Hope and the Knight of the Black Lion Page 2

  “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 reins 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.