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.