Warrior's Princess Bride (2 page)

The ribald laughter hushed immediately. His men, Geraint, Arnaud, Jean-Paul, gaped back at him, jaws dropping open, forming a mute tableau of surprise. And below them, spread-eagled on the floor, a maid. His heart jerked in shock, in anger.

‘Let her go.’ His order, sharp and commanding, rapped out from the doorway. The young soldier’s hands fell away from his belt. His dagger slipped from nerve less fingers, its blade clattering against the stone floor. Silence, laced with thickening guilt, cloaked the church. Benois’s frame filled the doorway, a giant silhouette against the day light, his broad shoulders almost touching the sides of the arch, long legs spread wide across the threshold.

‘Get out.’ Benois stepped to one side, folding his arms impassively over his chest.

The soldier closest to Tavia bent down to pick up his knife. ‘You’d better say your prayers now, virgin,’ he whispered. The soldiers scuttled out, heads hanging, shame faced as they passed their commander.

As he turned to follow his men out of the church, his mouth taut and white with rage, Benois glanced back at the maid lying under the north window. In the dim light, filtered through the narrow arched slits, he could just make out the slender figure crumpled up against the altar, the stark whiteness of her face like a ghost against the grey backdrop of stone. Although her eyes were open, she made no move to scramble for cover, or to hide. Benois frowned, irritated by his own uncustomary behaviour. He didn’t have time for this now, but if his soldiers had gone too far…?

His men were descending the steps, blinking in the bright sun shine, their guilt evident by their shuffling steps, their mumbled excuses. Instinct told Benois to leave the maid; he had already given the order to retreat, and his soldiers would be gathering beyond the gates of the city, ready to ride back to Chester. And yet it was he who had given the command for no blood shed in this attack on the city, no raping and pillaging. There was something in that still, pale face that made him hesitate, causing him to spin on his heel and stride up the aisle, pulling his gloves off decisively as he approached the altar steps.

The maid was of peasant stock, judging from her clothes. Her booted feet stuck out from a
bliaut
ragged with patched-up holes. The dress bagged around her thin frame like a sack; it had obviously been made for someone far larger than herself. The linen scarf that covered her hair had fallen back in the scuffle with his men to reveal her dark wine-red hair.

Her light blue eyes stared past him, unfocused, as he bent over her, unsure what to do. Since fighting for Henry, he had tended to avoid the company of women, finding physical pleasure only in his swift visits to whores, and now, he, Benois, most feared commander of Henry’s northern battalions, had no idea what to do next.

He patted her on the cheek. Nothing. Seizing her by one shoulder with his great hand, he shook her, not gently. No reaction. He began to shake her a little more. Suddenly she began screaming hysterically, like a wild woman, a banshee—a high-pitched screeching like an animal howling in pain. He winced, pulling back slightly, trying to retreat from the noise that threatened to blow his eardrum.

‘Get away from me…you…barbarian!’ she stuttered the words out, a piercing wail, jerking upwards from her prone state to shove her hands up towards his chest, trying to push him away. She struggled against him, throwing her shoulders back and forth, trying to dislodge his hold. He dropped his grip on her shoulder immediately, sitting back abruptly on to his heels.

‘Easy, maid. I have no wish to hurt you,’ he muttered, amazed by the luminous quality of her skin, the beauty of her face, set in a perfect oval.

She focused on him then, shaking with horror, her wide cerulean eyes lit with fear. Tears welled in the corners, threatening to spill over, and her hands flew to her face, as if she couldn’t bear to look at him. Tears bubbled through her fingers, dripping over the fine bones of her hands, splashing to the floor in great, dark spots.

Benois shifted uncomfortably. His calf muscles began to cramp in this crouched position. She seemed to be in one piece; maybe he should just go.

‘You’re inhuman,’ the maid blubbed out. She jabbed a finger in the direction of the door. ‘Those men…were inhuman!’ Her whole body quivered with terror.

‘Did they hurt you?’ Benois frowned. Scanning her neat figure, he could find no evidence of attack, no reason why this maid should weep so much. The noise of her crying made him feel grace less, inept. It was a long time since he had offered a woman comfort, sympathy, and he wasn’t about to start now.

‘Nay.’

The single word was enough for him. Benois sprung to his feet, eager to leave, his huge, bear-like frame towering over the forlorn, seated figure. He was reluctant to spend time dabbling in plea san tries with a peasant girl. At his movement, she turned her large, aqua marine eyes up to him. The glossy wings of her hair parted over her forehead, forming a shining auburn frame to her terrified expression. ‘They hurt me,’ she added, ‘but not in the way you imply.’

‘Good.’ He nodded curtly, his tone matter-of-fact, abrupt. ‘Then, as you appear to be recovered, I will bid you good day.’

Tavia’s eyes widened, chips of sapphire staring at him in puzzlement, as if unable to comprehend his words.
‘Recovered…?’
Her voice rose a couple of notches as she struggled to speak. ‘Are you completely insane?’ She tilted her head back, pointing at the thin line of blood trick ling down her neck with one grimy hand. Her pink fingernail quivered against her pale skin.

Benois shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’ve seen worse.’ He clamped his lips together in a furious line. His soldiers were trained, professional men; men who should have known better.

Tavia viewed the man in astonishment, unbelieving as to his remorseless words. He stood before her, this barbarian of a man, without a hint of apology for his men’s actions. In the half-light, she could decipher no hint of his visage, except for his mouth, clamped firmly into a cruel, thin line. The silver metal of his helmet covered his head, the glittering skin of his hauberk shone out from beneath a short cloak of ermine, lined with red silk. The fine wool of his tunic bore the colours of Henry II, two lions embroidered in heavy gold thread across the breadth of his chest.

She folded her hands together in her lap, trying to still their trembling. Her voice, when it emerged, was a low whisper of condemnation. ‘So you don’t care one jot that your soldiers chased a woman into a church, kicked her down to the floor and threatened to rape her at knife point?’

No, he didn’t care. ‘Those men will be punished.’ His answer was terse. Why did he even offer this woman an explanation?

‘I thought I would be safe here,’ she murmured. Tavia tipped her head back, the cut on her throat smeared red across the graceful line of her neck. ‘But they followed me, pursued me, like I was their quarry…’ Her voice wavered as she fought back fresh tears, fighting to maintain some sort of composure. ‘Your men are animals.’

The lick of contempt in her tone squeezed his chest. ‘Aye, they are,’ he replied grimly. The tiny metal loops of his chain-mail glittered as he reached down from his lofty height to help her up. His extended hand loomed before her, tanned and sinewy, the fingers surprisingly fine and tapered for such an oaf of a man. She didn’t want to accept his help, but the strength had run from her legs like water.

‘Come on,’ he said, irritated. ‘I haven’t got all day.’

The curtness of his tone stung her and she sneered at his hand as if it was a piece of rotting meat. ‘I don’t need your help,’ she lobbed back at him. ‘Just leave me!’

With a grunt of annoyance, he seized her wrist, hauling her roughly to her feet, before turning on his heel, and sweeping out of the church.

Tavia leaned shakily against the altar, blood pumping furiously through her veins. She closed her eyes for a moment, shuddering with relief, tracing her palm annoyance. Her skin still burnt with the force of the man’s grasp, the imprint of his hand. But something was amiss. His palm had not been smooth against her own, but ridged and dented as if the skin had been through a mangle. A touch she would never forget.

T
avia jerked awake, her heart banging out a jittered rhythm. Through the hazy layers of consciousness, soldiers continued to chase her through the church, a pair of ferocious slate-grey eyes leading the pursuit. She blinked rapidly, trying to dispel the frightening image, peering into the gloom of the cottage that was her home. Reaching out to touch the cool, gritty dampness of the stone wall beside her, her fingers shook with the comfort that she was finally safe. Her journey north wards from the city had been beset with anxiety, her muscles tensing at every creak from the trees, every sighing whisper through the grass, her mouth dry with the thought that the English would return. Once dark had fallen, she had crept through the narrow alleyways and side streets before running swiftly over the rough moorland to the farmstead.

A low moan from the pallet on the other side of the cottage drew her attention. The straw in the linen pillow rustled beneath her hair as she turned her head from the wall to look over at the huddled form. All she could see of her mother was a strand of silvered hair coiling out from the top of the blanket, the rest of her slender figure hidden by the covers. Tavia chewed on her lip, fervently hoping her mother would be better this morning. She had awoken many times in the night to the sound of her mother thrashing about on the mattress. When Tavia had gone over to try to settle her again, her mother had pinned her with a wild, disorientated gaze, scarcely recognising her own daughter.

‘What! Still lying a-bed, chit?!’ Her father pushed himself through the doorway, scattering rain drops as he pulled off his hat. He strode over to Tavia’s pallet in the corner, grabbing at her shoulder through the thin stuff of her linen chemise, wrenching her upwards. ‘Time you had the pot on!’

Tavia shifted into a sitting position. She hunched her knees up wards, drawing the frayed woollen blanket up to her chest, clutching her arms about her calves. She rubbed her face with her hands, trying to eradicate the tiredness around her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Father.’ She murmured an apology, having no wish to argue with him while her mother still slept. Normally, she rose with the dawn, lighting the cooking fire in the middle of the cottage, and starting to make the big cauldron of porridge for when her father came in from the fields.

‘If you don’t rise now, I’ll give you something to be sorry for,’ Dunstan growled. Leaning over, he pulled sharply on her long braid that fell like a glossy dark red rope down the centre of her slim back.

‘Ouch!’ She rubbed her scalp, turning wide eyes up to him.

‘Up!’ Dunstan spoke abrasively, jerking his thumb in the direction of the unlit, blackened hearth.

Tavia shook her head, trying to clear her mind and concentrate on her chores. Throwing back the covers, she swung her feet to the floor, pushing her toes into leather slippers. The toggle had broken off the right-hand shoe, making it difficult to walk in. She fumbled for her under dress, folded neatly on a stool beside her bed, silently thanking her mother for saving the fine piece of wool to make the garment. It was the one item Tavia owned that came close to luxury, and she relished the feel of the soft wool against her skin. Wearing this under dress, her
bliaut
, made of a cheap, coarse weave, did not aggravate her skin. She dragged the heavy gown over her head, fastening it on each side with leather lacings.

‘Where did you run to yesterday?’ her father asked gruffly, as Tavia finally placed a steaming bowl of porridge before him. She folded her arms over her chest, unwilling to tell him the full events, unwilling to hear on her own lips that she had never been more frightened in her whole life.

‘I went to the church,’ she muttered. ‘I thought it would be the safest place.’ Her top teeth nibbled at the rounded fullness of her bottom lip.

‘Well, you could have thought to come back and help me with the ox-cart.’ Her father shovelled a spoonful of porridge into his mouth, his beady, red-rimmed eyes roving over her slim frame, almost with disgust. ‘I had a devil of a time trying to reach home on my own.’

‘I wanted to make sure it was safe before I left the church,’ she explained hurriedly. She turned back to the fire to hide the fear in her eyes, remembering how she had stared as the wide oak door had closed behind the soldier, that giant of a man, and how she had stood, frozen, unable to move, for a long, long time.

‘More,’ Dunstan commanded, shoving the empty, porridge-spattered bowl over the uneven planks of the table. She ladled the white, sloppy mess into the bowl and handed it back to him, grateful for the small routine chores that made her feel normal again, grateful for her father’s familiar rough treatment of her.

‘We’ll travel to Kelso on the morrow, take the wool there,’ her father announced suddenly, belching. ‘I made no coin yesterday because of the attack.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘And I expect you to stay with me this time.’

Tavia whirled around, the spoon in her hand spattering white gobs of porridge on to the brown earth floor. ‘But, Father, it’s not safe!’ She quailed at the thought of travel ling to town again. ‘All these attacks!’

Dunstan brought his fist crashing down onto the bare, worn planks. ‘You’ll do as I say, girl! I always knew you were lily-livered, just like that useless piece of woman hood lying over there.’ He poked a finger at her mother’s limp form on the pallet.

Tavia jutted her chin in the air, placing the spoon care fully down on the table and moving to her mother’s side, resenting her father’s accusation. She touched her mother’s forehead; the icy coolness of the skin came as a shock after her mother’s high temperature in the night. Tavia frowned. What was the matter with her? Suddenly her mother lurched upwards, her body snapping wildly from one side to the other, as she crossed her arms over her chest to claw at her shoulders with des per ate fingers. ‘Get them off me! Get them off me!’

‘Shh! Calm down!’ Tavia whispered, sitting down on the side of the pallet and trying to draw her mother’s body into the circle of her arms.

‘My whole body is itching, it’s on fire,’ Mary moaned. Tears gathered in the corners of her wide blue eyes, as she concentrated on her daughter. ‘Help me, Tavia, please.’

Tavia jumped up, shocked at the deterioration in her mother’s condition and whirled around. ‘She needs a physician, Father. She can’t go on like this.’

‘Costs money,’ Dunstan spat out through a mouthful of porridge. ‘And coin is one thing we do not possess.’ He glared at her, the flesh on his face pinched and blotchy. ‘If only you had made more effort with Lord Greaves, then all our troubles would be over. We’d be living the life of a noble family if only you’d wedded him.’

Lord Greaves! Tavia recalled the bent, arthritic creature at least twice her age, eyeing her covertly in the marketplace on several occasions. He had been the last in a long line of potential husbands lined up by her father, rich woollen merchants who visited the stall on a regular basis, men who showed an interest in the weaver’s daughter.

‘He didn’t like the colour of my hair,’ Tavia replied, sweeping her father’s dirty bowl and spoon from the table, and plunging them in a pail of cold water to wash them. She scrubbed viciously at the clots of sticky porridge, the icy water stinging her hands.

‘And not just that,’ Duncan added. ‘Just look at you, so thin, scrawny. Men want women with a bit of flesh on them; they want sons, all of them. You don’t look fit to breed, girl.’

Tavia’s eyes darted to the gloomy corner as her mother moaned, restless on her pallet. ‘Surely we must have a few coins saved?’ She turned to her father in despair, the cloth between her fingers dripping on to the packed earth floor.

‘Nay! I told you! Can’t you use some of your herbs on her?’

‘Nothing is working.’ Tavia shook her head, thinking of all the different tisanes and poultices she had made up for her mother over the past few days. ‘Nothing works.’

‘Slut can die for all I care,’ Dunstan muttered into his beard.

‘What did you say?’ Tavia gaped at him, incredulous, unbelieving at the savage words she had just heard. Tossing the cloth into the pail, she stepped over to the table, thumping it with her small wet fist to get her father’s attention. ‘How dare you speak about my mother…your wife…in such a way? We need money, Father, and we need to send for a physician…now…today.’

Her father smiled, a narrow, mean curling of his lips. His pale, watery eyes were blank. ‘You’ll get nothing from me. Either of you.’

Tavia leaned her head against the ridged, nubbled back of a tree, and sobbed, hope less ness ripping through her chest like a knife blade. Speechless with anger at her father’s words, she had fled the cottage, seizing up her crossbow from behind the door before heading for the small thicket of trees in the corner of the sheep pasture. How dare he! How dare he treat them both like this? Refusing to lend her the coin to fetch a skilled physician that her mother so desperately needed! She took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to think practically, fingers curling around the smooth stock of her bow as it rested upon the ground. There must be another way.

Needing to steady her anger, she unwound the white veil from her hair, tying the cloth around the tree trunk. Firing her crossbow had al ways calmed her, channelling her vision on the target in front, slowing her breathing. Oft-times, when she found her father’s temper too much to bear, she had come out to these woods, sending arrow upon arrow into the trees; constantly honing her skill made her feel more secure. Indeed, it was because of her father’s behaviour that she had learned to shoot; the urge to protect her mother, and defend herself, had become paramount in her life. She had never needed to use the bow against him…not yet, anyway.

Placing the knot in the centre of the trunk to form a makeshift bull’s eye, she paced back over the open ground, away from the thicket, her wide skirts flaring over short, sheep-nibbled grass. Determination clouded her delicate features, small lines of strain etched around her mouth. Yesterday, she had felt so useless, so unable to defend herself in the face of those English barbarians; she couldn’t let something like that happen again. Her chest constricted with the memory. How stupid she had been to leave her bow in her father’ cart; if the weapon had been at her side, she could have picked them off, one by one, including him, that barbarian leader, the man with midnight eyes.

From the leather satchel slung diagonally across her back, she drew out one arrow, tipped with white goose feathers. She placed the crossbow on the ground, upending it so the curve of the weapon faced down wards. Putting her toes either side of the stock kept the weapon steady, so she could draw back the sinew cord and hook it over a notch at the top of the bow.

Slotting the arrow into the central groove, Tavia raised the bow to eye level, willing herself to concentrate, to focus on the target. Her sight narrowed on the knot, the tied ends of the veil fluttering either side of it. Her fingers sought the lever underneath the bow, the lever that would lower the notch and release the cord, which would in turn send the quarrel into the target. Taking one deep breath, she squeezed.

The arrow flew straight, its iron tip landing in the middle of the knot with a dull thud. In a moment, she had re-armed the weapon, sending another, then another arrow straight to the centre of the target.

‘When you’re done with wasting your time out here, mayhap you’d get your backside in the house, girl! There’s work to be done!’ Tavia jumped as her father’s strident tones cut through the stiffening breeze as he lumbered over the field. Her shoulder muscles tensed as she lowered the crossbow and turned.

Dunstan eyed the three arrows in the target, then spat derisively on the ground, his face ugly with lines of hostility. ‘Wasting your time out here with that damned thing!’ His mouth curled down with miserable resentment.

‘It’s no waste if it saves my life one day,’ she replied mutinously, resisting the inclination to take a step back from her father’s scowl, ‘or the life of another.’

‘It’s no use unless you’re a man,’ her father cackled. ‘With a skill like that you’d earn good money.’ He nodded towards the arrows pinning the linen knot to the bark.

Behind her, a slight breeze sighed through the treetops, like water running over stones. ‘What are you saying?’ Tavia asked, her tone careful.

Dunstan laughed nastily. ‘King Malcolm’s worried. He’ll pay anything for good marksmen. With these attacks from the English, he’s losing longbow men every day. Soldiers armed with a crossbow are far more effective.’

‘So how does one become a bowman for the King?’ She made a huge effort to keep her voice level, calm.

Her father peered at her suspiciously. ‘He holds a weekly contest. Any competent marksmen can turn up and have a go. If the King and his commanders think anyone is any good, they’ll sign you up immediately.’

‘And how much does he pay?’

‘Nine pence a day.’

Tavia’s eyes widened. ‘A small fortune!’ Her heart began to pound.

‘One that we’ll never have if we stand here prattling all day,’ Dunstan said roughly. ‘Come, girl, there’s work to be done.’

The imposing walls of Dunswick Castle stretched up high from a craggy promontory of basalt rock, towering above the patterned roofs of the town. The thick but tresses, constructed of huge square blocks of stone larger than a man, seemed to grow up out of the rock on which the castle perched to form an intimidating, impressive defence.

Shielding her eyes against the bright April sunlight, Tavia followed the wheeling flight of the crows as they circled in the air currents above one of the four corner towers. The screeching of the birds, a sad and lamenting lilt, did little to boost her confidence. Hesitating on the main bridge that led into the town, she swallowed, her throat tightening with an unusual dryness. She picked un steadily at a loose patch of pale green lichen on the flat stone that topped the bridge wall.

When she had arisen that morning, long before dawn had spread its faint light through the hills and dales, she had felt composed, beset with iron-clad determination about the task she intended to under take. Dressing hastily in some of her father’s cast-off clothes, discovered at the bottom of an oak coffer, she had started the fire and porridge so as not to draw her father’s anger. As long as he was warm and could fill his belly, then he would not think to question his daughter’s whereabouts. Planting a light, farewell kiss on her mother’s brow had only served to strengthen her resolve; with dismay, she noticed the skin on her mother’s hands had erupted into savage blisters.