The Bought Bride

‘The Lady Rhoese of York,’ she said. ‘Daughter of the late Lord Gamal.’

‘Speak in French,’ said the Norman. ‘’Tis the language of the court, as you both well know.’

The cleric seemed surprised, but merely glanced at him before rising respectfully to his feet. ‘Lady Rhoese, we were just looking at your—’ He stopped abruptly at the Norman’s signal.

‘At my what?’ she said. ‘My estates? Is that what you have there? The survey taken two years ago of the Yorkshire lands? And who wants to know what I hold? Meddling Normans and their like?’ Her glance at the tall Norman was unmistakeably accusing, but it was no match for a thirty-year-old captain in the king’s service used to commanding men twice his age, and the fierce message from beneath the level steel brow of his helm took only seconds to make its impact. She had better say no more along those lines, it said. Remember last night.

The brown creased skin of the cleric’s face relaxed into soft folds like a well-used pouch and his hands slid furtively past each other into the sleeves of his faded black habit. ‘Yes, my lady,’ he said. ‘I have it here because the king himself needs to see it.’

Rhoese felt the blood in her veins freeze as a chill wind blew across the crowded field. ‘Mine?’ she whispered. ‘My property? Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure. In fact, his Grace is with Archbishop Thomas at this very moment. Your arrival will be of some interest to them, I should think.’ He gathered the scrolls up like a bundle of firewood and clamped them under one arm. ‘I shall take these to him and tell him you’re here. It will save some time. Would you mind waiting with Judhael de Brionne?’ he said, indicating the soldier. ‘He’ll escort you, m’lady.’ Half-smiling at her in apology for the lack of choice, he turned away and disappeared, leaving Rhoese more puzzled than ever and wishing she had not come.

The Norman had hardly taken his eyes off her. ‘I understand you’ve been told of the confiscation of your late father’s estate,’ he said, matter of factly. ‘Is that why you’re here? To plead for reinstatement?’

Briefly, it occurred to her that this man could hardly have cared less whether she had heard or not, otherwise he would not have risked a mention of it so casually, moments before she was to meet the king, and again her anger flared keenly at the incessant and callous theft of English land and property into Norman coffers. ‘It’s a game to you, isn’t it?’ she hissed at him. ‘To see who can take most, fastest, every last acre of it, no matter how many generations have held it. Just like your forebears the Northmen. No, Norman, I’m not here to plead for reinstatement. I’d not waste my breath so foolishly.’ Her brazen stare swung away with her last words, conveying her despair as well as her consternation at seeing him again so soon, face to face.

‘No,’ he said, flatly. ‘No game, I assure you. I was about to suggest that, if you had come to plead, you’d be wasting your time as well as your breath. Once his Grace has set his mind on something, he doesn’t budge. But I see you need no advice from me on that subject. You northerners are fierce protectors of property, are you not?’

‘Yes, and despite what I said yesterday, you’ve managed to find out what I am owed, who from, and for what. Haven’t you? Well, it will be interesting to see how long it remains in my name now. You must be well pleased with your spying.’

‘If you think the king is interested in you as a result of anything that I saw yesterday, lady, then think again,’ he said, harshly. ‘There is only one part of it so far that interests me.’

Holding her anger back on so tight a rein would normally have made her more aware of the precise implications of every word he said. This time, however, it was only his reference to the king’s interest that caught her breath and held it like a hard ball of fear in her throat, and though she opened her mouth to speak, nothing came. Before she could loosen her lungs, the cleric reappeared, beckoning to her and Els to come forward, and they were led by him through groups of curious men across to the archbishop’s thatched hall.

It was now almost unrecognisable, thronged with heavily mailed guards and their squires, monks and high ecclesiastics still in their jewelled vestments, scribes and messengers in the royal livery, nothing like the place she had visited with her father when he had been greeted as a friend. Her original idea to speak to Archbishop Thomas before he left with the king was already losing any appeal it had once had.

The man called Judhael de Brionne was close behind her, and there was to be no turning back. ‘Go on,’ he whispered, as if challenging her to dispense the same aggressiveness she had shown to him. But at first sight it looked as if such an attitude would be irrelevant, confronted as she was by such an unexpected sea of faces and a crowd of male bodies in a hall ten times the size of her own. Between every wooden pillar and alcove, men of all ages stood around in varying degrees of involvement, some clearly bored and restless, other attentive and hovering like hawks above rolls of parchment on the table before the archbishop, diving into the heaps to scavenge for information. Sprawled across a chair at the far end was a man she knew to be only twenty-eight years old and totally devoid of either charm or grace. William the Second of England. His hand fondled the thigh of a slender young lad who stood next to him, whispering into his ear and giggling.

At the entry of Rhoese and Els, the buzz of conversation stopped, making their long walk down the hall more like an hour’s trek at the side of the Norman, while the inane grins and loud comments that she knew were meant for him fell upon her ears also. ‘Well done, Jude,’ one of them called. ‘Keep your armour on, Jude,’ another said. ‘You’ll need it.’

Normally, she would have insisted on fierce reprisals for this lack of respect, but the knight would allow her no time to respond, and she knew that she would not leave here any the richer for having met the king, or the archbishop. Furthermore, each step she took gave her a better understanding of why it was being said by the English that this new royal court was a disgrace, inclined to every kind of vice and corruption. In the shadows, men stood close together, openly embracing.

Her ears burned more hotly than her cheeks as she and Els sank into a low curtsy before the king, while any hope of being treated fairly evaporated like a pond in the height of summer. This was exactly what she had hoped to avoid for so long, and now she knew her time was up.

The natural light in the hall came from square holes set high up in the walls kept open by wooden shutters on pulleys. Extra lamps were perched on wooden beams nearest the king, and it was by this light that she now saw the man with whom she had hoped to speak in private: Archbishop Thomas of York. By his side stood a woman, except for herself and Els the only other female in this vast hall.

‘You!’ Rhoese whispered. It was Ketti, her stepmother, with not even a maid to accompany her. Deep inside, a part of her hardened still further at the realisation that no good could come of this either, while bewilderment, despair and foreboding returned to wipe out whatever words she had been preparing.

Even after one year, the new king had gained a reputation for getting to the point with a suddenness that left people hardly knowing to what they had agreed. It was no different for Rhoese, nor was she helped by the deeply unpleasant rasping voice that needed all her concentration to understand it. ‘Lord Gamal’s daughter,’ he barked, erupting from the chair like an unleashed hound and coming to stand before her. He was stocky and belligerent, bull-necked and florid.

‘Yes, your Grace,’ she said. His eyes were odd, one flecked with brown, the other bluish-green. Quickly, she looked away.

‘Well, I’ve called in your father’s estate, so that’s that. If I cannot rely on my tenants to provide men when I need them, I’ll give my property to men who can.’ He looked around him, well content with his summing up. ‘He didn’t even send out three merchant ships last year at his own expense, so I’m told, and that’s another failure,’ he said, looking this time directly at Ketti.

Against all protocol, Rhoese interrupted him before being invited. ‘But your Grace…my father died…lost overboard. Surely these are extenuating circumstances?’

‘Eh?’ the king bellowed, visibly reddening. ‘Extenuating what?’

The hall fell ominously silent.

‘Circumstances, sire,’ she said.

There was a sound and a slight movement from one side, and the archbishop moved forward into a pool of light where a fitful ray of sunshine caught the gold panel on his chasuble. ‘Too late to go down that road, my lady,’ he said quietly into her ear. ‘The Lady Ketti has already explained that to his Grace. You are here to help her at this difficult time. She’s going to need a home, you see. Isn’t she?’ He held out his ring for her to kiss.

Archbishop Thomas had known her father well. The York merchant had brought back rarities, furs, falcons, walrus-ivory and wine for the Norman churchman’s pleasure, and they had trusted each other. No doubt the archbishop believed he was returning the favour by helping Gamal’s widow after the confiscation of her livelihood. Yes, she was going to need a home. Rhoese’s.

She looked across at her stepmother dressed modestly in grey with not a jewel in sight, her mean little face the very picture of pathetic humility, her hands clasped tightly around a rosary of jet and bone which Rhoese knew not to be her best. Cleverly, the woman had got to the archbishop first to remind him of the wealth of her ward Rhoese, and how her stepdaughter had recently refused her friendship when she, Ketti, needed it most. Their eyes met, and Rhoese read the blazing malice and jealousy behind the mask of pity. ‘My stepmother has a large family of her own, my lord,’ said Rhoese, hearing the heartlessness of her reply fall upon the silent hall.

‘They’re in Denmark, woman,’ barked the king. ‘And what’s more, it’s high time you were married.’

Rhoese frowned, unsure of the exact nature of his pronouncement. She felt the strong clasp of Els’s hand, then she turned to look behind her for the knight to see whether he had left her to her own devices and was unaccountably relieved to see that he was at her back, less than a pace away. Her eyes travelled upwards over the steel links to his eyes and found that they were fixed on her with an expression she could not interpret. Still baffled, she turned next to the archbishop whose kindly face was, for a Norman, usually easy to read. ‘What?’ she whispered.

‘His Grace is telling you that he wishes you to be married, my lady.’

‘But I don’t want…I haven’t…no! This is your doing!’ she said to Ketti, furiously. ‘How could you? You know full well that I have no intention of marrying. Your Grace, marriage is not for me, I thank you.’

To her utter humiliation, the king appeared to be enjoying the dispute as if it were an entertainment for his delight, and his bellow of laughter was so unexpectedly loud that Rhoese stepped back, causing her to trip over the Norman knight’s foot. Instantly, her elbow was supported by his large hand, her back by his body, holding her upright until she could find both feet again.

The king squeaked as he replied to her, ‘I hadn’t thought…ugh…hadn’t thought of marrying you myself, woman,’ he laughed. ‘Did you think…oh, my God…that I was offering you…?’

‘No, your Grace, I didn’t.’

‘Well, thank God for that,’ he blasphemed, impervious to the disapproval on the archbishop’s face. ‘I was trying to tell you that you won’t need your house in York when you’ll have one with a Norman. I’ve had a good—’

‘A Norman?’ Rhoese snarled, glaring at the king.

His laughter stopped as abruptly as it had begun and his face reddened again to a tone deeper than his pale red hair. ‘Yes,’ he snapped with a sudden anger. ‘A Norman. What have you against that idea? Is a Norman not good enough for you? Or is not any man good enough to fill the role of husband? Eh? Is that why you’re still unmarried? What age are you?’

‘Almost twenty-three, sire, I think.’

‘God! You should have had a brace of bairns by now, woman.’

He could not have known it, but that was probably the most hurtful remark he could have made, but to make it in public before a hostile crowd, and before her vindictive stepmother who had stolen the man she was to have married, made it doubly harrowing. Rhoese paled, swaying with the pain, and once more the hand came to steady her beneath one elbow.

The king noticed nothing. ‘Well, as I said, I’ve had some good offers for you from my loyal vassals, lady, and you have your stepmother to thank for releasing you from her wardship. She was quite reluctant to let you go, were you not, lady?’ He looked across at Ketti, who bowed her covered head demurely, hiding the triumph in her eyes. ‘Yes, so she was. And anyway, no women in my reign will hold land in their own right. I’ll not have it. It’s against God’s laws, isn’t it, my lord Thomas?’

The archbishop bowed. ‘Indeed so, sire,’ he said. ‘I’m sure Lady Rhoese will see your reasoning, once she gets used to the idea. English women, I believe, are not used to having their husbands chosen for them. Is that not so, m’lady?’

She had nothing to lose now except her life, and it was only the thought of Eric, her brother, that made her worth anything to anyone as a person rather than as a commodity. ‘English women are used to having their husbands chosen for them,’ she replied stoutly, looking directly at Ketti, ‘but they are invariably given some say in the matter. A woman has the right to say no, if she doesn’t approve.’

‘Not in my reign she doesn’t,’ said the king, loudly. ‘And it’s time this matter was settled. I’m getting bored with it, and I’ve been ready to go hunting since we got back from the ceremony. I’ll have no more argument. Lord Gamal’s widow and her household can have the place at Toft Green and you’ll have the husband I’ve decided on. So there.’

Shaking her head in despair, Rhoese saw that to try to reason with this man would be pointless. He was unpredictable, and closed to any argument a woman could put forward. His sense of humour was grotesque in the extreme, and his insensitivity was too humiliating to be suffered by prolonging the discussion. Again, she turned to the knight behind her for one last glimmer of understanding from someone, anyone, but he was looking across to the other side of the hall where there was a jostling and a shoving accompanied by bawdy shouts and hoots of laughter. A man was emerging, summoned by the king’s beckoning hand.

‘Come on over, Ralph!’ he called, roughly. ‘It’s your bid I’ve accepted. She’s yours, and her estate. It’s quite a fair size. I don’t know what the rest of her is like; you’ll have to find that out for yourself. Eh?’ The laughter he generated by these coarse remarks brought hot waves of shame to her cheeks and a suffocating fear that rose into her throat like a sickness. Vaguely, she felt a firm grip around her upper arm, pulling her hard against a chain-mail chest, and when she looked for the source of her support, she found that the knight was still not looking at her but at the man who was being almost pushed forward to where they stood.

‘Come closer,’ said the king to Rhoese, ‘and meet your future husband. He’s a good fighter, is Ralph. None better. A loyal vassal. He deserves a reward. Here, Ralph de Lessay, put this in your bed to warm it, man. This should get you a few heirs, if you know how to go about it.’