Chapter 1
Port of Barfleur,
November 25, 1120

Sabin FitzSimon stood on the wharfside in the gathering dusk and through narrowed leaf-hazel eyes watched King Henry’s ship, The Mora, put to sea. A chill wind chamfered the iron-coloured waves with silver as the low slung galley rapidly diminished to a dark, beetle shape, toiling through the troughs. The fading plash of her oars carried back to shore and Sabin smiled to hear the sound because it heralded the success of his scheming. With the King’s departure for England, his way was clear.

The young woman at his side moved closer until her hip grazed his. Her hood was drawn up against the cold, and strands of auburn hair had escaped her veil to whip in the stiff, salt breeze. Lora was still fresh, still with that glimmer of innocence that was so fleeting in the court whores, and he should know. At two and twenty, Sabin FitzSimon had had them all…or nearly all. It was said among the young knights at court that Sabin kept a notched tally stick of his seductions, but it wasn’t true. He had no particular interest in remembering those who had gone before. His pleasure was in the pursuit, and there was a keener edge to this particular chase, for Lora was a favourite bedmate of King Henry’s and Sabin was trespassing on royal territory.

Shouldering a wine cask, a porter emerged from one of the dockside taverns and strode towards a moored galley. In the deepening twilight, the vessel’s strakes gleamed like the feathers of a swan and her prow was a proud and graceful curve. Boldly coloured round shields lined the wash strake, increasing her freeboard and protecting her passengers from flying spray. Silk banners streamed at her mast, their colours intense in the last of the light. She was The White Ship, the Blanche Nef, pride of King Henry’s fleet and a fitting transport for his heir Prince William and the lively younger element of the court who were still roistering onshore.

‘Shall we go within?’ Sabin indicated the hostel from which the porter had emerged. ‘We could have a room to ourselves while we wait to embark.’ His voice was devoid of suggestion but his gaze was eloquent.

She slanted him a look through her lashes. In the gloaming, her eyes were dark but he knew that in daylight they were the blue-green of a sunlit sea. ‘That would be welcome,’ she said, the formal words belied by the mischief and frank lust dancing in her expression. If Lora’s list of conquests was not as long as Sabin’s, it was because she had more recently come to the battlefield. It was of her own will that she chose to end the hunt. Had she wanted she could have sailed on King Henry’s ship, instead of remaining to dally with the revellers… with one reveller in particular.
He turned her on his arm to face the torchlight spilling from the drinking house. Tipsy laughter and overloud conversation beckoned the couple as they picked their way across the straw-littered mire of the street to the door. So did the stares of three well-armed and relatively sober soldiers who had also not sailed with the King.

Sabin swept a giggling Lora into his arms, carried her over the threshold and deposited her on a trestle bench. ‘A flagon of your best wine if you have any left,’ he commanded the tavern keeper. ‘And food to soak it up.’

‘There’s just one keg sir.’ The landlord wiped his hands on the cloth at his belt. ‘But it’s supposed to go to Prince William’s ship with the rest.’

Sabin fished in his pouch and withdrew a handful of silver – winnings from an earlier game of dice. ‘It isn’t now,’ he said with a wolfish grin. ‘A flagon for me and the lady, and share the rest around.’ He cast his gaze into the murky corners of the hostel and snorted with contempt to see a youth slumped over a trestle, one hand curled slackly around a cup. Sabin strode over to the table and lifting the mop of fair-gold hair looked into the slack, pickled features of his youngest half-brother. ‘Simon?’

The youth blinked owlishly. ‘Is it time to go?’ he slurred, and belched a miasma of sour wine fumes into Sabin’s face.

‘No. I was just making sure that you were still alive.’ Sabin’s mouth curled in good-humoured scorn. ‘Looks as if you’ve sunk enough to float a galley.’

‘ ‘S’ good wine. You should try it…’ The lad’s head thudded back onto the trestle and he began to snore, saliva drooling from his open mouth.

He was going to have a head like a bell tower on Easter morn when he awoke, Sabin thought with grim amusement. If Simon’s mother and stepfather could see him now, they would be furious – and as much with him as the boy. Whenever there was trouble, it was so often Sabin’s fault, that even when he was innocent, he frequently got the blame.

Abandoning his half-brother to his sotted slumber, he returned to Lora. The generous scattering of silver had prompted the landlord to find half a roasted hen, a wheaten loaf and a compote of apples stewed in honey. ‘If you have a quieter place where myself and the lady can dine in peace, I will not be ungrateful.’ Sabin touched the pouch at his belt with emphasis.

The tavern keeper raised a knowing eyebrow and placing the food on a tray, started for the door. ‘This way, sir,’ he said.

Sabin caught his sleeve. ‘I’ll ask you to watch out for the lad too.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the almost comatose Simon.

‘As if he were my own, sir.’ The landlord gave a mildly sardonic bow and straightening up, led Sabin and Lora to a chamber at the rear of the hostel. There was a large public dormitory on the floor above the drinking room, but the landlord had found it profitable to provide accommodation offering a degree more privacy. His wife had thought him mad when he converted the old hay store. Now she dressed in blue Flemish wool and thanked his business sense.

The pleasantly appointed chamber boasted a bench against one wall, a central hearth burning charcoal for heat without smoke, a handsome enamelled coffer, and most importantly, a capacious bed with a feather mattress. The landlord placed the tray on the coffer and lit candles in the wall niches either side of the bed. He accepted his payment from Sabin with a murmur and bowed out of the door.

Sabin listened for the click of the latch, then turned to Lora with a bright, incorrigible grin. ‘I have been dreaming of this for weeks now. You and me and a bed.’ Going to the flagon, he poured two cups of wine.

Lora swayed over to him. Removing the goblet from his hand, she dipped her index finger, withdrew it, and slowly sucked from base to polished nail-tip. In the candle shadow, her eyes were as black as sin. ‘I hope you make it worth my while,’ she purred and dipped her finger again, this time reaching up to outline his lips. The sheer eroticism of the gesture almost made Sabin grab her, throw her onto the bed, and take her fully clothed like a common street whore.

‘In full measure!’ he said in a lust-constricted voice. His hand trembled as he pushed down her hood and took the gold pins from her veil. Her braids shimmered like the leaves of a copper beech in late summer and she smelled intoxicatingly of cinnamon and roses.

‘You do know that poaching the King’s game is a dangerous sport,’ she cautioned impishly. Her forefinger collared his throat with jewelled red droplets.

‘I’m a dangerous man, sweetheart,’ he muttered and set his hands at her waist, drawing her hip to hip. It was at once a relief and a frustration.

She laughed and rubbed against him. ‘That is what everyone says. I have been warned more than once to stay away from you.’

‘And obviously paid no heed to the warnings.’

‘Oh, I’ve paid them every heed. But my curiosity is the greater. I want to know how true the rumours are.’

‘What rumours?’

She eyed him coquettishly. Her hand went down between them and explored. ‘About the size of your tally stick,’ she said.

Amid flurries of laughter interspersed with lustful urging and gasps of pleasure, Sabin and Lora tumbled on the bed, shedding their clothes with abandon. The cord holding up Sabin’s braies was knotted and there were some moments of exquisite torture while a giggling Lora unpicked the tangle with her sharp nails’

‘You just don’t want me to see the prize!’ She gave a mock pout. Her loose hair curtained her face and twisted in auburn ringlets to cover her lush, freckled breasts.

‘Believe me, I want you to do more than see it!’ Sabin said hoarsely.

‘Then what do you want me to do? Her voice was a throaty purr. Aha!’ She prised the knot free and loosened the cord. His braies slipped down and her eyes widened. ‘My, my,’ she said with admiration.

‘I’m a man of deeds rather than words,’ Sabin grinned. ‘I’d rather show you than tell you.’

She spluttered then burst out laughing. He pounced, rolling her beneath him on the soft, feather mattress.

Sabin was savouring the first tight, deep thrust, when the door slammed back on its hinges and three soldiers burst into the room, one clad in mail, the others wearing the quilted tunics of men-at-arms.

Lora screamed in Sabin’s ear like a fishwife. He was out of her and off her in a single blur of motion, his hand groping for the sword on his discarded belt.

‘Hold!’ the mailed soldier bellowed. Swords hissed from scabbards and Sabin found himself cornered and looking down the length of three blades. His chest heaving against the steel points, he stared through his tangled hair at his assailants and lowered his hands. Lust withered more swiftly than a storm-toppled tree. On the bed, Lora whimpered and frantically sought to cover herself.
‘What do you want?’ Sabin demanded, but thought that he already knew. These weren’t thieves out for his purse. These were king’s men. The poacher had been caught with his hand – and more – in the snare.

‘If King Henry was less merciful, your cock and bollocks,’ their leader snarled, confirming Sabin’s suspicions. His blade lowered to Sabin’s genitals to emphasise the point. ‘You have played him for a fool and now you will pay.’ He snapped his fingers at Lora. ‘Get dressed, slut.’

Making small sounds in her throat, Lora struggled to don her chemise and gown. An abrupt command and Sabin’s arms were grabbed and lashed behind his back. He was forced to his knees in the thick straw of the chamber floor.

‘Don’t hurt him,’ Lora implored, her voice pitched high with fear.

‘Christ, Arnulf, get her out of here and put her on the ship,’ their leader snapped. One of the soldiers seized her wrist, yanked her from the bed and dragged her sobbing and screaming out of the door.

Sabin held himself rigid and felt his belly ripple with nauseous fear. He knew it was going to be bad, could only pray that they did not cripple him permanently.

‘Now then.’ The leader circled Sabin, his boots crackling through the fresh straw. ‘I am authorised to take reparation for the insult you have given your king.’ Picking up Sabin’s pouch, he emptied it of the remaining coins. A magnificent cloak clasp of English silverwork fell out into his hands.

Sabin lunged and was brought up against a sharpened edge. ‘That was my father’s!’ he burst out and struggled against his bonds. A sword was reversed and the hilt clubbed against his temple. He swayed, seeing stars. A booted foot slammed between his shoulder blades and his cheek hit the straw with bruising force.

‘ ‘Was’ is right. The leader tucked the money and the brooch into his own pouch, latched Sabin’s swordbelt around his own waist and drew the blade to test the balance. ‘Decent, but I’ve seen better. Still, it should fetch a good price.’ Sheathing the weapon, he laid his foot beneath Sabin’s jaw. ‘Pick him up Richard. I haven’t finished with him yet…in fact I haven’t even started.’

Through the eye that was only half-swollen shut, Sabin focused on the guttering flame of the candle in one of the niches. Its partner had gone out, and that side of the room was cloaked in darkness. If some parts of his body were not clamouring with pain, it was because they were still numb; the agony would come later. King Henry’s men had known their business. Sabin was too highborn and well connected to die, but not protected enough to be immune from a severe warning.

‘Christ,’ he groaned and struggled to sit up. His hand were still tied behind his back and he was naked. A purple bootprint stained his ribs, and his abdomen felt as if someone had been using it as a threshing floor. It was not the first time in his life that he had suffered such punishment, but usually his assailants had come off worse.

The charcoal fire had died to grey and the November chill was seeping into the room. How long had he been lying here? He knew not, save that the candles had been fresh when he and Lora had been shown to the chamber and now he was about to be left in darkness. He strove to his feet, collapsed, fought his way up again and wobbled to the bed. The effort opened up a drying cut on his lip and he tasted fresh blood. Sabin fell face down on the mattress, turned his head to one side so that he could breathe and let oblivion swallow him.

When next his awareness returned, pallid dawn light was threading through the shutters. He was chilled to the bone, stiff as a corpse, and someone was kneeling over him.

‘Is he dead?’

Sabin recognised Simon’s frightened voice.

‘Not yet, sir,’ replied the landlord, ‘but I doubt he’s in the land of the living either.’

There was a sharp tug at Sabin’s back as the landlord used a whetted dagger to sever the cords binding Sabin’s wrists.

Sabin groaned. His arms had set in their trussed position and to move them was at first impossible, then agony. His entire body throbbed with pain, sharp, dull, incapacitating.

‘Bones of Christ, what happened to you?’ Simon came around the side of the bed. His thin, adolescent features were puckered with worry and his complexion was sweaty and pale in the aftermath of his drinking session.

‘King Henry’s hirelings,’ Sabin croaked and felt his lip sting and bleed again. ‘I was with Lora…God, stop boggling at me like a witless sheep. Go away. Let me die in peace.’

The youth ignored him and hovered anxiously. ‘I said you shouldn’t chase her.’

Since he couldn’t get up and walk away, Sabin closed his good eye and hoped that Simon would take the hint.

‘The Blanche Nef sailed without us.’ The youth’s tone was despondent. He had been looking forward to voyaging on the finest galley in King Henry’s fleet. ‘The other ships have all gone too. We’ll have to find a wine transport to take us home.’

Sabin grunted. Practicalities were beyond him for the nonce.

The tavern keeper’s wife arrived with a bowl of warm water, a cloth and some salve. A judicious application of leeches reduced the swelling around Sabin’s eye and the cut on his lip was treated with some disgusting grease that nevertheless did its job and prevented the wound from splitting open every time he tried to speak.

In pain and great discomfort, but not at death’s door, Sabin was able to dress and shamble into the tavern’s main room where he partook gingerly of bread soaked in milk and a cup of watered wine. He missed the customary weight of the sword at his hip and he had to borrow Simon’s spare brooch to pin his cloak.

‘My mother won’t be pleased when she sees you.’ Hunched over an almost untouched cup of wine, Simon studied Sabin’s battered visage. ‘There isn’t an inch of you that’s not black or blue or red.’

‘Your mother never is pleased to see me,’ Sabin retorted, pushing another morsel of milk-sodden bread between his lips whilst striving to open them as little as possible. His jaw was aching ferociously and at least two of his teeth were loose. ‘You know as well as I do that she’d prefer I’d never been born.’

‘She’s always been fair to you,’ Simon’s tone was defensive. ‘You’ve never lacked for anything.’

Sabin shrugged and paid for the movement with pain. Simon was right. The Lady Matilda, Countess of Huntingdon and Northampton had always been fair. So even-handed that no one could accuse her of neglecting her duty or shunning her husband’s child, bastard-born of a novice nun and begotten on the way home from the great crusade. What was lacking was the warmth that she bestowed freely on the children of her own body. For him the smiles had always been forced, for Waltheof, Maude and Simon, they were wide and joyous. Her offspring could do no wrong.

Sabin, by quirk of fate and sometimes a petulant demand for attention, was usually caught out in transgression. It had not mattered so much while his father was alive. There had been the balance of his affection, albeit tinged with guilt, but after he died, that balance had been removed and Sabin had found himself trying to run up a steep and slippery slope. Sometimes he thought that it wasn’t worth the battle, and that he should just slide quietly down into hell. Then again, perhaps he had already arrived there.

‘Why did you do it?’ Simon asked.

‘Do what?’

‘Chase Lora when you could have had your pick of the court women.’ A hint of envy flickered in the youth’s blue eyes.

‘I like playing with fire,’ he said flippantly and pushed his bowl aside, the sops half-finished. ‘I might as well ask you why you drank last night until you dropped. You knew it would give you a head like the bottom of a pond this morn, you knew it would make you sick, but you still went beyond enough and into too much.’

‘It was good wine,’ Simon’s tone was defensive. ‘And I don’t like sailing – even on the best galley in the fleet.’

‘Not because your stepfather would disapprove of you getting roaring drunk in a dockside tavern and you felt like defying his rules?’

Simon’s throat flushed red above his tunic collar. ‘I didn’t get drunk to spite my stepfather.’

Sabin said nothing, but his look was eloquent. Two years after her husband’s death, the Lady Matilda had wed David MacMalcolm, Prince of Scotland. A political match to be sure, but one from which deep affection had developed. The marriage had been blessed with several offspring, the eldest only six years old. Prince David took his parental responsibilities seriously and that included dealing with his stepchildren. Being the bastard of Lady Matilda’s first husband, Sabin was on the periphery and only the most heinous of his misdemeanours were brought to Prince David’s attention. However, they were numerous enough to have earned him a reputation and last night’s incident was certain to add to it.

Simon pretended great interest in a dubious stain on the trestle.

Manoeuvring his cup to avoid his cut lip, Sabin finished his watered wine. ‘I went after Lora because I liked the way she laughed and I wanted to unbind that hair of hers and run it through my hands,’ he said. ‘She wasn’t jaded like some of the women at court. And yes, perhaps I did want to see if I could persuade her to abscond Henry’s bed for mine. I admit that I might have over-reached myself but…’ He stopped speaking as the landlord’s wife returned from a visit to the fishing boats, her basket filled with two large crabs and half a dozen flounders. Her complexion was grey and she was trembling as she sat down heavily at one of the trestles. Her husband hastened to her in concern, demanding to know what was wrong.

She looked up at him through welling eyes, then across at Sabin and his brother. ‘The Blanche Nef,’ she said. ‘I have just heard that last night she hit the Chartereuse rock and sank.’
There was a brief silence while the three men stared at her.

‘You are sure?’ Her husband was the first to break it. He gestured at her basket. ‘You know that Tomas trades more false gossip than he does fish.’

‘I didn’t hear it from Tomas,’ she said with tearful indignation. ‘Breton Alys told me. Her husband was out fishing and rescued a man from the sea at first light. He told them that the Blanche Nef had foundered on the reef and when they tried to prise her off, she sank.’ She waved her arm. ‘Go and ask for yourselves if you do not believe me…go and look. They say that pieces of wreckage have been washed up by the Point and at least one body. All those young people…all those we entertained last night…every one of them drowned, including the Prince.’ Covering her face, she began to weep in earnest, rocking back and forth on the bench.

‘Holy Christ on the Cross,’ Simon whispered and signed his breast. He gave Sabin an appalled look. ‘We should have been with them.’

Sabin stared blankly at the door that the woman had left open in her distress. Raw November cold blew into the room. Across the rectangle of pallid light he watched people going about their business and heard the screaming of gulls over the landed catches from the fishing boats.

‘Perhaps it isn’t true,’ Simon said. ‘False rumours always spread like wildfire.’

Sabin heaved to his feet and moved stiffly to the door. The wharfside was as busy as it had been last night, but now it was filled with clusters of townsfolk, bartering opinion and speculating on the news. As Simon said, it might not be true, but there was a cold knot in his belly that told him it was.

There was a sudden flurry as people began running towards the shore where a fishing vessel was beaching, the master and his lads splashing barelegged and knee-deep in the water. One of the youths was shouting and gesticulating. Thrusting past Sabin, Simon sprinted towards the vessel. Sabin lurched stiffly after him, the wind tearing into his mouth, causing his loose teeth to ache ferociously.

The fishermen were lifting something out of their craft and bearing it onto the firm shore above the waterline. Sabin saw his brother crane to look and then abruptly turn away.
‘It’s Lora,’ Simon said, swallowing. ‘Dear God, I didn’t believe it was true…I didn’t.’ Bending over, he retched.

Sabin pushed his way forward, heedless of his superficial pain, for a far deeper one was gathering inside him – as if someone had seized his soft, vital organs in a fist and twisted.
She lay on her back, her auburn hair spilling over her body like strands of seaweed and her complexion a deathly blue-white. The red lips were pale, the once laughing eyes as opaque as stones. Without his urging and blandishments, she would have been safe with the King. He had as good as caused her death.

Someone brought a litter and Lora was lifted onto it. Grains of sand and crushed shell clung to her hair and sodden gown. The smell of brine and fishing boat rose from her body, replacing the warm scent of cinnamon and roses that had coiled around Sabin’s senses last night. He shouldered to the side of the litter and gently stroked a tendril of hair away from her marble-cold cheek.
‘I should have died too,’ he said and did not know if it was a blessing or a curse, that King Henry’s soldiers had taken his sword to a watery grave. Had it hung at his belt, he would have been tempted to draw the steel and fall upon its edge. Dazed, hurting, he stumbled back to the tavern. The main room was already filling with locals, eager to discuss the news, their faces reflecting a mixture of horror and relish. There was very little wine to go around, but there was plenty of rough cider and people set to with a will. In the background, Sabin was aware of his half-brother shoving out a drinking horn to be filled.

He hobbled away from the noise and sought the room where he and Lora had sported in light-hearted abandon the previous dusk. Here the scent was still of cinnamon, of burned wax from the guttered candles, of spilled wine. He lifted the flagon that had been knocked over in the initial scuffle and saw shining among the rushes, a hair ribbon of woven green silk. Picking it up, he twined it around his fingers. The shimmer was like the glint of a drake’s head in spring. Fierce heat prickled his lids, adding to the pain of his bruised eyes, but he did not weep. Tears were too easy a release. As a child, punished for mischief and misdemeanour, pride had been the stones in the wall and defiance the mortar that had prevented him from crying. Since then, the wall had been many years in the building and fortifying, so that now it stood so vast, so high, so strong, that even if it was damaged, it would not crumble. It kept enemies out, and imprisoned him within.
He lay down on the bed and bent his forearm across his burning lids, the ribbon still woven around his fingers. There would be no wine galleys sailing for England today. Tomorrow perhaps, bearing the unbearable news. Grimly pushing all thought and emotion from his mind, Sabin took refuge in slumber, lightless and fathoms deep; the closest he could come to death without dying.