Chapter 26
Twenty-six
They were feeding the lions. Isabelle de Clare winced at the distant sound of roaring.
She had gone to watch once, but the sight of the great beasts tearing apart the carcass of a horse had not been one she was desperate to repeat.
Damask, her small silver hound, would shiver if Isabelle took her anywhere near the lion pit, but sometimes Isabelle would go without the bitch to watch the great golden beasts prowl the walls of their confinement.
After all, she told herself, they were a rare sight and when she left the Tower she would probably never see their like again—if she left the Tower, she amended gloomily.
It was three years since she had entered this place and dwelling within its confines like a pawn shut up in an ivory chess casket was immensely frustrating.
Her childhood homes had been the windswept shores of Ireland and South Wales, with occasional forays into the Marches, to her family’s great keep of Striguil, hugging the cliffs above the River Wye.
Now it was difficult to remember any of them.
The faces of her family were growing hazy in her mind too, as if successive layers of mist were being drawn across their images.
If she tried she could still picture her mother’s blond braids, but then her own were the same and a constant prompt.
Her brother and father had travelled deeper into the fog and at times were almost wholly obscured.
The roars echoed and although they were far from the lions’ quarters, Damask squatted nervously on the grass to urinate, her ears trembling back in the direction of the sound.
“I do not blame her,” said Heloise of Kendal, joining Isabelle on her morning walk with the dog. “The lions make me want to do that too.”
Isabelle smiled at her companion, glad of the company.
Like her, Heloise was an heiress, although her lands were nowhere near as great and she had only been here for a few months rather than the three years of Isabelle’s residence.
She was a dumpy pigeon of a girl with mead-brown eyes and a freckled complexion.
Whereas Isabelle spoke French with the soft lilt of her Irish birthplace, Heloise’s accent was strong and forthright and held the distinct influence of the north.
“The justiciar has had orders about me,” Heloise announced as the girls crossed the sward.
The late spring weather had chosen a day to pout and rain clouds threatened in the distance.
A cool wind blustered their cloaks and tugged at their veils, exposing Isabelle’s heavy wheat-gold braids and Heloise’s glossy dark ones.
“You’re not leaving?” Isabelle’s gaze widened in dismay. Although Heloise had not been at the Tower for long; she had already made an indelible impression on Isabelle’s lonely existence and she could not bear to think of losing her friend so soon.
Heloise shrugged. “I’ll probably have to. Lord Ranulf said that he’d received letters from the King releasing me into the hands of a warden.”
“Did he say who?”
Heloise wrinkled her nose. “William Marshal,” she said, and sniffed. “He’s not of the north.”
Isabelle shook her head. She had not heard of the man either, but, like Heloise, her upbringing had been away from the hub of all court affairs and the important men she knew about were those of Leinster, Striguil, and Longueville.
“Probably some Norman with planks for wits,” Heloise added. “Lord Ranulf didn’t say much, but I could tell he wasn’t impressed.”
“What will you do?”
“What choice do I have?” Heloise folded her arms inside her cloak. “I suppose if I don’t like him I can always dose his wine with hemlock or cause him to fall in a bog on the moors. The peat pools swallow sheep and cattle whole, so I don’t see why they shouldn’t swallow a man without trace.”
If Heloise had hoped to elicit a horrified response from her friend, she was disappointed.
Coming from Ireland, Isabelle knew all about bogs that conveniently swallowed troublesome folk.
Her own mother had not been above muttering such sentiments on occasion—especially about Normans.
She wished this unknown William Marshal to perdition for taking away her new-found friend. “When’s he coming?” she asked.
Heloise shrugged. “Lord Ranulf didn’t say. You know what he’s like. Getting anything out of him is like trying to prise a limpet off a rock. Soon I hope. I want to go home.”
It started to rain and Damask turned tail and streaked back the way she had come, her coat as sleek as watered silver. Sated by their meat, the lions’ roaring had settled to an occasional desultory rumble.
“I wonder who the King will set over my lands.” Isabelle shivered as she made to follow her dog.
The drops struck her face like tears. She wanted to go home too, but that would never happen until she had a warden set over her, and God alone knew how fit for the purpose that man would be.
He might buy the office with no more intention than to milk her lands dry, and she would be powerless.
A pawn removed from her casket and knocked sideways on the chessboard.
Her hands had tightened into fists as she walked and she could feel the tension seeping up the back of her neck and throbbing at her temples.
“Not worth worrying about until it happens,” Heloise said cheerfully. “Nothing you can do about it…except bide your time if he proves unworthy.”
“And what if it doesn’t happen?” Isabelle choked. “What if I am kept here until I rot?”
“Oh, you won’t!” Heloise said, reaching out. “Here now, don’t cry.”
Isabelle twitched away from her. “I’m not crying,” she snapped.
Heloise looked hurt, but took the hint and didn’t persist.
Through the sudden slant of the rain, Isabelle watched a man dismount from a fine black palfrey and hand the reins to one of his squires. She thought how unfair it was that an unknown knight could come and go at will while she was incarcerated like a felon.
William could tell that Ranulf de Glanville, England’s justiciar and King Henry’s senior administrator, was displeased at the royal command to release Heloise of Kendal into William’s keeping, but then Ranulf always had an eye to heiresses for the aggrandisement of his own family and his opinion of William was somewhat jaundiced.
A tourney circuit wastrel and suspected adulterer, with a fast sword and a smooth tongue.
William knew exactly what Ranulf thought.
“You are to be congratulated on your good fortune,” de Glanville said insincerely, although his lips did stretch to a wintry smile. “Not only the lady Heloise, but the lordship of Cartmel too, I understand.”
“I am aware of the King’s generosity,” William replied evenly. “I would like to see the girl and make arrangements for her to leave.”
The justiciar raised his thin, silver eyebrows. “You are in haste…my lord.” The last two words were added delicately and could have been taken as either compliment or insult. William allowed both nuances to bounce off him.
“Naturally I am. I have lands to discover and govern and they are at the other end of England. Since Heloise of Kendal is now my ward, I desire to meet her and give her a day’s grace to pack her baggage.”
De Glanville’s nod was grudging. “I’ll have her summoned.” He beckoned to an attendant. “I assume you intend to wed the girl?”
William made a non-committal sound, thinking that everyone was suddenly very concerned about his marital status. “I have heard that you have another heiress lodged in your keeping,” he said thoughtfully.
“I have several heiresses. They come and go as the King sees fit to grant them to wardens and husbands,” de Glanville said coldly. “And I doubt he will see fit to grant you more than he has already given.”
William answered the rebuff with a smile.
He had heard that the daughter of Richard Strongbow was lodged in the Tower and everyone knew that she was one of the greatest marriage prizes in the kingdom.
Only the heiress of Chateauroux on the French border had any claim to greater tracts of land.
A man who gained such property would not be just a simple baron, but a magnate.
He had been wondering for several days if Queen Eleanor was that ambitious for him and also how ambitious he was for himself.
He had glimpsed Strongbow’s daughter fleetingly on the day he had set out for Jerusalem—a thin girl in the early stages of turning into a woman, with wide blue eyes and ropes of rain-jewelled fair hair.
The attendant returned, escorting two young women: a willowy blonde and a buxom younger girl with a freckled complexion and bright brown eyes. Ranulf de Glanville’s own complexion darkened until it almost matched the madder-red of his woollen tunic.
“As I understood,” he said curtly, “I sent for the lady Heloise alone.”
The attendant stared like an owl caught in daylight and began to stutter an apology. Overriding him, the plump girl took a swift pace forward and said, “I asked Isabelle to accompany me. Have I done wrong?”
The justiciar compressed his lips. “Had I wanted both of you, I would have sent for both of you.” He gestured to the discomforted attendant. “Escort Lady Isabelle back to her chamber.”
William rose and bowed to the girls. “They may both remain as far as I am concerned,” he said easily. “A flower gladdens the eye, but two flowers doubly so.”
“This is not the court of the Young King,” de Glanville snapped. “Your speeches are inappropriate…my lord, as is Lady Isabelle’s presence.”