April 1067, Boulogne
Across the Narrow Sea, in a small, impoverished hamlet at the edge of Boulogne, Genevieve Elysia de Fontenay, her sister Marie, and their Aunt Hortense waited in silent apprehension. Yesterday, they had retreated to the solar where, behind a thick wooden door and a sturdy metal latch, they’d spent a restless night jumping at sounds of rampage in the great room below.
This morning, the solar, long a sanctuary from the dark, brooding castle, was luminous. They sat beside three tall, narrow windows, and carded wool, spun thread, and embroidered. But the gentle light did nothing to take the chill from their spines when voices bellowed—or now, when startled by the thundering ferocity of someone pounding against their latched door.
“Lady de Fontenay,” a gruff, demanding male yelled, beating on the door with enough force to jolt the thick boards. “You are summoned. Immediately.”
Hortense leaped to her feet, poised for battle.
“Elise!” Marie cried, using her sister’s familiar name.
Setting her embroidery aside, Elise stood. Calmly, she shook out the ankle-length skirt of her red cotte, richly embroidered with silver thread. “Our . . . guardian merely wants to demonstrate his authority,” she said to Marie.
Hortense unlatched the door and opened it boldly, filling the doorway with her ample body. “God’s peace, Sir!” she said. “Mind your manners, you’re not in a bordel,” she chided the hearth knight.
“God’s blessings,” Elise said to the messenger, stepping out into the damp, chilled gallery. She ignored his flustered greeting and turned instead to her handmaiden beside him, a fresh, red handprint on her cheek. With lowered eyes, the girl lifted a blue, ermine-lined cloak, which Elise accepted, furious her servant had been struck. Sweeping the mantle around her shoulders, she watched the soldier’s quick departure. Whether it signaled his impatience or the urgency of her summons, she knew not.
Leaning carefully over the loose balustrade, Elise peered down into the cavernous hall, listening to the silence. She hoped the men, who’d arrived the night before, had exhausted Arques’ revelry. His entertainments tended toward the depraved. As if seeking absolution for his excesses, he often summoned her after his debauchery and displayed an unpredictable and violent temper in her presence. Unable to control his warring impulses, Arques both desired and detested her.
Three years ago, her uncle Count Eustace de Boulogne took Elise and her sister from the abbey near Fontenay, the seat of Elise’s estates. They had not seen him for more than a decade, and both knew the move meant he would soon barter them—through marriage—for lucrative alliances. He’d sent them to a small village edging Boulogne, near enough to be summoned quickly, far enough to ignore. Here they lived with their Aunt Hortense, Guillaume, the former count of Arques, and Walter, his son. Although Arques had no kinship to them, he was bound by ancient alliances to serve Eustace as the nominal lord of this castle and their token guardian.
Taking a lighted candle from the sconce, Elise kicked out her skirts and proceeded down the steep, narrow steps, careful to avoid the fate of a servant who recently lost his footing–and his life.
To her, this once-sturdy fortress bore the characteristic essence of Arques: the castle rotted from within. No pretext of grandeur, no fresh mortar, nor daub and mud could hide the dilapidating shell, the disintegrating timbers, the poorly thatched roof. Like their contentious relationships, the castle and its dark brooding turbulence bore heavily on its inhabitants.
She stepped off the last tread onto loose stones shifting beneath her feet. After setting the candle in a sconce, she scanned the room to gauge the degree of Arques’ malice.
At one end, thin rays of weak sunlight streaked across the floor from the slit windows above the gallery. Instantly comforted, she saw Walter sitting beside the roaring fire in the center pit, though he sat with his head in his hands in apparent distress. Searching the corners of the room where Arques’ thugs ruled, she found it unusually empty. A few servants darted about, and despite the fire, a chilly breeze billowed the heavy, faded red drapery, which swayed like tall, breathing pillars.
Fingering the silver trim at her wrist, she studied Guillaume Arques, sitting at a table beside the glowing hearth. A circle of bright light from a candelabrum illuminated the document in his hands. With a slightly amused look on his face, he studied the scroll, an important document, she inferred from the ribbons and seals. A pair of lethargic hounds flanked him. One raised his head to look at Elise and dropped it again to his paws, blinking against the fleas jumping about his face.
At fifty, Arques still looked the prince: tall and powerfully built. A startling plume of white hair flared above his right temple against thick, black locks framing a smoothly handsome face. The legendary Count d’Arques and his grandeur had once exemplified the ideal of Norman nobility and provoked awe among his peers. Now, the bitter, demeaned outcast personified ruination and provoked ridicule.
Walking toward the hearth, she watched Walter. His father’s schemes had condemned Walter to destitution and dishonor. At nearly thirty years, he had no future. Yet, he had not been cruel like his father. No, she thought, glancing at his bowed head, he had been her friend. Once, she had hoped for more. She felt her face flush with the embarrassing memory. Her girlish infatuation had died quickly under Hortense’s guidance and with Walter’s impeccable sense of propriety. Eternally grateful, she cherished their friendship and thanked her saints. Walter protected her and Marie from himself, his father, and any other man who would make his fortune by defiling highborn women.
As her skirts whispered softly over the rushes, Walter raised his head. She saw a flash of anguish, buried quickly beneath a welcoming smile as he stood to greet her. Arques’ falconine eyes snapped from the documents to watch her.
“Ah, the Countess deigns to answer my summons.”
“What is amiss?” Arques always used her title when trouble brewed. She inhaled, preparing herself.
Arques rose from his bench and kicked one of the dogs, its whimpers fading as it leaped away. He stepped around the table toward her. “You are to be married.”
“T-to . . .” Not to Arques. Please, God, not to him. “To whom?”
He chuckled. “Despite my best efforts, you’ll not be my bride.” He reached out to stroke her cheek and laughed when she stepped back. She recognized the look in his eyes. It must be a curse to be attractive but old and dispossessed. There had been a time, she supposed, when the mere flicker of his desire would have brought women eagerly to his bed. She wished he would not look at her that way.
“This is your fourth betrothed. With your curse, this one will pass soon to Christ, too.”
Elise did not rise to Arques’ bait. The nuns claimed that all the men previously betrothed to her had died—suddenly, inexplicably, under strange, perhaps unnatural circumstances. She knew otherwise. The first, a youth of sixteen, died from a training wound. The second, a man older than Arques, had choked on his food, and the last, an infant barely three winters, drowned. She supposed that, despite her wealth, her curse was the reason Eustace had not yet arranged a marriage.
“Your groom is one of William’s commanders,” Arques said. “Eustace is in Bergues celebrating the release of his son held hostage by William during the invasion. He sent his retainer instead.” He looked behind her.
Elise spun around, startled to see a figure emerging from the shadows near the screened alcove. She had not seen him when she’d searched the hall, a careless mistake.
Her tension eased upon recognizing Eustace’s loyal and trusted captain, Brian le Dogue Dubec. She and her sister Marie had first met Brian when he had escorted them from Abbey Clarion to Paris, and afterward to Boulogne. She never understood why he’d sworn fealty to her tyrannical uncle. Everyone knew Brian would fight the saints if Eustace so ordered. Yet, she sensed he was his own man and that he chafed against his vassalage.
His face expressed his dislike of this mission. She imagined that Brian would rather slit someone’s throat than dance around words knowing most of what happened in negotiations would be couched in flowery phrases and meaningless toasts. She watched him eyeing Arques, like a large and dangerous mastiff.
She guessed he was a few years older than Walter. He’d shaved his thick brown hair from the back of his head in the warrior’s style. He had brown eyes accented by crow’s feet, a result of squinting into bright sunlight rather than laughter, she suspected. Although the deep scars on his face did not make him hideous, they signaled his ferocity and implied battle wounds elsewhere.
“My lady,” he said. “I will negotiate the betrothal particulars on your uncle’s behalf.”
“As her guardian for the last three years, I will dictate the terms!” Arques’ plume, like hackles, flared.
“You have no legal authority.” Brian turned to Elise. “Count Eustace never relinquished his responsibility for you and your sister. He intends, as always, to protect his interests.”
Elise groaned inwardly, for this marked the beginning of a long and tedious battle. Tensions between Dubec and Arques had erupted on previous occasions. No friendship existed between them, only a long and smoldering animosity, which bound them together as closely as relatives. She believed their mutual dislike stemmed from Eustace, who dangled them both in dependency and often inflamed their loathing. She supposed their rivalry amused him.
“Will you protect her interests?” Walter said.
“This is not your concern,” Arques, flicking his wrist in dismissal.
“Who is this commander?” Walter insisted. “How old is he?”
Brian studied Walter a moment before speaking to Elise. “Alaric the Norman of Ewyas is twenty-four, perhaps twenty-five. He is the legitimate issue of a marriage between the Archbishop’s bastard, Simeon the Brave, and Julienne the Fair,” he said to Arques.
Elise saw Arques’ surprise and a slow smile. What secret did they share?
Brian continued to answer questions about Alaric’s birth near the Welsh border and his contribution to William’s venture. “He distinguished himself at Hastings.”
“Whose life did he save?” Arques asked.
“Bishop Odo’s,” Brian answered without pause. “Your betrothed was enfeoffed—not by William the duke, but by William the king. A knight, he holds the insignia of the corpus de royale and attendant rights. He was granted the tenancy-in-chiefdom of Staffordshire. Lord Stafford is also le Seigneur de Tutbierrie, where his castle rises.”
Rarely would a landless kinsman achieve such honor, Elise thought. As tenant-in-chief, he was nothing more than a military landlord, much like her own tenant-warriors who held land in exchange for protecting her estates. A knighthood merely distinguished him as a mounted warrior rather than a bowman or foot soldier. Yet, he was a member of the king’s elite knights and had the rights and authority to act on the king’s behalf. What had he done to win these privileges?
“The countess outranks him,” Walter said.
“It matters little, you worm,” Arques sneered. “This marriage is the wish of that bastard some fools call the Conqueror! Besides, she’s too old to expect a better match.”
Walter turned on his father. “Insults are unnecessary.”
Elise appreciated Walter’s defense, but in truth, she should have married at fourteen like most noblewomen. Her age of twenty-one would disappoint any man, and she might be too old to bear many children.
“My lady,” Brian injected, obviously enjoying the discord between Walter and his father, “Eustace insisted, and William agreed, that you will retain your title despite your marriage.”
“Why?” Arques asked, voicing her own question about the unusual arrangement.
“They believe your betrothed will match your rank very soon.”
“Is he ambitious?” Walter asked.
“A former mercenary, he is brash, uncultured, and well suited to his destiny.”
“As you are suited to your own?” Arques said.
Ignoring Arques’ jibe, Brian turned to Elise. “Your uncle believes your betrothed has the makings of legend. They call him the Black Wolf. Some claim he changes into a wolf during battle, though I have not seen it myself.”
Elise’s heartbeat quickened. Only warriors of Odin were said to take the form of fiendish creatures. Such phantasms provoked Christ’s Church, which sent the heretic and his entire family, from the eldest to the very youngest, to the stake.
“Take heart, Genevieve,” Arques said. “Your wealth will buy you a seat next to God.”
“Why does William want this marriage?” she asked Brian, infuriated at Arques’ sacrilege.
He hesitated. “Black Wolf needs a Norman bride.”
“A rich Norman bride,” Arques said. “To buy soldiers and weapons and build castles to suppress the English.”
Brian shrugged. “Philip approves.”
She hid her alarm. Although the king of the Franks would be interested in this match, it was dangerous to attract the notice of a royal kinsman.
“Perhaps,” Arques said, “he thinks you more useful in Englelond under William’s nose.”
“I wish to see the offers.”
“The good nuns,” Arques said, “should never have taught you to read.”
As Elise read the documents, Walter watched Brian Dubec and his father circle each other. He and Brian had met shortly after his father’s castle had fallen. Walter, sixteen, emaciated from the siege, had been wounded, blunting a mortal blow aimed at his father’s bare head. The wound had given Arques his white plume, which afterward symbolized Arques’ failure and his son’s pathetic courage.
Arques surrendered and had sought refuge with Eustace in Boulogne. Walter vaguely remembered arriving at this very castle, a torch-lighted courtyard, Eustace and his father arguing. Walter fell from his horse, bleeding. Brian, a young soldier, ordered to situate Walter, carried him to the stables and left his fevered body on a rat-infested straw pallet to die.
Instead, his wounds healed. Afterward, Walter had followed Brian around, fascinated by the cocky twenty-year-old soldier, by his violence, his rigor, and his endurance. Eager to earn a knighthood himself, Walter wanted to train with Brian, who spurned his requests. When Brian traveled with Eustace, he would return and describe his adventures, tantalizing Walter with a future he would never have. He realized the intensity of Brian’s revulsion the day Walter overheard him speaking to a companion. Although Arques demanded opportunity be given to him, Walter expected opportunities to arise for him. Without candle, coin, or sword, Walter has no future. I’ve no pity for him, Brian had said. He should find a life in the cracks. Like other snakes.
Walter had recognized the truth of Brian’s judgment, but even now, he felt intense shame for mistaking Brian as his friend.
“William,” Arques said, “left his kingdom after two months on the throne, less than a year since his invasion. I wager most of the English still do not know William is king.”
“You have no coins to wager,” Brian taunted.
Arques scowled. “William cannot hold his throne long, especially now when he is in Rouen.” Arques paced the room. “Someone . . . Someone must be gathering arms or making alliances. William’s enemies could overthrow him in months.”
Brian leaned his hip against the trestle table. His mocking gaze scalded Walter, promising a private encounter. Walter understood. He would face Brian’s sword, his fist, or his men’s thrashing, for Brian’s chief entertainment had for some time been to humiliate Walter as often as he could.
Why did Eustace want this alliance? Elise wondered, searching the document for a clue among lists of her own lands and her betrothed’s holdings, located in places with odd names. Did Philip have designs on her land in the Vexin? What did William gain? She studied her betrothed’s signature mark. From the gouges in the parchment, she surmised he had been angry when he accepted the offer. That, she thought, was the single most important fact of her impending marriage.
She looked up from the document as Arques repeated his tired litany. “I am the legitimate son of Duke Richard, half-brother to the successor duke Robert. By line of descent, I should have inherited the duchy after Robert’s death. Instead, the king and the Norman counts settled the duchy on my bastard nephew—a boy of seven.”
Elise recalled the story of how young Duke William, a boy of fifteen, took sole reins of the duchy and gave the county of Arques, a rich fertile land, to his uncle. The benevolent gesture nettled Arques: a bone when I deserve the carcass.
As Duke William’s power grew, Arques’ hatred of his nephew grew like the bloated innards of a putrefying corpse until—nurtured by King Henri of the Franks—it exploded, coating everyone with his noxious bile. The old, ailing monarch feared William, his young, powerful vassal possessing the province along his northern border. Encouraged by the king to weaken William’s duchy, Arques seized his fate. He built a gleaming stone castle, resolved to split the Norman duchy in half, thereby creating an independent province for himself. He renounced his vassalage to William and began seizing one Norman village after another, moving south toward Paris, fully confident that King Henri, who had instigated his revolt, the count of Anjou, and others would augment and provision Arques’ forces.
Arques had wagered his future and lost.
Young William drove Arques back into his castle. After a yearlong siege and near starvation, Arques surrendered. Abandoned by the French king and his other princely allies, Arques lay bleeding on the altar of fickle fortunes.
His misadventure changed Elise’s life forever. Infuriated by William’s increasing strength, King Henri attacked Normandie, destroying village after village until William’s forces faced him in battle near Mortemer. Fleeing in defeat, the French attacked Elise’s home, and in the wake of the killings, she and Marie became Eustace’s ward.
Duke William could have imprisoned Arques. But his leniency condemned Arques to fester with impotence and nearly servile dependency. Despite William’s coins, despite his noble dress and bearing, Arques languished without land, titles, or soldiers: bored, frustrated, and despised by the nobility.
“All know,” Arques said, “that I am the rightful duke of Nor—”
“—When is this marriage to occur?” Elise said, handing the documents to Brian.
“You will be betrothed by proxy this afternoon,” Arques said brusquely. “King Philip’s representative will arrive shortly as will Abbot Juhel from Clarion. You will be wed as soon as you join your betrothed.”
The swiftness of these events astonished her. Usually, a betrothal among nobles lasted a year or more! “Has the Pope agreed?”
“Yes,” Arques said. “Philip recalled Count Roland de Rennes from Rome. He arrived last night. Roland and Dubec will escort you to your husband’s castle.”
Elise felt as if she had been slapped. Roland went to Rome last year. King Philip would have had to summon him—months ago. They’d known of this betrothal for a long time. “Why was I not given more time to prepare?”
“You did not need to know,” Arques said, “until I decided—”
“None of us needed to know,” Walter said. “Father and I first learned of it last night when Brian arrived.”
“It is the situation in Englelond, my lady,” Dubec said. “Your marriage must be expedited.”
“Does my betrothed come himself to negotiate?”
“No,” Brian replied. “Dreux Marchand de Ville, Lord Norfolk, William’s envoy will negotiate on his behalf and represent your husband by proxy. He arrives this afternoon.”
“And for Philip?”
“Thierry de Châlons.” Arques’ smile curled into a nasty snarl.
Thierry! Elise thought, feeling a slight throbbing in the center of her forehead. With Thierry, King Philip’s chief advisor, one took nothing for granted.