Alys Clare: Ashes of the Elements

* * *

There was, quite naturally, music to face.

That evening, when Theophania had gone grumbling upstairs to see to the baby, Josse sat down with his brothers and his other sisters-in-law, aware that the assembled company was not entirely pleased with him.

Hell and damnation, he thought, reaching for more wine, whose house is this? I’m the eldest brother, I can do what I like in my own home!

But that, of course, was the problem. And Josse was fair-minded enough to appreciate it. Acquin, both the large fortified manor house itself and the wide estates, belonged legally to Josse: he was the heir, he had inherited both property and title on the death of his father, Geoffroi d’Acquin, fifteen years ago.

But Josse had always known he was not destined to be a country landowner. He had no skills with the land, nor with animals, other than horses; no interest in organising his tenants and his peasantry into working for the good of all who depended on Acquin. His brothers, Yves, Patrice, Honore and Acelin, were the ones who loved and understood the land.

Josse, anyway, had left home as soon as he could after coming into his inheritance. He’d been away before, apprenticed as page, as were so many eldest sons, to another knight’s household, to learn a very different profession from agriculture. He’d even spent a couple of years living in England with his mother’s kin, where his maternal grandfather, Herbert of Lewes, had given him a hearty welcome, apparently having got over the shock of his beloved Ida having left home to marry a Frenchman. When he was old enough, Josse had become a squire. And, in time, won his spurs.

When he was but a youth, he’d ridden with King Richard himself, not that he’d been King then. But he was now.

Through the generosity of the new King Richard, Josse had a manor house in England. Or he would have, when the builders finished. And God alone knew when that would be.

In the meantime, while Josse tried to be patient with delay after delay, he was back living at home. In what was legally his home, but in which, as he was all too well aware, he was now more of a guest.

And, at times like this, not a very welcome one.

He flung himself down on a stout wooden bench, feeling both angry and embarrassed.

‘I was doing the lad no harm!’ he protested, drinking down a huge mouthful of wine.

‘Maybe you weren’t,’ said his sister-in-law Marie, Yves’s wife. ‘But that isn’t the point. Theophania asked you not to let Auguste ride your horse, and you took no notice.’

‘The lad’s too mollycoddled!’ Josse cried. ‘He only gets to ride that tiddly pony of his, which is no challenge whatsoever to a red-blooded lad! And there are too many women here — he needs a bit of masculine company.’

‘He has that, in plenty!’ Acelin said, clearly affronted. ‘He has me, and he has his uncles Yves, Patrice and Honore. In addition, there are Yves’s boys, Luke, Jean-Yves and Robert, and, when he has grown bigger and stronger, soon Honore’s little boy will be a playmate too. Enough male company there, surely, Josse, even for you.’

‘That’s as maybe.’ Josse had the unpleasant feeling that he was not only outnumbered, but also being out-argued. ‘All the same, he’d be well used to riding a big horse by now if he’d had the upbringing I had, let me tell you!’

‘You were still here when you were six, galloping about on a pony not much larger than Auguste’s, and making a thorough nuisance of yourself,’ Yves said pedantically. ‘You didn’t go off to be Sir Guy’s page until you were seven.’

‘Yes I did!’

‘Didn’t!’

‘Did!’

‘Oh, stop it!’ Marie shouted. ‘Really, Josse, what is it about you, that you make sensible grown men act like small boys again?’

‘They’re my brothers,’ Josse muttered.

‘Oh, that explains it.’ There was a definite note of sarcasm in Marie’s voice. But she did, nevertheless, give Josse a smile; she had always been fond of him.

‘Josse should not have called Theophania a- called her what he did,’ his brother Honore said piously. ‘It was very rude. And very inaccurate.’

Acelin, furious all over again at the insult to his wife, made a choking sound.

‘Sorry,’ Josse said quickly, before Acelin could get going on a renewed bout of self-righteous indignation. ‘It just slipped out.’

‘What did you call her, Josse?’ Marie whispered, while the two youngest brothers were nodding and agreeing about Josse’s lack of respect. ‘Acelin wouldn’t tell me, and Theophania threatened to go into hysterics when I asked her.’

‘I’m afraid I called her a bitch,’ Josse admitted. ‘I’m very ashamed of myself, Marie. I’m thinking of going to market and buying her a pretty fairing — some ribbons, a bolt of fine cloth — to make amends.’

‘She’d probably much rather you just left her son alone,’ Marie remarked shrewdly. ‘Although, me, I tend to agree with you. There’s a little too much petticoat government round here, when you’re away.’

‘You’re the senior wife,’ Josse said. ‘And surely Agnes would support you, even if Pascale didn’t.’ Agnes was married to Patrice, and Pascale was wife to Honore; mother of a sickly child, Pascale was usually too preoccupied with caring for him to enter into family arguments. ‘Can’t you improve things?’

‘Hmm.’ Marie looked thoughtful. ‘Possibly. Only you know what Theophania’s like. When she’s crossed, she gets one of her sick heads.’ She paused to bite off a thread; round and placid with advancing pregnancy — a state that suited her well, Josse reflected — Marie was sewing some small garment made of fine linen. ‘And when Theophania has a sick head, we all suffer,’ she concluded. ‘The whole household.’

‘Quite.’ No wonder I don’t fit in here, Josse thought sadly. My four brothers and this sensible woman, the eldest of my sisters-in-law, all let themselves be led by the nose by the least sound person in the house. All for the sake of a quiet life!

‘Where’s Theophania now?’ he asked presently.

‘Feeding the baby,’ Marie said.

‘But I thought she’d have engaged-’ He broke off. It was Theophania’s business, after all.

‘You thought she would have engaged a wet nurse?’ Marie looked at him. ‘Ah, no peasant woman’s milk is good enough, not for the child of Theophania.’

‘Oh,’ said Josse.

Marie bent her head over her sewing; tactfully, Josse did not pursue the matter.

I’ll buy Theophania a gift, he resolved, and repeat my apologies. I was unforgivably rude, and to a woman to whom, even if I don’t actually like her, I owe respect.

But, when I’ve been forgiven, I shall go.

Even if the refurbishments to his new manor house were still incomplete, even if the rain came in and he had to sleep in a barn, it would be better than life at Acquin.

For the time being, anyway.

* * *

King Richard Plantagenet had given Josse his English manor house in the winter of 1189, in gratitude for a certain service which Josse had been able to do for the King.

Richard, in that cold January season, had been preoccupied with planning his great Crusade; Josse often thought that it was only because Richard’s mother, the good Queen Eleanor, had reminded her son of his obligation, that the manor had come Josse’s way at all.

The manor had formed part — quite a large part — of the rich estates of the late Alard of Winnowlands. Josse’s gift was a stoutly built but dilapidated house, which, so he was informed, had been constructed a good seventy years ago, some distance from the main hall, to accommodate a particularly sour-tempered mother-in-law. The house had a small walled garden, an orchard, and several acres of pasture, some of which gave on to a swift flowing river bordered by willow trees.