The Maiden and the Unicorn (33 page)

"Delilah!" His hand drew her face near and he saw her swallow nervously. Perhaps tonight. There had to be somewhere in the castle he could lead her. Then suddenly the dreamy look snapped out of her eyes and she jerked her head back.

"I-I have to—your pardon."

Before he could detain her, she had scrambled free of the bench. Raw pain assailed him as he watched her hasten down the hall with white-knuckled hands grabbing her skirts as if a demon was after her.

She did not return and when he inquired after her the next day, the wench was indisposed. That it was the sudden onset of her monthly course not his unacceptable company, which had caused her hurried exit was little balm. He disliked the way the other ladies firmed their ranks and barred him access to his wife. That and then having to be in constant attendance on his new father-in-law, ready to give careful answers on estimates of armour, crossbows and biscuits had him seething like milk before a custard.

By the end of the week, he needed to quarrel with someone.

Chapter 16

"Ankarette has offered to take your duty for today so make ready," Richard Huddleston growled at Margery some four days later as he passed her on his way out of the Great Hall. "And pray, do not argue, I need a day free from loans, army provisions, maps and maybes. I shall expect you at the stables as soon as you can."

It would be refreshing to be actually told that she was expected to ride, thought Margery. She assumed that was meant, unless he was planning to chase her through the hayloft for sentimental reasons. It would have been courteous to have asked if it was agreeable to her or even to have waited for an answer.

"A plague on him!" Margery swore through her clenched teeth and went off in search of Ankarette. "Did you have to agree?" she exclaimed wryly. "You know that spending the entire day in Huddleston's company thrills me to the very depth of my being!"

"Well," retorted Ankarette, "I should be delighted to spend a day in
my
husband's company and he is tedious and talks of nothing but milk cows."

Margery's sarcasm abdicated in favour of sincere remorse. She put an arm round her friend, "Your pardon, I should not complain."

"Oh, complain all you like if it helps but you really should make the best of things."

Suitably chastened, Margery exchanged her damask kirtle and thin leather slippers for her green riding gown and boots and sought her husband outside the stables. Long promptly materialised with three saddled horses but there was no sign of Richard Huddleston until the next quarter bell when he appeared with two dogs and a small cart in his wake. It was driven by a falconer accompanied by two youths. Behind them was a rail on which five hooded birds of prey perched, tethered and disgruntled like a row of magistrates on a bench before breakfast. The discordant bells on their legs mocked their pomposity.

Margery frowned at the cruel talons and sharp curved beaks but at least the birds would be chaperones. Everyone knew that men did not hunt women at the same time as they hunted game, otherwise she would have been tempted to leave Huddleston to ride with his ill humour for company.

Her husband looked ready to check any protest on her part, an eyebrow flexed to parry criticism. He raised a leather falconing gauntlet to the brim of his green hat in salute before he swung himself into his saddle. Long helped his mistress mount and followed after them at a respectful distance, attempting to chatter in loud, distorted French with the falconer who turned out to be a Scot.

Below the castle wall, the sloping town market square of sorts was untidy with laden barrows. It smelt like a great lord's kitchen, the yeasty aroma of fresh bread twisting in and out of the rich breath of roasting meat and beneath it all the stink of composting vegetables, rank meat, smoke and human waste.

Richard drew his sword and merrily lanced a pear off a stall, tossing down payment. He presented it to his new wife. She unskewered the gift gingerly with polite thanks, her mind elsewhere.

"Why are there no stone buildings, do you think, sir? There is stone aplenty to be had."

They had reached the bridge. He set his hand upon her reins, checking they were out of earshot. "A sensible question. Rumour has it that if a dauphin is born, the King will pull each dwelling around the castle asunder lest plague carry off the child. But there are some he cannot harm. You cannot see them from the castle walls but if you follow the road that runs south, you will find houses carved out of the cliffs. Such dwellings are common in this area and less costly."

"How? Like caves? You have seen them?"

"Not from the inside but I intend to."

"What freedom you have as a man," she sighed. "You can do what pleases you."

"It would please me to—" But he bit back his words, schooling
his
features into respectful gravity. "I can escort you if you wish. Give me a few days to arrange such matters."

It was excellent that she interested herself in such curiosities; it also gave him further opportunity to steal her away from her duties. There were other matters that deserved her attentiveness.

Across the bridge, beyond the peasant hovels, they finally smelt the blessing of the sweet summer air. Margery's soul, freed of the chateau, stretched invisibly in temporary delight beneath the cloudless hazy blue of the sky.

"The birds belong to the Lord of Concressault. I promised I would exercise them for him," her husband told her over his shoulder as he slackened pace. So things had changed, after all. For an instant, Comet's swishing black tail ahead of her palfrey had reminded her of the road to Exeter. "I will say this now, Margery, and have done. Next time you rush from my presence in such panic, I want reasons and I will not be banned from direct converse with my wife. If we were home in Millom..." He sighed as if he saw the crackle of rebellion beginning to smoulder in her face. "I see you do not care for falconry but I need the sport after days of constant negotiating and I would think you need to fly just as much as the hawks."

With that, he touched his spurs to his stallion and the splendid harmony of equine sinew and muscle set a challenge to her palfrey. The wind billowed Margery's light summer cape and veil out behind her and drove the roses into her cheeks. When he slowed his horse to a trot, she was not far behind him and the grin he gave her warmed her unaccountably more than the sun.

He spent the morning putting the short-winged hawks through their paces with the falconer following on foot like a persistent peddlar, a constant half-pace from his spurs. The birds gripped grumpily onto a wooden frame that hung from the man's shoulders, fluttering furiously now and then to keep their balance. Long and the apprentices cheerfully ran hither and thither bagging the game. Despite the beauty of the morning, Richard was saddened; Errour should have been there rolling in the grass and outpacing the other dogs.

Margery winced every time the birds made a kill and after two hours grew hungry and fractious. Huddleston had surprised her with a lady's hawking glove and taught how to hold her wrist but she had felt no rapport with the handsome goshawk. Her husband's businesslike tutoring brought her an exhilaration that the sport did not. To have him touch her without the usual battle of wills afforded her an unlooked-for pleasure.

"You do not approve?" Huddleston finally, to her relief, slipped the leather hood swiftly over the last, sated hawk's head before it could snipe his hand and set it back on the frame.

"I know how the small birds felt." Before she knew it, his gloves were about her waist and she was swung out of the saddle. Did he hear the rumbling in her belly? Had he instructed Long to bring food?

"Ah, we harp upon the same theme again, do we?" He dislodged a pebble with the point of his boot before fixing on her face. "Lady, face the realities of this world. If it had not been I who had tied your jesses to my glove, it would have been another. It is a wonder Warwick did not dispose of you in marriage sooner."

"He was hoping I would take the veil." She brushed away a persistent fly and was surprised when he pruned a switch from a sapling and proffered it to her like a rose.

"So why did you not? In time you could have become an abbess with land to administer, a multitude of servants, even, perhaps, a compliant young chaplain. Your passage through the local shire might have been a spectacle to behold—and you could have had books to your heart's content."

She waved the twigs like a fan. "And calluses on my knees."

"But a self-contained existence, a contract between you and the Almighty, a misericord eventually in Heaven." His irreverence had her laughing. "So why not, Margery?"

"I missed Bella and Anne and Ankarette. Besides, the contemplative life is too rigid, too disciplined. Every moment of the day was set out, whether it was weeding the Mother Abbess's herb garden or getting up at some unbelievably frosty hour to pray. Oh, it would have suited my lord to have presented one member of his family to God. Archbishop Neville—Jesu, he is my uncle, is he not?—spent three hours on my return to Warwick trying to persuade me to change my mind. It was such hypocrisy. I doubt if he even remembers what the inside of York cathedral looks like since he spent most of last year helping my lord bring the King to heel."

Huddleston was not in total agreement. "There are a lot of clergy like him. On the other hand, you need educated, intelligent men such as Archbishop Neville in positions where they can advise. We both know of noblemen who cannot order a pigsty. The only reason they can manage to stay where they are is because they were born to their positions and have well-trained commoners to keep them there."

"Like you."

"Like me. Life is very unfair. Why should the inept inherit? Are you hungry?"

"As a toothless wolf," she admitted, laughing. "Have you not noticed I have been casting covert glances at Matthew's saddlebags."

"I can see our travels in Devon have spoiled you. We shall be too late for dinner at the chateau. Let us return the birds to the mews and our trophies to the kitchens and then I shall introduce you to a most excellent cookshop."

"Cookshop!" exclaimed Margery in astonishment, her insides reviving at the thought.

He grinned, his hand steering her back to her palfrey. "Aye, unless you want us to trap the local salamanders. I can see that keeping you hungry is the answer. How many pastries would buy a promise from you to behave for the rest of the day?" He tossed her back onto the sidesaddle.

"I am not sure," she said thoughtfully. "How many can you afford?"

* * *

With fresh colour in her cheeks, Margery looked far from famished by the time Richard finally bestowed her happily at a trestle inside the cookshop and slid onto the bench opposite. Her eyes were everywhere and he could tell she was enjoying herself. Other patrons were staring at her as though she wore her eyes at the end of two antennae but he was pleased she was too hungry to care.

They were alone at the end of a long trestle table which had been politely vacated for them by some deferential apprentices. The large room was hot and dark but surprisingly clean. The other tables were full. A party of merchants was conversing enthusiastically, happily drunk; an artisan and his wife were stolidly eating without conversation; a Franciscan was on his own in a corner; and two townsmen were doing business over sops in wine, arguing solemnly.

The serving wench ogled Richard as she took the order so he deliberately watched the wench's waggling rump retreat. In truth, Margery's pert bottom pleased him better but it did no harm to test her capacity for jealousy.

"I am sure she will accommodate you later," his new wife murmured. "Though is there not a danger of the pox or some such?"

He was mercifully saved from answering as a wooden platter of savoury tarts descended between them. "These are good. I tried one yesterday. Careful that you do not burn your mouth." He could see she was so hungry that to wait further was torture. The stares continued and she was conscious of them now. The other end of the table was filling up with newcomers.

"Our neighbours are trying to calculate whether we are married to each other or conducting an
affaire du coeur.
They have decided on the former."

"You could fondle my hand," she suggested, laughing. "Would that reopen the speculation?"

"I do not feel like fondling anything of yours at the moment. I am too ravenous." He bit into the pastry. "Eat, eat!"