To Touch The Knight (8 page)

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Authors: Lindsay Townsend

BOOK: To Touch The Knight
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Sir Tancred sighed. “If I may.”
“You are most welcome.” Edith stretched forward and took his hand in hers. “I am always glad of your company.” She meant it, too. Sir Tancred reminded her of her father and grandfather, and he was a good man, too kind for the ruthless life of a tourney knight.
Unlike Ranulf. . . .
They sat together in quiet, staring at the brazier, deep in their own thoughts.
Chapter 10
Ranulf was whistling while he checked his weapons and chain mail. He was by the river, sitting close to the washerwomen, hoping to spot the little maid among them and thinking of the Lady of Lilies. “I shall name her today,” he said aloud. “Give her a good Christian name that will be hers and she will answer to. I will ride for her and fight for her, and wear her favors.” The ones he still had, he thought, and grinned, glancing up at the early morning sun. Many hours and fighting yet, but the evening would come quickly and then he would kiss her again.
A stone splashed in the water close to him and he half scrambled to his feet, but it was only Giles, slinging pebbles into the river. Giles stalked toward him, his face dark.
“Women are devils,” he announced, flinging himself down beside Ranulf. “They promise and promise and mean none of it.”
“Lady Maud?” Ranulf turned the mail armor over and began to check for any severed or missing links there. The sun was warm on his back, reminding him of the haymaking he had done. Should he ask the Lady of Lilies to salve his sunburn? No, that would be too much to ask, even in jest.
Giles tossed another stone into the water. “All is at an end between us.”
Ranulf waited. It was Giles's habit to court a woman, idealize her, and then flee the instant he decided she was not perfect. Poor Lady Maud had done something.
Sure enough, here it was. Giles scratched his balls, sprawled a little more, and announced, “She would not let me fly her merlin.”
“Did she fly your falcon?”
Giles stared at him. “Of course not, I had said no! Then when I asked her to give me the merlin—”
He grumbled on and Ranulf ignored the rest. Giles thought every woman should give him what he wanted; his mother had taught him that.
“Stupid bitch.”
For an instant Ranulf concluded he had uttered his thought aloud, but it was Giles again, berating his ill usage.
“She is a spoilt, petted creature.”
“Perhaps she thought the same of you,” Ranulf answered, rising to his feet. “I am for the castle.” Walking, Giles would have less breath to moan.
A sly look of calculation slithered onto Giles's sulk. “Not your new lady love? I thought I might seek her out myself. You and she are on everyone's lips.”
Ranulf shrugged. “Seek away,” he said, feigning indifference. He did not want Giles smarming round his Lady of Lilies. Giles always assumed no woman could resist him and used his good looks and charm—charm he could put on and off like a cloak—to great advantage. In truth he did not want Giles within a mile of her tent, or her company.
“So much for Olwen,” Giles remarked nastily.
“I do not forget her.” He would not forget Olwen, and Giles's spite did not touch him. He had always known the day would come when he could think of his wife without the heavy, dragging grief. He had not thought it would come so swiftly, or that an Eastern Princess would fill his mind so completely—
If princess she is. Yet what else can she be?
 
 
Sir Tancred slept late, and when he stirred he complained of a headache. Edith made him a sage tisane and massaged his neck and shoulders. He felt clammy to her touch. His girl Christina was also anxious, looking to Edith for support.
“Stay here today,” Edith pleaded. “I am staying. Keep me and my maid company on our bed and let us listen to more music.”
Sir Tancred agreed and took only a little coaxing to get into the larger of the two beds within the tent. He and Christina dozed beside Maria, and Edith fetched them more drinks when they asked, and rubbed their feet. Maria was so large now she could go into labor at any time, but Sir Tancred's pallid look worried her. Edith was relieved when he fell at last into a steady, peaceful sleep.
“Not the pestilence, then,” said Teodwin in a low voice, reflecting her fear.
Edith shook her head. “Are there many waiting?” she asked, turning to her other tasks for the day. She began to pace in the tent, longing to walk out altogether. She could hear the other women and former village children of Warren Hemlet outside, playing at elves in the sparse woodland beside the tent, and wished briefly she was with them.
“Fewer than at other times.” Teodwin polished his shoes with his long sleeves. “Now the black knight claims you for his own, the gifts are beginning to lessen, too.” He removed a last dust spot with his thumb and looked at her. “The village men are getting worried, and our women are already gathering stores in our wagons. We might be wise to pack the rest of our things and go.”
“I agree,” said Edith, with a sinking heaviness, thinking at once of Ranulf and wondering, if they did leave, if she would see him again.
“You said yourself, Edith, that once people ask too many questions it is time to depart. They are not asking yet, but they are considering. The black knight has asked things of you and about you that have made them wonder. This tourney will soon be over, in any case.”
She tasted bitterness in her mouth and thought it was resentment against Ranulf, but then a moment later she knew it was disappointment.
“What of Maria and Sir Tancred? Is it safe for them to travel?”
Teodwin coughed, a sign of stress. “It may have to be.”
Edith stopped pacing and made her decision—in truth, there was little choice. Teodwin would not have troubled her with anything less than a real, if so far distant, threat. “We shall leave tomorrow, quietly, when the rest of Lady Blanche's court and guests are at a feast, or procession, or whatever they do. If all agree, we can make for Kenilworth. Sir Henry spoke of a great joust there, due to be held in a week's time.”
Teodwin nodded eagerly, his hazel eyes knowing and sympathetic. “A new place means new knights and fewer questions, for not all the knights here will follow on,” he observed shrewdly. “Do not tell the black knight when he comes this evening,” he added, guessing her thoughts with absurd ease. “Do not tell him that we are leaving, or where we are going.”
“I will not,” she promised, feeling a limb-aching sadness settle into her like hunger. “But I must tell Lady Blanche something, in courtesy. And I can be sorry, can I not?”
“Better sorry than dead.” Teodwin limped with his carved walking stick to the entrance, saying over his shoulder, “Will you see the knights and squires inside or outside?”
“Outside.” She wanted Tancred to sleep unmolested. “I will not keep them waiting too long. May I have some wine, please?” She needed something to stifle the panic in her belly.
Teodwin ducked through the entrance flaps and then, to her surprise, returned at once. “I will bring you a large cup,” he said, stepping out again before she could ask him why.
Chapter 11
Ranulf was not at the head of the straggle of knights, squires, and heralds fidgeting under the canopy opposite the Lady of Lilies's great tent, but he was certainly in the first rank. He had decided to come, mainly to sport again with the princess, but also because he did not trust Giles. Giles might be a fellow warrior, a good companion in arms, but Giles was also a womanizer, with open, handsome looks, blue eyes, a glib tongue, and a winning way. Ranulf never understood why so many women found Giles appealing, that arrogance of his masked as confidence, but then he was no girl.
The princess is my lady for this joust. I do not want Giles casting his shadow in my light.
And there was the delectable matter of those missing kisses. . . .
There was a general stir and straightening from the heralds and squires beside him, and Ranulf waved at the emerging princess. She was in blue today, with blue gloves, and she carried a goblet of wine in her right hand. He waited while she saw others, intrigued as to how she managed to sip the wine without wetting her blue veil. She had a kind word and encouragement for every knight and squire, mixed with pithy good sense.
“What advice for me?” he asked, when she came to him, walking on an instant path of flowers cast by two dark-haired children. “Does my horse need a little more training to become used to the clash of battle? Do I hold my shield too high?”
“Do not join in combat with a scythe,” she replied, not at all disconcerted by his questions, or his blatant listening in, and laughing as he laughed. “How now, my lord?”
“Are you joining the other ladies today?” It was a way to ask if she would watch him at the joust.
Her dark brows drew together. “Alas, sir, I cannot. My maid is close to her time.”
He said nothing on that matter of women, nor on the rumor that Tancred was ill. Again, looking over her pretty camp with the strolling musicians and flower-clad children, he thought it too lightly guarded.
He beckoned to her, and, when she leaned in a little closer, said in a low voice, “Lady, where are your guards? Where are Sir Tancred's? I could send you some men—”
“No need.”
As if she guessed she had been ungracious, she added, “Do you wish a favor, my lord?”
Ranulf stepped back. She did not understand, it seemed—or was she willful, blindly stubborn? Like a blow from a mace, his memory brought him to Olwen, dead in his arms: white and dead and stiffening. She had set out that fateful morning with a tiny escort. She, too, had thought herself safe.
The black grief poured over him and through him as he spoke. “You concern yourself with trifles and not your own safety? The security, too, of your people? These children here”—he waved at the youngsters, feeling a fresh molten coil of inner rage on their behalf—“how will you protect them and with what—with daisy chains and soft words?”
“My lord—”
“No, not yours,” he said harshly. “Not any lord's, more's the pity.”
“And you would announce that to the cosmos, would you?” she retorted, her eyes slitted with anger.
“You would do far better under a lord's protection, madam, but you are too foolish to see it.”
At once her color rose as if he had slapped her. Staring down at her reddened forehead and blazing eyes, he realized that he had made her situation worse: he had indeed broadcast it to the world. Even as he groped for words to undo a little of what he had done, she lunged at him, seizing his arm in a surprisingly strong grip.
“Hear me, now,” she said, in a low, dark voice. “I take care of me and mine, without your foul insinuations!”
“I did not accuse you of lack of care.”
“And I would rather be put up as a prize than submit to yours!”
He wrenched his arm away. “That can be arranged, madam.”
They were both too furious to back down and he could see no way out of it; rather he was relieved when she stalked off, her long flowing silks striking against his legs as she turned about, almost tumbling onto the grass in her haste to escape him. He put out a hand to stop her falling and she cried out, “Do not help me, sir! I want none of it, or you!”
Behind them he could hear stifled laughter—he knew of only one man in England who would dare to laugh, even if Giles had the good sense to stop laughing. He slewed about and there was Giles, hiding the smirk behind his hand and staring at the departing princess.
“Suave as ever, eh, Ran?” he called, tall and elegant in his best blue mantle, cool where Ranulf knew that he himself was red with temper. “I see our Eastern Princess approves you.”
“Go to hell!” Ranulf snarled, wanting to drag the taller, more handsome Giles to the river and dunk him into the mud. He stormed off, wishing he had never opened his mouth, feeling as charmless as the most gauche of squires.
 
 
She heard him, behind her, Sir Giles, her former master, who had thrust her and the other villagers into the church of Warren Hemlet and barred the door on them, leaving them all to die. She wanted to scream, and run, and be sick; instead she forced herself to walk.
Her anger at Ranulf was swallowed in a greater horror. They knew each other, Sir Giles and Ranulf. Giles had called him Ran—a nickname, surely? They must be friends. Ranulf was a friend of her savage former master.
Now that I know this, how can I trust him? If he is a friend of such a man as Giles de Rothencey! How can he be?
Revolted, she felt clammy all over, bursting into the great tent and falling onto her knees, shivering in reaction.
“Take everyone else and go,” she said through a jaw that felt as rigid as iron as Teodwin hurried to her. “Sir Giles has come here, so get all our people out into the woods. Go out through the back entrance. Hurry!”
To her relief, he did not waste time asking more or arguing. As he herded the children and adults together, whispering to them to be quick and quiet, Edith sped behind the curtain to check on Maria, Christina, and Sir Tancred.
All were still sleeping, and had she been friends with the Almighty she would have thanked God; as it was, she left them snoring and returned to the main tent. Scattering cloaks and flowers—a chessboard, a copper cup, a rebec; in truth, anything that came to hand—across the large sleeping pallet of the village men that dominated the left hand side of the tent, she hid their cloaks under a mound of things. She did not think her former master would recognize any of the clothes, but she wanted to make sure he did not.
Sir Giles did not know her as the Lady of Lilies, and he had not truly known her as the smith's widow of Warren Hemlet and sister to the priest, but she knew him. She knew him all too well.
She had warned the others just in time—scarcely had Teodwin slipped through the small back entrance and she was tying the flaps than she heard a quick, firm step outside. Sir Giles had done what no other knight or squire had presumed to do: he had come to her tent, without leave or invitation.
His predictability angered and comforted her at one and the same time. She knew what she was dealing with.
Remembering, she ran now behind the curtain to the widowed and single women's side of the tent, repinned her veil, flung on her largest silk cloak, found a half-bulb of garlic that she was using as part of a wound potion, smashed a clove on a stool, and smeared it rapidly over her arms.
She snatched up a scrap of sewing that the miller's widow had been doing and took that with her into the main tent.
“You must forgive Ran. He is still in deep mourning since the death of his wife.”
As she had expected, Sir Giles had entered the tent and was helping himself to a cup of wine. Edith took a deep breath and approached him.
“I would know your name, my lord, since you are in my place and helping yourself to my wine.”
For an instant Sir Giles appeared disconcerted, but he soon smiled—the wide, open look he reserved for ladies.
“Forgive me, I am as discourteous as Ran!” Still clutching the wine cup, he bowed. “Sir Giles de Rothencey.”
He did not say “At your service” or thank her for the wine. Edith decided to keep him off balance—and have him out of her tent as quickly as possible.
“Are you a friend of Sir Ranulf?” She strolled to the wide doorway of the tent, hoping Sir Giles would trail after her. “Twice now you have called him discourteous. Is that what friends do in the West?”
He laughed, not in the least put off, it seemed, by her garlic perfume, and worse, not in the least ashamed of himself. “Do you wish to speak of him, my lady? I would prefer to talk of you and your fabled beauty.”
He came alongside her, trying to peer through her gauzy cloak by the greater light from the entrance. Edith took a step sideways, hoping she was out of his reach.
“Shall we sit outside? There is a bench ready.” She knew she was too breathless, but if he assumed she was wary of him, so much the better. In truth, it was not fear that made her nervous but a loathing she was certain must show even through her veiling. She wanted to shout out the names of the villagers he had condemned, to hurl them at him like stones. Had it not been for de Rothencey's inhumanity, her brother Gregory might not have died—
or if he had, it would have been in his own bed, not on the road.
Overwhelmed by that memory, the very dust of the road seeming to rise up again to blow into her eyes and to clog her lungs, she watched Gregory die again, pass away in great heaving, shuddering gasps while she could do nothing—nothing—to help him. Helpless, horrified, Edith shook with rage.
“Are you sick?” The mask of the courtier was abruptly tossed aside as Sir Giles backed rapidly away. Edith managed a choking cough and his blue eyes widened with alarm.
“I must take my leave of you.” He was out of the tent, almost scrambling. “I will bid you, adieu, and—”
He collided with Ranulf in the entrance and then he was away, fleeing straight from her camp without a single backward glance.
Edith knew she should do nothing but a reaction overcame her; from being light-headed with fury she felt she was floating. It seemed now that the clouds in the sky had fallen to earth and had become her bed; a very soft, fluffy bed.
“Take my arm and do not faint yet, I will guide us back indoors. Faugh! You stink like a French cook. I know Giles loves garlic, but this is too much, Princess.”
“He thought me ill,” Edith rasped, wondering why her throat was so dry and appalled at what he had just told her. She had not known that of her former master.
“And that is why he left? Not very ardent. Up with you now.”
She was in Ranulf's arms, being carried to a stool. He set her down and brought her a cup of wine—not the same cup Giles had used, for her former master had taken that with him, she realized.
“Better?” Ranulf was kneeling beside her, his arm across her back, supporting her, his other hand lifting the wine cup. “Take another drink—I will turn my head if you wish to unveil.” He glanced at the curtained-off section of the tent and added, “How is Sir Tancred?”
“Sleeping.” Edith took the cup from him; it gave her something solid to hold on to. “Thank you. I did not expect to see you again so soon.”
Ranulf said nothing. She had gifted him with the chance to explain, and part of him wanted to do so, and to apologize for his harsh words of the morning. But then he thought of Giles again—how long had Giles been alone with her?
He studied her bowed head, trying not to breathe in as the stench of garlic hit him again. He knew almost nothing of her—her name, her past, even most of her face remained mysteries to him. He had seen her with Sir Tancred and thought them as easy and innocent with each other as father and daughter, but had she other lovers?
Giles cannot be her lover. He does not know her. But then, he was in her tent today, and they were alone, with no attendants. Am I mistaken? Are they intimate? Are they playing everyone at this joust for fools? Such a jest would be much to Giles's taste, even if I think it ill favored. Olwen always said he had a cruel wit.

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