Lords of the White Castle (52 page)

As they rode out of the woods, Maude gained her first glimpse of the keep that had engendered so much bitter struggle since the time of Fulke's grandsire—the great-grandsire of the baby growing in her womb.

The castle stood on a low rise, overlooking a crossroads: Oswestry to the west, Chirk and Wrexham to the north, Whitchurch to the east and Shrewsbury to the south. The Welsh border curled in a semi-circle less than three miles distance on all but the southern boundary. There was a palisade around the whitewashed timbers and a ditch surrounding the sharpened stakes. The gates stood wide in greeting, but they were heavily guarded and vigilant soldiers manned the wall walks. Inside the compound were numerous daub and wattle storage and service buildings, and a large wooden hall with oak roof shingles.

Fulke drew rein and looked at her. 'It is not as great as Lancaster or as grand as the Archbishop's palace at Canterbury,' he said with defensive pride, 'but it is mine and one day it will be the finest keep on these Marches.'

She turned her gaze from the castle to him. 'If I had wanted palaces and vast castles, I would have agreed to become John's mistress,' she replied on an admonitory note. 'It is mine too, and it is already the finest keep on these Marches. I desire no other.'

Although he swallowed, he still found it impossible to speak further, but he reached across the space between them and clasped his hand over hers.

A long day turned into a long night of celebration, although no one got particularly drunk. They could not afford to drop their guard. This morning had been a clear demonstration of what happened when vigilance was relaxed even for a moment.

That night, lying in the chamber above the hall, his and Maude's cloak for a groundsheet, a blanket above, Fulke wrapped his arms around his wife. 'Tomorrow we begin to build,' he said, his lips at her throat. 'I will have the village carpenter make us a bed.' He pitched his voice low. Whittington was crowded with his men and others were using the chamber for sleeping space too.

'You could have made do with the one that was already here instead of having it taken out and burned,' Maude commented. 'It was good seasoned oak.'

Fulke grimaced. 'Mayhap it was, but my father always said that a bed was a couple's private space. I want to begin afresh, not He with you where FitzRoger and his sons have lain with their women and whores.' He nipped her flesh and cupped her breast. 'I am giving you a clean slate to furnish Whittington as you choose.'

Maude made an interested sound. 'With a marble table for the dais and silver cups and tablecloths of silk damask?' she teased.

'And I always thought you a woman of sound taste.'

She pinched him and he leaped against her with a muffled protest. Their lips met, softly at first, but with a kindling hunger. Mindful of the other sleepers, they made love in silence—intense, fierce, shattering. As they parted and drifted into sleep, secured by the clasp of hands, Fulke pondered on the nature of silence, how much meaning it could hold: from hollow desertion waiting to be filled with noise; to the containment of pleasure that was magnified to a blinding intensity by the very need to make no sound.

And behind her closed lids, Maude imagined Whittington as it would be in the future. The proud baronial
caput
of the FitzWarin family, complete with a dais table of speckled Purbeck marble. Smiling to herself, she snuggled against Fulke.

Gwyn FitzMorys looked at his older brother in furious disbelief. 'You haven't got the abilities of a cracked louse!' he cried. 'How could you have let it happen!'

'They were on us before we knew it,' Weren said miserably. He flashed an accusing look at Gwyn. 'Besides, half the garrison were away with you, flashing their mail at the Shrewsbury whores.'

Gwyn reddened. There was an element of truth in the sally but he was not going to admit it. 'We were meeting with the bunder-sheriff!'

'Amounts to the same thing.'

Gwyn seized Weren by the throat of the borrowed tunic. Apparently the idiot had been trying to escape disguised as a maid and had been the laughing stock of FitzWarin's soldiers. 'It amounts to more than you ever will!' he spat. 'God on the Cross, all you had to do was keep the gates shut and maintain a vigilant guard on the wall walks. Papa was right when he said that you couldn't organise a drinking session in an alehouse!'

Choking, Weren strove to prise his brother off and could not.

'Papa will be turning in the grave where the FitzWarins put him!' Gwyn snarled and released Weren with a push that sent him reeling against the wall.

'You should have been there!' Weren gasped as he struggled upright.

'Why? I'm not the heir.'

'No, but you know what to do! You shouldn't have taken the best men!'

Gwyn glared. He had taken them because he had been expecting to set out along the Northern March with Henry Furnel in search of Fulke FitzWarin. Instead, FitzWarin had slipped behind his back and struck at the weakest point. Now he had Whittington, and from what the men said, sufficient Welsh mercenary troops to secure the place. Besides, whatever hatred he might feel for FitzWarin, Gwyn acknowledged that the bastard possessed formidable military skills. 'No, I shouldn't,' he said softly. 'It was my fault for overestimating your ability.'

'What are you going to do?'

He felt the anxiety in Weren's stare. Weren might be the elder brother, the one entitled to the land, but he had about as much notion of how to control and govern as a plough ox. Gwyn thought about shrugging and leaving him in the lurch, but for their father's sake and his own pride he could not.

'I am going to stay here and fight on,' he said. 'You' -he stabbed a forefinger—'are going to John with the news of Fulke FitzWarin's outlawry. Now we have no land, it is your duty to secure a fief to support us until we can regain Whittington.'

He watched Weren swallow. 'And God help you if you fail,' he added, 'for I certainly will not.'

CHAPTER 28

Whittington Castle, Shropshire,

February 1202

In the deep of the night during one of the heaviest snowfalls of the year, Maude gave birth to a daughter. Her labour lasted from the hour of compline until the second matins bell and the midwives had little enough to do to earn their pay except catch the baby in an apron, clean its face and cut the cord. The infant squalled lustily the moment she entered the world, announcing her presence to all and sundry.

'Red hair and a temper to match!' the senior midwife laughed.

'And a red face!' Maude laughed too, and blinked back tears. She was exhausted, sore, overjoyed and overwhelmed. It was almost impossible to believe that this tiny, furious creature was hers. Seeing the ripples and kicks beneath the skin of her belly was one thing; meeting their cause was another. She held her newborn daughter awkwardly in her arms and gazed into the crumpled, bawling features.

'She'll calm in a moment,' the second midwife said cheerfully. 'Shows she's strong. It's when they don't yell that you have to worry.'

Emmeline, who had come for Maude's lying-in, cooed over the baby, tears running down her cheeks. 'Just like her poor grandmother,' she sobbed, wiping her eyes on her blue wool sleeve.

Still bawling, the baby was gently bathed in a ewer of warm water, dried in a soft towel, then tightly swaddled, bands of linen cloth replacing the muscular constriction of the womb. Being wrapped seemed to soothe her and the indignant bawls became little snuffles and hiccups.

The midwives delivered the afterbirth and Maude was helped from the birthing stool to a clean bed, freshly made up with linen sheets and a sheepskin cover. Emmeline went to fetch Fulke while Barbette brushed and braided Maude's gleaming silver hair. It had been unplaited for the birth in the belief that it would help her push the child from her womb. The infant was placed in Maude's arms and mother and daughter assessed each other. Maude would not have called her daughter 'beautiful', still puckered and red from her birth and the ensuing tantrum, but that didn't matter. It was overwhelming love at first sight.

'She has her father's eyes,' Barbette murmured.

Maude smiled and touched the soft little cheek. The baby turned instinctively towards the finger. 'And his voice,' she said.

The door opened and Fulke strode into the room, filling it with his presence.

Maude watched him approach the bed. She knew he had been pacing ever since her labour had begun. Every hour or so he had sent one of the hall maids to enquire upon her progress until the exasperated midwives had returned the message that everything was going as it should, and that the birth would happen when it happened.

'I would rather have fought a battle than waited out these last hours,' he said as he stooped to kiss her. 'I am told we have a girl child.'

'You do not mind that it is not a son?' She knew how much store men set by their heirs, as if begetting a male child was the ultimate proof of their virility. She could remember her father's disappointment as each of her mother's pregnancies had ended in miscarriage or stillbirth, with herself the only surviving offspring and dismissed except as a bargaining counter in the marriage market. And this child was special, the first FitzWarin to be born at Whittington in more than fifty years.

'My only care is that you are both safe.' He looked at the child cradled in Maudes arms and tentatively touched the fuzz on the baby's brow. 'Red,' he said.

'Hold her.'

Very gingerly, as if he had been offered a primed barrel of pitch, Fulke took his daughter in his arms. Maude swallowed the lump in her throat. She had been astounded at her miniature perfection. Now the baby's tiny, delicate size was emphasised by Fulke's own height and robust strength. She watched him extend a forefinger, and saw the look on his face as the baby curled her little fist around it.

'I have heard about women who can wrap men around their little finger, but this is the first time I have seen a man captured by a single clasp,' she jested tearfully.

Fulke returned her smile, his own eyes bright with moisture. 'Even if you were to bear me a dozen sons, no moment will ever crown this one,' he said hoarsely. He gazed down into his daughter's birth-crumpled face. 'What shall she be named? Jonetta for your mother?'

Maude shook her head. 'No,' she said, 'Hawise for yours. What else could she be named with that hair?'

Winter gave way to spring and then the heavy greenery of summer. Fulke deepened the ditches around the palisade, he repaired and strengthened the timbers, and he made himself ready for whatever Henry Furnel and the FitzMorys brothers might throw at him. But the summer passed, the grain was harvested, Christmastide arrived and still they did not come.

'John cannot afford to pay his troops in Normandy,' said Jean de Rampaigne, who was visiting them for the feast season, having spent the last month in Hubert Walter's household. 'He is so unsure of the loyalty of his Norman barons that he has entrusted major keeps to his mercenary captains.'

'If he cannot afford to pay his troops, then surely that is unsound policy.'