Roselynde, p.21
Roselynde, page 21
At last, above the rising noise of battle, as his own men firmed into squads and began to resist, Simon heard what he had been listening for. Horses were coming across the fields. “Roi Richard!” Simon bellowed, and loosened the reins that had restrained his battlewise mount from joining the melee at its very beginning. The horse sprang forward, sidestepped a group of men who were engaged, and burst out into the open.
All around the village the king’s name rang out as if Simon’s voice had wakened a multitude of echoes. These echoes, however, had substance. Men rode out of the shadows that had concealed them, crying “King Richard” and wielding swords.
Simon swung at an oncoming rider, felt the blow parried, heard a gasp, drew and swung hard again—to be rewarded by a choked cry and a darkness that disappeared. He spurred his horse, and the beast moved forward. Simon strained his eyes, cursing the dark. He could see no one else. Beorn, a little behind him, was cursing also.
“They have slipped by us, lord,” he cried.
Slipped by? It was impossible. Simon turned right, spurring into a gallop, praying his horse would not stumble and throw them both. Still, it was minutes before he found another opponent. Again the clang of blades, but this time Simon did not need to strike another blow. Beorn, unopposed, struck from behind and felled the Welshman.
They set off again, circling the village wide. A rider thundered toward them. “Richard,” Simon cried as he raised his sword. “Richard,” the other replied, wrenching his horse sideways to avoid his commander.
“Where is the battle?” Simon asked.
“I do not know, lord,” the man replied. “There were four against the ten of us from where I was. We cut them down. I heard weapons this way, so I came.”
“Back to the village,” Simon ordered.
By the time they returned, the second phase of the battle should have begun. Simon’s men had done their parts. Each fire was a blazing torch now, burning the brush and thin branches the men had gathered and dried and set upright in the flames. The village was alight so that the men-at-arms could see to fight—but there was no one to fight against. This time it was not because the Welsh had melted away. The hundred or so men who had come to the attack had fought hard. They lay where they had fallen, some dead, some wounded. A few, perhaps, had retreated.
Simon stared around. This was no feint and no raid. But what was it? Could he have been mistaken in thinking they were near the main encampment? That was possible. Perhaps more than one level of misdirection had been used. As Simon checked over his men and the fallen Welsh, however, a pattern began to show. More than one Welshman had died inside a hut, many had fallen at the doors. Certainly these men had come to rescue Llewelyn, and they had been desperate about it. But why so few?
The simplest answer was that only a few were in the area, there was no camp. Then Llewelyn would have been the leader of this one small group, and they had done their best to save him. Simon’s heart sank. If they did not soon find a Welsh encampment, they would really starve. They could put the men captured to the question. Simon made a moue of distaste. It was a poor way to reward their devotion, but necessity—
Nonsense! There was a camp. There must be. And it must be a major gathering point. Llewelyn had told him so with nearly the first words out of his mouth. He had expected to be tortured. Since by now the Welsh knew that Simon’s troop did not torture their captives as a general rule, Llewelyn had expected to be put to the question because he knew he had important information. Which brought Simon back to the question of why so few to attack. Even if the Welsh knew Simon to be wise to their tactics and did not wish to denude their camp of many fighters, sending such a small band was stupid. It would have been better not to attempt a rescue at all.
Having seen the prisoners placed under guard, Simon set fresh sentries and ordered that the dead be gathered and laid out respectfully to await burial. When their own wounded had been treated, the leeches were to help those among the Welsh who would accept their ministration.
“Will they come again?” Beorn asked his master as Simon stood staring toward the woods he could not see.
“I think not, but I do not understand what they are about,” Simon replied. “Tell the men they may sleep, but with their arms. And let the horses be kept together and well guarded.”
“We will keep to our plan?” Beorn asked a little doubtfully.
Simon’s jaw clenched briefly. This might be a trap, yet it was one he dared not avoid. “Yes. Before the dawn the enemy wounded must be bound hand and foot and left—even those nigh to death. I am sorry for their pain, but I have no men to spare for guards.”
“There will be many at the camp?”
“Yes.” Simon’s voice was grim. “I fear we will pay dearly for our dinners, but we must pay or starve. Gather the captains, Beorn. I have new battle plans to tell them.”
Chapter Thirteen
Cedric Southfold thrust his reins into the hands of his namesake from one of the fishing villages. He did not stay to answer Cedric Fisherman’s question nor even to shed his dripping cloak. The lady of Roselynde was just and generous, but she was also amazingly harsh to those who set their own business above hers. The lady had said he was to be swift and, indeed, across the known paths of England he had ridden swiftly. It had been less easy to follow Simon through the trackless forests of Wales.
Accustomed to the softly rolling hills, the tamed pasture and arable, the well-known, small woods of the south coast, Cedric had been appalled by the broken mountains and wild forests of North Wales. Nonetheless he had trailed Simon as in the past he had trailed lost lambs, delivered the letter he carried, and memorized what Beorn had told him. Still, he was not easy. If the lady did not know Wales, would she believe the difficulties he had encountered? Certainly to delay even a minute to change into less ragged and soiled clothes now that he had arrived would be a mistake.
Just inside the entrance Cedric Southfold stopped and gaped at the Great Hall of Westminster Palace. He was appalled. He had been often in the Great Hall of Roselynde, for he frequently served as the lady’s messenger since he had been brought to her notice and elevated from a poor freezing shepherd of the south pasture to his present comfortable place. He had even twice been in the Great Hall of the White Tower. That had been in high summer, however, and few were in the Hall so that even though it was ninety feet long and forty wide, he had found his mistress without trouble. This was three times as large and full to bursting with fine-garbed ladies and gentlemen. How was he to find his lady?
“Well, churl, what do you here? What do you want?”
The sharp treble brought Cedric’s eyes from the shadowed immensity down to about waist level. A little page sneered up at him. The man-at-arms bowed numbly, his age, his experience, the scars of honorable wounds all nothing before the fact that the sneering slip was a gentleman born.
“I bear messages from Sir Simon Lemagne in Wales to the queen and to Lady Alinor of Roselynde,” he answered in his uncertain French.
“Go—” the child had begun haughtily, when a beringed hand caught him a sharp crack on the side of the head.
“Cedric! Did you find him?”
The man-at-arms knelt. “Yes, lady.”
Alinor turned on the startled page. “When a man of mine comes seeking me, do you bring him to me with all haste. I alone will tell my men to stop or go, to wait by the fire or in the rain, as I know their desserts to be. And you had better learn to use more civility to those who deserve it by their own good behavior or I will lay open the other side of your head. Now begone.”
Cedric’s head came up proudly. He would die for her, so he would. His lady used a man by his good service and she cared nothing for whether he was born in a shepherd’s hut or a high house.
“Come,” Alinor said next, totally unaware of her man’s interpretation of her action. “Take off that sodden cloak and warm yourself by the fire while you give me the news.”
She examined him carefully when the cloak hung over his arm, commenting on a bloody spot on his clothing and advising him which leech to seek out for attention. It made his heart melt with mistaken gratitude. So, in fact, would Alinor have treated a horse or a dog that was her possession. Any creature that gave good service deserved to be well fed and well cared for. If it was not well treated, her grandfather had taught her, it would soon cease to be valuable. Mistreated men and animals cannot serve with their full strength. As Alinor would have inquired of her farrier and helped dose a sick horse, so she would recommend medicines for a sick man.
“I have letters, lady.” He drew them from his breast and handed her the packet, carefully wrapped in greased leather to preserve it from the wet.
“Did you see my lord?”
“Yes, lady. He gave me the letters with his own hand.”
“How did he look?”
“Thinner, I think, but he laughed exceedingly over what you wrote and seemed in high spirits.”
“What said Beorn?”
Cedric closed his eyes and began to recite by rote what Beorn had told him. The words tumbled out freely, as Cedric had repeated his message over and over all the way home, fearful of losing or forgetting a word. Half an hour later, Alinor had a day-to-day account of where the troop had been, what they had done, what they ate, and where and how they slept as well as of every nick and scratch Simon had suffered and how it had been treated or not treated. There was no word said, however, about the women Simon had used. This was not owing either to delicacy or to deliberate concealment on Beorn’s part. Simply, he would think it no more important that Simon had taken a woman to bed than that Simon had had sheets put upon that bed.
“That was well done,” Alinor praised. She felt in the pouch that hung from her belt and found a small silver coin, which she gave to Cedric, making his eyes widen at her munificence. “Go now and have your hurt seen to and rest,” she ordered. “On the day after tomorrow, come you here to me. There will be letters to carry back to my lord.”
As soon as Cedric was gone, Alinor unwrapped the parcel. Her eyes scanned the brief lines Simon had written and her lips twisted with amusement. He was well, the men were well, the campaign went well, he hoped she and the king and queen were also well. She raised her eyes exasperatedly to the roof above and thanked God she had the foresight to send Beorn, who was both intelligent and trusty, with instructions to report everything that happened. Then she looked at the sealed letter to the queen and had to repress a flicker of jealousy. Perhaps Simon had saved his news for her. Quickly, before the notion could come back and infect her thoughts or expression, she hurried down the hall to the passage that led to Edward the Confessor’s house. The queen had established herself in the Painted Chamber there, leaving the White Hall, which was newer and more commodious, for Richard, who had returned only two days past from a progress which had taken him north to Geddington and west to Warwick.
Alinor was glad of an excuse to intrude upon the queen. Directly after Richard’s coronation, she had been much in demand, writing one letter after another to friends and relatives of the queen to describe the lavish spectacle—which, to her indignation, none of the Court ladies had been permitted to attend. Afflicted by a sudden spurt of religious fanaticism and sexual perversion, Richard had ordered that no women or Jews should be present at the coronation itself or the feast celebrating it.
That had been the cause of another spate of letter-writing of a more serious nature. Thinking from the order that the king’s favor was about to be withdrawn from the hated tribe of Israel who practiced the necessary act of usury under his protection, the people of London rioted, beating and killing the Jews and looting their property. Richard had been furious. He was not such a fanatic as to lose sight of the usefulness of the Israelites whom his great-grandfather William the Bastard had brought to England and established as moneylenders. Not only did the Jews serve as bankers to the royal family but when one died his property, which was under the protection of the king, reverted completely to the Crown, unless the heirs paid an enormous fine for the right to inherit.
Richard hurriedly sent justiciars and troops to put down the rioting which was becoming general. In addition, every hand that could hold a pen, including Alinor, who would not ordinarily be used to write such matters, was employed to send orders to all of the king’s domain that the Jews were still under his protection.
By the third week in September, however, that excitement was over at Court. There were still riots, but the sheriffs and justiciars were supposed to be quelling those. As news drifted back from Richard’s progress, a new uneasiness was spreading about Richard’s method of governing. The king was selling official positions. It was not that the Court had any quarrel with the actual appointments Richard had made at the Great Council that had been convened at Pipewell Abbey. There were, of course, individual dissatisfactions and hard feelings but, in general, the Earl of Essex and the Bishop of Durham were felt to be wise and careful choices as chief justiciars. The fact that William Marshal and four of the justices of the king’s court had been appointed to advise and assist the justiciars was also reassuring.
There was far more grumbling about the choice of William Longchamp, the Bishop of Ely, as chancellor. Longchamp was a little, ugly, deformed man, which was offensive in itself in someone who did not have high birth to obscure his physical failings. He was also a stranger to the English and to English ways. Still, there were no open protests. The king, after all, was a stranger to the English barons himself and, reasonably enough, would wish to have a long-time servant known to be faithful in a position of authority. If Longchamp let himself be guided by Essex, Durham, and William Marshal, all would go very well. Without words, it was also understood that the queen would oversee all.
Alinor had early news of the appointments and the barons’ reactions from Isobel of Clare, who received more informative confidences from her husband than Alinor had expected. When William and Isobel returned to Court in October, however, a less favorable light was shed on the king’s doings. Richard would not leave the old order unchanged or change what was abusive and oppressive and leave what was good. The appointments, it turned out, had been sold for gold.
Of course it was customary that the king should receive a gift commensurate with the value of the position he bestowed. No one would complain of that, it was custom. A king chose his man and appointed him. If the gift was not adequate, the king could say so. Richard had been cruder than that, however. He had asked outright what each office was worth to each man and, except in the case of Longchamp, had appointed the highest bidder.
Such action alone would have been disturbing, but worse followed. The king made it plain that he intended to change every officer in the realm, from the highest to the lowest, and that—in clear words—the governance of England was for sale.
At first Alinor had shrugged. She did not think the men Richard would appoint would be more corrupt than the officials Henry had used at the end of his reign. What thought she gave to the subject was mostly of ways to protect herself and her dependents. It was not until Isobel confided that William was offering fifty marks for appointment as Sheriff of Gloucestershire that Alinor conceived the notion of turning Richard’s greed to her own profit. Perhaps she could buy the office of Sheriff of Sussex for Simon. Sussex was a rich shire and would cost high, but her grandfather had been a frugal lord and Alinor, except for the charges for the men-at-arms and the upkeep of the vassals who defended her, was no spendthrift either. There was considerable gold in the strongboxes of Roselynde. Better to pay it to the king for a purpose than to have it taken away by the exactions of the official he would appoint.
Alinor’s problem, until Simon’s letters came, had been how to go about making the offer. She could not herself approach the king and say she wished to purchase the office. Women, except in temporary emergencies, could not be sheriffs. She was afraid to write to Simon and tell him to make an offer to the king. For one thing, if the letter took long to reach him, the appointment might be promised elsewhere by the time his request came. For another, Simon might get up on a high horse because he felt it was not honest to bargain for an office like a merchant. Isobel had mentioned that William was much troubled about the arrangement and that she had needed to point out to him that, however ill the means, at least he would be an honest sheriff and thus benefit not only themselves but the whole shire.
Worst of all, however, Alinor was sure Simon would refuse to take the money from her to pay the king. She was equally sure he had nothing approaching the necessary sum of his own. Nor would he be willing to borrow. Scrupulous as he was, he would reap far less profit from the office than most other men. For her own sake Alinor was more interested in preventing the appointment of a rapacious sheriff who could levy fines on the men and on herself than in what Simon could squeeze out of the shire. The only path Alinor could see was through the queen, but she had hesitated to talk about Simon without some good reason. She had not forgotten how oddly the queen had looked at her, how she had said “Sir Simon has become very great with you.” Now, however, the letter was an excuse and it had come at an excellent time too. Since the king was in London, the queen was less occupied with business. Moreover, Richard intended to stay in London more than a week so that now, at the beginning of his time in the city, the queen was not taken up with last-minute conferences,
“I have letters from Sir Simon,” Alinor said, curtsying gracefully.
“From Wales?”
“Yes, madam.”
“Simon sent a messenger to you from Wales?” the queen asked sharply.
It had been very wise, Alinor thought, not to raise the subject of Simon without a good cause. She did not mind the queen’s question. She was prepared for that. “No, madam. I sent the messenger to Beorn, my master-at-arms, who is serving with Sir Simon. Since the man had to return, I suppose it seemed reasonable to use him.”
