Through a Dark Mist (25 page)

Wardieu studied her expression a moment then left her in the care of his squire while he descended the steps alone. He walked toward the frenetic group of men and, without warning, drew his sword and slapped the flat of the blade across the man’s bare buttocks. The mercenary jerked upright with a bark of surprise, the curse dying instantly in his throat when he recognized who had wielded the sword.

“My lord,” he roared with good-natured drunkenness. “Care to ’ave a wee slap at her yerself, do ye?”

“Sunrick, you hoary old boar. Can you not conduct your affairs in private?”

“Eh?” The knight was older, his skin as leathery as bull-hide armour, his hair a shock of snow white scattered over his shoulders.

“My betrothed”—Wardieu cast a meaningful glance to the top of the stairs—“finds such open displays of affection in poor taste.”

The knight and his group of merrymakers squinted up through the smoke and sifting dust and gaped at the pale figure standing in the gloom. One of them muttered something ribald enough to win a broken-toothed smile from Sunrick, who spat a rejoinder carelessly out of the corner of his mouth and ran a loving hand over the whore’s bare thigh. With a grunt, he bent forward and pulled the wench upright, causing her to give a shriek of laughter as he slung her over his shoulder and carried her into one of the adjoining antechambers. The other men hefted their tankards of ale and followed, some still grinning over their shoulders at Servanne de Briscourt.

“My lady?”

Servanne looked beside her and was surprised to see Eduard’s perplexed expression mirroring her own. Apart from Biddy and Sir Roger, the young squire had been the only friendly face in the long journey from Alford—clearly smitten, Biddy would have said, by her ladyship’s youth and fragile loveliness.

“The running of the castle has been left in the hands of men too long, methinks,” he said, offering one of his rare smiles. “’tis certain your presence here will work a change or two for the betterment of us all.”

Servanne started to smile back, but a burst of laughter from farther down the hall caused the boy to look away, and something in his profile caused her breath to stall in her throat. For a brief, dizzying moment, another profile as angular and rugged superimposed itself over Eduard’s. The similarity was made even more pronounced by the darkness of his hair, thick and swirling softly against the nape of his neck, and, when he turned back to face her, by eyes that were the same smoky gray that placed a hint of wolfish cynicism on every glance.

Servanne stared, and Eduard stared back.

“Eduard!” Wardieu called. “Bring Lady Servanne forward that she might be properly introduced to some of our more loyal retainers.”

Eduard’s smile shifted again, becoming tauter and grimmer than the situation warranted. He offered Servanne his arm and escorted her down the steep flight of steps, whereupon, at the bottom, she could have sworn she heard a murmured: “Courage, my lady.”

The Baron de Gournay strode forward and relieved Eduard of his delicate burden. Like a king leading his queen to the throne, he held his arm outstretched so that Servanne had to reach up and out to keep the tips of her fingers in contact with his wrist. She was led along the length of the hall toward the dais, her skirt dragging gently over the grimy rushes, her dainty slippered feet snapping the occasional thin bone overlooked by scavenging dogs.

Long before they reached the end of their promenade, the silence had become as pronounced and oppressive as the windowless gloom. Wardieu extended greetings to a familiar face here and there, some of them wedding guests who had arrived early to take advantage of their host’s good food and strong wine. A goodly number of knights and ladies stopped their eating and drinking to stare curiously at the prospective bride. They were not of the same ilk as the villeins who owned tenancy on Sir Hubert’s estates. These knights were bleary-eyed and coarsely dressed; their women were blowsy and vulgar, their gowns spotted with grease, their fingers and chins slick with sweet fat.

“Wardieu, ye old Dragon!” One of the knights came forward, a goblet in one hand, a partially gnawed joint of mutton in the other. “I see ye’ve resolved yer difficulties with the outlaw rabble. Have her back safe and sound, do ye? Not tupped, were she?”

“Godfrey, Lord Tydfil,” Wardieu murmured by way of an introduction. “A brazen old warrior, but a stout ally and keeper of the peace on my marcher estates. The Lady Servanne de Briscourt.”

“Ahh.” The mutton was levered to one side for a closer inspection of the new bride. “God grant ye health, honour, and joy, milady.”

“God grant you peace and health, milord,” she replied by rote.

Lord Godfrey peered up at Wardieu through eyebrows that resembled nesting squirrels. “Not tupped, were she?”

“My lady finds herself in perfect good health, praise God,” Wardieu responded dryly.

“Mmmm.” The knight looked disappointed, but he nodded. “Good. Good.”

“And your own fair Drucilla?”

A woman with painted cheeks and a rack of teeth broken off to their blackened gums squealed with laughter and tipped a goblet to acknowledge the compliment.

“Bah!” Sir Godfrey spat a wad of yellow phlegm into the rushes and scowled. “A sour old trull she is. Tupp her now and then just to keep my gear well greased, but for pleasure’s sake, I’d ruther swive a sweet wee bit like yours.”

A broad, leering wink sent Servanne shrinking back against Wardieu’s arm, a gesture that was seen and remarked upon by a smiling Nicolaa de la Haye.

“I warrant she might find you a little hard to take, dear Godfrey,” she purred, advancing with the sinewy grace of a cat. Her head was bare and her black hair flowed sleek and loose over her shoulders. More than one appreciative pair of eyes widened as she unfastened her mantle and shrugged the garment into the waiting hands of a page.

“Hard to take? Why, ’tis my normal state,” Sir Godfrey bellowed, grabbing his crotch for emphasis. “I should hope she’d find me so!”

Wardieu was watching Servanne’s face, aware of the tightness growing around her lips and the distinct pallor of aversion draining her complexion as she looked from one guest to another.

“You seem tired, my lady,” he murmured. “It would serve you well to rest and refresh yourself before we sup.”

“I would beg leave of you to rest the night, my lord,” she said. “I … fear I would not make happy company tonight.”

“Of course she must rest,” Nicolaa insisted. “After such an ordeal as she has endured, what can you be thinking, Lucien, to expect her to sup as if it were any ordinary day? Have you chambers prepared?”

The cool blue eyes narrowed as if he might object to being overruled, but the annoyance passed and he signaled to Eduard.

“I would trust you to see Lady Servanne to her chambers. As well, you may remain to see to any necessity she requires.”

“Aye, my lord,” Eduard said, bowing and offering his arm almost eagerly. Equally relieved to be able to escape the smell of stale bodies and sour food, Servanne touched her fingers to his wrist and nodded formally to Lucien Wardieu.

“My lord,” she whispered.

“God’s night to you, my lady,” he replied.

Nicolaa moved at once to place herself between Wardieu and Servanne before the latter had even turned away. The sound of her husky laughter and Lord Godfrey’s garrulous barking followed the two until they had ascended the steps and removed themselves to the relative quiet of the vaulted gallery.

“This way, my lady,” Eduard said, gently covering the lengthy pause she took to fill her lungs with a breath of clean air. He led her to the far end of the gallery and made two wide turns down converging stone hallways before climbing the corkscrew staircase to a private tower. He leaped ahead to open the oak door, then stood aside as Servanne entered a plainly furnished, but comfortably expansive suite of chambers.

The outer room, where the maids would sleep, was fully ten paces square with curtained slumber niches built right into the walls. A second door led into a large wardrobe with whitewashed walls and small painted flowers decorating the stone arched stone ceiling above. A wooden tulip-shaped tub sat on a raised platform at one end of the room; lining the walls on either side were rows of pegs set into the mortar for hanging clothes. There was space for dressmakers to sit and sew, a cabinet where a lady’s most treasured collections of scents and spices could be safeguarded. A small table and chair for the dressing of hair, and a tall, prettily painted cupboard that concealed the bench for the privy completed the furnishings.

Servanne absorbed most of it in a single glance before following Eduard through yet another set of doors, these double-slung and banded in filigreed wrought iron. She found herself standing in a huge solar, half of it squared to fit the shape of the main keep, half of it circular and jutting out over the central courtyard below. There were three enormous windows stretching from waist height to the top of the domed ceiling. Each was recessed to hold wide window seats, each rose to a pointed arch and was divided, into smaller lights by decorative stone casings. On a bright day the chamber would be drenched in sunlight, the beams playing across the dazzling white walls. Lines had been painted in red to outline each masonry block, and in each block, a depiction of a rose, a tulip, or a honeysuckle blossom. The high French bed had red velvet curtains which rose above the top of the frame, climbing in a thick, twisting spiral to the ceiling. There were rows of wood and leather chests along one wall to house valuables, a low table and stools for doing needlework, and, the rarest luxury of all: a mirror of polished steel, the surface so flat and smooth it was like looking into glass.

There was more: a fireplace as tall as a man and deep enough to hold the big kettles used to heat water for bathing; there were panels of coloured silk hung on either side of each window embrasure, used to diffuse the light when the shutters were open, or camouflage the wood when the shutters were closed.

The floor was stone, covered with wooden planks to blunt the cold in winter and the damp in summer. There was an ornate
couvre-feu
made of stained glass to place in front of the hearth at night to reduce the hazard of jumping sparks. The bed boasted a thick feather mattress covered with snow-white linens, quilts, a fur coverlet, and more pillows than Servanne could count on two hands.

As stark and masculine a war room as the great hall purported to be, Servanne’s chambers offered an elegant contrast, but it was all too overwhelming to grasp at once and she could feel the burning pressure of tears building behind her eyes. Her gloves slipped unheeded from her numbed fingers and the sobs that could neither be contained nor muffled behind her splayed hands began to shake her slender shoulders.

Eduard, seeing the beautiful damsel burst into tears before him, was at a complete loss to know what to do and fidgeted from one foot to the other, jumping a full inch off the ground when Biddy burst into the room behind them.

“There, there, my lamb! There, there! What have you said to her, you scurrilous snipe? What have you done?”

“N-nothing, goodwife. I have done nothing. I—I swear it!”

Biddy cradled her sobbing charge against the pendulous cushions of her breasts and glared at the hapless squire. “Out! Out, I say, and terrorize someone else who might be strong enough to endure your ill humour! Out!”

Eduard, swallowing and gulping wordlessly, backed out of the solar and through the wardrobe where the accusing stares from Helvise and Giselle sent him running for the stairs.

“Now then,” Biddy said soothingly. “The brute is gone, tell me what is wrong.”

“Oh, Biddy,” Servanne wailed softly. “I am so unhappy!”

“Unhappy?”

“I know. It makes no sense. I should be anything
but
unhappy. I am rescued, I am safe again, I am here—” She raised a tear-streaked face from Biddy’s shoulder and glanced meaningfully around the incredible lushness of the solar. “I should feel angry over what happened to me, relieved it is over, and thrilled to be exactly where I have dreamed of being all these long months … but instead … I feel lost. Lost and frightened and so unhappy I could just die.”

“Frightened?” The fine hairs in Biddy’s ears prickled to attention. “Has something happened? Has someone said something to frighten you?”

A soft, wavering sigh sent Servanne back into the smothering comfort of Biddy’s bosom. “He was so cruel, so heartless.”

“Cruel?” the matron gasped. “Heartless? Why, what has he done that is so cruel?”

“He sent me away. He could have refused to let me go, I know he could have. I—I even think a small part of him wanted to ask me to stay, but the other part … the beastly, proud, arrogant part of him did not want it to appear as if he had become weakened or … or affected in any way by what happened, and so … so he sent me away.”

Biddy, her head spinning, wondered if it would be a timely moment to collapse into one of her swoons. “You are not talking about Lord Lucien are you?”

Servanne lifted her head and turned huge, glistening blue eyes to focus on the boldly depicted De Gournay crest and shield carved on the bedboards.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I think I am.”

18

Servanne spent a restless night rolling and tossing from one side of the big bed to the other. The sense of foreboding she had felt with her first glimpse of the sinister towers and spires of Bloodmoor Keep, had grown in intensity with every passing minute. The Dragon had neither said nor done anything outright to persuade her he was living a lie. To be sure, standing the two brothers side by side, one would have to choose the Dragon over the Wolf as being better suited to bear the De Gournay crest and shield, and yet … something told her it was not so. Something told her the Wolf was the legitimate son of Robert Wardieu, the legitimate heir to Bloodmoor Keep.

But if that was true, it meant the man under whose protection she now resided was a murderer. It meant he was a cheat and an impostor, and had schemed to bring about his own father’s death.

“This Lincoln Wolf has you bewitched, child,” Biddy had said in the small hours of the morning, aghast at the story she had finally coaxed from Servanne’s tongue. “Just because he bedded you and put a hunger in your loins, do not be convinced he speaks only the truth! I warned you. By the heart of St. Agnes, I warned you where your curiosity would lead, but did you listen? Did you heed me? Did you even give half a care for this poor heart who loves you so well?”

Biddy had dissolved into a wailing flood of tears, and Servanne had offered what comfort she could, but both had known it was to no avail, and after a few moments of incoherent snifflings, Biddy had resorted to more worldly logic.

“Look around you, my lady: Are these the trappings of a dishonest man? The baron is the king’s champion, and a friend to Prince John. He is as prominent a figure as William the Marshal, or Salisbury, and could undoubtedly be vouchsafed by both as being who he says he is! As for the other … he is nought but an outlaw and rogue knight who kidnaps helpless women and takes his amusement in filling their heads with notions of grand intrigues. If he truly
was
Lucien Wardieu, why has he waited all this time to make his claim? Why does he wait, even now? And why, by all the mercy that flows from heaven above, would he have given you to a man
he claims
has defiled the family name with acts of murder and treason?”

“I do not know,” Servanne had answered truthfully. “He mentioned some other danger—”

“Some other danger?” Biddy shrilled. “Some other excuse, more’s the truth. I may not approve wholeheartedly of some of the goings-on we have witnessed since our arrival—the great hall is a nest of pestilence and shall require tending to at once!—but I have also seen nothing to implicate the baron in anything more devious than buying himself a bride of some means. And if you would condemn him for that, you would have to condemn every other lord, baron, and earl in the kingdom … yea, even the king himself, who has no more love or affection for the Princess Berengaria than he would a common pine knot. But he will marry her because of the political union she represents, and because Queen Eleanor has said he must marry for the sake of peace in the kingdom.”

“There is no kingdom at stake in my marriage,” Servanne had argued quietly, and Biddy, who had expended most of her breath and logic on her last speech, recognized the stubborn set to her ward’s jaw and clasped her hands over her bosom in a gesture of despair.

“Surely … you do not intend to reject the baron’s suit? You do not intend to refuse the marriage?”

Servanne had not answered then, nor, after a night of sleepless agony, could she have answered the question now. She had relived, in her mind, every word, every gesture, every memory made by the Black Wolf of Lincoln. His hands had been there to taunt her body through flushes of heat and cold; his lips had been almost real enough to cause shivered recollections from her throat, to her toes, to the very core of her womanhood. He
had
bewitched her, there was no use denying it, but was his ability to render her senseless with ecstasy the only reason she wanted to believe his claim?

Servanne sighed and rolled onto her stomach, refusing to acknowledge the daylight slivering through the cracks of the window shutters.

“Why?” she whispered. “Why did you send me here?”

Your temper is more than a match for whatever tests the Dragon may put you through.

“Such a compliment is laughable,” she muttered forlornly, dragging a pillow beneath her and hugging it to her breasts. “Especially since it appears not to have had any lasting effect on you, my lord wolf’s head.”

She pictured him as she had last seen him, his dark, brooding magnificence muted by the falling shadows; the forest all around him, green and hazed with dampness; the sky a roiling mass of gray cloud, rumbling with distant thunder. Across his cheek, the livid bleeding result of her temper. On his mouth, the arrogant smirk of self-satisfaction. In his eyes there was … there was …

In his eyes, where there should have been anger or triumph … there was only …

Only … what?

Servanne’s heartbeat had quickened noticeably in the past minute or so, but before she could determine the cause of this new distress, another was knocking brusquely on the outer door and bustling into the chamber like a fomenting hurricane.

“His lordship sends word he is desirous of your company in the great hall,” Biddy proclaimed, sweeping aside the bed curtains and hastening Giselle and Helvise into the chamber with an impatient wave of her hand. “I returned the message you were still abed, and had not even been to chapel yet for morning prayers, and
he
sent back that you should pray quickly, for his mood is none too holy this morning.
Then
I am told Prince John’s cortege is expected any hour now, so I suppose we must forgive the host his poor manners, although if it were up to me I should not fawn and simper over that sly fox, regardless if he were regent or king.” She stopped and drew a deep breath for refueling, then swept aside the coverlets in a grand gesture of annoyance. “Maledictions, what are you staring at, child? Get up. Get up. Brother Michael awaits you in the chapel—such a nice young man but if you wait overlong, he’ll have no nails left to chew—and young Eduard has come whimpering back to offer you escort. Quickly, now. Quickly. Stockings, garters, tunic … Helvise, saints seize my heart, I am lost of a shoe! Fetch it quickly from the wardrobe while Giselle bathes my lady’s hands and face.”

In a flurry of activity, dainty white feet were thrust into stockings and garters fastened below the knees. A sheer white chemise replaced the thicker linen sleeping gown, over which a tunic of fine gold silk was fussed and fretted into place. The gown Biddy had selected was a rich blue velvet, elaborately embroidered with the same gold thread as in the hints of silk that peeped at throat and wrists. A girdle sparkling with jewels encircled her waist; a golden armband, several rings, and a long, looping strand of pearls completed the toilette.

Servanne watched the progress of her maids through the reflection in the polished steel mirror. When it came time to comb and plait her hair, she showed the first signs of impatience, and remarked to Biddy that at least half of the ladies present in the hall the previous night had not respected the modesty of a wimple.

“Harlots, whores, and trulls wear their heads bare,” Biddy declared with an ominous squint in one eye. “And you are on the way to chapel, not the fair.”

It was a short journey, down the corkscrew stairs of her own tower and up the twisting flight of an adjacent tower. The chapel was small and dusty, the priest oppressively sincere in droning the litany. At the end of the mass, Servanne and her tiny flock were again herded down into the bowels of the castle, taken to the great hall to break their fast with the lord and his guests. The numbers of knights present at the tables had increased noticeably overnight, and the huge platters of bread, cheese, and ale were disappearing from the linen tablecloths as fast as the servants could bring them out from behind the screened walkway to the kitchens.

The Baron de Gournay stood to greet his prospective bride, his genial smile almost able to counter the effect of seeing Nicolaa de la aye already seated on his left side on the dais. The sheriff’s wife had spared no effort in making herself visible in this place of honour. Her gown was rendered from a bolt of crimson damask—a very small bolt judging by the tightness of the fit and the amount of flesh left exposed to the hungry stares of the male guests. Her hair had been left uncovered and the raven black tresses tamed beneath a meshlike webbing of fine gold wire.

“I trust you are feeling better today?” Wardieu inquired politely, leading Servanne to her place at the table. He noted the whispering silence that had marked his bride’s descent into the hall, and cast his own approving gaze along her modestly elegant attire.

He smiled and Servanne’s feet nearly tripped over her plummeting heart. He was indecently handsome. Tall and bronzed in complexion, she could well imagine the difficulty in choosing between De Gournay and King Richard for sheer golden splendour. Clad in various shades of blue, his shirt and chausses were dark as midnight, surmounted by a tunic of paler damask, quilted and beaded with hundreds of winking sapphires. The Wardieu crest was emblazoned on his massive chest in silver thread and glittering gemstones, the tangled grotesques seeming to come to life with each gesture or movement. His hand, as he held it up to call for total silence, was broad and calloused, its implied power hardly softened by the smother of gold rings he wore on the long, tapered fingers.

“My lords and ladies,” he said, his voice as rich and bold as his appearance. “I give you my bride, the Lady Servanne de Briscourt.”

The dais was raised a scant three feet higher than the rest of the hall, but it was enough to catch the last of the early morning rays of sun that streamed down from the slotted windows carved high on the east wall. De Gournay’s tawny hair glowed with a golden halo, resembling a spill of pure sunlight, and Servanne could almost hear the sounds of the women’s heartbeats pounding hotter and faster in their breasts.

His fingers closed slowly, possessively around hers and he raised her hand to his lips, lingering long enough over the caress for a sigh to ripple through the audience.

“Your chambers are satisfactory?” Wardieu asked, waving away the young page in favour of assisting Servanne into her seat himself.

“Oh yes, my lord. They are very much so.”

“You must want for nothing while you are here; you have only to ask and whatever you desire will be laid before you.”

At the sound of the solicitous offer, Nicolaa stabbed her eating knife into a convenient pear with somewhat more violence than the act required. If Wardieu noticed, he paid no heed. He seemed quite engrossed in studying the newest points of interest revealed by the morning light, namely, how truly blue the centres of Servanne’s eyes were, and how white the surrounding orbs. Her lashes were thick and honey-coloured, which led him to speculate and then to search the edge of her wimple until he confirmed his suspicions that her hair would be as blonde as his own. Blonder, he surmised, if the shiny thread of escaped yellow was any indication, and thinking back, had he not seen a long, gleaming curl of something silvery-pale flown from beneath her hood the night he brought her away from the abbey?

He had always preferred his women dark-haired and white-skinned, finding the contrast more stimulating than fair hair and ill-defined contours, but now he caught himself warming to the notion of a golden-haired beauty in his bed.

“Two days,” he mused. “It seems an interminable wait, my lady.”

Servanne read exactly the same thing in his eyes as Nicolaa saw, and for once, was thankful when the sheriff’s wife interrupted bluntly.

“You can hardly proceed without Prince John since he is standing for the bride. And doubtless the old whore herself, Eleanor of Aquitaine would nail your eyelids to your knees if you snubbed her precious La Seyne Sur Mer.”

Servanne’s heart missed a beat. Her gaze focused on the table linen and she gripped her eating knife so tightly, both blade and hand trembled. Luckily Wardieu had turned to reply to Nicolaa and neither saw her reaction to the name.

“It was a figure of speech, Nicolaa,” he sighed. “Not a proclamation of intent. However, with John’s cavalcade nearing the moor as we speak, and La Seyne reported to be but a day’s journey away, it may well suit my purpose to speed the entire affair along … with the good bishop’s permission, of course.”

Servanne’s heart had barely calmed from the first shock when it was sent slamming into her rib cage by a second one. A deep, melodic baritone gave response to Wardieu’s question, the ail-too familiar voice coming from one of the guests seated at the far end of the dais. Servanne inched her head around by degrees, leaning forward when she found her view blocked by Wardieu’s broad shoulder. A painfully constricted breath later and she was able to follow the flow of a capacious black wool sleeve to the ermine collar and gold link chain of office that ornamented the otherwise plain, voluminous robes. A plaited sallet tamed the riot of jet-black hair, and the soft brown eyes that turned to meet hers were as guileless and solemn as they were the day the sandal-footed Friar had greeted her at the gates of Thornfeld. Only this time the sacrilege was not in feigning the posture of a humble monk. This time, Alaric FitzAthelstan had aspired to the robes and rubies of a bishop!