The Knight And The Rose Read online

  Contents

  Characters 1322-1327

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  PART TWO 1326

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Postscript

  Acknowledgments

  THE KNIGHT AND THE ROSE

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1999 by Isolde Martyn.

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

  http://www.penguinputnam.com

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-0447-4

  An Berkley® Book

  Berkley Books first published by the Penguin Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  Berkley and the “B” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  First edition (electronic): February 2002

  Also by Isolde Martyn

  THE MAIDEN AND THE UNICORN

  For John

  who liked this story best of all

  Characters 1322-1327

  Listed in order of appearance, real historical characters are marked with an asterisk.

  SIR FULK DE ENDERBY “THE MALLET” husband to Lady Johanna FitzHenry and a veteran of the wars against the Scots

  LADY JOHANNA FITZHENRY third wife of Sir Fulk de Enderby and youngest daughter of Lord Alan FitzHenry, Constable of Conisthorpe

  AGNES her tiring woman

  GERAINT (GERVASE DE LAVAL) a rebel fleeing from the Battle of Boroughbridge

  SIREDMOND MORTIMER* rebel from the Battle of Boroughbridge, heir of the rebel Marcher lord, Sir Roger Mortimer of Wigmore

  FATHER GILBERT chaplain to Lady Constance of Conisthorpe

  LADY CONSTANCE wife to Lord Alan FitzHenry, Constable of the royal castle of Conisthorpe and mother of Lady Johanna

  YOLONYA tiring woman to Lady Constance

  SIR GEOFFREY Seneschal of Conisthorpe Castle

  LADY EDYTH DE ENDERBY Sir Fulk’s unmarried sister

  SIR EDGAR DE LAVERTON knight in the service of Sir Fulk

  DAME CHRISTIANA a holy widow and recluse under the patronage of Lady Constance

  JANKYN (WATKYN) jester to Thomas, Earl of Lancaster

  MILES FITZHENERY younger brother of Lady Johanna and heir to Lord Alan FitzHenry

  LORD ALAN FITZHENRY Johanna’s father and former Constable of the royal castle of Conisthorpe

  AIDAN Lord Alan’s manservant

  SIR RALPH DE MIDDLESBROUGH Deputy Sheriff to Sir Roger de Somerville, High Sheriff of Yorkshire

  AMICE Ranulf Weaver’s wife, daughter to Yolonya

  PETER Amice’s son, scholar under patronage of Father Gilbert

  STEPHEN DE NORWOOD proctor of the archdeacon’s court, advocate to Geraint/Gervase and Lady Johanna

  MAUD DE ROOS a widowed noblewoman

  WILLIAM DE BEDFORD judge of the archdeacon’s court

  MARTIN DE SCRUTON examiner to the archdeacon’s court

  AVICE MERCER, MARGERY FULLER townswomen of Conisthorpe

  JOHN DE DREUX, EARL OF RICHMOND* Duke of Brittany and Constable of Richmond Castle

  HUGH DESPENSER THE YOUNGER* favorite of King Edward II

  HUGH DESPENSER THE OLDER* Earl of Winchester, father to Hugh

  QUEEN ISABELLA* Queen of England, wife to King Edward II and sister to King Charles IV of France, later known as “the She-wolf of France”

  EDWARD, PRINCE OF WALES* future King Edward III, son of King Edward II and Queen Isabella

  SIR ROGER MORTIMER* rebel Marcher lord, imprisoned in the Tower of London, father of Sir Edmund Mortimer and favorite of Queen Isabella

  CECILIA DE LEYGRAVE* lady-in-waiting to Queen Isabella

  LADY ELIZABETH BADDLESMERE* wife to Sir Edmund Mortimer and daughter of executed traitor, Sir Bartholomew Baddlesmere

  ADAM ORLETON, BISHOP OF HEREFORD* supporter of Queen Isabella and enemy of King Edward II

  HENRY, EARL OF LEICESTER* brother of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster

  Prologue

  March 16th 1322, the Feast of St. Boniface

  “HOW MANY MORE times must I teach you your duty to me!”

  Fulk de Enderby lashed his ringed hand into Johanna’s cheek, sending her stumbling back against the bedpost. She heard his spurred boots descend the stone stairs outside her door, and slid miserably to the floor, huddling beside the coverlet. The bruise down the side of her face was already ripening uncomfortably against the interwoven metal threads. Yes, how many more times?

  The laughter, the joy in life, that once had been her nature had been threshed away; Fulk, this so-called worthy banneret her father had compelled her to wed, had nigh on defeated her but she still had a little courage left. Killing the old fiend might be a mercy to mankind even if they hanged her for it. Anything to escape the cruelty and the beatings.

  Cob, her little hound, whined against her ankles. Johanna roused herself and gathered him into her arms, rocking his head against her kirtle. Only a matter of weeks, she thought, and she would be prepared to hurl herself from the top of the keep and risk an unhallowed grave and eternal Hell. Satan at least might have a sense of humour.

  “Oh, my lady, what damage has that brute done this time?”

  Her young tiring woman, Agnes, came quietly into the bed-chamber and knelt beside her shaking mistress. Dried lavender seeds tumbled from the cloth tucked into the girl’s waist and she smelt comfortingly of the linen press. Fulk had not taken Agnes from her, not yet.

  The younger girl gently turned Johanna’s face to the open shutters and shook her head sorrowfully. “This wicked place! I curse your father for sending us here. There were tales in plenty, but did he care?”

  “They were wrong!” Johanna knuckled the tears away angrily.

  “Who, madam?”

  “The wretched jongleurs with their songs about knightly chivalry and love. All lies!”

  The small dog, all paws and teeth, grew tactlessly playful, at odds with his mistress’s unhappiness and Johanna set him down. “Do you think my skin will grow calloused and as wrinkled as a walnut from all these beatings? Mayhap that Hellspawn will not desire me then.”

  Rising, she paced to the narrow slit that served as a window. A blackbird perched precariously on the crenellation flew off, his freedom mocking her. She had uncaged every songbird in the castle; she was the only prisoner.

  Her palms pressing against the insensitive stone of the walls, she stared longingly through the deep embrasure at the bleak brown-tufted hills that breasted the horizon beyond the village of Enderby.
r />   “If only he would let me ride. Just to escape for a few hours and feel the wind on my soul.”

  “He thinks you more likely to conceive if you forsake riding.”

  “Ha, what truth is there in that? Besides . . .”

  Agnes came across and slid a sisterly arm about her. “I know.”

  The chapel bell for morning mass crossed the silence between them like a shadow. “Light a candle for me and tell the chaplain why I shall not be at mass.” Coiling her fingers into fists, Johanna bruised them against the broad sill. “Oh, by our sweet Saviour, what I need is a miracle or let God send a thunderbolt.”

  “Aye, well, you never know, my lady, God might send both.”

  One

  March 18th, the Feast of St. Edward the Martyr

  “I’LL NOT BE takin’ you further, Master Scholar.” Geraint awoke to a jab in the ribs, felt the weight of Edmund’s inert body across his thighs and knew that the danger, the nightmare, was still with him.

  The carter clambered down from the driving board and relieved himself on an untidy cairn of stones. It gave Geraint the chance to come to his wits before the fellow sauntered round to the side of the wain and lifted up the sacks that had been giving his passengers a meagre protection against the chill damp.

  Rubbing the sleep out of his bleary eyes with his thumb and forefinger, Geraint wondered how he had even managed to doze, awkwardly crammed in as he was between the tightly lashed barrels of Bordeaux wine and the crates of North Sea stockfish.

  “Looks like he’ll be wearin’ a thick ’ead when he wakes,” the carter muttered, casting grim eyes over the youth cradled in Geraint’s arms and wrapped chrysalis-like within a heavy cloak. “Won this at dice, did he?” He reached out and tested the fabric between his fingers.

  In a different world, Geraint might have clouted the clod for his discourtesy but the fellow unwittingly had carried them at risk of his own life. They had certainly not been on the list of goods to be collected.

  “Aye, he did,” Geraint muttered indifferently, tossing his fair hair back and eyeing the wild wood that disappeared into the mist in each direction with misgiving. “Where are we?”

  They had been trundling for hours across a foggy, God-forsaken moor since leaving Ripon but now he could hear the churning of river water against crags and knew they had left the high country.

  “T’ road yonder hies east up t’at moors agenn and I dare say you’ll no be wantin’ that. Go straight on an’ down the road lies Skipton. If you’d be wantin’ t’ nearest village, cross the bridge, take the right lane and follow t’ beck along. Me, as I told you this mornin’, I be bound to deliver goods to Bardon and, like as not, the Cliffords or t’constable ull give me food’n lodging, but they don’t like me bringing extra travellers wi’ me. Tried it afore.”

  “Aye, fair enow,” answered Geraint. “Help me down with him then.” Not for the first time, he was tempted to slide a blade between the carter’s ribs and seize the wain, but he had seen so much death in the last week that he had no stomach for further killing and, like as not, if the man was known hereabouts, some gossip might recognise the horses and start asking questions. Besides, the man seemed to be a charitable fellow with a misplaced respect for poor sozzled scholars and did not deserve such a miserly end.

  “Happen there might be another traveller as can take you further,” muttered the carter, clearly feeling guilty at dumping them like sacks of waste from a tanner’s. Between them, they lifted down the groaning, valuable heir of the imprisoned rebel, Sir Roger Mortimer. “By the Rood, he ain’t no feather.”

  Geraint grunted. Both he and the carter were strongly built but the intermesh of Edmund’s bones and flesh weighed cursed heavy. It was a veritable marvel how two humble feet could keep any healthy man upright at all, let alone in chain mail, he reflected, as he propped Edmund against a convenient milestone and straightened his aching back, striving to hide the fact that his own wound was hurting like the Devil’s fire. The cold wind was already scourging him through the thin fabric of his tunic and poking icy fingers into his ears. He tugged his ragged hood forward and stamped his feet to get the blood flowing back through his limbs, stiffened from the journey.

  “I ain’t partial to pokin’ me nose in where it ain’t welcome,” muttered the carter, scratching his scrubby chin. “But your friend seems right sickly.”

  “Pah,” snorted his passenger dismissively, “if you think he looks white around the gills, you should have seen him under the alehouse board two days ago. We are supposed to be journeying back to his family,” he added. “Leastways we will be if he can poxy well stay sober enough to tell me the directions.”

  The middle part of the freshly baked tale was certainly not a lie—that was if King Edward’s armoured sheepdogs had not herded up the remainder of the Mortimers still at large.

  “An’ here was I hopin’ he might be one of them wounded rebels what opposed the king’s men up Boroughbridge way. Might be a reward for some of ’em, I shouldn’t wonder.” So the fellow did not have a turnip for a brain.

  Geraint sniffed with what he hoped was convincing incredulity and shook his head. “Not him, my life upon it!” He was careful to watch the carter’s face, hoping that the man believed him. With the flail wound weakening his left shoulder and arm, he did not rate his chances of overpowering such a brawny fellow. During the journey, he would have had surprise on his side, but face to face now with merely a knife—well, not unless he had to.

  “Aye, well,” the carter shrugged. “I’ll be off then. God be wi’ you, lad, and Christ preserve your drunken sot albeit he looks ripe for an early grave. There’s a priory down the dale if you reckon sommat else is ailing him.” Sensible advice except that his enemies would be sniffing around the religious houses like dogs above a coney warren.

  “He will be back at the dicing table tomorrow,” Geraint grinned. If he was not dead before sundown. “God’s blessing on you and my thanks.”

  “Glad to have the company, young ’un, not that you said aught. But it’s good to have some extra muscle if a wheel should loosen comin’ over the high places an’ I should not have cared to meet one of them rebels.” With that, the carter clapped him heartily on his wounded shoulder then happily busied himself checking girths and hooves, leaving his passenger with his teeth clamped together, nearly passing out with the pain of it.

  With relief, Geraint watched him eventually flick his carthorses moving. It was a mercy the fellow had not expected payment; being dressed like a poor scholar had its advantages. He scowled at the stained, worn tunic that served him now and waited until the cart had rumbled out of sight before he heaved Edmund into the paltry shelter of the wood.

  A twitter of wrens in the thicket complained at being disturbed as he gently set Edmund down and paused to retrieve his breath. The young knight’s lank brown hair lay tumbled incongruously across a patch of wood anemones that were optimistically unfurling.

  Poor Edmund. Nature had spooned him out too small a dose of his father’s appetite to live life to its full. Yet the lad had tried his best to act in Roger’s interests and support my lords of Hereford and Lancaster against the king.

  Geraint had little thought to play his nurse, but discovering their companions slain and stripped beside the campfire when he returned from seeking food and tidings, and only the lad left alive, had given him little choice. Dead before nightfall? Please God, no, but the dank, grey weather seemed to be closing in upon them again.

  He felt the despair of being a stranger and the hollowness of not knowing where to find kindness that could hold its tongue. With no familiarity with these Yorkshire dales, he was not certain how far they had come from the great road north nor whether the people of these parts had heard the tidings of the battle.

  He decided to scout out an empty barn loft, warm with animal breath, where he could bestow Edmund at dusk. His clothing had already blessed him with a kind of sanctity, so it seemed but a simple matter to pass himself off
as a footloose schoolmaster and cozen a crust or two from a housewife. And with God’s providence, there might be a laundered sheet left out upon a hedge that he could pilfer to dress their wounds.

  The ashes and hawthorns, still unbudded, yielded no cover so he hacked free some nearby coppice to make a shelter of sorts, interweaving a mesh of foliage byre-like around Edmund’s body. It would conceal the youth’s presence and shield the upper part of his body and, with God’s good grace, keep the wind from chilling him further. Not that it seemed the young knight was even aware enough to be troubled.

  Setting out to return to the crossroads, Geraint took the village lane, which ran cheek by jowl with the wood as far as he could see. Accustomed to riding, he felt disoriented and vulnerable out of the saddle, or maybe it was because his wounded shoulder throbbed with every step, his belly was pleading to be fed and the freezing wind was slowly addling his mind.

  Furrows of mud sucked at his feet so he picked his way instead along the matted grass at the road edge, trying to avoid slithering into the ditch that kept him company. It was an effort to keep the memory of the battle and its aftermath from repeating like a continual rallying trumpet in his head, and to staunch the anxiety that he could be hanged or worse. Dazedly he floundered on, blowing on his fingers and trying to concentrate on his footing.

  Pounding hooves and the jingle of harness drove the weariness from his mind. God forbid they were bounty hunters! Cursing, he sprang into the ditch and crouched against the mess of ivy and nettles. A half-score of men-at-arms, their surcotes too far off for him to recognise, came thudding into sight heading towards the village.

  Pressing his body hard into the bank, he crossed himself, offering more rash promises to St. Jude as the ground pounded with their passing, or was it his heart, frantic lest they drag him away for interrogation before they hanged him?

  The saint must have heard his desperate prayer. With his damp hose muddied further and his hands prickling from nettle stings, Geraint eventually clambered back onto the road.