, carrying it past the astonished scribe, she threw the entirety on the fire.

Fulke stared through a brilliance of tears. Billows of smoke rose towards the roof vents. The flames siezed the edges of the board in avid, fiery claws.

'Finished,' Maude said with a brusque nod. 'Neither black, nor white, but mingled ashes. Now we can go home.'

CHAPTER 41

Alberbury, Shropshire,

Summer 1222