Gisborne: Book of Pawns Read online

  ‘And the Saracen bow?’

  ‘Like the tongue, learned when the Saracen travellers were at Cazenay. I like the bow. It’s small and light, better for someone short like me. The long bow is too unwieldy, the crossbow too heavy. Sadly the little bow has a shorter lifespan in our damp climates and doesn’t hold together as well as English bows. I like the power in such a small weapon. It could almost be called a woman’s bow.’

  I heard a chuckle.

  ‘My little archer,’ he said softly.

  A smile crept onto my own face.

  ‘Where do we go?’ I asked.

  ‘We need shelter for this night. Le Mans is too far but if we ride all day tomorrow, by dusk we shall be inside the walls.’

  I was glad to think of defensive walls and heavy gates, for today I felt as vulnerable as a fawn amongst wolves.

  ‘There!’

  Gisborne’s horse moved to my right and Khazia followed without me even twitching the reins. A forester’s hut lay in shambles before us, providing a wall and a piece of timber under which we could shelter. I slid from the mare, clutching her mane for support and within moments we had hobbled our mounts so they could graze within reach, a small puddle of water close by. Gisborne would not light a fire in case we attracted interest and I, who already trembled with cold, wrapped my cloak tight around me and nibbled at the stale cheese and bread he passed me. I sipped the water from my flask and then placed a weary head that ached upon my saddle. My heart lay heavy in my chest, its beats marked, limbs knotted beneath as I drew myself into a huddle. As I turned my back against the world, I felt a tear sneaking from my eye, my body shaking as if I froze.

  Guy’s arm sneaked over my side.

  ‘It is exhaustion and shock, just breathe deep and steady.’

  He curled himself around me like a drake’s tail-feather, his own warmth seeping into my anxious frame and I found my breath slowing to match his. As I grew more comfortable, my eyes became heavy and it was only as I finally sank into sleep that I realised my hands lay under his and that his thumb stroked over and over across my knuckles.

  It was the first time I, Ysabel the virgin, slept with Guy of Gisborne, a chaste event that left me as intact as Marais could have hoped.

  Chapter Three

  Sometimes when one wakes it’s as if ice has been dropped down one’s spine but I woke as if I were wrapped in silk and wool. Warm, loose, remembering only the stroking of my knuckles. As I arched my body, I knew he had left me but I felt no fear. Not immediately … and then, like the aforesaid winterfreeze, cold crept over me as I recalled death; Wilfred’s, Harold’s, my mother’s. I sat up with a rush.

  ‘Lady Ysabel, you’re awake.’ Guy strode into the clearing with the horses. ‘I took them to the stream and they drank their fill.’

  My breath gushed out. I hadn’t realised I held it. But his presence eased the distrait of my memories and I clambered up, folding the cloak he’d laid over me, straightening my gown and re-plaiting my hair in a rough braid.

  ‘Here,’ he held out a palm filled with redcurrants. ‘They might be a little tart but there is nothing else other than the water. At least that is clear and sweet-smelling.’

  ‘Do we leave immediately?’

  ‘As soon as we are saddled.’ He shouldered our gear and began tacking the horses.

  ‘I’ll be back momentarily,’ I muttered and dashed to the stream, taking care of nature, washing my face and hands. When I returned he was mounted and passed my reins over with no comment and I leaped aboard, no leg-up, quite able. But he’d already pushed his own horse on and missed my agility.

  Alone. Just he and I. Riding abreast. Silent. I could only think he regretted holding me last night and yet I was so grateful.

  ‘Guy?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Thank you for comforting me last night. I was cold and…’ I hesitated, ‘so very cold.’

  ‘It is best bodies lie close when it’s cold. One body warms the other.’

  ‘Of course.’ Huh, of course, I thought wryly. ‘Where shall we put up in Le Mans?’

  ‘There is a priory.’

  ‘For me no doubt,’ I replied with the taste of tart redcurrant on my tongue. ‘And you?’

  ‘An inn close by.’

  ‘I could stay at the inn as well.’

  ‘I think not, Lady.’

  Lady? Mary Mother! After yesterday?

  I was too tired to argue. All at once I wanted to bathe, find clothes, eat.

  ‘How long from Le Mans to the coast?’

  ‘Another few days.’

  His mood had become more removed. Truly a woman would be mad to bother further. I’ve always disliked sulky men as it implies an arrogant individual used to being indulged. But this man next to me had not been spoiled.

  How did I know when he had told me nothing?

  Simply, he was my father’s steward.

  If he’d led a truly privileged life he would never have been a mere servant. And yet I knew he was of noble birth, so why then such a humble position by comparison? I knew I could secure answers at Moncrieff but I have ever been impatient.

  I chose my time.

  We had been riding by a small rivulet and stopped a few miles from Le Mans. As I dismounted, my foot twisted on a stone and I wrenched my ankle so that it swelled dramatically.

  ‘What have you done?’

  Gisborne bent to check my foot, my gown folds still hooked up for riding. Without my leave, he scooped me up to carry me to the water, stripping my hose and boot.

  ‘Place your foot in the water. The chill will ease the swelling.’

  I stood with him holding my elbow, embarrassed, conscious of the value of nuisance.

  ‘Truly, there is no pain. May we ride on? I wish to get to Le Mans as soon as we can.’

  ‘Can you walk?’

  I limped slightly. ‘Enough to get me to my mount.’

  He sighed as if I were so much trouble, lifted me up and hoisted me back on Khazia, slipping the hose up my leg and placing the boot back on with infinite gentleness. I reached to his hand.

  ‘I’m sorry. This is such a fraught journey. I apologise for being such trouble.’

  His attention focussed on placing my foot in the stirrup as if I hadn’t even spoken. My father had given him orders … to mind me like a nursemaid. He should be accompanying my father on social occasions and official domain business. Even royal progresses because as a noble of greater ranking, my father had his place at Court. But instead this man smoothed folds and minded a precocious woman.

  ‘Please accept my apologies.’ I offered.

  ‘You needn’t apologise. Not when you shoot a bow like a trained archer and when you speak the Saracen tongue.’ His mouth tipped up. ‘You are quite an enigma, Lady Ysabel.’

  Me an enigma?

  I laughed. ‘I shall assume that to be a compliment. Can we go?’

  The mood had lightened in the blink of an eye, and as we rode more peaceably I took a breath.

  ‘Guy, why are you my father’s steward?’

  He rode along without saying anything and then, ‘Why are you interested?’

  ‘You know about me, thus I should know a little about you.’

  I tried to pose the reply lightly, as if it didn’t really matter. Again there was a taut silence, as though he warred with himself about what he should and should not say.

  ‘I needed employment.’

  Short and to the point.

  ‘You needed employment? Gracious. Since when do sons of the nobility need employment?’

  ‘Again this idea that I am a noble.’

  ‘Deny it then. Tell me that your courtly manners and your education are a product of a lowly upbringing.’

  A very small smile appeared and I felt the warmth of it across the breadth between us. ‘Honestly Ysabel, you are like a horsefly. Apart from swatting you away, one can’t get rid of you until you have your bite.’

  ‘At least I am plain Ysabel now,’ I m
uttered.

  If he heard he made no comment. What he did say opened up a discussion that filled the miles left until we reached Le Mans and which left me breathless and filled with sorrow for a man and his mother.

  ‘I am noble born,’ he said. ‘I am the son of Baron Henry of Gisborne and his lady, Ghislaine. Like yourself, Ysabel, I am an only child.’

  ‘Why aren’t you at Gisborne then, helping your father manage his estates at the very least?’

  ‘Because there are no estates left to manage.’

  I gasped and pulled my mare to a halt. ‘You say?’

  He sighed and I could see the story hurt him deeply.

  ‘My father went to the Crusade as a Templar knight. He … renounced his marriage and passed his possessions over to the knights. Admittedly he sought a guarantee that my mother and myself should be housed and some of the monies from the estate should go to our welfare but the Templars were so much bigger than my father and a year after he left for Jerusalem, my mother and I were turned off Gisborne. We sought to travel to Anjou to my mother’s family, but she caught an ague and died in a small priory near Great Harwich. As for my father, he is still alive I believe; if you call the way he lives a life. Somewhere near Jerusalem, he leads the life of a leper…’

  My breath sucked in. ‘Guy…’

  ‘He may be aware of his wife’s death, I don’t know. The Knights Templar seemed to lose interest in him once they had our estates and once my father became a leper. So you see, I have nothing, Ysabel, and yet I am noble born. I am the son of a madman who believed he could secure a passage to Paradise if he joined the Knights Templar and fought in a Holy War and thanks to him my mother died in ignominious circumstances. My own future is what I make of it. I took employment where I could find it and because I am highborn and educated, I have been the steward for a number of nobles. But I do not stay long with any. I leave whilst I am respected and liked and I work my way back up the chain.’

  It seemed I could not stop him. Once he started, it was like a confessional and words flowed from him, dripping in un-camouflaged bitterness. I found I hardly blamed him. It was a sad story and I was not a little afraid of the chill manner with which he told it.

  ‘I said to you once that status is power. Thus I work my way to knighthood. Have no doubt – I shall be knighted and recognised and shall have lands and wealth. And no one, not any single man, shall ever take from me what I see as mine.’

  We rode further and my heart sank just a little, for bitterness is a hard nut to crack.

  ‘I would lay bets that this is not what you wished to hear, Lady Ysabel,’ he commented. ‘But you now know with whom you travel. If it offends you, I apologise. But it is what I am.’

  I didn’t know how to respond. I had lost my mother but she died in comfort in the magnificent Lady Chamber as they called her room at Moncrieff. I still had my father and he hadn’t disavowed himself of me, but not only that, Moncrieff was still our family demesnes. I had led a charmed and spoiled life in Aquitaine where my father’s wealth and that of my mother’s family meant I wanted for nothing, least of all status. How could I possibly understand what he felt? Every word he spoke had been underlined with wicked irony by church bells clanging on the wind from Le Mans, and I wondered if he had repudiated the Church altogether after being treated so falsely by men of God.

  ‘Those bells are loud,’ I said to break the tension but he didn’t reply and so against my better judgement I pushed him further. ‘Have you never wished to find your father?’

  ‘I know where he is. There is a leper order, the Order of Saint Lazarus outside Jerusalem. It’s an Hospitaller order run like the Knights Templar and they care for each other and others who have the illness.’

  ‘Then he is a man to be admired.’

  ‘He had no choice. He was a Templar and he was a leper. It was join the Order or die on the streets of Jerusalem. I feel nothing but disgust for him. He killed my mother.’

  ‘You should forgive him, Guy. He will die a terrible death.’

  ‘He will have monks around him to hear his final confession and give him his rites. He does not need my forgiveness.’

  I felt to ask him anything else was to open wounds that he was perhaps trying desperately to heal. Heal and forget?

  Somehow I doubted Guy of Gisborne was a man who would ever forget.

  To arrive in Le Mans on that day was to learn of a change in the course of history. We had heard rumours on the road of the Plantagenet family wars and thus it was no surprise to hear that King Henry had fallen sick whilst at Le Mans where he had been born. He and Richard were in the middle of a brawl over succession, with Phillip of France siding with Richard. Phillip and Richard attacked the town and feckless, disloyal Henry ordered parts of his birthplace to be burned to stall their invasion. But even a king could not control a wind that changed and caused a massive conflagration, threatening to burn his birthplace utterly. Henry fled, leaving the town to put out its fires and lick its wounds.

  He had retired to Chinon but his health failed by the day and he died two days before we arrived at Le Mans. I was surprised the town even thought to ring mourning bells. Guy said such was the power of a king.

  ‘But’, said I, ‘the king is dead. Long live the king.’

  The bells rang with heavy resonance anyway.

  It was a relief to me that we had arrived in scorched Le Mans at all because I was exhausted beyond belief: saddle sore, heart sore, tired, dirty and hungry. I should have mourned my former king but I did not. To be frank I cared little and found the smell of burned buildings still lingered in the air, not unlike Henry’s memory.

  I wondered who could mourn an obsessive man who burned innocents alive to satisfy his need to make a point and overpower a son. Further, I decided that if any of his sons wanted to fight to secure their kingship, I cared not at all. I wanted to divest myself of all memories of fighting, of blood and gore and yet I knew that what Gisborne and I had dealt with between Tours and Le Mans would live with me forever.

  The Sisters of the Priory Saint Jean were kind and generous, providing hot water and a small oak bath despite the fact that it was late in the evening. The lay sisters had been directed to care for their new guest who obviously had coin to pay her way and I briefly thanked the Lord that Gisborne had lined palms to make it so. The bells of the Priory chimed and despite the fact they marked Vespers, I wondered if they also tolled as a reminder of the deceased monarch. I gave thought to Eleanor, wondering what she felt about her king-husband’s death. They always said she loved him despite his despicable treatment of her, what with his florid temper, his loose morals with the fair Rosamunde and others.

  I only knew that when I fell in love it would be forever and that I would only ever marry a man that I truly loved. Which brought me back to Eleanor, whereupon I decided she would be brokenhearted.

  My thoughts also went to Gisborne.

  I shrank from the idea of investigating why. Whilst I soaked in the tiny bath in front of the brazier at the priory, I knew he might well be doing the same at his inn. We had arranged to meet after we had broken our fast the next day. The town of course would be in some sort of mourning ordained by the Church, but as long as we could arrange our forward passage, he seemed less than worried.

  How he felt about Henry’s death, I could only guess. What I suspected was that he would shift the pieces around on the chessboard that was his life, and work out how to move forward and upward. There was a part of me that hoped it would be at Moncrieff but in reality I doubted it. The man had ambition and for all that Moncrieff was a wealthy estate it was not his.

  Ah yes, status was all.

  The bells rang through the night but I managed to sleep by telling myself they rang for Richard rather than Henry and that there would be a coronation and England would be content and my homecoming would be filled with the excitement of this new reign. But in truth, I was so tired the bells merely rang me to a long and heavy sleep.

 
The other guests in the dorter had risen and left by the time I woke and dragged on my filthy clothes to make haste to the refectory. The portress of the priory handed me a message and as I ate a slice of fresh bread, I read Gisborne’s words. He wrote with a good hand and I added it to his other attributes. There were stories that even some kings could not read and write but my father’s steward appeared to do both.

  He asked that we delay our meeting till midday and that he would collect me from the priory to purchase fresh clothes and supplies. But whilst heavy of leg and low in energy, I had no intention of watching the Sisters follow their daily devotion to God. Such placid, quiet rhythms might have been sustaining but instead I asked for directions to the marketplace.

  ‘Should you venture alone?’ The portress asked. ‘You are a Lady, it is not seemly.’

  ‘I have no choice, Sister.’

  ‘Two of our Sisters are going to the market to sell our honey. You could go with them.’

  ‘I thank you then. If they would not mind my company perhaps it might be best.’ I hastened to the gate to meet my companions.

  The town still smelled of food, of smoke, of many bodies moving about daily life. Of cats, dogs and horses. Here and there was evidence of Henry’s flame and fire, but with the resilience of all great places, the market continued and the townsfolk found evident joy in it, shouting and laughing … a meeting place to ease the angst of days past.

  The Sisters accompanied me as I went from stall to stall. I doubted I would find any clothes ready made for my purpose as bolt upon bolt of fabric lined the more expensive end of the market but then the Sisters plucked at my sleeve and showed me a fine stall on which lay folded garments.

  I pulled out a woolen bliaut. Like the chemise I found, none would be as good as those that were tailored to my size but the fabric was of decent quality and a serviceable cloak wrapped around the bundle; all that was functional and suited to my journey. The Sisters and I finished our business and they escorted me to the head of the street in which stood Guy’s inn. I thought to wait for him, surprise him even, and bid the Sisters adieu with thanks. I would return to the priory anon, I said.