To Touch The Knight (30 page)

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Authors: Lindsay Townsend

BOOK: To Touch The Knight
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Chapter 38
Ranulf saw the smoke for several bone-jangling, heart-wrenching miles as he urged the indifferent nag he was riding to its best speed. Too soon, and yet not soon enough, he and his reduced company galloped toward the dark pall hanging over the castle turrets. He thundered past stragglers clutching baskets and small chests, but when he shouted, “What news?” he received no answers.
He jolted past men sitting on the scorched earth, many with tears scoring down their smoke-blackened faces, but the wood behind the camp was still green in a world turned gray and black, and he clutched to hope like a sacred relic. Edith would have reached the wood and would be safe there: he knew this even as he entered the great field and saw the smoldering wrecks of tents and wagons.
“Has there been a war?” Edmund asked, his voice cracking as if he was five years younger.
Ranulf gritted his teeth and lashed his horse, weaving round the trails of ash and embers. The stink of fire, charred wood, burned cloth and flesh smacked him like a punch in the back of his throat. It had been a whirlwind of flame and destruction.
He rode on, seeing a glove, a single gauge, pinned to a barrel by a long metal nail. It was a bizarre accident and, sickeningly, it reminded him of a glove he had seen before, pinned in a very different way. When he found Olwen dead on the track that fatal morning, a single glove—given her by Giles—had been pinned beneath her twisted body. In his shock and grief he had never thought of it, never saw it as anything but tragic mischance.
What if it was more, though? Giles loves to gloat. What if Giles ordered that glove left under my Olwen, as a sign? What if he took the other glove as a grisly token of some kind?
Perhaps he was wrong, but he had never found the other glove.
When I return to the north, I must walk those woodland tracks
.
He had avoided it because walking where Olwen had died gave him no pleasure. Now he recognized he had no choice.
Later, that is for later. Where is Edith?
Up ahead, sitting on the ground on a saddle without a horse, a lad with long red hair rocked to and fro. Ranulf called to the boy. “Hey! Have you seen—?”
As the huddled figure looked up at him, he realized that this was a girl—one of the dagger-girls who haunted every tourney ground. Swiftly, he checked his first question, about Edith. “Do you need help, girl?”
“To lose more?”
Ranulf found his bag of coins and tossed it to her.
“Thank you kindly, sir.” She bowed her head and shook the coin bag, a strange smile hovering about her lips. “Are you sure?”
Before he could ask her what she meant, his squire began shouting.
“Sir! Look here, look you!” Off to one side, Edmund had dismounted and was kicking through ash piles farther up the hill. Now he fell to his knees and began desperately scooping and flinging charred wood and canvas away from a prone figure.
“Oh, God.” Twisting onto his belly, Edmund was copiously sick.
Ranulf swallowed his own mouthful of bile and swung down from the horse, kneeling stiffly beside his captain. Staring at the stricken face, twisted as a gargoyle, he acknowledged that the world was truly mad. Stephen had been a doughty fighter, a good man, betrothed to one of the maids. He had survived the war in France and the pestilence; now he was dead with a crossbow bolt through his heart. Forcing his icy hands to move, Ranulf closed the man's staring eyes and tried to recall a prayer.
“Treachery.” The girl spoke his thought. “Your man had no chance. When she allowed herself to be taken, the rest of your company lost heart and scattered. They are long gone.”
The girl shook the bag of money again. “Sir Giles offered her more gold than this. He killed your man when he protested as she took it.”
Ranulf closed his own eyes and tried, for the sake of Stephen's soul, to say a prayer. There was no doubt whom this distraught young woman meant by
she
, but he did not believe it. She loathed Giles, and with good reason.
She lies, yes, and has lied, and doubtless will always stretch and mold the truth, but not to harm. Never to hurt others. She detests Giles! She has cause to hate him. You know this.
“Fired at by a fellow knight.” Edmund was shaking like a loosened window shutter. “By a
friend
.”
“It happens,” Ranulf said harshly, wanting to stop the lad from sinking into tears that he would loathe himself forever after for shedding. “Get off your knees and see if you can see any of the men hereabouts. Baldwin”—he called to another man who had gone out hunting with them; an older, steadier sort—“You look, too. The rest stay close.”
He tore off his cloak and used it to cover Stephen, blocking out the deep hole in his body. The poor wretch looked as if he was sleeping, in a bad dream, which was worse, but at least the bloodstains were hidden.
“You.” He did not want to speak any more to the dagger-girl, but need compelled him. “You say my lady is with Sir Giles?”
She laughed, showing crooked teeth. “They went off together on horseback.”
Ranulf was glad his squire was out of earshot. “She went with him willingly?”
“Eagerly, my lord. Most eagerly.”
You lie!
Edith had never lied like this, for malice. What harm had she ever done this redhead? None, he wagered. Fighting it down, Ranulf mastered his rage and asked quietly, “How long ago was this? Which direction?”
The girl shrugged, making a great play of stirring the ash near her feet with her heels. “Here and there. I did not notice. I cannot say how long.”
“He can, though,” said Lucy, coming alongside Ranulf. Carrying Rano in a sling, she had emerged from behind a heap of charred planks—part of a mock “castle” that had been caught in the conflagration along with so much else. Beside her, having just released her hand, Gawain held himself very straight, his lips moving as he whispered something over and over to himself.
“Yes, my page?” Ranulf crouched so he and Gawain were a height.
Gawain glanced up at Lucy, who nodded, and the boy took a deep breath.
“My lady was beaten by Sir Giles and she fainted. He used his crossbow like a sword, hacking about with it. He did not see me because I hid behind a water barrel.”
Edith struck—
Ranulf gripped his own arms tightly before he started smashing everything in sight. His head felt as if it might leave his body, he was so lurid and hot with anger.
I should have killed him in the forest when I had the chance, without waiting to see justice done.
Gawain chewed on his lower lip. “I did not challenge him.”
“You did right,” Ranulf said quickly. “You kept watch for me.”
“See?” Lucy said, resting a work-roughened hand on the little boy's shoulder. “I told you your lord would not blame you.”
“Before he took her, she said something.” Gawain frowned. “I do not understand it.”
Spit it out, boy!
Ranulf rocked on his heels, grinding a charred tent pole under his boots, imagining it as Giles's face. “Whatever you remember is useful,” he encouraged him as his guts boiled at the slowness of all this. “It will help me to find her.”
The dagger-girl snorted, but Ranulf ignored her.
“Anything, Gawain.”
Gawain hopped from one foot to the other. “I want to come,” he burst out. “I want to rescue her.”
“And you shall.” Ranulf would have promised anything. “Where should we ride?”
“To the yellow castle.” Gawain took another deep breath and recited, “‘Not the yellow castle.' That is what my lady said, exactly.”
Giles has no yellow castles
, was Ranulf's first thought, and he glanced from Gawain to Lucy. “What is it, and where?” he cried out. “Where? Where in all this realm of England do I seek her?” Frustration gnawed at him like a wolf chewing on a bone.
“In the greenwood there are people with us who will know,” Lucy answered, calm and warm as new milk. “Our lady told us to gather there, and we have.”
Ranulf rose. “Take me to them.”
“She does not want to be found,” the dagger-girl muttered spitefully as he passed her. She was still sitting in the midst of the smoking tourney field on the saddle without a horse. “A fool's quest.”
“Better a fool than a viper,” Ranulf answered.
Stalking behind Lucy and his scampering page, he realized too late that he had forgotten his captain, lying dead and untended on the tourney field like so much midden rubbish.
Forgive me, old friend
, he thought, and he shouted to Edmund to see to Stephen's body and to gather the rest of his forces.
“To the greenwood, quick as you can!” he ordered. “Bring fresh horses, good runners!”
He wanted them all to be riding out again within an hour.
To this yellow castle, wherever that is.
 
 
Lady Blanche looked out over the battlements of the bailey of her castle. With a sigh, she marked how one section of the curtain wall still needed repairs, and that after her husband had promised he would see to it. Richard, of course, was excited about his latest joust. He was like a boy playing with a barrel of apples, she thought, and the picture gave her no peace. Her husband's love of the tourney had, over the years, meant that she remained in this cold, small castle, and that her dowry had been spent on elaborate prizes and entertainments.
And for what? The fools had succeeded in setting their own camp ablaze, and so her careful plans were ruined: they would not now be spending money in her markets. She had been ill and none of those courteous gentle knights had called on her. The mob in the churchyard was back, and Richard was making jokes about barring the castle gates. Her harvesters were demanding more money. It was not as bad as two years ago, during the time of the great death, but it was poor enough.
She heard galloping horses and peered—her eyes were weak at a distance—over the battlements again.
“My Lady Blanche!”
She recognized Sir Ranulf by his bellow and bowed stiffly to him. Where was her husband, to stand with her facing this handsome brute? Off stuffing himself with cheese and fruit tarts in the kitchen, no doubt.
“I trust you are now recovered, my lady.”
She said nothing, refusing to be mollified. She still ached from the fever and was sore all over. He was plainly not riding to see her, or joining her joust of peace: he and his men were in drab battle dress and armed to the hilt. Sir Ranulf was in his usual black armor but it was very drab, mud-splattered, without shine, and no favors anywhere.
He glowered at her as if she was a target and bawled out, “My lady, have you seen Sir Giles? And the princess? I must have urgent speech with them.”
Did he mean they were now a pair? Despite her aching back and sides, Lady Blanche began to be intrigued. “I am not sure,” she called down. “Would they have passed this way?” Recalling now that the princess had never called or asked after her, she added, quite deliberately, “I may have seen a couple riding forth, oh, an hour ago. Very comfortable they seemed together. He was kissing her hand as a sign of his admiration.”
Even though her eyes were weak at a distance, she saw his face darken.
She added a final twist. “The lady was laughing.” Let Sir Ranulf make what he would have of
that
news, she thought, satisfied when the knight said a brusque, “Fare you well,” and rode on. Did these men think she had nothing better to do than to gossip and to keep watch?
And how was she going to pay the harvesters?
Chapter 39
Ranulf felt Gawain's small fingers clinging to his belt as they rode along a sunken track and wished again that the child had remained in camp. Why had he allowed the lad and those others to come? He had his usual fighters, sadly without Stephen, but he had also acquired a motley crowd of stragglers. Each had insisted on coming and Gawain had sworn he would follow the horses' tracks if he was not allowed to remain in the company. As he needed some of the former serfs as guides and the rest would not be parted or persuaded to stay behind, Ranulf had no choice but to bring them along.
He worried that even Lucy, Maria, and the children were with them, riding with others as they hurried like the wind-blown clouds, but he could do nothing about that now. Once they knew Edith was taken, there was no holding them.
Much as he approved their courage, he disliked having womenfolk along, especially mothers and babes, but he knew in the end that he would have to bring them along, or they would follow on their own and Edith would never forgive him. So they were riding together to the Chastel d'Or.
He had never heard of Giles's yellow castle, but the people gathered in the woods behind the tourney camp knew it well. Worse, they told tales of it.
The yellow castle, or Chastel d'Or, as Giles grandly called it, was on the borders of Giles's richest demesne land: a small place with a water-filled moat, gatehouse, and drawbridge. Giles, he had learned from the anxious, cowering group in the wood, all branded runaways, enjoyed ducking his serfs in the moat whenever the fancy took him, and half drowning them.
Teodwin, who was interpreting the whispers of the runaways, had cursed when he had translated that. “I know that habit of Lord Giles from my past,” he admitted. “Edith knows it, too. Did she ever tell you how Peter the farrier died?”
Ranulf shook his head. “Only that he drowned in a fish pond.” Edith had spoken of her former betrothed, but he had never asked her the full story about the fellow's life or death, not even when she confessed what Giles had ordered done at Warren Hemlet. As he lifted Gawain onto his saddle and ordered his men to allow those who wanted to come to ride pillion with them, he knew the tale would be grim.
“Peter Farrier was a stubborn mule of a man. You could not tell him one single thing. He loved fish and had a taste for stealing pike from our lord's fish pond close to Warren Hemlet.”
Teodwin spat, a rough gesture Ranulf had not seen before from the steward. “Edith begged him to stop, but Peter took no more heed of her than he did of any other woman or man. Next time he went fishing he was caught, a few days before his wedding.”
Teodwin glanced up at Gawain, perched high on Ranulf's saddle with his hands clasping the horse's mane. “You should have a pony,” he added inconsequentially.
“I have, sir,” replied Gawain. “But he is off somewhere. What happened to the man Peter Farrier? Was he branded as punishment?”
Teodwin raised his eyebrows at this frank question and answered, “Something like, yes, and then he died.” Stepping closer to Ranulf he mouthed, “It was six months later before any of the village elders dared tell Edith that her Peter was drowned in the fish pond on Sir Giles's orders.”
He grunted at Ranulf's stark scowl and slapped his lame leg. “This was also a gift of our lord, from a beating. I cannot now recall what I did that so angered him, but he ordered me beaten and broken, and so I was. Edith set my leg, but she could only do so much.”
“I am sorry,” Ranulf said, astonishing himself. He knew he was a fool for being ashamed, but he also knew that he had not studied Giles that closely.
When Edith told me he was branding people, I shrugged. Now I have seen what that means. Yet why did she not tell me about Peter the farrier? What else has she hidden? Is there more of Giles's spite? Can there be more? Or was she truly laughing with Giles and allowing him to kiss her hand, as Lady Blanche claimed?
“We must ride fast,” he said.
“And if he has despoiled her?” Teodwin demanded.
Ranulf felt as if he had been knifed in the guts, a wrenching, burning knife that lunged into his body and slammed up into his chest and his heart. He took a ragged breath and forced himself to answer.
“That is why we must make haste.” He had looked east, to where he was told Chastel d'Or was, and wished as he had not done since he was a boy younger than Gawain.
Lie, Princess, lie well. Be the very Lady of Lilies you are. Beguile and charm and delay and lie as you must, do what you must, to survive. Laugh with Giles, if it keeps you safe.
He did not want to think about kisses being exchanged.
Do not then, Ranulf
, warned Olwen.
Trust her. Yes, she lies, but you should trust her. She never lies to hurt.
“She will never hurt me,” he said aloud, as hope and fear flooded through him. The way was so slow, the waiting and journey so long! This road, the London road, crawled with wagons, shuffling peasants, urgent heralds on sweating horses, and more. Even the ruinations of the pestilence had not made this road faster, or less packed. Threading through the mass when he wanted to charge, gallop so fast that the dust raised over his head and all he could hear was his own breathing and the horse's hooves, was another torment.
But at least they were riding. They were all riding to Chastel d'Or.
 
 
Her back hurt as if a witch was sticking pins in her. Her head ached and her shoulders and neck were as stiff as old dough. Someone was shouting to her. Adam wanted her to heave herself out of bed and work. No, it was Peter. He was mocking her because she was merely a blacksmith and not a farrier.
No, that was wrong. Peter and Adam were dead. So who was it?
Where was Ranulf?
Edith's eyes snapped open. Was he here? Was he safe? What must she do to keep him safe?
Her head still rang with confusion and hurt, as if she had gorged on new ale, but her memory had begun to work properly. She clenched her eyes shut. If she was lucky, her captor would not have noticed and she would have a few more moments to collect herself and to plan— She was unlucky.
“You are safe, Princess. You may open your eyes.”
“Lord Giles?” She allowed her lashes to flicker as if she was still stirring. “My lord?”
Her voice was slurred and slow even as her thoughts flew like frightened doves from a cote. Where was her ring? Had Giles seen it?
Giles lay stretched out on the bed beside her. She went cold, imagining the horror of his caressing her while she was unconscious. To stop her body from shuddering, she took a rapid tally of the room. The chamber was of stone, with no true windows. There was a bed, a strew of rushes, a stool, a chest. Sunlight poured in by way of the open door. A maid hovered nearby, clutching a shawl. A man patrolled outside, stepping slowly to and fro. Lolling on the cushions and straw pallet, grinning like a boy in possession of a rare bird's egg, Giles still wore his clothes. So did she. Her long silken wrap had been flung over her as a blanket: she clutched at it, determined to cover herself as quickly as possible. Better yet, she now could feel Ranulf's heavy ring, pressing against her breast and hidden by the lacing of her bodice.
She gasped in relief.
“Princess? Are you in pain?”
Still he did not know her, could not recognize her as the blacksmith of Warren Hemlet. That mercy almost unmade her, but she forced herself to shake her head. “No, no, it is not that.”
“Then what, my love?”
He knocks me out cold yet calls me love!
Edith tried to smile but her lips would not obey her. She settled for a question instead, sitting up very slowly.
“Where are we, my lord?”
“In my golden castle, now ours.”
“Is it in a far-off place?”
“Very far,” he agreed. “A place like the castle of the green knight.”
“Green?” Edith prompted, for as Princess of Cathay she should not be expected to know that story.
With a languid sweep of his free hand, Giles wafted aside her question. “Do not trouble yourself with trifles, Princess. It is enough for you to know that you have escaped the black knight and are safe with me.”
Edith saw his eyes crinkle at the corners and his lips quiver slightly as he told the lie—signs to watch for again, she decided. Did he think she had no sense or wit? She could not see the position of the sun in this barren chamber, but her silk and his rich light tunic were not grimed with the dust of leagues of travel.
My legs would be aching as much as my head if we had come far. I can smell a distant whiff of spices and roasting meats; the kitchens are preparing their master's lunch. I can hear a carpenter somewhere, sawing. He would not do that in the gathering dark. We have not been on any road for long, and I know that the yellow castle is set back from the London road, on a green-way track.
What else had she been told of the yellow castle? She strove to recall the few, nervous comments the former runaways had gabbled to her on the riverbank, but mostly they had spoken of Giles's cruelty: no surprise there.
She knew it was a risk, but thought it wise to ask after Ranulf. If she was too accepting, even a lord as self-regarding as Giles would be suspicious. “How am I here, my lord? This morning I was Sir Ranulf's prize.”
“And poor treatment he gave you! Had I not killed that brute in the wood for him, you would be despoiled. You should think no more of him, or his.” Giles touched her bruised cheek. “I am sorry I ill-used you, but I had to break the spell. Fredenwyke wears black armor and uses blacker arts. I, too, was blinded by him at first, and called him friend.”
Forced to listen to these glib and evil accusations, Edith felt the heat of indignation surge into her face, making her bruise smart more than ever. Quickly, she lowered her eyes so that Giles would not see the sparks of anger in them, and hastily swung her green silk wrap across her shoulders, eager to cover herself. “That being so, my lord, will he not pursue you?”
“Us, my dear Princess!” Giles fondled a scrap of cloth between his fingers, and Edith recognized part of her veiling that he had ripped from her head. “But no, I do not think so.”
“Sir, I do not understand you.”
“Do you not?” Giles stretched a fingertip to her bare middle, which she had not yet been able to cover with the wrap, then abruptly he withdrew his hand. “I must not be too keen,” he murmured, a remark that heartened and terrified Edith together.
“Fredenwyke?” she prompted. It felt strange to give Rannie his formal name, but she thought it wise.
Giles was stroking the piece of veil again. “He cannot stand for his things to be handled by others. I once saw him drop a good pair of gloves into the fire because his squire had worn them.”
“To wear any clothes without permission is wrong, yet I am surprised he did not give them to the young man,” Edith said, aware that such a reply would please her companion.
“Exactly!” exclaimed Giles, who never gave anything away. “Have you marked that fashion in him?”
“Yes.” She would agree to anything harmless.
Have I noticed that trait in my lord? I cannot remember!
Giles twirled the silk around his hand, trapping his fingers. “He will know now, that you have escaped with me.” He gave her a bright, chilling smile. “We are both free of him, Princess.”
Does he expect me to thank him?
“As you say,” she managed, wondering how to remove herself from the bed. She glanced at the maid but saw no help there, only a rigid, pale terror.
“Did he burn your hands?”
“A dragon of the East did that,” Edith replied, startled by Giles's unexpected question into giving the old lie. She was surprised that he had noticed the fire marks on her fingers, but then he had always seen her gloved before.
“Truly, Princess?” Kneeling up on the bed, he put out a hand as if to touch her bare, scarred palms, smiling as she hastily withdrew them.
“Sir Giles!”
“Forgive me, my lady.” As he bowed his head, she understood that Giles was not truly interested in her hands, or how she had come by her fire marks: his ploy had all been a means to flirt and toy with her.
Better for me that he is so disinterested! Ranulf would have asked more.
Her heartbeat quickened as she thought of him, her dark-armored, grim-seeming knight, but it was dangerous to indulge herself. Giles might see the heat in her face and think he was the cause.
Be a princess
, she reminded herself as he mumbled a further apology of sorts, and she took the moment to hide her costume and limbs in her long green silk.
Ranulf is coming, and you must charm Giles until he does. You have done the same a hundred times with other knights
.

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