To Defy a King (37 page)

'How is the Countess?'

'She is a little improved, sire. If you will excuse me . . .'

John tilted his head to one side. 'No, Lady Bigod, I will not. Every time I try to talk with you, you find a convenient reason to rush off, and you interest me far more than a man farting "Sing Cuckoo" through his arsehole.'

'Sire, it is cold . . .'

'Indeed, but we have warm cloaks, and there are other ways and means of generating heat.'

Shock blazed through her and she felt the facade she had built beginning to crumble. 'Sire, by all means let us talk, but come within to the hall.'

'I would rather talk to William Marshal's daughter alone,' John said, lowering his voice and stroking the edge of her cloak. 'Without distractions.'

'Sire, you ask something that is improper and inappropriate. '

John gave a soft chuckle. '"Improper"?' he mimicked. 'Come now, you are hardly a shrinking flower or an unknowing virgin, are you, girl? And from what I have heard, propriety has not always concerned you.'

Mahelt wasn't sure if it was the way he called her 'girl', or the fact that he obviously had spies in the Bigod household, and even her father's, but suddenly she was on fire with rage. 'I am an honourable and faithful wife to my husband,' she said through clenched teeth. 'People will be wondering where you are. For the King to go missing in these uncertain times must surely be a matter for concern.'

'I dare say they'll search for me by and by, but we have a little leeway, and surely I have nothing to fear in so loyal a household. Let us talk a little about honour and faith, shall we?' In a sudden swift move, he pushed her against the wall, crushing her spine against the stones. He pinned her with his body, groin to groin. 'What would you give to see your husband and sons kept safe, my lady? What would you pay? How highly do you value your honour?'

Mahelt struggled. 'More highly than you can afford to despoil it!' she spat.

John's face was in hers. She could smell wine on his breath and feel that breath invading her mouth as she was forced to draw it into her own lungs.

'Is that so?'

'You need my father. You need Norfolk!'

'Do you think they'd turn traitor for the word of a chit?' John hissed. 'A silly spoiled girl? What do you think would happen? How much you think you are worth and your true value are different matters!'

Mahelt gasped in outrage. However, he was right about one thing. She was indeed no shrinking flower or unknowing virgin. Having grown up with brothers, and from Hugh's occasional trepidation in the bedchamber when she was being intimately playful, she knew how sensitive men were when it came to their cods. She went limp, allowing John to think she had yielded, pushed her hand down between them, grabbed his genitals and twisted as if wringing a cloth one-handed.

The reaction was gratifying and instantaneous as John doubled over with a strangled sound of agony. Mahelt heaved him off and fled, but not to her chamber. That was her sanctum and where her children were. She would not lead him to them. Instead she made for the safety of numbers. Towards light and noise and affable bonhomie.

Now came the greatest test of her control and courage. She had to act as if she had just come from Ida's bedside and nothing had happened. If she made an outcry here and now there would be no going back. And what if John were right? What if she was dismissed as a chit? What if she discovered that her value was indeed that of a 'spoiled girl' and not a future countess? Yet if they took the opposite view, what could they do? John's mercenaries were here inside their walls, and they were outnumbered.

Roland le Pettour was still capering about breaking musical wind and everyone was roaring at his antics. He was juggling apples and every now and again raising one leg and throwing an apple under it in time to a loud report. Mahelt took her place at Hugh's side and signalled a squire to pour a cup of mead. She rinsed her mouth, filling it with the taste of honey. Her hands were shaking and as she set the cup down, she tipped it over. A squire moved swiftly to blot the liquid on his dapifer's towel.

She had thought Hugh thoroughly engrossed in the entertainment, but he turned to her, immediately alert and sober. 'What's wrong?'

Mahelt shook her head. 'Nothing,' she said in a tight voice. 'I wasn't looking properly.'

He set his hand over hers. 'You're shaking.'

Her lips barely moved: 'It was cold in the privy.' She swept her gaze around the hall. Although men were still laughing at Roland's antics, restive glances were being cast towards the King's empty place. Two of John's household knights left the gathering and went outside. Longespee followed.

The squire refilled her cup and Mahelt drank. Her neck and jaw were so tense that a headache had begun to rage at her temples.

Moments later, Longespee returned to his place at the high table, and the household knights to their seats at a lower trestle. 'The King has retired,'

Longespee announced to those on the dais. 'He intends to leave at first light and desires to be fresh for the journey.'

Mahelt exhaled on a sigh of relief because it looked as if the matter was going to blow over. She silently hoped that John was going to lie in agony all night.

She heard her father-in-law saying he bade the King good rest but expressing surprise because he had been under the impression that John had only gone to the latrine.

Longespee shrugged. 'The King is feeling the strain of long days in the saddle and does not wish to be disturbed until the morning.'

Mahelt finished her mead and excused herself. Hugh immediately rose to attend her, and although she would have preferred her own company, she was grateful of his presence across the ward from one dwelling to the other.

As they reached the foot of the steps leading to their solar and bedchamber, he took her arm and drew her round to him 'I know something happened between you and the King,' he said. 'I am not a fool.'

'Then do not act like one,' she hissed. 'The King is saddle-weary. Leave it at that.'

'If he has despoiled you--'

'Hah! Do you think he would have retired if he had?' Yanking away from him, she started up the stairs. 'He made an offer I declined to accept.'

'What sort of offer?'

Mahelt swallowed her impatience. 'Oh, in Christ's name, Hugh, what do you think!' She flung open the door and entered their chamber. The warmth from the fire and the comfortable surroundings enveloped her in welcome familiarity. Roger sat on his nurse's knee listening to an adventure story about a knight and his magnificent white horse but when he saw his parents, he scrambled off the woman's lap and ran to them. Mahelt swept him up in her arms and absorbed the wholesome smell of him: fire-warmed linen and rose water and sleep-ready child. Her voice trembled with revulsion and fury. 'He thought that I would yield and keep quiet, because of my honour and yours, but he does not know me.' She looked at Hugh. 'A man who does such things to prove he has power over women is a weak reed indeed.'

Roger held out his arms and swapped parents, wrapping himself around Hugh and clinging like a limpet. 'He does it to prove his power over men.

To prove he can take what he wants,' Hugh said grimly.

'Then he hasn't succeeded in proving anything tonight - for his pains. He will harbour a grudge because of my refusal, but that is nothing new. My family has lived with his grudges for almost ten years.' 'Grudges cut both ways.' Hugh's eyes were dark with anger and disgust.

Mahelt gazed at his hands holding their son, the span of his fingers against the small body, the tenderness and strength. And then she thought of John's grip on her, forcing her against the wall. Would her son's hands cup life and revere it, or would they spill and rip and tear?

'He must be stopped,' Hugh said.

A frisson ran through her as she imagined John dead in his bed with a sword through his breast. Dead at Framlingham. She began to shiver at the enormity of the vision. 'Hugh?' Her voice was a mere breath.

A shudder ran through him too and he took a step backwards and shook his head. 'It must be done in clean daylight, not in a dark corner with a bloody knife, otherwise there is no difference between us and him. It must be embraced by all, not just the few. He has to be bound by the law and that law has to be enforced by all.'

Going to the fire, Mahelt sat down and extended her hands to the warmth.

She sought the heat, trying to dissolve the cold lump at her core. 'It is easy to say these things,' she said, 'but how will it be accomplished?'

Hugh returned Roger to his nurse and joined Mahelt at the fire, setting his arm around her shoulders and drawing her close. 'The barons and the bishops need to come together and decide upon what must change, and then make it law,' he said.

Mahelt gazed into the flames. 'In the spring, the French may invade,' she said softly so that her voice did not carry beyond the curve of the firelight.

'What of the prophecy that John will no longer be king by Ascension Day?'

It felt good to say the words, to speculate and imagine a time without John's presence brooding over their lives.

'If the French do come, we must decide what to do. Louis of France does not have John's vices and we may find it no hardship to accept his rule, but he will be looking to promote his own men. Not everyone will desert the King.

Your father will not for a certainty, and neither will Longespee. Many others will not kneel to a Frenchman in the pay of Rome, but it does also mean that those who stand loyal for John will have more leverage on him.'

'Longer spoons than before, you mean,' she said.

Hugh conceded the point with an uncomfortable shrug. 'There is a deal of thinking as well as talking to be done and it will depend upon the will of all and not just the word of a single mad soothsayer.'

Mahelt sighed and leaned her head on his shoulder. In the warmth, the bruises where John had grabbed her were beginning to throb in poisoned reminder. Tomorrow he would be gone, although, like a snail, his trail would linger behind him. She suddenly felt exhausted and tears were not far away, although she refused to give in to them. 'The tale of tonight's happening must not go beyond these chamber walls. Neither to your father, nor to mine, and especially not to Will - for his sake, not the King's.'

'It won't.' Hugh kissed her temple. His voice hardened. 'But even if the matter goes unspoken, it will not go forgotten. If the will of all is to be known and directed, then more than the sword, those who desire change will need a lawyer's pen and a lawyer's mind.'

Longespee stood in his mother's chamber and prepared to make his farewells. The dawn had opened a narrow crack of oyster-shell gold on the horizon and he had a few moments of free time while the servants finished harnessing the horses and securing the baggage. The King had broken his fast in his chamber and was in a sour mood and some pain. A strained muscle in his groin, he said, caused when dismounting from his horse the previous day. Longespee suspected there had been some kind of altercation last night between the King and one of the women of the household -

probably Mahelt - but had chosen not to delve. It was easier to turn a blind eye. Mahelt was present in Ida's chamber but tight-lipped and silent. Hugh was in a similar mood and it was plain to Longespee that welcomes had been outstayed - if there had been welcomes at all in the first place.

His mother had risen from her bed to bid the royal party Godspeed and she seemed improved upon yesterday. She was swathed in furs to ward off the cold and because she had been standing near the fire there was a flush of colour in her cheeks. She was insisting on personally offering the King the stirrup cup to send him on his way and, to that end, wine and herbs were steaming in a cauldron ready to be ladled out at the last minute.

The children were unaffected by the strain in the atmosphere. His oldest Bigod nephew flew around the room brandishing his toy sword, darting between the adults and fighting imaginary enemies with gusto. Longespee chuckled to see him because it reminded him there was still innocence in the world and joy in small things. The lad's baby brother was just about a year old and had very recently begun walking. The infant had a mop of golden curls, scarlet cheeks and vivid sea-blue eyes. It was wearing a beautifully embroidered white smock and all it needed was a set of fluffy little wings to complete the angelic resemblance. Charmed, Longespee squatted down to be on a level with the baby. 'Come, little Bigod,' he said, holding out his arms.

'Come to Uncle FitzHenry.'

The baby giggled at him, revealing two perfect rows of milk teeth.

Longespee was fascinated. He had never really engaged with a child of this tender age before. Long absences from home had left gaps in witnessing his own son's development, and the times he did see him, it was always in the arms of his wife or a nurse, and he wouldn't have felt manly holding an infant so small.

He gave this one a poke with his forefinger. The baby plopped down on its bottom with such a look of surprise in its big, round eyes that it made Longespee chuckle. 'Let's test your mettle, little Bigod, eh?'

The child put out its chubby hands and laboriously regained its feet, almost tripping on the hem of its smock. Longespee grinned and poked it a second time. Amused and fascinated, he watched it plump down and once more struggle to a standing position. Somewhere inside him, buried so deeply he did not even acknowledge it existed, there was a sense of a hunter with its prey. This was a pup from his own pack, but a lesser member, and it should know its place, or at the very least show that it was strong enough to fight for a higher one. The infant certainly proved tenacious, toiling to its feet again with an expression of absolute concentration. Longespee let it take two steps, and then, laughing, prodded it. As the baby tumbled over like a soft ball, Longespee looked up to share his mirth with everyone else and instead met Hugh's thunderous expression, which was so filled with fury and revulsion that Longespee felt as if he were the one who had been poked.

Hugh strode forward, stooped to his baby son and lifted him in his arms.