Faerie (23 page)

“It does not seem it would be a happy song, though,” she said.

“Ah, but if she dinna, we wouldna have apples! And if ye’ll taste the tarts, lady, forever ye’ll be grateful to Mother Eve.”

Leonie laughed and took a bite from the tart he gave her. She laughed again amid her hums of pleasure. “I’ve never tasted better.”

Some of the Norman soldiers knew the steps of the dance and joined in. Others stumbled, clumsy from the ale, bringing laughs to all. Some found maidens among the village, but Leonie saw their behavior was carefully watched, and they minded their manners well enough. She resolved she would do her best to see they did not misuse the women and girls, although she had the feeling the great Black Earl and her noble husband had already seen to that. For now, they wanted peace, not dominance.

The caroling lines came to a halt at the end of the song, and the pipes droned on, depleting their bags. The common folk stood round, waiting expectantly as the pipes began to wail a new tune. De Mowbray left their lines and walked up, huffing as only a very large man can do. He placed his fisted hands on his wide hips, waiting along with the others who stood behind him.

“What is it?” she asked.

“’Tis the time for the bride to take her husband’s hand for the marriage dance.”

“But I don’t know the steps. All I know are court dances. They do not suit with this music.”

Philippe’s deep laugh rumbled from his chest. “Nor do I know them. I’ve never seen such steps. The court dances I learned as a boy in Normandy. You know them too, de Mowbray, and you know the music and rhythm are not the same.”

De Mowbray rubbed his black beard. “Hm, aye. They aren’t the same at all, and of a truth, I don’t know how to dance anyway.
I just jump around, and they don’t seem to mind. But you must dance. The people expect it. If you don’t—well, you must. Can’t you make them fit?”

“Oh no, ’twould never work,” she replied, shaking her head.

Philippe stood and held out his hand to her. “It could be done. Ignore the music, and count the steps to ourselves. Shall we give it a round or two, precious bride?”

She shook her head, imagining her feet stumbling over themselves.

His eyes took on that haughtily narrowed look she despised, half smile, half sneer. “Are you afraid, adored sweeting?”

At the taunt, her eyebrows shot upward. “I?” She lifted her chin. “I am afraid of nothing, esteemed husband. It simply cannot work.”

A wicked smirk crinkled Philippe’s face. “But if the piper can play our tune? What shall it be? The
danse real
?”

“He would not know it.” How would a rough northern piper know the music of the royal French court?

With mischief gleaming in his eyes, he called out, “Piper! Can you play this?” Philippe hummed out a tune. The piper quickly picked it up.

Leonie felt a hitch in her breath. To dance with him. And later to lie in his bed.

She shook away the shudder. She had said she feared no man. And she had so promised herself. She could change nothing with fear, only with courage. So she must make it so.

“Slowly, piper. Ta dum, ta dum, tada dum, dum.” Philippe waved his hands to match the beat he wanted. The piper slowed accordingly. He turned back to her, his head cocked at an enticing angle.

“Now, my sweetest bride?” he asked, thrusting his upward-turned hand toward her again. It was no question; it was a demand. She could see that in the way his eyes smoldered.

Well, then, she would match him. Dare for dare.

With a gimlet eye focused back on him, she took his hand and walked into the circle. Then they moved apart to the clearing’s edge, the proper space for the
danse real
’s beginning. The fiery light of torches outlined his hard, lean body in his pale blue tabard, and a light gust of wind tossed his golden hair like strands of pure light.

Leonie’s eyes met his, full on, demanding her own answers.
What are you, Peregrine? What do you mean for me, good or ill?

His brown eyes threw challenge at her and the smirk twisted both corners of his mouth.

Her shoulders squared as she stood tall, resolve hardening like tempered iron in a forge.
So shall it be, then, Philippe le Peregrine, whatever you are. I will not be cowed. No matter what comes, it will not be said I have merely lain down and let my fate come to me.

Did he read her meaning? As if he did, he tilted his head and the corner of his mouth turned up. Aye. Challenge met and accepted. Let the dance begin.

They stood several arm lengths apart, the farthest arc of the circle they would traverse, he facing one direction, she the other. Each sliding step would move them slowly closer to the center, winding round and round like wool on a spindle.

Philippe signaled to the piper, who began the dance, his wailing pipe making it sound like a dirge. Step-slide, step-slide, one-two-three, one-two-three, arms rigidly at her side, eyes straight ahead in the formal posture of the dance, Leonie matched her steps to the pipes, while a drum somewhere near the piper picked up the slow cadence. She could hear Philippe humming the tune as he circled on the opposite side of the spiral.

With the first repeat of the music, they continued around the circle, now with their faces turned toward each other, looking down along the arm each of them extended toward the circle’s
center. Step-slide, step-slide, the inward spiral began, subtly closing toward each other with each step, until at the end of the second refrain, their upraised fingertips barely touched.

With the next repeat, their hands clasped, zapping lightning between them. Leonie spun gracefully beneath his high-raised arm, and back to their upward-held clasped hands.

“He’s playing faster,” she whispered to Philippe.

“Aye.” Danger sparked in his eyes. Or was it wild pleasure?

Her heart beat faster, in rhythm with her own excitement. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. A
danse real
was a sedate dance! They should reel outward again, moving in and out, slowly, in exactly measured steps. But the piper played ever faster, ever faster. Philippe hooked his arm around her waist and spun her about in the wild way the villagers had done.

“Stop! I can’t do that!”

“You just did.” His low and throaty laugh mingled with the increasing pace of the pipes, a drum beating a barbaric, rattling rhythm that throbbed in her pulse. Her ribbons slipped, her confining braids failed, and her curls flung wild in the whirling exhilaration. Rapidly, wilder, they circled, her feet nearly flying. Whirling and whirling, the folk around them merged into a spinning blur of shouting and clapping with the piper’s furious tune.

Philippe lifted her in the air, swinging. Her foot caught his leg. She shrieked as she lost balance, her flailing hand grabbing for his sleeve. With a flip, Philippe threw himself before her as they fell together, and she came down atop him.

She giggled between gasps for breath, looking at him beneath her. His eyes smoldered like embers. The crowd shrieked with glee. Her hands splayed over his hard, heaving chest, and she quickly curled them into tight balls. His smile was gone. His eyes were fierce. Then he chuckled and rolled with her, and then she was down and he was up. The crowd’s murmur softened, like sweet music.

Philippe leaned over her, one muscular leg wrapping over her body. “I think I must kiss you now, my sweetest bride, else they will think me very strange.”

Leonie tried her best to sneer but only managed a ridiculous flare of her nostrils. “Alas, most revered husband, they would be right.”

Her last word was cut off as his lips touched hers. She closed her eyes against the raging storm that tormented his gaze. At first his mouth was hard against her lips as if he meant to punish her, but it softened to tenderness while the pads of his thumbs feathered over her cheeks. Her very flesh burned where his body touched hers, and she wished for once she had no Faerie blood in her to fan the flames of her desire. Always, always, he had provoked her to such unmaidenly fires. Always, she had hated him for that.

Abruptly, he pulled back from her. Ferocity, nay, perhaps anger, blazed in his eyes where sweet laughter and tenderness had been. Aye, she had forgotten, he hated her too. This was but a sham to please the villagers.

De Mowbray’s raucous laugh cleared her mind soon enough.

“Come now, lad, if you’re so anxious, we’ll get on with the bedding now.”

Philippe sat and rose sharply to his feet. He dusted himself off and reached down a hand for Leonie, but she was already rising.

As she stood, Leonie saw an old woman in a hooded dark cloak, standing alone between two crude cottages. She wondered if her Faerie vision was coming back, for she could tell the cloak was a deep mossy green. Strange and pale, the woman’s eyes gleamed, as if they were not color but light, and her hair seemed as brittle as old, sun-bleached straw.

Philippe held out his hand to Leonie. “Old woman, come and join us,” Philippe said, beckoning.

“There is a time for joining and a time for watching,” the old woman replied in a voice that scratched its way through her throat. “My time has come to watch.”

“Then come and eat,” he replied.

The woman’s light green eyes gleamed. “You please me, Norman lord,” said the crackling voice. “Your heart is heavy, yet it is gentle. May many a blessing come to you and the daughter of Herzeloyde.”

Leonie watched Philippe’s face as it turned into a heavy frown, and his mouth opened, yet he did not reply.

“You do not believe,” said the crone. She raised a long, gaunt finger and swayed it before them as if tracing a path that meandered toward the distant horizon. “Follow your heart, Norman lord. Where it leads, you will find your answer.”

“Who are you?” Philippe asked. “What is your name?”

“I have no name.”

“Everyone has a name. What is yours?”

The crone laughed, a ragged sound, but her solemn face did not change. Instead, she turned to Lord Northumbria. “You tarry too long, Black Earl.”

The great hulk of a man rearranged himself into a reverent bow. “Aye. So I do. We will stay the night and hasten home with the dawn.”

Pulling her dark hood over her straw-like hair, she turned and walked away through a mist that clung near the walls of the huts, until she disappeared into the darkness.

Silence descended on the villagers. Even the pipes had ceased their wailing. Among them, a whisper arose, and tucked within the low murmurs, Leonie heard a single word repeated.

Cailleach.

“Who was she?” Leonie asked the earl.

Northumbria gave her another of those rare smiles that was no more than the lifting of his black mustache, bushy once again, for he had been dancing as wildly as everyone else.

“Naught but an old woman who talks too much,” he said. “Well, let’s be on about the bedding now. The old woman’s right, I’ve tarried too long.”

Philippe glanced at her, frowning, and an angry rigidity overtook him. “There’ll be no public bedding, de Mowbray.”

The bushy black brows furrowed. “But ye must, lad.”

“It is a heathen custom.”

De Mowbray shrugged. “Aye. So?”

“It is our affair, not anyone else’s.”

“But lad, there must be witnesses. Especially this time.”

“Then if any should ask of any man here, let him say Leonie of Bosewood and Philippe de Evraneaux, called the Peregrine, were betrothed by command of the king. They spent two nights alone in the wilderness, and the morning following their wedding, there was no virgin’s blood found on the marriage sheets.”

Leonie gasped, feeling the color drain from her face. How did he dare. She clenched her hands into tight fists, for if she let her wayward fingers have their way, they would claw his eyes out!

The earl rubbed his beard. “Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you when Fulk comes to demand the lass. But it’s your affair, as you say. So let’s be caroling you back up the hill now, and I’ll leave at dawn.”

“Must you go so soon?” Leonie asked him, already feeling the loss.

“Aye, lass, I must. But don’t you be forgetting, if he doesn’t treat you right, you’re to come to me for help.”

Philippe offered his hand to the earl to shake. “I thank you for your help, but not your advice, de Mowbray.”

The Black Earl bellowed a laugh as he clapped his other hand over their handshake.

“Strange man,” said Philippe as they watched the earl disappear into the crowd.

The whine of bagpipes filling signaled to the dancers, who formed lines and burst into song. Philippe took Leonie’s arm and the procession wound up the hill toward the castle gate.

Her cheeks were still hot with rage at him, but she gritted her teeth and played her role. Now she had only to think about sleeping in the solar where the odor of neglect still stank.

But instead of to the dilapidated hall, he led the procession to the wooden tower in the north corner of the castle, and to the ladder that led from the open base to the square tower room. She frowned at him. “I don’t understand.”

“Our bower,” he replied. “Up.” His hand circled in the air, making it clear climbing the ladder was what he wanted her to do.

She shrugged and climbed. She was, after all, trying very hard to be a reasonably obedient wife.

At the top of the ladder, she crawled through the square hole and onto the tower floor. Bright light from the newly risen moon flooded in the tower’s windows, for the shutters were flung open wide. In one corner, the feather bed sent by her Uncle Geoffrey was covered in white sheets, with blankets and pillows aplenty.

“It’s Ealga’s gift to you,” he said. “So you don’t have to stay in the hall until the odor goes away. And saints preserve her for her thoughtfulness.”

“But when did you talk with Ealga? She was with me since we arrived at Bosewood.”

“There are ways.”

She had not noticed, but now she thought of it, she had not seen Ealga since the wedding at the church steps. So she must have come here from the church.

“The night will be cool, but I think, no rain, and we have plenty of blankets to keep us warm.”

Confusion began to hammer at her mind. What kind of man was he? One moment crassly lying and humiliating her
in front of de Mowbray and the entire village, and the next, planning a fine feast, even to the point of making a place for her to sleep in comfort. He did not fool her to claim it was all the doing of others.