A Knight’s Enchantment (7 page)

“Do not delude yourself, knight. You wage war for yourself.”

Ignoring that, he flicked the old gold chain around her throat, thinking again how pretty her mouth looked when reddened. “This suits you well. I will seek to win you more today.”

“I make my own way.” She was as stiff as a shield in his arms and twice as unyielding. The few women he had known had all told him bluntly that he was a one-night stand-in for their absent spouses: they had fought his clothes, not him, and afterward were keen for him to leave. Joanna was different: to win her would be the challenge of months, and to keep her the challenge of years. He smiled at the thought, not in the slightest daunted.

“What?” She scowled. “Are you devising new ways to humiliate me?”

“Are you humiliated now?” he asked mildly.

“You keep me against my will.”

Hugh dropped his hands from her narrow waist and clasped them behind his back. “Now I do not.” To prove this, he unthreaded his leg from hers.

Joanna instantly drew back—spurted back, she moved so fast. Hugh waited, as he might with a nervous hawk or hound, and she leaped forward.

She tugged at the chain around her throat. “I am not a thing like this! How can you call me a prize? How dare you? God made me, not man!”

“You are a true wonder of creation,” Hugh agreed, wondering where his squire was and if he had time to kiss Joanna thoroughly before Henri dashed back into the tent.

“I am that,” she said, and, standing up on her toes, she kissed him directly on the mouth, a lingering, ripe kiss that was over far too quickly.

“It worked,” she said, when she withdrew, brushing some small speck off the bodice of her new gown. “I had a mind it would.”

“What?” He echoed her and she smiled.

“I thought that I could kiss you to silence, and so I have.” She gave him a mocking half-bow. “God be with you, sir knight.”

She sashayed from the tent before Hugh could speak, just as his squire Henri darted back into the space with his crumpled surcoat.

Escape, while he is distracted
.
He has put you in this ignominious place, but you do not have to stay in it. Escape!

She hurried away from the small, patched tent, marking how inconspicuous it was when set against the gaudy wagons and tents of the other knights. Hugh, it seemed, spent his tourney money on other things—horses, for one, Joanna thought, recalling the fiery, splendid Lucifer.

Could she steal a horse from the picket lines and gallop away? Escape and then sell the horse later for gold: more ransom cash for her father? As a daydream the idea was as beguiling, but her sore back and thighs protested at the thought and her sense said no, she had not the riding skill. Yet, if she could find a drab bit of cloth to cover this red gown she might do well enough on foot. This place was filled with men, yet so far she had to admit that she had been treated with respect.

Because of who you are with.

Almost as if her head was on an invisible string, she found herself looking back, wondering how Hugh looked in armor. Yet what did that matter? She was seeking a way to remove herself from him.

“Lost are you, lovely?”

The woman’s voice was a surprise; the nipping hand on her shoulder a shock. She swung round, finding herself confronting a matron of middle age, dressed in a gown that was unlaced to her stout middle and carrying a spindle with a hank of red dyed wool on its end—a parody of a spinster, Joanna realized.

“Not I, madam.” Joanna shifted sideways but the woman waved her spindle and instantly a group of girls streamed from a nearby tent and surrounded her. Joanna eyed them warily: with their loose hair and skimpy, almost see-through gowns, these were true tourney girls, she guessed, women who followed the jousters for love or favor.

“I must be away,” she said, but a tall girl with unbound blond hair and white make-up covering a rash of pimples held up a warning fist. Silently, the troop closed in.

“I am with Destroyer,” Joanna added, despising herself for mentioning Hugh but hoping his nickname would prove useful.

At once, the madam snapped her fingers and her girls spilled back in clouds of rose perfume. She prodded Joanna with her spindle.

“Should have told me, lovely, though I could guess. Brown as hazel nuts, the pair of you.” The madam continued to assess her, her eyes sharp as flints. “Keeps you nesh enough, I see, spoiled and soft, but then as I say to my girls: Destroyer’s a devil in bed but he will not stint a woman. You had better return to him. He has a temper on him, as I am sure you know.”

Under the older woman’s beady eyes Joanna felt compelled to turn about on the trampled-down thread of a track that ran between the tents and stalk back toward the fluttering pennants of a black bear against a red field—Hugh’s personal flag. Below this bare field were lines of horses and a further camp of farriers and smiths where she could have hidden, but the madam was still watching her.

Behind her, along the path where she had lately tried to flee, she felt the ground shuddering. That, and within seconds the drumming of hooves, alerted her to the horseman’s approach. She stepped smartly toward a hawthorn bush with hacked and broken branches—it would provide some small protection if the horse happened to miss its footing.

The beast did not. Instead it slowed and its rider, a man in mail but without the tall closed-in helm worn by knights in combat, called out to her.

“My lady! My lady in red! Will you grant me a favor?”

He was young, fresh-faced with scarcely any stubble, and clearly a knight who had only lately won his spurs. As he cantered toward her his face and sword shone, as if newly minted. Joanna sensed his excitement and heady pride and despite her own plight she was touched.

“Here then.” She handed him one of the trinkets off her own girdle—she would give nothing that had once belonged to Hugh. Quite apart from the fact she did not want to cause this young knight trouble, she did not want to alert Hugh or his men by granting anything distinctive, anything Hugh would recognize. This tiny golden tassel she thought safe enough: Hugh would not have noticed it swinging at the end of her girdle. “Wear this for me, in honor of my father.”

Flushed with pleasure, the knight reached down from his horse, taking the tassel between finger and thumb, holding it as reverently as if he was handling a holy relic. “Lady, I will treasure it forever. Your gift will inspire me to great feats of arms this today: I shall challenge all comers and best all knights—”

“And I am most grateful.” Joanna interrupted this flow of knightly enthusiasm, wondering how she might slip away. If the knight engaged her for much longer, she would be spotted by one of Hugh’s men, or worse, by Hugh himself. “I must now return to my father,” she lied. “May I know your name, Sir—?”

“Sir Tancred of Kenilworth.” He lifted his lithe slim body, standing up on his stirrups prior to dismounting. “May I escort you?”

“’Tis only a little way,” Joanna lied. Spotting a place where she could go and the horse and the young knight could not, she sped across the grass toward a cart and wagon drawn side by side, with no more than a hand-span between them. “Farewell, Sir Tancred,” she called back hastily over her shoulder, blushing as she saw the young knight pinning her small token to his surcoat, as if she was a true noblewoman. “Do well for me!”

Ashamed at her deception, she did not look round again and squeezed between the carts, praying that no servant would protest or stop her.

Hugh was armed and checking his warhorse and weapons when two of his men-at-arms for whom he had yet to provide badges appeared with Joanna strolling between them.

He took off his helmet, so he would be less of a stranger, although it was obvious from the way she was frowning that she knew who he was.

“How far this time?” he asked her, nodding appreciation to his men, who busied themselves with looking over his charger.

“I had reached the outer palisade of the field.” Joanna’s eyes were bright and feral, her face hard and pinched with displeasure. “How could I know they were yours? They wear no caps, badges, or anything!”

The men hid their faces behind the charger’s massive flanks.

“You cannot blame them.” Hugh wondered at his lack of temper—by rights he should be furious at Joanna’s folly where instead he rather admired her stubbornness. “You must understand this tourney field is no place for a young woman to be wandering alone.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You brought me here. You allowed the world to believe that I am your prize.”

“And I will take you away again, as soon as I may,” Hugh replied. “Though that will not be—”

A single piercing horn blast sounded over the hilltop, the signal, Hugh knew, that the jousts would soon begin. He almost said as much to Joanna when he noticed one of the gold tassels on her girdle was missing. His heart racing, he looked her over, head to heel.

“She was unharmed, unmolested?” he demanded in French to his men.

“No one accosted me,” Joanna answered in the same language. “And you can ask me.”

Then where is the end of your girdle?

Hugh bit down hard on his tongue. She might have lost it on the field somewhere, or in a bush. What did it matter? It was a piece of womanly foolishness, the kind of decoration that holier clerics than Bishop Thomas were fond of railing against.

He pointed at the remaining golden tassel. “Will you give me that as a favor? I know you do not have your gloves with you,” he added quickly, before she could remind him of that fact.

“Take my headrail,” she said steadily, cool and smooth as the blue silk veil she wore as she unpinned it with nimble fingers. “It is yours to begin with.”

She held it out, giving a nod and a fleeting smile as he took the long streamer of cloth and knotted it round his surcoat.

“Take her to sit with the womenfolk—the ladies, not the others.” Hugh snapped his fingers at the wolfhound. “Guard her, Beowulf.”

As the dog attached himself close to Joanna’s heel, Hugh slammed the helmet back over his head, making his skull ring as his face settled into a grim frown. Joanna’s tiny smile had convinced him—she was up to something. What, he was not certain of yet, but he had his suspicions and he would be on the lookout.

Certain that the hound at least would not let him down, Hugh mounted his horse and rode off to the lists without looking back.

There were five noblewomen who had followed their lords to this tourney, all seated in a covered wagon close to where the knights would joust and surrounded by hounds and lapdogs and men-at-arms. The five had a look of each other, Joanna decided, as she climbed the wagon steps. Grudgingly they admitted her to sit upon a cushion but did not offer wine or honey-cakes. All were tall, narrow-featured, pale-skinned, and richly dressed, and all stared at her hands as if her fingers were stained in blood, not sulphurs. Joanna sat on her palms and watched the ladies make more of a fuss of the wolfhound than her. She longed to explain that she scrubbed her hands daily, but the stains remained; that she must work for her bread and her fingers showed the badge of her craft. She wanted to ask these long-nosed, haughty females if they were any knight’s prize.

When Hugh galloped onto the field, the noblewomen praised his horse, his riding, the weight and grip of his lance and the length and power of his long, lean legs. Joanna was tempted to point to the blue gossamer streaming across his brawny shoulders but as he drew rein, waiting for his first opponent to emerge clearly from the mass of horses and knights already gathered on the field, her favor had already been noticed.

“Destroyer is wearing a favor, but I do not recognize the lady’s colors. Did you give it to him, Eleanor?”

“Never in this millennium. I would not dare, though as God is my judge, I have often wished for the courage to do so. Did you, Matilde? He has smiled at you before.”

“I would not give that handsome devil a token in case he challenged my husband, and then I would not know which of them to cheer.”

“It would not matter, Matilde. We know who would win.”

“And my husband left weaponless and horseless.”

“How many chargers has he won now?”

“Too many to count…. Was it you, Berengaria?”

“No, but I wish I had. He is, as you say, so very handsome.”

“That he is…”

The chatter ran on and Joanna hid her smile behind her stained hand as the speculation washed round her. None of the noblewomen deigned to ask her, but that did not matter: their nervous envy soothed her in a most un-Christian manner.

Hugh turned his head and for an instant Joanna sensed him looking at her. She wondered if he was smiling or solemn behind the helm and shocked herself by actually waving back to him, swiftly sending out a prayer for his safety.

Why have I done that? He needs no help or acknowledgment from me! In all, he inspires fear, not love!

Joanna knew that was not the whole truth. And how could she complain when that very fear was keeping her safe in this place?

“He should not have brought me here,” she muttered under her breath. “He delays my work and puts me and my father in danger.” She wrenched her eyes from him and saw his challenger cantering toward him, shouting threats and insults in French.

It cannot be!

Her heart cantered in turn as she recognized the slim, youthful figure and his big, bony chestnut stallion. It was the worst match possible: Sir Tancred of Kenilworth.

Joanna realized she was wringing her hands and quickly hid them again, in case Hugh or his young adversary had seen. This would be a horribly unequal contest, she guessed, and both wore her tokens!

Please do not let Hugh see the tassel. Please let Sir Tancred have hidden it away, in a glove, under his armor—

Her hopes and wishes were useless. There was the golden tassel, still pinned to the young knight’s shoulder, swinging to and fro as he received his lance from a squire and yelled another insult. Inexorably, Joanna felt her eyes drawn to it and she sensed, without knowing how, that Hugh had also spotted it and now knew who had given Sir Tancred the favor.

She wanted to shout a warning, but dared not in case it made Hugh angry. Frustrated, her nerves on edge, wanting to close her eyes, sick in the pit of her stomach and longing to stop this folly somehow, Joanna knew she was compelled to watch. Helpless, she saw the knights raise their shields to each other in acknowledgment before they joined in battle.

The noise as they charged each other was incredible and then it was over. Suddenly and brutally, in an explosion of snorting horses and clashing arms, Hugh and his charge rammed into Tancred and his horse. Joanna winced as some poor creature, horse or rider, screamed. In a dreadful pall of dust and splattered gobbets, a horse and rider were down, rolling on the churned earth less than a bowshot’s length away from the wagon. Joanna lunged for the wagon steps as the unearthly shriek went on but the noblewomen Matilde seized her arm and dug in, her nails like claws.

“Do not shame them more! Stay!” Matilde hissed, her face bright and her eyes wide as she instantly returned to watching.

She is enjoying this.

Appalled, Joanna tore her arm out of the older woman’s grip and tumbled down the steps, almost falling headlong out of the wagon. Choking on the standing swirl of dust she saw a massive figure hauling his smaller opponent out of the wreck of a broken lance and a shattered, buckled shield. She screamed as Hugh tore her golden favor from the sagging knight’s shoulder and took it between his teeth, gripping it as a dog might a bone.

“Enough! I yield!” she yelled, terrified Hugh would not hear her.

Incredibly, it seemed he did. Even as she drew in breath to plead again, she watched in ghastly slowness, the world about her gray and grainy, sluggish as moving ditch water, as Hugh set Tancred back on his feet.

He said something to the young knight, then turned and caught the rearing chestnut, smoothing the beast’s quivering flanks with an ungloved hand while his own horse snorted and stamped. Another word from Hugh and the charger became quiet, shaking its head and flicking its long tail. Hugh himself remained where he was as squires streamed onto the field to help Tancred remove his helmet and guide him back to his tent.