Red Rose, White Rose. Joanna Hickson

words, I was to perform the task that Lady Joan herself would have done, were she young and a man.

      As her prayers dropped to a low murmur, I bowed to her apparently oblivious back and walked out of the chapel as quietly as my hard leather soles would allow. I never wore the soft-soled shoes affected by my brothers in their domestic life. It was part of my vow as a knight-champion that I remained constantly ready for action. To that end I carried a hidden blade, even when carrying arms was not permitted. All I had to do to begin my appointed task was collect my saddle-bags, my short sword, my helmet and my habergeon, the light body armour that protected throat and breast without hampering silent movement through any terrain; and, of course, my horse. I would wear no symbol of affinity but cease being a Neville knight and become an anonymous mercenary soldier of fortune; one that could mix with others of like kind.

      However, before any of that I had to seek out one other person. I found her in the inner garth, a small and private walled pleasure garden. It afforded fresh air but there was little grass evident because the sun barely penetrated the high walls of Raby’s inner court, and so it was laid out with gravel paths, small evergreen bushes and painted wooden posts carved into heraldic beasts. At the far end was a sandy square reserved for bowling, where a girl in a green kirtle and a pretty lace-trimmed coif was throwing a stick for a little brown and white terrier.

      Hilda Copley was the daughter of a local knight, who had arrived at Raby five years before to be a companion for Lady Cicely. The two girls had shared lessons, leisure activities and even a bed ever since, and I knew how anxious Hilda would be about Cicely’s continued absence. Besides, having taught both of them horsemanship and the rudiments of archery and self-defence, I was as close to Hilda as I was to Cicely, except that I was not Hilda’s half-brother and to me that was a very important difference.

      When she saw me at the garth gate she abandoned the dog to his stick and ran towards me, skirts flying, a sight I greeted with a wide, appreciative smile.

      ‘What are you smiling about, Cuddy?’ she demanded excitedly. ‘Has Cicely returned?’

      ‘No, I fear not,’ I admitted. ‘Lady Joan wants me to spy out the situation in Brancepeth so I am about to leave.’

      Hilda’s dark brows knitted in vexation. Usually I loved it when her pretty face creased in a frown and her brown eyes glinted in challenge but on this occasion I knew she was about to dispute my unquestioning obedience to Lady Joan – not a subject I was prepared to debate with her – so I forestalled her protest.

      ‘No one else seems to have any idea how to grapple with the problem so I am more than willing to go on a fishing expedition. At least I can travel unrecognized and ask questions in places where the Nevilles would not go. It might just yield results. God knows, something has to.’

      The light of battle died in Hilda’s eyes and she became practical. ‘Someone has to,’ she amended, favouring me with faint twitch of the lips, ‘and Cicely can always rely on you.’ She did not add ‘more than the rest of her brothers’ but I could hear the unspoken words in her tone of voice.

      She whistled sharply and the terrier came running up and dropped his stick at her feet. ‘Caspar is pining for his mistress,’ she revealed, picking him up and tucking him under her arm. ‘I thought a bit of exercise would cheer him up.’

      Caspar was Cicely’s dog, used to following her everywhere except of course to the hunt, when the big alaunt hounds would probably have eaten him for dinner.

      ‘I expect Cicely is missing him,’ I remarked, falling into step beside Hilda as she walked towards the gate. ‘Are you going to feed him now?’

      ‘Yes, why?’

      ‘Well, I thought if you were going to beg some scraps from the kitchen for Caspar you might also acquire some supplies to sustain me on my travels.’

      I was rewarded with a cuff on the arm. ‘So that is why you came to find me. And I thought it was for a sight of my bonny brown eyes.’

      ‘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.’

       4

       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