Gisborne: Book of Pawns Read online

  1

  GISBORNE

  Book of Pawns

  By

  Prue Batten

  Copyright 2010

  Kindle Edition 2012

  The author asserts the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written consent of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that with which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the purchaser.

  Praise for Prue Batten’s other novels.

  A Thousand Glass Flowers:

  ‘Prue Batten leads the way with elegant adult historic fantasy. The Eirie Chronicles set the bar for modern fantasy authors wanting to tread the fine line between reality and fantasy. A fairy tale for the twenty-first century.’ Saffina Desforges, Kindle UK best-selling author of Sugar & Spice and the Rose Red series.

  'A sweeping, gorgeously written tale of magic, adventure, intrigue--and the very human power of enduring love. It held me spellbound.' Anna Elliott, author of The Avalon Trilogy.

  'A magnificent evocation of a parallel world whose joys and sorrows are our own. Beautifully done.' Ann Swinfen, author of In Defence of Fantasy.

  ‘Gloriously described - I simply put this as the best book I've read this year, possibly in the last five. I have read G R R Martin's magical 'A Song Of Ice & Fire' series and thought nothing could beat it. A Thousand Glass Flowers has, and not one of those precious petals is shattered.’ Amazon.co.uk review.

  The Stumpwork Robe:

  ‘… a master artist's skill in painting with words. This has been the freshest and most unique reading experience I've had in many a month of Sundays’ Amazon.com review

  ‘I read both The Stumpwork Robe and the sequel The Last Stitch. Prue Batten has talent as a writer--the world she creates is beautiful and believable. She has cleverly woven Celtic mythology and the lore of the fae into a semi-medieval world. Her characters are vivid and engaging, and the plot kept me reading on, wanting to know where it would go.’ Amazon.com review.

  The Last Stitch:

  ‘The great thing about Kindle and Amazon is that you find these gems that you possibly wouldn't see while perusing the local bookstore or local library. The author has created a world that is beautiful, frightening, very real and very different from our own world.’ Amazon.com review

  ‘Batten's writing retains the dreamlike glow of the folktales she uses so inventively, and adds a chill and ruthlessness that make fairytales into nightmares.’ Amazon.com review

  Author’s Note

  Sir Guy of Gisborne is in essence a legendary character, possibly first mentioned in Child Ballad #118 but potentially in an even older story. Traditionally he is associated with the legend of Robin Hood but I have chosen to move far from the familiar canon and imagine what might have happened in altered circumstances.

  Because Gisborne is familiarly linked to the reign of Richard Lionheart, the story I have written takes place at the cusp of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and I have tried where possible to be faithful to the times. Sources are listed in the bibliography at the end of the novel but much commentary and research of the period is contradictory so I have taken whichever fact fitted my narrative most comfortably.

  There are other liberties throughout the story – the most obvious being Ysabel of Moncrieff’s marital status. With her background, wealth and accomplishments, it is highly unlikely she would be unmarried at the age we find her in the novel. At the very least, she would have an arranged marriage to a wealthy nobleman of some standing. I have chosen to take Ysabel out of the mould for the purposes of the story.

  And finally, I have used Julian of Norwich’s quote out of its later timeframe. It is a beautiful saying and fits the theme of the story.

  ‘I dwell by dale and downe,’ quoth Guye,

  and I have done many a curst turne;

  and he that calles me by my right name

  Calles me Guye of good Gysborne.’ Child Ballad #118

  ‘And all shall be well, and all shall be well,

  and all manner of thing shall be well.’

  Julian of Norwich

  Chapter One

  The parchment crackled as it opened and I angled it to the light at the window.

  ‘To Lady Ysabel Moncrieff, my daughter, It is with sadness that I inform you of the death of your loved and adored mother, Alaïs de Cazenay, Lady Moncrieff.’

  The letter was dated two months previous and was signed with my father’s name, his seal buried in uncompromising oak gall ink. I glanced at the packet again in the hope there would be more words … something, anything. But my father had sent no message of comfort or orders for my future and I was bereft.

  As the writing blurred and I held hard to the stone windowsill, I thought that in eight weeks my mother had died, been buried and had a mass said for her soul every day whilst I sang, danced, hunted and gamed with my Cazenay cousins and friends in Aquitaine. My heart ached with the poignancy of it all and I wept, the tears blotting the green of my gown.

  I drifted around the domain in a dark and distant mood and my cousins could barely touch me in my grief because I adored my mother and had lost my way with no one to show me the path back … my mother, a beauty and a cousin twice removed from the great Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. Alaïs deserved to be lauded by the troubadours across the land because Eleanor had thought her a jewel beyond measure and had not been pleased to give the hand of one of her favourite ladies to my father. He was Joffrey of Moncrieff, an English baron of greater ranking and the man who appeared to have forgotten his duty to his child.

  I saddled my mare, Khazia, the next day and the groom helped me mount, the gown folds hitched into the girdle that hung at my hips. I wanted to gallop and cry far from the meaningless prattle of the castle confines. I wanted to grieve, rent my clothes if I desired and as soon as I was over the drawbridge, the mare stampeded downhill over stones and round jutting boulders with me caring nothing for her safety or my own. My heart hurt. I had not been able to see my mother for two years nor tell her what she meant to me in her last days. It seemed to me that I had deserted her when she needed her daughter beyond measure.

  Khazia snorted and started sideways and through my tears I noticed another mount gaining on my flank, saw a hand reach out to grab my reins. Pressure was brought to bear on the bit and Khazia slowed, shaking her head in protest, the horse alongside matching her pace.

  Eventually we stopped and both animals stood heaving whilst I swallowed on my pain and turned to stare at the man who had halted me. He still held my rein but bowed his head slightly and spoke. The resonant tone of his voice burrowed through my hurt and the blood thumped through my limbs in consequence.

  ‘Lady Ysabel, I am sorry for your loss but breaking an innocent animal’s legs does neither you nor your mother any credit.’

  I went to slap his face, a face with strong planes and shadows of tiredness, but he grabbed my wrist, tugged hard so that I had to lean toward him, and then calmly placed my fingers back across the reins. His eyes met mine glance for glance, the air solid and tempestuous, but something in his expression touched my grief and my anger stilled for a moment.

  I was sure he felt compassion for me, not pity like the rest of Cazenay society, but a kindred understanding of loss and confusion. The mare blew loudly down her nose and shook herself and I realized this man was right; I had been thoughtless and cruel.

  I slid down, my gown still hitched inelegantly high, and he dismounted beside me. He towered above wit
h height and broad shoulders, reminding me how effeminate were the men I had known. I guessed he was older than myself by a year or two, perhaps a little more, and he had a manner that implied he had seen life far more than I.

  ‘I am Guy of Gisborne, Lady, and I am charged to return you to Moncrieff forthwith.’

  I gasped as I held out a sweaty hand that he took but did not kiss, holding his dark hair back with the other hand. I was to go home, and my heart so lately broken began to warm and I almost thought I might bear my mother’s death after all. Gisborne’s palm was dry and cool and something about the way our fingers touched slowed the world around me. A blush warmed my cheeks and I glanced at him from under my lashes, noticing he was intent upon me.

  ‘When, sir? When do we go? I am desperate to return.’

  ‘Tomorrow at cockcrow. They pack your immediate needs now. Your chests will follow.’

  I stood looking out over the view of the stony valley with the fierce lapis sky and the river trailing away between ivory cliff walls and brushed falling hair back from my forehead.

  He followed my gaze.

  ‘It’s not the cool green of England’s shores, is it?’

  His voice held a degree of sarcasm and as he wiped at his brow, a faint sheen of sweat peeled away under his palm.

  He was dressed in leggings and laced leather boots that creased across his ankles and the southern winds blew a linen chemise back hard against his chest. For the first time in recent days I smiled.

  ‘But they write excellent poetry, have delectable food and play at courtly manners like none other.’

  His mouth barely curled and yet I could see he was amused.

  ‘I read and I write and yet I believe there’s a time and place for it. Things here seem out of balance. Too much sweetness and not enough savoury.’

  ‘Is Moncrieff any better?’ I asked. ‘It is so long since I have seen it. Eight years, Sir Guy.’

  ‘I am not yet a knight, merely your father’s steward.’

  ‘You are a knight because you rescue me from this place and return me to my father. How does he? I miss him.’

  ‘I have only been in your father’s service for six months, Lady Ysabel. But in truth I would say he is much aged and your presence may sooth him in his troubles.’

  My heart jumped and I grabbed Gisborne’s arm. ‘What troubles? Is he ill?’

  I could see he chose his words carefully but I could decipher nothing beneath what he said.

  ‘He grieves,’ he replied.

  Tears threatened again. Of course my father would grieve; Alaïs was his light.

  ‘Tomorrow you say? How long will it take us?’

  ‘A month to reach the northerly coast, perhaps a few days to sail to the English coast depending on the seas and then two weeks to ride to Moncrieff.’

  As he spoke, he helped me mount, and I brushed away the tears that finally trickled down my cheeks. I was to go home at last. So many times I had craved it, losing my temper with the heat, the affectations of my friends, wanting nothing but the quiet, calm cool of Moncrieff.

  Momentarily I wondered why I should want to go home so badly with my mother gone. But then I recalled the dour walls of Moncrieff and the way the building stood proud in the middle of its little lake. The way the water that underlined fens life trickled, rushed and sometimes just stood as reflective as a burnished piece of steel. But more than anything, I realized my mother’s heart and soul were still there and I wanted to be close to her.

  It was my family’s habit from when I was born, to make the arduous journey to Aquitaine once yearly so that Alaïs could enjoy the southern climes and meet with our cousins. My father Joffrey loved Aquitaine and would sink himself deep into his wife’s familial society. I sometimes wondered if he preferred it to Moncrieff which is northeast of London, as flat as a trencher and surrounded by the blurred edges of fens and marshes.

  I loved my family home and Cazenay equally but if I had a choice, Moncrieff was where I belonged because they say often enough that home is where the heart is. On less damp ground, Moncrieff had valuable fields and its forests were sought after for reputable hunting and I had reveled in the riding, even as a child.

  In addition, Moncrieff Castle was considered a well-appointed and comfortable place because my mother filled it with acquisitions from Aquitaine, my father’s purse strings always open. But its singular most remarkable claim on my affections was its position in the middle of a lake. My father had the habit of calling my mother his Lady of the Lake after the spirit in the legend of Arthur the King and I loved the mysterious nature of such a title.

  When I turned twelve, Mama sent me to Aquitaine to join my Cazenay cousins in the belief the sophistication of the courts would add a sparkle to my charm and the chance of an advantageous liaison. Ensconced in an eyrie-like bastion that hung on the edge of white ravines, I enjoyed the atmosphere, but whilst I became educated in the courtly style, I missed the pale colours of my home – the mystic trees and reed-frilled fens, the forests that wrapped around and whispered legends in my ear and the lake on which the swans and I would float.

  Despite such longings, at fifteen I was as polished as I could be and becoming objectionable. By twenty, and still in Aquitaine, I was bored. Worse, I was unmarried. My father had dallied with possible marriage settlements but he had hardly been diligent, losing interest if any complication arose. Meetings with suitors were arranged but no son nor their father would have me because I was sharp, opinionated and as accomplished as all of them at hawking and poetry … even gambling. Worse, I could shoot a bow better than any of them and I suspect they felt emasculated. So I was every man’s best friend but most assuredly not a lover nor likely mother of children and my Papa seemed unworried.

  My mother? Ah, she despaired.

  ‘My beautiful Ysabel,’ she would say. ‘Can you be a little less outspoken, a little more accommodating?’

  Each year she would arrive at the beginning of the English winter and she would find her daughter a little more refined. At eighteen, I was concerned when an ague kept her at Moncrieff. At nineteen, I fretted that a further ailment prevented her annual sojourn. At twenty, the hateful messenger’s packet arrived and my life changed in the time the heart takes to beat once.

  Cazenay’s skies did not weep for me as I left. The blinding blue stretched as far as the eye could see and the white cliff walls of southern Aquitaine intensified the glare. I did not cry either but my handmaid, Marais, sniffed until I told her to desist.

  ‘It’s like the Holy Land,’ Gisborne grumbled as we headed away, by which I presume he meant the heat of the south.

  I confess I too was hot and took no time when we took halted at one point, in removing my overgown, rolling it and shoving it in a bag on my saddle. I wore just my kirtle, revealing bare arms as I lifted my hair into a plaited coronet on top of the head away from a sweat coated neck.

  ‘You have been there?’ I enquired.

  ‘No,’ Gisborne answered. ‘But I know it’s hot as Hades and it may be part of my plan to...’

  Being hot made me testy and so I leaped in.

  ‘Why must all men feel they should go to the Outremer as a rite of passage. Why is it necessary to kill a Saracen before you can call yourself a man?’

  ‘You do not believe in the Christian fight then?’

  ‘I do not. What right do we have to tramp men of an alternate belief into the ground? It is not something my God would ask of His believers. Of that I am sure.’

  ‘Then you think King Henry was wrong?’

  ‘I do and I have no doubt Queen Eleanor thought the same after she saw Jerusalem for herself when she was Louis’ consort.’

  I pushed back a stray lock of hair and noticed Guy looking at my bare arm.

  ‘In the time I have been at Cazenay,’ I continued, ‘I have met traveling Saracens who are erudite, great healers and men of learning that make us look like primitives. But what hope do we women have of stopping such madness as a
crusade. Men are plain stupid sometimes,’ I added with just enough disrespect to make a point.

  ‘As are women with bare arms and uncovered heads who parade before men. Lady, for myself I don’t mind. But we have men at arms with us who may not be so couth.’

  He expression cooled the air. Nothing like the man I had met yesterday and who had opened a door for me to a new life away from Aquitaine and who had heated my skin like a ray of southern sun.

  I sighed with no attempt at concealing my petulance.

  ‘Oh for heavens’ sake. I am showing no more than their own mothers and wives show in the fields and I am familiar with half of them – they are Moncrieff men who have known me from the cradle.’

  ‘Without doubt,’ he replied in a superior manner. ‘But you are nobility and should act accordingly.’

  I turned to see if he was serious and God help me he was. His face had not a vestige of a smile. I could not contain myself and burst out laughing.

  ‘My memory of Moncrieff such as it is, is that the nobility create their own rules as they go along. Today’s bad taste could be tomorrow’s new fashion.’ Then I added as an afterthought, ‘Rather like a crusade.’

  To which his mouth gave a twitch.

  ‘You make your point, Lady Ysabel. But let me say, the attitudes of Aquitaine have been your life for eight years. You may have forgotten what England is like. There is a stiff decorum in the houses of the nobility with whom you will associate. It is best you acclimatize yourself to that fact before you reach Moncrieff. It would not do to upset your father.’

  I felt put upon.

  ‘So I have spent eight years learning to be something which will not suit England when I could have been back in Moncrieff being truly happy.’