Joanna Hickson - Red Rose, White Rose

‘So it was,’ I protested, feeling the blood rise in my cheeks. ‘And your way with the kitchen staff.’

Hilda stalked off ahead, affecting indignation. The terrier’s tail wagged dismissively at me from under her arm. ‘Hah! Well, I suppose Caspar might spare you a bit of gristle.’

Brancepeth

Cuthbert

I took the moorland route to Brancepeth and rode in bright sunshine, my horse trotting easily over grassy sheep tracks. The dry conditions meant I could let my mind wander, considering the reasons for my unquestioning obedience to Lady Joan; the obedience which the spirited Hilda found so hard to comprehend.

Hilda was not illegitimate. She was the true-born daughter of Sir William Copley, late tenant of one of the closest of Raby’s many manors. Even as a young child, while her father was still alive, she had often been to Raby, making friends, especially Cicely who was nearest to her in age. I had often encountered her when I was a boy, but by the age of eleven I had begun serious training military training and grown scornful of little girls with their dolls and giggles. Now, of course, it was a different matter.

I do not remember precisely when I began to notice that Hilda had grown from a cheeky little girl into a dark-haired temptress, but it must have been during the summer that I started to teach her and Cicely how to shoot an arrow. I found something intensely appealing about the way Hilda tilted her chin before she hauled back on the bowstring, and when she flexed her arm and pulled I felt a blood-rushing response to the thrust of her budding breasts against the fabric of her bodice. She was thirteen and I was not yet twenty. During the three years since then, my teenage lust had turned into something more controlled, but my heart still missed a beat whenever I caught sight of her.

Since then, too, her father had died and her eldest brother Gerald had inherited the manor of Copley. Young Gerald had been one of my fellow henchmen at Raby, sharing the training, both military and social, that was intended to turn us into fierce and faithful Neville knights. As youths we had been quite good friends until I began to receive more senior and responsible posts than he did, a situation he judged to be due to favouritism. That was when he began to cast snide remarks in my hearing about ‘bastard blood’ and ‘bum-licking by-blow’, insults I managed to ignore. But when he got wind of my feelings for his sister his antipathy grew more sinister; there was ample opportunity on the practice ground for knocks and thrusts to result in real wounds inflicted accidentally-on-purpose. I had been much relieved when his inheritance took Gerald back to the manor of Copley, but before he left he made it abundantly clear to me that if any word reached him linking my name to Hilda’s, violent retribution would follow. Our paths had not crossed since but I knew that, apart from when he performed his knight’s service on the Scottish border, he was never far away.

The stain of bastardy was the glue that bound me to Lady Joan; not that she ever used that word. It was the reason I gave instant and unquestioning service to her. Very soon after my arrival at Raby I had been surprised and perturbed to be summoned to the countess’s tower and admitted to her private quarters. In the room she called her salon I was dazzled by the light that streamed through half a dozen diamond-glazed windows and awestruck by the opulence of the furnishings. Until then, I had known only the interior gloom of my family’s fortified farm high up in the dale above Middleham Castle, and its rough-hewn table and benches. Lady Joan’s sumptuous silk hangings and polished-oak chests and chairs were a revelation to me and I needed no nudging from her chamberlain to fall instantly on my knees before her raised and canopied throne. I was convinced I must be kneeling at the feet of a queen.

‘You are welcome to Raby Castle, Cuthbert.’ Her soft, aristocratic tones sent nervous shivers down my spine. ‘You may be surprised that I have sent for you but we have much in common, you and me. Like you I was baseborn and grew up under the shadow of illegitimacy. I know it is not an easy road to walk. I was lucky. My father eventually married my mother and was powerful enough to have her children legitimized. That will not happen to you and yet you too are lucky because you have impressed your father with your strength and intelligence. He will see to it that you receive the training necessary to join the elite force of Westmorland men-at-arms. But because you are his son he has asked me to ensure that you also receive an education and learn good manners, and so you are to join my sons and daughters at the appropriate lessons. I trust you will take advantage of this opportunity and repay our generosity with true loyalty.’

Under her gracious azure gaze I blushed furiously and mumbled some words of gratitude, turning the new homespun hood which my mother had made for me round and round in anxious fingers. At ten years old I needed no urging to pledge my loyalty to this beautiful, fragrant, splendidly jewelled lady. I wanted to prostrate myself before her and let her trample me under her satin-slippered feet but instead I bowed my head and tugged at the fringe of hair on my forehead. ‘Oh yes, my lady, I will,’ I said and, true to my word, I had repaid her over and over again and was even now continuing to do so.

At Brancepeth a posse of Raby men-at-arms was now camped in the shelter of a tree belt, well back from any archers’ arrows fired from the castle walls. Hal had seen to that at least. As I was wearing no insignia that might be recognized from the battlements, I went to speak to the sergeant in command but I took care to remain in the shadow of the trees. He reported no activity at all that day and, with dusk fast approaching, did not expect any. This puzzled me as Brancepeth was not under siege, but my curiosity was met with a shrug from the sergeant; his instructions were to keep out of arrow-range and log any activity. I took myself off to the village where I hoped to find looser tongues.

In the main street I promised a halfpenny to a loitering lad to mind my horse and he directed me to the alehouse, identifiable by a desiccated evergreen bush hung over its door. It was the usual low-roofed, smoke-filled, mud-floored hell-hole; a meeting place for unmarried local villeins with a farthing to spend, thirsty black-faced colliers from the nearby mines and weary travellers from the west who could not quite make it to Durham before curfew. I hoped it would be assumed that I fitted the last category. There was no room near the fire so I took a seat on a corner bench beside a man wearing the Neville bull on his jacket and signalled the pot-boy to bring me a mug of ale.

‘You must be a local resident, sir,’ I said politely, indicating my neighbour’s livery badge. ‘That is the Neville bull, is it not?’

The man’s grin revealed only three or four blackened teeth. ‘ Brancepeth Neville, sir. The other lot, with their fancy sailing ship, do not show their faces here.’

I affected ignorance of Neville business. ‘Oh? Why is that?’

He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together with a knowing look. ‘Family feud, sir, over land, coin and castles. Rich men’s pickings.’

The pot-boy arrived with my ale in a banded wooden mug and I tossed him a farthing. ‘You seem very knowledgeable about the lord’s affairs,’ I prodded, taking a long gulp of the thin liquid. It was stale but not unpleasant.

He puffed out his chest. ‘Well I should know something since I work at the castle.’

With teeth like his I doubted if he worked in the private apartments but I decided flattery would aid my cause. ‘You must have a senior position, sir, if you can leave after dusk. When I rode past the drawbridge was up and the portcullis well and truly down.’