Authors: The Quest
Impatiently, urgently, they removed each other’s garments, flinging them to the floor and over the bed, careless of laces and flimsy material. At the core of their urgency was the silent knowledge that their time together was short. The future yawned uncertainly before them, with all its implied disasters.
But here and now there were sweet pleasures to be found in the coupling of their bodies. Flesh against flesh, united in form and heart, seeking and giving delight. It mattered not to her that he did not speak of love; he gave evidence of it in his gentle caresses, then in the growing ferocity of his touch as he ranged over her.
When she was at a fever pitch of excitement, lifting her
hips to urge him enter her, he parted her thighs roughly and thrust inside. The movement took her breath away, and she clung to him with arms and legs twined round about him like a summer vine, offering body and heart and soul. He drove into her with shattering motions that swept her to the height of suspense and held her there.
Moaning, she met his fierce thrusts with her own, hands caressing him and wresting ragged gasps from him as she touched him intimately. She cupped him in her palm, hand reaching between their bodies to caress him, and felt his shudder. His breath was hot against her cheek, his body hard within her as he checked his movements. With his forehead resting on hers, his lips traced light kisses over her nose and mouth. Then he shifted, easing his body away a bit to look down at her.
With light from candles silhouetting his broad frame, he gazed down at her, his hair a muted gold in the shadows, his features dark against the candle glow. “Promise me,” he rasped, “that you will obey me without question in the coming days.”
She stared up at him. There was an urgency in his tone that compelled her to agree. “Yea, Rolf. I will obey what is asked of me.”
He did not have to explain. She knew that she must yield to him in matters of warfare. The slightest delay could mean death.
And knowing the possibilities that loomed ahead of them, she drew him down to her again, fiercely resisting the intrusion of anything between them now. Rolf’s breath came harsh between his teeth as she lifted against him to take him more fully inside her. Braced over her with a hand on each side of her head, he drove his body into hers with a feral sound of pleasure. Again and again he penetrated to the very core of her, sending shuddering waves of bliss through her until finally she poised on the brink of release.
Clutching him to her as if drowning, she sobbed against him, “I love you,” then yielded to the shattering ecstasy he gave her. It was a surrender and a victory at once, and she held him to her long after he had reached his own release,
hands stroking down his misted skin with tender caresses of love.
Thick mist shrouded the turrets towering over them, and damp shadows crawled over the stones of the bailey as Rolf mounted his destrier. He looked down at Annice, a tightening in his throat. She had wept most of the night, turned away from him in their bed as if she could hide her sorrow. He had not let her know he heard but, when she had finally subsided, had pulled her to him and held her through the night.
Women were ever fearful when men rode off to war, and he could not reassure her that he would come back. Even the stalwart King Richard had been slain by a chance arrow that had fallen from the sky. Rolf thought it a celestial error. Richard had been amusing himself by watching an enterprising Frenchman use a frying pan to catch the stones catapulted toward their fortress; those stones had then been used as ammunition against the English who had launched them. Then had come the arrow that struck Richard in the shoulder, and he’d broken the shaft attempting to pull it out. It had taken the king twelve days to die from the festering wound. No leech had been able to save him.
Nay, he would not promise Annice that he would return. He would not give her hope that might prove false.
Tidings were grim. London had been taken by the rebels, and the city prepared to defend herself against Salisbury’s Flemish troops. But it would demand enormous siege machines and an endless supply of ammunition to break the city, as the river alone made it nigh impossible to broach, so the Earl of Salisbury withdrew. That left the very core of John’s resources in the hands of the rebels, gold and goods held hostage by his enemies.
Now the rebels were locked inside the city, unable to leave, but fortified against the king’s efforts to enter. In the game of chess the situation would be called a stalemate.
Messengers between Windsor and London were wearing new ruts in the road as the king attempted to negotiate with his barons. Rolf was called to the king’s aid, and now he answered
with his troops, leaving Gareth of Kesteven as able castellan for Dragonwyck.
“I have given Gareth his orders,” he said to Annice. “Do you obey whatever message I send. I have made arrangements for you to go to the nunnery near Gedney should the rebels turn to Dragonwyck. Though I do not believe it would fall easily, I dare not risk your safety. Take Belle with you should this come about, and flee for your own safety.”
“Yea, lord,” Annice replied, though ’twas obvious she only half attended his words.
He smiled slightly and leaned from his saddle to draw her near. Wulfsige snorted his displeasure at having anyone close to his head, and Rolf quieted the destrier with a firm hand as he held Annice in a fierce grasp.
“I will come back for you,” he said softly. “Whatever I must do, I will see you safe from harm. Do not fear for me, but mind your own danger. The rebels are in foul moods and will not barter.”
Heedless of those watching, Rolf spread his fingers in the hair at the nape of her neck and kissed her fiercely. His mouth ground into her soft lips as if he would never taste them again; then he released her abruptly. She stumbled back several steps, blue eyes wide with anguish and tears.
Unable to bear it a moment longer, he wrenched Wulfsige’s head around and spurred him forward. The thunder of shod hooves against stone filled the air as they rode out of the bailey and over the drawbridge. They were just cleared of the bridge when he heard it being raised. Gareth would not allow any man to enter once the castle was closed.
Rolf did not look back.
By the time he reached Windsor, negotiations were all but ended between the king and his barons. Strife had raged back and forth, messengers wearing roads and metal horseshoes thin as powerful men bartered critical issues. Finally, sixty-one articles of the charter were decided upon.
It was the last that drew Rolf’s attention and dismay.
“Why in the name of all that’s holy,” he muttered to Guy, “does anyone think twenty-five men will ever agree on what is just cause for rebellion? These barons named as mediators
will think only of their own interests, not those of the country or the king.”
“Yea,” Sir Guy agreed tonelessly. He looked past Rolf to the broad meadow stretching beyond their camp. They had been ordered to make camp there, in this meadow between Staines and Windsor. It was called Runnymede, and ’twas there that a meeting had been placed between king and barons on this morning of June 15. The long reach of level grassland stretched along the banks of the river, and the rebel barons had also made camp. They had come with a multitude of illustrious knights, all armed to the teeth. It looked as if the whole of the nobility of England faced the king, while John had many less.
The archbishops of Canterbury and Dublin were there for the king, as well as the master of the English Templars, and the earls of Pembroke, Warren, Salisbury, and Arundel. About a dozen barons of lesser degree were among their number.
It was to those men that the king finally capitulated, signing the document known as the Magna Carta with dignity and all the decorum usually assigned to his rank as king. With sunlight gilding grass, trees, and the glitter of the king’s litter, the great charter was signed. It proposed to grant equal rights to every class and every individual in the nation, but held far more implications than those.
The twenty-five barons chosen to “observe, keep, and cause to be observed with all their might” the provisions of the charter were present at Runnymede and triumphantly accepted the king’s signed document. King and barons all swore to keep all the provisions of the charter “in good faith and without deceit.”
John also promised that he would not procure from anyone anything whereby his concessions might be revoked or diminished, but few placed much faith in the king’s promises. Why else would John have hired so many foreign mercenaries?
“England is merely exchanging one king for five-and-twenty overkings,” Rolf observed bitterly when it was over and John had retired to Windsor. The noise of celebration and feasting was a muted rumble in the distant meadow littered with tents and rebel barons.
Guy turned away from the open window. “ ’Tis whispered that once in privacy, John treated his steward to the sight of Angevin temper at its worst. He snarled blasphemous oaths, gnashed his teeth, rolled his eyes, and snatched up sticks and even straws from the floor, gnawing them like a madman. Shredded wood and embroidered hangings litter his chamber, I am told, and none dare go near him till his temper is lessened.” He paused, then added softly, “ ’Tis said that the king frothed at the mouth like a rabid dog, foam flying about and covering his garments. He is mad. We are lost.”
“But the king is not mad.” Rolf drank from his cup, the wine doing nothing to ease his own disquiet. He lifted his eyes to look at Guy. “Mark me, this is only the beginning. When John recovers from his tantrum, he will set about to undo what has been done this day, and all of England will suffer for it.”
Four days after the signing, all the barons of England, rebel and loyalist, repeated their oath of homage to the king. During the next seven days the king dispatched copies of the charter to the sheriffs, foresters, and royal bailiffs in every shire, with letters ordering them to make the men under their jurisdiction swear obedience to the twenty-five named barons in whatever form they might request. He caused twelve sworn knights to be elected in the next county court to inquire into the evil customs that were part of the grievances listed, promising their extirpation. To the outside world John showed a calm, smiling countenance, conversing gaily and familiarly with those he met, declaring himself satisfied with the settlement of affairs and peace.
Hubert de Burgh, a loyalist of John’s, had been appointed new chief justiciar. He ordered the sheriffs and knights of every shire to punish any person who refused to swear an oath of obedience to the twenty-five barons.
When the king left Windsor ten days after the signing of the charter, unable to move earlier because of a severe attack of gout, Rolf and his men went with him to Winchester. For a brief time it seemed as if the king meant to keep the charter, and the barons would keep the peace.
But the hard core of rebel barons openly insulted John and refused to relinquish the city of London to him. July
and August passed in a haze of sultry weather and a flurry of letters between England and the pope. The pope sternly instructed the barons to obey John and pay him homage in any matter which he required of them.
Then it was widely learned that even before the signing of the Magna Carta, John had entreated the pope to annul the hateful agreement forced upon him by disloyal rebel subjects. Stephen Langton, traveling to Rome to entreat the pope to allow king and vassals to work the charter into a peaceful solution, was intercepted by the pope’s letter disavowing the Magna Carta as well as the archbishop.
Caught between unconditional surrender by order of the pope or open war to the bitter end, the rebel barons flew into revolt. They were not ready for war, however, and the king was. John had been gathering men and arms, and Poitevens, Gascons, Brabantines, and Flemings flocked to his cause from over the sea. The Earl of Salisbury visited ten royal castles and selected from their garrisons troops for John’s service. The king issued a general safe-conduct to “all who may wish to return to our fealty and service,” then toward the end of September advanced as far inland as Malling.
Rolf and Sir Guy camped their men outside London with increasing disquiet. News had come that Seabrook was wavering between open rebellion and homage to the king. Justin, Rolf worried, was in grave danger. He intensified his efforts to retrieve the boy and finally wrested from John a promise to send royal troops for him should Seabrook rebel. But that did not seem likely to happen soon. He was still left to wait and wonder and watch.
Rolf wrote careful letters to Annice, keeping back the worst news. He did not mention that the rebels had appealed to King Philip of France to join their cause and depose John.
“What do they expect?” he snarled in frustration to Guy. “That King Philip will help them wrest England from John’s grasp and then go quietly back to France? Nay, if we lose, England will be part of France. Philip will give England to Prince Louis to rule, and Louis will pay his knights with the English lands belonging to those foolish barons who summoned him.”
After a moment of taut silence Guy murmured, “Now that the rebels have renewed the siege of Northampton Castle and laid siege to Oxford, John’s efforts to induce the archbishop into yielding Rochester Castle to him have failed.”
Sensing undercurrents in Guy’s remarks, Rolf looked up at him. “Yea, ’tis well-known. What of it?”
Guy took a deep breath and said, “Your brother Geoffrey has sided with the rebels.” He held out a letter, and after a moment Rolf reached out for it.
It was short and had been sent first to Dragonwyck. Gareth of Kesteven had forwarded it by messenger to Rolf, but that man had not been able to find him at first, and thus had the letter fallen into Guy’s hands. It was a guarded appeal from Geoffrey to his brother to join the rebel forces.
The wind blew steadily and harshly against the walls of the tent, and he listened to it for a long minute before folding the parchment in half. His brother was just across the river from him. He found it vaguely entertaining that the letter had followed him about England for near a month before ending up in his hands only a few miles from his brother.