A Sister's Crusade Read online

  A sister’s Crusade

  Ann Turner

  Copyright © 2016 Ann Turner

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,

  or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents

  Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in

  any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the

  publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with

  the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries

  concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events

  and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination

  or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons,

  living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Matador

  9 Priory Business Park,

  Wistow Road, Kibworth Beauchamp,

  Leicestershire. LE8 0RX

  Tel: 0116 279 2299

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador

  Twitter: @matadorbooks

  ISBN 9781 785896 699

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

  This book is dedicated to Eleanor Hibbert (1906-1993),

  who wrote under the pseudonym of Jean Plaidy. It was her historical romance books that inspired me to pick up a pen and begin writing.

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  Bibliography

  Author’s Note

  In 1978, the BBC showed the series ‘The Devil’s Crown’, the story of the three Angevin kings, Henry II, Richard I (Lionheart), and the infamous John. Being fascinated in history, and an avid viewer of historical dramas (to get my historical fix), I enjoyed every episode of this tremendous series, and it remained in the back of my mind for many years.

  It sparked in me an idea for a story of a young woman who lived in this traumatic, violent time, travelling to the Holy Land and having adventures along the way. At that time, I frequently wrote short stories for my own amusement, and so the embryonic story you are now about to read came into being.

  By the way, the entire series of: ‘The Devil’s Crown’ is now able to be viewed on YouTube. I know this as I have re-watched the entire series again, having forgotten how like both a staged play, and a living tapestry it looks.

  It made me a fan of the actor, Brian Cox, and I still enjoy watching his television appearances to this day.

  There will be readers of my novel who may wish to suggest that I am being historically inaccurate when I write about the wearing of the cross of Saint George during the 3rd crusade.

  Saint George officially became the patron saint of England in the 14th century, under the reign of King Edward III, great, great, great nephew of King Richard I. However, the red cross on a white background that is recognised as the symbol and flag of Saint George, was first adopted by the Christian soldiers as their patron saint about the year 1098 at the Battle of Antioch during the 1st crusade. It is written that King Richard I put his soldiers under the protection of this saint, by having them wear the Cross of Saint George, thus the familiar image of the crusader in the white tabard with the red cross emblazoned on his chest is the one we all recognise today.

  I would like to thank Alan Beasley, and his contacts for his help in promoting my novel.

  There are also two people I would especially like to thank for their support: Tracey and Chris, who I shamefully forgot to mention once before. These lovely ladies listened to my constant grumblings when I felt the world was against me while I sweated blood as I wrote, and encouraged me on.

  I feel humbled to know that Tracey has been inspired by my writing to put pen to paper (metaphorically) herself and now writes.

  I have read some of her work, and it is looking good. Don’t give up, Tracey.

  1

  December. Cold, icy-cold, with a bitter wind blasting in from the north to penetrate and chill a man to the very marrow in his bone. Meagre fires in mean hearths barely gave out enough heat to warm the room, though smoke filled the lungs and stung the eyes before swirling upwards towards the hole in the roof and freedom in the cold air.

  Every year for as long as the people of the village could remember, life had been hard. Scarcely anything changed from day to day, from season to season, from year to year. They worked the fields and tended the livestock for Lord Oswyn, an unappeasable master to serve. Resistance to his rule was not permitted. Dissent or lawbreaking was swiftly and cruelly dealt with. Once the taxes were paid, the villagers were allowed to remain in their hovels, and retain barely enough food to stave off hunger, though the lord and his wife lived in opulent comfort at Romhill.

  Lord Oswyn was frequently seen patrolling his lands, astride his tall hunter. He would scarcely regard his serfs as they bowed low, never looking directly into his face – such familiarity was not permitted, as they were not worthy of his attention – though occasionally he would stop and demand information as to how the crops were growing in the fertile soil this season, how many of his cows and oxen were in calf, whether the harvest would be a good one or whether grain would be a higher price this season.

  Now, just a few days before Christmas, the weather had turned bitter. The skies were leaden grey and heavy. Occasionally a cold sun would glimpse from gaps in the clouds, yet there was no warmth to cheer weary, aching bodies. Snow flurries eddied and swirled around the villagers, chilling them through their roughly woven, patched and repaired home-weave. Their hands, chapped, red and numb from the cold, could barely grip the hoes they stabbed into the frozen ground. However, despite the conditions, the constant hunger and the miserable homes they wearily trudged back to at sund
own, their spirits were unusually good. The crops of wheat and rye had been good this season, and enough was harvested for the making of bread. The surplus would be sold to bring a healthy revenue to the estate.

  Usually, Oswyn retained the profits, but this year – with his wife finally pregnant after years of barrenness and with the inclusion of the crops – in a sudden and unexpected mood of generosity, he had presented the villagers with a pair of oxen to make ploughing the fields a little easier. This had made their Christmas more cheerful; they were poor and could barely afford the cost of owning livestock to help work the fertile fields, so the village ownership of two of these beasts was an occasion for celebration. Some began to sing Christmas songs and others joined in. It was only a few days before they would all jostle into the small church, decorated with holly, ivy and fragrant pinecones, to celebrate the birth of Jesus and listen to the padre preach. In a partitioned booth, Oswyn and his fragile wife, Petronella, would sit, apart and aloof.

  Petronella, the daughter of a Saxon lord, was distant to the villagers as they were not of her own kind. She had not been raised to regard such inferior beings, considering they were far below from herself and her husband. It distressed her little to see the starving children of the village, or to see women in the same condition as her still working hard, not given the luxury of the cosseting she enjoyed. Similarly to her, the man she had married lacked empathy. He regarded the native Saxons as a lower class, as had every Norman, since the invasion of Duke William the Bastard and his crowning as king of this cold, foggy island off the coast of Europe. Their marriage had been for the advantage of the Redfearn family, to continue to integrate into the Saxon aristocracy, to breed out Saxon blood and replace it with Norman blood. This had been so since the Conquest, and continued on.

  Petronella’s health had frequently given cause for concern. She had been blighted with a weak constitution throughout her life and frequently suffered from maladies. She was never seen riding out with her husband and her delicate health had raised doubts that she would ever produce an heir for her lord. The services at the church were the only times Petronella would be seen, always looking frail and haunted. The peasants were not overly concerned about their lady’s health; she never attempted to connect with them and their harsh lives, and so they regarded her with disinterest. They did not want her pity at their plight. Only the young, raggedy children of the village, not yet blighted by the insolence of the vast canyon of their lowly position to the lady of the manor, would smile and shyly wave at her. They would be reprimanded by their parents, and frowned upon by their passionless lord.

  Some of the peasants had been fortunate and were employed at Romhill to serve their master and mistress. But though they had the shelter of Romhill as their home, their lives were hard and they were never given permission to leave the grand house. They were completely lost to their previous lives and were at the mercy of Lord Oswyn and the disdain of Lady Petronella.

  Into the humble, desperate life of the village, Esma, the only child of Aelrid and Heresuid, was born. She was a spirited girl who resented the fact that she had been born into a life of servitude. She wanted to discover the world outside her village, to explore and go to strange new lands, but she was also realistic enough to know that these would all stay dreams. She was a girl and this meant that her life was already mapped out: a marriage to one of the young men of this village or the neighbouring one; her first married night would be spent with Lord Oswyn at Romhill; and then back to her husband where she would be expected to work at his side, care for their home, prepare meals from the meagre rations, while giving him child after child before, in all probability, death in childbirth.

  Esma knew her father was disappointed that she had not been a boy. Male children were more useful than females and he had frequently beaten her in a drunken state, before turning his rage on Heresuid for her failure to give him a son. This treatment at her father’s hand only hardened Esma to the harshness of her life. She resented the fact that but for the accident of birth, Lady Petronella lived a life of comfort and luxury, never having to sleep on a straw mattress alive with fleas and lice, or wear patched-up clothes. She would never watch the calluses and chilblains ruin her hands, or know the stabbing pain of an empty stomach as there would always be enough food to fill her belly. Life was unfair to a girl born so low.

  Frustrated, Esma stabbed the hoe once again into the frozen soil. There was no use in feeling sorry for herself; she should accept that her life would progress in the same way as all the other young women of the village – the ninnies that they were – but she was different and she knew it. There was more to life than this and she felt inside that she would be singled out for something big – but what? However, she was always just as curious when the ninnies gathered around a new bride the morning after her wedding, in order to hear about that first night at Romhill. The description would always be the same, yet they all wanted to hear the experience again and again.

  Firstly, after celebrating the marriage with family and friends, the bride would wait for Lord Oswyn to arrive on his horse. The new husband could do nothing but watch helplessly as Oswyn would swing the bride up behind him and ride back to Romhill with few words spoken to anyone. She would be taken to a large room dominated by the biggest bed and goose feather mattress the girl had ever seen. This had given rise to the bed being named ‘the goose bed’ by those who had occupied it. In the room there was also a long table laden with food. Oswyn would give the bride a cup of wine that made her giddy with its potency. He would then sit in a large chair and order the young woman to strip while he sat silently watching her. Once she was naked, he would stand and instruct her to undress him, making sure she lingered at the removal of his hose. This would always cause the girl to blush with embarrassment. He wanted to see this reaction from her, wanting her to see he was ready for the procedure to come. Then he would pick the girl up in his arms and carry her to the goose bed, lay her upon it, pin her down and exact his droit du seigneur with only grunts of exertion as he took the girl’s maidenhood.

  Once the task was completed, Oswyn would depart. The young woman would be allowed to spend the remainder of the night in the bed, to eat and drink from the table in the morning before a groom arrived to return her to the village, her expectant husband and questioning from the young women.

  When this happened to her, Esma was determined to enjoy the one night of luxury before her monotonous life with her husband commenced. There was not much for her to look forward to, so that one night, how unpleasant it was, would be the highlight of a tedious life.

  She heard the sound of hooves pounding on the hard earth and knew it was Lord Oswyn riding by on some important business. The men bowed, calling their greetings, and women curtsied, but none looked directly at him. Esma, feeling rebellious, continued working the soil. What interest would Oswyn have in a girl like her? Why should she show deference to him?

  He passed by, but today he slowed his horse to a walk. One girl had ignored him – it was most disrespectful of her. These creatures were the sediment of society and not worth consideration, yet he was aware of her indifference to him. It was his right to show impassivity, not the other way.

  He turned in the saddle and looked at her. He recalled she had ignored him once before and he had dismissed this dissent, as she must be weak in the brain and not know any different. On this second look, Oswyn decided the girl was a bit on the scrawny side – that would be due to the lack of food – but there was also something other that caught his attention and his loins stirred. With Petronella finally pregnant, he needed stimulus and usually he would amuse himself with his current mistress or one of the young maids in Romhill. This, however, was something different; she did not look as if she were feeble minded.

  Seeing her, he wanted gratification now. He could not wait until he rode to his mistress’s home, or returned to Romhill to hoist up the skirts of a kitchen maid and
get into her. He had selected this tatterdemalion – or had she unwittingly selected him? – and for this enchantment and allure, she would oblige him. Oswyn turned his horse and walked back, his eyes not leaving her. He imagined her looking up at him, enticingly, slowly, daringly, and brushing a wayward strand of hair from her face as a deliberate act of provocation. Esma glanced up at him – not enticing, but certainly provocative. Charming, Oswyn thought. He leaned forward in the saddle, not breaking eye contact.

  ‘Your name, girl?’ he asked.

  ‘Esma,’ she replied, brazenly looking back at him.

  Aelrid saw his daughter appearing to detain the lord and he hurried over in a panic.

  ‘What d’you think you are doing, daughter?’ he asked, alarmed.

  Oswyn raised a gloved hand to silence him, his eyes still not leaving Esma’s face. ‘You have a fine looking daughter,’ he said and Aelrid beamed with a false pride at the compliment.

  ‘I do, sir. She is a good and dutiful daughter that any father would be proud of,’ he proudly boasted.

  Esma shot him a look, but was somehow not surprised at his lie. Heresuid had now joined her husband, curious to know why they were speaking to Lord Oswyn, while others in the field had also looked up and were following the conversation. Their lord never engaged in talk with anyone other than the village elders.

  ‘Esma, you will come with me.’ He held out his hand, ready to lift her to the back of his horse.

  She shook her head. ‘Thank you, sir, but no thank you, sir,’ she answered, plainly.Aelrid was shocked at his daughter’s refusal to their lord and master, and stared open-mouthed at her.

  ‘What do you mean by that? Lord Oswyn wants you to accompany him and you refuse?’

  ‘Yes, why should I?’ she replied boldly, still holding his gaze.

  Cursing, Aelrid boxed his daughter’s ears, but Oswyn smiled at her spirit and wanted her body more. ‘You will obey our lord with his demand,’ Aelrid prompted sharply.Heresuid nodded agreement with her husband, though she was concerned what this would mean for her daughter. Oswyn had a lecherous reputation and was renowned for plucking women from the village for his amusement.