The Rose Of Lorraine Part 1

The Rose of Lorraine.

by Elizabeth Mayne.

BOOK ONE.

Law is like fire for it lights as truth, warms as charity, burns as zeal.

With those virtues the King will rule well.

SIMON DE MONTFORT.

(c)copyright by M. Kaye Garcia Jan. 1997 cover art by Jennie Dixon.

"This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars..." WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

Prologue.

June 10, 1346 Chandos Enceinte "Wake up, English! You'll not spend the night beneath my roof. Get dressed and get out!"

Edward Plantagenet startled awake. A muddy boot struck his belly, making him wince and protect his b.a.l.l.s.

"Go on, get out! Put on your filthy boots and take your stinking carca.s.s elsewhere."

The boot fell to the floor as Edward stood. Naked, tall, barrel-chested and handsome but tired beyond belief, the king of England stared at Isabella de Chandos and knew the woman had gone mad...again.

"Bella, why?" Edward demanded in a compelling voice. He had a way with women...even angry ones. "Tell me what has upset you? I will make it better, I swear."

Her night rail whirled around her legs as she picked up his cotte hardie, sark and hose and threw the lot at him. Red hair raged about her as wild as the tempest and fury that held her in its grip. Every item was wet and sodden, for it had rained for two days now and any man who dared the outdoors, returned drenched through to the skin.

Though lulled by the good ale his host had provided, Edward had sense enough to step into his hose and tighten them over his belly before the woman's husband arrived.

She had progressed to the stately bed and clawed at it. stripping the damask coverlet, tearing the fine linen sheets from the featherbed. The king approached her from behind, hands open to grasp her shoulders and calm her. She had always been a high-strung, sensitive woman of tempers and moods too deep to fathom, but her husband, John de Chandos, was King Edward's most trustworthy man.

"Bella, why?" Edward crooned in a soothing voice. "Has someone frightened you?"

She spun with a wad of cloth bunched and trailing in her hands, screaming, "I want you gone! How dare you! How dare you ask more of Chandos. He's done enough for you."

"Bella, Bella." Edward laid his big hands lightly on her shoulders, letting the cloths she shoved at him fall to their feet. "Calm, sweetling. Tell me what is wrong."

"Wrong?" she screamed in his face. "Would you cut my heart from my breast? Aye, you would, you heartless b.a.s.t.a.r.d. I know what you plan, what you order my husband to do. You go to war in Normandy, Calais and Lorraine."

"Your Majesty, what trouble here?" The woman's husband charged into the bed chamber given over to the king.

Sir John was dressed no better than Edward III, in sopping trews and muddy boots. Lord Chandos skidded to a halt on the polished floor. His tanned face drained of color as he caught sight of his wife wearing only a night rail in the king's presence. "What do you here, Bella, in the king's bed chamber?"

"Merde! Mon mari, can you not see I throw this beast, this roi de guerre out of our house? I won't let him build an army in my yard to attack my father and my brothers. Enough, Edward Plantagenet. Here stands one woman who has the courage to say to you, no, you cannot be king of England and also king of France." She spat at the king's feet.

Mortified, the lady's husband quickly secured a hold upon her, pulling her away from the king. "Hush, Bella," he soothed her. "You imagine things again." "Non!" Rage gave her the strength to twist free of Sir John's grip. "Liar! I have been to Portsmouth, seen with these two eyes the cogs and boats, horses and carts piled high with arms and tools of war. You invade France. I know it. Do not lie to me, Chandos. Do not lie for your king!" "Be silent, Bella!" the lord of the manor thundered a command that none who served him would dare disobey. His mad wife was another matter. She ran to the fireplace and took from the mantle a priceless vase. "Put that down and leave this room at once."

"He leaves or I do, Chandos. You must choose."

"Maman, why are you screaming?" A little boy of four years stumbled into the chamber. Behind him a

sleepy older brother was stricken face, all eyes and silent, but shaken so badly his night shirt flapped around his skinny knees like wind-torn willows.

"Madame," the husband roared. "Put that down!"

"I swear to you, Chandos, do you take up arms against my father, I will kill your sons and then kill

myself."

"Bella, you go too far."

"Non, Chandos, you and your devil-king have gone too far. On my eternal soul, I swear to you, this is all

you will have left. Nothing!" She threw the vase at her husband's head.

Chandos ducked as he lunged for her. The two little boys screamed and the vase, a token from Queen Phillipa for gracious hospitality given in the past, shattered against the castle wall.

"BY OAK, ASH, AND THORN, THE FAERIES MAGIK IS BORN.".

-1-.

The Well of Souls Lewes, England, 1995.

"Bella, please, not another English cemetery!" Aristotle Wynford. He rolled his eyes as his wife turned onto the Priory parking lot. She touched the Fiat's brake too firmly and pea gravel splattered out from under the wheels. "d.a.m.n, Bella. My first vacation in fifteen years and you're gonna spoil it with an accident!"

"Calm down, Ari. It's only the gravel in the parking lot." Bella eased the car into a s.p.a.ce, mentally toying with a Walter Mitty-ish vision of wringing Ari's neck. His constant nagging undermined her confidence about driving in a foreign country. "I'd be glad to let you take the wheel."

"Me? Aristotle Wynford, drive? In England? With no speed limits and all these maniacs on the wrong side of the road? Not on your life!"

"Then stop needling me unnecessarily. We're here to get away from stress and relax," Bella reminded him. "Keep this up and you'll drive when we tackle the mountains in Wales tomorrow, Ari."

Ari flashed a toothy grin and reached out to pinch her cheek. Fourteen years ago the gesture had meant she was cuter than a bug. Today, it meant nothing.

"In Wales? Honestly, Bella, are you crazy, woman, or what? I'll be busy enough straining the limits of my Welsh heritage, reading road signs and maps while you drive. I have it on good authority we Wynfords descend directly from an English king--on the wrong side of the blanket, mind you. I wonder how one says navigator in Welsh?"

"We shall have to ask," Bella replied.

She dropped the key fob behind an unfinished Miss Marple mystery inside her purse, and made certain she had their pa.s.sports, travelers checks and her Walking the Battle Fields of England Guide Book before snapping the bag closed.

They tumbled out separate doors into a soft morning mist. Bella smoothed the wrinkles from her khaki walking shorts and slung a sweater across her sleeveless blouse. She stood very still listening to the crunch of the gravel under Ari's trainers as he came around the car, but her eyes strayed to the battlefield she was here to visit.

Something unexplainable tugged on her, commanding she move directly there. From the moment she'd set foot on English soil, she'd experienced a strange, recurring sensation of deja vu, but not as strong as she felt it now. The truth was she'd never been to England before and knew of no reason why she should feel this way for the past nine days.

On one level the odd sensation spooked Bella. She had never given much credit to psychic experiences other people claimed to have. Bella's thoughts were firmly rooted in reality. Iain had revelled in the fantastic, the magical, in wishes and fairy tales and all things that went b.u.mp in the night.

From the time Iain began talking, Bella had asked herself if it were possible that her son could be an old soul reborn. Iain's endless questions and observations about the how and why of nature had tested what Bella perceived as purely normal. Tragically, his death, the death of her only child, had left her with a gaping void in her life that simply could not be filled.

Now, Lewes' Walls beckoned to her with the same poignant sense of impossible mystery the Alamo did back home in San Antonio. Battlefields gave meaning and purpose to death. To die for a cause was a n.o.ble thing. To die as Iain had, was a careless waste of life. What epitaph could be said for a nine-year-old boy run over by a car?

It was hard for Bella to imagine this peaceful little valley as the site of b.l.o.o.d.y gore and conflict. Everything seemed so vibrant, so full of color. Green. Green gra.s.s, green trees crowning Harry's Mount and Offham hill, green hedgerows marked each country lane and crisply-trimmed privet hedges bisected the stone walls of a castle ruins. Mossy green, forest green, deep and lovely summer green.

To her raised-in-the-heart-of-Texas eyes it was a rare treat to see such lush color. Bella didn't miss Texas' heat or sun. Not after getting sunburned on the hottest day in London history while watching the Trooping of the Colors at Buckingham Palace. When she got home she could tell her friends, yes, a red-head could get a sunburn in London.

The heat didn't linger in England. Today on the road to Brighton the sun couldn't make up its mind, poking in and out of an overcast sky. Bella cast a glance at the clouds and forced a smile, "I hope it is going to clear off."

She watched Ari tilt his long face and squint at the purpling clouds. Laugh lines creased his eyes and a hint of gray at his sandy temples looked very appealing.

"What would you like to do first, Ari? The Anne of Cleves Museum or the castle ruins?"

"I'm up to here on ruins." Ari snorted as he jabbed flattened fingers at his throat like a battle axe. "Look at those kids over there. I'll bet twenty dollars that shop's got video games inside it." The same hand that hadn't decapitated him now pointed down High Street where numerous boys loitered on the sidewalk. "Doesn't make any difference where in the world you go nowadays. All males under the age of seventeen look the same, don't they?"

Everywhere there was a painful reminder that Iain would have been fourteen this coming August. The sun broke through the clouds as one lad sauntered up High Street like he was the lord of the manor born. He swaggered past an elderly woman without bothering to speak or grant her one extra inch of ground.

Bella would never have allowed Iain to grow up so callous. A Texas gentleman tipped his hat or touched the brim in deference to age. It was the way she was raised and she would have raised Iain the same way.

The little old lady actually stopped and turned to watch the boy stroll up to the youths on the sidewalk and greet them in some universally understood sign language that now boiled down to swear words and heybro wazhangin?

The group of teens disappeared behind the store front. With the sidewalk clear of their rowdy noise the unusual town recovered its aura of Old World quaintness. Tourists spilled out of the Priory, chattering on their way the museum. Ari tugged impatiently on Bella's arm. "Let's make a quick run through the museum. I'm getting hungry."

Bella slung her purse across her shoulder and automatically lengthened her stride to match her husband's energetic pace. At five-eleven he lorded over her diminutive five foot zero.

A glance at her wrist.w.a.tch confirmed that it wasn't quite eleven o'clock. Bella could safely bet every Conan Doyle volume she owned that Ari would give her one hour to complete the tour. Then he'd roar like Henry the Eighth for his dinner at precisely high noon and spend the next three hours in a charming public room, savoring English beer and swapping stories about the big deal that got away.

Aristotle Winthrop Wynford had been born waving a qualifier and wearing polyester pants.

He'd been twenty-four years old, fresh out of the army with a brilliant smile, a dimple in his chin and California surfer blond hair that was to-die-for-to-touch when he'd proposed marriage to shy and sheltered, fifteen-year-old Sarah Isabel Saint Pierre of Castroville, Texas.

Her parents hadn't wanted Bella to date Aristotle. Castroville was small town, rural. On both sides of her family her great, great grandparents had been original settlers of the town. Alsatians banded together for over a century in their newly adopted country, speaking the old Francoise and clinging to their customs, raising big families and strapping sons tied to the land.

Ari was a city boy. Ari was different--flashy, slick, not to be trusted because he wasn't one of them.

He had given her a diamond ring and a dozen red roses on her sixteenth birthday, St. Valentine's Day, and by Easter, Bella had known for certain a baby was on the way.

In spite of her parents' predictions, their marriage had lasted, though there had been no more babies after Iain. At first, Bella hadn't minded. Becoming a mother was the greatest joy of her life. The long hours while the baby was napping, Bella had spent reading. Magazines and mysteries, childcare books, all the stuff a young mother who was lucky enough not to have to work to help the family make a decent living would read.

By the time Iain had begun half-day pre-kindergarten the monthly flow of magazines and book club selections no longer filled all the empty hours in Bella's days. She had turned to college and discovered history and immersed herself in the study of the past to fill in the gaps. For years she stayed so busy working on her degrees she never listened to the questions that hovered in the back of her mind. She had a successful husband, a beautiful son, a pretty home. Why wasn't that enough?

Bella thought she was smart enough to know that if something wasn't broken, you didn't try to fix it. It never occurred to her mind in all those years that Iain was the glue binding her and Ari together. She knew that now, now that it was too late. Ari hadn't touched her intimately in over four years. He never came home before eleven at night.

The sun broke through the clouds, warming the day considerably as they exited the Anne of Cleves Museum. Ari walked on ahead of her, but Bella lingered on the flagstone walk, enthralled by the pastoral beauty of the morning.

A centuries old oak spread its dense, magnificent canopy outward, some limbs bent so low, they nearly touched the earth. Beside it, a stand of ash fluttered the silvery underbelly of their leaves in the gusting breeze. According to the Texas folklore that Bella had grown up with, that meant rain. As she checked the sky again, Bella's hand grazed the hedge at her side. She pulled it back sharply when a thorn cut her, and cried out in surprise, "Ow!"

The th.o.r.n.y bush had scratched her ring finger. Three beads of red blood instantly welled along the inch long cut. She opened her purse to get a tissue. By the time she found one, three b.l.o.o.d.y streaks twisted in to one red splatter that fell to the earth.

"Bella, come to me!"

"What?" Bella started, surprised by the deep voice that came out of nowhere. She put her knuckle in her mouth, licking the copper-tasting droplets off with her tongue, wrapped the scratch with the tissue and looked to Ari. "What was that you said?"

He turned on the stone path ten feet away and gave her one of those looks of his, full of impatience. "I didn't say anything. However, after seeing that display in the museum, I'd say that Henry the Eighth was one h.e.l.l of a man. Jeez, six wives! Every time the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d got tired of plowing one, it was off with her head and on to the next."

He made that chopping motion with his hand again. Bella stared at him, confused. She had definitely heard a man speak. Bella said, "Well, you're not to worry about Anne of Cleves. She's one of the smart ones that kept her head. King Henry just divorced her."

"Divorced her, you sure? Cutting off her head would have been quicker."

Ari squinted against the sun, patting his pockets, looking for sungla.s.ses. He favored the mirrored ones the Texas Highway Patrol issued as uniform gear. As he settled those on the bridge of his aquiline nose, Bella realized he shut her out more effectively than if he'd donned one of the visored helmet from the museum's array of suits of armor.

"When we get back home, Bella, I want you to go ahead and file for that divorce."

Taken back, Bella asked, "Ari, what makes you bring that up now?"

Ari glanced at the Rolex on his wrist, a perk of the Million Dollar Sales a.s.sociate Club, dismissed the castle ruins and flashed his new car showroom floor smile. "Why, King Henry, what else?"

"Don't be spreading that salesman's gloss on me, Ari. You'd better say what you really mean," she insisted.

"Well, seeing that we're in such a public place...." He surveyed the tourists and natives with the expertise of a man who could cut a qualified customer from a milling crowd in two seconds flat. Dismissing them all, he dug his hands into the deep pockets of his camp shorts, and stared at her upturned face. "Aw, h.e.l.l, it's like this, Bella. Ask yourself where we're gonna be ten years from now, when there's nothing holding us together today? Our marriage is over. You're the only one who won't admit it."

Bella wouldn't argue. Years ago she'd stopped believing fairy tales could come true. It was her fault that she'd always needed more than Ari was willing to give. "Right, Ari. Consider the matter closed. I'll phone a lawyer collect from the next phone booth we cross."

"You know it's for the best." He looked to a pair of pretty English girls strolling up the same path and winked.

Bella's cheeks instantly stained with color. Some things would never change, but she was through wearing blinders wherever she went.