‘Where have you been?’ she snapped at Martin and grabbed his arm in a pincer grip. ‘Go and change your tunic, hurry. We’re due at the justiciar’s hall within the hour. You look like something disreputable in a mercenary’s baggage train!’ She released him with a push.
Self-assured Martin might be, but not stupid, and he obeyed her command at a run, grimacing over his shoulder at Joscelin as he reached the end of the hall.
Her insult had been all for Joscelin. Last night he had responded to Ralf ’s baiting with violence. Now he offered the lady Agnes a stony courtesy. She might claim that he had been bred in the gutter but she was the one who stooped to it to sling mud.
He sat down at a trestle and took a small loaf from the bread basket in the centre of the table. Then he poured himself a mug of ale. He could have insisted on taking his place at the high table and commandeering white bread and good wine, but he could not be bothered with that sort of battle this morning.
‘Where’s my father?’ he asked, a glance round the hall showing him a suffering, bleary handful of his own men, the steward and servants, but few of the de Rocher retainers. For a moment he thought that she was not going to reply. Her eyes narrowed and her lips tightened. None of your business, her expression said, but the submission to male dominance was so ingrained that she did not openly defy him. ‘He’s gone to fetch Ralf from Leicester’s house,’ she said frostily and turned her back on him to chivvy the servants.
Joscelin broke the bread and began to eat. Small joy his father would have of Ralf, he thought. At four-and-twenty, brimful of anger and resentment, his half-brother was too old and dangerous to be whipped to heel like a raw adolescent. He regarded the skinned knuckles of his own right hand, flexed them and winced.
Agnes stalked away from the trestle with a stony face. The servants suffered. Joscelin thought about holding his ground and decided that it wasn’t worth the aggravation. Cramming a final piece of bread into his mouth, he took his cup outside to finish his ale in peace. It was a mistake. As he sauntered into the warm morning air his father arrived, Ralf riding behind and both of them obviously in filthy tempers.
Ironheart dismounted, cuffed the groom’s apprentice across the ear for being a fraction too slow at the bridle, and stamped towards the hall. His pace checked for an instant when he saw Joscelin and a muscle ticked beneath his cheekbone. Then he came on, his body stiff with anger.
‘Leicester’s house!’ he snarled at Joscelin as he came level. ‘You couldn’t have chosen a more public place to brawl had you scoured all of London! You shame me and you shame your blood!’
Joscelin looked beyond his father’s mottled fury to where Ralf still sat on his horse. ‘I had good reason,’ he said quietly. His fist tightened around the cup.
‘Leicester says you were drunk,’ Ironheart snapped. ‘He was only too pleased to furnish me with the details while I dragged Ralf off some strumpet he’d fallen asleep on. I’d have done better to take a vow of celibacy than beget the brood of half-wit sons collaring me now!’
‘I wasn’t drunk, I was angry,’ Joscelin said.
‘And spoiling for a fight before you left me last night. A dozen eyewitnesses say that you started it. If you can’t control that anger then you’re not fit to lead men!’
Joscelin’s shoulders went back as if he had taken a blow, but he said nothing. Not for the world would he repeat the insult that had goaded him to strike.
‘Oh, get out of my way!’ Ironheart snapped. ‘Let me swallow a drink before I choke!’ Thrusting past Joscelin into the house, he bellowed at his wife like a wounded bear.
Ralf rode over to Joscelin, deliberately fretting the horse, making it prance. ‘I thought for the good of your hide you’d be long gone by now,’ he said.
‘As usual, you thought wrong,’ Joscelin retorted.
Ralf’s complexion was pale and sweaty. An ugly bruise marred his left eye socket where Joscelin’s fist had connected the night before. Reddish beard stubble framed the compressed line of his mouth. ‘One day I’ll be lord of all my father owns and you’ll be nothing,’ he said, each word edged with bitterness. The horse stamped and sidled. The swish of its tail clipped the cup in Joscelin’s hands.
Joscelin refused to be intimidated. ‘You really don’t know the difference, Ralf, between having nothing and being nothing,’ he said and poured the dregs from his cup onto the ground. The dust lumped and glistened. ‘I might sell my sword for money but never my integrity.’
For a moment, the prospect of another brawl hung imminent but the sound of Ironheart’s choler-choked voice barking through the open hall doors held the brothers to caution. Ralf bestowed a single, glittering look on Joscelin that spoke more eloquently than words and snatched the horse around towards the waiting groom. In the course of its turn, his mount’s glossy shoulder brushed Joscelin, forcing him to step back. A hoofprint bit into the dark stain in the dust where the drink had spilled. Joscelin stared at it and then at his brother’s back. It was long and broad and the amount of fine Flemish cloth required to make his tunic must have cost Lady Agnes’s domestic budget several shillings.
Ralf did not know the privation of lying down at a roadside because there was nowhere better to sleep. He had never had to fight for each mouthful of food or gather firewood in freezing, sleety rain when you were so weary you wanted to give up and die, but couldn’t because people were depending on you. Ralf did not know what real hunger was.
Ralf moved restlessly around his mother’s chamber, touching this and that without any real purpose. Agnes watched his progress with troubled eyes. She could still feel the dry imprint of his kiss on her cheek. He stank of wine, sweat and the cheap scent of whores. She was disappointed but not surprised; nor did she blame him. It was all William’s fault.
‘Shall I find you some salve for your eye, my love?’
Ralf shook his head and fiddled with a piece of braid lying on top of her work basket. ‘It doesn’t hurt,’ he muttered. He dropped the braid and moved to the window.
Agnes admired his spare, angular grace and the gleam of his sun-bright hair. She was so proud of his golden fierceness and the fact that she had given him life.
‘I need money,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to ask my father and, even if I did, he would not give it to me.’
‘How much?’
‘Enough to see me comfortable while I’m in Normandy with Leicester’s troops.’
Her heart plummeted. ‘You are truly going?’
He said nothing but, after a moment, turned his head and fixed her with a stare that held a world of discontent and frustration. His eyes were light brown like her own. With the sun striking them obliquely, they held flecks of suspended gold. The swollen bruise was an affront to his beauty.
‘Have you told your father?’
‘Not in so many words, but he knows.’
And would do nothing to help him, Agnes thought, because he thoroughly disapproved of Robert of Leicester. If she herself disapproved it was because of the danger to Ralf’s safety, but she knew she could no more hold him or persuade him to do her bidding than she could handle William’s great Norway hawk. To her mind, it thus made eminent sense to ensure that Ralf had everything he needed to survive.
‘How much?’ she asked again and went to her jewel casket. Every penny she spent had to be accounted for to William but she still had her jewellery which was hers to dispose of as she wished. William never noticed whether she wore trinkets or not and she seldom felt the need to deck herself in finery. If she could spare Ralf even a moment of hardship, she would give up every last piece.