Authors: Roberta Gellis
“The ransom,” Simon said with such open desperation that
Alphonse had to make an effort not to laugh at the young man’s inability to
conceal his thoughts. “I am not empowered to talk about that. Will you not wait
until I can write to my father and ask if a figure can be set?”
Alphonse smiled slowly. “I am in no special hurry to leave
England—so long as I can have your word that I will not be made prisoner for
being a foreigner in time of war.”
“Good God, no!” Simon exclaimed. “We are not at war any
longer, even within the realm, and certainly England is not at war with
France.”
Alphonse was not sure whether Simon had deliberately avoided
saying “You have my word” or thought what he had said amounted to the same
thing. He was pleased by the omission, which cleared even the smallest shadow
from his conscience. Smiling again, he said, “I am pleased. There is that stag
hunt you promised me, and since you say you must stay in Kenilworth all day
tomorrow, perhaps we can have another passage or two at arms.”
“With all my heart.”
The look of strain disappeared completely from Simon’s face
and then he frowned suddenly and said, “Did I not hear you say before that you
detected a halt in your destrier’s gait? Are you sure he suffered no hurt?”
“I do not think so,” Alphonse replied, allowing a faint note
of uncertainty to enter his voice, “but I would be glad if you would look at
his leg yourself in the morning before we joust. That is another reason I wish
to run a few courses. If there is some hidden hurt, the shock of a meeting will
show it. Then I will have to ask you to lend me a horse for the stag hunt.”
“Any mount you like.”
Simon gestured widely and began to discuss the merits of the
various horses in the stable. Alphonse asked the proper questions to show his
interest. Little by little the young man relaxed enough to let his conversation
drift away from the safe topics of jousting and hunt. No longer fearful of
mentioning his prisoners’ names lest that increase Alphonse’s consciousness of
the time passing in which he had not been allowed to see Sir William, Simon was
able to complain about the heavy responsibility thrust on him which kept him
penned in Kenilworth, and in the next sentence remark bitterly that when his
mother was at the keep she ruled it and him except in matters of war.
Alphonse made soothing answers without offering advice or
comment. The conversation did not improve his opinion of Simon, but it held
more interest for him than the talk of the previous days, and the time until
the evening meal and the hour when it was safe to go to bed came swiftly.
Morning saw Simon earnestly examining Dadais’s right fore
and calling the farrier to do the same. Neither could find any fault—which
scarcely surprised Alphonse, who had magnified a weary stumble on the road home
after the hunt into a hint of injury—and each agreed that an experimental run
in the lists should be the next test. Alphonse and Simon gathered up two
jousting lances each and rode to the narrowest area in the outer bailey behind
the wall that protected the domestic buildings of the inner yard. There, as he
had done the first time they jousted, Simon ordered the few men working around
the storage sheds to leave so they would not be tempted to run too close in
excitement and startle the horses or be trampled if the horses got out of hand.
Then he sat and watched Dadais as Alphonse rode to the other end of the open
stretch of ground.
“I can see nothing,” he called to Alphonse. Then he asked a
question of the farrier, who was also watching, and added, “Nor does the horse
leech see anything.”
“He feels steady to me,” Alphonse called back.
“Then let us run.”
Alphonse turned Dadais, signaled that he was ready, and when
Simon dropped his lance into position, he touched Dadais with his heels and
grunted, “Ha!” more breath than voice. The great horse ran straight ahead,
indifferent to Simon’s mount thundering toward him. The sun, just risen above
the wall, sparkled on Simon’s helmet. Alphonse bent his head as if to avoid the
glare, and his lance touched above center and to the left of the boss of
Simon’s shield, held for a bare instant, and slipped off over Simon’s shoulder.
Simon hit a truer blow, below and on the inner side of the shield. He let out a
yell of triumph and thrust hard forward. Feeling his lance catch, he yelled
again, but in the next moment the tip came free, Alphonse’s shield twisted and
lifted, and the two men were past each other.
“Very good!” Alphonse called. “You nearly had me that time.
I should have been thinking about you instead of Dadais’s right fore.” He
stopped beside the farrier and said, “He seemed sound at the start of the run,
before I had to give my mind to the jousting. Did you see any sign of
weakness?”
“None, my lord,” the farrier answered in bad French, “but it
was a short run. Will you go again?”
Alphonse waved at Simon and then rode toward him. “Did you
hear? Your man says he saw nothing but that the run was short. Will you run
again?”
“Of course.”
“I will take the same position so the farrier can see Dadais
clearly.”
Alphonse started forward on the words and Simon loosened his
rein, then pulled up again as his horse started to move, calling, “Sieur
Alphonse.” Alphonse turned toward him and he hurried to say, honestly if a bit
reluctantly, “I am sure you missed your mark because the sun was in your eyes.
It is only right that we change places. The farrier can walk to the other end
of the run.”
Alphonse laughed heartily. “The sun did blind me a little,
but this is only practice and it is more important that the farrier see
Dadais’s gait clearly. I hope I can count on you not to spread about the news
that I missed you and am growing old and weak.”
Simon laughed also and rode back to where he had started
before. He did not think Alphonse was old and weak, but his confidence had been
elevated. He saw Alphonse take a new lance from where it leaned against a shed.
That meant nothing, it was the habit of a professional jouster. He shouted his
readiness, heard Alphonse’s answering call, and spurred his mount, all his
attention on the spot on the shield he wanted to hit. He did not notice that Alphonse
had struck Dadais far harder with his spurs this time, or that he cried out,
“Hai! Hai!” in a higher, more urgent voice.
The stallion leapt into a full gallop, curling his lip so
his strong yellow teeth showed in threat and screaming a challenge to the
oncoming horse. Simon might have felt the slight check in the stride of his
mount, but at that moment a blow of enormous power hit his shield, driving the
inner edge into his chest so that his breath was knocked out of him.
Simultaneously the top edge of the shield lifted and struck him on the visor,
pushing the helmet against his face so hard that his senses swam. The
dizziness, pain, and sense of suffocation paralyzed him. In fact, he could not
have moved his shield to unseat Alphonse’s lance; however, he did not even
realize that the dulled point had slid across his shield and lodged against his
chest until he felt himself rising and tipping out of his saddle. He cried out,
but his voice was the echo of Alphonse’s shout. His last thought was that his
guest was as shocked and surprised as he.
That last thought was totally mistaken. Alphonse’s cry was
one of pure triumph. He had not been certain until the very last second until
he saw the placement of the dulled tip of his lance that he would not pull back
and seem to miss completely. But the position was just right and every weakness
he had noted in Simon’s jousting form—his head too high over his shield, the
inner edge tipped too much, his body too far forward in the saddle—tempted him.
He struck, throwing himself forward into the blow, prodding Dadais again to get
a last desperate effort from him, angling his lance so it would lift against
the boss of Simon’s shield, and finally shouting aloud in triumph as he saw
Simon rise up out of the saddle, lose his stirrups, and crash to the ground.
“My God,” Alphonse called to the farrier as soon as he could
check and turn Dadais, “is he badly hurt?”
The man had already reached his master, knelt beside him,
and lifted the visor. “I see no blood,” he cried.
“Stay with him,” Alphonse shouted, riding past. “I must
catch the horse. I will send help.”
“No,” the farrier protested instinctively, but then he
shrugged. Any man with the sense of a pea would know that the lord’s young
destrier—unnerved by a threat of attack from a more dominant animal, a severe
physical shock, and then the loss of the guiding hand on his rein—would run
harder when he sensed pursuit by the older stallion. If the lord had let him
alone, the destrier would soon have stopped. But these lords had not the sense
of peas, though they thought themselves all wise. Sure enough, the young horse
had bolted, rounded the wall of the inner bailey toward the garden, and
disappeared from sight. The farrier shook his head and began to unfasten his
lord’s helmet straps.
As soon as the farrier could no longer see him, Alphonse
checked Dadais’s pace. The young stallion also slowed, and in another few
minutes Alphonse had him trapped in the angle of the outer and the garden
walls. A gesture brought closer two menservants who had been watching.
“Does either of you understand French?” he asked. The older
man nodded. “Your master has had a fall,” he said. “One of you must run to the
hall or the keep and tell the clerk. The other should go around to the back and
do whatever the farrier orders. Before you go, just hand me the rein and I will
take Sir Simon’s horse to the stable.”
That much was easy, both men obeyed without question. Now
came the last bit, though, which might be the end of the venture.
Chapter Nineteen
After dinner on the day that Alphonse sent Chacier back to
Warwick, Sir John Giffard had formal news from the Earl of Gloucester that all
chance of Louis of France or the Church mediating a peace between Leicester and
the king had collapsed. On October 21 the papal legate had issued orders of
excommunication against Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester; Gilbert de Clare,
Earl of Gloucester and Hertford; Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk; and all their
adherents for contumely in their support of the Provisions of Oxford, which the
pope had declared null and void.
Barbara immediately raised the question with Sir John about
whether, because of Alphonse’s association with the French court, he should try
to leave England as quickly and quietly as possible, and then, when Giffard
said with surprise that Gloucester’s letter contained no such implication, she
asked whether the earl could have forgotten about her husband. Sir John assured
her it was most unlikely.
“Gloucester is not careless or indifferent about those he has
come to like,” Giffard protested.
“Not in general, of course,” Barbara said. “But under these
circumstances, perhaps…”
Then she shook her head. Alphonse had been gone only three
days, but she wanted him back and was trying to find an excuse in Gloucester’s
message. Unfortunately, it held no excuse. As he should, Gloucester was sending
news to his allies and supporters, but his letter held no warnings or sense of
urgency. Leicester might have been angry and disappointed over Louis’s refusal
to mediate a peace, but clearly Gloucester did not feel the same. Nor did
Gloucester appear to be much disturbed by his excommunication. Barbara thought
he had the inability of most young people really to believe in death and
damnation. Not that he lacked faith. He simply felt there was more than time
enough before
he
died to change the pope’s mind and be received back
into the bosom of the Church.
Sir John Giffard and Barbara were still discussing whether
it would be wise to send the news to Alphonse when Chacier rode in. He was
circumspect in what he said to Barbara, having gauged her reaction from the way
her face whitened when she saw him. Chacier had long experience with the
screaming terrors and screaming rages of women suspicious of his master’s
doings, and he knew no explanation he gave would content her. Thus he said only
that his master had sent him for clothes. Sieur Alphonse had not yet seen Sir
William and intended to stay in Kenilworth one or two more days.
Later, when it was full dark, Chacier caught Sir John on his
way to the outer gate where a large armed party, twenty men and a leader
claiming to be Sir Guy de Montfort, were demanding entrance. In a few words
Chacier told Sir John Alphonse’s full message, explaining that he had not given
it earlier because he did not wish to frighten Lady Barbe.
Sir John uttered a soft, angry oath and waved Chacier away.
There was no reason under the sun why young Simon should want to keep Alphonse
in Kenilworth. Yet earlier, the moment Chacier left them, Barbara had told him
the servant had not been sent to fetch clothing but to be safely out of the way
of some danger. Sir John had been startled by her expression of controlled
terror and had soothed her as best he could, not believing a word she said and
assuming her a prey to female idiocy. Now Chacier had virtually confirmed what
she had said. Surely, then, he must take seriously that, when one of his gate
guards had told him that the third de Montfort son was demanding shelter, she
had begged him not to tell Guy she was in Warwick.
Thinking her crazed as a moonstruck witling, Sir John had
agreed to keep her presence a secret, although at the time he had not believed
Guy de Montfort was at his gate. Disseisined Royalists had tried before to win
Warwick back, and he had thought the demand for lodging an attempt to get into
the keep. He had armed, since he did not know whether the troop would be gone
or whether he would need to summon more men to defend the walls. The
implications of Alphonse’s message, however, caused him to revise his opinion.
Probably Guy
was
at the gate. Somehow Alphonse had become a bone of
contention between Gloucester and Leicester, and Sir John found himself caught
holding that bone.
He made some swift decisions, then leaned out over the wall
to shout across the moat that he would be glad to welcome Sir Guy, but because
there was no way to identify him in the dark, he must refuse to accommodate the
troop that accompanied him. When they rode back into the town, he would let
down the drawbridge. He prayed Guy would ride away in a fury, but he had little
hope that his prayer would be answered. What he expected was angry and furious
protests or possibly threats, but none came. Although the half-moon was partly
obscured by moving clouds, it gave enough light to show the troop riding away,
leaving two mounted men and two baggage animals waiting. By the time the troop
had withdrawn far enough to make a charge at the drawbridge impossible, Sir
John had the walls lined with archers and a party standing behind the portcullis,
which was not raised.
All the preparations were unnecessary. In the light of many
torches it was clear that only Guy and an unarmed man, clearly a servant
leading pack animals with loads that could not be men, waited on the drawbridge
for the portcullis to rise. Guy made very merry over Sir John’s “caution”—the
way he said the word implying cowardice—while he dismounted and all the while
it took to walk to the hall. Long before Guy allowed himself to be diverted
from that subject to answer Sir John’s pointed and repeated question about why
he was crying out at the gates of Warwick rather than remaining in the comfort
of Kenilworth, Sir John had decided he would tell Guy nothing at all.
When Guy finally felt he had drained dry the jest of Sir
John’s fear of two men and some bundles of clothing, he finally said, “Oh, I
have not come from Kenilworth. I was at Hereford on some business for my
father. It grew dark and I decided not to ride farther.”
The reply was reasonable enough, but when they entered the
hall and Sir John noticed how eagerly Guy looked around, he felt a grim
satisfaction that there was no sign of any noble presence but his own. His
chair with its footstool stood alone by the central hearth. On a table by the
chair lay the hunting knife and the oil and sharpening stone he had been using
before he had hurriedly pulled his mail over his tunic and gone out to see who
was at his gate. The bench on which Lady Barbara had been sitting with her
basket of embroidery silks beside her was gone.
“I thought you had a guest,” Guy said.
“You mean Sieur Alphonse?” Sir John responded. “He only
stayed a few days. Then he went on to Kenilworth to see his brother’s
father-by-marriage who is a prisoner there. I should imagine he is gone by now.
That was…let me think…three days past? Four? In any case, if you are looking
for Sieur Alphonse, I cannot help you. He did not say where he would go from
Kenilworth, but I imagine he rode for the nearest port when he heard the news
that King Louis had refused to act as mediator—”
“I thought it was his wife who wished to see Sir William,”
Guy interrupted.
“His wife? He never mentioned her.” Sir John looked straight
into Guy’s eyes. What he said was perfectly true. Alphonse had never mentioned
Barbara because she was right there and could speak for herself. “And
Gloucester’s letter to me,” he went on, “clearly said that I should do what I
could to forward Sieur Alphonse’s purpose to see Sir William.”
“Gloucester’s letter,” Guy repeated. “So Sieur Alphonse came
direct from Tonbridge?”
“He certainly came from Tonbridge,” Sir John replied. “I
cannot swear that he came direct from there. I never asked. Why should I?”
“He has Royalist sympathies,” Guy snarled. “Did you not know
he was Prince Edward’s friend?”
“He is your brother Henry’s friend too,” Sir John said
placidly. “We talked mostly of Gloucester and Henry and jousting while he was
here.”
“Gloucester is a—”
“Gloucester is my overlord and my friend.” Sir John’s voice
was hard and cold.
Guy’s lips curled into a sneer, but he made no direct reply,
saying only that he had ridden a long way and was tired. Sir John agreed at
once that he had been just about to go to bed himself when the message from the
gate arrived. Then, with no expression at all on his face but a good deal of
satisfaction in his heart, Sir John inquired politely whether Guy would prefer
to have his sleeping pallet set by the hearth or near the wall. He did not
laugh at the shocked expression on the young man’s face. Plainly Guy had
expected him to yield his own bed to his guest, but Sir John was not about to
give precedence to a third son who was ten years younger than he.
The next morning it was clear that Guy had been chewing the
cud of his anger half the night. He slept late and then, instead of leaving at
once, demanded to see how the work of dismantling the keep was progressing,
claiming he had been ordered to report on it to his father. Sir John was
tempted to tell him to get out before he lost his temper, but recalling how
plainly he had spoken to Leicester of his opposition to the destruction, he
felt a refusal would be unwise. Guy would certainly tell his father that he had
not been permitted to see whether the keep was being torn down.
Since Sir John was not eager to have Guy wandering loose
around Warwick, he took the young man to the site personally. There he got his
revenge by keeping Guy much longer than he really wished to stay, explaining to
him, almost stone by stone, how the keep was being pulled down, and laughing
inside when he saw that Guy did not understand that the work was being done
carefully so the great wall, in which the keep was embedded, would not be
damaged.
Finally, no longer attempting to hide his boredom and
indifference. Guy interrupted Sir John in the middle of a sentence and insisted
he must leave. Irritably, when Sir John asked with seeming eagerness what he
would say in his report to Leicester, he stated that he could see that the keep
was being demolished as quickly as possible. As a final pinprick, Sir John
summoned the master mason and begged Guy to repeat his compliments to that man,
as it was mostly his work that was being praised. For a moment Sir John was
sorry he had done it, he thought Guy might fall into a fit with rage. But the
young man managed to choke out the words. He took no further chances of being
outmaneuvered after that, brusquely refusing Sir John’s polite invitation to
dinner and leaving as quickly as his servant could be summoned and his horse
saddled.
Returning thoughtfully from the gate, to which he had insisted
on accompanying his guest, Sir John came face to face with Alphonse. His eyes
goggled.
“Chacier tells me that he cannot find my wife or her maid,”
Alphonse said.
“She was hiding from that cow’s leaving,” Sir John remarked
without the slightest hesitation, gesturing toward the gate out of which Guy
had ridden. “Come to the hall and I will summon her down. I am glad to see
you,” his lips twisted, “I think. It depends on what terms you left
Kenilworth.”
Alphonse removed his hand from his sword hilt, rather
grateful that Sir John had not seemed to notice the threat. He laughed and
shrugged. “I hope you will believe me when I say I do not know on what terms I
left Kenilworth, but if you do not mind, I will tell the story of my departure
only once. May I find Barbe myself and assure her all is well? She is very
clever and would have understood that I might be in trouble when she saw
Chacier alone.”
Sir John agreed with enthusiasm that Alphonse should
announce himself, having almost as little taste for joyful vapors as for
tearful ones. But announcement was not necessary. As they approached the hall,
Barbara came running out and threw herself into her husband’s arms. He clutched
her to him and bent his head to kiss her temple, her nose, her lips. Sir John watched
with considerable interest, then walked on into the hall aware of a mild
uneasiness. He pushed it out of his mind before he was forced to consider
whether he felt uncomfortable about so open an expression of love or regretted
that he was not likely ever to be so greeted by his own wife.
Only a few minutes later they followed him in, and enough of
his discomfort lingered to make him question why, after begging him to hide
her, Barbara had rushed out like that. “How did you know Guy had not decided to
return?”
She laughed aloud. “Because Clotilde and I have been on the
watch from one or another window of the upper floor every moment since Guy left
the hall. I saw you walk with him to the gate, and at first I did think he was
coming back with you. I was fit to get a crossbow and shoot through the window,
but then I recognized Alphonse.” She laughed again. “How could you think I
could mistake him for any other man?”
Her voice faltered on the last few words and her eyes
flicked from Sir John to her husband. For a moment she wished she had shot him.
There was a confident pleasure in the soft curve of Alphonse’s lips that filled
her with equal joy and trepidation. She had exposed too much, and that had made
him happy, which of course made her happy, and might cost her all her joy. So
she raised her brows and added, “I have known Alphonse for over ten years. His
size and walk and the fact that his hair is black and Guy’s much paler could
not be mistaken.” Then she turned her eyes to her husband. “Far more important
is why you sent Chacier out of Kenilworth. Were you mistaken in thinking you
were in danger there?”
“I was never in danger,” Alphonse replied, smiling. “I
thought, in fact, that Simon was too enamored of my company.” He then described
his treatment in Kenilworth, ending with his accidental encounter with Sir
William and Simon’s reaction when told of it. “So,” he concluded, “I dropped
Simon on his head in a practice joust and came quietly away before he recovered
his senses.”