Authors: Roberta Gellis
“You may lodge with us,” John told him. “Queen Eleanor found
a house for Hugh in the town, unless you think that lodging with Hugh Bigod
would prejudice King Louis against your appeal for William.”
“He will not ask where I am lodging,” Alphonse said. “And I
will be glad not to need to pitch a tent in a field or ride twenty miles before
dawn each time I come to court. I doubt I could find lodging closer with those
who came from England and Louis’s people filling the town. Usually my aunt includes
me among her household for lodging when she travels with the king, but I told
her I was going home.”
“Good God,” John said, “I hope Hugh still has the house.”
“Louis is not the kind to demand his people be given the
room of other noblemen,” Alphonse began.
John cut him short with an impatient gesture. “At least he
would have the right. No, I was not thinking of Louis. We had some trouble with
King Henry’s half brothers, Guy de Lusignan and William de Valence. They
insisted on having the place Queen Eleanor wished for Hugh—”
“The Lusignans.” There was little expression in Alphonse’s
voice, but the corners of his full lips, which usually seemed to curve upward
in a slight smile, drew back, making his mouth into a straight, hard line. “I
will see to them if need be,” he went on, shaking his head as John began to
protest. “I do not think you fear them, but one must respect the wishes of
one’s king. Louis, I know, dislikes them for many reasons and will not be sorry
to see them… ah…encouraged to leave Boulogne.”
John laughed. “In a general way, I agree with you. Aside
from Henry himself, there must hardly be a man alive, whatever his party, who
would not be glad to see the backs of all that brood of vipers, but I must say
that in this case we were grateful to them. Hugh really preferred a smaller
lodging—he was very short of money, of course—and he wanted to be somewhat
farther from Queen Eleanor—”
John stopped short in confusion, but Alphonse echoed his
laugh. “That, too, I understand. Eleanor is my aunt, and I love her, but she
has grown harder and more demanding as her husband’s troubles have multiplied.
And for any reasonable man who can see that Henry’s troubles are mostly of his
own making, it must be very hard to deal with her. As to the money—”
“Raymond has taken care of that,” John said quickly. “And
Hugh and I will cover your expenses too, of course. In fact, if I had not been
half out of my wits, I would never have let you pay our scores—”
“Zut!” Alphonse laughed again. “Do not be so foolish. All
the money is coming from my brother’s purse anyway. So what does it matter who
pays it out? And my expenses? What expenses? I will not have any if I lodge
with you. Moreover,” Alphonse’s eyes brightened, ”if we are here some weeks,
someone will get up a tournament in a neighboring town, and I will make a
handsome profit on all the young fools in the area who want to try to overset
me.”
He held up a hand as John was about to speak and rose in his
stirrups, pointing ahead to what seemed to be a mob around the gate they were
approaching.
“What can have happened?” John groaned.
“Nothing, except an unusually rich market,” Alphonse
answered soothingly.
He turned to gesture his servant ahead toward the gate to
make sure with a small bribe to the guards they were not delayed there. But it
was not the guards who put obstacles in their path. The guards were caught
somewhere among the shouting, milling throng, and Chacier never found them.
Fortunately, John and Alphonse did not wait for the servant to return but
forged ahead, picking their way around the outer fringes of angry farmers and
carters whose confused and frightened oxen balked and backed and started
forward just when it was least expected and most inconvenient.
When men, beasts, and carts became more tightly packed,
Alphonse and John laid about them with the flats of their swords, which quieted
most of the protest at their pushing through ahead of others. They found
Chacier staring in perplexity at two carts that had locked wheels and jammed in
the narrow passageway that pierced the thick wall. The oxen were bawling and
bumping into one another in the dark tunnel, trying to escape from the carts
and each other, and the farmers on the far side of the gate were exchanging
blows and recriminations.
“You will have to go around to another gate, sieur,” Chacier
said.
“Nonsense,” Alphonse replied. “How do I know it will be any
better than this?”
On the words, he handed his reins to John, loosened his foot
from his right stirrup, and slid from his saddle to the top of one cart, using
his sword to brace himself upright. Unfortunately, just as he stood erect, the
ox attached to the cart chose to back up, and Alphonse lost his balance,
pitching forward onto a heap of unwashed and well-fertilized vegetables.
Alphonse’s remark and the voice in which it was uttered
silenced the mob nearest the gate, and they remained quiet while he got to his
feet again and worked his way to the front. Having studied the situation for a
moment, he leaned down and cut the leather traces that held both oxen to their
carts. One being a little ahead of the other already, both were able to lumber
forward without hindrance when Alphonse smacked them smartly on the rear with
the flat of his blade.
Their emergence from the gate drew the attention of their masters,
who left off their quarrel to pursue the beasts. Meanwhile, Alphonse had
clambered back and gestured the nearest men to him. The gesture being made with
his bared blade and Chacier standing by whip in hand encouraged cooperation.
John had been struggling not to laugh, until he had to dismount and get his
horse and Alphonse’s out of the way. He was soon splashed with dung and mud
himself, and much less inclined to find the situation exquisitely humorous.
Now that the oxen were no longer pulling forward, it was no
great feat to draw the carts back out of the gate, and John and Alphonse were
first through. The streets were almost as crowded as the gate, however, which
made John remark despairingly that he was sure Hugh would be gone and they
would never be able to find him with the city so crowded. But Alphonse had
recovered his good temper and retorted with laughter that, if so, he was going
to lie down in the gutter to sleep, since he had no longer anything to lose and
it would be better than trying to battle their way out of the city again.
Neither awful prognostication came true. As they worked
their way past the market area, which spread out from the port, and climbed the
hill toward the castle at the top, the streets grew somewhat quieter. John’s
conviction that the crowding was sure to have displaced his lord was proved
wrong at last when Hugh’s own manservant opened the door to them and welcomed
them in with considerable enthusiasm, despite their dirt. He apologized for
leaving them to make their way up to the solar themselves while he helped
Chacier unload the baggage animals and showed him where to take the horses.
With the town so full, it was impossible for foreigners to get servants, he
said somewhat bitterly. John clapped him on the shoulder and replied that he
could forgive him anything just for being where he was and gestured for
Alphonse to precede him up the stair.
“Oh, no,” Alphonse said. “I freely relinquish to you the
courtesy due me as a guest and the honor due me as the son of a count. You go
first and explain our condition.”
His intention was to give John a chance to say a few words
to Hugh Bigod alone, not to explain why they were both soiled with well-manured
mud but to allow Bigod to make mental arrangements for what might be one unexpected
guest too many. Thus Alphonse climbed the stair in a leisurely fashion,
entering the large front room when John was about halfway across, moving toward
a solitary figure just rising from a chair near the fireplace. In the same
instant that it became clear that the figure could not be Hugh Bigod, John let
out a yell of “Barby! Barby!” and leapt forward.
Alphonse stopped as abruptly as if he had seen Medusa
instead of Barbara de le Pontet de Thouzan le Thor. She had run toward John
when he called her name and they were now embracing. With a small shocked
intake of breath, Alphonse removed his hand from his sword hilt. He had no
right to her. He had been fool enough to turn away the love she had offered him
so artlessly when she was a child, a scrawny, almost ugly little girl. And look
at her now. Alphonse swallowed hard and took a deep breath. In any case, he
reminded himself bitterly, she was doubtless no longer the widow of de le
Pontet de Thouzan le Thor. In the seven years since he had seen her she must
surely have remarried.
At least she had not married John of Hurley. That was clear
enough. There was nothing of husband and wife in the rough hugs of joy they had
exchanged, and they had backed away from each other without the smallest
lingering of physical pleasure in touching. John’s questions about his brother
and father-by-law had burst out at once, and she was answering, assuring him
that all was well with William of Marlowe and Aubery of Ilmer.
“They are not shackled or in a dungeon,” she said. “At least
William is not. He was with Richard of Cornwall. I saw Richard and William in
London and William looked too well and easy for me to believe that Aubery was
hurt or harshly treated.”
John bent his head and murmured, “Thank God. Thank God. I
could not have borne to have escaped, leaving them to die.” He then laughed
aloud and struck Barbara gently on the upper arm. “Now we can work to free
them.” But after that he frowned, relief providing time for him to become
puzzled. “What the devil are you doing here?”
“My father sent me, of course. Surely you do not think he
would leave poor Hugh to wonder what had happened to his wife and children.
Joanna is safe at Framlingham with the two younger children, and Father sent
his men to hold Hugh’s lands. With any luck, everything will be safe for Hugh
when he comes home.”
“And when is that likely to be?” John asked, his voice gone
cold.
“Do not begin to argue with me,” Barbara snapped. “I am not
afraid to warm your ears as they deserve. What do you men care for anything
beyond your own pride and your precious ‘right’? Uncle Hugh too! Did he give a
single thought to Joanna’s suffering when he agreed to go to war?”
John made pacifying gestures. “Do not eat me, Barby. I am no
more free to do my will than you are. When did you come? Are you staying here
with us? Where is Hugh?”
Hugh Bigod! When Barbara referred to him as Uncle Hugh,
Alphonse at last connected John’s lord with Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk.
Because Alphonse never thought of Norfolk by his personal name, he had not
realized Hugh Bigod must be the earl’s brother. But he could not stay in the
house while she was there. He had no idea how much seeing her would hurt. If
someone had named her to him, he would have said he had almost forgotten her.
It would have been a lie, but he had not ached with missing her for years.
Only the anger and contempt in her voice when she spoke of
men’s pride had carried him back to the day when the news of Thouzan le Thor’s
death had arrived. Overnight Louis had received a dozen requests for her in
marriage. There had been the same anger and contempt in her when she called
those men ghouls. And so he had run back to Aix to hide himself, afraid she
would class him with the “ghouls” who desired not her but the pretty estate
that had become hers when her husband died. Why should she not? How could she
know how much he had come to love her over the two years she had been Thouzan
le Thor’s wife in name only? He had been very careful to treat her with proper
courtesy, and what else could he do? Pierre de le Pontet de Thouzan le Thor had
been his friend. He had been fulfilling Alphonse’s own conditions in not
claiming his wife until she became fifteen years of age—
“Man, have you turned to stone?”
John’s voice, quite loud, as if he had spoken more than
once, startled Alphonse out of old regrets and led him to new ones. He realized
with disgust that he had not heard her answer to John’s questions, but he
forced himself forward in response to a beckoning gesture.
“I promise Barby will not faint over a little dirt.” John
went on, with just the hint of a quiver, as if he were carefully hiding his
amusement over Alphonse’s reluctance to come closer.
“No, of course not,” Alphonse said, somewhat relieved to
discover that John’s conception of him as a man too much dedicated to fine
clothes and elegance had hidden the blow he had received. “Nonetheless, I
cannot be other than offensive company in my present state. If madame will give
her permission, I will go below and change my clothes.”
Alphonse spoke as easily as if the utter blankness of her
face had not turned the knife in his heart. His years as a courtier had taught
him to expose only those emotions calculated to gain an end, so his dark eyes
were half lidded, concealing pain, and his lips slightly curved. The expression
of indolent indifference infuriated Barbara enough to dissipate the paralysis
that had stricken her when John pointed out the guest he had brought with him.
“Madame!” she exclaimed. “You cannot have forgotten me
completely in only seven years, Sir Alphonse. You always called me Barbe. Have
I changed so much?”
“Not so much that I do not recognize you,’ he said, “but
enough so that I would not dare use your name without permission.”
“Oh, of course you two must know each other,” John put in
quickly, hoping Barbara would control her quick temper. “I forgot that Barby
was Queen Marguerite’s lady for four years. That was before she came to live
with Hugh.”
John was annoyed with Barbara, believing that her pride had
been pricked because Alphonse had not recognized her at once. He turned more
toward Alphonse, blocking their view of each other slightly, and pinched her
arm to remind her that they needed Alphonse’s goodwill.