The first riders into the clearing were two knights wearing plain surcoats of blue linen over their mail. Because he was a warrior, Fulke's attention was first for them. The one on the near side wore an open face helm that revealed a portion of his narrow, handsome features.
'Jean?' With relief and pleasure, Fulke sheathed his sword.
'Never mind me, what about greeting your wife?' said de Rampaigne, twisting in the saddle to indicate the other riders.
Fulke followed Jean's pointing finger to the small chestnut cob in the midst of the soldiers and the figure sitting astride. It was not obviously a woman on first glance, for a brown, hooded cloak covered all overt signs of gentler, but once his attention was fixed, he did not know how he could have been so blind.
'Maude!' Breathing the name, he strode to her. She kicked her feet free of the stirrups and came down into his arms, her own winding tightly around his neck. For a moment the world went away as he embraced her, his nose filling with the sweet herbal scent that she used to perfume her clothes. Sage and lavender and bergamot. The curves of her body, the pale sea-green of her eyes beckoning him to drown as they filled with tears. Everything he had missed and wanted.
A throat was loudly cleared and a voice said wryly, 'Delighted though I am to see such marital harmony, the conception of your fourth child should be a private matter, FitzWarin.'
Maude blushed. Fulke raised his lips from Maude's, and turned to bend his knee to Hubert Walter of Canterbury. The Archbishop was watching them from the back of his dappled mule with benign good humour.
'Your grace,' Fulke murmured.
'Get up. You can't help me from this nag in that position.'
Fulke hastened to aid Hubert from the mule. The saddlecloth was emperor purple, stitched with small crosses in thread of gold and must have cost a fortune in itself. Hubert was wearing plain robes by his standards, with only a bare trimming of metallic braid and embroidery, but the linen of his vestments was of a heavy weight and fine weave. The Archbishop had always been a robust man, fond of his food but muscular beneath the flesh. Now that muscle tone was sagging and the flesh was taking rapid command. Hubert's breathing was stertorous as he flicked dust from his robes and leaned on his staff.
'Your children are safe at my manor of Mailing,' Hubert wheezed. 'I thought it best to leave them there for the nonce. No one will dare to touch them beneath my jurisdiction and, as Maude can attest, they are all flourishing.'
Fulke nodded. His cup would have run over if he could have seen them now, but he knew the limitations as well as Hubert. 'Thank you, your grace.'
'Hawise made this for you.' Maude produced a plaited loop of brightly coloured scraps of wool. Attached to it was a wooden cross fashioned of two oak twigs, the pieces bound together with strands of strong, red hair. 'She says you're to wear it around your neck.'
'Made me bless it too,' Hubert said gruffly. 'She has your will of iron.'
'She has mine,' Maude contradicted. 'Fulke is merely stubborn' There was a tremor in her voice.
Fulke swallowed the ridiculous lump that came to his throat as he looked at the offering. Very carefully, he placed it around his neck. 'For this, if nothing else, I have to make my peace with John,' he said and, cradling the cross, looked at Hubert. 'Do you have tidings?'
Leaning on his staff, Hubert walked heavily to a nearby tree trunk and sat down in ponderous stages. 'My knees,' he said ruefully. Rubbing them, he regarded Fulke sombrely. 'The King says that if you come to him at Westminster and lay down your arms in surrender, he will deal with you leniently. If you continue to play the outlaw, then he will hunt you down like a wolf in the forest.'
'How leniently?' Fulke demanded.
Hubert Walter screwed up his face. 'He would not be drawn, but both Salisbury and Chester believe that he can be brought to see sense in restoring Whittington to youas do I,' he added, spreading his hands to show the fleshy palms, criss-crossed by deeply imprinted lines.
'So, he has not been brought yet.' Fulke narrowed his lids.
'No, but he will.'
'You were confident that my father would have Whittington too,' Fulke said bitterly. 'You were confident that you would make a truce of Philip of France and it came to naught.'
Hubert Walter gave an exasperated sigh. 'And for that reason the King needs you as much as you need his pardon. Both of you must compromise.' Leaning forward, he emphasised the 'must' with a thump of his staff.
Fulke tightened his jaw. 'I will surrender to him, but I will not compromise on Whittington. That remains immovable. It was the reason that I turned outlaw. Let him give me what is rightly mine and I will serve him to the best of my ability all of my days. If not….' He shrugged and glanced down at the crude little cross between his fingers. 'If not, then what hope do either of us have? It's nigh on twenty years since he struck me with a chessboard and I rattled his skull against the wall in recompense. In God's name, Hubert, you must find an end to this for all our sakes.'
'That is what I am trying to do.' Hubert pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed his lids with forefinger and thumb. 'If you will but attend the King at Westminster, I will guarantee your safety. So will William of Salisbury and Ranulf of Chester.'
Fulke frowned. He had lived so long without trusting that it was difficult to grasp an olive branch without fearing that it might turn into a snake. But then why else was he here?
'None of the other barons will lay a finger on you because whilst you might be a vicious thorn in John's side, you are not a threat to them. Indeed,' Hubert added with bleak humour,' many of them sympathise with you. You are striking a blow for their interests as well as your own. The King cannot touch you lest it be with his hired men and you have proved yourself twice the worth of them. John needs you.'
'I will come,' Fulke said after a long pause. 'But only with my full complement of men and an escort provided by my guarantors.'
'As you wish.'
Fulke's eyelids tensed slightly at the soothing note he heard in Hubert Walter's tone. The Archbishop was a renowned diplomat and statesman, a manager and manipulator of men. It was one of the reasons he was so favoured by John. But behind Hubert the diplomat, Hubert the politician and Hubert the Archbishop, lay Hubert the brother of Theobald Walter. Fulke latched on to the thought.
'I doubt that you can give me "whatever I wish",' he said with a grim smile, 'but I do thank you for what you have done… for keeping my wife and children safe.' He squeezed Maude's waist.
'I could do no less for my brother's memory, and even an Archbishop must have a conscience tucked somewhere about him.' Hubert heaved to his feet. 'I leave it to you to escort your wife back to Mailing. Jean will travel with you as my representative.'
Fulke inclined his head. 'Thank you, your grace.' Hubert was playing a delicate game. He had not actually said before witnesses that he was granting Fulke the succour of the manor, but the implication was there to be taken up. Kneeling, Fulke kissed the Archbishop's sapphire ring of office, then rose as a knight brought forward Hubert's glossy dappled mule.
Hubert rode away, his escort following, all save Jean de Rampaigne, who clasped Fulke's arm and slapped him on the back in camaraderie before going to greet Richard and Philip.
Fulke drew Maude into his arms again and rubbed his stubbled cheek against the tender softness of hers. 'I dare not hope,' he said. 'I shut the faintest glimmer from my mind lest it be no more than a false dawn. We have had too many of them, too many broken promises for me to lower my shield.'
At the sound of hones crashing through the undergrowth, he snatched his recently sheathed sword from the scabbard. Maude clutched his arm in a reflexive gesture, but recovered herself and stepped back, leaving him room to move.
Ivo burst into the clearing at a ragged canter and slewed his lathered mount to a halt. Blood spidered from a deep cut on the back of his left hand. Behind him came Alain, his complexion the colour of whey.
'Will!' Ivo panted, leaning over the pommel. 'Will's been taken!'
Fulke's heart had been pounding hard in response to the threat of attack. Now it seemed to stop within him. He strode up to the horse and grabbed the bridle in his fist. 'What do you mean he's been taken?' he snarled.
A sheen of sweat glistened in the hollow of Ivo's throat as he swallowed. 'We were following a deer trail, thinking to bring down a bind, but we came upon a poacher instead, butchering his kill.'
'And?' Fulke's tone was like quenched steel.
Ivo bared his teeth in anguish. 'An ambush had been set for the poacher by the royal foresters, and we rode straight into it. They knew we were not legitimately in the forest, for we were not blowing our horns to tell of our presence and we were carrying bows. We should have run'he gasped as Maude bound his wound with a strip of linen torn from her wimple'but you know Will.'
Fulke needed little imagination to see the scene for himself. It would not occur to William to retreat. Always, someone more responsible had to haul him away by the collar and Ivo and Alain were not of that ilk. He was furious. At William. At the men who had taken him. At the whole Godforsaken mess of fate.
'They'll hang him for a traitor,' Alain said hoarsely.
'You should have thought of that before you went adventuring,' Fulke said. His voice was husky with the effort of control and he spoke softly because once he raised it, he knew that the sheer volume of frustration and rage would fell every tree in the wood.
He turned to the staring, dismayed men. 'Saddle up,' he said with a terse sweep of his arm. 'We'll ride after them. Jean, will you do me the courtesy of returning my lady to Mailing.'
'No,' Maude declared as Jean began to nod in agreement. 'I'm not returning without my husband.'
Fulke turned to her, his body as tense as a wound trebuchet. 'I will come to you as soon as I can, I swear.'
Maude laughed bleakly. 'If I had a penny for every time you have said those words to me, I would be the richest woman in the world. As it is, they beggar me!'
'Maude….' He held out his hand to her, not knowing if he intended to remonstrate or reconcile. 'Don't be awkward…'
She took a step away from him in what could be either a gesture of release or rejection. 'Go,' she said with glittering eyes. 'Go and save William from a bed of his own making, but remember, you make your own too, and this is the last time that I will lie in it and wait for you.'
Fulke could hear the hammering of blood in his ears, could feel the tension tighten within him until every nerve and sinew was whining with the effort it took not to break loose and lash out. He could sense the men watching him, waiting to see how he dealt with a woman who spoke so boldly.
'Jean.' He almost strangled on the word.
The knight nudged his horse forward. 'My lady, shall we go?' he said to Maude with polite neutrality.
With a narrow glare at Fulke, she stalked to her mare.
Refusing the aid of a boost into the saddle from Philip, she swung astride with the ease of a squire and gathered up the reins. Then without looking round, she turned the palfrey and rode out.
For an instant, Fulke stared after her, then, exhaling harshly, strode to his own mount. 'Come,' he said brusquely. 'We are wasting time that we do not have.'
John had sat on the bench throughout the morning, presiding over the court sessions of the forest hundred with unwaning concentration. Richard's love affair had been with the sword and the machinery of waroccupations that had drained the Angevin treasury to a husk. John's fascination was with the judicial process. How it could make and break, how it could be applied to create revenue and bring order, and how, in his own case, it could be manipulated and side-stepped to further his will.
This morning he had presided over several breaches of the law from the petty to the serious. Damage to property, thievery, murderer, abduction. The usual gamut. One foolish man had beseeched him for justice and been carried away screaming to face the gibbet. It might have been different had he asked for mercy instead. Salvation or damnation: it all came down to words.
John lightly brushed his beard with a beringed forefinger and signalled the next case to be brought before him.
'Caught in the great forest, poaching deer,' said the official as the bruised and beaten prisoner was ushered forward, the shackles clanking on his wrists. 'Won't give his name.' The official's tone implied that it didn't matter; this one was fodder for the gibbet.
John eyed the man, judging him to be in his early thirties. One eye was almost swollen shut. Dried blood was caked beneath his nose and joined the clotted mess of his split lip. He would not have been recognisable to his own mother, and yet John felt a glimmer of familiarity. It was the way the eyes held his in defiance, the knife-slash brows and heavy black hair. He knew those characteristics. No common peasant would return his look so boldly. No common peasant would wear a padded gambeson or sport such fine embroidery at the cuffs and hem of his tunic. John hunted his mind, searching thickets of memory until one sprang a reply like a startled quarry, and he began to smile.
'He might not give you his name, but I will,' he said, 'He is William FitzWarin, brother of Fulke, and a valuable capture indeed. Tell the men who caught him I will give them the same payment that I give to those who bring me the hides of wolves.'
'You'll gain nothing from having me,' William snarled and was immediately clubbed to his knees by the guard standing over him.
'Show more respect for your King!' the man warned.
'I'll give it where it's due. 'William gasped, a bruise beginning to swell on his temple.
John gestured sharply to stop the soldier from clubbing William again. 'I want him alive,' he said and stroked his beard. 'For the moment.' He slanted a glance at William. 'It all depends on how much your brother values your life.'
'Fulke will never yield to you!'
'Then you will hang from a gibbet for outlawry and poaching the King's deer,' John said indifferently and waved his hand. 'Take him away.'