Faerie (20 page)

“You, Lord Fulk, you will be the first to die,” she added. “And then how will you force me to wed you?”

“You would not dare.” Fury spun blackly in his eyes, but his hands did not move to his weapons.

“I will not give myself to you. I will happily die fighting.”

Fulk’s big black horse danced like a nervous spider as the knight pulled unevenly on his reins. Fulk had to know he could
not move fast enough to save himself. He had moved too close, expecting a battle of swords, for no one shot a bow from horseback. No one save Leonie of Bosewood, but he could never have expected that.

“You will burn in Hell for your perfidy, lady,” Fulk said. With a jerk on the reins, he wheeled his horse and leaped into flight down the road, his men and the bishop’s men turning and galloping after him.

“Since I have committed no such betrayal, I believe I’ll leave that to God,” she said. “In any event, I think I would find burning in Hell a pleasanter experience than being married to him.”

“By the devil and all the blessed saints!” said de Mowbray. “A battle fought without a shot, by one woman, and not a man to raise his weapon. I’ve never seen the like. What do you think you’ll do with the likes of her, Peregrine?”

Philippe flashed a wary glance at her, but the odd upturned corner to his mouth betrayed something more. “Haps I’ll have her train my archers.”

Her heart still pounded, though she had not realized it before. Whence had this come, this sudden notion to play, nay, to be, the warrioress? It had just come. And something in her heart sang, that she had done something that pleased the Peregrine.

“Then,” said de Mowbray, turning his massive warhorse toward the Castle of Bosewood, “if you mean to have a castle for archers to defend, you’d best hie there quickly. There’ll be an army at your curtain wall before you can sneeze.”

“I
T’S A PIGSTY!”

Leonie stared, her mouth hanging open. The tiny village surrounding the castle was pitifully neglected. It had been bad enough crossing the narrow drawbridge that looked flimsy enough to collapse from the weight of more than one horse, but this—

“A stinking, decrepit pigsty,” Philippe added. “De Mowbray’s right. Let’s burn it.” His mellow brown eyes turned harsh as he scanned the curtain wall from the inside. His knights, along with some of the king’s, and villeins of all stations gathered around them as they dismounted.

Leonie followed his example, looking at the fortress from a warrior’s eyes, and her heart sank. They would be in serious trouble if they faced an attack. The stone wall was nearly complete, but toward the upper slope of the ground, one large gap was blocked only by huge wooden pickets. The wooden parapets, from which men could defend the walls, were incomplete, leaving some places without protection.

“Lady! My lady!”

Leonie turned and saw Ealga running toward her. Her heart suddenly racing with joy, Leonie dismounted, ran to Ealga, and threw her arms around the woman who had been more mother than maid to her, as long as she had lived.

“I feared for you, my lady,” said Ealga. She smoothed her hands over Leonie’s high shoulders and tucked the wayward pale curls of her charge’s hair back behind her ears.

When they separated again, Leonie spotted a hidden tear gleaming in the corner of the woman’s eye. Ealga’s lower lip quivered. “They said you had been found and were coming, but I was afeared.”

“I am well. Only a small injury to my ankle, and I have already forgotten that.”

“My lady, this place, ’tis filthy. We have been cleaning since we arrived, but ’tis no place for one gently born.”

“Aye, so I see,” Leonie replied. “’Tis no place for any of us. No matter. We shall make it fit.”

“Leonie!” From the crumbling smithy, her favorite little boy came running.

“Sigge!” He landed in her arms with the colliding force of a big dog. She laughed. “You can speak now! How did you get here?”

“I can, Leonie, most times, that is. I came with my brother. The king said the Peregrine needed a blacksmith, and Lord Geoffrey didn’t want to send Papa, so the king asked him for Modig and me. Only I’ve got to help in the forge, and it’s a mess.”

Leonie glanced at Philippe, who shrugged. Had he known about her attachment to the boy? If Sigge were here, and Ealga, it would be almost like home. “It looks like everything here is a mess, Sigge. We’ll all have plenty to do to set things right.”

“Now that we have the happy reunion out of the way, may I have a word with you, beloved bride?”

Leonie startled at Philippe’s voice. She lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes at his folded arms and honey-brown eyes gone dark beneath glowering brows. Her chin went up as her back
stiffened as straight as the lances his knights carried. “You wish to speak, esteemed lord?”

“Be sure, precious bride, you never again do what you did this afternoon.”

“What was so foolish? Did Fulk not turn his tail?”

“You would have been killed in a melee. You were lucky. You will never put yourself at risk in such a way again. Do you understand?”

She sniffed. “You would be dead if I had not.”

“I do not mean to say it did not work out well. But that matters not. I am a knight. As of this day, precious bride, you will begin conducting yourself in a wifely manner.”

“And if I do not?” She gritted her teeth as her anger steamed her blood like water splashed into a fire.

“Do you wish for me to take that bow you value so much away from you? I’ll do it if I must. You are not a warrior, nor a man. You will not act as if you are.”

Fury heated her face and spread down her neck. If he ever dared.

But nay. She glanced around. All in the bailey—knights, soldiers, ladies, villeins—were as quiet as the dead. None of them would have sympathy for a lady who acted like a man, not even Ealga, who knew her secrets.

“If you are through, then, honorable lord, we ladies appear to have much scrubbing to do if we are to have a hall suitable for our delicate breeding.” Before he could reply, she whirled away and stomped to the hall doors.

Hugh of Hatterie stepped ahead of her. “Haps, my lady, you might want to wait until—”

“Until what, sir? Until the rats have finished eating all the garbage? If I am to be a lady, I shall have a hall worthy of ladies. Step aside.”

Wincing, Hugh pulled on the door, and Leonie saw that the upper hinge was broken. A death-dealing stench rolled out.

Leonie held her breath, forcing herself not to gag.

“Jesu and the saints,” said Philippe behind her. “Let’s tear it down and start over.”

“You might tear it down, honored husband. I would clean it. Leave me to my task. You surely have plenty of manly tasks to perform.”

She heard his grumbling, heard his footsteps, and knew he had turned and stomped away. Something in her heart sank.

Nay,
pigsty
did not begin to describe it.

She snapped off her veil and wrapped it around her face to dispel the foul odor. Seeing a rat scurry past her foot, she snatched a woman’s broom and swung at it, but the act was futile, for the rat dived into the pile of refuse. She clenched her teeth and promised herself there would be no rats in her hall.

“Open the shutters and let some of this stench out.”

“But lady,” said one of the ladies sent by Aunt Beatrice, “Sir Hugh ordered them shut to keep the stench within.”

“Open them,” Leonie repeated. “I want the stench without. I shall have the keeping of the hall, not some lofty knight, and they will have more than bad smells in their bailey this day. We shall clean this place out if we must use shovels. Ealga, show me the solar. I hope it is better than this.”

“It is not, lady,” Ealga replied. “But come and see. Mayhap we’ll soon have it fit to unload your dowry train, but I think not today.”

Leonie signaled to the other women to continue their work on the hall and followed where Ealga led her to the solar, a chamber behind the hall. She lowered her hand from her nose to force herself to become accustomed to the wretched odors.

The solar was worse beyond belief, with strewn refuse occupying most of the floor. The bed was a mass of filthy rags and,
she did not doubt, vermin. “Burn the mattress,” she said. “Burn everything in the chamber, save the furnishing.”

“Aye, ’twas my thought,” Ealga responded. The old woman glanced over her shoulder, then began a whisper. “Lady, tell me true, are ye all right? Ye said ye were injured. Did ye heal it?”

Leonie shook her head. “All would have been well, and I would have evaded the Peregrine by walking through the night, but when night came, I discovered the sight was gone. I could see no better than anyone. I stopped to rest, but in the night a boar attacked me. I escaped into a tree, but he gored my ankle.” She raised her skirt and showed the gash. “The Peregrine stitched it when he found me, else I would not have been able to walk. But it doesn’t hurt now because it doesn’t gape open.”

“A boar? They dinna attack folk wi’out they are disturbed. Let me see.”

Leonie propped her foot up on a stool, and Ealga bent to examine the wound. “’Tis not festered,” she said in her assessing voice that sounded a bit like humming. “’Tis well stitched. But why did ye not heal it before he found ye?”

“It didn’t work. Everything is strange, Ealga. I killed the boar, but my first shot missed. And on our way back here, I saw a giant snake. The Peregrine thought ’twas my imagination, or that I’m daft, but I tell you it was real. It was longer than a man is tall, with a huge head, red eyes, fangs, and a forked tongue, and black as night. When the Peregrine came running, the snake slithered into the brush. Then that night we were in a shelter and were attacked by people I couldn’t see. We were warned because one of the Earl of Northumbria’s dogs had found us and was in the stockade with us.”

“I’ve heard of the earl’s strange dogs,” Ealga answered. She finished her assessment and dropped Leonie’s skirt. “They say they are kin to the black dogs of Hell that roam the moors at night, but his dogs hunt the black dogs and other spirits. ’Tis all
verra strange, lass. Do ye think ye lost your talents when ye were injured in the forest?”

Was that it? Had the injury to her head damaged her mind, then, and her Faerie ways were gone forever? “But that does not explain the snake or the boar. Nor how the earl’s dog found us. Nor, for that matter, how the Peregrine found me so easily.”

“And none of it explains why ye have decided to accept the marriage ye fought so hard against.”

“How was I to fight him, Ealga? I could not even walk, and with my skills gone, I am but an ordinary woman now. How can an ordinary woman fight the king’s will and one so sly as the Peregrine?”

“If ye are but ordinary now, can it be so bad? Is it not what ye always wanted?”

She had. She had so often said it. But now it did not look so good. “There’s that,” she replied. “None can call me witch now, can they? But I still find myself marrying a man who does not want me, who haps might kill me, and the only thing stopping him now is his promise to the king.”

“Something he above all other men would honor, dinna ye see that? Haps ye are safe now, after all.”

“And home, where I can help my people, as my mother did.”

“Are you sure ye cannot close the wounds? It looks uncommon good for one naught but a few days past.”

“I tried. I tried so hard, I nearly fell from the tree with the strain. But it did no good.”

“Then test it.”

Ealga seized Leonie’s dagger from its sheath and slashed a gash across her own arm.

Leonie gasped. She grabbed the arm and clutched her hands around it, forcing herself into the flow of thought that had always worked before. Her mind began to spin in the maelstrom that was more emotion than thought, concentrating all her energy
into the oozing wound. She could feel the blood seeping between her fingers and she tightened her grip, forced her thoughts deeper into her mind. Her body and her mind fought, and it was draining all her strength.

“Best to give up, lass,” Ealga said with a sigh. “We’ll just put a bandage on it. ’Tis not a deep cut, anyway, just a bloody one.”

Leonie opened her eyes and stared at the seeping wound. It should have been completely closed, as if it had never existed. But it was no different from the moment she had grabbed the old woman’s arm.

“So. I am to be ordinary after all,” she said.

But she knew the Peregrine had always been right about her. She was arrogant, willful, wayward. Bold in ways no other maid would ever dare. She was not ordinary, nor was she superior to other humans. She was simply spoiled. And she had brought danger on herself because she had no humility.

Leonie of Bosewood, daughter of Herzeloyde, did not know how to be ordinary.

Through the gaping doorway came Maud, the lady maid her aunt had sent with the dowry train. The lady gasped at the blood.

“Ealga has cut herself,” Leonie said. “But I do not think it is dangerous.”

The lady’s attention to the blood quickly faded, and she turned to Leonie. Leonie knew what was coming, for she had observed this whining woman many a time in her aunt’s home. Perhaps Aunt Beatrice had simply grown tired of the woman, and she had taken her first opportunity to be rid of her. Perhaps she had grown equally weary of Leonie and her strident ways. Perhaps Aunt Beatrice would now have the peaceful household she had always sought. Claire was always the perfect daughter. Leonie had not appreciated enough the love and nurturance she had been given.