Juliet Landon - The Bought Bride

‘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.’

There was a roar of laughter and applause so loud that none of Rhoese’s protests were heard, yet still the grip on her arm was maintained as if the knight had forgotten to release her. Nor had he laughed.

‘Let her go, Judhael de Brionne,’ the king commanded. ‘It’s your turn next. This one’s for de Lessay. Let go, man.’

The grip slowly relaxed, casting Rhoese adrift into a sea of grinning faces and clapping hands through which she could still make out her stepmother’s jubilant expression. Turning her back on it, she came face to face with a man of more than middle age, a deliberate move on the king’s part to get another lucrative offer for her when this husband died, making her an even richer prize than she was now. It was a favourite artifice.

Ralph de Lessay, it seemed, had as little grace as the king and as much excitability, for he grabbed Rhoese unceremoniously by the shoulders before she could stop him, pulling her hard into his sweating face for a mouth-stopping slobbering kiss that left a trail of spittle to drool down her chin. His soldier’s grip hurt her intensely.

She brought up her arms to push, to wipe her face with her sleeve, to keep him at arm’s length. Gasping for air, she sobbed to the king, ‘No, sire! No! This is unworthy. This is not the way the daughter of a king’s thegn should be treated. Please, let me go home, I beg you.’

The king’s face straightened into a sober block of recognition like a child who had suddenly become aware of a misdemeanour. ‘Yes,’ he said, tightening his mouth. ‘That’s enough. Take her home, de Brionne. It’s time we were away on that hunt.’ With a sudden about-face, he turned and strode through the hall, knowing that the crowd would part for him like the Red Sea, and soon the place was emptying except for the clerks, the archbishop and his assistants and those most involved with the whole disgraceful incident.

Thoroughly shaken, Rhoese was the first to find a voice, determined not to give Ketti any pleasure by an exchange of incivilities that she would win, hands down. From the archbishop, however, she hoped for something that might still lend a grain of dignity to the proceedings, something that might allow her to walk away from this nightmare with her head held high. A blessing, perhaps? A word of comfort that would remind her of some small benefit? ‘My lord?’ she whispered. ‘Am I…is he…? Oh, my lord, is this truly happening to me? Can he do this?’