Red Adam's Lady Read online

  “Sir Brien de Tornay.” He was smallish, past forty, glumly dispirited.

  “Sir Giles FitzGodfrey.” He was older, blear-visaged, his belly sagging through his belt’s grip. Relics of old Lord Maurice’s rule, and no assets to the household, she judged them, as they mumbled over her hand and furtively surveyed her.

  “My guest and comrade, Sir Reynald de Carsey, you have met before,” her husband’s voice said, an undertone of rueful humor to its formality.

  Sir Reynald smiled into her angry eyes and said insolently, “You should remember it with more pleasure, my lady, since it has been your rare good fortune.”

  “I remember in what fitting state we left you, Sir Reynald,” she retorted, looking straight at the sot they had left that night wallowing in his vomit. The sneer vanished as though smacked off his face.

  “God’s Head!” her uncle’s voice growled from her other side, jolting her with remembered menace. “You’ve not curbed that tongue yet? There’s a devil in the wench needs exorcising, Lord Adam.”

  Red Adam’s hand closed on Julitta’s, and he moved between them. “I am content with my wife beyond my deserts, Lord William.”

  He snorted. “Take your belt and beat a seemly meekness into her at the start is my advice.”

  “If that’s your method of procuring domestic concord, I marvel your wife has never seasoned your pottage with henbane,” Red Adam replied dispassionately.

  Lord William’s wits, impaired by his overnight celebration’s lingering effects, were slow to recognize menace. “What—oh, aye, you jest. I’ve no intention of quarreling with you, lad—”

  “A pity, for I have every intention of quarreling with you, my lord.” He was white as milk, and his hand quivered on Julitta’s.

  “God’s Blood, we are kinsmen now!”

  “Kinsmen? If you were thirty years younger and half a yard less around your belly, I’d challenge you to combat for the way you’ve used my lady.”

  “You misbegotten whelp!” Lord William surged forward, his face engorged. Julitta, her hand fast gripped, stiffened herself from recoil. Then Gilbert dived forward.

  “My lords! Father—peace, peace, I pray you!” He flapped his hands like a woman shooing hens from her kitchen. “It is unseemly—”

  “Never fear, he’ll strike none but a woman.” Red Adam’s glance flicked from face to face. “I uttered a challenge, Lord William. Which of your sons will take up the gage, and vindicate your conduct towards their cousin?” Gilbert recoiled, and Gautier gaped in consternation. “More than they can stomach?”

  Gilbert drew the shreds of his dignity about him. “We w-will withdraw from under your roof, Lord Adam, b-before more is said we shall all regret.”

  “Who bade you speak for me, you whey-blooded mouse?” snarled his sire. “Regret? This daft whelp will be the one to regret, when the power is in our hands and we remember our enemies!”

  “‘If,’ not ’when,’ should be your word. I’m not daft enough to join your feckless treason with young Henry.”

  “Treason? He is our Young King, crowned and anointed, asserting his rightful claims.”

  “With rare incompetence and peculiar allies.” Red Adam grinned at the unhappy brothers. “It’s an interesting life following the tourneys, but if you have to take to it when your sire has Chivingham escheated for treason, I doubt you’ll fancy it.”

  By the sick anger in the face of Gilbert, who had worn out his youth and was rapidly withering into middle age waiting to sit in his father’s chair, he had prodded his sorest dread. Lord William turned on his son a glare that wilted him to the limpness of boiled cabbage, jerked his head at his wife and daughter standing by the dais’s steps, snarled all round the company, and stalked out, his family trailing after him. Reynald de Carsey laughed softly in the hush.

  Julitta fetched what felt like her first breath since the quarrel’s eruption. The company roused from petrifaction, stealing sidelong glances, nudging ribs and muttering in ears. Such a breach of decorum enlivened few bridals, and already another Brentborough scandal had leaped its wall and was winging over the North Parts. Red Adam drew her forward. “Entertain our guests, my lady, while I do your kinsmen a host’s parting courtesy,” he bade her, and followed Lord William. She caught at composure, undutifully cheered to have seen her uncle routed and been spared Gilbert and Bertille as mentors. She moved towards Ranulf of Hostby, the eldest guest, and initiated a discussion on the damage done the harvest by the past week’s weather.

  Everard FitzJordan supported her as a gentleman’s duty, but Gerald of Flackness regarded her with a kind of sour surprise, as though her relief at his loss were an affront, and pointedly gazed into an empty ale-horn. Julitta signalled to a servant to fill it, and kept the talk limping along by sheer persistence, conscious of Reynald’s malevolent grin behind her and the scorched sensation mounting to her cheekbones. Then someone mentioned the lack of news from Leicester, and at once they were off.

  It all came pouring forth in a yeasty froth; rancor at King Henry’s encroachments on noble privileges in these past nineteen years; at his new-made upstarts who usurped the places and profits of their betters; at royal extortion, protection of Jewish usury, and laws that set at naught a nobleman’s right to settle his disputes sword in hand. There was talk of the Holy Martyr of Canterbury, numbered now among the Saints. The world had ceased waiting with held breath for Heaven’s judgment to crash upon the King, but if God’s justice were tardy, there were men eager to avenge His servant. Julitta, listening, could comprehend their anxieties. They were all but committed to rebellion, but its lack of progress had filled them with doubt and dread. She wanted to cry out that the enterprise was folly and doomed, but that was no part of the courtesy she owed guests in her hall.

  She turned impatiently to the nearest window and glanced out at the sky. Sir Everard joined her. “This is heavy talk for a bridal morning, my lady” he observed. “I wish you well, and am thankful to see you reconciled to your marriage.”

  “I thank you, my lord.”

  “It’s no light task laid on you. Brentborough has been too long under a curse. Now that he is wedded, Lord Adam must break it; entertain, visit, join in his neighbors’ pleasures.” He smiled. “I might be your father, so let that excuse my presuming.”

  “I account it kindness,” she answered honestly, even though she recognized the direction of this laborious approach.

  “In these times friends and kinsmen need each other. A pity Lord Adam forced this breach with your uncle, and between us we must repair it. If I try to persuade Lord William, you must endeavor to soften your husband’s heart while—”

  “While a bridegroom’s ardor renders it malleable.”

  “Felicitously expressed,” said Red Adam’s amused voice in her ear, and his arm slipped round her shoulders and drew her to his side. Her pulse raced. “It is malleable as a lump of butter, my delight, so what are you to persuade me to?”

  “Amity with my uncle.”

  He grinned. “That amity will be best assured if we never come within arm’s reach.”

  She repressed a giggle. “My lord, your wish is my law.”

  “I reckoned in that matter it would be.” His hand tightened a little, and he looked, suddenly grim, into the older man’s face. “I am the King’s man, and you’ll not entangle me in this plot against him. If you’ve the sense of a tadpole under your hair you’ll climb free of this coil before it throttles you.”

  “You insult me!” Everard exclaimed, his mild face darkening.

  “Flatter you! No rebellion yet has unseated the man on the throne. Even that fool King Stephen kept it under his backside to his life’s end, for all his foes could do.”

  “The Young King has his rights—”

  “That daft whelp’s not man enough to achieve aught.”

  “God’s Blood!” Gerald bellowed. “That’s treason, and you’ll answer for it!”

  “Whenever you choose to challenge me,” Red Adam r
esponded, regarding him with wounding tolerance. “Stop frothing like a brew-tub and think, man. You’ve seen him at court; he’s favored you with a gracious word, he’s comely and pleasing. But I’ve followed the tourneys with him. Hell’s Teeth, it’s only William the Marshal’s prowess pays his debts.” He was addressing them all now, wholly earnest.

  “He’s rightful King!” Sir Ranulf asserted.

  “In his father’s lifetime? He’s a vain lad puffed up with flattery, and the French King’s collar about his neck.”

  “Yet the rebels are doing none so ill, and they have great force among them,” Everard said soberly. “There’s King Louis in Normandy, all Brittany up—” He checked suddenly, looking foolish; everyone knew that Red Adam had spent the spring and early summer campaigning with King Henry’s forces in Normandy, and had returned to Brentborough by way of the siege of Leicester.

  “If they could but combine together we might need to worry,” Red Adam commented.

  “Leicester is still untaken,” Gerald pointed out.

  “And what do its defenders achieve but the enmity of their neighbors whose lands they ravage, while they wait for the Earl to return? The last heard of him, he’d skipped to Flanders. What sort of mercenaries d’you reckon he’ll recruit there, with naught to pay them but promises of English loot?”

  A small snort of appreciation was forced from Julitta, who was probably better acquainted with mercenaries than any other of his hearers. They murmured sullenly. Red Adam’s gaze moved contemptuously from face to face.

  “Oh yes, you’ll sit fast until your rumps grow roots, and blather about the homage you’ve done to both King Henry and his son. You know what the King’s wrath is, and you know the whelp has promised to reward those who win him England with his opponents’ lands, so you’ll take up no weapon until you’re sure of joining the victors. But I’ve sworn one fealty and I’ll hold to that and to Brentborough, not squat on my tail bones waiting for the dice to fall. Hell’s Teeth, I’d sooner follow the tourneys!”

  “You may yet reckon yourself lucky if you can,” grated Gerald.

  Red Adam raked the troubled faces with a stare few cared to meet. “Why, do you also find my hospitality discomforts your innards!”

  Everard smiled a small, grim smile. “Some of it is not easy of digestion, Lord Adam. We are loath to disrupt your marriage feast—”

  “But in these days a prudent man sees to his own,” old Ranulf blurted.

  “I’d best send forth for guests into the highways and byways,” Adam retorted irreverently. “I’ll not press you, nor yet blame you, but I’d advise you to consider where prudence truly lies.”

  “God’s Death, you’re magnanimous!” jeered Gerald. “Or timid.”

  “Oh, I’ve a deal to lose—as you have. Including a cordial relationship with my neighbors.”

  “Did you become a tourney champion with your tongue?” snorted Gerald. “You prate like a priest.”

  “I have not forgotten you are guests under my roof, if you have.”

  “We’ll not linger there!” He stalked down the hall without more ado, and his companions exchanged uneasy glances.

  “It would be best, Lord Adam, if we took our leave,” Sir Ranulf declared.

  “We wish you and your lady a long and prosperous life together, and many children to crown it,” said Sir Everard, descending the dais steps. “Indeed the breach grieves me, and I earnestly hope you’ll reconsider—”

  “Let be. I’ve sworn allegiance to one King and I hold by him.” He shook his head at Julitta as she started to join them. Sir Everard’s voice floated back as they went down the hall.

  “—overdue at my home, and my wife is with child and easily alarmed—”

  “Fussy as a big-bellied woman himself,” jibed Reynald de Carsey, downing the last of his breakfast ale and looking about him for a servant to refill his horn. Seeing none, he pitched the vessel on to the sidetable with its stand of plate, bringing several dishes clanging down, grinned offensively at Julitta’s anger, and slouched out after his pot comrade.

  Julitta hastened to check the plate for damage and set the unimpressive collection to rights. As she stepped back she noticed a curious object on a bracket above the table, a very curious object indeed; skull-shaped, crested and dingy green. Peering at it from all angles, she made out, under dust and cobwebs, an ancient helmet of corroded bronze, with one side crushed in.

  “It’s Roman,” her husband’s voice said in her ear. “Old Bertram told me. When the ruins on the headland were demolished for stone to build the keep, they found two skeletons still joined in a death-grapple under them, and one was wearing that. Old Maurice set great store by it; called it the Luck of Brentborough.”

  “His taste in luck pieces matched his luck,” she commented, repressing a shiver as she peered up at the relic and wondered that he had not left the skull inside it. “Are your servants willing to sleep under it, and does a Roman ghost stand guard over your plate?”

  “I’ve not heard of such a sentry, but I do know that never another stone was lifted from that ruin, nor will any venture near it by day or night.” He reached for her hand, and Reynald de Carsey, loitering by the door, sniggered.

  Julitta held back. “My lord—”

  “Get into your riding dress, and throw that hideous gown of your cousin’s to the kitchen wenches! Oh, it’s obvious—she’s half a head shorter and buxom; for all their cobbling you look six months gone.” He impelled her towards the stair, speechless between anger and agreement. “Where’s that wench? Attend your lady, ninny!”

  “M- my lord? At once, my lord—my lady!” Avice put her nose over the gallery rail, quailing and twittering. Reynald lounged further into the hall to scrutinize her, and she flinched from sight. Julitta stalked past both men and up the stair, wishing the pair of them collared with millstones and sunk in fifty fathoms.

  4

  Red Adam too had put off scarlet when she joined him in the bailey, and was sober in dark blue tunic and chausses as shabby as her own homespun. His finery had been a shorter and heavier man’s lending, though on a masculine figure its deficiencies of fit had been less obvious than her own gown’s. He looked taller, trimmer, his hair a fiercer red above the bandage. He was addressing his pot comrade, and she caught the tail end: “—some pretence of decency!”

  “You’re not pretending a fondness for the wench? Take your belt to her; she needs it.” Reynald scowled at Julitta as she descended the stair, and tramped away to the stables.

  Odo and the redhaired groom brought out their horses. Her mare squealed at the unfamiliar hands, and he cursed her. The fellow was unmistakably a Lorismond, a stock which bred embarrassingly true; doubtless a by-blow of old Maurice’s. A welt’s end showed on his neck, and she was sharply reminded of another man less justly beaten because of her. She turned on Red Adam.

  “What of my man Ivar?”

  “I’ve set inquiries forward.” She stared, but for once he was not mocking. “He’s been wrongly used, and I was responsible.”

  “What do you know of responsibility?”

  “I’m learning.” He joined his hands and stooped to mount her. As she arranged her skirts a pack of mismatched hounds surged baying from the kennels, and the mare reared up snorting and danced sideways. Red Adam leaped to seize her bridle and hauled her to a stand.

  “What was your uncle doing to set you on this brute? Trying to break your neck?”

  Julitta firmly reined her in. Folie was the most edgy-tempered beast in her uncle’s stables, which was precisely why he had assigned her to his niece and left her as his wedding gift. “It wouldn’t grieve him, but I’ll acquit him of the intent.”

  “She’s no fit mount for a girl.”

  “I can handle her.” He looked up at her keenly, and she cursed her unruly tongue. In her wanderings she had straddled everything from a knight’s destrier to a woodcutter’s donkey, but her husband knew nothing of her discreditable past and she would prefer that
he never learned. He did not challenge her; the household knights and the huntsmen were assembled, and they rode out behind a tumult of dogs.

  The weather had cleared, and while the fine days lasted they scrambled about hills and woods after wolves and foxes, without much profit; hawked over moors and stubble, and visited outlying farms to assess the harvest now in the barns. Julitta, who had been kept rigorously at her needle under her uncle’s rule, rejoiced in air and exercise, but whenever she returned to a castle still governed by Constance, who made no pretence of consulting her lady, she itched to assume her rights. But Red Adam insisted that she should stay beside him, provoking Reynald to jibe that he dared not trust her out of his sight. In public they maintained courtesy according to their bond; in private she nursed her rancor.

  As August wore out, the rain clouds blew back, and on a gray morning Julitta emerged to find only Folie and Red Adam’s bay waiting in the bailey. “Ride with me,” he commanded, and led her, not to the gate but between the castle’s outbuildings on to the headland.

  Wind tore at their clothes and hair, sword-sharp from the sea, and her eyes watered and her cheeks stung from the force of it. Among the rough grass were almost-silted trenches, and fragments of wall foundations made square-cornered patterns where the horses trod delicately; the Roman ruins whose stones had helped build the castle. Then the turf broke before them, the headland lurched down in dizzy jags and pitches to a tumult of rocks and spray far below, and they looked over gray sea that glinted now and again as sunlight stabbed through the clouds. Endlessly the waves crept in, gathered crests, and shattered against the cliff in a smother of spray that the wind tossed cold and salty into their faces.

  Red Adam watched in a rapt silence, until Folie shook her head with a snort and a jingle of bit chains. He started, and took up his reins. “I come here often,” he told her. “Here one stands in awe, facing God’s majesty.”

  Such reflections deprived her of any power to answer. He turned from the verge. “Stay back from the edge,” he warned. “The cliff falls. And that’s odd. I’d believed rock everlasting, and water soft and unstable. Yet it’s the water beats down the cliffs, and grinds the rocks to powder. ‘Here shall thy proud waves be stayed’—but the stone crumbles.” He paused for her to join him, and swung his mount to ride between her and the edge. He shrugged and grinned, the grin she yearned to clout to the other side of his face. “It’s a wife’s duty to listen to her husband. You’re likely to find it onerous.”