Shields of Pride Read Free

across the back of his neck. ‘At least it keeps me employed. What does my father say?’
    ‘The same as you, but he’s less polite.’
    Joscelin’s hazel eyes brightened with amusement. ‘Where is the old wolf anyway? I’d have expected him to have bellowed my backside off by now.’
    ‘He’s dining with the justiciar.’
    ‘Is he now?’ Joscelin looked thoughtful as he sat down in his father’s new chair. Richard de Luci was the nominal ruler of England while the king was absent in Normandy. Fiercely loyal to Henry, he was a skilled administrator and warrior. Joscelin’s father and Richard de Luci were friends of long standing and similar interests, but their socializing was usually a matter of business as well as pleasure.
    ‘Apparently the Earl of Leicester and others are in London for the purpose of asking de Luci’s permission to leave England with troops and money for King Henry’s army.’ Maude ordered a servant to bring food.
    Joscelin raised his brows. Robert of Leicester was self-seeking and arrogant, without an honest bone in his body. If he was going to war, it was to feather his own nest at the expense of weaker men. King Henry was certainly not weak - but his son was. ‘I saw some of that money today,’ he told his aunt. ‘Indeed, I helped bring it into the city. It was in the custody of one of young Henry’s lick-boots and if I have not walked in here with Giles de Montsorrel’s blood all over my hands, it is one of God’s miracles.’
    Maude sat down beside him, leaned her elbows on the trestle and gave him her full attention as he told her about his encounter on the Clerkenwell road, his tone growing vehement with disgust as the tale progressed. ‘De Montsorrel looked at me as if he had a stink beneath his nose that he was too highbred to mention. I tell you, if it were not for the women and the little boy, I’d have struck him in the teeth and withdrawn my aid. You should have seen his men struggling with his strongbox. There was more in it than a few shillings to buy himself a couple of nags at Smithfield and trinkets for his wife.’
    ‘He’s lately come into an inheritance.’ Maude screwed up her face as she strove to remember. ‘His father died of a seizure at Eastertide, although he’d been having falling fits for almost a year.’
    Joscelin nodded. ‘So I’d heard.’ He did not add that Raymond’s final seizure on Easter Sunday, immediately before Mass, had taken place between the thighs of a servant’s daughter at the moment of supreme pleasure. The incident had been the source of much ribald comment in alehouse and barracks. Giles de Montsorrel had either a family reputation to keep up or one he was never going to live down. That thought reminded him of his own half-brothers and he grimaced.
    ‘Are Ralf and Ivo here?’
    A servant mounted the dais and set a steaming bowl of the soup before Joscelin, and a simnel loaf with a cross cut in the top.
    ‘I’m afraid they are.’ The pleated wrinkles around Maude’s mouth deepened. ‘Not that we often see them, the amount of time they spend carousing in the stews. Your father says they’re just sowing wild oats and that they’ll tire soon enough.’
    ‘But you are not as convinced.’
    ‘Would you be?’
    Joscelin cut a chunk from the bread and dipped it into the soup. ‘You know how matters stand between my half-brothers and me,’ he said. ‘I’m the bastard, Ralf ’s the heir, and he rams it down my throat at every opportunity. ’ His expression was suddenly grim. ‘And Ivo’s like a sheep - follows Ralf ’s lead even if it happens to be off the edge of a cliff. Thank Christ I won’t be here much above a week.’
    ‘You’ve only just arrived!’ Maude protested.
    ‘I’ve a bad memory,’ he said ruefully. ‘It’s not until I come home that I remember the reasons why I left in the first place and by then it’s too late.’

3
     
    Linnet de Montsorrel stared at a cobweb veiling an oak roof-beam. A