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.