Chapter 27
“Can we truly stay until sunset?” Edith
asked once they were outside. She could hear distant screams and
chanting. A pall of dust hung around the base of the church and the
churchyard. Urged on by the shrieking preacher, the mob were
stamping their feet.
She shivered, imagining afresh what
must have happened to Sir Henry and his friends. The knight had not
been Ranulf’s ally, but no one deserved to be battered to death in
an English churchyard.
“I think you know we have no choice,”
Ranulf answered, “And pray God this preacher is the priest’s
friend. The fellow will have them marching soon and attacking whom
he wishes—they would be wise to barricade the gates at Castle
Fitneyclare.”
Edith thought of her brightly colored
tent with its riches, flowers, and spices, all open, all impossible
to defend. “I must get my people away!”
Turning her back on the church, she
tried to run to the main tourney encampment, but Ranulf tugged her
into the shadow of the hut. “Make no sudden moves, or we shall be
spotted,” he said urgently, keeping a tight grip on her arm and
about her waist. “You must trust your men to see sense and to get
the others out into the wood to hide.”
“But our goods!”
“Better lost goods than lost lives.
Will any more than Maria have been tempted to join the
preacher?”
Edith thought, then shook her head. She
picked up a dry branch, recognized it as good firewood, and dropped
it. What was the use? Ranulf had his lands to return to when he had
a mind. Without their goods, her people would have to seek work,
and now it would be the backbreaking labor of harvest.
Foreseeing all this, she sat down
heavily in the shadow of the hut and put her face in her hands. “I
have led them to nowhere.”
Ranulf swiftly recovered the dry
branch, gathered more from the sides of the track, and settled
beside her. “You no longer need bear this alone, Edith.” He tapped
her knee with his fingers. “If you marry me, they shall be my
people, too.”
She glanced at him fiercely but his
face was in shadow. “Why should I do that?” she asked carefully,
not daring to presume upon any hopes.
He tapped her other knee. “Because you
are my prize and I would see your face every day. Because I have
seen your household, and although it is without order, it works.
Besides”—he leaned forward and she saw the smile on his face, the
glow of affection in his eyes—“it is the only way I may wed a
princess.”
The crowd by the church was chanting
and stamping still, but all Edith could hear truly was her own
pounding heart. She studied his open, jubilant face, wondering why
she did not speak.
He does not say a word
of love. Am I a fool to want any?
“You and yours will be safe with me,”
he said. “Say yes, Edith.”
Why does she
hesitate? The knight in Ranulf inwardly seethed. He was a
warrior of England, with men and arms and lands. Any damsel would
be delighted, grateful, to accept him. She should be on her knees,
thanking him.
Would you be another
Giles? the man in him warned. If you do not
think her worthy of marriage, why ask for her hand? What do you
want?
He did not realize he had spoken this
last aloud until Edith answered, “I want to be with
you.”
He wanted the same. He wanted her with
him, all the time, so he could watch her, watch out for her and
keep an eye out. She was his prize. The idea of her spending time
with any other, flirting with any other, made him want to smash
heads.
Is this love, Ranulf
? prodded Olwen in his memory. Or
possession?
“Stay with me, then,” he said,
impatient for an answer. “Marry me and stay.”
She made a strange, strangled sound
that might have been a cry.
“Would we leave here at once? Could we
be married in the north?”
His heart leapt but he answered
steadily, “If you wish.” He did not wonder at her haste to leave,
not with the mob in the churchyard.
Or Giles. The
thought slammed into him and he spoke. “How do you know
Giles?”
Let her speak the
truth, he prayed, as she looked him directly in the
eye.
“I know him because I know of one like
him, in my homeland.”
Softly, Ranulf. We are
almost there.
“Where is your homeland?”
She gave him another frank look but her
mouth trembled. Again, he understood why she had chosen to appear
veiled. Her beauty was dazzling but full of small revelations of
her thoughts and feelings.
He took her gently onto his lap,
sitting with her in the shadow of the priest’s hut. His men would
be a while yet, making their camps safe, sending heralds and spies
out to the castle, the rest of the camp, and that volatile
churchyard, as they sought him out.
He kissed her mouth, very softly.
“Trust me, sweeting. I would never harm you or yours. You have
marched under false colors: so be it. I did the same once, in
France.”
He had forgotten, too, until now. “It
was necessary,” he added.
She nodded, also understanding, and
began to speak.
“I was born to the east of
here.”
Tell him
everything, Gregory prompted in her mind as she glanced at
Ranulf’s grave, listening face. But she dared not. In the end she
had flinched from admitting she knew Giles well—too well. They were
both knights, and Ranulf might not believe what she could say of
his former friend. She and others had lived it, and still the
experience seemed a thing of nightmares, too impossible to be real.
Some truths were too hard to tell.
“A little to the east of here,” she
went on.
“A little English, then,” murmured
Ranulf. He sounded amused, not shocked. “How did you manage to make
yourself so exotic?”
“The language we speak among
ourselves—that is our old dialect, as spoken by our grandfathers.”
From there it seemed natural to mention her
grandparents.
“My granddad was a smith and a sailor.
He served on many ships when he was a lad and a young man. He loved
to travel.”
“You knew him?”
She nodded. “He lived for a long time,
did my Grandfather Walter.”
Ranulf smiled and kissed her cold
fingers. “I had an Uncle Walter. He must have been a good man for
tales, your grandfather.”
“Yes, he was. He had a gift of words
and memory. I loved it when the nights grew dark and work had to
stop. I could listen to his stories then.”
“Where did he go?”
“To Venice. To Genoa. To Jerusalem. In
Jerusalem he made friends with a traveler from the city of
Damascus. That man had also been to the court of the great Khan in
the further East.”
“Not Cathay?”
She shook her head. “Cathay sounds
exotic, so I used it. My granddad traveled to the Indies. He adored
spices, ginger and cinnamon especially, and he fell in with a
caravan going along the silk and spice road from
Jerusalem.”
She could picture him, sitting on his
stool in the corner of the family house, close to the fire, his
wrinkled, tanned face lively with recollections. He had been
toothless then, and drooled, but his mind was still as sharp as a
pin.
“He loved to draw. He drew the
paintings in our church and in the reeve’s house. He drew on boards
and tables, on anything he could use as a surface to paint on. When
I could, I saved his drawings and hid them.”
“You were his ally,” Ranulf said,
understanding at once. He brushed her skirts. “The silks were his,
too?”
She nodded. “He brought them back with
him. He gave them to my grandmother, who loved the softness and
sheen of them but considered them too fine and showy for the
village. She tucked them into the bottom of her clothes chest, and
only the family were allowed to see them.”
“So your costume?”
“My granddad said women of the Indies
wore such silks and light cloth, even ordinary women. He drew them
for me. They were like no robes I had ever seen.
“One year, a troop of players came to
our village. I saw how people love a show, a spectacle. I saw how
one man may dress and act as another and become a different person,
even a woman. I remembered it all.”
“You have your grandfather’s
memory.”
Ranulf traced the red line of an old
scar in the center of her palm, a slow, tingling semi-caress that
made her think of things other than her story.
“Were you a smith because of your
grandfather?”
Blinking, Edith forced her attention
back, down the years. “I was to be a midwife, like my mother. I
helped her and my granddad and father. I was either with her, going
to women in the villages, or at the forge.”
“Not much time for play.”
“Had you, as a page?”
“Not a bit,” Ranulf chuckled, then he
frowned. “I never thought of it till now. How old were you when you
married?”
“Ten and four.”
“To Adam. Then you were
widowed?”
She nodded.
“So you would be more independent and,
as his widow, would be required to continue in his trade. Was that
before the great death came?”
“Yes.”
“Then you were betrothed to
another?”
“Yes, when I was ten and nine. To
Peter, who brought new tools and another anvil to the forge.”
Remembering, Edith felt herself blush. On the morning of their
betrothal, Peter had laid her over that anvil and taken her that
way, with her old, patched woolen skirts around her middle, to
“seal the deal,” as he put it. It had been very early, before the
rest of the village was stirring. The anvil had dug against her
middle but even so, she had found her taking pleasurable. She had
hoped Peter might do that again, but he never had, preferring to
have her ride him. Save for that time when she had been sick and he
had insisted. . . .
“Did he die before you were married?”
Ranulf broke into her less-than-happy thoughts.
“Peter drowned two nights before our
marriage in our lord’s fish pond,” Edith admitted. That was all she
wanted to say.
Ranulf studied her a moment, then he
tugged her long plait of hair. “Do the women of the Indies wear
their hair thus?”
Grateful for the respite, Edith
answered, “So my granddad told me.”
“And you remembered, because you loved
him and you were his favorite, the one with whom he shared his
adventures.” Ranulf counted off on his fingers. “You had the silks,
the knowledge of the East, the skill of a smith, the wisdom of a
wise-woman. You put it together to make yourself a shield: Lady of
Lilies, the Princess of Cathay.”
“The rich and the royal are never
questioned,” Edith said, raising her chin. Did he expect her to
feel ashamed? “It worked well for us.”
“It did indeed!”
“It gave us a chance at a new
life.”
“And how did that happen? Was it the
pestilence that drove you out of your homes?”
So easy then for her to lie, to agree.
It would avoid more questions. Edith opened her mouth to say
yes.
“Our overlord feared illness,” she
heard herself say. “He saw how the great death came, striking all,
spreading, sparing few.”
“He abandoned you and fled,” Ranulf
said, his face rigid with distaste.
“He drove us.” Edith was suddenly back
inside the church at Warren Hemlet, feeling suffocated. A warm hand
drew her outside again and a warm mouth kissed her cheek and chin,
returning her to the present.
“Take a taste of ale.” Ranulf shook a
flask before her face. “You need say no more, unless you wish to.”
He squeezed her hand. “If you spot him again at a tourney, point
him out. What he did was a shameless thing, without honor. What is
his name?”
Edith shook her head, wary of admitting
who it was. The habit of secrecy still held her, and Giles and
Ranulf had once been close, after all. And she had a more urgent
question, touching directly on herself. “But you
understand?”
He smiled and hope blossomed again in
her, warming her.
“I understand that your lord deserted
you, expelled you and your fellow villagers off lands that you had
held by custom for all your lives. I understand that you, my
clever, bold little maid, used your wits and what you had to hand
to make new lives for yourself and others.”
“You approve?”
But that was too large a wish. She
sensed rather than felt his slight withdrawal, even as he answered
at once. “You did what you felt was needful.
“It must have taken careful
preparation,” he went on, giving her no time to respond. “How many
souls joined you? The whole village? Did you cut across fields to
escape notice?”
“Yes and yes.” She wanted to ask again
if he understood, but dared not in case he thought her tedious.
Instead she told him of those villagers who had chosen to travel to
other parts and stay there, for better terms. Those who, when they
passed through other hamlets, had found new lands to farm, lands
deserted by all previous owners and tenants. She told of how they
had found the warhorse Hector in the barn, starving and thirsty,
and how she had hoped to give Hector’s former master a drink,
before she had to accept that he was dead—dead of the pestilence,
like so many others.
“How did you come to jousts and the
tourney?”
She wondered how she could explain.
“For the show and the spectacle, where everything is bright,” she
said slowly. “Out in the world of farms and fields where we had
lived, all seemed to be dying. What then, the purpose in planting,
or in waiting for the harvest, or in gathering or making anything?
The tourney, in contrast, seemed a world of fairy, untouched by
death. Did you think only knights crave honor and
glory?”
“Not anymore.” Ranulf kissed her scared
hands. “Have your people changed much? Do they like
it?”
Edith nodded, thinking of
Teodwin.
“Will they miss it?”
“I do not know,” Edith answered,
thinking of herself. “They will not be forced into their old pasts,
their old crafts?”
“Not by me.” Ranulf made his words a
vow. “Let their new talents show, for me.”
He chuckled. “Did you expect me to
protest? A true knight, one who fights, sees such changes on the
battlefield every day: squires becoming knights, men-at-arms
becoming captains. Why waste skill?”
He saw relief shine out in her face.
She cared so much for her people, it touched him. As for the
rest—he thought of the stricken village they had both seen, and of
the half-starved Many with her deformed, dead infant. Edith had
indeed done what was needed to survive.
“I love you,” he said. “Nothing you
have said, or will say, could change that.”
It is not Edith’s words
but her actions that disconcert me.
He had no time to consider that
thought—Edith had cast herself into his arms, saying a mass of
exclamations in her own dialect, forgetting he understood not a
word. He caught her against him, feeling her shivering, realizing
then how much she had feared his reaction, his possible
rejection.
“Hush, hush.” Her terror appalled
him—was he so much a judge? Did she not know by now that he meant
what he said? He loved her.
I do, too, but not
those lies. She has played us all and lied for weeks. To tell a lie
is against all knightly conduct, but she has done so again and
again. How now will I know, for sure, really for sure, that she is
ever telling the truth?