Wild Wind

“ALEX, WHO IS
that woman? Do you see how she’s looking at you?”

“Which one, Faithe? Is she pretty?” Alexandre de Périgeaux shielded his eyes against the morning sun and scanned the sizeable crowd assembled in the courtyard of the Tour de Rouen, grateful for some diversion from such a long wait in such hellish heat.

Faithe of Hauekleah, Alex’s sister by marriage, shifted the babe on her shoulder and cocked an eyebrow. “I thought all women were pretty,” she teased, flinging his own, oft-repeated words back at him, “if you but looked at them from the right angle.”

“Cheeky wench. So they are.” Alex studied the multitude of lords and ladies—the flower of Norman aristocracy—garbed in peacock-hued finery, fanning themselves restlessly as they anticipated the upcoming ceremony. Some had gravitated around a jongleur accompanying himself on lute, who serenaded them with a long and lyrical chanson about knights going in search of the holy Grail. At the outskirts, clerics chattered in small groups, like clusters of blackbirds.

“She’s wearing white,” Faithe offered. “An exquisite silken tunic.”

“No lady in white is looking this way.” Worse luck. A little harmless flirtation—and perhaps a bit more, if the fates favored him—was just what he needed to adjust his bodily humors, unbalanced by having re-crossed the English Channel for the first time in seven years. It should gladden his heart to stand on Frankish soil, the soil that had bred and nurtured him, after so long an absence. And it wasn’t as if he was alone here, his brother’s family having journeyed with him from their Cambridgeshire farmstead for this great occasion. Yet he missed England—missed it terribly—and had from the moment he’d left its shore.

Perhaps he should have stayed there. Having little tolerance for court life and less for standing about waiting, Alex wondered how he would bear up under the full week of royal celebration to come.

Faithe peered into the crowd. “She must have turned back round. Her mantle is blue.”

“Little help there.” The courtyard was a sea of blue-cloaked backs.

Faithe patted the squirmy infant Edlyn. “She turned and stared at you, with the most curious expression. I thought she must know you.”

“There you are, brother!” Luke of Hauekleah greeted Alex with a slap on the back that he felt in his bones. “Do you never tire of flirting with my wife?”

“Never. You’d best stop wandering from her side, lest I resolve to steal her from you.”

Faithe rolled her eyes. Luke guffawed. Even five-year-old Robert, perched high on his father’s shoulders, smirked at the familiar empty threat. Luke and Faithe’s middle child, Hlynn, oblivious to the adult banter, gripped her father’s hand and sucked her thumb as she gazed with wonderment at the grand noblemen and their ladies milling in the courtyard. The three children were identical in coloring, with their Saxon mother’s creamy skin and calm hazel eyes, and the distinctive blue-black hair that Luke shared with Alex and the rest of their swarthy kin.

“Steal her from me, eh?” Luke exchanged an amused but softly intimate look with his wife. “You’d have to kill me first. And I don’t die easily.”

“The Black Dragon didn’t,” Alex conceded. “But the Cambridgeshire farmer standing in front of me hasn’t defended himself with a weapon in years. I, on the other hand” —he patted the hilt of his broadsword, sheathed on the belt buckled over his ankle-length, ceremonial overtunic— “have been honing my skill in the service of our liege for fully a decade now.”

“Almost a decade,” Luke corrected with an ostentatious yawn. That was true. The de Périgeaux brothers, knights of Aquitaine, had been recruited by William, Duke of Normandy, when Alex was seventeen and Luke four-and-twenty, which would be but nine years ago. They both served their Norman master—Alex with his sword and Luke with his crossbow—through the conquest of England and the duke’s ascension to the throne of that kingdom. But whereas Luke had eagerly traded his crossbow for Hauekleah, Alex continued to reject King William’s offer of honorable dismissal and an English estate in recompense for his service—to the puzzlement of all, save perhaps for Luke and Faithe.

“Almost a decade then,” Alex said. “And before that, I did naught but study the arts of war—I was swinging a sword when I was smaller than Robert here. So I daresay I could take you, brother. And then I’d have your lady wife all to myself.” He bowed with mock formality in Faithe’s direction.

“Let’s settle this now.” Grinning, Luke handed Hlynn to her mother and bent over to lift his son down. “Like men—with our fists.”

“Suits me.” Alex slammed his fist in his brother’s stomach as he was rising, earning him an answering blow that stole his breath, if only for a moment. The two men grappled in their long, elegant tunics, laughing breathlessly, as people turned to watch and the children rooted loudly for their father.

“Stop that!” A furious yank on his hair made Alex turn to find his sister, Berte, scowling at her younger brothers and casting anxious glances toward their audience. A formidable personage, Berte had inherited the de Périgeaux height, making her half a head taller than her round and balding husband, Baron Landric de Bec. He hovered behind her, clucking in sympathy with her outrage. “Have you two no sense of decorum whatsoever?” she demanded.

“Nay,” Alex answered.

“None,” his brother concurred.

“‘Tis my fault, my lady.” Faithe looked as if she were fighting a smile. “I should have stopped them.”

Berte shook her head, her expression doleful. “One may as well try to stop a raging storm. These two have always done just exactly as they please, and living on that barbaric island seems only to have made it worse.”

“Quite so,” Landric agreed.

Faithe raised an eyebrow at the slur to her homeland, but wisely kept her counsel.

“Now everyone is staring,” Berte fretted. Alex followed her mortified gaze toward the onlookers, chuckling as they disbanded.

One figure, a woman, stood perfectly still amidst the swirls of multicolored silk, the ripple of veils and glint of jewels. Pale and slender, as unreal as a church statue carved of pearly marble, she met his eyes across the courtyard...

Across the years, for she’d looked much the same the first time his gaze had fallen upon her nine long summers ago. Her beauty had a transfixing harmony to it—high, wide cheekbones, sharp little chin, willowy throat. She’d worn white that day, too, although then her hair had flowed in a gleaming flaxen stream down her back. Today it was plaited in two braids over which a veil of gossamer sendal silk trembled in the sultry breeze. Then, as now, her sea-green eyes were large and quiet and intent.

“That’s her,” Faithe said. “The woman in white. The one I told you about.”

From the corner of his eye, Alex saw Luke turn toward the woman in question. Recognizing her instantly, he shot an apprehensive glance toward Alex.

Faithe noticed this. “You do know each other.”

“She’s Nicolette de St. Clair.” Alex fingered the worst of his scars from that misbegotten summer, a puckered little rivulet that snaked down his forehead, carving a small bare patch through his right eyebrow. “My cousin’s wife.”

He definitely should have stayed in England.

As he watched, the lady Nicolette smiled tentatively, eyes alert and wary. The civil thing would be to return her smile, but his maelstrom of conflicting emotions—shock at seeing her, loathing, yearning—so confounded him that all he could do was stare. Presently her expression began to waver uncertainly.

A fanfare of trumpets startled him. He glanced toward the sound and saw a procession of youths descending the steps of William’s private chapel. A volley of cheers greeted them.

“They’re coming!” Berte exclaimed. “The young knights.”

“They’re not knights yet,” Luke pointed out.

Alex returned his attention to the lady Nicolette, only to find her turning away, eyes downcast, mouth tightly drawn.

“They soon will be,” Berte said. “There’s my Charles, third in line. Do you see him?”

“Aye,” Luke said, frowning at the red-haired lad and his comrades. “God’s eyes, how many are there?”

“Four-and-twenty altogether,” Berte answered. “Come, we must follow them to the sporting field. That’s where the dubbing is to take place.”

Alex allowed himself to be swept along in a slow surge of humanity toward a field of mown grass on the right bank of the Robec, near where the small river fed into the Seine. Unable to wrest his thoughts from Nicolette, he searched the strolling horde for her as he walked, but didn’t see her.

“I’ve never known so many young men to be dubbed at once,” Faithe said as she herded her two older children along in front of her while cradling Edlyn. “‘Tisn’t the English way.”

“‘Tisn’t generally the Norman way, either,” Luke said, taking the baby from her to free her hands, “unless, as today, a man of unusually high rank is bestowing the honors. Few families would pass up the opportunity to have their sons knighted by a king.”

The candidates for knighthood came to a halt at the base of a carpeted platform on which had been erected a long table displaying a dazzling array of armor and weapons—gifts from their families and invited guests. King William and his queen, Matilda—crowned and draped in ermine-trimmed mantles despite the heat—sat on grand thrones in the center of the dais, flanked by courtiers and high churchmen. To one side, a band of minstrels played a lively canso on flute, harp and castanets.

Berte squinted into the crowd as it settled into position facing the platform, her rouged bottom lip caught between her teeth, rings glittering as she wrung her hands. “Where’s Christien? I knew he’d be late.”

“Merciful heavens,” Landric muttered. “Christien.”

The eldest of the siblings, Christien had inherited the family’s Périgeaux estate in its entirety upon their sire’s death, prompting his landless younger brothers to leave the southern duchy of Aquitaine and take up arms for William in the hope of earning holdings elsewhere. Christien boasted many virtues of character, but punctuality was not among them—a potential complication today, inasmuch as he, along with Alex, Luke, and of course, Landric, was sponsoring young Charles for knighthood, and was expected to participate in the rites to come.