What the Heart Sees (4 page)

There were no polished steel mirrors in the bath house so she had no idea what she looked like, and she was too busy looking down, admiring the soft green slippers that peeked from beneath the hem of the gown to notice the expression on Rosie’s face. When she did look up, the woman’s frown was sternly back in place.

“Have a care not to drip grease on the frock or wipe yer mouth on a sleeve. Try to walk like a lady, shoulders back, chin up, titties out, an’ no stompin’ about like a woodcutter’s oaf. Speak only when yer spoke to. Don’t pick yer nose or fart or scratch anything, an’ for pity’s sake, don’t swill more’n a mouthful of the wine or ye’ll end up on yer back with yer legs in the air before ye can blink.”

Cassie repeated her orders and nodded. Her belly was full of butterflies and her hands were shaking as she followed Rosie into the keep. Despite having lived most of her life in the village, she had been inside the great hall but three times. On those occasions she had been conscripted along with every other girl above the age of ten to carry and serve food to a throng of guests. There had been no cause for great feasts held at Belfontaine these past few years, so her memories were more of running hither and thither with platters of meat and fowl, staring in awe at knights and their ladies, their colorful garments, while avoiding their huge snapping wolfhounds who attempted to snatch whole chickens off her tray.

Now she stood at the arched portal at the rear of the hall and felt her knees quake anew. It was a large, imposing chamber with tall stone walls that stretched three storeys up to a maze of arched beams that criss-crossed the vaulted ceiling. Lacking windows below the level of the second storey, light was provided by a score of tall iron stands that seated a dozen or more fat wax candles. Fires blazed at either end of the hall, in hearths large enough to hold half a tree trunk. There were chutes built above the fires to carry the smoke up through the roof, but a good deal of it escaped and formed a hazy layer under the ceiling beams. Rushes crackled underfoot. Pennons, banners, crests, and shields decorated the spaces along the walls that were not covered by massive woven tapestries.

At one end was a raised dais where the lord and his special guests sat to dine. Below were trestle tables stretched down either side of the hall where knights, priests, verderers, and squires would sit, their rank of importance readily identified by how far they sat above or below the square salt cellars. Pilgrims and priests were usually well below the salt, and lowest of all were common villeins and villagers who ate the scraps and gnawed the bones left by their betters.

It was there, at the lower end of the table that Cassie thought she would be seated, but Rosie nudged her shoulder and pointed to the dais. Sir Thomas was seated there, slouched to one side in his chair, his head propped in his hand—a hand that occasionally rubbed his temple indicating he was not dozing, as she had first assumed, but that he was deep in troublesome thought. To his far left was Sir Hubert and another knight locked in quiet conversation. To his right was an empty X-chair and beside that, another pair of knights.

“Surely not,” Cassie whispered over a fresh surge of panic. It was one thing to dream about being regarded as an equal, to long for something and someone she could never have, and to hoard such longings inside like a wretched secret never to be shared.

It was quite another to walk boldly up to the dais and take a seat beside the lord of the castle and his vaunted knights.

She turned and tried to dash back toward the bath house. Rosie’s bulk blocked her path on one side, then the other until finally she grabbed her by the shoulders, spun her around, and pushed her back inside the great hall. By then the commotion had been noticed by the handful of weary defenders taking their meal between watches on the walls. And, horror of horrors, by Lord Thomas Purefoy himself, whose voice echoed angrily along the empty hall to demand an explanation.

“Now ye’ve done it,” Rosie sighed. “Get on up there, girl, and mind everythin’ I’ve told ye.”

Thomas was frowning. He was short on fighting men but heavily burdened with villagers. They had come inside the walls carrying only what they could gather in haste, filled with expectations of being fed and protected by their liege. His walls were tall and thick, but his harvests had been burned in the field, and his stores were dwindling. Only this morning he had ordered one of the last bullocks slaughtered so there would be meat on the table and hot broth to warm their bellies. Thankfully the well was still sweet and deep and there was water aplenty, but the ale was running low and he had grudgingly ordered the seneschal to water it by half.

Now the servants were squabbling and the seneschal, who should deal with such nonsense, was nowhere in sight. He recognized Rosie the laundress, but not the one she was pushing and shoving and ordering forward. As the girl came closer, he noted the green of her tunic and the tassels on her belt that danced side to side with each step she took. A gleaming cloud of blonde hair surrounded her face and shoulders, the light from the candles sparking it with gold and fiery shades of russet.

Closer still he could make out the features of her face as she passed from one pool of light to the next, though her eyes were lowered and her mouth set in a grim line. Her complexion was tanned and smooth, with blushed cheeks and a lovely little nose. She was tall and slender and there was something about the way she walked...

His eyes widened and his brows lifted.

It was the fletcher’s daughter. The archer. The layers of grime had been scoured away, the boyish clothes had been exchanged for a softly feminine tunic, and while her expression looked a little like a deer staring down the shaft of a hunter’s crossbow, she moved with a measure of determined pride that had the other knights at the dais stopping in mid-sentence to mark her approach.

Thomas stood, though he had no memory of doing so. He was on his feet when she climbed the two steps to the dais and walked toward him. Her hair flowed around her shoulders like liquid sunlight, spilling down her sleeves, so silky and fine it fanned out in the breeze produced by simply walking.

She stopped before him and dropped into a curtsey. “God’s grace to you, my lord.”

“And to you,” he murmured. Becoming conscious of the stares from the dais as well as the hall, he indicated the chair for her to sit down, then sat again himself. Conversations around them resumed and a lackey appeared to set a trencher of bread before her on the table. At a nod from Thomas, a goblet was produced and filled with wine.

Normally not at a loss for words, especially with the fairer sex, he found his tongue to be firmly squeezed against the roof of his mouth. She smelled of some sweet flower he could not put a name to, and he found himself sorely aching to touch a strand of that silky hair, to know if it was as soft as it appeared.

His life, of late, had been far too busy to think of women, and his physical needs, when they pressed in upon him, had been released hither and yon with any number of castle wenches who were only too happy to oblige. He was mildly surprised to find his body reacting to the girl beside him now. Reacting in such a way as to make him shift forward on the chair and reach for the platter of cold meat and cheeses.

“You must be hungry,” he said with the profundity of a scholar.

She raised her eyes to his for the first time and he was stymied again. Dark deep green they were, as clear as a still pond in the forest.

“I do thank you, my lord, but I broke my fast earlier today with the other archers, and it would hardly be fair to fill my belly again while they go without. We are promised broth for our supper, and so I shall be content with that.”

“Your intent is honorable and loyal, girl. But if de Caux’s men find their courage again and return to the catapult, and if I put you on the south tower to keep discouraging them, none will know if you have taken a piece of cheese or not.”

“I will know it, my lord.”

He leaned back in his big wooden chair and regarded her with enough intensity to send varying shades of red and pink into her cheeks.

“And does this virtuous abstinence extend to the wine as well?”

She ran the tip of her tongue across her dry lips and glanced at the shimmering red liquid in her goblet. “The men on the walls have only had ale, a weak and watery brew at that.”

“Edward!”

His squire jumped forward. “My lord?”

“Fetch Mistress Fletcher a stoup of weak, watery ale.”

“Aye, my lord.”

He hastened away to fill the command and Thomas reached for the goblet of wine, draining half of it in a swallow. When the squire returned with a plain wooden bowl of ale, he leaned back again and waved a hand to indicate she should drink.

“You were going to tell me how you came to be such a fine archer.”

She sipped from the edge of the bowl to moisten her mouth and set it down again. “I know not where the skill comes from, my lord, aside from a keen eye and a steady hand. Father said I could shoot the eye out of a hare when I was four.”

“Why was I not informed of this skill until today?”

“Would you have done more than smile and nod and pat me on the head?”

“I might have. You give me little credit.”

“Then you should know I can read and write as well. I can do sums and I make the very fine paper your seneschal uses to keep your books, letters, and journals. I speak French and Latin, though I find writing both to be a test of patience.”

He continued to stare for a moment, then tipped his head back and laughed. It was a deep-throated, completely masculine sound and echoed throughout the great hall, causing conversations to pause once again.

Noting the interest, he stood and took up his goblet of wine. “Come with me, girl. Bring your ale.”

He walked away from the board without waiting to see if she followed. With a glance around the hall, and specifically at Edward the squire, who was attending upon her chair, she stood and dutifully followed the knight across the dais and up the staircase that led to his private apartments in the north tower. Her nerves, by the time she climbed the winding stairs, were jangling so badly the ale was splashing over the sides of the bowl.

On the upper landing, she paused to catch a full breath and steady herself. Every eye in the great hall had been upon them and every thought behind those eyes must have been assuming he was taking her to his chambers to bed her.

In truth, that was her first thought as well and she knew not whether she should be terrified or thrilled beyond measure.

He appeared at the arched doorway and frowned.

“Come along. I don’t bite.”

She could not feel her feet but by some inner command, they moved forward. She followed him through the antechamber, where a spartan pallet suggested this was where his squire slept. Through another, thicker oak door, she entered the main solar, a large room with a raised bed at one end, several chests and an armoire at the other, and a very tall, very wide cupboard without doors that held at least a hundred books. The rest of the space was taken up by a hearth, a writing table, and a large padded chair with a tall carved back. Tapestries hung on all the walls and there were carpets underfoot. Three shuttered windows afforded breathtaking views of the fields and forests surrounding the castle, each with deep ledges and real glass panes.

A magnificent, full suit of armor stood on a wooden frame, the hauberk made of polished steel half moons. Beside it were three swords of varying lengths, a shield with his coat of arms, a helm, and various other weapons and garments of war that gleamed in oiled readiness.

“When you say you can write Latin and French, I assume that means you can read both?”

“Yes, my lord. Most of the words.”

“No offense, but a fletcher would not seem to be the type to educate a son, much less a daughter.”

“No offense taken, but he was not always a fletcher. And it was my mother who insisted I learn to do more than scrub pots and breed babies. She was...”

Cassie paused and bit on her lip.

“Go on. She was...?”

“The daughter of a Saxon nobleman and well-schooled herself.”

“And your father?”

“He was a second son and thus studied for the priesthood.” The question was in his eyes and she answered before he gave voice to it. “My grandfather was the Earl of West Saxony. His lands and titles were seized when it was thought he encouraged the barons to revolt against the Norman invaders.”

“And did he?”

Her eyes sparked. “Yes. Proudly so.”

Thomas’s smile was a little crooked. “And does the grand-daughter of this Saxon nobleman still regard us as invaders?”

She offered no immediate reply and he smiled again. Walking over to his escritoire he searched amongst the papers for a moment until he found the one he wanted. The wax seal had been broken and the page smudged through various attempts to cipher the words.

“As much as you find Latin and French to be a test of your patience, I find Saxon Englishry to be a maze of confusion. Think you it would go against your grain to read it for me? It is ancient and the script is ruined in places, but it was found along with some trinkets in this old box, which, in turn was discovered recently in the wine cellars.”

Cassie approached the desk slowly. Beams of sunlight were streaming through the tall arched window behind him, making tiny dust motes that were suspended in the air glitter around his shoulders. His hair gleamed blue-black, his face was in profile and the sight made her heart leap high into her throat.