Shadows and Strongholds (22 page)

The young man was standing in the courtyard minding the horses while Gilbert de Lacy took wine in the house with Joscelin and Sybilla. Perched on his wrist, clinging to a thick leather gauntlet, was a peregrine falcon, a crimson hood covering its fierce gaze. Made allies and rivals by their fascination, Marion and Hawise peered round the corner of the house at the object of their desires.

'I wonder if he's betrothed.' Marion ran her hands over her gown, the lacings of which were pulled tight to emphasise her budding breasts and tiny waist.

'I thought your interest was in becoming Lady FitzWarin,' Hawise muttered, wishing she had changed her own dress, which had a mud stain on the skirt and a frayed sleeve.

'Your mother said we should have a choice,' Marion said sententiously.

Hawise didn't think Marion's interpretation was quite what Sybilla had meant but, given the circumstances, could hardly say so. 'What makes you think he'll be interested in you?' she sniffed instead.

'Watch,' Marion said in the tone of a master to a particularly inept pupil. Leaving their hiding place, she walked directly towards the young man. Despite her bold approach, her steps were small, coy and feminine. He looked up from the hawk and the way his gaze widened and filled with appreciation made Hawise burn with jealousy. Marion flirted with him through her lashes. She pointed to the hawk, and he smiled at her and said something, his finger gently stroking the bird's breast feathers. Marion giggled in response and played with her braids, the small gestures she made drawing attention to her throat and the pert curve of her bosom. Hawise ground her teeth. Unable to stand by and watch Marion building a huge advantage, she stepped out to join her.

The squire stared. 'Is this your maidservant?' he asked Marion.

Marion giggled with horrified delight. 'No,' she said, her hand to her mouth. 'Hawise is Lord Joscelin's daughter.'

The young man bowed to Hawise. 'Forgive me, mistress, I should have known,' he said, slowly appraising her from head to toe. 'There is a strong resemblance.'

Hawise reddened, unsure if he was being complimentary or not, although his tone was courteous enough. The way he was smiling created a whirlpool in the centre of her pelvis. 'And who are you?' she asked imperiously.

He continued to gentle the hawk and the sensual movement of his hand made her shiver. 'My name is Ernalt de Lysle and I am senior squire to Gilbert de Lacy'

'Are you betrothed?' Marion's question was as direct as her gaze was artless.

'Not yet, mistress. Are you?'

Marion shook her head. 'I'm Lord Joscelin's ward and he will not seek a match for me until I reach my fifteenth year day'

'And how far away is that?'

'A little over a twelve-month,' Marion said, giving him another of her flirtatious glances. 'Lady Sybilla says that girls should marry for love as well as land.'

'Does she indeed?' Ernalt thought the girls diverting. He had noticed them watching him and had wondered how long it would take them to approach. Most young women of rank were heavily chaperoned but it did not prevent them from giving their mothers, maids and sometimes husbands the slip to make assignations. Marion, as she had told him she was named, was as pretty as a kitten, and the manner she had of looking through her lashes was provocative and promising. The de Dinan girl resembled a servant on first glance, but beneath the smirched gown, the outline of her breasts was tempting and that eldritch hair would look magnificent tumbled about her naked body.

These were the women of an enemy household, but that knowledge only added piquancy to the notion of seduction. To snatch and despoil one of de Dinan's chicks would be immensely satisfying. Marion was the prettier and more flirtatious, but she wasn't the daughter of the house. The redhead was wary, but he could sense her hunger, and he had not missed the competitive atmosphere between the girls.

'Is that your hawk?' Marion wanted to know.

'No, mistress, she belongs to Lord Gilbert, but you can stroke her if you want.'

Biting her lip, Marion extended her hand and timidly touched the bird. As if sensing the girl's nervousness, it bated its wings and she flinched with a frightened little cry. Observing her response, Ernalt thought that it would be exciting to be the first to touch her, to bruise that pink petal mouth and watch her eyes widen like a wild thing in a snare.

'Would you like to stroke her too?' he asked Hawise de Dinan.

Her red plait rippled with the scornful toss of her head. 'I handle hawks all the time,' she said. 'Give me your gauntlet and I will hold her.'

He saw the dagger look flashed at Hawise by the daintier girl and swallowed a smile. Rivalry indeed. Removing a spare gauntlet from his mount's saddlebag he handed it to Hawise. 'Go on then,' he said.

She donned the glove with a determined set to her lips and a tiny frown between her eyes. When she took the bird from his hand it bated its wings, but she soothed it with a gentle voice and a steady touch. 'I spend much time with my father's hawks,' she said complacently.

'That's true,' Marion retorted. 'Lady Sybilla is always telling her that she smells of the kennels and the mews.' She raised her sleeve to her face as if to protect her nose from a lingering aroma and gave him a look that egged him to agree with her.

Above them a door opened and Ernalt watched de Dinan's squire descend the external stairs, a wine jug in his hand. There was something vaguely familiar about him, which Ernalt was unable to place. The youth's expression was impassive, but the dark eyes were not and, despite his own bullish confidence, Ernalt felt the hair rise on his forearms.

Hawise de Dinan flushed as if she had been caught with her hand down his braies. Marion brazened it out by smiling and waving. The youth let his gaze linger on the trio for a moment, then continued towards the kitchen with the jug.

'Your father's squire is a sour fellow,' Ernalt remarked with a laugh to dissipate his unease.

'Don't worry' Marion said. 'Brunin won't say anything.

Can I hold the hawk?' She pointed at his gauntlet. 'I'm not very good, but I'm sure you could teach me.'

'His name is Brunin?' Ernalt removed the gauntlet and stared after the squire. Memory hesitated on a brink.

'His father's lord of Whittington,' said Marion. 'Do you know him?'

'Oh yes,' Ernalt said, relief brightening his eyes. 'I know him. Scared him half to death when he was a pup. He still looks terrified now.' He shrugged one shoulder, to show the girls how insignificant he considered Brunin to be. Marion gave an excited giggle, her gaze full of admiration. 'The hawk,' she said breathlessly. 'Show me how to hold the hawk.'

'You've been shown many times, but you don't like the feel,' Hawise said waspishly.

'Perhaps I haven't had the right teacher.'

With great reluctance, Hawise transferred the peregrine to Marion's wrist and with satisfaction watched it flutter and flap its wings. Marion leaned away a frightened look in her eyes.

'No, no. Gently, like this.' Ernalt moved to soothe and correct. It was an excuse for his hand to touch Marion's spine solicitously, to linger. For his head to dip towards hers. The hawk danced on its jesses and slowly settled.

'There,' he said. 'See, that's not so hard is it?'

'A truce.' Gilbert de Lacy sampled the word as if it were some strange food he had been asked to taste and was unsure whether he liked it or not. 'I ask myself why you should suggest one now? What do you have to gain? What do I have to lose?'

Joscelin dug his hand through his hair, caught himself in the nervous action and lowered his arm. 'We both gain a breathing space. As to what you have to lose—only you can decide that.' He met de Lacy's stare. The blue eyes and the straight dark brows were disconcertingly like Sybilla's but there the resemblance ended. Her cousin's mouth was thinner, his bones sharper and close to the surface like over-grazed pasture, his nose a bony blade.

'You know what I want from you, de Dinan, and it is not a truce,' de Lacy growled. 'I think that you desire to keep yourself whole until Henry FitzEmpress returns to make yet another attempt on his thwarted inheritance—and you believe it will be easier without me salting your tail.'

'Think what you will,' Joscelin said with forced indifference. 'I have made the offer. It is yours to take or leave.'

De Lacy's glance flickered to Sybilla. 'What does my fair cousin say?'

She returned him a flat stare. 'That you will want in vain, but if you have any sense in your skull you will accept the offer.'

He smiled sourly. 'Madam, you remind me of the Empress Matilda—a lady now living in exile.'

'I take the first as a compliment and the second as a cheap jibe.' Sybilla looked to the door as Brunin returned, a replenished jug in his hand. 'More wine, my lord?'

He shook his head. 'It is not that I do not trust present company, you understand, but that I do not trust myself. Who knows where my tongue might stumble while slackened by drink… and while there is truth in wine, there is danger too.'

Joscelin watched Brunin set the jug on the sideboard. The youth's movements were precise, but Joscelin could sense a tension similar to his own. 'Whatever happens in the near or distant future, at some point you will have to make your allegiance,' Joscelin said. 'Or will you gamble on fence-sitting and hope you can bow low enough to the victor when the time comes?'

'Why should it matter to you?' de Lacy asked suspiciously.

'It doesn't. I was suggesting a reason why you might consider my offer generous.'

'That depends on the terms.' De Lacy leaned back and chewed on his forefinger. 'There are truces and truces.'

'You won't say anything, will you?' Hawise said urgently to Brunin.

It was early afternoon and Gilbert de Lacy had recently left with his handsome squire. De Lacy and her father had agreed to keep peace with each other until the first day of the New Year, and review the situation then.

Brunin gave her a dark look. 'About what?' He was grooming his new horse, although its coat already gleamed like a wet hazelnut.

'You know "about what",' she said tersely.

He swept the brush along the gelding's flank. 'If you and Marion want to make fools of yourselves, that is your own business.'

She reddened. 'We were just talking to him.'

'Then why ask me to watch my tongue?'

'Because he's de Lacy's squire and my parents probably wouldn't approve—even if a truce has been agreed.'

'And with good reason.' He ceased grooming the horse and used his forearm to push his hair off his brow. 'Hawise, have a care. I've tangled with him before and he is not to be trusted.'

'He said that he had frightened you once. Perhaps you still hold a grudge.'

'Perhaps you would too if he had held a knife to your throat.'

'He was probably just teasing you,' she said defensively.

Brunin's stare was contemptuous. 'Oh yes,' he said acidly. 'How stupid of me. Teasing was all it was, even while the blood was running down my neck.'

She turned her back on him with an abrupt movement, not wanting to hear.

'Did you not see the way he was playing you and Marion against each other for the pleasure of it?' There was no mistaking his impatience and scorn. 'With his looks he can have any woman he wants. Why should he settle for two foolish little girls?'

'I'm not foolish and I'm not a little girl!' she shouted at him.

He merely looked at her.

'I hate you!' Hawise spun on her heel and stamped from the stables, vowing that she would never talk to him again. Ernalt wasn't like that, she knew he wasn't. No one who stroked a hawk with such gentleness would threaten a child with a knife. Probably Brunin had done something to annoy him and then been over-sensitive to Ernalt's retaliation. With equal determination she dismissed Brunin's remark about Ernalt playing her and Marion against each other. Marion was a dreadful flirt. Ernalt was bound to respond to her; that didn't mean he had been encouraging rivalry between them. He had said that he hoped to see them around the fair on the morrow and that now his lord was at truce with her father, perhaps there would be more opportunity to talk. He was nice and Brunin was the one being foolish.

On the third day of the fair, Brunin's father arrived to make some belated purchases. He had left his womenfolk at Whittington and was accompanied only by his retinue. 'Trouble over the border,' he said succinctly to Joscelin as the men drank wine at one of the vintners' booths. 'Iorwerth Goch and the sons of Wrenoc ap Tudor have been raiding and I have had to put a deal of effort into protecting my boundaries.' His tone was morose. 'Ap Tudor claims Whittington by right of birth because his grandsire once held the land of the Earls of Mercia, but they lost that right a long time ago, before the death of the first King William.'

'Losing a right doesn't stop the loser from trying to regain it,' Joscelin said, with all the bitterness of personal knowledge.

'I will give them the ground to bury their dead,' FitzWarin said savagely. Then he shook himself and found a smile of sorts. 'I hear you have been using diplomacy to make your eyrie a safer place from your own would-be predators.'

'For the time being.' Joscelin looked pensive. 'If I am fortunate, it will last until the harvests are in.'

FitzWarin swirled the wine in his cup. 'Think you that Henry will come soon?' he asked. 'Does your son-in-law at Hereford hear anything?'

'Only that preparations are in place. Louis of France and that fool Eustace are chasing Henry around Normandy to no avail. He has the measure of both of them.'

'If he misjudges, we could end up with "that fool Eustace" as our next king,' FitzWarin said grimly.

'I doubt it. The Church won't let Stephen confirm him as next in line to the throne, and even those who would follow Stephen to the ends of the earth would turn their mounts aside from tipping over the edge with Eustace.'

Fitzwarin gave a snort of bleak amusement. 'You are right about that,' he said. The humour froze on his face and he stared. 'God on the Cross, what is that?' His eyes bulged.