Текст книги "The Stone Rose"

Автор книги: Carol Townend

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The goldsmith drank lustily. ‘Ah, that’s good.’ He scrubbed his mouth with his hairy hand. ‘Out with it, Malait. Have you more ill-gotten gains for sale? You must have taken to robbing the dead, you bring me more than anyone else.’

Accepting this tribute as no less than his due, a brief grin flashed across Otto’s lips. The two men often met, for Tomaz bought whatever Otto offered without asking questions, and they did a roaring trade in stolen goods. ‘Here,’ Otto dropped the stone into the goldsmith’s waiting palm. ‘What is it?’

Unhooking one of the overhead lanterns, Tomaz placed it on the table. As he stared at the diamond-shaped crystal, his dark brows twitched.

‘Is it a diamond?’

‘A diamond?’ The goldsmith’s shoulders began to shake, and he dissolved into barely smothered laughter. ‘Fancy you bringing me one of these, and not knowing...’

Malait clenched his fist.

Holding the crystal between finger and thumb, the goldsmith prudently swallowed his amusement and held the stone to the light. He did not want to offend the hot-headed Norseman, or lose a good source of income. ‘See how cloudy it is? There are countless flaws. And look, here’s a chip.’

‘Aye. But what is its worth?’

‘It’s a sunstone. I could smash it with my heel.’

‘Its worth, Tomaz.’

‘Paol could answer that.’ Tomaz tossed the sunstone into the lap of a fisherman whose ancient back was bent as a bow, and whose skin was as brown and tough as the leather of Otto’s boots. ‘What value would you give this, Paol?’

Paol picked up the sunstone, glanced at it, and his mouth split in a gummy smile. ‘Wouldn’t give you an oyster for it.’

‘What!’ Otto shot to his feet.

‘It’s a sunstone, Malait,’ Tomaz said. ‘Your ancestors would have fought tooth and nail for one, for their ships.’

‘Ships?’ Otto repeated, dazedly. Bitter anger flared in his breast. Alan le Bret had taken him for a half-wit.

‘Aye. Might be useful out of sight of land. Round the coast? Worthless.’

‘Worthless?’ Here he was, thinking he’d never have to work again, and all the while Alan le Bret must have known the damned thing’s true value. Why else would he have relinquished it so tamely? One question remained. Had there been anything else in the statue, or had le Bret made a fool of him on that score too?

Tomaz smirked. ‘Imagine a Viking not knowing a sunstone when he sees one.’ Then, seeing the Norseman’s visage grow black as a smith’s, he curbed his mirth.

‘God rot you, le Bret,’ Otto spat through gritted teeth. ‘I’ll spill your guts.’ He focused on the goldsmith whose mouth was curving despite himself. ‘What are you laughing at, Tomaz?’

‘Nothing. Have another drink, my friend.’

‘Give me that thing, old man.’ Otto held out his hand. He would have to return to de Roncier; the sunstone was some sort of proof that there was no jewel. And by the Bones of Christ, Otto thought, it had better be the gem that the Countess had been hot for, and not the statue. If the Count’s mother coveted the statue, he’d be lucky if he was put to cleaning the castle midden.

Tomaz stared pointedly at the pitcher of Bordeaux. ‘What about the wine?’

‘You drink it, and I hope it chokes you,’ Otto said. He rose and stalked into the dark.

***

At that moment, Alan was travelling on horseback along La Rue Richemont in the company of Ned. It was a broad highway, wide enough for several knights to ride abreast, and it was easy to follow because the moonlight made rocks and road shimmer.

‘Where are you bound, Alan?’

‘East gate.’

‘Won’t it be secure at this hour?’

‘They’ll let me in.’

‘Oh.’ Ned looked puzzled. ‘Alan?’

‘Mmm?’

‘If you’re so set on getting a fortune, why didn’t you desert Mistress Gwenn and take off with her mare? You would have got yourself two horses that way. This way you get nothing, for I’m to take yours back to St Clair’s stables.’

Alan couldn’t answer Ned’s question. All he knew was that when he and the girl had arrived at the crossroads, he had found himself spurring on to the manor alongside her. And when they had got there, she had kept faith with him. She had not tattled about his attempt to steal the non-existent gemstone, or his kissing her. He shrugged. ‘By the Rood, I don’t know. It must have been a momentary lapse. You’ll not hold it against me, surely?’

Ned was accustomed to Alan’s warped humour, and he greeted this with a laugh. ‘No. But it made me think, that’s all. There might be some hope for you. Alan?’

‘Stop prattling, will you, Ned? You make my head ache. You’re worse than any maid.’

Smiling, Ned obliged.

Alan could see a pale flickering of lights in front of them. Below the lights there was a long, thin, winding darkness which he knew was the wooden wall encircling the port. After riding some way in silence, he said, ‘Our ways will part at the gate.’

‘Aye, so you mentioned before. Where will you go?’

‘I’ve a mind to seek out our noble Duke.’

‘What? Brittany himself? I understood he was in Rennes.’

‘You were misinformed,’ Alan said, his mind on the black and white of Duke Geoffrey’s ermine that he had seen that morning in Locmariaquer. He’d wasted enough of his life on the intrigues of petty lordlings. He wanted to move on to higher things.

‘Alan, why don’t you reconsider–?’

‘Don’t sing that old ballad, Ned,’ Alan said wearily, rubbing the thigh of his mended leg. ‘The melody sickens me.’

‘You’ll regret it.’

Alan laughed shortly. ‘I’ve fatter fish to fry.’

‘You’re a heartless dog,’ Ned murmured, without heat.

‘Not quite, else I’d have been long gone. Here.’ Alan came to a halt and swung himself out of the saddle. He tossed his mount’s reins at Ned and heaved his pack from the animal’s back. ‘You can lead this bag of bones back to the shack that St Clair calls his stable. I’ll walk the rest of the way. Fare you well, Ned. I should think you’ll do well with Sir Jean.’

Ned clutched his cousin’s reins and gulped down a constriction in his windpipe. ‘God speed, Alan. Will I see you again?’

‘I should think so,’ Alan answered carelessly. ‘I know where to find you.’

‘Yes.’

Alan shouldered his pack, sketched Ned a mocking bow, and turned his face towards the wooden palisade.

***

Marie de Roncier was breaking her fast in the hall of Huelgastel. Seated at the head of the table beside her son, she tipped the sunstone from one dry palm to the other as though it scorched her. A silver-topped cane lay within reach on the trestle.

Weeks earlier, when news had reached her of her sister’s death, the Dowager Countess had been overcome with guilt. If she had stayed her son’s impetuous hand, if she had not demanded the statue, her crazed sister Izabel would yet be alive. However, in the days that had followed, Marie had stopped chastising herself. Life was easier when she turned her back on her uneasy conscience. She flung the sunstone on the table with a crack. ‘My thanks, Malait, for bringing us this relic from the past, but I asked for the Virgin.’ Had Izabel died to protect a glass pebble? It looked as though her informants had been right, her sister’s wits must have gone at the end.

‘You see, Maman,’ the Count said. ‘The diamond only had form in old wives’ minds.’

‘You are insolent, François,’ Marie said, frostily.

‘No, Maman, practical.’ He smiled. ‘Honestly, accepting there was a jewel – which I doubt – is it likely they retained it all these years?’

Relieved to find the wind in this quarter, Otto took a pace towards the Dowager Countess. ‘If there had been anything of value, madame, I’m sure Alan le Bret would have known.’

Regally, Marie waved him out. ‘You may leave us.’

François booted the door shut after his captain. ‘Well, ma mère? You advocate that I do nothing, I expect?’

Marie did not want any more blood on her hands. ‘Do St Clair and his brood of bastards threaten you?’ she asked, investing her voice with as much scorn as she could.

‘Advise me.’

Marie’s dark face lighted. ‘With pleasure, François.’ Her Robert, God rest him, had often asked her advice, she liked being consulted by her menfolk. ‘Stay your hand and let matters rest. If you act, you acknowledge St Clair as a threat. And that would be tantamount to admitting you occupy shaky ground – it would be a tactical error. The man is weak, François; weak-minded, and weak in manpower. He’ll never be a real danger.’

‘Suppose he marries Yolande Herevi?’

‘He won’t. I’ve told you before, even that man wouldn’t stoop to marry his concubine. Don’t thrust a stick in a wasps’ nest.’

François rubbed his red cheeks and looked dubious. ‘I’d be happier if the nest was completely burned out.’

Marie grew pale. ‘No, François.’ It was not easy for her to plead, but she reached a hand towards her son. ‘Enough is enough. Please.’

François held his mother’s gaze for a heartbeat or two. ‘If it pleases you, Maman,’ he answered off-handedly, ‘I’ll play it your way, unless circumstances should change.’

Marie’s hand fell. ‘My thanks, François, I knew you’d see reason.’

Part Two

Champions and Heroes

O God, the sea is so wide and my boat so small:

Be good to me.

Prayer of a Breton fisherman.

Chapter Eleven

Kermaria, two years later. Spring 1185.

Jean St Clair and his family gathered for supper in the hall, together with the men-at-arms, serving women and other members of the household. The whiff of mildew and decay had long been banished, and the scents of lavender and beeswax mingled in the air. The rushes were changed regularly; the whitewash was renewed annually. A large wall-hanging brightened the gloomy north wall. As last year’s harvest had been good, Jean had money in his coffers – terracotta tiles had been carted in from Vannes, and the hearth and fire-surround had been relaid in bold chevrons of terracotta and gold.

‘The duck smells good,’ Raymond said, hooking a stool from under the trestle with his boot. Raymond’s thick brown hair fell in tousled waves. He was unusually handsome, for not only had he inherited his mother’s fine emerald eyes, but he also had her beautiful bone structure. His muscles had filled out, and he had the ungovernable appetite of any active young man. Without waiting for his parents to choose their birds, Raymond took his knife from his belt, wiped it perfunctorily on his breeches, and speared himself a fowl. It thudded on his trencher, and an onion rolled across the table leaving a glistening trail like that of a snail.

‘Raymond, your manners!’ Yolande chastised him, smiling.

Her son flashed her an incorrigible grin and flung himself on his stool. His charm he had from his father. ‘Apologies, Mama, but I’m famished! Where’s Gwenn?’ Gwenn was his dinner partner, and she was supposed to share the food on his trencher, after the fashion of nobles in larger households. Raymond never understood why they had to affect these ridiculous manners, but to save family argument he was prepared to pay lip-service to the odd caprice of his mother’s.

‘Here I am.’ At fifteen, Gwenn remained petite and darkly pretty.

‘Hurry up, sister. Or there’ll be none left.’

There was plenty, but Gwenn took her place at her brother’s side while Raymond lunged at the sauce jug.

‘This bird suit you, Gwenn?’

‘Aye.’

‘And wine sauce?’

Already he was drowning the bird, and a dark pool of sauce seeped out under the edges of their trencher. ‘It would be too bad if it didn’t,’ Gwenn observed wryly.

Raymond stared at the jug as though it were bewitched and had leapt into his hand on its own. ‘Sorry.’

‘That’s alright. I like the sauce.’ Gwenn noticed that Ned Fletcher was watching her from the other trestle. Goaded by some inner demon, she lowered her head and peeped experimentally at him. Recently, she had discovered that Ned Fletcher went bright pink when she did that. A tide of crimson swept up the Englishman’s neck and surged into his cheeks, and he swiftly transferred his attention to a flagon of wine. Gwenn smiled.

Yolande’s clear brow – she had marked this exchange – clouded.

Everyone, with the exception of Raymond, who was already carving his bird, was looking to the master of the house for the signal to begin. The door opened, and Denis the Red, so called because of his fiery crest of hair, tramped in. One of Ned’s peers, Denis had been posted at the bridge on the avenue. A travel-stained stranger dogged his heels. Someone groaned. This would mean a delay in eating.

‘Aye? What is it, man?’ Jean asked irritably, for he was as eager for his meat as were the rest of them.

The stranger, a courier, stepped forwards and proffered a scroll. ‘I’ve a despatch for you, sir.’ He lowered his voice. ‘It’s from your brother, Sir Waldin.’

Jean raised startled brows. The St Clair brothers wrote only rarely to each other, and the last time Jean had heard from Waldin had been two years earlier, after Jean requested Waldin’s support. Waldin’s reply had been curt and to the point. Waldin had sent his regrets, but it was not quite convenient for him to comply with his brother’s wishes. Waldin had promised that he would join his brother later. Jean had not taken Waldin’s promise seriously.

While his household waited, knives suspended over trenchers, the knight broke the seal on the parchment and ran his eyes slowly over the script. He was a novice where reading was concerned, but this hand was bold and clear, and easy on the eye. Waldin must have done well in the last tournament to be able to afford so neat a scribe. ‘Waldin is coming home,’ he announced with a smile. He turned to the messenger. ‘Is my brother in good health?’

The man started. He had been staring at the heaped trenchers; he had not eaten in hours and the smell of braised fowl was making him giddy. ‘Aye, sir.’ Swallowing down a mouthful of saliva, he mustered a smile. ‘He’s been Champion of Champions this past two years.’

‘Has he, by God? So that’s why he wouldn’t come when I beckoned. I thought you were going to tell me he’d been injured, and was coming home to lick his wounds.’

The rush-strewn floor was shifting under the courier’s feet. ‘No, sir. Sir Waldin is as sound of wind and limb as he has ever been.’

‘Thank the Lord.’ Jean grubbed in his pouch for a coin, and tossed it at the messenger. ‘Sit you down, man. On my soul, you look half famished. Eat,’ he said, addressing his household as well as the messenger.

‘My thanks, sir.’ The envoy stumbled to the soldiers’ board and fell upon the food.

Denis the Red watched in envy. His stomach growled. Tonight, Denis would have to be content with cold fare by the bridge. He stumped sullenly for the door and wondered what they’d be getting tomorrow. He wouldn’t be on look-out at supper-time tomorrow.

‘So we’re to meet the great tourney champion at last,’ Raymond said.

‘Yes, if he doesn’t change his mind.’ Waldin was notoriously unreliable, and tourneys were his life.

Gwenn saw that Ned Fletcher’s gaze was once more trained on the top table and she tried another smile. This one failed to bring the slightest flush the young trooper’s cheeks, and Gwenn thought she knew why. Ned knew all about Sir Waldin, and he had his ears stretched to catch every last word about the champion knight-at-arms. She herself had met her father’s younger brother when she was only seven, and she longed to see him again.

Waldin St Clair was, in his way, a rebel. He had refused the expected career in the Church and had gone off to make his fortune at the tournaments. Gwenn’s memory of him personally was hazy. All she could remember was that he had appeared out of nowhere, but she had vivid recollections of the tournament that he had taken her to with Raymond on the outskirts of Vannes. Of course, Gwenn was older and wiser now, and she realised that, for Waldin, that small local tournament must have been an insignificant affair, but it had given her a taste of the excitement they offered. She had seen the silken pennons flying, and the gaily caparisoned horses. She had heard the thundering of great hoofs and the squealing of the horses. She had smelt the excitement.

Waldin had not taken part that day; instead he had devoted himself to answering Raymond’s questions and plying Gwenn with scoopful after scoopful of honeyed almonds and raisins. For months afterwards Gwenn had relished their sweetness and had carried in her mind the brightness and colour of the tourney. After the tournament, Waldin had vanished out of her life as inexplicably as he had appeared, but that day with her uncle had stood out among other, duller days as one filled with magic and wonder.

It was strange how she could not call Waldin’s face to mind, but she was sure she knew what he would look like. He would be tall and strong and brave. He would ride a white charger like the hero of a troubadour’s song. She conjured up an image of him, and it was clear as day.

‘Why should Sir Waldin change his mind, Papa?’ she asked. Since bringing his family to Kermaria, Sir Jean had given his children permission to name him ‘father’, explicitly acknowledging them as his. He had not, however, kept his promise to marry his mistress.

Jean smiled. ‘The reasons why Waldin could be delayed are legion.’

‘From what I’ve learned of life on the tourney circuit, I should think they’re most likely female,’ Raymond cut in with a man-of-the-world snigger. He looked more than happy to expand on this theme, but Jean silenced him with a look.

‘My brother’s a law unto himself, and always has been,’ Jean said. ‘But judging from his missive, it would seem he’s retiring from the lists.’

‘Thank God for that mercy,’ Yolande said softly.

Gwenn clapped her hands. ‘I can’t wait to see him! Think of it, Raymond. The tales he must have to tell. Why, he will have met the King.’

‘Which King are you talking about?’ Raymond asked dampeningly. ‘France or England?’ He seized a decanter of wine and upended it into his cup.

‘Does it matter? To have met a king, any king! Oh, Raymond, aren’t you excited?’

He was, but at seventeen Raymond felt conscious that he was a man full grown, and he’d die rather than admit it. ‘I should think Waldin will have better things to do than gossip with maids,’ he said.

Yolande intervened. ‘It will be lovely to see your brother again,’ she declared. ‘I’m glad he’s retiring from the circuit. Perhaps we might persuade him to stay.’

‘I pray so. I could always use a good man.’

‘Why is Waldin retiring, Papa?’ Raymond asked. ‘I thought tourney champions made sackfuls of money.’

‘They do. When they win. As you know, they take all the loser’s accoutrements – his horse, his arms, everything. But each time they fight they risk their lives and their goods. And they cannot always win. The life of a champion often ends in penury, if it is not cut short. Waldin’s had a good, long run. Only God is infallible, and Waldin knows his time as a champion is limited.’

Raymond toyed with a piece of meat he had impaled on the point of his dagger. ‘He’s running away.’

‘He’s using his brain.’ Jean set his stoneware cup down smartly. ‘But don’t ask me. You can ask the champion himself in a couple of weeks. He plans to be here around Ascensiontide.’

‘So soon?’ Yolande murmured, under her breath. Her hands were at her girdle, tightening it, and her eyes were turned down to their trencher. ‘That’s not long at all. I’ll have to have done it by then.’

‘What are you muttering about?’ Jean demanded, noticing for the first time that Yolande had lost her sparkle. ‘Whatever’s the matter?’

But she declined to meet his gaze. Instead her eyes wandered to the fire flaming in the newly-tiled hearth. She sat straight as a nun, and folded her hands neatly over her stomach. ‘We’ll be needing new linen sheets if Waldin is to come. The spare ones are fit for nothing but dish clouts.’ Then she turned her head and met her lover’s eyes straight on. Her gaze was remote, her face was set like rock, and her wide forehead was furrowed. Jean’s heart lurched. That look – it was as though she did not like him, had never liked him, and was sure she never would like him. Bemused, he ran his hand over his moustache, and then Yolande was smiling warmly at him, and her hand had come to cover his.

***

Having picked at her evening meal, Yolande retired early to the solar, taking a rush-light with her. At Kermaria, peace was almost as rare a commodity as privacy, and Yolande needed peace desperately tonight. She had some thinking to do. Pressing her hand to her belly, she paced the boards. A tiny fluttering made itself felt, as though there were a butterfly inside her. But it was no butterfly. Yolande had known that fluttering sensation before, and knew what it meant. Each time she had noticed it, a babe had followed some months later.

She was pregnant. Yolande had misgivings about this baby. She did not want another child. More precisely, she did not want another bastard.

The Stone Rose stared proudly down from a new walnut plinth on a shelf Jafrez the carpenter had fixed to the east wall. Kneeling before it, Yolande offered an Ave Maria before murmuring a more personal prayer. The Virgin watched with cold, granite eyes. ‘Holy Mother, help me. Advise me. I had thought the time had past that I could bear a child. Why else should my courses have stopped when Katarin was three? What purpose do you have in giving me another child? I count it no blessing. Why?’

It seemed to Yolande that the hard, almond-shaped eyes judged her; judged, and found her guilty. ‘I know I have sinned,’ she bowed her head, ‘but I love him. I would have married him if I could. Before each child was born, I prayed that it would not have to bear the taint of bastardy. Three times I did that. I pray that same prayer today. Holy Mother–’

The shadows shifted, light danced and skittered over the limewashed walls. Someone had entered the solar, carrying a lantern. Yolande’s moment of private contemplation was ended.

‘Mama?’ Gwenn set the lantern on a coffer and opened its door, so that the light strengthened. ‘Is anything amiss?’

Stiffly, Yolande got to her feet and forced a smile.

‘You look so sad. What is it, Mama?’

Yolande longed to confide in someone. Why not Gwenn? Her daughter was fifteen now, old enough. ‘I’m enceinte,’ she announced, bluntly.

Gwenn looked delighted. ‘But Mama, that’s wonderful! I love babies. There will be someone else for Katarin to play with.’ She kissed Yolande on the cheek. ‘Don’t be sad about that, Mama. That’s lovely news.’

‘Is it?’ Yolande murmured, bleakly. ‘That will make four of you. Four.’

‘So?’

Yolande swung away. ‘Four illegitimate children, Gwenn. I think three is more than enough for any woman to bear a man, don’t you?’

Some of the shining joy left her daughter’s expression. ‘No one minds that out here, Mama.’

‘Don’t they? Don’t you mind, Gwenn?’

Her daughter’s eyes slid to the newly worked arras hanging across the chamber door. ‘No.’ Her chin inched up. ‘It was only in Vannes that people minded. Here, on Father’s land, it is different.’

‘Is it? I’m not so sure.’ Another matter had been preying on Yolande’s mind, and dimly she perceived that the two worries were linked. ‘Lately, I have noticed that your relationship with Ned Fletcher is over-familiar – no, Gwenn, it is no use you scowling like that. It won’t do. I worry about you. If your father and I were married, Ned Fletcher wouldn’t dare let his eyes stray.’

‘Ned Fletcher is good to me,’ Gwenn said, stubbornly. ‘I won’t hear a word against him.’

Yolande kept her voice cool. ‘I’m sure he is, dear. But you must remember, he’s from common stock.’

‘Common stock!’ Gwenn spluttered. ‘What do you mean?’

So Gwenn did mind... Yolande sighed. ‘Oh, my dear, if I were married to your father, you would understand immediately what I mean. My life of sin has blinded you to the truth.’

‘That’s hogwash and you know it.’

‘Gwenn, such language!’

Higher went that defiant chin. ‘Well, it is hogwash, Mama. If you’re trying to say that the common folk lack the finer qualities, then I must disagree with you. Ned is kind.’

Ned. Yolande suppressed a groan. She called him Ned. Worse and worse.

In full spate, Gwenn rushed on. ‘Ned listens to me. Ned doesn’t patronise me like Papa. And unlike my dear brother, Ned Fletcher keeps his promises. It seems to me that Ned Fletcher is more honourable than both my father and my brother put together! Remember that it was Ned,’ Gwenn caught the spark in her mother’s eyes, ‘I mean Fletcher and his cousin, Alan le Bret, who saved me. That took courage. If that doesn’t put the case for those of common stock, I don’t know what does.’

‘Oh dear,’ Yolande said weakly, trying and failing to put her objections into a reasoned argument. She was too old to be carrying, and wished she was not so fatigued. ‘I never did like Fletcher’s kinsman.’

‘But he did save me.’

There was no answer to that. ‘I was misguided,’ Yolande murmured, ‘to let you sit in on Raymond’s lessons. It’s enabled you to talk the hind leg off a donkey, and it’s not becoming in a girl. You’ve grown so clever, you could argue wrong into right. We’ve spoiled you. God knows if we’ll ever find a husband to take you.’

‘Oh, Mama,’ Gwenn tossed her head, ‘it’s your thinking that is crooked.’ But then she saw how tired her mother was, and relented. She led her mother to her bed in the curtained recess. ‘I’m sorry, Mama. You should be resting. You’ve the babe to consider.’

Meekly, Yolande permitted Gwenn to direct her to her couch. As Gwenn pointed out, she had the babe to consider. Since de Roncier had loosed his fiends and set that terrible fire, Yolande had dismissed all thought of marriage from her mind. Marriage to Jean would not legitimise the children they already had, and any wedding might provoke the Count to further outrages against her family. She did not expect her lover to honour his promise to marry her in view of the attendant dangers.

But if there was to be another child...

After Gwenn had crept out, leaving her with the lantern, Yolande settled under her downy coverlet, and laid a hand over her womb. The babe was growing within her. Growing with it was the resolve that by hook or by crook, this child would be legitimate. She accepted that in many respects Jean had been criminally irresponsible. He had neglected his inheritance for years, claiming he had not the funds to manage it, when a more far-sighted man would have put his shoulder to the plough, and husbanded his land to make it fruitful. Latterly, Jean had seen the light and had mended his ways. These two years past had seen him wearing his fingers to the bone. Kermaria was improved beyond recognition. A disloyal voice chimed in, suggesting Yolande consider how much more improved Kermaria would have been if he had begun his stewardship of his estate when he had first inherited it.

No matter. Jean was...Jean. He may have been irresponsible, but he was reformed, and even in his earlier, feckless days he had always been able to win her over with his charm. She loved him.

A yearning sigh fell from her lips. It was all very well for her to feel inside her that their unsanctified relationship was blessed by God, but lately she had come to the conclusion that it mattered little what one thought, if one was out of step with the world. It was the world, after all, that named her children bastards, and it was the world that thought the worst of them for it.

If only Jean could be persuaded to marry her. Yolande hoarded another, more telling wish close to her heart. She did not wish for gold, or for power or influence. Her wish was simple, and it astonished her, for she liked to think of herself as a free spirit. Yolande wished that one day she might be able to present Jean with a babe and say to him, ‘This, my love, is your heir, your legitimate heir.’

***

A flagon of Rhenish later, Jean tiptoed past the sleeping women of his household, heading for bed. The women’s pallets, neat as a row of beans, ranged across the floor of the solar, a hazard to the unwary. Of the four recesses built into the walls of the solar, three had beds in them. Jean glanced at the one Gwenn and Katarin shared. All was quiet there. Katarin must be sound asleep. Releasing a thankful sigh, for his youngest could raise hell if she did not feel like sleeping, he picked his way across the shadowy room. The third niche, which Raymond had appropriated for his sole use, was empty, for Raymond was drinking below. The fourth and last recess stank. No one slept there. One day, Jean vowed, he would have the mason fit another privy. The need for it was dire.

Above his bed a lantern burned. ‘Are you awake, my love?’ he whispered, as was necessary if he did not want to be overheard by his household. Jean unbuckled his sword and, as was his habit, placed it within arm’s reach by the bed. His mistress stirred and yawned. ‘What ails you? You looked as though you were miles away at dinnertime.’

Yolande propped herself up on her pillows. ‘Perhaps I was.’

‘Eh?’ Jean couldn’t find her meaning easily, and was too full of wine to try very hard. Sinking onto the edge of the mattress, he unlaced his knee-high boots and flung his tunic aside. In a corner, a bowl of water waited on a stand. He splashed his face perfunctorily with it; it was as chilly as a March sea. ‘Hell.’ He shivered, and cracked his elbow against the wall. ‘This bedchamber is too cramped,’ he observed, not for the first time.

‘It grants us some privacy.’

‘You have something there.’ Jean grinned and, leaving both chausses and linen chainse on, he clambered into bed. He slid a hand over a warm, rounded breast, and nuzzled her arm. ‘You have something here.’ But instead of the response that he hoped for, he was greeted with a soft sigh. He shifted his hand to her waist and lifted his head. His lover looked pensive. He resigned himself to a lengthy and probably tedious conversation, and valiantly tried to rally wits that were more than ready for rest. ‘What is it?’

Under the sheets her breasts rose as she inhaled deeply. ‘I had thought to keep it from you, Jean. I had thought to cope with it on my own. But then I realised that that would never do. I have never liked keeping secrets from you, and to do so in this instance would be very wrong.’