April Munday (6 page)

He was very far from ready to revise his opinion of women, but he was beginning to think that Rosamunde might be the exception.

They rode back into the castle and he spent the rest of the morning watching the men train in the bailey. The duke had left a small force to guard his castle. It was not beyond imagining that King Jean could have sent a force to invade, but these few could not have defended the castle against a much larger army for long. But Sir Walter would be a different matter.

They entered the courtyard and watched the men as they trained to fight. Guy was in charge and he pushed the men hard. Thomas stood beside Richard as he watched and they swapped comments on the men. Richard found that he had to change his opinion of Guy. Despite his youth, the man had managed to pull together a well-trained force and Richard now began to understand why France had been defeated at Poitiers. This was a people that took war seriously and trained to fight under any circumstances. He had seen the archers that morning. The boys shot with an accuracy which could only be matched by the very best crossbowmen. Their speed could be matched by none. They had also practised swordplay, although not to the same level. And when Richard asked later why they had done this, he was told that at Crécy the archers had run out of arrows and the duke had decided that his men would be trained to fight in other ways should that happen again.

In one corner of the courtyard the men-at-arms trained with pikes and swords, but what surprised Richard was the amount of training the knights did off their horses. French knights also trained to fight on foot, but not to this extent. He turned to Thomas. “Do you show me this to humiliate me?” he asked, with a slight curl to his lip.

Thomas laughed. “No, I simply wanted to know when you think you’ll be able to join in and whether you think there’s anything we could do better.”

Richard laughed, “You ask a defeated enemy how you can improve?”

“These men will be tested soon.” Thomas was serious again, “And I would rather not lose any more men.”

“Why should we trust him?” asked Guy, coming up behind them panting heavily from his exertions.

“Because,” said Thomas, “Should Sir Walter get inside this castle, he will not stop to ask whether anyone inside is French or English, friend or enemy of the duke. He will just kill everyone until he gets to Lady Rosamunde.”

“No,” said Richard. “That is not why I will help you. I will help you because I am sworn to protect Lady Rosamunde.  And if that means helping to train these men, even though they later use those skills against France, then that is what I must do.”

Guy paled. “Do you intend to arm him?”

Thomas grinned. “If he promises not to turn his sword against anyone in the castle, of course.”

“You will accept his word?”

“Yes, I will.”

This did not please Guy, who muttered something under his breath and left them.

“I will not give you cause to regret your trust in me.”

“No,” said Thomas. “I don’t think you will. Come, Margaret said she would have something ready for your leg by now. Perhaps she can ease the pain a little.”

Distracted by her grief, Rosamunde only gradually became aware of the effect that Richard was having on her household. She supposed it was only to be expected that the women would find as many opportunities as possible to be near him or to watch him. He was an extremely attractive man. Once he was rested and clean he dominated the other men. His dark beard and hair had been trimmed, although his hair was still long. Although they affected to laugh at the strange fashions that he wore and his almost incomprehensible English, they had been wary of Richard from the start and now they paid him very close attention. Despite his limp, he moved with grace and his long hair and beard gave him an air of mystery and excitement that seemed lacking in the men who had remained at the castle. That air of mystery was not diminished when he did not always understand what was said to him, or sometimes pretended not to understand. He spoke little unless he was in council with Rosamunde and she quickly realised that it was because he spoke English so poorly. There were very few people in the castle who were able and prepared to speak French with him. His very silence seemed to increase the women’s interest in him.

And the women’s interest increased the men’s. They kept a wary eye on him and he was rarely to be seen out of the company of one or other of them. She noted with some relief that Richard did not encourage the women’s attention and did not seem to go out of his way to speak to any of them. He spent most of his time when he was not with the men with Thomas and Margaret and that pleased her. Her steward had brought her no stories of finding him in quiet places with servant girls or women from the town or the castle, although she began to wonder what she would do if he ever did. It seemed unlikely that such good behaviour could continue indefinitely. It was one thing to take the men of her father’s household to one side and explain her father’s wishes. It was quite another to explain them to the French prisoner. She rather thought that he would just laugh at her.

Ever before her father had gone to war it had been difficult to stop her ladies watching the men as they practised in the courtyard below her solar. It became almost impossible now that Richard was there. The training had caused her some problems when her father had left. She had not sought his advice, not wanting him to think that she was incapable of looking after things in his absence. She could not watch the men in the bailey as her father had done every day. They were half naked and it would not be seemly. Rosamunde led firmly by example and had decided that when her father left she would rely on Sir Guy’s assessment of the men’s training. She herself would never watch them. Before Richard’s arrival she had not given what happened in the courtyard a second’s thought; she had listened to Guy’s reports of the men’s abilities without thinking too much about how those abilities were honed. If there was no need for the chatelaine to observe the men as they trained, there was certainly no need for her ladies to do so. Yet they did and they gossiped about what they saw in Rosamunde’s hearing. It was not that she listened, but she heard and the women were impressed with the Frenchman. She had noticed for herself his strong shoulders. He would be a strong man when he regained his full strength. His crippled leg would always hold him back, but it was his bare chest and back that the women would be looking for, not his legs.

As the days passed she began to admit to herself that she was curious. It had been easy to resist the apparent temptation when there was no temptation and now she wanted to look and to see Richard. At first she told herself that it was simply a need to understand her ladies’ behaviour. But she knew that this was not the case. If she was honest in all her dealings with others she was no less honest with herself and she had to admit to herself that she was attracted to him as a man. She enjoyed his company. Now that he had recovered from the voyage and begun to get used to their ways he had proven himself to be an entertaining companion. He was always courteous, always had witty stories, when he could be persuaded to tell them, and he had a good singing voice, although few understood the words of the songs that he chose to sing to entertain them in the evening.

All of the ladies expressed their dismay that he did not dance. Even Margaret was of the opinion that he must have been a fine dancer before he damaged his leg, but Rosamunde suspected that Richard would never dance well. He was graceful in his movements and Guy reported that he moved well enough in the courtyard, despite his leg. His songs were the songs of war. He spoke often of the troubadours and who roamed the south of France with songs of love, but he could never be prevailed upon to sing their songs. He would smile and say that they could not understand his language, so there would be little point. Rosamunde understood that French was no more his language than it was hers. She had heard a troubadour sing in the langue d’oc many years before when her father had taken them all for a brief visit to court. The young man had impressed her with the way he paid attention to the women and sang to them as well as to the men. But she thought there had been some trouble later, so perhaps it was as well that Richard did not exercise whatever skills he might have in that area. She could see that he did not set out to please the women in his songs and she doubted that he had ever learned to dance well enough to please them. Pleasing women did not interest him; although she knew from Thomas that he had been married.

Rosamunde found him distant. There was no warmth in him, except when he was with Thomas. When she learned from Margaret that his wife had died in the Big Death she thought she understood him, for surely he had given his heart and was afraid to give it again. There were many among her women, she knew, who would be happy with less than his heart. But she never saw him pay more attention to one woman than to the others, save Margaret, and no woman received attentions that were not appropriate to her position in the household.

She longed each day for her father’s return to take him out of her hands. Surely the duke would send Richard away to one of his other properties. And perhaps he would consider the ransom paid when he returned, but she had to accept that he would probably not return before the spring and much could happen in the winter months, both in France and in England.

She took the threat of siege very seriously and was constantly thinking about what would be required to see them through it. Although the harvest had not been good, it would be sufficient if the winter was not too bad and there was always hunting and fish, unless they were besieged. She feared most for her people. As soon as Richard had identified the threat to the town she had become convinced that he was right and that they must find some way of bringing the people inside the castle. Although the castle was large, so was the town. In the end she sent away as many as she could to one of her father’s estates in Dorset. She began fitting out some of the larger bedchambers as dormitories, trying to work out how many people she could get into each space. The animals were also a problem. They would need to be inside the castle or Sir Walter would use them for his own supplies, but there would be nothing for them to eat once they were inside. Unlike the people, they were not easy to transport, but she still managed to move some of them knowing that they might end up eating the rest to survive. They salted as many fish as they could catch and a small group left the castle each day to hunt. This meat was also salted and stored.

Every afternoon she walked around the outside of the castle with Richard, Thomas and Guy to check that everything was in order and that they had identifies and could defend every door and window that could be used as an entry into the castle. Every evening they went through their plans and reassessed their ability to defend the castle. One evening, in despair at the lack of defence they could offer, Rosamunde said to them, “It would surely be better if I handed myself over to them without a siege.”

Thomas was quick to say, “No!” Guy nodded his agreement.

Richard only looked at her with his dark eyes and asked “Why do you not?” He must have given it much thought and not come to any conclusion.

Both Thomas and Guy were outraged and said so, but Rosamunde paused. “Because my father says not,” she said after a while. “If I had the choice I would not choose to marry him. I find him repulsive, but if my father said to marry him, then I would. But he says not to, therefore we fight.”

“But you would hand yourself over to save your people?” pursued Richard.

“If it were my choice, yes. My father would not wish his people to suffer for me. It is our duty to protect them, not to use them.” Rosamunde knew that the duke was unusual in this respect, but he had been changed by the Big Death. Having been spared the worst of its effects in the area immediately around the castle he had seen whole villages destroyed on his other estates. That had meant that there was no one to work the land and no rents for him. where other landowners had become harsher with their tenants to raise more money, the duke had become more lenient. People from other destroyed villages had slowly moved into his villages and he had begun to prosper again where others lost tenants and were unable to raise their rents. Rosamunde did not intend to change her father’s policies with regard to his tenants.

“And you fear that despite fighting him, Sir Walter will win anyway and take you.”

Rosamunde shuddered. This was exactly what she feared.

“You fear because you are outnumbered?”

Rosamunde nodded.

“The English were outnumbered at Poitiers,” said Richard, “But still they won.”

“Because the French made mistakes,” said Thomas.

“Because the English were better prepared,” said Richard,” And because they could cope with the unexpected.”

“But Sir Walter is English,” said Guy, patiently. “He will be trained in the same way as all the men here.”

“But his men will not be fighting for their lives, or at least, they will not think they are fighting for their lives. Everyone in the castle will know that they defend the castle or they die. And the prospect of death makes men very inventive.”

Rosamunde did not want to think of anyone dying. Sir Walter’s men did not follow him by choice, but because he was their lord. She doubted if many of them had the stomach for taking on such a strongly fortified castle just to get one woman. It would not make them richer. Once he knew what had happened the king would fine Sir Walter and the latter would certainly never get Rosamunde’s dowry.

“Perhaps he will not come,” she whispered. “Perhaps he will wait until my father returns and try his suit again.”

The three men looked doubtful. “This is no love-sick boy, Rosamunde,” said Thomas. “This is a man controlled by his lusts. While you were betrothed there was nothing he could do and now he must think you unprotected and vulnerable.”

“If I wanted you,” said Richard absently, “I would take you.”

And Rosamunde did not know what to say. She stared at him. Did he mean that he did want her and would take her, or was he just putting himself in Sir Walter’s place? Richard did not lack imagination and he often made them stop to think about how Sir Walter would do things. She thought for a moment that she would be pleased if he did want her. He was attractive in many ways and she thought he might make a good husband, but she suspected that that was not what he had meant. She began to think about other women he might have taken, with or without their consent, and that thought took her back to Sir Walter.