Gisborne: Book of Pawns (48 page)

‘He lies for us,’ said Ulric. ‘They all do.’

‘Is this subterfuge then?’ I asked as I willed the troupe to move on.

‘Yes. Helewys and Brother Dominic were warned there might be trouble and of what type. They are good people and the soldiers are more ingenuous and tractable in the face of devout religion.’

Are they? And yet they work for people like Halsham and my husband. My husband … alive and full of vengeance!

And then Ulric’s words sank in.

‘What do you mean they were warned of trouble? Who warned them? If it was Beatrice, she is a saint!’

‘Beatrice? Oh I daresay she was in on it. For sure she has told Sister Helewys and Brother Dominic you were not a nun nor I a wool merchant.’

So Sister Helewys just played a game in the back of the cart, enjoying the subterfuge.

‘Ulric,’ I grabbed his arm, ‘Tell me!’

‘Ssh. Later.’

He nodded towards the road. Brother Dominic was pointing back toward Locksley. A question was asked and Brother Dominic shrugged his shoulders, but then put his finger in the air as if he remembered something.

Within seconds the men set off at a gallop. We stayed where we were until the sound disappeared into forest silence whereupon the priest whistled us back.

We clambered out of our hideout, hurrying back to our companions, the habit catching on twigs as I grabbed at Ulric’s arm, ‘Tell me who warned them.’

He gave me a look as we rushed back to the cart and I knew.

It wasn’t Beatrice.

It was his employer, spy for the royal household and a knight of the realm, master of the estate of Locksley.

It was Sir Guy of Gisborne.

‘You were lucky,’ the merchant said. ‘They believed us.’

‘What did you say?’ asked Ulric.

‘What Sir Guy told us to say. The Lord and Saints protect you from the likes of De Courcey. His reputation from London and Old Jewry has spread.’

The merchant spat on the ground and his wife chided him.

Old Jewry. They know?

I tried to butt in but the merchant continued.

‘They asked if we’d seen a woman with a wound to her face. And Brother Dominic shrugged and said no, and that it is surely a shame as a woman who tried to kill her husband deserves the wrath of God.’ He looked at me and grinned. ‘Forgive me, Lady Ysabel, we were told to lie.’

Sister Helewys spoke up, excitement rampant.

‘And Brother Dominic
did
lie. So well! Reverend Mother said it was a lie blessed by God and that we must do what we must for you. So we said we hadn’t seen anyone since Locksley, saving themselves.’

‘But then I remembered,’ Brother Dominic’s eyes glinted with irreligious craftiness, ‘ that there was group of pilgrims who left when we did, heading for Compostella. There was a young woman with a savage cut upon her face travelling with them.’

‘And they left,’ the merchant added. ‘But I tell you, Lady, you must leave us now. Get away while you and our young friend here have a lead.’

I looked at Ulric, my mind jumping everywhere, but mostly that Gisborne had helped me.

Sister Helewys said, ‘Lady, Reverend Mother said you have men’s clothes. I think you must change and jump up on the horse behind our wool merchant friend and make haste. This has all happened rather too early.’

My heart clanged.

Too early? This is what it has been like for a year, dear Helewys. If only you knew.

I reached for the clothes bundle in the back of the cart.

Change again? Why not? It was fast becoming a fleet skill I swear I could sell as market entertainment.

The habit rolled into a rough ball and I threw it into the back of the cart as Ulric fastened the girth of Brother Dominic’s mount. He leaped up and I climbed onto the back of the cart and slipped over the horse’s rump behind him, aware Reverend Mother’s little
misericorde
lay at a handy angle at my belt.

The horse circled, sensing our anxiety.

‘Thank you,’ I called as Ulric straightened the animal. ‘Thank you all!’

But the words fled behind me as Ulric’s heels closed on the gelding’s sides. Vaguely I heard Helewys’s ‘God bless!’ as we galloped down a track away from the road, heading into a forest that seemed to stretch on and on.

Once again I thanked my father for teaching me to ride a horse in whichever way was needed – astride, pillion, even fashionably sideways. But this ride was fraught, with no saddle and only a bouncing rump to cushion me. I held my legs away from the horse’s flanks, unwilling to interfere, wrapping my arms tight about Ulric, my body trying to relax into the horse’s stride. Downhill we fled, and I prayed the animal was sure-footed, dreading what might happen to my insecure seat if we must turn hard at a corner. Trees concealed us and as we moved deeper into the forest along that willing track, Ulric slowed until we trotted and then walked, with the horse blowing down its nose. Reaching a fork, the track changed to nothing more than a defile but I had lost all sense of direction in this leafy maze.

‘Where do we go, Ulric?’

‘Chester, and thence to Mont Hault.’

‘Mont Hault?’

‘Ay. The Welsh call it
Yr Wyddgrug
and even though it is in English hands, I can secret you at the priory. There are a small group of Benedictine nuns…’

‘Of course there are. I owe my life to nuns,’ I muttered. And then louder, ‘I appear to owe my life to
God.
’

‘You owe your life to God and Sir Guy right now, Lady Ysabel.’

‘Sir Guy … so you say, and yet I find it the oddest thing. Tell me how it is that I seem to
owe
him
so much.’

‘It is not for me to reveal, Madame. It is something between you and he and if not Sir Guy, then with God. Leastways you are alive, you will be free, and little William of Gisborne will reap the benefits.’

William!

‘William? You know where he is?

‘Ay. He is in Mont Hault, with Gwen and Brigid.’

‘My God, Ulric! How have you done this?’

My hands had flown to my cheeks, unlatching from my escort’s middle.

‘It is my job. Intelligence.’

‘Does G…’

As I spoke, the horse shied at a bird flying from a coppice directly in front of us and I slid sideways off the animal, landing in a soft bed of moss and fern.

‘My lady!’

Ulric hauled the horse to a halt, jumping down by my side, but I grinned. Then I burst out laughing.

‘Ulric, I swear when I saw you this day I thought I was marked, that I would be a pile of ash by the King’s command. Now I find you give me hope.’

I wanted to pursue the question of whether Guy knew he had a son and that son in
Yr Wyddgrug
, but it was enough now to know I would see my child anon and I thanked the Heavens and all in it for that chance.

‘Lady Ysabel, we have much ground to cover yet and it mayn’t be safe, so do not hope for too much. We shall have to creep around Chester, change horses. It won’t be easy. Even less so since the Welsh lost Mont Hault back to the English. It means De Courcey and Halsham will have ears and eyes.’

‘Damn them, Ulric. I haven’t come this far in my life to have them stop me. I will prevail, I assure you. No matter what.’ Inside my head, that faint epiphany began to rise like a phoenix. ‘We will be travelling for some days then?’

‘Oh indeed, Ysabel. Perhaps longer depending on what problems we confront.’

Travelling.

Through forest and by stream, sneaking past villages and where Ulric would surprise me. Leaving me with the horse I had named Dominic after our perjuring priest, he would sneak off into the dark shadows of night or the stripey shades of dusk and he would always return with food of some sort. We made a practice of filling our bellies with fresh clean water when we came across streams far from settlements and I learned to forage like wild boar to keep hunger at bay.

I became dirty, the rigours of travel embedded in the wrinkles of palms and under fingernails. When I slapped at insects, a cloud of dust would rise from my jerkin, and even though we washed in streams the filth became ingrained – a second skin. We neither of us looked the same. Ulric no longer resembled Ulric of Camden, the pleasant-faced young man from Moncrieff and he told me that his Lady Ysabel had vanished long since.

I wondered if he realized how ironic was his choice of words – Lady Ysabel had indeed vanished, quite literally, yet her spirit soared higher and stronger than ever as each league we travelled brought her closer to Chester and closer too to Mont Hault.

Summer days lulled us – the warmth, the blue skies, the abundance of fodder found in the thick forest and rolling hills of the countryside. Our feet need only be cautious of occasional bogs and reed patches, and once a thunderstorm lit the night, Dominic laying back his ears and swishing his tail, but we were dry ‘neath a rocky overhang, aware the gates and bridge of Chester waited not far off.

Perhaps summer was too kind, a somnolence born of sun without cloud. Dominic plodded along, me in the saddle, Ulric alongside. A whining shape sped past my ear, my cheek grazed by feathers that burned. I dropped to the horse’s neck, the sound of another arrow soaring past my other cheek as I felt for my blade and heard Ulric’s sword being drawn – like the sighing of an ill wind.

The two thieves came at us from separate sides of the track, the one on my side reaching for Dominic’s reins. But the horse sensed danger, smelled strangers, and threw his head high, dragging the reins free, shying away and stepping down on the man’s foot with an iron-shod hoof.

The fellow’s anguished howl set up birds and I slashed at his shoulder with the
misericorde
as Ulric grunted with his own sweep and parry. He leaped for the horse, swinging onto its rump and clamping his heels hard against Dominic’s flank and we jumped the fallen and bleeding villains, galloping far away until we pulled up on the fringed edges of the Dee hard by Chester, horse’s sides heaving, our own matching his breath for breath.

I slipped from the horse, my knees folding so that I almost fell. In a heartbeat I was back amongst the carnage of the Angevin forest with Gisborne. My heart pounded even harder than Dominic’s galloping hooves had when we left our erstwhile companions days before. They talk of the cold sweat of fear and that is precisely what coated my filthy palms. Panic horrified and annoyed me all at once. I took a breath, remembering Gisborne holding me, wrapped around me that night and my breath slowing to match his.

As I took command again, I knew the violence of Wilf’s and Harry’s deaths would haunt me forever and the haunting was entirely dependent on my reaction to it. At that moment, all I wanted was to find quiet and peace with my son and I vowed and declared that I would do everything necessary to make it so.

‘Alright?’ Ulric whispered, looking at Chester’s walls.

‘Yes. Yes, I am.’

My hand smoothed Dominic’s neck and I wondered if we would have to leave him behind and secure fresh horses. Ulric said no if we rested for a day hidden in the forest. He would buy an extra mount for us and yes, he had coin and then we could make haste to Mont Hault perhaps three or four leagues away if we kept to the byways.

So close!

I waited whilst he walked to the town gates, feeding into a little group of people loaded with goods for the market. The brooding shape of the castle stared across the Dee at me, and I shrank into the trees, wondering how many eyes could see me as the soldiers walked the parapets. Would they have been warned to watch for a woman who had tried to kill one of the King’s favourites? One of Prince John’s favourites?

I wondered how Ulric would convince anyone that he wasn’t merely a filthy villein on the run with stolen pennies in his purse. I daren’t think of him being anything other than successful and I daren’t think of Gisborne. Not yet. I wanted to, to be sure. I wanted to try and sift through all the information that countered my own experience, but I wouldn’t. I dipped further back into the woods, holding Dominic’s reins as he grazed on the forest grasses. Eventually he rested, his head hanging, bottom lip dangling, his hoof tilted so that his hip angled like an old man’s. I sat against a tree, reins hooked over my arm, tired and hungry.

‘Ysabel! Ysabel!’

Ulric’s voice woke me and my head jerked up. He threw a small bag in my lap.

‘Fine mess you’d be in if it weren’t me,’ he said from the back of a thickset chestnut mare to which Dominic stretched his neck and whickered. ‘I’ve got bread and two pies. And some cherries which I stole from a handsome tree near the church.’ He grinned. ‘They’re very sweet.’

And so we began a day’s rest, secreted deep in the woods around Chester. We ate and chatted about Moncrieff, about Cecilia and Brother John. Of Camden and De Courcey. Oh yes, we talked long about
him.
I avoided nothing in my discourse on my late marriage. How could I? Ulric and I were almost as intimate as an old married couple. I say ‘almost’ because of course we were not a couple. Would never be.