Chapter 34: Settlement?

(Robin of Oaklea narrates)

I sit quietly away from the men at arms and the Friars, the victors who are cheerfully drinking their fill. All the ale in the Inn’s barrels has already gone, so they have started upon the wine. No more ale until the day after tomorrow, when the oldest batch that was started in the brew house should be cleared and barrelled and ready to drink, Alwen says, and only after we have sent supplies to Bartown.

The King is going to war against the Welsh Prince of Powys in the morning, though, and he is drinking wine as if he will go on all night long. Only Father Andrew remains with him goblet for goblet, and he is starting to nod his head in weariness. I am not sure he realises that tomorrow is Sunday ... I believe it is, at least.

The Queen and Lady Elsbeth retired to their separate chambers long ago. My mother and father went to bed even earlier that they did. Alwen looked particularly drawn from her experience. The loss of Henry Small and Stephen Gloucester, a couple of innocents, as well as one of the archers that my father had brought from town, an ale house keeper, who was well known to my mother as a customer. All were innocents. I feel the loss of Henry particularly, I considered him reliable if dull company and a genuine protective friend.

Hugh, I see nowhere, since Alwen permitted the jugs of wine to descend to the lower tables; I suspect Hugh is under one of them, asleep. Looking around the hall I wonder why we provide rooms with beds, when most guests seem to sleep where they drop in the drinking hall!

Someone sits down next to me, but I have no need to look to see who it is. Her hair colour and its fully brushed excessiveness gives her away without a second glance.

“Sorry to have deceived you, Robin, over this past week, with a series of calculated lies, but my father needed to know who the real ringleader and the financial backer of this treasonous plot was.”

“So, we have all been used,” I say, with undisguised bitterness, “you used me and your father used you.”

“Yes, they did. But, it all worked out in the end.”

“Did it? I am not so sure, I am still confused at what constitutes the end, and what the whole point of it all was.”

“What are you confused about, what don’t you know?”

I am not sure if I really want her to continue, I just want the whole sorry mess to go away. My silence is a form of answer that she responds to.

“Look, Gervaise and I thought that your father would jump at the chance to save a maid’s honour in that wood. His reputation goes before him. Hey, even bards write and play songs glorifying your parents and their love story at court.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I wouldn’t tell them that you know, they even think most of the Oaklea villagers don’t know their story.”

“Ha! Ha! That’s rich. They are a lovely couple though. Anyway, that is why we put on that acting outside the inn at Wellock Brigga. We waited up the lane for either you or your father to come outside. As a bonus, your father followed you out just as we arrived in front of you. Gervaise pulled me right into your face and I gave you a long lingering look to ensure you would recognise me later.”

“Oh, I recognised you all right.”

“We knew you were coming through the wood just behind us, as one of the men shinned up a tree, and told us roughly where you were. The canopy was too thick to see you clearly. So I let out a few screams for your benefit but then nothing. We couldn’t see you but imagined you were there somewhere. We thought your father was still with you. I now know that because your father wasn’t with you, you hung back. We were sure that he wouldn’t have done. One of the coachman, pretending to laugh at us, managed to catch a movement from Hugh and told us you were simply standing and watching. So I asked Gervaise to make our struggling look rather more convincing...”

“And that’s when I shot him.”

“Yes,” she giggles, “he won’t forget that in a hurry. So Gervaise and the men ran off, and there I was, left behind with just the three of you. No Will Archer, who was the one I was after.”

“And that’s when you kept asking me about him and I wouldn’t tell you anything.”

“That’s right, it threw me completely. I couldn’t get a message to anyone because we hadn’t foreseen this. I had to wait until we got on Ecgberct’s ship and I tried to hand signal through gestures for Gervaise not to follow us to Brugge but to go back to Wellock and see if my abduction by Will’s family would draw him out and it did. We thought that your father would refuse to help me because he had to be here for the rising, you know, bringing his men to the party with Wellock and his cronies. So I made the most of spinning you the story about the dowry being everything we had and we continued to Brugge. In the original plan, the idea was to lure your father Will to Brugge and get him and the Shire tax horde out of the game, and give him the opportunity to prove he was untrustworthy by trying to steal my dowry, which Rebecca never would have allowed.”

“So Rebecca was in on this ... web of deception?” I ask.

“Yes, but she was always confident of Will’s loyalty. She was surprised to see you, when we arrived in Brugge, but a glance from me warned her to play it by ear. Gervaise had sent a pigeon message, but not until he returned to the pigeons we had left at Wellock, and the bird was lost in the storm.”

“But wasn’t Wellock involved in the treason from the beginning?”

“Aye, he was, but at first he did not have the wealth needed to back such a venture. He needed ready cash to pay for an army and persuade others to join the cause, and he had none, but the Shire Reeve, Sir Giles collects all the taxes in the spring, that is a lot of loose change, but your father Will was the new Shire Reeve in town, so the plot was abandoned last year. Then the rumours started again in February this year. And the Privy Council had mixed views on Wellock’s loyalty. That is when we came into play. Gervaise came with a letter of introduction from the Count of Flanders, who knows Lord Gerald of Wellock slightly, and used him to broker the marriage between him and I, through my mother. Gervaise tempted him with the dowry money, saying he would pay him handsomely for his troubles, once he got the dowry. But when Gervaise returned to Wellock to tell him that I had been abducted and beaten them to Flanders, he couldn’t say he knew who you were, so he only described you.”