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Pushing off his mail coif and tucking his helmet under his other arm, he reached out and accepted the messenger’s duty. The waxed seal cracked off the parchment in his hand and he stepped back away from the man to unroll the parchment until he could read the words. Then he stopped breathing as the words began to make sense to him.
Henry wanted to reward him for his father’s past and his current service to the Crown. A woman, nay, a wife, befitting his standing in the esteem and respect of the king. More gold for some service already performed. Another title.
Orrick swallowed as the words struck him. His father had been no fool and neither was he. He knew, plain and simple, that he was being bought. And the price being paid was high enough to make him worry. If Henry was stepping into the affairs of his nobles, Orrick knew he should be worried. Especially when it happened in the remote area of England where he lived and breathed. And when it brought him the likes of a bride named Marguerite of Alencon.
The messenger asked if he should wait for a reply and Orrick shook his head. “My answer will be my attendance on the king’s call, sir.”
“I shall convey your willingness to him, my lord.”
The man’s words were said almost as a question rather than a statement. His call to wed the king’s vassal was obviously not a secret at court for even the envoy knew the contents of the letter. And the words contained some doubt that he would agree. Not permitting any question to remain between them, Orrick replied to the envoy’s unspoken words.
“I am the king’s dutiful servant, sir. I live to serve as he needs me to.”
The messenger nodded and bowed before leaving the chamber. Orrick watched in silence as Abbot Godfrey walked slowly back in and waited for his reaction to the news he’d received. Godfrey kept his counsel in good times and bad and Orrick did not hesitate to tell him this life-changing pronouncement of the king’s.
“I am to marry at the king’s behest.”
“Marry, my lord? Did the king speak of whom you marry?”
Orrick knew that the marriage agreement was more important than the people involved, but he nodded to the abbot. “Lady Marguerite of Alencon.”
“Do you know the lady?” Godfrey asked, looking over Orrick’s shoulder at the king’s words. Free in his examination, the brother reached over and took the parchment from him, reading the words several times. ’Twas their practice since Godfrey knew Orrick would miss some of the important details and Orrick knew Godfrey would not. “Marguerite of Alencon…. The name seems somehow familiar to me. Mayhap your lady mother would know of this woman?”
“If she belongs to Henry’s court, my mother will know her name and her history, fear not.”
“’Tis true, my lord. Your lady mother has an inordinate amount of knowledge amassed about the king and his people. If she would turn her interests to other matters, her soul might gain some wisdom.”
Orrick knew Godfrey disapproved of his mother’s hunger for courtly gossip, but the years of being separated from her extended family and many friends in Normandy had not lessened the urge to follow the goings-on of those she’d left behind. In this instance, it might help him decide if he were being rewarded or punished with this marriage gift from the king.
“I will speak to her about her weakness, good abbot,” he said as he rolled the parchment up and slid it safely into the tunic he wore beneath his chain mail.
Godfrey cuffed him on his shoulder and laughed. “You will ask her what you need first and then reprimand her for her weakness, will you not, my lord?”
“You know me too well, Godfrey,” he said, acknowledging his plan. “Why waste valuable information without finding it first? This is my future I speak of. I should discover what I can before answering the king’s call and taking the wife he offers.”
Godfrey’s wizened face lost its joking expression. “Orrick, make no mistake in the flowery language of his message or in the beauty of the woman he names. You are ordered to take this wife. And to take her now.”
Orrick matched his seriousness. “I did not miss that part of the message, Godfrey. I understand the intent within this.”
“Then go with God, my lord. I will keep you and the lady Marguerite in my prayers until you return safely to our lands.”
He reached out and shook the abbot’s hand and then received a blessing from him. ’Twas the way of Godfrey. Without another word, he made his way to his men and mounted his horse. The journey would take nearly two days unless they pushed. Now with the need to return home and prepare for his travels to the king’s court and a wife, he did urge his men faster.
First though he must tell his mother and make arrangements for her comfort elsewhere within the keep. His wife would need to have a certain hold on the way things were done and he suspected that his mother, familiar with the keep and its people for over three decades, would not relinquish her power without challenges. There would be time for all of that, of course. First he needed to go bring home his bride.
The journey seemed to speed by as he thought about the woman who would be his wife and the mother to his children and heirs. He was not some green youth with no idea of what was to come. Marriage had been on his mind for some time, but always one matter or another came up and interfered with it. Now, the king had given him a way to do it simply and plainly.
So, it was with great anticipation that he and his men rode into the yard of Silloth Keep and approached the stairway to the great hall. He had taken no more than three or four steps when his mother’s voice rang out to him, squashing any belief that the king’s orders would work out for the best.
Lady Constance came tearing around a corner and faced him as her ladies and various other servants caught up with her. The redness in her face and her labored breaths spoke clearly of her agitation. But what was she upset about?
His stomach sank as she waved several parchments in his face. Without any attempt to lower her voice, she addressed her most pressing concern to him.
“Swear to me that you will not marry Marguerite of Alencon!”
How had she known? They had just arrived at the keep after a strenuous ride back from Abbeytown. The king’s messenger reported to him there without traveling here. How could she have known?
“Mother, the king has ordered our marriage. I go now to answer his summons and to bring her back here. How did you know her name?”
He watched as the confusion and anger and frustration filled her face. She turned to several of her ladies and none gave her the answer or reassurance she sought from them. Orrick was becoming convinced, as Godfrey was, that his mother spent entirely too much time fretting over gossip and other womanly worries such as those. Mayhap his new wife could help to distract her from such ways?
“You cannot marry her.”
This was getting out of hand. This was why he should not have delayed his marriage this long and why his mother needed to take her place within his wife’s household. But her sorrow over his father’s death had driven him to mercy and her excellent skills at chatelaine had won out. ’Twas time to change that and his wife would be just the person to do so, with his guidance and control.
“The king has gifted me with Marguerite of Alencon, as you apparently know. And the king is generous in doing so….” His words drifted off as even he experienced an uneasy feeling over the amount of gold being paid to take this woman as wife. Damn, but his mother knew what was at the heart of this matter and now he feared asking her. But he must know what he faced from the king. “Tell me now, for I would hear all of it.”
Steeling himself for what was to come, Orrick took a deep breath and faced his mother in the midst of all who looked on around them.
“The king is truly generous, Orrick, but not in this instance. He pays you gold for he seeks to give you his mistress as wife. Marguerite of Alencon is the king’s whore.”
The king’s whore?
Now that he’d heard his mother’s words, he turned and sought his chambers. Orrick needed to prepare for this summons and prepare himself to take the king’s refuse as his wife.
At least now he completely understood that he was being punished for some sin committed by either himself or his father. What other reason could there be for such an insult as this?
Chapter Two
“Henry will not do this to me. You are wrong,” Marguerite argued. “He loves me.”
But the words sounded hollow and unconvincing even to her ears. Marguerite turned away from her companion and looked at the elaborate dress spread on her bed. It could not be. It simply could not be true that Henry had given her in marriage to someone else.
“You know him better than anyone, Marguerite,” Johanna replied in a bland tone of voice. “If you say he will claim you before the marriage can happen, I believe you.”
Her temper flared and she flung the dress from the bed onto the floor. Grasping the edges of it, she tore it open and pearls and gems went flying all over the room. Before she could rip it into the pieces she wanted to, another voice called out to her from the doorway.
“Is this how you treat the gifts of the king?”
Marguerite turned as Lord Bardrick, Henry’s steward and henchman here at Woodstock, entered her chambers. Johanna made a quick curtsy and escaped, though Marguerite was not sure if her own temper or the steward’s lecherous gazes at the woman’s ample bosom made her run from the room. The door slammed and she was alone with one of very few men who had Henry’s confidence and knew the king’s secrets.
“My lord,” Marguerite said, dipping gracefully as she knew she could to the floor in a curtsy, one that shared a glimpse of her own now well-endowed bosom with him. “I fear I am overwrought with excitement over my impending marriage to Lord…Lord…” She pretended not to remember the name of her prospective husband for a moment until Bardrick said it.
“Lord Orrick of Silloth.”
“Just so. Lord Orrick of Silloth. I mean no disrespect to the king. Indeed I am always pleased by his attentions and his gifts.”
They both knew the gift most recently given to her by Henry. The babe had been a girl unfortunately, and of no use to Marguerite in her plans to make a claim for Henry’s further attentions and affections. At least a boy would have been accepted and graced with a title and a position of power and wealth as Henry’s other bastard son, Geoffrey, had been. Through a boy she could have some hold. But the girl born a few months ago was worthless to her and remained behind at the convent where she had given birth to her, a nameless noble, nay a royal bastard, to be raised by the nuns there. Her own sister stayed behind to oversee the baby and to answer her own call to a life of service to God.
Bardrick walked to the door of the room, opened it and spoke to one of the servants waiting outside. “Take this to one of the seamstresses and have her see to it. And quickly, girl,” he yelled, pushing the servant to move more rapidly. “The wedding is on the morrow and it must be ready.”
Marguerite watched with a sense of amusement as the girl gathered the pieces of the dress together and stumbled from the room. She had not moved from the spot in which she stood.
“The king plans on carrying out this farce then, Bardrick?” she asked.
“’Tis no farce, lady. You will marry Lord Orrick and Henry will brook no refusal on your part.”
“And if I do not?” Marguerite could not believe this was the end. Henry would reclaim her. He would object, mayhap even at the last moment, and save her from this unspeakable match.
“The last three people who refused the king’s generosity are not alive to tell you the stupidity of doing so. Think on that tonight as you prepare yourself for your marriage in the morn.”
A shiver shook her and, even though she tried to hide it from this weasel, his smarmy grin told her of her failure.
“Aye, lady. The prudent thing to do would be to acquiesce to Henry’s wishes. His loyal subjects who do usually live longer and better than those foolish enough to stand against him.”
Fight it though she did, she nodded slightly in his direction, never meeting his eyes since she knew the satisfaction she would see there at her surrender. Bardrick bowed to her and backed to the doorway, the way he did when she was the king’s favorite. The insult of it was clear—she was one of the many who had sought the king’s bed and now were to be used as rewards for services rendered to his faithful.
“Sleep well, Marguerite.”
The sound of his laughter and scorn as he made his way down the corridor away from her was the worst of it. It broke her resolve and she fell onto the now-empty bed and let the tears flow.
This could not happen to her. She had been groomed throughout her life to be the consort of a great man. Her blood was of royal stock and she deserved a husband of the same. She did not expect to be given instead to some barbarian of mixed blood in the north of England. This Lord Orrick lived as far from the court and the king as anyone could get. His lands were in some godforsaken place where there was never sunshine as in her own homeland. He was simply some minor lord over a few keeps and a mongrel group of villeins. She deserved more than this, more than him.
She deserved the king.
Marguerite waited for her grief to pass. There was still time. Henry could still, would still intervene before the words proclaiming her Orrick’s wife were pronounced. He could step in at anytime and call off this farce and gift this “lord of the north,” as he was called, with some mealy-mouthed chit more of his class. Someone content to suffer his touch and his life in the rough place he called his own.
She remained in her chambers for the rest of the evening, waving off her servants and her meal, preferring not to suffer the pitying looks of everyone around her over this match. As sleep was finally overtaking her, she prayed that Henry was simply making a point to her about overstepping her place and that he would keep her as his own.
Surely that was his plan?
“If you tug that once more, I will have your head!” Orrick said through clenched jaws. “I am not some maid who needs these kinds of clothes.”
“But, my lord, the king will be present at your wedding this morn, along with the most important of his court. You must look your best.”
Orrick began to mumble, but realized the futility of it. His own servants’ efforts were being complemented by some of the king’s men in order to make certain that every order and direction of the king was being followed to the smallest of detail. The king’s steward here at Woodstock had visited him several times over the past two days in order to convey Henry’s pleasure over his quick arrival and his agreement to the marriage.
The woman must have made herself into some kind of problem if Henry was this anxious to rid himself of her. And in but a few hours, she would be his—his wife and his problem to deal with.
“Finish it, Gerard. Finish it now,” he growled under his breath.
His man must have recognized the end of his limits of putting up with so much frivolity for he urged the others to complete their assigned tasks and leave the room. Gerard gave him one more look before also leaving.
Orrick shook his head and found himself alone.
He looked down at the elaborate tunic and the thick chains of gold that lay on his chest, and worried. He hated this much attention. He hated being at court. He hated all of this. But as a loyal subject of the king, he had no choice but to persevere until he could return to his own lands and sink back into the anonymity that the distant, wild north of England offered him.
And take his wife with him.
They would meet for the first time in less than an hour—a courtesy granted by the king at the request of the lady. She knew nothing of him; most at court could probably not describe him or even know they spoke to him as they did. But no one here hesitated from speaking of her. He had listened to the tales since his arrival; indeed he could hear the accolades in his mind even now.
She was beautiful. Her long, rich golden-brown hair reached nigh to the floor and flowed in generous curls over her lushly endowed body. Poems had been written about her gloriously blue eyes and sculpted red lips.
She was well educated—her family had provided the most learned tutors of the day—and she could speak most of the languages of the continent and could read and write in at least five, including Latin and Greek.
She was well pedigreed—in spite of her illegitimacy, her bloodlines reached back to Charlemagne and the great Frankish kings. She had connections to most of the royal families in the Christian world on the continent of Europe.
And she was the king’s whore.
Orrick sought out the window in his chamber. Pushing it open he observed the activity beneath him in the yard. Enjoying the familiar frenzy, he breathed in deeply and tried to allow the coolness of the breezes to soothe his concern. He wished he could talk this over with someone, but there was no one he could trust with his doubts over this marriage. There was so much more to this than a simple agreement and an order of the king. Was he being humiliated for being only an English nobleman and not one of the king’s favorites? Had his father or mother sinned against the Plantagenets and he would bear the cost of it now?
He planned to do nothing here in the severe scrutiny of the court other than accept Marguerite as his wife and take her back to his lands. Any problems between them would be worked out there, where no one questioned his authority or power. No one except the woman who pushed her way into his chambers now.
“Have you met her yet? Has she been presented to you?” His mother had followed him to Woodstock as he had expected but her presence here was not helping him. Instead her questions and veiled comments caused him more concern.
“I meet her in less than an hour, Mother,” he said as he turned away from the window to face her. And to clear up any doubts, he continued. “Alone.”
Orrick watched as his mother did momentary battle with the words she wished to say. Her face, not bothered yet by the wrinkles of life, tightened in worry. When had her pale blond hair begun to change to gray? She still had the full, robust figure he’d always known, but she was beginning to favor her mother in appearance. Now that he looked closer, Orrick could see the softening of her green eyes.
“Alone? But your family and hers should be present at such an important meeting. I must—”
“You must do nothing, Mother. I will meet Marguerite alone first and then you may attend the ceremony with the others.” His words sounded harsh, but he must speak sternly to her or she ignored him and went on her own merry way.
She looked as though she would argue for a moment and then a different expression filled her eyes. He saw the tears gathering and, for once, he knew these were not just a ploy to gain his sympathy or support. Her words confirmed it.
“I only wish your father could be here to see this. He had hoped you would consider marriage years ago, but…” Her words drifted off.
Orrick regretted his tone. “I delayed and now he will not see it. I am sorry for that, as well.” He left the window and walked closer to her.
“Things will be different,” she whispered.
He heard the fear in her voice. She would lose her standing with the arrival of his wife. Instead of being lady of the keep, vital to its efficiency and safety, she would now be an interested onlooker with no power or control that he or his wife did not grant her. Did she realize that she had given him the opportunity he had searched for to speak on this issue before his marriage?
“Mother,” he began, unsure of his words. “After the marriage…”
“If you would arrange an escort, I will move to my dower property near Ravenglass. It may be easier if I go directly there and you can have my belongings delivered to me when you arrive in Silloth.”
Although she said the words calmly, Orrick could almost feel the rapid beating of her heart. He could hear how she held her breath waiting for his words that would determine her fate. He knew his mother and she wanted nothing less than to be resettled in her dower keep since it was even more removed from life than his corner of England was. There must be a way to soothe her fears and not set up too awkward a situation in his own home.
“Your keep in Ravenglass needs some work and is not suitable for you to live there at this time. While repairs are done, I think you should remain at Silloth and give guidance to my new wife. Things will be strange to her and you might help her become accustomed to our ways and our people.”
After an uncomfortable moment of silence that seemed to stretch on for days, his mother’s exhaled breath and relaxed shoulders told him that he had said the right thing.
“I will only stay as long as the new countess needs my assistance, Orrick. I will not remain where I am not wanted.”
Orrick strode to her and gathered her in his arms. “I know you will not interfere, Mother. I know you mean well.”
Both of their words sounded hollow even to his ears. His mother, the Lady Constance, was a meddler and manipulator. She poked and peeked into every aspect of life at Silloth and at his other properties. She lived to meddle. But today, on his wedding day, he would accept her words as truth and hope for the best when they found themselves back at Silloth.
