his shout through the tightness in his throat squeezed the band of pain across his forehead until he thought his skull was going to shatter. ‘I had a woman and child once before and I lost them. I wasn’t there when it mattered!’
Ironheart winced as if the raw anguish in Joscelin’s voice was a physical blow. Turning, he took two paces back towards his son, then stopped. His fists opened and closed and his throat worked. When the words came they were heaved out with effort as if they were enormous stones. ‘I wasn’t there to protect your mother,’ he said. ‘When I arrived from their summons she was dead but still warm enough for me to believe she was yet alive - only sleeping.’ He gave a choked laugh. ‘They said I tried to kill myself for love of her but it wasn’t true. It was for hatred of myself.’ Clamping his hands around his belt, he drew a shaken breath. ‘The woman and child you mentioned, this happened during those missing seven years?’
Joscelin nodded, his pain too great for him to be amazed that his father had voluntarily spoken of his own hidden guilts and griefs. ‘Breaca took me under her wing and then into her bed. She bore Juhel in the winter of ’sixty-one. Your grandson would have been twelve years old by now.’
‘What happened?’
‘Camp fever.’ Joscelin bit his lip. ‘He wasn’t strong enough to survive it. When he died, so did the fire between his mother and me - or perhaps it was already out. I don’t want to lose Linnet and Robert, too.’ He bowed his head and closed his eyes. Even the candlelight was almost too much to bear as the headache invaded and wrecked his faculties.
‘You won’t lose them,’ Ironheart said gruffly. ‘The child looks to be over the worst, from what I saw just now, and the woman’s got a stubborn core of steel.’
‘No, I’m going to lose her, too,’ Joscelin said bleakly. ‘Everything has changed.’
‘Don’t talk such drivel. All that has changed is your ability to think.’ Ironheart’s harsh features suddenly softened and he gave a deep sigh. ‘Conan thought I’d dredge up some wise words from somewhere to comfort you but I fear he overestimated my ability. All I can say is that I am here. You have to trust me. Give me the care of your wife and stepson for tonight and I promise I won’t let anything happen.’
Joscelin wanted to deny his father, tell him it was impossible, but the pain that had been toying with him like a cat with a mouse now sheathed its claws in his skull and the world became a seething agony. He was only dimly aware that the words emerging from his mouth were not the ones he desired to say.
Ironheart went to the door and shouted for the servants.
Linnet felt something lying on top of her. Hot and smothering, it pinned her to the mattress, making it impossible to breathe. She struggled to push it off but it responded by tightening its grip. She thought she could feel cruel fingers digging into her flesh and the bowl of her pelvis cramped as if she had been invaded. Choking for air, she opened her eyes and at first saw only the darkness of the night illuminated by the one lonely flame of the night candle beside the bed. She could make out the figure of a man sitting in the chair. He started to rise and bend towards her, and as he did the weight on her chest grew leaden.
‘Don’t fight me,’ whispered the voice of Raymond de Montsorrel. ‘You cannot win.’
She tried to scream but there was no breath in her lungs. A whirling darkness engulfed her. Her eyes were blind but she could still hear voices. Raymond whispering in her ear with the darkness of lust, Giles raging, calling her a harlot. Joscelin . . . Joscelin saying, Christ, wake up, I don’t want to listen to this. Another voice, closer, harder with frustration.
‘Come on, woman, damn you. Fight. Or was I wrong about your spirit? Do you think I’m going to let you do this to my son? You will not die!’
The other voices faded and the darkness ceased to whirl. Her lungs shuddered, filling with cold air. Making a tremendous effort, she forced her lids apart. The figure was leaning over her now, eyes darkly gleaming in the candlelight, cadaverous features intense but very different from Raymond’s. William de Rocher laid a calloused palm on her brow in a surprisingly gentle manner. She tried to flinch but her weakness was too great. Indeed, her eyelids were too heavy to hold open, and after a brief struggle she had to let them flicker down.
‘Hmph, still hot,’ she heard Ironheart say, ‘but steadying down. You, girl, see to your mistress.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Linnet heard the trickle of water in a bowl, and in a moment a blessedly cool cloth was laid across her forehead. The bedside chair creaked as Ironheart sat down again. Why was he here? she wondered vaguely, and where were Joscelin and Robert? It was too difficult to think. Sleep was claiming her in a soft, deep blanket and she welcomed its embrace.
Ironheart watched Linnet sink into sleep as the maid lightly wiped her down. Dawn was still several hours away, late because of the encroaching winter, but he judged that the crisis had been reached and perhaps a corner turned.
After a while, as Linnet continued to breathe deeply and evenly without impediment, he left the maid in attendance and went stiffly into the antechamber, where Joscelin was sleeping with Robert on a makeshift pallet. The child was visibly improving. Probably by the morning he would be complaining he was hungry. Thin and small though he was, sapped to pallor and shadows, he also possessed the tenacity of a clinging vine.
Ironheart turned his attention to the man against whom Robert was curled. Even in sleep, the marks of pain were etched between Joscelin’s dark brows. He remembered his son’s earlier words. A woman and child in the mercenary camps. The thought, which had been held on the surface by other considerations, now began to seep into every level of his being. Ironheart stooped to the hearth to pick up the flagon of usquebaugh-laden wine. Seven missing years in which, unaware, he had become a grandfather and then been bereaved. Joscelin was so much like him that he wondered if his bloodline was cursed.
Chapter 27
An inflated pig’s bladder sailed through the air and struck the dais with a solid thump, dislodging a branch of evergreen and a pair of antlers pegging the foliage in place. The bladder bounced off the decorations and squelched into a dish of tripe on one of the lower tables. A diner fished it out and hurled it back the way it had come. Blazing a comet-trail of sticky lumps, the bladder curved across the dais and landed on the floor at Father Gregory’s feet. A look of intense revulsion on his fine-cut features, the priest nudged the improvised ball away with the edge of his boot.
With considerably more enthusiasm, a gazehound surged from beneath the table to lick at the remnants of tripe still clinging to the bladder. When a servant approached with the intention of rescuing the missile, the dog wrinkled its muzzle and snarled, then secured the bladder firmly between its forepaws and bit at the knotted end. There was a bang. The remnants of the football shot into the air and landed on the dog’s back. Ears flat, the hound scooted beneath the table and knocked Father Gregory off the bench.
Conan leaned down, flexed his forearm and hauled the unfortunate priest back on to his seat to howls of mirth and appreciation from the unruly crowd below the dais.
‘Church always does take a tumble on Twelfth Night!’ Conan laughed. ‘Never fear, you’ve got all year to take your revenge in tithe payments, Peter’s pence and penances. Isn’t that right, Josce?’
‘If you say so.’ Joscelin, resplendent in a tunic of dark-red wool trimmed with gold silk braid, toasted his uncle in mead. The garment was a Christmas gift from Linnet. Robert had one exactly the same and could not be persuaded to wear anything else.
Conan made a rude face at Joscelin’s indifferent tone of voice. ‘God, you’re getting to be as sour as your father!’ he declared. ‘Where’s your Twelfth Night spirit?’
‘Wearing thin,’ Joscelin said as one of the cook’s apprentices capered past the dais wearing a woman’s gown, a wimple set askew on his yellow curls. Twelfth Night was never any different: short of murder, everyone was given licence to behave outrageously and the rules were always stretched to their limit. Usually Joscelin would have joined the merriment, if not with alacrity, then with a reasonable degree of grace, but tonight, although he knew he should be rejoicing, he did not have the will. The residue of yet another headache burned behind his
