Gilliane (Roselynde Chronicles, Book Four) Read online

  Fearing to frighten Gilbert, Gilliane did her best to restrain her sobs. Again expression flickered in Gilbert’s eyes. He left off touching her hair and put a finger to the tears coursing down her face. Then, suddenly, he wriggled upright. Before Gilliane could stiffen with fear he had put his right arm around her shoulders and drawn her against his breast while his left hand tried to wipe the tears from her cheeks. Gilliane was so surprised that she stopped crying and looked carefully at him.

  What she had hoped for fleetingly was not there. It was not a miraculously restored man who looked back at her. Nonetheless, there was something in Gilbert’s face, a dim awareness of his own humanity and hers. It was not much, but it gave Gilliane another thread of hope to cling to. Perhaps with patience and kindness, at least part of Gilbert’s mind could be restored. If only she had time. She sighed. Unfortunately, she could not afford to wait. She had not forgotten Saer’s glance. He would be back well before morning to make sure she had truly become Gilbert’s wife. Swallowing nervously, Gilliane lifted her face still further and touched her mouth to her husband’s.

  Chapter Three

  On November fourth a complete family party was assembled before the huge hearth in Roselynde’s great hall. Lady Alinor’s attention was divided between her eldest son, who was describing with great enthusiasm his knighting, which was one of the events that had taken place in conjunction with the coronation of the boy king Henry III on October twenty-eighth, and her husband, who was still thin and hollow-eyed from a desperate illness.

  “I swear our troubles are over,” Adam said, his voice a bass rumble in his effort not to shake the rafters as he sometimes did when carried away by excitement. “Many came who would not go near John. Some were there to swear who, I am sure, had already given oath to Louis—but they will not waver again. And this papal legate, Gualo, really knows the possible from the impossible.”

  Lord Ian smiled at his stepson but turned his head to look at his son-by-marriage, who was leaning over the back of the chair on which his wife, Joanna, sat. “Geoffrey?” Ian asked.

  “Oh, you will never get Geoffrey to say yea without a little nay in it,” Adam protested.

  Geoffrey laughed and came around the chair—short step, long step—a limp that was a permanent memento of the disastrous battle at Bouvines, which had ended John’s hope of recovering the territories on the Continent that he had previously lost. As he passed his wife, he touched her gently.

  “I am not so bad as that,” he said. “I will agree readily that those who have sworn to Henry at this crowning will hold by their faiths, and I agree, too, that among the legate Gualo, Peter des Roches, and the Earl of Pembroke, this land will have good governance. For all of that, it will not be so easy to rid ourselves of Louis. He is no fool. Perhaps he did not foresee John’s death, but he saw most clearly that it would be unwise to place too much dependence on those that broke their faith, even to such a king as John. What he has taken is held by his own men, and they will not lightly yield.”

  “I know that,” Adam remarked indignantly, “but I do not regard unseating them as trouble.”

  Lady Alinor sighed and Joanna said bitterly, “Oh no, killing is your favorite sport.”

  “Tush!” Adam responded tartly. “Do not be so womanish.”

  Ian and Geoffrey laughed aloud. “In heaven’s name, bite your tongue,” Geoffrey cried. “Do you think I wish to lie abed with a man? What should Joanna be if not a woman?”

  “You know what I mean,” Adam said, laughing also. Then he frowned. “And Jo knows as well as I that we cannot live in a land divided in this way, so what is the use of saying to me that I love killing—which is not true anyway. Since it is absolutely necessary to cast Louis out, and it cannot be done except by war…”

  “Adam is right about that,” Geoffrey put in.

  “Fighting cocks!” Joanna spat. “You are all of a feather.”

  “There is wealth in this land,” Alinor said slowly. “Has it been suggested to Gualo to offer Louis a bribe to go?”

  Ian put out a hand and stroked his wife’s arm. “Your heart is speaking, Alinor, not your head. Louis is here because the land is rich. He wants it all, and to offer him money now would be more of an encouragement to him to stay—as if we were crying aloud that we believe ourselves weak—than any inducement for him to go.”

  “Besides,” Adam urged, “to rid ourselves of Louis would have little effect on the men who have taken keeps and are sitting in them. They would not go, even if the prince took the bribe. We would need to fight them anyway.”

  “And even if we, who still have our lands, should abandon our countrymen and agree that those who now hold the land should keep it—” Geoffrey began.

  “No!” Alinor and Joanna exclaimed together, their eyes lighting with rage.

  Ian looked at Geoffrey, whose face was perfectly expressionless except for the amused glow deep in his golden eyes. Too clever by half, Ian thought, he has picked the one note that can make fighting palatable even to Joanna. The possessiveness of the women of Roselynde was bred deep in their bones. The thought of giving up an inch of land or the least useful of their serfs could turn both of them into vindictive furies. It was not greed. Both women were generous to their dependents and charitable in general. Neither raised any protest over what her husband spent—although, Ian thought ruefully, it was just as well neither he nor Geoffrey had ever tried to include the cost of a mistress in his spending. It was almost as if the land and the people who belonged to it were a child that needed protection.

  “We must be a little flexible about who holds the disputed lands,” Adam remarked thoughtfully. “Those who have been deseisined must be restored, of course, but in some cases, the right is not clear. Some of the men who returned with Louis were first deseisined by John, and for no good cause. Some, also, were holders of the land before John lost Normandy and were forced to give up their English holdings to keep what was theirs in France.”

  “They may go back to what they desired, then,” Alinor said sharply, but she looked at her son with amazed admiration.

  Adam had always been so heedless and playful as a child that she had often despaired of his being willing to give serious thought to any subject. Yet here he was, sounding more and more like his father every day. (The word tush, that Adam had used a few minutes before, was Simon’s. Ian said peste when he was annoyed.) More important, the delicate perception of shades between absolute wrong and absolute right was characteristic of Simon and must be part of Adam’s nature because Simon had not lived long enough to teach Adam his marvelous sense of justice.

  “What Adam says is true,” Ian commented, shaking his head at his wife. She did not like France or the French, and anyone who chose lands in Normandy over lands in England was no loss to the country as far as Alinor was concerned. “But,” he continued, before she could begin to press her point, “the question is of no immediate concern. What we must decide is whether to wait for Louis to move, whether to press Winchester, Gualo, and Pembroke to start an offensive, or whether to begin quietly to clean out our own part of the country.”

  “We can do nothing without first warning Pembroke what we are about,” Alinor said quickly.

  Joanna could not see her mother’s eyes because they were lowered, but she knew how they would look—black pools of fear, all the gold and green light gone from them. King John had died on October eighteenth of a combination of dysentery and an affliction of the lungs. The latter had developed from nearly being drowned trying to rescue the baggage train, which had been caught in a sudden flood and sunk in the quicksands near Wellstream. Ian, wetted as thoroughly as the king, had also nearly succumbed to drowning inside his own body of the phlegm in his lungs. Fortunately, his men were able to bring him to Hemel, where Joanna’s devoted nursing, his own strong body, and his intense desire to live had saved him.

  Once over the worst, Ian mended fast, but he still did not have his full strength. Geoffrey and Adam had ridden to He
nry III’s crowning without him, while Alinor brought him slowly home to Roselynde. The journey had so exhausted Ian that he had spent the next two days abed, yet here he was, eyes bright with anticipation at the thought of going into battle, even though his breath still rattled suspiciously in his chest from time to time.

  Her own husband Geoffrey was no better. Joanna watched him limp to the other side of the fireplace to refill his goblet from the flagon that stood on a small table near Ian. Not long in the past, Geoffrey had nearly died of the battle wounds that had left him lame. However, neither the pain nor the permanent injury had dampened his eagerness to thrust himself into the first line of any fight. As for Adam… Joanna uttered a disgusted snort as Adam confirmed her thought before it was clear in her mind. He smiled warmly at his mother and made a happy gesture, completely unaware that his words were like a knife in Alinor’s heart.

  “You need not worry that we will spoil any plan of Pembroke’s, Mama,” he said earnestly. “I made sure to speak to him of the matter and he said any disturbance we made here in the south would be most welcome to him because—”

  “Welcome to him, indeed,” Alinor snapped. “I never thought William would use us as a cat’s-paw. But it is always so with men, who forget they have friends or family whenever a cause of honor comes before their eyes. Doubtless it will be useful to the king’s cause if we draw Louis’s full wrath upon us while—”

  “Mother!” Adam exclaimed. “What makes you missay Pembroke? I have not yet told you the full sum of our talk.”

  Ian began to laugh and then to cough. Both Alinor and Joanna jumped to their feet, but he waved them back. “Sit. Sit. I did but choke on my own spittle because of laughing. And you need not doubt your mother’s good sense, Adam. She is only doing what she accused Pembroke of. She is sacrificing his good name as an excuse to keep me from doing what she thinks would harm my health.”

  “Nonsense,” Alinor rejoined, but she was gratified to see the stricken expression in her son’s eyes. Adam adored his stepfather and would never knowingly do anything that might hurt him. He would be more careful now. “What I said was perfectly true. I did not mean that William would permit us to be overwhelmed. If there was real danger, he would send help or even come himself, but I cannot see why my lands should be burned and battled over.”

  “It will not be your lands if we ride out to smite our enemies,” Ian remarked irritably.

  “That is all very well,” Geoffrey interrupted smoothly, thinking that Lady Alinor was not so far wrong. Ian was not yet well, as the sudden sharpness so soon after laughter betrayed. “But it will be necessary to choose those enemies carefully.” What Adam had not yet said was that Pembroke, while agreeing that any action against Louis’s men would be of help, had urged that the action be one that could be quickly ended or broken off unfinished without hurt. “He already plans to march against the prince in force and will summon us for that purpose as soon as his plans are fully formed.”

  “What is soonest begun is soonest ended,” Ian pointed out.

  “Yes, but not if one begins to besiege London,” Adam said, laughing, thereby redeeming himself in his mother’s eyes. “Geoffrey is quite right, and I was just about to say the same thing.”

  Ian looked from one young man to the other. “I was afflicted in the chest, not in the head,” he said dryly. “What has given you both cause to think that a week in bed has driven all knowledge of war from my mind? I can bear to be treated like a half-witted child by my womenfolk because that is their way of love, but do not you two begin to cosset me. What news did the court have of Louis’s actions?”

  “The most important is that Louis called on Hubert de Burgh to yield Dover as soon as the news came that John was dead, and Hubert denied him with contumely, and so fiercely resisted the attack Louis began that the prince was finally convinced the city would never yield. Louis has withdrawn to London to lick his wounds.”

  “No,” Alinor warned, “that cannot be.”

  Ian looked at her sharply, but he knew his wife. The warning was no further attempt to protect him from himself but a judgment on the news. “Do you mean you do not think Louis has given up hope of taking Dover?” he asked.

  “As to that, how could I guess what is in Louis’s mind? No, I meant he has returned to London, if he has returned there, for some purpose—not to lick his wounds.”

  To that all three men nodded agreement. “He has never held Dover and has lost little by raising the siege.” Geoffrey voiced the opinion for all three. Then he caught and held Ian’s eyes. “And I do not say this to cosset you, my lord, but because I really believe it. We must wait to see what Louis will do before we make our own move.”

  After a moment, Ian nodded. “Yes, at least insofar as direct action goes, we can wait for a little while. However, we are all agreed, are we not, that there will be hard war, and that unless the weather is far more severe than usual, it will be fought right through the winter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thus, to sit still is foolish,” Ian continued. “We must begin at once to hire and train men. This will not be like an expedition to France or Wales, where we can call up our levies and draw men-at-arms from our own keeps. Each keep must be fully garrisoned, even when we ride out with a full tail of men.”

  “We will be hard pressed for battle leaders,” Geoffrey pointed out. “For instance, I cannot take Sir Roger from Hemel because I cannot leave the keep, even fully garrisoned, without a man to lead.”

  “I can go to Hemel,” Joanna said. “The men will obey me, and you need not fear I will yield the keep.”

  Geoffrey turned pale. “Joanna,” he protested, “did you not tell me you had a hope you were breeding?”

  “What has that to do with anything?” Joanna asked tartly. “Since when has a full belly made a woman unable to guard what is hers? I will be all the more careful to preserve the patrimony of my child.”

  “Let us count up what we have before we come to any hard decision,” Ian suggested hastily, seeing the agonized expression on Geoffrey’s face and fearing he would say something that would precipitate his headstrong wife into stubbornness.

  “There will be two knights from Iford,” Alinor began. “Sir Giles and one of his sons can go, leaving one son to hold the keep. Sir Peter from Clyro can also go. His eldest boy is young, but there is little chance that any of Louis’s men will try to take a place so far west.”

  “Two of my castellans have sons old enough to come with us,” Adam offered, “but my lands are too surrounded by Louis’s people to draw any experienced men from the keeps.”

  “That is true of Geoffrey’s lands also,” Ian agreed.

  “Joanna, go and ask Father Francis for parchment, pen, and ink,” Alinor directed. “Let us write down what we have and what we need, lest we be lost in a maze of half-remembered matters.” When her daughter was well away, Alinor looked at Geoffrey, who was still biting his lip between fury and worry. “Do not fret yourself or be so mad as to forbid her,” Alinor said softly to him. “I am no believer that a woman must be a weak reed and I do not doubt Joanna’s strength or ability, but I agree that Hemel is too dangerous for a woman alone. It is too close to Louis and not strong enough. Moreover, to leave a woman as castellan invites attack from men who think such a one must be witless. I will keep Joanna here at Roselynde, if only you do not let your tongue wag so loosely that you say something to raise that stubborn bitch’s hackles.”

  Adam had been frowning in puzzlement over Geoffrey’s obvious distress. He loved his sister dearly, but he did not tremble with fear for her because he never doubted her ability to do anything. Of course, he realized that certain things were beyond her physical strength, but he thought no less of Joanna for being unable to do those things than he thought less of Geoffrey because Geoffrey could not lift as heavy a weight as he could. Adam acknowledged that Joanna could not don armor and lead men in the field nor join the physical battle on the walls to defend a keep. Nonetheless, he knew
that his mother was perfectly capable of directing the defense of Roselynde and assumed Joanna would be just as able to defend Hemel.

  Now, however, he saw the reason behind Geoffrey’s concern. It was true that most women were idiots, good only for tumbling in bed. He, too, would think a castle held by a woman easy prey. And a man who had not a sister and mother like his own, but women of the lesser sort, would never believe a woman could hold the men-at-arms to their work. Such a man would try more ardently to take the keep the more he was repulsed, thus doing greater damage and creating more losses among the defenders. Furthermore, this would be more true for a keep like Hemel, which was less strong in itself, than for Roselynde, which discouraged attack by its position and size. It was something, Adam told himself, that he would need to remember when he had a wife.

  The thought made him frown. It was not for lack of being asked that Adam was still unmarried. Men had been proposing their sisters and daughters to him since he was fourteen, when he had reached the legal age of consent. And it was not owing to a distaste for the married state that had made Adam insist his mother and stepfather refuse all offers thus far. In fact, Adam desired very much to be married. He had been born into a family where love reigned and the deep, unremembered memories of early childhood urged him to find for himself that warm, safe haven of the heart and soul that he had sensed surrounded his mother and father. Even after Simon had died, there had been love. Ian had come to protect them all from the king’s wrath—so he said—but his match with Alinor had been for love, and after more than ten years that love still leapt between them as lightning leaps between two hills.