Chapter 20
In the great tent where Edith and her
fellow villagers slept, Many was safely resting. Bathed and in a
fresh shift, she stirred only to sigh with contentment when Ranulf
laid the slumbering foundling baby beside her. Teodwin had placed
her on a small pallet in the great tent and put screens around her.
Maria and the youngsters, Mary, Simon, and Gawain, kept trying to
peep at the young woman, and Teodwin had been shooing them away
with his carved walking stick.
“They think it a game,” he told Edith
wearily, “and you are not done yet.” He studied her bedraggled
appearance: the gown with the missing sleeve, her bare feet and
uncombed, drying hair. “You have been summoned tonight to Castle
Fitneyclare. Did you return by way of the woodland
path?”
Startled by the question, Edith nodded.
She had been watching Ranulf watching Many and the baby. He had
called the young mother a witch, but he now stroked her damp hair
quite tenderly. Ranulf, she was coming to recognize, was ever moved
by the plight of others. Had he not saved his page Gawain and been
more than happy to take in Mary and Simon, two peasant children of
no pedigree?
“We came the back way from the church,”
she mouthed to her steward, conscious of Maria hovering close. So
far, Maria had accepted Edith’s hasty story that she and Ranulf had
taken Many’s baby to the church to be baptized. Edith wanted that
story to hold.
“As well you did, and used the back
entrance to return.” Teodwin gestured with his thumb. “Sir Giles is
waiting outside at the front, to escort you.”
“That is for me to do,” said Ranulf,
stalking up behind Teodwin.
Relief poured through Edith, sweet and
golden as honey. On their silent, hasty march from the churchyard,
where they had been forced to keep their eyes on the faint track
and their ears pricked for footpads, she had been afraid. She did
not want Ranulf to think less of her, or worse, despise her, for
not believing as he did. But it seemed that he still cared for and
accepted her.
“She is my prize,” he clarified,
dashing her hopes. He looked her up and down. “A bedraggled one. I
think the gown would be improved by another sleeve, and your
makeshift veil is not at all appealing, my lady.”
It was the first time he had truly
commented on her new gown and perversely, although she recognized
the justice of his remark, Edith was hurt and angered anew, the
more so as Maria giggled.
“We should both change,” she said
stiffly. “I am sorry about the new gown.” She was, too, very sorry.
I have not even seen it myself by day. . .
.
Ranulf bowed, his dark eyes twinkling.
“No matter as for that,” he said lightly, with a nobleman’s ease
about clothes, “I will return for you.”
“Send your squire,” Edith answered.
“You will need longer to change than I. Your tunic and boots are
both amiss.”
Instead of being indignant, as she
hoped, he merely glanced down at his crumpled tunic and scuffed
boots and laughed.
“True, true,” he said, still chuckling.
“I must indeed send Edmund to recover you while I beautify
myself.”
Edith bit her tongue on two possible
answers: the first that he needed no beautifying, the second that
Edmund would need to stand his ground with Giles. The first
response stoked Ranulf’s vanity too much, the second gave her
former master too much importance.
Edmund is a noble
squire and I am an Eastern Princess. Sir Giles will not be allowed
to pester me.
Sir Giles saw his former friend leave
the Lady of Lilies’s tent. Ran looked as he had before with Olwen,
preoccupied and happy, thoroughly smug and irritatingly joyful.
That was before he had worked on Olwen. He had taken her bright
dislike and fashioned it into a new and shiny desire.
Then why did she refuse
you in the end? whispered a dark voice in his mind, but he
ignored that.
Strong hate, strong lust: two sides of
the same blade. He would work on this Eastern Princess, too. Women
were easy to charm. Why not? Was he not entitled to pleasure?
Carefree times and the best kind of contest, where his opponent did
not even understand that they were in conflict. He would win this
latest girl from Ran, of course: prove again he was the cleverer,
more cultured man.
She was emerging. Giles paused to scan
her strange dress: a billowing wrap of some kind over billowing
pale skirts, and a long headdress and veil. Ran’s lanky page was
with her, but he would be quickly disposed of, sent on an errand of
some kind. Giles smoothed his hair and strode forward, stopping in
a patch of moonlight to show off his fine profile.
“My Lady of Lilies. It is a wonder for
me to meet you at last.”
He bowed, planting himself more firmly
in the middle of the track before the small, veiled figure and her
gangling, pimple-cheeked escort.
“Sir Ranulf needs your assistance,
Edmund, so I will take the lady.”
“My lord instructed his squire to
remain with me, Sir Giles.”
He was surprised at her speaking at
all, and startled by the exotic timbre and accent of her voice.
Recalling the many rumors of her beauty, he smiled. Charming Ran’s
“prize” into becoming his own would be a sweet
triumph.
First get rid of the
squire. . . . “Take my cloak, Edmund.”
He tossed the fur cloak at the startled
squire, who instinctively put up both hands to catch it, and
swiftly offered his own arm. “My lady.”
She took his arm, of course, and he
moved them off along the track, deliberately choosing the most
well-trod. In moments their progress was checked by great streamers
of mud and standing water, visible even by moonlight. “I fear I
will need to carry you along this part.” He fought to keep the
smile from his voice and lips. “Allow me, my lady.”
She remained perfectly still, while
Ran’s squire was open-mouthed.
Learn from a master,
boy! “Lady Blanche is eager for your company,” he prompted,
dropping a pebble into the ooze. Let the little
madam see how filthy this is. He turned so the moonlight
would catch his smile and gently squeezed her hand, aware that in
seconds that soft, pliant body would be in his arms.
“You led us here, sir.”
To his amazement, her exotic voice held
a tinge of censure, and worse, he actually saw her shrink back.
Irritated by her cool response and her haughtiness—who was she to
berate him?—he was instantly tempted to rip her veil away, to roll
her in mud and to have his servants retrieve her later and haul her
to his tent. There he would teach her the value of good
manners.
“Ah, you should forgive me, Lady.”
You will find it best to forgive me—“I was
overcome by your beauty.”
She did not ask, as women always did,
how he knew she was beautiful, so he could not use his best line.
Instead, she plucked a flat stone from the murk and laid it across
a vein of dirt. Even as he was astonished by what she was doing,
she flew from him, leaping lightly from his side over the stone and
onto the tough, dry grass. He saw her bare feet were not even
marked, a further insult.
“If you use the stone, you may come,
too,” she told him, the insolent filly. “How fare you,
Edmund?”
She asks a squire ahead
of me!
“We should make haste,” he ground
out.
“Why, sir?”
Why did the bitch not
say his name?
He was already justly aggrieved, but
there was worse.
“As I consider this, I wonder. Why
should I hasten to the castle tonight, when my Lady Blanche has
never asked me to her castle on any other night? Why are you her
messenger, sir?”
“Do you call me liar to my
face?”
“It takes one to know one. The lady
Blanche, I mean. She will understand why, as a lady, I will not
obey her summons.”
Her brazen answer made no sense.
Outraged, he lunged through the standing pools of water toward her,
conscious of nothing but a need to have his way.
A shadow hunted over the moon and
became solid, became Ranulf, almost as tall as he was and faster,
harder. Before he could react, a fist that felt like a boulder
smashed into his gut and he was eating mud, gasping for breath and
eating mud. Through a dull roar in his ears he heard his former
friend.
“That is enough, Giles. You have drunk
too much wine at high table, and that is enough.”
He closed his eyes on his humiliation
and would not answer. Slowly, he heard them leave. Soon, only a
scent of lilies was left.