The Bought Bride

‘Then what?’

A squall of rain hit the thatch and burst through the door, flinging it hard against the wall and bending the flames over the logs with a sudden ferocity. ‘Shut the door!’ Hilda yelled as more men entered, unsure of the kind of welcome they were getting.

The effect of her father’s death was worse than anything Rhoese had personally suffered until then, her mother Eve having died when Eric was born. Without her adored father, she saw her world turn slowly upside down, for she had awaited his return before telling anyone her secret. He was to have been the first. But the shock of losing him so abruptly and with no very plausible explanation made her ill, and she lost the foetus one terrible night with no one to help except Hilda and Els, the only ones except the chaplain to be told the truth. Eric had discovered it for himself.

Warin’s sympathy over her grief was correct but barely adequate, and nowhere near enough for her to be able to tell him about the second cause of her anguish, especially when his attentions had already begun to veer noticeably towards Ketti on the pretext that she had lost most by Gamal’s death.

Hurt, unwell and desperately unhappy, Rhoese began to spend more and more of her time here at Toft Green, in the hope that Warin would come and help to prepare it for their joint occupation. But that had no effect. Then one day she found him and Ketti lying together. Warin’s defence—that he was merely offering Ketti some comfort—was unconvincing, and the outrage of his betrayal so soon after the other tragedies broke Rhoese’s heart. There was no blazing row, no confrontation, simply a silent and hopeless withdrawal to her own house on Toft Green, the energy to fight for what had almost been hers having gone the same way as her happiness, her well-being, and her aspirations.

Hardly had she and Eric removed the remainder of their belongings than Warin moved in with Ketti, taking his aged father to join Ketti’s cantankerous mother and the twelve-year-old son Thorn by her first marriage. The change-over was complete, and Rhoese redirected rents and dues from her Yorkshire properties to herself and Eric for the maintenance of an independent household.

Immediately, Ketti’s hopes for a comfortable widowhood diminished at this withdrawal of supplies, and she protested. But Rhoese saw no reason to contribute her profits when Warin had taken over Lord Gamal’s mercantile business, his large warehouses along the Ouse wharf, his two ships, his wife and the house on Bootham next to the expanding new abbey of St Mary.

In the ten hectic months since her father’s death, Rhoese had erected a protective shell of ice around her damaged heart, keeping it cold with thoughts of revenge that, as yet, had done nothing to salve the deep wounds of rejection. Now, there was no man she could trust with her love except her brother, whose blindness from birth seemed not to matter when he had so many other rare qualities. He had already expressed a wish to join the monks at St Mary’s, and Rhoese had sent a hefty donation for the new buildings, the foundation-stone of which was to be laid by the new king himself on the morrow. They now awaited a message from Abbot Stephen to say whether he would accept Eric as a handicapped novice.

He squeezed her arm gently. ‘Go and prepare, love. We have guests to supper, and I’ll play the harp for you afterwards, if you wish it.’

‘And are you going to sup naked?’ she replied. ‘As an extra entertainment?’

‘Neal!’ he called across the fire. ‘The lady has a suggestion.’

Judhael de Brionne’s desire to know more about Rhoese had not even begun to be satisfied by his friend Ranulf’s disclosure concerning the stepmother’s tenancy problems. It was about the woman herself that he needed to know, and in characteristic style had soon decided that he could find out for himself, in private, more than he could be told by well-meaning friends eager to win wagers.

Alone, an hour after curfew, he rode through York’s puddled streets to where the south-west corner of the high city wall enclosed Toft Green, where dark outlines of thatched huts within a stockade clustered around the great hall, with the scent of wood smoke carried on the blustering wind. Under cover of darkness he waited in the hope that, sooner or later, someone would show themselves and tell him more about how a Yorkshire noblewoman ruled the roost.

He did not have long to wait for a door at the back of the hall to open, emitting the soft glow of firelight, the strains of a harpist’s song, and a woman’s figure silhouetted against the interior. Jude urged his stallion forward a few paces so that he could watch her cross to one of the smaller buildings and, now that the rain had ceased, to leave the door ajar, presumably to shed some light on the inside.

In a few moments she had emerged again, this time carrying something beneath one arm and closing the door stealthily behind her before slipping along the side of the hut towards the trees at the end of the croft, diving into their deep cover like a stoat sure of its direction. Jude’s heels touched the stallion’s flanks to direct him along the track until a gap in the wooden stockade allowed them through. Heading for the same trees, they picked a way silently over damp leaves, showering both man and horse with droplets from the branches.

The horse snorted indignantly, and the noise resounded through the quiet woodland, sending the pursued woman skittering aside with a yelp of alarm, then with a burst of speed that Jude was trained to anticipate. The shadows were black and unhelpful, but Jude’s eyes were keen and used to seeking in the dark, nor did the stallion have any difficulty in following the fleeing woman’s crashing leaps that more than once brought her down by clothes caught on tangles of undergrowth and low branches.

With wildly fumbling fingers she tore herself free at last, only to find her path blocked by the huge snorting horse and its stamping hooves, then, as she dodged away, by its great hindquarters. A hand came out of the darkness to seize her, and at that same moment she hurled the bundle away into the undergrowth with all her strength, yelping with terror at the restraining arms that pulled her backwards and held her, squirming and protesting. There was fear in her voice, and pleading. ‘Let me go…please! I am the Lady—’

‘Lady Rhoese of York. Yes, I know who you are,’ Jude whispered in her ear. ‘And you are breaking the curfew, which is worth a night’s imprisonment, as I expect you know. Now, my lady, do I detect a change in your former manner, perhaps? Are you so dismissive now of inquisitive Normans?’

‘You!’ she snarled, twisting inside the cage of his arms. ‘What are you doing here after curfew, sir? Let me go, damn you!’

‘My, how your heart is beating.’ His hand had delved under her cloak, moving upwards over her ribcage to encircle one breast, his thumb monitoring the frantic thudding beneath her kirtle, an offence as serious as breaking the curfew.

‘No…no!’ she protested. ‘No man may hold a woman so. Let go!’

‘So tell me what you’re doing out at this time of the night and who you’re going to meet. A lover, is it?’ His hand stilled, but did not withdraw.

‘You have no right to know. My business is my own.’

‘Not at this time of the night, lady. Tell me.’

Her hands could not prise his arms away. ‘If you must know, I was on my way to St Martin’s Church,’ she said, angrily, ‘to speak to Father Leofric. His tithes are due today.’

‘And it couldn’t wait until tomorrow? The priest is hardly going to starve for want of a tenth part of your dues, is he?’

Rhoese was silent. Her visit had nothing to do with the tithes, but she could not tell this Norman the real purpose when it was his earlier snooping that had prompted it.

‘All right,’ he said, turning her round to face him, ‘if you won’t tell me more, you can explain yourself to the sheriff tomorrow, if you prefer. Curfew-breaking is serious, and you should be setting an example.’

‘Look…no…please! There’s no need for that.’ Her hands pushed against his chest, registering the soft wool of his cloak and the lower edge of the cloak-pin on his shoulder. Unable to see much of him, she could feel his breath on her eyelids as he spoke, and the withdrawal of his hand left a cool imprint below her breast. Now, all the fears and forebodings generated by his earlier interest, and in the dues she was receiving as he watched, surged back like night-demons, warning her not to antagonise him further. The Normans were a powerful force, and an appearance before the Norman sheriff could easily undo all her attempts to stay out of the public eye. The man must be appeased. ‘No?’ he said, softly. ‘Then you have another suggestion?’

‘Hospitality?’ she offered. ‘You could come into the hall and hear my brother play. He’s a fine harpist. I can offer you mead, or ale?’

‘And poison me, no doubt?’

‘No, indeed. That’s not what I meant. My chaplain himself will pour your drink, if that’s what you fear.’

‘Anything else, lady? Have you anything else to offer me?’

Rhoese froze, aware in every fibre of her being the direction his questioning was taking, and preparing herself to feel the insult and the helplessness of her situation, yet unable to prevent the sudden flare of excitement as she recalled how he had stood before her in the yard, his eyes beating hers down, challenging her attempts to dismiss him. She had felt that same excitement then, and had tried to counter it with a nonchalance that did not exist. She felt it again now and could find no sharp answer this time, not even when he moved her slowly backwards to press her against the broad trunk of an oak.

In the dark, excuses flitted across her mind like bats too fast to see. Then it was too late even for protests, and the shell of aloofness she had nurtured during the last ten months weakened under the tender-hard pressure of his body. She felt the muscles of his thighs through the fine fabric of their clothes, his soldier’s arms bending her into him, the assuredness with which he handled her. His expertise showed in the way he angled her head into his shoulder and held it there with the most careful imprisonment, signalling that there would be no hastily snatched uncultured performance, even though the setting could have been improved upon. Later, Rhoese tried to excuse her lack of resistance as being useless against such a confinement, telling herself that she could not have evaded his mouth, even though she could.

There were no thoughts, only the warm insistent pressure of his lips slanting across hers that she knew was not meant for her delight but for his alone. His arms across her shoulders tightened, his grip on the nape of her neck was merciless, forbidding her mind to wander, compelling her to heed what she was forfeiting and reminding her that his was the conquering side, not hers.

Snatching at fleeting protests and thoughts of mal-treatment, she tried to remain indignantly unresponsive, but soon realised that any reaction from her, either for or against, would have been swamped by the fierceness of his lust. Like a man starved of lovemaking, which she knew could not be the case, he explored her mouth from every angle with breathtaking skill and, when he paused, it was only to cover her throat with his kisses before returning with renewed passion to her mouth again. Warin, her only real comparison, had been eager and vigorous, but never with this man’s masterly accomplishment, and though Rhoese would have preferred to rate him as no more than a clumsy molester of helpless women, she was far too moved to label him so when her legs were already turning to water.

She felt a hardness press against her belly, her own answering leap of fear and excitement, and the keen contradictory betrayal of her shaky emotions. How had she allowed this to happen? And why? ‘Stop!’ she called to him. Her head was held back while he tasted a path towards her ear. ‘Please…no more…you must stop. You have forgotten yourself, sir. I am an English noblewoman and this has gone far beyond talk of offerings. Let me go home now.’

He was breathing heavily against her skin, his shuddering sigh barely acknowledging her protest. Yet, even now, one hand had begun its own well-informed journey on to her left breast, hurrying Rhoese even further towards a warning. Grabbing his wrist, she tried to pull him away, but her hand was ignored and, as her cries were silenced by his mouth, she understood that it would be he who called a halt, and that this had less to do with the offence of being out after curfew than with her discourtesy to him in the yard.

This time, the beguiling movement of his lips over hers was just enough to keep her mind teetering on the brink of bliss while his hand like thistledown explored her in studied disregard of her command. Far from forgetting himself, he was very much in control. ‘Must?’ he whispered. ‘Are you still telling me what I must and must not do, lady?’ The stroking continued, stealing her protests away like a wind-torn web, weakening her lungs so that she could not answer him. ‘Now I think we are beginning to understand one another at last,’ he said. ‘Would you not agree?’

His question was easy enough to answer, for he’d shown her in no uncertain terms what he wanted. That much she could hardly fail to understand. Less sure by far was her own understanding of herself, for now the unresponsiveness she had believed was hers to command had begun to desert her. She was responding, despite everything she could do to hold herself apart, to keep her mind level and cool. He would know. He was expert at this. Yes, he would surely know.

No, don’t let him know. Pull away, before it’s too late.

She pushed at him, viciously, heedless of the damage, and with the desertion of his caress and the sudden halt to her arousal, an anger took its place with a carelessness that shocked even Rhoese. ‘You mistake, sir!’ she snarled. ‘It would take more of a man than you’ll ever be to understand my contempt for your kind. I would find it easier to understand the mind of a toad. Presumably you have had your amusement at my expense, so now you can—’

His hand over her mouth cut off the rest of her tirade. ‘Do not start again, my lady, if you please. There are plenty of dark hours left for my amusement, as you put it, and your unwillingness is of no consequence to me. If you value your noble chastity so highly, you had better learn to curb your tongue. I thought I’d made that clear. Shall I show you again who is master?’

Norman cur. Low-born scum. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Leave me be. I can find my own way home. Just leave me.’ There was the parcel to retrieve from the undergrowth, and her anger boiled not least because the whole episode had apparently been engineered to chasten her and to amuse this arrogant Norman who would now laugh about it, share the experience with his friends, itemising the points of interest, enjoying her humiliation. Most of all, her anger was inwardly directed towards herself for allowing this to happen without making any attempt to fight back or to injure him. Weak, stupid woman. So much for her scorn of men. Deeply ashamed, she lashed out at him with a delayed but futile attack upon his wide shoulders, hammering at him in a burst of rage.

‘She-cat!’ he laughed. Even in the darkness he caught her wrists. ‘Come, lady. It’s time you were locked up safely for the night.’ He stepped away, still holding her securely.

‘Locked up? No!’ she cried, pulling. ‘That’s not what you agreed.’

‘Hush, woman. I know what I agreed. I’m taking you home to your bower back there. You need not be concerned; I shall trespass no further on your domain, but nor is this the last you’ll be seeing of me, so don’t think it.’ He hooked a hand beneath her armpit and led her towards the waiting stallion.

How would she know him? Chain-mailed and steel helmeted, they all looked more or less alike. Would he be in civilian dress or in war-gear? ‘Your name, sir. Who are you?’ she said.

‘You’ll discover that tomorrow, in the daylight.’

‘I doubt it. You’ll not see me tomorrow if I can help it.’

‘You think not? Well, I know different, my lady. Take it from me, we shall meet again tomorrow.’

There seemed to be nothing to say to that, for the last thing she wanted was to prolong a pointless discussion.

Without disturbing even the sharp-eared hounds, Jude returned her safely to the door of her bower, opening it for her before she could reach it, though his arm detained her until he had taken his proper leave. ‘Until tomorrow, my lady,’ he said with a slight bow. ‘Do not venture out after curfew again.’

‘No indeed,’ she snapped. ‘Who knows what ruffians one might meet?’

‘Exactly,’ he countered. ‘York is a violent city. Sleep well.’ In one fluid movement, he mounted the stallion and swung away, cantering off into the shadows in the direction they had come, leaving Rhoese shaken and puzzled, her body still tingling from his daring treatment. She was also concerned for the package she had intended for Father Leofric that would not benefit from spending a night in wet undergrowth, though she was not inclined to venture out again into the woodland that night. Turning in sudden fury, she aimed a savage kick at the innocent door, wincing with pain of a different kind as she hobbled into the dark warmth of her bower.

Dawn came ever later during those early autumn days, and the household was up and about before it was light enough for Rhoese to enter the woodland to retrieve the linen-wrapped bundle from its damp bed of leaves. To her relief, it was intact and undamaged. Last night, with the fear of a sudden interest in her ownership of an apparently thriving estate, she had felt the need to take this priceless treasure to a safer place. Father Leofric was the obvious one to understand the worth of a leather-bound, gem-studded gospel-book, its pages covered with a Celtic script and intricate patterns lovingly worked by skilled nuns in the last century. There was only one such nunnery where nuns’ scholarship rivalled that of monks. It was Barking, in Essex, many miles away from York, but no ordinary citizen ever owned such a thing meant for the glory of God and for the use exclusively of holy men and women. And royalty. If it was ever found in her possession, she would have to offer a very convincing explanation of why it was in her keeping and, more to the point, why she had not delivered it immediately to the proper authorities. The brief joy she had derived from owning such a thing had long since been drowned by the fear of its discovery. She held the bundle close to her body as if it were a child.

Stooping to examine the ground, she noted the huge hoof-prints. Footprints, too. There was the oak. There was the slippery heel-print where she had tried to keep her balance. And there, when she closed her eyes, was the shockingly intimate and unlawful pressure of him against her, his hands roaming where they should never have been and which she should be trying to forget instead of remembering. An insistent pulse beat in her throat as the memory of his mouth reached her, catching at her breath and holding it until the tremor passed. ‘Men,’ she whispered. ‘Treacherous men.’

Chapter Two

Ketti’s House, Bootham, York

T he sheriff’s man reached Gamal’s widow just before dusk at her large house in the area near St Mary’s Abbey. He would have to deliver his message with some brevity if he wanted to reach home before the city gate closed at sunset.

With water forming a large puddle on the wooden floor around his feet, he delivered his most unwelcome news, if not with enjoyment, at least with a distinct absence of sympathy. Everyone in York knew of the woman’s faithlessness. He stared the couple down with pale protruding eyes and wiped drips off the end of his nose with his wrist. ‘If I may say so,’ he replied to their protests, ‘the news cannot be much of a surprise to you when my master the sheriff warned you during the summer that the consequences of ignoring the king’s summons for knight-service would be the confiscation of property.’

‘In the summer,’ the woman called Ketti yapped, stumbling over the Norman-French, ‘I was a newly grieving widow. I had other things on my mind.’ Immediately, she wished she had a better grasp of the language when the sheriff’s man glanced sideways at the strapping young man by her side, coolly assessing his bedworthiness by a pause at the bulge below his pouch.

‘Yes,’ he said, bringing his eyes slowly back to her angry blush. ‘In scarce one month you must indeed have been grief-stricken, lady.’ He cast an eye around the fine dwelling while Ketti and the young man, who had once intended to become her son-in-law instead of her lover, faced each other like a couple of rival mastiffs, each of them thinking how best to savage the other.

‘It’s Michaelmas,’ Warin pointed out as if it would make some difference. ‘The end of Holy Month. Where are we to go? This is our home.’

‘That’s something you should have thought of earlier,’ said the sheriff’s man, omitting the respectful ‘sir’ that an older man would have warranted. ‘My lord the sheriff has instructed me to tell you that this land has been donated to the new abbey of St Mary for their extensions. The house and all the outbuildings will be demolished once the king returns to London, and you will have to find somewhere else to live. You will be sent signed confirmation of this in due course.’

Warin, bold, brawny, and not inclined to negotiate if it threatened to take longer than his limited attention span, would have liked to throw the impudent messenger out on his head, but even he could see the danger in that. He could also see, perhaps not for the first time, that he might have been a mite too hasty in his change of allegiance from daughter to stepmother, now that the latter was not as secure as he had thought.

Ketti swung her white veil over one shoulder. ‘And I’ve already told you, whatever your name is, that my husband died last winter. He was in no position to send knights for the king’s service.’

‘But no message was sent. No excuse. No fine or relief in lieu of men. As you know, lady, a thegn holds his estate from the king in return for properly equipped knights whenever the king should need them. And the king has needed them sorely in this first year of his reign. His brother and uncles defied him. He needed all the men he could get. Any thegn who fails in this duty must forfeit everything to the king. That’s always been the law and you must have known it. Now the monks need this land for their new building plan, and you will have to—’

‘Bugger the new building plan!’ Warin bellowed, unable to contain his anger any longer. It was bad enough to have made a wrong decision, but to have this pompous little toad-face telling him what they had ignored in the hope that it would go away was too much to suffer politely. The time for civilities had passed. His healthy outdoor complexion darkened with fury and his fair curls stuck wetly around his face. ‘We’ve had your building plans up to here in York,’ he blustered, levelling his fingers to his brow, ‘and we’re sick to death of them! You’ve raided our fair city and razed it to the ground, wrecked our homes and livelihoods, dammed the bloody river to make a moat for your bloody castles—’

‘Warin…stop…shh!’ Ketti warned, placing a hand on his arm.

But he shook it off. ‘We’ve had to rebuild our warehouses, relocate our businesses, give up our orchards and grazing, see our houses engulfed in your stockades, see them trampled underfoot, and you dare to tell us that we can’t live here now? We’ve built this place with hard-earned sweat on our land, and there’s nobody…nobody,’ he yelled to the man’s damp receding back, ‘going to get us out. Tell that,’ he called across the courtyard, gesturing rudely, ‘to your lord the sheriff, whatever his bloody name is.’

His return to Ketti was nothing like the hero’s welcome he thought he deserved. ‘You idiot!’ she screeched, resorting at last to English. ‘What good d’ye think that’ll do. Eh? He’ll go straight back and tell the sheriff, the sheriff will tell the abbot, the abbot will tell the king, and before you know it there’ll be a crowd of his strong-arm men here to tip us out into the street. You couldn’t have waited for the king to go back home before you shot your mouth off, could you?’ Her plain, sharp-nosed, thin-lipped face was blotchy with anger, and her fair-lashed pale eyes bulged more than ever in the stare of scalding reproof that Warin had already grown tired of.