Sparks hoisted their way into the darkness on ropes of smoke. A soldier softly played the mournful tune of ‘Bird on a Briar’ on his bone flute. Conan took out his needle and thread and began mending a tear in his hose. Nearby, two soldiers played dice, gambling for quarter pennies. Joscelin returned to the fire, threw on a couple more branches, and sat down.
William drank, then raised one wavering forefinger at his son. ‘It was on a night like this that I met your mother. Has Conan ever told you the tale?’
‘You’re drunk,’ Conan said with a perturbed look in his eyes. ‘Whatever you say now, you’ll regret it in the morning.’
Ironheart answered the question himself. ‘No, he hasn’t.’ His lip curled. ‘But I wouldn’t expect him to boast his part abroad.’
‘So help me God, William, I’ve made my peace with you and her. I’ll not have you drag it out of the tomb again because you cannot hold your drink!’ Conan said sharply.
Ironheart hunched his shoulders and, ignoring Conan, faced Joscelin. ‘I was sitting at a fire like this one, drinking some poison from Normandy that dared to call itself wine and eating bread with weevils in it, when a young Breton mercenary approached me and begged for employment. Begged,’ he emphasized with a fierce look across the flames.
Conan sat very still. A groove of muscle tightened in the hollow of his cheek.
‘Sir, if you want to speak about this, do it tomorrow when you’re sober,’ Joscelin said.
Ironheart looked down at the restraining hand Joscelin had laid on his sleeve. ‘I won’t want to talk when I’m sober. No, you sit here and listen; it’s time that you knew.’ He shook Joscelin off and raised his cup in toast to Conan. ‘As it happened, I needed men and decided that if he was useful with a sword, I would hire him. In the meantime, soft fool that I was in those days, I let him sit at my fire and share my supper. Imagine that. I might as well have invited a wolf to dinner!’
‘You were as glad of my company as I was of the warmth,’ Conan said with quiet anger. ‘And when I asked if you had employment for my sister, too, you immediately jumped to the conclusion that she was a whore.’
‘It was the way you said it and the way she came to the fire with neither wimple nor veil to cover her hair.’
‘She was a virgin; she didn’t have to wear a head covering to be respectable.’
Ironheart’s laugh was caustic. ‘God’s toes, I’m not stupid. No man in his right mind would allow his sister to walk around an army camp with her hair uncovered, especially if she was a virgin. It would be an incitement to rape if ever there was one. You knew what you were about, Conan. You thought you’d use Morwenna to make sure of your position in my retinue. A clean untouched lass would be certain to appeal to a man who was finicky about using the camp sluts and had been a long time from home. It’s the truth, isn’t it?’
Conan chewed the inside of his mouth. ‘She
Ironheart gulped the last mouthful of usquebaugh. ‘You didn’t stop her when she loosened her braids and you didn’t refuse the silver I paid you for her maidenhead. ’
‘No,’ Conan bit out. ‘You’re right. I was enough of a whore myself to sell her to you. Would to God that I’d kept away from your banner that night.’
‘Amen to that!’ Ironheart snarled and looked at the son he had begotten on that long-ago campaign. Morwenna’s clear, beautiful eyes watched him across the firelight. He remembered her laughter, her willfulness and her impudence that sat so at odds with his ideal of women. He remembered her hair in his hands, dark and heavy and cool, the predatory demands of her body that took his own by surprise, although she had indeed been a virgin. And suddenly all the usquebaugh in the world would not have been enough to grant him oblivion. His eyes burned and filled with moisture and his chest and throat tightened. ‘I need a piss,’ he said and, lurching to his feet, staggered off in the direction of the latrine pit.
Conan put his face in his hands for a moment, then lifted his head and looked at Joscelin. ‘I should never have taken the usquebaugh from that Galwegian,’ he said bleakly.
‘Was that what really happened between him and my mother? I have never heard him speak of it before.’
‘More or less. I knew she was determined to make his bed her haven. She told me that she would give her maidenhead while she had a choice. You know how hard it is on the women of the camp; their men are killed in battle and they become the spoils and chattels of the survivors. Morwenna saw her freedom in your father.’ Conan rubbed his scar. ‘I don’t suppose it was a strange choice back then. He was a handsome man in his younger days and he had presence and a way of smiling that turned women to water. I could see she was set on him. The silver was incidental. I did not mean what I said about being whore enough to take it from him. As far as I was concerned, it was a bride price.’
Joscelin’s mind filled with a faint but evocative recollection of his mother’s thick dark hair and her hand touching his head. A glint of laughter. The memories must be painfully intense to the grown man who had possessed so much more and lost everything. ‘Perhaps it was too high for him to pay,’ he said softly, his eyes upon the tall shadow beyond the firelight.
Chapter 20
Quivering with excitement, Robert stood at his mother’s side in the dank autumn evening while Rushcliffe’s courtyard filled with men, horses and laden baggage wains.
‘Mama, there’s Joscelin!’ He pointed vigorously at the familiar liver-chestnut with its distinctive stocking marks.
Linnet’s heart fluctuated between her throat and her stomach. For three weeks they had heard nothing, apart from occasional frightening rumours that came down the Humber and the Fosse road with Nottingham- bound traders. They had been told on different occasions that the Scots had reached Yorkshire and were marching on York itself, that the Scottish army was thirty thousand strong and every man a savage. Both Milo and Malcolm had scoffed at such exaggerations.
‘Three thousand perhaps,’ Malcolm had said as Linnet smeared soothing ointment on his scar to prevent it from itching. ‘I’m no saying they won’t be doughty warriors, and gey savage, but they’ll be more lightly armed - out for what they can loot. They’ll nae hold fast against mounted Normans.’
Linnet had taken what comfort she could from his confidence and gone about her normal business as if Joscelin and his mesnie were out for the day hunting game and not hundreds of miles farther north engaging the Scots. To keep herself from brooding, she had taken up needlework with a vengeance. Not only was her wedding gown of sky-blue wool finished but she had also made Joscelin two shirts and a tunic of deep forest-green. Beside her, Robert was resplendent in a new tunic of that same green, his garment mirroring in miniature the one she had made for Joscelin. In Robert, the colour admirably set off the blond of his hair. In Joscelin, it would bring out the green flecks in his irises.
He was home to wear that tunic now but not for long. Earlier that day, Brien FitzRenard had arrived in a state of near exhaustion, craving food and lodging for the night and a fresh horse in the morning. He had staggered to the pallet she had hastily arranged for him in a wall-chamber and fallen asleep almost immediately, but not before telling her that he had orders for Joscelin the moment that he returned. Orders that she knew, with a heavy heart, would only send him somewhere else to fight.
She watched Joscelin light down from the saddle and noted with relief as he came towards her that he moved easily, without any impediment to suggest injury. Robert danced from one foot to the other like a hound straining on a leash. The man’s lips twitched. Linnet stooped, murmured in her son’s ear and gave him a gentle push. With a pang she watched him run to his hero.
‘I prayed every day like you said and I can gallop my pony now and guess what, one of the coneys has had five babies and they’ve got no fur!’ Robert gabbled out in one long breath, then shrieked with delight as Joscelin
