from Chapter Eleven
"Sir Knight. I hear that thou wilt not say thy name nor thy true business to anyone.”
"It is a vow I have made, that Baron Cloyes must be the first in England to know of these things. ”
“Man, thy story might turn my heart completely to thy cause,” Lord Godwin said.
“It matters little now, my lord.” Sir Chris coughed several times. “The earl has said I am to be made to confess to the burning of the manor house. To that I cannot confess, and so ... Lady Hope?”
“Yes, Sir Chris?”
“I am sorry I could not help you,” he said in a voice I could scarcely hear. “I am sorry, too, that you were not persuaded to know Christ.”
Hope and the Knight of the Black Lion
by Mary C. Findley
copyright by Mary C. Findley 2010
Published by Findley Family Video Smashwords Edition
Many images used herein were obtained from IMSI’s MasterClips/ MasterPhotos copyrighted Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. East, San Rafael, CA 94901-5506, USA.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. Exception is made for short excerpts used in reviews.
“Speaking the truth in love.”
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to persons living or dead is coincidental except as noted in the “Notes for the Reader” section after the text of the story.
Table of Contents
Chapter One : A Latin Lesson, A Footrace, A Mysterious Chamber
Chapter Two: A Strange Knight, A Home Destroyed, A Disordered Mind
Chapter Three: A Shrouded Demon, A Red Boar, A Sign of Weakness
Chapter Four: A Black Lion, A Broken Door, A Scented Sheepskin
Chapter Five: A Knight's Duty, A Lover's Scorn, A Maiden's Doubt
Chapter Six: A Crusader's Quest, A Captive's Vow, A Friendship Forged
Chapter Seven : A Father's Teaching, A Brother's Love, A Knight's Resolve
Chapter Eight: A Singing Slave, A Friend Refound, A Captive Freed
Chapter Nine: A Lesson Revisited, A Scout's Report, A Plan Prepared
Chapter Ten: A Part to Play, An Unexpected Ally, A Trust Betrayed
Chapter Eleven: A Plea Unheeded, A Twisted Tale, A True Defender
Chapter Twelve: A Prisoner Exchange, A Reunion, A Revelation
Chapter Thirteen: A Desperate Plan, A Butterfly Palace, A True Defender
Chapter Fourteen: A Daring Declaration, A Rich Discovery, A Deliverance
Chapter Fifteen: A Homecoming, A Blessing, Reunions Aplenty
Chapter Sixteen: Bittersweet Vows, Secret Love, Hidden Hopes
Chapter Seventeen: Justice and Grace, A Family Found, A Friend Reclaimed
Chapter Eighteen: Friends Reunited, Faith Rewarded, Hope Renewed
Chapter One : A Latin Lesson, A Footrace, A Mysterious Chamber
Non ex operibus
iustitiae quae fecimus nos sed secundum suam misericordiam salvos nos
fecit per lavacrum regenerationis et renovationis Spiritus Sancti.
Titus
III:v
Not by works of righteousness
which we have done but according to His mercy He saved us through
washing of regeneration, and renewing by the Holy Spirit.
Titus
3:5
"Sum, es, est," I intoned. "Summus, estis,sunt." My uncle, Baron John Cloyes of Colchester in Essex, nodded encouragement, his soft silver hair sliding loose from his brown felt stirrup hat and falling into his gray-blue eyes.
"Very good, my Hope," he murmured, pushing the hair from his gaunt features with a long, thin hand. He towered over me, well above six feet in height. Even at seventeen I showed no signs of carrying on the family tradition of statuesque grace. The few weeks my mother and I had passed here only confirmed my dwarfish status. My standing stool for this worktable had been raised twice and still the grammar tome sat just under my chin. Even my mother, the Lady Ada, sister to Baron John, was inches taller than me.
It was no wonder that when my father, Charles Fitzhugh, Baron of Maidstone, had died a few months ago the escheator had determined that I could not inherit his estate. Of course the fact that I was female could not have entered into his thinking. The king passed it on to a favored distant male relative of my father's. Thus we had come to live with my mother's brother.
"Eram, eras, erat." I rolled my blue eyes around the drawing room-turned schoolroom, trying to find something to think about besides the conjugation of the irregular Latin verb to be and the fact that this whole manor house was scaled for giants. I felt like Jack in Cormoran's kitchen, but there were no golden harps or hens laying golden eggs.
"Eramus, eratis, errant." The solid oak furniture was sparse and not much ornamented. The fireplace was common gray river stone and lime. Fennel and thyme hung from the smoke-darkened beams exactly as they had at home. I rested my gaze on the tapestries covering the walls and saw devout crusaders engaging evil Saracens, a colorful fair with a footrace underway, and determined hunters pursuing wild cats into a grove.
I hastily closed my eyes, drawing a deep breath that probably swelled my small frame. I twined my short, square fingers into the black braids beneath my white coif and pulled hard to restore my concentration.
"Ero, eris, erit, erimus, eritis, erunt!" It burst out of me something like an overladen cart outstripping its oxen down a steep hill, but it was over.
"Well done, well done, Hope!" laughed my uncle, patting my shoulder. "Now for the Scripture." I reached for the massive Latin Vulgate across the workbench. It was so heavy I could barely stir it, two stone easily. Together it and I would barely have topped a hundredweight if my lincoln grayne gown and I had been soaked. Uncle John gave it a push and I opened the tome, searching for my old parchment scrap wrapped in linen. I pulled it out and unwrapped the much-overwritten lesson sheet. My uncle put out a hand to keep my place in the Bible and I saw that his skin was as gray and old as my charcoal-smudged page.
"Non ex operibus iustitiae quae fecimus nos sed secundum suam misericordiam salvos nos fecit per lavacrum regenerationis et renovationis Spiritus Sancti," I read haltingly. "Titus III:v."
"Your pronunciation is improving greatly, my Hope," my uncle said. "Now the translation."
"Not by works of justice ... "
"Better to say righteousness."
"… Righteousness which we have done but according to His mercy He saved us through washing of … of making new ... "
"Regeneration, my dear. Being reborn or given a new life."
"… Regeneration, and renewing by the Holy Spirit."
"Excellent! Oh, excellent, Hope." The baron seemed to freeze suddenly. The hand beside me moved slowly, hesitantly and came to rest on his chest. He breathed very slowly and softly and his eyes got a faraway look.
"Uncle, do you know that it is not usual to teach Latin to a girl?" I asked. I prayed that he would at least agree it was hopeless to go on trying to put learning into my dull head. I did not mind a few chores like bread making and even cleaning but being still for hours was torture. At home I had climbed trees and slept under the stars and even bested boys in a footrace now and then. I glanced longingly out the window at the perfect autumn day.
Before we had come to Colchester I had been like the red and golden leaves swirling freely through the air on the sweet breeze. Now I felt again that I was like them, but that I was doomed to lie dead and still upon the ground. I had been studying Latin and Greek since the day I had arrived and I was sick of study.
"I want you to understand the Scriptures for yourself," Uncle John replied. "Since they are not in English, or French, or German, then you must read them in Latin."
"I … do not read French or German either," I pointed out. I did not mention that reading in any language had never been an interest or willing pursuit.
"You will," smiled my uncle. "And more Greek as well, and perhaps a bit of Italian before we are through." I fidgeted and promptly fell off my standing stool. Uncle John caught me by the arm and set me upright on the floor.
"I am sorry, uncle," I said with a furious blush. "I am not used to being so still for so long."
"So your mother has told me." Uncle John frowned and seemed to wrestle with himself. "Well, then, child, since you have been working so hard, suppose we declare a little holiday." My heart leaped, and I fear so did my body. Uncle John looked mildly surprised to see me jump so but said nothing. "St. John's celebrates the oyster harvest with a fair beginning tomorrow."
"A fair, uncle?" I cried. "Oh, may we go?"
"Why, yes, I believe we may," Uncle John nodded. "You have met almost none of the hundred yet, and also the Earl of Chelmsford will be in attendance with his son. It is proper that you and your mother should meet them.
The earl will be judging a footrace and his son has won the last few years."
"A footrace? Oh, uncle, may I be in the race?"
"You, run in a footrace? But it is for boys and young men, My Hope."
"But my father always let me race with the boys." I did not add that it was less permission than indulgence because I seldom asked leave beforehand.
"It may not be, Lady Hope," the baron said sternly. "You are to learn your lessons and the management of this household. Racing with boys will not help you become a graceful and wise young woman. I wish to see you grow into a fit mistress for Colchester and a proper wife for my son Richard."
"Uncle, Sir Richard has been gone from England for fifteen years," I exclaimed. "I heard that he disowned the family name and probably died in one of Louis IX's crusades. Why do you believe he will return, or that he would be a fit husband for me if he does?"
"Hope, have not both I and your mother asked you to pray fervently for Richard's return and his repentance?"
"Of course, uncle, and I have made prayers and burnt candles faithfully at St. John's, St. Botolph's Priory and even St. Mary Magdalene's," I said uncomfortably. "But our chapel gathers dust and the altar seems never to be used. No priest ever comes to the manor. I am sure that you never seek the church's intercession for him. Would not a father's orisons be more efficacious than mine?"
"It is apparent that the Latin lesson have made no impression upon you," growled my uncle. "No works can save Richard – not mine, not yours, not his own. Only God's mercy and grace can do this work. I pray for that, and I do not ask a priest's help or waste money on useless candles."
"But, uncle, we cannot speak directly to God," I faltered. In the short time we had lived with Baron John I had found him a sweet, patient, quiet man. This tower of anger frightened me. I did not know what he meant by saying the church was no help to him in his prayers for Richard. I simply wanted the uncle I knew back. He saw the fear in my eyes and subsided.
"Of course you do not understand. You cannot learn it all at once," he sighed. Thankfully he did not return to the subject of my betrothal to his son, who was twenty years my senior. I had much more to object to than Richard's disappearance or his undutiful conduct as a son. The very idea of marrying a man almost forty filled me with revulsion. He extended a bent arm to me and I twined mine in it. "Come, come, let us go and find your lady mother and tell her you must both have festive gowns for tomorrow, for we go a-fairing."
"But I want some oysters!" I exclaimed as my mother tried to draw me away from the vendors' stalls, my face already shiny with sugar and grease. "It is a celebration of the oyster harvest and I have not even had any oysters yet!" The day of the fair was a little cooler than yesterday but it only seemed to make things sharper, brighter and clearer.
I suddenly saw a handsome boy with golden curls and laughing brown eyes watching me and I blushed and hurried to my mother's side. I must have looked dwarfish standing beside my tall, slender mother in her blue damask gown and snow white toque, she so fair and graceful. The young man disappeared into the crowd milling across the grassy field away from the stalls.
"Hope, it is nearly time for the race," my mother chided. "Your uncle wishes to introduce us to the earl and his son beforehand."
"The race! Mother, I have to get something. I will be right along."
Reluctantly my mother parted from me, picking her way across the meadow to join the group forming at the race's starting place. I tore off to a thicket surrounding a giant dead oak, a fine hiding place I had spied the first day we arrived in Essex. I dug through the brush and dead leaves into the hollow tree's cavity, where I found Curt Bradenham's clothes. I had bartered for them yesterday and paid dearly, too, to get the shoemaker's son to give them up and hide them for me as well, with the jet and silver lion's head brooch my father had brought back from the Holy Land after the taking of Jerusalem. Curt had smirked and said he would have the silver pin and the fine ash bow and arrows that were to be the prize as well. I had merely smiled.
I shed my green sleeveless surcoat and slid out of my yellow cotehardie. Helde had wanted something for leaving it unlaced, of course, since she might have been punished if it had been discovered. She had gasped in wonder at my bronze Egyptian mirror, another gift from my father. Father and I had giggled over the woman on the handle and how he had wrapped its nakedness modestly in blue silk before giving it to me. I felt sad at giving it up just to run a race but I found these reminders of what I had lost painful and hoped getting rid of them would ease the hurt.
Putting on Curt's clothing, a linen shirt, coarse brown tunic, braes and hose only took a moment. I felt so free. My uncle was very strict and I had hardly even been out of his sight. It had seemed I was doomed forever to be imprisoned in gowns and wimples and couvre-chefs. I clamped the borealis hat over my braids and stuffed my women's weeds into the crevice.
As I ran across the meadow I deeply regretted stuffing myself with sweets and fried delicacies. They weighed heavily on my midsection. I ran full into someone as I tried to dart into line at the racecourse. We both went down and the fellow cursed and rolled on top of me with his hand at my throat. It was the same handsome boy I had seen at the vendors' stalls. He had shed his gold-threaded, tight-fitted scarlet tunic and wore a simple linen shirt, a sleeveless russet tunic, braes and hose. Except for the obvious fineness of the workmanship of the tunic his garb was similar to that worn by all the other boys and myself.
Most of the runners wore some kind of hat, some decorated with a feather or bright piece of cloth, so I did not feel out of place. On my hat I had pinned the last memento I still had of my father – a small mantle-clasp he had worn depicting a gold palm branch and a cross in rubies given to him by Friar James in Kent for his service in the Crusades. The young stranger wore a black felt cap with feathers from a red-tailed hawk. He stared and grinned and withdrew his hand.
"You are a girl," he hissed. "How dare you come here among these men?"
"You mean these boys," I sneered, trying not to let anyone overhear. He let me up and we sidled into our places but he stayed close beside me. "I can beat anyone here."
"Arrogant little wench," he sniffed. "I have won this race before. It will be more fun to teach you a lesson."
A portly but handsome man with perfumed golden hair and a rich purple bliaut and red mantle with gold embroidery on the sleeves called out for the race to begin. I tore away from the pack. Never had I run like this before, even considering the smooth, rolling countryside that made a perfect racecourse. I ran half in fear, half in anger over this boy who put my thoughts in a whirl where pleasant and unpleasant mixed uncomfortably.
I left the pack behind and streaked toward the beech hanger that marked the halfway point of the race. Just as I entered the underbrush my indulgences at the food stalls caught up with me and I had to deposit the contents of my stomach in the bushes. As I finished someone tackled me and I rolled off the trail. The blond boy pinned me.
"You are fleet as a hind," he said, breathing hard. "But I am Actaeon and will bring you down."
"I am Aphrodite and I curse you for your discourtesy to maidenhood!" I bit his hand as he tried to cover my mouth and he roared and fell back.
"I wish I could see what Actaeon saw!" the boy said as he grabbed for me again. A hot flush washed over me at his words and I hardly knew if I wanted to escape. Then I remembered the race. I jammed my little knife into the hem of his tunic and pinned him to the ground, scrabbling free and darting out of the thicket right in front of the lagging pack as they caught up to us.
I burst out of the beeches with the whole lot of boys close behind. I could hardly breathe but somehow I kept running. The blond boy appeared in the corner of my eye and I barely managed to avoid his grasping hand. He lost his footing and plunged headlong, just allowing me to cross the finish line first. The others had to dive in all directions to avoid tripping over my pursuer's prone body. Half a dozen men in livery raced forward to help the blond boy to his feet and the nobleman who had begun the race hurried anxiously forward, along with my mother and Baron John.
"Robert! Are you hurt?" the blond man demanded.
"Of course not!" snapped the boy, getting up and pushing the servants aside. His face was red with humiliation and he looked around for me.
"Hope, what have you been doing?" my mother gasped. I suddenly realized my hat was gone and my braids had no doubt been flying like banners since the beech hanger. My uncle looked grimmer than I had ever seen him.
"So this is the Lady Hope," chuckled the blond man. "I am Walter Talcott, Earl of Chelmsford, and this is my son Robert. This race was not to be for such delicate maids as yourself, my lady."
"You are Lady Hope?" the boy spluttered. "Well, then, at least I was beaten by noble blood. It is all right, father. Give her the prize. She deserves it."
The earl took the bow and arrows from the groom who stood beside him. My uncle stepped between us as he started to present them to me, however. "I pray your pardon, lord earl," my uncle said grimly. "Lady Hope may not accept this prize. She has disobeyed the wishes of her mother and myself and must be punished. By your leave, we shall depart."
"Now see here!" Robert cried. "Hope does not have to leave. I wish her to stay."
My uncle fixed a look on Robert that quailed his bravado in an instant. He flushed angrily and turned away, speaking rapidly to an attendant. Just before my uncle pulled me away Robert lunged forward, brazenly kissed me on the cheek and at the same time slipped something into my hand.
"I am going to marry you," he breathed into my ear. "I will speak to my father about it today." I thought my uncle would strike him but he simply strode off with me running to keep up. My mother followed in tight-lipped silence. When we got home my uncle took me into my classroom and made me kneel down at the worktable.
He beat me with a willow wand. I had never been physically punished. My mother stood there and watched it done. I stared at her with eyes filled with rage and humiliation and she never said a word. The amount of pain a little thin branch could inflict was astonishing, but I neither cried nor made a sound. Finally my uncle left off and assisted me to rise. I could barely stand and at last the tears burst forth.
"This is unjust, my lord!" I cried, bitterly angry with myself for giving way to what he must certainly have wanted. I meant to show him they were anything but tears of repentance. "It is excessive, to beat me so for a footrace!"
"You think I beat you because you raced?" The baron looked so pale and ill. In spite of my anger I wondered why he seemed so weak. "I beat you because you have given encouragement to that whelp Talcott. His father is a wastrel and I see the seeds of the same in the son. You must not let him have his way with you. You are destined for another, Lady Hope, and even if you were not I would forbid this match. If the boy follows the man he would tear your heart to bits if it gave him pleasure. Do not see him again. I forbid it."
I was so astonished I could not speak. My mother tried to kneel and embrace me and I pushed her away. Sorrowfully she rose and she and the baron left the room. My maid Helde appeared to lead me off to the screened-off area of the solar that served as sleeping chamber to my mother and I. She had a very soothing balm for my legs and many tears as she applied it. In the midst of her babbling I gathered she wanted to return the bronze mirror, thinking that I had been punished for giving it away. I sighed and did not undeceive her. After she left I pried open my hand, which had become stiff from concealing what Robert had given me. It was a scrap of deerskin containing a crude picture of some kind of building. A pair of deer antlers grew atop it and two stick figures stood beside it close together. Stars and a moon were scratched above the other objects.
I went softly out into the solar, thinking over my uncle's geography lessons and wondering if I could see Chelmsford from one of the windows. My mother's and my tiny alcove did not face in the right direction. I slipped up two steps into an antechamber screened with heavy wood lattice that I had never entered before but which seemed to point in the right direction.
It was a dark and hazy place and I went toward the window, not minding where I was and wondering what Robert had meant by the little puzzle I held in my hand. Instead of the earl's castle I saw through the trees, sharply backlit by the fading afternoon sun, the roof of a little cottage a mile or two from the manor. The baron's former gamekeeper had retired a short while ago and had moved to Blackheath to take an inn called the Red Boar. His cot stood mostly empty because our new gamekeeper lived hard by the manor and rarely used it.
This, then, must be what Robert had meant by his drawing. I was to meet him at the gamekeeper's cot tonight. His handsome, laughing image filled my mind and I knew I would defy my uncle a hundred times over to see Robert again. His kiss had seemed just a ploy to distract attention from giving me the note but as I thought on it I realized that it had warmed and excited me in a way I had never felt before. I covered my cheek as if it had left a visible mark and turned to leave the chamber.
But what place was this? I looked around in astonishment. The baron cared little for ornament and the solar; yea, the whole manor, was almost featureless. In this, a rare private chamber in the open world of a manor, a powerful personality leaped out at me. On one wall hung a scholar's gown, impossibly long, surrounded by various objects that a student might acquire, an inkwell and quill as well as a wicked-looking knife and a shelf with a few precious books. Since coming here I had seen more books in Colchester Manor than I had my whole life before. A partly-unrolled sheepskin bore a long Latin inscription mentioning the word "Cambridge," which I took to indicate that someone had attended lectures there and perhaps had even become a master of arts. I dared not touch anything so I went on looking about the room.
On another wall hung a fine pair of crossed swords and a shield that bore the emblem of the house of Cloyes. A suit of leather practice armor hung beneath it. Beside the window on a black oak stand rested a lute and some sheet music. On the floor before the hearth was spread a huge bearskin. Spears and a gigantic bow and arrows rested by the fireplace. If I had felt small in this house before it was nothing to the dwarfing effect of being in this room. I approached the oversized bed and was shocked to see that a woman's garter woven with pink and gold threads peeked out from beneath the pillow. Besides that everything seemed perfectly orderly.
I opened a small chest on the bedside table that seemed to be oriental in design. Inside lay some fine amber and gold jewelry of a very masculine design and at the bottom a neatly folded piece of parchment. Someone coughed behind me and I whirled to see old Simon, my uncle's seneschal. I shoved the parchment into my sleeve. Old Simon watched me narrowly. I had had very little to do with the ancient creature, since he managed the household and I wanted nothing to do with that. He always dressed in a close dark mantle and his large head stuck out of it on an absurdly thin neck. An ill-fitting gray cap usually covered his bald pate but just now he held it in his hands as if he had been in the act of putting it on. His protruding, watery pale eyes flitted around the room and then fixed on me.
"Was there something my lady wished?" he asked coldly.
"Oh, I only wanted to look out the window," I said dismissively. Then I looked more closely at Simon.
He looked a bit like a faithful guard whose duty has been neglected so that an enemy has entered his domain. "Why has this place been kept like a shrine?" I demanded. "My mother and I could have been housed here instead of Uncle John going to the expense of making us another chamber."
"My lord the baron has permitted me to keep the chamber is as it was when my young lord was here," Simon replied.
"Is it Sir Richard's room?" I looked around in wonder. "He seems to have pursued a great many interests. Music, skill at arms, scholarship, hunting – I daresay he had indifferent success with so many things."
"My lord Richard was thought to be very accomplished," Simon responded. "In all of these things he was considered a master."
I sniffed. "Of course I cannot know if that is true. But I also cannot imagine why everyone believes he will return after so many years with no word. Surely he must be dead."
Simon grew pale but he gave no other sign that my harsh words had affected him. Obviously the old man had loved Richard. If indeed he had been so accomplished he must have been worthy of a faithful old servant's honor at one time. I had heard nothing but bad about him – how he had said he would no longer wear the colors of Colchester or carry the name of Cloyes. What had happened to change him? "I said he surely must be dead, Simon," I repeated.
"That is in God's hands, my lady," Simon said. I was irked by his calm manner. I had wounded him, I knew it, but I could not shake him. Why I wanted to hurt him I could not say, but I went on. "Well, you had better tell the maids to have more care with the bedding. There is … an object … which should not be here." I blushed to remember the garter but did not turn to look again. Simon stepped past me and I watched him thrust the object under the pillow out of sight. "It belongs there?" I gasped.
"I have said that the room is as it was when Lord Richard was here," the ancient man said as he faced me without emotion.
"So he defiled his home as well as despised his name," I spat.
"He did not know Christ, my lady," Simon said softly. "I pray that when he returns, he will."
"We are all Christians, Simon," I scoffed. "Every Englishman knows Christ." Simon looked at me a long time. "It is not my place to speak to her ladyship about this matter. My lord the baron will teach you what you need to know." He bowed and shuffled away.
When the moon was high and the entire house asleep I dropped from my window in Curt Bradenham's clothes and quickly got out my pony, Cairn. I was thankful that I did not share a bed with my mother, though it meant I had to lie on a trundle only an inch off the floor. The ride to the gamekeeper's daub and wattle hut did not take long with the bright clarity of the moon silhouetting everything. I slipped off Cairn and approached the door. Someone grabbed me from behind. I screamed as a kiss was planted on my lips. Robert laughed at my terror. I felt a fire start in me with that kiss but suddenly I pushed him away and pulled Cairn's reigns so that he stepped between us.
"All right, Hope, I am sorry I frightened you," Robert said offhandedly. He tried to push Cairn aside but I held him there. "Are you not glad to see me? I welcome you, my Atalanta, fleet of foot to run a race and to run to me, your Hippomenes. You did not let me win the race but since you came I am sure you have decided to favor me." He beckoned me toward the cot. "Our bower awaits."
"I cannot stay, Robert," I said, confused and frightened. He stood out in sharp relief, almost without color, like a marble statue, perfectly handsome but somehow without warmth. I wanted to stay with him but my uncle's warning would not leave my mind. Still I could not say openly to Robert that my uncle thought he would not truly love me when he had promised to wed me at our first meeting. "I only came to tell you that I think my uncle opposes our marriage because he believes my cousin Richard still lives. I am betrothed to him, you see, but he disappeared so long ago he must be dead. If we could somehow convince him of that I believe he would relent."
Robert frowned and thought a moment. "Wait, I think I know a way," he grinned. "My father has met a French knight who has gone about Europe bringing messages of comfort to the families of dead Crusaders. He may know something of Richard Cloyes. My father said he would be in England soon. We will see that he comes to Chelmsford. But in the meantime ... "
"In the meantime you must return home before anyone knows you have gone," I interrupted him, jumping up on Cairn's back. "And so must I."
Robert seemed almost angry for a moment. He caught hold of my bridle and held me fast, staring into my eyes with fire in his own. I could not hold his gaze and blushed deeply.
"I must conquer your maidenly reserve, I see," he said finally, kissing my hand where it lay on Cairn's neck. "I will leave then, but go and look in the cot. I have left something for you. You missed them at the fair."
Robert mounted his bay stallion and sped out of the clearing. I went hesitantly to the cot and looked inside. On the table sat the splendid ash bow and arrows, my crumpled borealis hat with my father's clasp safely attached, and a covered basket. Inside the basket lay a cluster of still-warm oysters.
Safely I crept back into mine and my mother's alcove. I breathed a prayer of thanks that she seemed to sleep so soundly. I put on my nightgown and picked up a piece of paper that lay on the floor beside my trundle. It was the parchment from Richard's box that I had thrust into my sleeve when Simon had surprised me. Cautiously I opened it. It was filled with lines of writing and I flushed scarlet when I saw what it said, over and over, a hundred times, in a firm, strong, perfectly tidy hand.
"I will never marry that puking brat Hope. I will never marry that puking brat Hope. I will never marry that puking brat Hope."
I crept swiftly across the solar to Richard's chamber, threw open the box, returned the parchment to its place and started to slam the lid. Then I saw the inscription inside the box. "From Charles Fitzhugh, with loving regard, to my nephew, Richard Cloyes."
I shoved the parchment back inside, closed the box gently and left the room. So my cousin Richard had made his choice in the matter of our arranged marriage as well as I. I wondered how he could keep such a token in the box my father had given him, but it was no matter. Even before I had met Robert today I had known I would never marry Richard. It was good to know we agreed on something, and that I had a far better suitor. Now if I could only prove my cousin was dead and be free of his specter once and for all.
Chapter Two: A Strange Knight, A Home Destroyed, A Disordered Mind
O sacred Head, now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down,
Now
scornfully surrounded with thorns, Thine only crown;
O sacred
Head, what glory, what bliss till now was Thine!
Yet, though
despised and gory, I joy to call Thee mine.
What Thou, my
Lord, hast suffered, was all for sinners’ gain;
Mine, mine was
the transgression, but Thine the deadly pain.
Lo, here I fall, my
Savior! ’Tis I deserve Thy place;
Look on me with Thy favor,
vouchsafe to me Thy grace.
Old Simon's cracked and wheezing voice broke in upon my halting verb declension. "My lady, a knight comes asking to see the baron." I mocked him behind my mother's back as I quickly shut the book on my hated Latin lesson. We had come back to a lesson from earlier in the day on which I had done very badly and was doing worse tonight, with a warm early spring breeze still drifting in through the solar windows. The poor old parchment was crumpled and marred with angry tears and rubouts.
Mother rose from beside me. I looked up at her, so graceful and fair, with her dark braids framing her pale face and just a tiny touch of gray at the temples. She wore a snowy linen gown and wimple that made her look like an angel. She glanced once at me and her deep blue eyes filled with sorrow. I looked away, my own eyes probably almost as dark as my perse kirtle, as they always looked when I felt angry and stubborn. I had none of my mother's height and little enough of her beauty or grace. No, even now that I was nearly eighteen and had spent months schooling to be a lady under my uncle's stern tutelage, there was still not much of the Lady Ada in me.
"The baron has already retired, Simon," my mother said uneasily. My uncle had been ill a good deal. We had only lived with him five months and he seemed to be sick all the time now. When I asked my mother what ailed him, she said it was a sickness of the heart. I wondered why it was that the priest was not called when the physician attended him.
"Yes, my lady," Simon said, his eyes cast down. "This visitor is most insistent upon seeing him. He says his business is long-delayed and very urgent. my lady, perhaps you should see him and judge for yourself."
What was the matter with Simon, I wondered suddenly, staring at the old man. I had not seen him nervous or excited in all the time we had lived there, except on the day when I had invaded the sanctuary of my cousin Richard's room. I had not imagined it possible for the wizened old creature to show such strong feeling, but he seemed gripped by an emotion I could not read. He glanced at mother, at me, out to the main solar where Uncle John slept behind heavy carved oak screens. He usually took a sleeping draught – the doctor had insisted, because it seemed he never slept at all without it -- so it would have been difficult to awaken him.
"Very well, I will speak to him," my mother said. "But only to urge him to return tomorrow when the baron can receive him."
"You will send him away, my lady?" Simon asked anxiously. "Would not my lord wish hospitality to be offered to him?"
"Simon, I will see the man and speak to him," my mother replied quietly. Mother swept out of the solar and along the edge of the dark, massive oak-paneled dais where the family ate. I followed after a moment, very curious about this stranger who had so upset Simon. I peered across the dimness of the great hall toward the main entrance between the kitchen and buttery.
The house servants did not sleep in the great hall, as they did in some manors, but in an outbuilding hard by the kitchen. Only Simon and Helde had niches off the solar so they could be near if needed during the night. Mother paused halfway across the hall before the low-burning fire in the great hearth. A figure separated itself from the dark, rich tapestries against the far wall as if a knight of twenty years gone had come to life. I shrank back into a crouch on the dais, peeking between the walnut railings.
The knight, who held his slotted helmet in his arm, turned toward my mother and bowed in a very formal, old-fashioned manner. His mail and helmet had been carefully polished but were battered and scarred. His surcoat was blood red and bore the profile of a black lion's head thrown back and in full roar. I had never seen that insignia before and I had made some study of heraldry. He seemed very stiff and slow in his manner. I could see a mass of black hair shot with gray curling around his shoulders. Mother apparently could see his face, which to me was hidden in the shadows of the poorly lit hall, and she gave a gasp of fear and shrank back.
"Who are you?" she asked. I scuttled to the other side of the dais across the felt carpeting but still I could not see what had frightened her. He seemed to hear my movement, for his head snapped up and moved in my direction. I retreated quickly into the shadows.
"My name I cannot say, Lady Ada," the knight's deep, resonant voice said. His speech was strangely accented, foreign. "Believe me that I mean no harm, and let me speak with Baron John Cloyes. He will understand my business. It can only be told to him."
My mother glanced at the two retainers who stood near the door and they raised their lances. "Sir, I cannot possibly permit you to disturb the baron if I do not know you name or business," she said. "I do not know your face or form, or the house whose emblem you wear. I cannot tell if you mean good or ill. Give me some sign by which I may know your intentions."
"I say again, I mean no harm, my lady," the knight said. "But that is such a new thing with me in this house I cannot think how to prove it."
"Sir, you cannot expect me to take that as a proper answer," my mother said. "Nay, that I cannot, my lady," the man said, and I could hear a deep sadness in his rough voice that touched me in spite of my puzzlement at his failing to make himself known. "As you say, I will go, and tomorrow see if the baron will receive me. Good night, Lady Ada. God grant you and the baron safe rest."
"Sir …, Where shall you bide the night?" my mother asked as he turned to go. "Where I can, lady. It has been my habit. One more night I will bide where I can, and then, perhaps tomorrow ... "
"Sir ... " My mother hesitated. She was, as I had been, touched somehow by this mysterious man who gave us no reason to pity him except that desolate sound in his voice. "It is not my nature to refuse any visitor hospitality, but ... "
"Oh, my lady, do not trouble yourself about it," the man said. "I have given you no reason to show me kindness, but great reason to send me hence. Farewell."
And so he was gone. After the door closed my mother stood in the hall a long time, and we heard a sound of singing. The knight had a very fine baritone voice and we thrilled to the sound of O Sacred Head Now Wounded. My mother stood transfixed, listening, and twice or thrice started forward as if she would call the man back before the singing faded in the distance. I could not tell why, but I wanted her to do it with all my heart. But at last she turned and approached the dais again. I was frozen in my absurd spying attitude and she caught me there. I unbent myself and followed her up to the solar.
"Go to bed, My Hope," she said softly as she turned back into the study room. I crawled into my bed but my mind turned round and round. Mother and I had just been arguing again before the stranger had arrived. Robert Talcott had been making very open and insistent overtones of marriage to me. I would have been glad of anybody's overtures of marriage, but Robert happened also to be handsome, witty, wealthy and well-landed. I could not understand why my mother and Uncle John both continued to oppose him. And it was becoming more and more difficult to resist his physical presence. I had to meet him in secret, alone, of course, and his desire was plainly growing. We had to marry before I ran out of clever excuses or the wish to make them.
It was the specter of Cousin Richard again. We had passed from October into March with my uncle the baron and still his son had not been heard of, not that five months would make a difference when fifteen years had not. But I was not to think of marrying anyone else. Richard was my burden to carry until I could somehow prove he was not coming back. My mother and Uncle John both still believed he was alive and would return. It was an absurdity I could not reason them out of. The Earl himself had confirmed that he had joined the crusade of Louis IX to take Alexandria in Egypt but his ship had apparently been lost in a violent storm that had blown the rest off course to the city of Damietta. Thousands of knights went to the Crusades. So many did not return and were honored as fallen heroes but everyone knew they were dead. Why could not Uncle John and Lady Ada let Richard be dead?
And this ridiculous business of questioning the faith. No, it was not even questioning. My uncle was simply a heretic and I was sure my mother was already of his persuasion. Since my uncle's health had begun to decline so sharply my mother had helped with the lessons and they both openly accused the Church of wrong teaching. I continued to read the Scriptures myself and they pointed out to me every day new differences between what the Church taught and the Scripture said. We should all have been burned if we had not kept quiet and had most unusually discreet servants. Of course they would have been burned right along with us. This was one reason I resisted the Latin lessons. Of course I was learning it – much better than I wished, but I feared to repeat these lessons that made me doubt what I knew it was damnation to question. Robert would soon rescue me from this heretic household. That was my only hope.
Hope. I hated my name sometimes, because it was like a joke when it crept into everyone's speech and made him or her stare at me. "I hope it will rain," the gardener would say, and then smile at me. "It is my hope that you will honor my wishes," Uncle John would tell me, and look at me as if I was not his Hope if I was not going to obey him. I knew he was good and wise and loved me but I had not gotten over my anger with him about Robert. He and mother would have to accept that I had hopes of my own.
I heard a voice calling outside, something muffled, but I could tell it was in French. The hour was late, now, and the sky had grown overcast with a smell of rain. Who would come at this hour? I slipped out of bed and ran to the window. Leaning out, I could see an odd, orange-tinted glow which lit up the drizzly night over the roof of the small baking house. Past the oak-shingled granary I glimpsed horses coming along behind the dairy. I started as I saw a flickering at the henhouse.
The old wood structure where the servants slept began to glow strangely. I heard more muffled voices and heavy hoofbeats. Two barns beyond the inner wall practically burst into flames. The manor was enclosed by a moat which had long since dried up because of the lack of rain over the winter. Too ill to attend to it, the baron had allowed the outer wall to fall into disrepair. The sparse but overgrown hedge certainly presented no obstacle to invaders. I feared to know what would become of the stables of cows and oxen and the pigsty.
I rushed through the solar to see a company of men on horseback burst through the great wooden front door and ride straight into the hall.
I heard screams and clashing of weapons as the guards futilely engaged them. Old Simon ran toward them in his nightclothes waving a torch. To my horror the leader of the group, whom I could see in the light of Simon's guttering torch was a huge, hawk-nosed man with yellow hair and pale eyes, clubbed Simon to the ground.
"Hope! Hurry! Put on a cloak!" I turned away from the scene and saw my mother rush across the dais. She carried my dark blue cloak and threw it over my shoulders. We retreated to our own chamber. "Out the window with you, my love," mother hissed. "I know you have crept away enough times to go for your midnight rides. Go now, and ride for all our lives. Try to get help."
I scrambled out onto the window ledge and was down on the ground in a few moments. I looked up through the increasing shower and saw my mother at the window. Then a man's arm snatched her back out of my sight. I ducked under the overhang as a head poked out, looking down. I scuttled away under cover of the jutting wall and made it to the stables where our horses were kept. Thankfully it had not yet been set ablaze and I was able to drive out our few mounts and draft horses. I did not even think of saddling Cairn when I came to him at last. I simply threw myself on his back, cutting the rope with my little knife and kicking him backward out of the stable. He turned and flew off down the road toward the castle of Chelmsford and Robert's father's soldiers. Once I glanced behind me through the downpour that had finally burst loose. Flames shimmered through the haze of rain from the windows of Uncle John's manor house.
I nearly killed poor Cairn that night. We arrived at the earl's mud-splattered and exhausted and I roused the castle with my cries for help. The earl came out to me bleary-eyed and half-dressed, with a deep purple velvet mantle thrown over his nightclothes, but he came alert as he heard my tale and immediately gave orders for soldiers to go to Colchester and give assistance. Robert came into the audience chamber a moment later. I saw his handsome face and slim figure and all my tension and worry to burst out. I collapsed into his arms.
"Say, Hope, I am sorry for your trouble, but I cannot say I mind this," Robert laughed. He stroked my wild, dripping black hair. His own golden curls were in some disarray, falling over his merry brown eyes and his blue and red parti-colored tunic was all askew. I had always liked his ready humor before. But just now it was a most unwelcome trait. I pulled free of his grasp.
"You must not know what has happened," I said coldly. "This joking is unseemly at such a time, Robert."
"How can I mend it by being grim?" Robert said. "Father has called his best men to go, and they will be led by the greatest knight in England. Come along and see them off. Mayhap that will cheer you."
I followed him through the heavy curtains out onto the balcony. In the courtyard below a company of soldiers mounted up and stood ready in the rain as the earl came out on his balcony with us. From beneath us somewhere came a mud-plastered man leading a winded-looking, limping horse. I stared in horror as he looked up at us.
"That is the man!" I shrieked. "My lord Earl, that man is the one who forced his way into Colchester and struck down our seneschal!" Robert and the earl stared at me as if I had gone mad. The hawk-nosed man looked into my eyes and said nothing.
"You are mistaken, Lady Hope," the earl said icily. "This is my great friend, Hugo Brun. He saved my life in London."
"Nay, my lord, I do not mistake!" I cried. I had seen the man's face so clearly. How could this be happening? It was worse than any nightmare could be. "The man who may already have murdered my mother and uncle is being sent to their rescue?" I demanded. "He must have left his filthy minions behind while he rode back to cover his tracks. Look at his horse! It is as spent from running as my Cairn. If he has not come from Colchester why is his horse caked with mud, lathered and blowing so?"
"Mah lord the earl knows Ah went riding this evening, Mademoiselle," the man said evenly, his words heavily-accented. "Ah am not familiar with this country yet, but Ah did see a 'ouse afire. I tried to approach to warn those within but the flames were already too great. 'Is grace will tell you that Ah arrived only a few moments ago and was getting a fresh 'orse and men to return and give aid. Merci."
He patted his horse as a groom came up with another animal and led his away. "See to 'is off 'ind shoe," he called after the groom. "Ah believe it came loose. Ah tried to spare the poor beast." He gave the horse another pat and then swung onto his new mount. The earl's lips had become a fine line.
"Robert, take the Lady Hope to rest. She is disordered in her mind," the earl said. Robert grasped my shoulders and hurried me away.
"What ails you?" snarled Robert. He dragged me down the hall like a meal sack while I pounded him helplessly with my fists. "Hugo Brun is a hero! He is the man I told you about last fall, the one who carried back hundreds of messages from men who died in the Crusades. He is on a holy quest and has gone all over Europe bringing comfort to grieving families. You accuse him of being a murderer? Stop it, Hope! Why do you beat upon me?"
"I tell you he attacked my uncle's manor!" I screamed. "Why will you not you listen to me? You are only sending him back to finish his murdering! He will help no one! He will just have your father's approval of his devil's work!"
"Here! Get the Lady Hope to a room and see that she stays there!" Robert grunted, pushing me into the arms of a startled servant girl. "I will ride with him myself and see what has been done and will be done. Will that satisfy you?"
"Yes," I said. He stormed off and the girl quickly took me to a guestroom. She helped me undress and got me into bed. I leaped up again, though, when I heard her turn a key in the door. I thumped and shouted but no one paid any attention. At last I fell back onto the bed in sheer exhaustion and went to sleep. Something woke me a long time later. A rustle. I looked up toward the window curtain behind my bed without moving. A shape slid across and I saw a man slip out into the darkened room. When I saw the knife in his hand I grabbed the heavy bronze lamp stand by my bed and clouted him as hard as I could. He dropped like a pole-axed cow and I hit him three or four more times before I realized he was not going to get up again. I was not safe here in this place where Sir Hugo was considered a saint. I had to get out, but until I glanced again at the assassin at my feet I could not see how. Rapidly I changed clothes with the man and shoved him into my bed, turning his face down into the pillows and covering his hair with a nightcap. After I had lopped off my hair to the same length as his I sheathed his dagger at my waist. I jammed his cap low onto my head and slipped out the window the way he had come in.
Climbing down to the courtyard was more difficult than it had been at home, especially since the stones had now become slippery with the night's rain. I did not dare take my poor Cairn, and did not suppose he would be able to make the trip back at any rate. Dawn was just breaking and I was able to slip out of the castle unnoticed as the tradesmen and market people passed in and out. I thanked God that the rain had ended as I slunk through woods and hid in village back streets across a countryside I had never even walked over before. The sun rose higher and began to dry the ground, but I stepped in every bog and blundered into every briar patch between Chelmsford and Colchester. And every time I stopped to rest or thought I must ask for help or directions, I saw in my mind Hugo Brun towering over me in his blue and silver knight's trappings. I saw that man who would have liked nothing better than to find me in some forlorn place and finish what he had begun at my home that was no more, and I went on.
Chapter Three: A Shrouded Demon, A Red Boar, A Sign of Weakness
Father, I have sinned against heaven,
and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the
father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on
him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: For this my
son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.
Luke
15: 22-24
It was afternoon, sunny and warm, before I arrived back at Colchester. All the outbuildings lay in charred ruins. Smoke still rose from the empty solar windows. I sank to the ground beside what had once been our henhouse and gasped for breath. I heard a crash inside the manor and started up. To my astonishment the knight of the black lion, soot streaking his scarlet tunic, emerged from the ruined doorway.