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Authors: Lindsay Townsend

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BOOK: To Touch The Knight
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Chapter 41
She had made Giles a berry tisane, adorned with leaves of mint. She had fed him fresh manchet loaves and soft cheese and dates—delicacies that would have made her mouth water had she been with Ranulf and done the same for him. Then there had been a meal in the great hall, a late noonday meal, at which Giles had set her in the great chair on the dais and plied her with mead. Whenever she could, under cover of the oak trestle, she tipped some of the heavy golden liquid out onto the rushes. Between courses, she asked after the bath—she did not want Giles to forget it, or to change his mind.
You would play the wanton, sister, in a stew of your own making with such a man? What will Ranulf think, if he finds you thus? Especially after you delayed telling him the name of your former master, and that even after he asked you straight! Will he not be reminded of your tardiness now, and wonder at it?
“Be quiet, Gregory,” Edith muttered as she hid her eyes behind her goblet for a moment, to save having to look at Giles. “I have trouble enough without your carping.”
To her disquiet, Giles was becoming bolder in his attentions. At first he had seemed quite awed by her unveiled and later veiled beauty, if beauty it was, and keen to show her off, directing his steward to praise her “exquisite Eastern figure” and admonishing his carver of meat to cut the roast most skillfully, so as to preserve the “lush perfection” of her veiled mouth. As the trenchers had been brought in and then replaced, however, Giles had begun to offer her bites from his own dishes: morsels of green salad, bits of meat, small cheese tarts. Although she accepted whatever he gave her with thanks, taking all with her fingers so she need not unveil, this feeding disquieted her, as it suggested the beginnings of a more urgent courtship, where other touchings would be involved.
She did not want Giles to fondle her. She saw his long, elegant hands roving here and there across the great table and in her mind they were no longer fingers but metal tongs and branding irons.
She was not alone in being wary of him. The tension in the great hall was like that before a thunderstorm. Servants carried and served but did so with a desperate haste. They all wore dark clothes, she noted, wondering if that was by Giles's order or if they had chosen their own costumes in a keen desire not to draw attention to themselves.
But these people were too cowed to be her allies. Unless commanded by Giles, none looked directly at her and certainly none smiled. There were no drinking contests, no games of dice on the lower tables, no romping dogs. All was custom and precedence: she took a corner of a piece of bread and so did Giles and then so did all the others. It was a sight that would have made her laugh had she not felt so unhappy. She had eaten at more cheerful funeral feasts.
Please, please, Ranulf, come, and quickly!
What would she do if he did not appear?
I will do what I can, whatever I can, and escape by way of the moat, if need be. I will lie to Giles, but never lie with him.
The vow steadied her and she could eat a little more, easing crumbs down her dry, taut throat. Eating was good: it was another delay.
Soon—too soon for her wish—the doleful meal was over. Giles pushed back his chair and rose, and at once that signal was followed by a mass departure from the lower tables, each man giving a stiff bow as he left.
She started as she felt a hand on her elbow. The touching she feared had already begun. Even through her green silk, she felt revolted because Giles had handled her.
“I think your water will now be ready, good and hot.”
She was still veiled but she tried to give him a wide smile, even as her face felt bleached and overstretched. “That is excellent, my lord! Lead on, and I will follow behind, for there are some herbs I would gather, by your leave, for your bath.”
She raised her eyebrows as he stopped by the edge of the dais, frowning at her. “In Cathay, my father the emperor always bathes first,” she lied easily, as Giles continued to frown. “My mother the queen anoints him with fragrant oils and herbs.”
Giles interrupted her. “I will bathe first.”
She bowed: a bow took her a step back from him. “As my lord commands.”
Trailing behind Giles, she thought the courtyard seemed very bright after the dim great hall. The drawbridge was still down and the gate open, but the guard was new and younger. He leaned on his spear and darted so many looks at the garlanded bathtub that she was afraid Giles would spot his interest and order the gate closed.
She clapped her hands before remembering that meant Giles would see the fire marks. “'Tis beautiful, my lord!”
Luckily, Giles's attention was fixed on the bath. It was set up most handsomely, Edith admitted, hoping at the same time that she would not have to get into it. Servants had placed awnings about the great tub and a set of steps, and flowers.
“Yellow and blue are the colors of my court,” she enthused, moving swiftly away from Giles across the bare earth. She whirled about, aware that her wrap and skirts would billow and cling. She loathed playing this crude coin with Giles, but it was all she had for the moment. “You are so gracious!”
She tried to say
generous
but could not; the lie was too huge and choked in her throat. Instead, she swiftly buried her scarred hands in the wreaths of lavender and rosemary twisted about and through the awnings and cloth screens. Their scent made her feel less sick.
“These are the colors of the French court.” Giles was flicking bits of lavender and looking as smug as a sun-basking cat. He tested the steaming water and nodded. Behind them both, Edith heard a serving maid sigh with relief.
Before he took the credit for his people's work, she widened her eyes. “You have been there? I would love to hear of it.”
Please, Ranulf, please come soon.
Chapter 42
Out on the drawbridge, Ranulf knocked the guard unconscious and one of his soldiers took the man's place, hastily donning the guard's cloak. Ranulf sped into the small gate-house but found no other watchmen. He nodded to his man, who grinned and wiped at his own face. Ranulf ignored the gesture. He stank of moat slime and his hair and body were black with clotted mud and other debris he did not want to consider. He was without armor now—it was strip down to his underlinen or sink. But the plan had worked. His other men, the wiry thatcher among them, were swarming up the rope he had left to haul themselves out onto the drawbridge and no alarm had been given.
Were the guards on the battlements blind, or distracted?
He could see the courtyard of the bailey now and instantly decided it was the latter. Edith was in the courtyard; a small, veiled, tender figure in green and cream, her jade-colored silk looped softly around her arms and middle, covering and shielding her—from Giles.
To see her, whole and alive and seemingly unharmed, almost brought him to a fatal stop. He dived back behind the guardhouse, his heart hammering in his chest, then stole another look.
She was with Giles, and they were beside a bath. Edith was unlacing Giles's tunic, taking care, he noted, that her own clothes did not slip an inch. She seemed intent on the lacings and did not glance up at the dazzle-faced Giles. He seemed utterly at ease.
Were the dagger-girl and the Lady Blanche right? She lied; he knew she lied. She kept secrets, too. Could he trust her now?
No sooner thought than answered—
Ranulf stepped into the courtyard. Giles, with his back to him, facing Edith as she slowly teased out the lacings of Giles's clothes, saw nothing, but she saw.
She screamed out, “Behind you!” thrusting Giles aside so violently that he tumbled against the steps, and then she pounded across the courtyard in a storm of sea green. Ranulf jerked around and felt the tip of an arrow slash down his side. Another arrow exploded close to Edith's racing feet, but still she came.
Trying to save me, the little fool!
He raced to meet her, snatched her as she tumbled, and hauled her into the gatehouse. “Stay there!” he roared, and ran back to do battle. His men had burst into the courtyard and the archer with the crossbow on the battlements was desperately reloading. Yet none of the other guards, if guards there were, had yet appeared, and the maids and servants had scattered like blown leaves.
Giles, I want Giles.
More of his mud-men were streaming into the bailey, chasing down the stragglers, but where was Giles?
The bathtub still steamed, its awnings closed.
Silently, Ranulf gestured to his men to surround it. Now that he had the bastard at bay, Giles could skulk in there till the water froze.
Edith, I need Edith.
He sprinted back into the narrow gatehouse.
Edith was standing exactly where he had left her in shadow, one bare foot on top of the other as she raked her fingers through the many folds of her sagging green wrap, trying and failing to make it hang right. Seeing her, so clean and spring-fresh and almost trim, he skidded to an ungainly stop, abruptly conscious again of his filthy, matted state, his moat-green stink.
 
 
Why had he stopped? What would he say to her? Would he berate her? Would he turn from her? Would he believe her? Edith could only wait to hear, and stare. He wore no black armor now but he was still dark, caked head to heel in mud and dripping with slime, a monster from the moat, with gleaming eyes and red fangs—
No! The red is oozing blood along his side!
“You are hurt!” She started for him but he flung up an arm, twisting to hide the injury.
“A scratch, nothing, I wager. Be still, I tell you.”
Unsure, she stopped at once. “My lord?” She saw him swallow and grimace. “Shall I bring you ale, my lord?”
“Anything but moat water, woman,” he growled.
“Woman” was not what she wanted to hear, but he had not repudiated her, not yet, so hope flared and so did her temper.
“I am your Princess.”
“You are that, and my prize, and if I ask for a drink, I do not want a discourse on the ales of Cathay.”
How dared he loom at her in that way, and make such brutal claim on her and take no effort to clean the muck off his bedraggled hair?
She stalked past him, out into the bailey, and stopped. Squinting in the bright sunlight, Lucy and her babe, Teodwin and Gawain and more were there, even Maria and her infant were with them, all standing in the bailey with horses, as if returned from a pleasant ride. But the faces of those who had been branded were intent, and every woman and man stared at the curtained bath.
“Come out, Giles!” shouted one suddenly.
“Face us!” cried another.
“Out! Out!”
The chant, and a slow stamping of bare and ragged feet, filled the small yard. The cowed servants huddled against the walls of the bailey, deep in shadow. The soldiers of Giles were nowhere to be seen.
Silently, Ranulf came beside her. Silently, she drew off her green silk and handed it to him to wipe his head and hands. She beckoned to Edmund, and Ranulf's squire joined her, offering a flask of something from around his neck. She thanked him and for once he did not blush: he too was intent on the stamping, chanting men and women.
She gave the flask to Ranulf, but he did not drink. He scanned the battlements and the drawbridge and then bellowed, “I challenge you, Giles de Rothencey! Face me now, even as I am, or be damned!”
“Nay, I demand justice!”
Another man stepped closer to the bath, then turned to face Ranulf. “If you would be our new lord, then give us justice!”
“He killed my wife!”
“He lamed my son!”
“He branded us!”
Ranulf held up a hand. With unkempt hair, muddy, stripped to the waist, and half dressed in a pair of leggings that now looked only fit to be burned, he could still command. He raised a hand and at once the small crowd fell silent, content to leave it to him.
“Come out, Rothencey,” he called, “and face your accusers.”
The awning around the bath tumbled into the yard with a splintering of wood. Giles emerged, fully dressed, his handsome face taut and pale with anger.
“I am lord here, or have you forgotten? You have no rights over me!”
“You are wrong,” said Ranulf, stepping forward, his face grim with an anger that Edith sensed he was barely controlling. His whole body was stiff and straight and rigid, as if he would make his own flesh and blood a sword. “You have broken faith with them, the worst sin for any knight.”
“Shame!” cried Edmund, his voice bouncing off the bailey walls. The crowd stamped afresh.
“Sin? Against peasants?” Giles stood in the center of the bailey, his blue eyes narrowed into slits of flint, paying the people no more heed than the courtyard flies.
Before Ranulf could answer, Teodwin limped in front of his former master. “I was your pig-man, once. I was lamed by your men, on your orders. Remember that?”
Giles would not look at him, although Teodwin in his purple tunic and clipped beard dusted with travel was hard to miss.
Lucy brought Teodwin his walking stick and nodded to her former lord. “I was once ‘Many,' my lord. You slept with me twice, against my will, then called me a slut and cast me to your men.”
“Brute!” Teodwin stepped closer to the fair-haired maid, as if to shield her, and made the sign to avert the evil eye—against Giles. He would have gone further, Edith reckoned, but now other voices were raised.
“You killed my wife! She starved because of you!”
“You lamed my son!”
“You branded us! Look at my face! Look at what you ordered!”
“Enough!” roared Giles, venting his own anger by kicking aside the broken pieces of awning supports and cloth. “Have you gone mad, Fredenwyke?”
Edith was chilled by his arrogance, by his refusal to acknowledge anyone but a fellow knight.
Ranulf waited and then, when no other accused Giles, he spoke.
“Sins, sir, against these good people and many others, including my Olwen, though I cannot prove that charge here and now, except in battle. Will you fight me?”
“You are mad,” Giles scoffed, refusing to acknowledge the second challenge as his eyes slithered round the bailey, seeking allies who were not there. He was abandoned and he did not know it, but perhaps, too late, he was learning.
“Sins against many,” Ranulf repeated, implacable as iron, “and especially against my lady here, my prize, whom you left for dead in a sacred place.”
“What?” Now Giles looked puzzled but Edith was astonished, the breath knocked from her. Ranulf claimed her again even as she had been, as a villager of Warren Hemlet whom Giles had locked into a church to die.
Truly he loves me. It does not matter to him what I am.
As if sensing her confusion, her amazement, Ranulf turned to her and clasped her hand in his own. “Edith? Will you speak?”
Giles's frown scored down his face. “That is no Eastern name.”
“But it is her name. She was once your smith at Warren Hemlet, as you should have known.”
Deftly, through long practice, Edith undid her veil and let it flutter to the ground. “I am as English as you, Giles,” she announced, claiming her past and present together. “I am Edith, once of Warren Hemlet.”
Distaste rippled across Giles's features. He glared, as if seeing her for the first time—which, as Edith, perhaps he was. “A filthy serf woman! Aping her betters—”
He said no more. Sprinting, Ranulf reached him, swung a fist, and he went down.
“Let us have him!” cried Teodwin.
“Yes!” bawled the crowd.
Ranulf stared at the twitching figure. “Take him,” he said. “That is my justice.”
He walked back to Edith as the others closed in.
“Leave them,” he said roughly, before she could speak. “Let us find a well or stream, so I can wash this filth off.”
He did not mean merely the dregs of the moat, and she knew it.
They turned together and walked swiftly away, out of the bailey of Chastel d'Or, away from the urgent scuffles and shouts, out across the drawbridge and moat, escaping into the cool green woodland. She tried to find him fresh water but he found the narrow, rushing stream ahead of her and splashed it over himself, using her green silk as a washcloth. Finally, he shook himself like a dog and she could wait no longer.
“I have to tell you,” she began, breaking off as he turned to look at her.
“Yes?”
She did not want to blush but she could not stop it.
 
 
“Lover?” The endearment flew from Ranulf's lips. It wrung him that she was so nervous at times, even after all they had enjoyed and also endured, still at times afraid with him. She looked haunted now, her eyes huge.
“He did not touch me, except for this.” She stepped closer and he saw the darkening bruise along her cheek and jaw. “If you require it, I will swear that—
pig
—did not touch me.”
Pity and love warred in him, and both were victors.
“No need,” he said, and he opened his arms.
Next instant he thought,
I am still as foul as a garderobe
, but then none of that mattered. She slammed against him, heedless of any stubborn mud and slime, and then her silks were filthy and they were both laughing: she was crying and laughing together.
“Hush, hush!” Her weeping alarmed him even as he thought the small spot of grease on her cheek from his arm was completely endearing. He wiped it off and scowled; his rubbing had made the spot worse.
“I love you, Princess-prize,” he said quickly, before she noticed. “You can lie as much as you like, for me.”
It was true. In her heart she was as true as any knight, as generous and brave. The rest was surface, and a very pretty, exasperating, beguiling surface. Careless of his own state, he kissed her deeply, wrapping his arms tightly around her.
“Soon we must marry,” he said, when she drew back a little.
“Are you, sure, Rannie? You claimed me just now as a simple smith.”
“Never simple!” His jubilation welled afresh at her pretty frown and her use of her pet name for him. “You are the first Eastern Princess Smith of England, I wager, and all in all a most fit wife for me. But come now, where is your ring?”
BOOK: To Touch The Knight
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