Joanna Makepeace - The Traitor's Daughter

Curtly the knight ordered a dinner of meat and vegetable broth, pease pudding and what tarts the fellow had to offer which would please the ladies. Philippa and her mother were escorted up the rickety stair to a small dark chamber where a slatternly maid brought them water and towels, plus chamber pots, so that they might refresh themselves. Thankfully they returned to the eating room to find the food already upon the table. Philippa, who had been dry-mouthed with alarm at what might transpire in the next hour or so, discovered that, despite that, she was hungry and was glad of the hot tasty food and the rye bread which accompanied it. This inn was not apparently able to provide the fine white manchet bread to which Sir Rhys was more usually accustomed.

Her mother was rather quiet over the meal and Sir Rhys accepted her need for silence in courtesy. Above stairs, away from his presence, Philippa had thought it best not to alarm her mother with her fears. Catching her eye across the table, she understood that her mother had already considered the danger.

Nothing happened, however. They completed the meal, then David, Sir Rhys’s squire, rose to pay the score. Peter had already gone to assure himself that their mounts had been fed and watered. Sir Rhys offered his hand to Lady Wroxeter to lead her outside to the courtyard.

“I considered it wiser to chose a less frequented inn, this being market day,” he explained. “The fare was nourishing but hardly acceptable to finer palates used to food prepared in the Duchess Margaret’s establishment at Malines.”

Cressida shook her head. “The food was excellent and the place unexpectedly clean,” she replied.

Since Peter was engaged in mounting his lady upon her palfrey and David was still about his business in the inn, Sir Rhys lifted Philippa once more into the saddle.

“These merchant’s clothes form an excellent disguise, and were well chosen,” he remarked as he fingered the wool of her russet gown.

Angrily she flashed back at him, “These garments are no disguise, sir. We live in virtual penuary at Malines while you live in luxury on my father’s estates.”

He looked from the tip of her proudly held young head to her little booted foot resting in the stirrup. How very lovely she was, even dressed, as she was, in these dull, outmoded clothes. Her golden curls peeped provocatively from beneath her simple linen coif, for she had thrown back the hood of her travelling cloak.

He had said earlier that she possessed the same golden loveliness of her mother, but in Philippa now that beauty was enhanced by vibrant youth. Her skin glowed with health and her green-blue eyes, almost turquoise in the sunlight, sparked with angry vitality. There was a seeming childlike fragility about her in her exquisite petiteness, which he had noted when he had come to her rescue in that darkened courtyard. It had brought out a protective tenderness in him, yet now his pulses raced as he thought how much of a true woman she was. He sensed the intensity of her bitterness towards him, read it in the set of her little pointed chin, in that hauntingly elfish, heart-shaped face, in the hard-held line of her lips, despite their sensuous fullness, which now he longed to lean forward and kiss.

He had met and known many women at court, and other, more earthy voluptuous beauties who had lived on his estates and granted him favours, daughters of his tenants and servants, but none had stirred him as this woman did.

When Philippa had risen, trembling, from her attacker and he had felt her quivering fearful young body pressed against his heart, he had recognised the inner strength of her, the courageous determination to recover quickly so that she could rush to her mother to warn and protect her, her genuine concern for their squire, even under the stress of her own ordeal.

She was in fighting form now, and amused admiration for her warred within him with the sudden surge of desire which ran through him.

He chuckled inwardly. She would need to be managed—for her own safety and that of those she might imperil if she gave way to rashness brought on by her own contempt for him.

“Ah,” he murmured, his dark eyes flashing in understanding, “so that is the rub, Lady Philippa, and the direct cause of your suddenly adopted hatred for me. Your man has informed you about my estates and how my father obtained them.

“I hate no one, sir,” she said coldly. “That would be against the teaching of Holy Church. Contempt would be nearer the mark to explain my feelings towards you.”

“You think I should have refused to accept my inheritance?” He gave a little dry laugh. “I would have thought you would have gained a better knowledge of the ways of the world than that, Lady Philippa. I am quite sure your father’s many services to the late King won him the preferment he both desired and earned.”

She went white to the lips and, seeing her unwillingness to reply to that shot, he bowed and moved towards his own mount.

Lady Wroxeter had not been able to hear their conversation, but, feeling instinctively that Philippa had insulted their escort, she turned in the saddle and gave her daughter a warning look.

They travelled for the rest of the day without incident and arrived at dusk at an inn on the outskirts of Carmarthen. Sir Rhys had chosen one less fashionable but apparently clean and respectable. He arranged for a private chamber for the ladies, informing the landlord’s wife that Lady Wroxeter was a cousin of his, who was travelling with her daughter and brother to visit a sick relative who lived in the Marches. He, himself, he said cheerily, would make do with the common chamber and, as Peter Fairley announced his intention of sleeping with their horses in the stable, he ordered David, his squire, to join him there.

After a hearty meal the ladies retired and assisted each other to undress.

“Philippa,” Lady Wroxeter said, wrinkling her brow in concern, “you have not quarrelled with Sir Rhys, have you? I asked you to have a care. I thought there seemed something of an atmosphere between you after our stop for dinner. We are in enough danger as it is. Do not antagonise the man.”

Philippa shrugged irritably. “I merely made it clear to him when he passed an opinion on our state of dress that our straitened circumstances are due in part to his enrichment at our expense.”

“But that is hardly true. King Henry would have granted your father’s lands to, if not Sir Rhys’s father, then another one of his supporters after your father became a proscribed traitor.”

“But Sir Rhys’s father turned traitor to his rightful king at Redmoor,” Philippa snapped.

“I doubt if Sir Rhys was quite old enough to fight for the Tudor either at Redmoor or Stoke and can hardly be blamed for what his father did,” Cressida reminded her. “In all events, those battles were over long ago and we have your future to consider now.”

“You wish that my father was not so concerned with the Duchess Margaret’s machinations?” Philippa posed, somewhat shocked by such a suggestion.

“Like most women, I wish your father would sometimes consider the cost of his outdated allegiance and think a little more of us,” Cressida rejoined tartly. “I love your father with my whole heart and will remain loyal to him whatever he chooses to do, but I do have you to think about.”

Wearily she climbed into bed and Philippa thought it best to say nothing further.

She lay wakeful. Her fears had been thoroughly aroused in Pembroke and would not be put to rest. Her mother had not been present during that dreadful journey to the coast, four years ago, when she had been forced to flee from England with her friends, the Allards. The King’s body squire, John Hilyard, had followed them and attempted to take Philippa prisoner, to hold her hostage for her father’s compliance to King Henry’s will. It had been a hard fight when he had overtaken them and Philippa had been little more than a child then, but she had known real heartstopping fear that they would be killed. John Hilyard had paid the price and lost his life as a consequence of that encounter and his body had been thrown over a hedge. In retrospect she recalled how they had all set their teeth and struggled on, their friend, Sir Adam Westlake, severely wounded in the fight and Richard Allard still suffering from the effects of the torture he had endured as King Henry’s prisoner in the Tower of London. Report of Hilyard’s death must have reached the King. Philippa doubted if she would ever be forgiven. If she could be captured now, on this visit, how great a prize she and her mother would be if Rhys Griffith decided to hand them over. Somehow she must convince her mother of their danger and try to escape from Rhys’s clutches.