Chapter 17
Edith stirred late the next day, close
to sunset. Scrambling up, realizing with relief that she was fully
clothed on her own bed, she found the tent full of
steam.
Maria was bathing herself and the two
children, Mary and Simon, in the biggest cauldron they had. Mary
was wailing as Maria poured a jug of warmed water over her head,
but Simon was splashing in the water and eating a pie.
“All these two have done is eat and
cry. We shall be days before we gain sense from them, if we ever
do.” Teodwin sat down on the pallet beside her. “Sir Giles is
outside, begging an audience.”
That knocked the sleep from her. “Did
he recognize you?” Edith glanced longingly at the water. She craved
a bath herself.
“Our old lord know his pig-man? No! But
I am most glad that your new lord’s men are on guard.”
Edith clenched her teeth on her
automatic denial that Ranulf was her lord.
“They allow no disrespect. When the
pie-man asked if the Eastern lady wanted any pies, the captain told
him he must call you Princess or take his pies and go.” Teodwin
smoothed the front of his purple robe. “The whole camp knows that
any who insult you will answer to the black knight. He has jousted
earlier today, wearing your favors.”
The ones he took from
me and still keeps. Edith sighed and boosted herself off the
bed. “The yellow silk today,” she said. She needed the cheerful
color to give her heart, especially as Giles was prowling outside,
convinced of his own suit.
“What?” she almost snapped, for her
steward was shaking his head.
“The black knight has sent you a new
gown, with veiling.”
“Most gorgeous, too,” Maria piped up
from the tub. “Silk as fine as yours and with long flowing sleeves,
as fine as mist.” She laughed and pointed at the rippling water in
the tub. “See how my babe within kicks!”
“He will soon be ready to come out,”
Edith said, smiling at Maria while within she felt numb. Here she
was, alive, well fed, being gifted with gowns, while her brother
rotted in a roadside grave and those poor creatures in the unnamed
village had no graves at all.
“I will see this gown.” Distraction,
that was what she needed. “I will find some combs for you, Maria,
for Mary’s hair.”
“We are doing well enough for now with
my fingers,” Maria answered, ever cheerful. “Put that new robe on
and give us a dance!”
Ranulf brought his small, silent page
with him to Edith’s tent. Hearing Gawain gasp, he knew the great
fluttering mass of colors still worked their magic and was
relieved. He would not have Edith—or should he still think of her
as the Lady of Lilies?—revealed as less than a Princess of the
East. Perhaps she was from the east—the east of England, at
least.
A small hand pressed anxiously in his
and he crouched. “Those knights outside await my lady’s first
appearance,” he told Gawain. “Sir Henry is not there.”
But Giles was. Giles, waiting with the
others under the canopy, glittering as the fading sunlight in tunic
and mantle of blue and gold. Giles had not been at the joust
today—few had been, for several knights had heard of the princess’s
absence and had come to her tent instead. Still, Ranulf had not
expected Giles to wait so long.
The gown I gave her is
blue and now they will match, he thought, alarmed, before
good sense returned. He knew Edith detested Giles.
“Let us go in. We can, for the lady
knows me.” He ruffled Gawain’s hair, wondering how the little lad
would react to the tent and the two new youngsters within. He had a
hope that perhaps if Gawain had something to care for, he might be
less fearful.
“Hello, Ran! I will come in with you.”
In a shimmer of gold and blue, Giles moved to intercept
him.
Ranulf avoided his mock punch and
blocked him. “Not this time.” He watched Giles’s smile thin and his
blue eyes turn to chips of ice, his combat face, and was even less
impressed. “Go elsewhere, Giles.”
“I will win this contest,” Giles
hissed. “No woman can resist me once I set my heart on
her.”
“And I will not give you that chance,”
Ranulf countered, conscious, as Giles was not, of his page
whimpering softly beside them.
“’Fore God, Ran, this Eastern maid has
bewitched you!”
“I admit she haunts me,” Ranulf said.
“Now begone. I will be a while speaking to the lady.”
Giles turned on his heel and strode
away, while Ranulf tried to feel sorry that their friendship was
probably at an end. He could not.
He took Gawain on his shoulder,
although it was against all custom to do so, and crooked his head
so he could see the boy’s face. “We are going to see the
princess.”
The child nodded and wiped his eyes on
his sleeve. For the first time that day he looked
curious.
As am I, Ranulf
thought, as he had one of Edith’s “Eastern” heralds announce him.
I wonder if she wears the blue
gown?
Maria refused to leave the hot
bathwater and refused to have screens put round. “I want to see
this encounter.” Her chin, the only sharp point of her these days,
cut toward Edith. “You cannot order me otherwise.”
“I can say it is our Eastern custom,”
Edith agreed, pinning her blue veil in place. Off in one corner, at
a small table set between guide ropes, Teodwin fussed with cups and
a jug of ale, exactly as he had done when Sir Tancred came calling,
she thought with a pang. Then Ranulf ducked into the tent and she
noticed no one but him.
“Princess.” He bowed and
approached.
For an instant she was afraid, for he
now knew her true name, and then she was busy, marking the changes
in him since yester evening. His fair-to-russet hair was wilder
than ever, with two leaves in it—he had not combed it at all since
last night, or else had missed those. His tunic was handsome, a
dark scarlet, but he had forgotten his customary belt. His full
mouth was not as pale as it had been in the pestilence village but
there were deep shadows under his brooding eyes.
He has scarcely slept
after witnessing those horrors, my poor, dear
man.
To stop herself from saying something
too revealing, she thought of Sir Giles, Ranulf’s friend, walling
them into the church. To prevent her rushing to his side to comb
his raggy hair, she sat on her hands. Her bare hands, she now
realized, with a jolt of alarm. She had forgotten her
gloves.
Ranulf bowed to Maria. “Mistress Maria.
Mary. Simon.” He nodded to the children. Mary had stopped wailing
and Simon dropped his pie into the water and pointed at
Gawain.
“Yes. This is my page,
Gawain.”
Simon found the pie in the bath and
held it out to Gawain, who stared at it as if it were a cow pat,
Edith thought. Seeking to smooth the moment, she said, “Good
evening, Gawain. My people and I are most pleased to meet
you.”
She bowed, but Gawain was staring now
at skinny, woebegone Mary.
“She does not like her wet hair in her
eyes,” he announced, in a clear, piping voice. “I do not like
that.” He tugged at his own fair curls.
“Will you help her, please, Gawain, as
a knight should a lady?” Edith asked, aware that Ranulf’s eyes had
widened with astonishment, although he said at once, “Here is a
comb, and a jug for pouring.”
The jug seemed almost as large as
Gawain’s tiny chest but the child took it at once. Walking
carefully to the wooden bathtub that was almost as tall as he was,
he gently swept Mary’s soaking hair away from her face. Deftly, he
dipped the jug and began to pour it over the little girl’s
shoulders.
Edith braced herself for a shriek and
water everywhere but Mary sat placidly in the tub, turning her head
this way and that as Gawain slowly poured more water.
“There is a wonder!” exclaimed Maria,
frowning at Simon, who was now smearing the remains of the pie
along the top of the bathtub. Realizing her scowl was being
ignored, Maria changed her attentions to another male.
“You do not seem disconcerted by my
state, sir.” She addressed Ranulf directly, and he, if he was
surprised at having a maid speak to him, answered equally
frankly.
“Nay, mistress. My father would issue
orders from his bathtub and my mother would take us youngsters in
with her to bathe.”
“You have brothers and sisters?” Maria
asked.
“A sister and brother, both older.”
Ranulf smiled as Gawain combed his own hair, to show Mary there was
nothing to fear from his combing hers. “And you, Princess? Have you
siblings?”
“I had a brother,” Edith said, pressing
her fingernails into her thighs. She tried to explain, but the
memory of Gregory pressed on her like a boulder and suddenly she
could scarcely see or breathe. She closed her eyes, fighting for
control.
“Princess? Will you take a walk with
me?”
“Gawain can come in the tub with us,”
Maria said quickly. “You should go. I mean, go, my lady,” she
added, as a clear afterthought.
I should step out
before Maria or another says something that I cannot
explain. Edith rose and clasped Ranulf’s hand.
On the way out, Ranulf said, “I think
that a hot bath and caring for that little girl has achieved more
for my page than days of my encouragement.”
“He is the page you took from Sir
Henry? He looks well.”
“He does, yes.” Ranulf’s mouth set in a
grim line. “Now he is no longer being beaten.”
“I did not know.” Edith hated what she
was doing, pleading for Ranulf to understand. Still, the thought
that he should believe she would countenance cruelty was not to be
borne.
He squeezed her fingers. “Be at peace,
Princess. I understand that of you, if little else. Will you tell
me of your brother?”
“If you will tell of yours and your
sister first.” She did not want to speak of Gregory. She feared she
would weep.
He launched into some long account
while she picked up and carried her trailing sleeves and tried not
to think of her brother.
“You like your new gown? It has cloth
even around your navel.”
His voice came to her as if from a
distance. She tried to understand what he had asked.
He stopped and touched her face through
the blue veil, cradling her cheek as if she had the toothache. “You
have not listened to a word I have said, Princess.” He drew nearer.
“Were I to strip your face, I wager you would be as pale as Gawain
when he first came to me.”
She wanted to protest but found no
words. She was in the village again, with all the dead, then on the
road with Gregory dying. Gregory stretching out his hands to her as
he writhed. . . .
Ranulf saw her color change and caught
her before she fell. She had not fainted but her limbs would not
hold her—he had seen it before, with men in battle.
Men he left to shift for themselves,
but Edith was another matter.
“Come, my prize.” He beckoned two of
his guards and sent them ahead, with instructions. “A warm tisane
and a bath.”
Returning with her to his own tent, he
settled her on a chair and gave her a drink of warm strawberry and
raspberry tisane. He did not speak of his day in combat, when he
had fought in a cloud of darkness much as he had done when Olwen
had first died, but told of the new lapdog Lady Blanche had brought
with her to the stands.
He took a cup of the sweet stuff
himself, forcing it down. That she seemed to notice.
“You need not drink to keep me
company.”
He marked how she sounded—tired, not
amused—and wondered anew about her brother. He had surely died in
the pestilence.
“It is my pleasure to do so, Princess.”
He forced another mouthful down and reflected on his loving family,
a treasure he had taken too much for granted. Silently and a little
guilty at his gratitude, he thanked God that his parents and
siblings still lived.
What would they make of Edith, sipping
from a cup without ever showing her mouth? Lips he had kissed
before and would again.
He knew she was not ugly or
pox-marked—he knew from tracing her features when he had been
blindfolded in her tent—so why did she hide her face?
She knows Giles. She
and Giles share a past. She fears being recognized, especially by
Giles. Had they been lovers?
The idea burned like a brand in his
body, until he looked at her. Head to toe in the gown he had chosen
for her, covered in a veil as deep as the evening twilight, she
looked hunted and haunted.
Pity welled in him as he watched her,
so small and hunched, and the fire in his belly melted away. “Poor
sparrow.”
Though he meant no disrespect, her head
jerked up at that. “I will have no man’s pity.”
“Why should I not pity
you?”
He knew that would spur her, and it
did. She jumped off the chair and began to pace the tent, almost
tripping over her sleeves in her haste. “Never do so, my lord.” She
fairly hurled the words at him. “Pity those like Mary and
Simon.”
“I do.”
“And folk who are too ill to harvest
their crops and so starve.”
“I do.”
“And bondsmen tied to harsh masters,
and pig-men seeking justice in vain, and farriers and smiths whose
tools are taken from them—”
“Which makes the better blade, iron or
steel?”
“Steel, but it is most hard to
fashion.”
She stopped pacing, staring at him with
wide, wary eyes, and he nodded.
“Truly, there are many surprises about
you, and many mysteries I would examine.”
“I am no witch to be
examined.”
“A gentle inquiry only,
Princess.”
The signal he had been waiting for
happened. Outside the tent, his squire cleared his throat loudly
and now marched in. “Your bath is ready, sir,” he announced,
red-faced. “Shall I bring candles and lanterns? ’Tis very
dark.”
“We shall need none. Thank you,
Edmund.” He offered his arm to Edith. “Shall we, Princess? We may
bathe and take our ease under the stars.”
She looked at him with narrowed eyes.
“You have not seen your gown yet, not in full light.”
“There is always tomorrow,” he said
easily. “Do you not relish the thought of a hot bath? I know I
do.”
She raised her dark brows.
“You are not alone in owning a
bathtub,” he prattled on—he would prattle like a gossip if it won
him what he wanted—“We shall be screened and private. Indeed, the
evening is now so dim we shall see nothing of each other but our
eyes.”
This was not true, of course, not when
they would be under the arc of heaven, but it sounded convincing.
When she said nothing he took her hand. “Let me serve you,” he
said, very softly.
Taking her silence as consent, he drew
close and lifted her into his arms, ready to bring her to the
bath.