A Bed of Spices (12 page)

Charles came forward, his hawk on his arm in a jess. “Humphrey!”

They embraced and eased away from the knot of women. Charles looked over his shoulder toward Rica. “See that a feast is prepared, daughter.” He scanned the milling group for a moment and signaled to Rudolf, then followed the men inside.

Rica busied herself giving orders to various servants—for the manor rooms to be readied, for a pig to be slaughtered and new greens to be plucked. There were berries aplenty growing in the fields, perhaps even a few cherries yet. Rica herself would see to them.

When the women were settled and preparations for the feast well underway, Rica headed purposefully for her father’s solar, carrying as her excuse a loaf of bread and thick slices of cheese along with a tankard of ale.

The oak door stood ajar and Rica entered quietly. Humphrey and Charles sat on a bench in the sunlight while Rudolf stood nearby the window, staring grimly toward the courtyard below, his hands clasped loosely behind his back.

“Tis madness,” said Humphrey. “The stench rises up from the earth like a vile poison. There are whole villages stricken and empty. The beasts lie dead in the fields.”

Rica lowered her eyes, thinking of the insects about which she had complained yesterday.

“We shall not trouble you overlong, brother,” Humphrey said, and gratefully accepted the wooden cup Rica put in his hand. “We head north to my wife’s manor near Nürnberg, and there will stay until the threat is passed.”

“I am glad to know you are well, and your daughters are good company for my own.”

Humphrey looked at Rica. “Your sister seems much improved.”

“That she is.” Charles sipped his ale and eyed Rica. “I trust, daughter, we will have no games from the pair of you?”

“Games?” Humphrey echoed.

“You will soon see there are hours you cannot tell which is Rica, which is Etta.”

Humphrey snorted. “I will always know Rica.”

Rica glanced toward Rudolf, who frowned at this. Did he guess that he had been fooled? In recklessness, she said to her father, “I will go to the orchards to gather cherries for your supper, Papa.”

Charles nodded and gave his brother a rueful twist of his lips. “She nags me like a wife, keeping all the good meat from my table, feeding me scraps like an old woman.” To take the sting from his words, he patted her hand. “That would be a treat, daughter. It will be a sore trial to watch the rest of you feasting.”

She kissed his broad brow. “I will prepare something myself,” she said and left them. She smiled as she heard Rudolf ask permission to take his leave as well, the hearty chuckle of her uncle ring into the passageway. “I’d go after her, too, my boy!”

Lifting her skirts, Rica ran down the twisting stairs on light feet and ducked into the pantry off the great hall. She startled a maid with a fresh armful of rushes as she hurried through and nearly bumped a boy who followed with another.

In the bailey, she rushed into the swell of activity. The rich scent of baking white bread rose on clouds from the ovens, and everywhere pages and servants scurried to make ready the hall for the feast. Rica heard the screech of a poorly played horn and took enough time to stop a black-haired vassal. “Lewis, send to Strassburg for musicians. Yesterday, there was a troupe in the square by the new cathedral—I would have them come to us.”

“And if they have traveled on?”

“Then hire others. But go, quickly. I will not have our guests insulted by that—” She glanced over her shoulder as the screech sounded out once more.

The vassal laughed. “Consider it done, my lady.” With a devilish wink, he added, “I will seek you out when they are here, and dance with you wildly.”

Rica shrugged coyly. “If you can fight your way through the hordes surrounding me, perhaps I will favor you.”

Again he laughed good-naturedly and turned to seek a boy to accompany him. Rica glanced behind her and saw Rudolf watching them from the stairs that led to the hall, his blond head gleaming. The rigid line of his body spoke of his displeasure. Rica lifted her chin. A pox on him. She whirled and rushed away.

Leo was nowhere to be found and Rica did not wish to confront her sister again just yet. Let her stew a little, as well. She left through the gates and made for the orchards.

Once there, she found a narrow path that led to the forest. If she followed it to its end, she would find herself in Helga’s garden. With a longing glance down the path, she settled instead beneath a great old pine. A brown spider tried to climb into her skirts and she brushed it away.

She did not have long to wait. Rudolf strode through the trees with as much noise as a boar. In the orchard, he paused. “Rica!” There was command in his tone.

Calmly, she plucked a strand of grass from its sheath and chewed on the end, watching him stomp in circles around the trees as if his temper could conjure her from the shadows. If he only stopped to look around himself, he would see her.

But when it became plain his temper could stand no more, when his face was flushed, his lips a thin white line, Rica stood up and shook her skirts, sending the bells at her wrists and waist ringing into the still noon forest.

Rudolf spun around. “There you are.”

At the fury in his eyes, Rica clutched fingers together in fear, but said sardonically, “What a surprise to see you here in the orchard. Have you come to pick cherries for my father?”

“I weary of your games, Rica.”

She met his gaze with disbelief. “Do you?” Stepping forward, she clutched her skirts. “I weary of yours. You think to punish me when I do not behave as you wish.”

“Rica—”

“Am I Rica? Or am I Etta? Do you know which you kissed in the hallway and which you followed? Do you know, my lord?”

Arrogance thinned his nostrils. “Does it matter? One is the same as the other.” He took a step closer to her, and with a snake-quick gesture he snared her arm above the elbow.

Rica felt a ripple of fear and cursed her foolish temper, the pique she had allowed to overrule her common sense. Little had she known of passion before the past few weeks, but saw it now on his face, sharp-edged as obsidian. She tugged at her arm, but his fingers tightened.

His voice was low when he spoke again. “Which of you did I see bathing in the river? Which of you walked nude as the day of your birth for any passerby to witness? Which of you is the whore, which is the maiden?”

Rica swallowed, a coppery taste in her mouth. His fingers bit hard into her flesh and she knew she’d carry the marks on the morrow.

After a moment, he let her go. “Do not mistake me for a fool,” he warned quietly.

Watching him depart, Rica fingered the tooth of the saint in a small pouch at her belt, praying silently— for common sense, for a level head.

Beware the change of the seasons.

Rica sought out
her sister before going to the hall for the feast. Etta was dressed in a rich tunic trimmed with minever, her hair woven with flowers. As if in forgiveness, she gave Rica a gentle smile. “Your present was well timed,” she said, as Olga fastened the bangled belt on her hips.

“I see.” She smiled at Olga. “I know you are weary, Olga, with all this activity. I will help her finish now.”

Olga sighed mightily and nodded. “Thank you, my lady.”

When she had gone, Rica said, “Papa has forbidden us to pretend to be each other while our cousins are here.”

Etta smoothed her surcoat and reached for a casket of jewels. She extracted a circlet of gold to settle around her hair.

“Did you not hear?”

“I am not deaf.”

Rica sighed. “Then tell me you hear! I will not risk Papa’s wrath.”

“How will he know?” Etta asked calmly.

“You cannot be me! You cannot run the kitchens and order the servants and see to the accounting. You have no knowledge of such. Am I to turn my back on all so that you are not jealous for a day or two?”

“To run the household of my lord, I will need to learn such things, will I not?”

“Etta, ‘tis not so simple as that.”

“You think I cannot do it.”

Rica’s heart plummeted, for that was, indeed, the truth. She did not believe Etta
could
oversee the myriad tasks required of the mistress of a castle. For all that she seemed to be healing, it was too sudden and startling a change for Rica to quite take in—she feared it was no permanent shift.

Rica fingered a ruby brooch. “I will be glad to teach you what I know, sister, but let us wait until our cousins have gone to Nürnberg.”

Etta stared at her for a long, long moment with no expression whatever in her wide violet eyes. At last she said, “We will do as Papa wishes.”

Rica hugged her. “Good.”

“You will teach me?”

“Everything. I promise.” She slipped her hand through the crook of her sister’s elbow. “Come. A feast awaits.”

Etta moved forward, then stopped abruptly. “Rica.”

She turned quizzically.

“Do not kiss him. Please.”

“Nay, sister.” In truth, the idea revolted her. For a fleeting second, she wondered how her sister could be so passionate about a man Rica could not imagine kissing. How would Etta regard Solomon, if she saw him?

Solomon
. At the thought of him, she tensed and then forced him from her mind. “Let’s hurry. I am hungry after so much work today.”

They met Lorraine and Minna in the courtyard, coming from the manor. Minna squealed over their finery, touching the gold net over Rica’s hair and the bangles on Etta’s belt.

“How can you both be so beautiful?” she exclaimed. At twelve, she had not yet begun to think of herself as such, although it was plain she had inherited her father’s rich, robust good looks. Amid the three blondes, she stood out more fully than she knew.

Rica hugged her. “And how can you still be so sweet?”

A bevy of servants rushed through the bailey, carrying tankards of ale and Rhenish wine and trenchers for the guests to share. A knot of vassals and men-at-arms, some from Humphrey’s household, some from Charles’s, stood nearby the steps to the hall. They had donned velvets and colorful hose and soft shoes with pointed toes. Several had curled their hair in elaborate preparation. The group of them admired the girls frankly.

Lorraine spied them and preened, twining a finger through her riot of natural ringlets. Rica nudged her. “Do not ask for more than you can handle. There will be much drinking tonight.”

“Pah. None of them interests me.” Arching her painted brows, she lifted her chin. “Now,
there
is a man.”

Etta made a quick sound of dismay, for it was to Rudolf, dressed in sea-blue velvet, that Lorraine pointed.

“Ah,” Lorraine said with a sharp smile. “I see I am not alone in admiring him. Has he spoken, my little dove?”

“Your conceit is boring,” Minna said, and took Etta’s arm protectively. “Pray do not weary us so all evening.”

Lorraine flushed and seemed about to make an angry retort, but Rica smoothly tugged her forward. “It is no wonder the men are enchanted,” she said tongue in cheek. Had the cut of Lorraine’s gown fallen any lower, her breasts would have spilled free, and the tunic was so closely cut Rica could make out her cousin’s hip bones. Pretty she was, but there was no question she would run to fat before too many years had passed.

Rica’s comment mollified her, however, and they took their places at the trestle tables arranged around the hall. Rica sat with Etta. “Do not worry,
liebling
,” she murmured in her ear. “Lorraine is too coarse by far for Rudolf’s tastes.”

Etta gave her a grateful smile.

Cook had outdone herself. The tables were filled with brewets and pasties and meat tiles together with jellies and fritters and plentiful ale. Rica, from long habit, dished their trencher full of the brewet, stabbing a choice bit of mutton from the carmeline sauce with her knife. She made a sound of pleasure and nudged her sister. “Don’t be so stubborn you starve, sister. Cinnamon is your favorite spice.”

Etta took up her knife and began to eat. Rica let go of a little breath and settled in to feast and forget.

As the meal wound down and the musicians began to make tuning noises on their instruments, Rudolf studied the tables through narrowed eyes. His stomach burned and he sipped a little ale to digest the heavy meal he’d gulped. Charles, in good spirits today, ate lightly of the berries Rica had collected, and nibbled cabbage in a clear broth, but left the meats and sauces alone.

Next to Charles, Humphrey’s face was greasy with his feasting—he ate everything with hale enjoyment, his great laugh booming out repeatedly.

In coarse Humphrey, Rudolf saw the peasant blood that ran through the family. In Etta and Rica, the blood had been thinned to nearly nothing, for they were as fair as any noble maids, thanks to the brilliant marriage Charles had made.

Charles and Humphrey had fought well and married well, but they were not far removed from the crass burghers flaunting their wealth garishly in the streets of the cities. Rudolf wondered if the coarseness would show in the offspring of his match with Rica.

If, indeed, he could ever learn which twin was which. His stomach increased its grumbling burn as he stared at the pair. Impossible to tell.

One dressed in rich rose with miniver on her surcoat and embroidery on her tight, buttoned sleeves. Her hair was loose and woven with flowers, and a ruby gleamed in the hollow of her throat. Her demeanor was calm.

The other wore vivid blue and an excess of bells at her wrists and girdle and sewn to her gown. Her surcoat was lined with fur that seemed to caress the elegance of her creamy flesh, and her mouth, as Rudolf watched, seemed as lustful as a rutting dog’s—red and lush. As he studied her, her pink tongue snaked out to lick a bit of sauce from her bottom lip, and the vassal next to her leaned in close, hunger in his eyes.

Once he would have named the belled girl Rica, the other Etta. But the game they played confused him. Did Rica play herself more coarsely or was that Etta overplaying her sister?

And which, no matter the names, did he wish to own? His eyes strayed back to the wide mouth of the belled girl. A welter of distaste rose in his throat. A whore’s mouth.