To Touch The Knight (31 page)

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Authors: Lindsay Townsend

BOOK: To Touch The Knight
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If
Ranulf was coming.
If
he understood her message.
If
Gawain had found him and found the courage and wit to pass it on.
Edith sucked in her gut and squared her shoulders, aware of Giles's eyes fixed on her bosom.
I have not survived the great death and brought my people into safety to die as an enfeebled serf woman. Giles is not my master. He is not even master of himself.
And if Ranulf does not come? If he is as Giles says?
She gave Giles a warm smile. “I feel so grubby from all our travels. May I have a bath, my lord?”
But not in this tiny, cloistered room from which I cannot get out
.
She rolled onto her side and from there eased herself into sitting up cross-legged, modestly draping her skirts about her legs and her green wrap over everything. All the while she was moving, she sensed the burning, greedy gaze of Giles roving over her skin, but he did not grab her.
Not yet at least. I can hold him off for a while yet, a small while
.
“My lord? To bathe outside in your castle courtyard would be my delight.”
Giles grunted something, then snapped at the maid, “Get out! Get the bathhouse stoked! Get a bathtub set up in the courtyard! Bring towels, warm water, bring soap! You heard your lady! Go!”
She rewarded him with an admiring look and, feeling more confident, smoothly set another delay in motion. “Will you show me your gardens, my lord? I love your English roses.”
 
 
“My lord, this is beautiful. Even the gardens and palace of my father do not compare to those of your castle.”
For an instant, strolling beside Giles on the fading primrose paths, Edith feared she had been too effusive, but her former master merely raised his chin to display his handsome profile and clicked his tongue in agreement. “I have always liked my pretty castle.”
“What is it called, my lord?”
“Chastel d'Or, which means castle of gold.” He chuckled at her attempt to repeat his French. “More in the back of the throat, Princess.”
Edith dutifully tried again, turning her head slightly so Giles could see
her
profile. She added a mix of the old Hemlet dialect and total nonsense, then said, “That is how I say it in my language. Are the walls truly of gold?”
Giles smirked again. “Shall we go and see?”
 
 
The walls and battlements were built of a golden yellow stone that shimmered in the afternoon sunlight. Edith was fulsome in her praise, extolling the color and beauty of the castle while remembering, just in time,
not
to clap her fingers together in order to show her delight. She did not want Giles reminded of her hands, and kept them tucked out of sight in the folds of her voluminous skirts or in her wrap.
Chastel d'Or was pretty, she conceded. It was a simple keep and bailey, older than Lady Blanche's home, with a small kitchen and physic garden, stables, a bake-house, an obviously little-used bathhouse, smothered in wild roses, and a moat.
She forced herself to look into the moat when she glimpsed it through the crenellations of the bailey walls. It was now very low, filled with dark, brackish water that no doubt stank. Giles had been idle in his cruelty and had not ordered it to be dug out or repaired.
Or, in these days of pestilence and runaways, could he not find the labor?
Smiling at that thought, Edith looked again at the walls. They were handsome but they were also old, straight-sided, very thick. Recalling what her grandfather had told her of castles in the East, she guessed an army would quickly seize it.
But Ranulf, if he is coming, does not have an army. . . .
Swiftly, she looked about again. The drawbridge was down. The main gate was guarded by a gray-beard who was picking his nose. The whole place was curiously muted.
I cannot hear the smithy. Is there no forge here, or workshop?
She sensed Giles watching, waiting for more approval. “Those trees are so splendid!” she cried, nodding to the woodland that surrounded Chastel d'Or. “Did you play in those as a boy, my lord?”
“I may have done so.” Giles was not interested in oaks or beeches, so she could not suggest a stroll in the woods. He pointed along the path of the physic garden. “See, Princess? Your wish is my command.”
Past the roses and marigolds, the lavender and rosemary bushes, was the bare, tamped-down courtyard. There in full sun, set away from the shade of the bailey and keep walls, was a huge wooden barrel. Men were rigging up awnings behind the barrel. Maids were rushing from the bake-house, bathhouse, and kitchens with steaming jugs of water, or, more dangerous for them, with glowing hot stones, carried perilously in aprons. Edith heard the splashes and sizzles as the stones were tipped into the barrel.
“Your bath is being prepared.” Giles plucked a sprig of lavender from a bush and tucked it not into her hair, but into his own tunic. “I will be your attendant, Princess.”
She nodded, as if in agreement, while her eyes tracked the position of the tub and the courtyard and the drawbridge.
“The sun will shine through the gatehouse onto my bath,” she said, hoping her voice was warm and wondering enough. “Thank you, my lord. This is exactly how I bathe in the East, with the gate of my father's palace open to admit the sun. But what of—”
She stopped and at once Giles repeated, “What of?”
“Will others be here, my lord? With us?”
“Should I put out their eyes, Princess?”
“No! Of course,” she added hastily, “I know you mean they will be blindfolded, maids and men.”
Thank you, Rannie, for giving me that idea!
“You sport with me, my lord.”
“Maids as well as men?” Giles looked her up and down, his eyes fixing on her bosom again. “Do you claim to be shy?”
“It is the custom of my land,” she answered, refusing to elaborate.
Giles pursed his lips while he stared at her softly wrapped curves and swatted the heads off marigolds. “Why?” he demanded.
“A princess is not to be seen by the common sort, only by quality,” she replied, appealing to his notions of knighthood. “By your leave, my lord, I will make a veil now from my wrap, to cover myself.”
“No need.” Giles snapped his fingers and at once servants came rushing. It was the work of anxious moments for them to fetch her some yellow cloth, almost as fine as her silk.
She veiled herself quickly, relieved that Giles could no longer see her expression, and gave him a brief bow. “I am greatly in your debt.”
She watched him chew on that and like it. His hand stopped swatting.
“I could bathe with you.”
As if he offers me a jewel!
“That would be wonderful, my lord.”
She dreaded being naked with him but knew she could give no other answer than the one she had. All she could do was delay more. “The day is so warm now! If you wish, my lord, I could gather some raspberries or blackberries and make you a tisane such as I make for my father.”
“You have such fruits in the East?”
“Of similar kind, and dragon berries.” Edith was already hurrying toward a shaded part of the garden, where she had spotted a mass of brambles. When Giles did not call her back, she knew her ploy had worked.
For now at least, and if he asks after dragon fruits I have another tale to spin.
Chapter 40
“Tell me again,” said Ranulf, “and make haste.”
A clamor of voices answered and he raised a fist. “Dismount, all of you, and gather in a circle round me. Then we shall talk. One at a time.”
Fury bit him like fleas but he clamped it down, stamping as he tumbled from his horse and swung Gawain down onto the woodland floor. He could see the London road from here, the dust of it at least, but he could not see the battlements of Giles's place, not yet.
Have we stopped too soon? Should I have ridden farther?
But he knew the danger of haste. From raiding in France he knew it and he sensed it now, as the rest of his straggling, motley crew sprawled and fell from their pillion mounts, bandy-legged and cursing.
“I did warn you not to come,” he said to a man who clutched at his groin and wailed something between a howl and a sob.
“Giles owes us,” said a branded woman, a cry taken up by several as they shuffled and argued themselves into a rough circle, with the sun slanting down through the trees onto their bowed backs. Amidst them, taller and broader and bristling with spears and knives, were his own men. Like him, they were in battle armor, hastily donned before their mad-long rush from the tourney camp. Edmund his squire was in chain mail and carried a shield: he looked weary but determined, his thin face tight with anticipation.
Ranulf nodded to him, although he knew already that armor would not win the day. He had no sappers to take the castle, so it would have to be won by stealth. For stealth he needed information, and quickly.
“There is a moat and drawbridge,” he called out, interrupting the grumbles. “Is there a postern gate? Any small, narrow entrance? That will be our way in, once we are past the guards.”
“What guards?” asked Teodwin as he chafed Lucy's legs, looking altogether too intent on the task, especially as he rubbed the blood back into her thighs—which would be what he would claim to be doing if challenged, Ranulf wagered.
He sighed and knelt on the forest floor, feeling for his dagger and then remembering he had given it to the free-woman Agnes in the meadow. He used a pebble instead to draw and explain. His men did not need this, but the others did, or they might give their approach away.
“Chastel d'Or—”
“The yellow castle,” interrupted one of the ragtag group.
“Chastel d'Or, yellow castle, Giles's fortress: it is all one. It is, as you say, small. One keep and some stone walls.” He drew the plan as he spoke. “Are there stables? Workshops? Cookhouses?”
No one answered, but when he raised his head he saw people nodding. He added those in, using his memory of older households as a guide. “There is a moat and drawbridge. The drawbridge will be guarded. Can any say by how many?”
After a moment of whispers, he held up a hand. “Enough. We shall say it is guarded and leave it at that. There will be another, smaller gate, there always is. Do any of you know it?”
More whispers and then a man stepped forward into the circle. “There was one close to my house. 'Twas where the moat stopped and where a great tree grew up from the water, an alder.”
Ranulf felt excitement prick him, as if he was being rasped by a salamander. Giles had been fool enough to allow a tree to grow there! “What else?”
The fellow shrugged. “It was a little, narrow, mean path. The guards used it, but liked it not for the shadows and damp. I heard them grumbling as they marched by my house. Then, last year, they came and pulled down my house, pushed it into the moat.”
One way to creep closer and enter the postern was now blocked, thought Ranulf, before he recalled the man's home had been destroyed.
“Our lord will give you one,” said Teodwin, as if he could spirit them out of the air. Ranulf hid a smile and said nothing: such plans were for later.
“Is the tree still there?”
“Yes,” said the man. “Or the stump, at least.”
More cover removed
, thought Ranulf.
Giles has not been as foolish as I hoped he would be.
“How many soldiers did you see about the castle?” he asked.
That provoked a lively, bickering discussion. Some thought a score. Some said two. Others swore no more than seven.
“I could go and ask,” piped up Gawain. “I am a page and I could say I was joining Sir Giles's service.”
“Brave thought, my lad, but no,” said Ranulf, feeling proud of the boy all the same, and exchanging a wink with Edmund. His little page had come a long way from the cowering creature Sir Henry had made. Not wanting to recall how Henry had met
his
end, he thought back to campaigns in France again and recalled instead how Giles ordered his men and watches, how he would still order them. There would be watchers in these woods, too, guards they must spot and bring down before they could raise any alarm. Darkness was best for such work, but he dared not wait, not when Giles had Edith.
He said as much to the group and then was surprised.
“We can do that,” several volunteered. They were all branded and small and thin, dressed in patched tunics and poor hats.
“These are soldiers,” he reminded them. “Armed and trained. They may not expect an attack, especially in daylight, but surprise can take you only so far.”
“It will take us far enough, especially as they will not be expecting any trouble from serfs,” said Teodwin, his freckled, red-cheeked face brighter than ever with suppressed excitement. “It will work, my lord!”
That hope is the hope Edith gave him, and now he takes it for himself.
“If they do it, we can watch the guards, see when they change,” said one of his soldiers. “We may take one hostage, or capture one and take his uniform and badges, make a play ourselves as one of Giles's men.”
“As Edith would,” Ranulf said, before he realized what he was admitting and clamped his jaws closed. Teodwin might guess what he knew, but there was no time now for anything save battle plans.
“I know another tactic,” he said, when a burst of chatter had died down and expectant, keen faces looked at him. “I need those who can swim, and swim like fishes and know how to breathe through hollow reeds or pipes. They must be able to climb, too, very nimble and fast.”
A ragged scarecrow stepped forward. “I can do that. I am a thatcher. I know how to climb.”
“Up under a drawbridge with archers shooting down?” Ranulf wanted the man to know the risks.
The scarecrow nodded. “Last summer, I was forced to work for Giles on a far-off hunting lodge. While I was away, my wife starved, and Giles tossed her not so much as a crust. I will do all you ask.”
“And me!” cried another, also stepping forward. “He lamed my son and laughed at my Thorvill's pain!”
The words “laughed” and “pain” resonated afresh in Ranulf's mind. In a flash of insight, he recalled again what the spy had told Edith: that he should look to his homeland, that Giles had wronged him. Here, too, was proof that Giles loved to savor suffering, that he enjoyed his victories of spite. What wrong had he suffered in his homeland? The death of his wife. Olwen, whom he had found with one of her new gloves, given by Giles, tucked beneath her broken body.
For certain it is that Giles had a hand in the accident that killed her! That is what his own spy meant. That, and that the signs of his treachery are still there for me to find, in my northern homeland.
“So it begins,” he said, feeling a grim anticipation seethe like boiling poison in his body. “From here on, we are at war with Chastel d'Or.”

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