Desire Lines (Welsh Blades, #3)

by Elizabeth Kingston

  Gryff thought he hid it well from Hal, the swift stab of pain she caused. He should have walked away then, but the need to pretend it didn’t matter kept him standing there, listening while she laughed and described how satisfyingly unsophisticated he was. She took his descriptions of his home in Wales – spoken to her at her eager insistence – and made them laughable. Nothing but sheep shit and rain, she said, and the manor houses sounded like no more than tiny heaps of slate and stone not even worthy of the name.

  “I thought the Normans were provincial! The Welsh truly are worse. But I take what amusements I can in this dung heap at the edge of the world. They will never believe me when I return to Aragon, how this little island thinks itself so important, so grand.”

  The worst wasn’t even the look of pity on Hal’s face – it was the slight embarrassment, the uncomfortable manner. Savage, backward, uncouth. Years here, living as one of them, educated as one of them, and nearly all the Normans still thought it about him. They liked him, but they saw him that way, and she had learned this scorn from them.

  Hal was different, and so was his father. When they made their silent way back to the mews, Hal’s father awaited them. He asked what ailed Gryff and when he received only a shrug in reply, he peered closely at Gryff’s frown.

  “Ah, a fair maid,” he divined. The rumble of his voice was as soothing as always, despite his words. “Who has turned your head this week? Agnes again, or is it still Lady Julia?” There was no hope of hiding these things from Hal’s father, who seemed to know everything.

  “I miss my home.” Gryff had not meant to say it at all, much less for it to come out half-choked, like he might weep at any moment. He burned with the shame of being Welsh, and the anger at knowing he should not be ashamed. “I do not belong here.”

  Hal’s father was better than his own. He put a hand to Gryff’s shoulder and said, quietly insistent, “You belong here.”

  And he was right. This mews was like the best part of home had been transported here. It was like the magical places in tales and legends, where two realms overlapped and he could briefly pass from one world into the other.

  He picked up the leather strips held out to him and made new jesses for the gyrfalcon. Working with hawks required a steady hand and a quiet mind; they could sense turmoil in a man, and would not trust him if he was not calm.

  Hal’s father kept him busy for days, for weeks – for as long as was needed to soothe the heartbreak, he said, for there was no better cure for it.

  Hal himself suggested that a better cure would be for Gryff to seduce the friend with whom Isabel had been gossiping. “Or whichever lady at court is most likely to stir her envy.”

  They narrowed it down to three friends who may have gossiped with her, and three more who would make her writhe with jealousy. Gryff had all but one in his bed within a fortnight, and found Hal was right – it worked nearly as well to help him forget as the falconry did. When Isabel cursed him for his faithlessness and called him a swyving whoreson, no better than a rutting beast in heat, he apologized most cordially and explained she could not expect better behavior from an ignorant savage.

  Chapter Five

  1288

  Walking at Nan’s side with the mule between them was far less distracting, but he did miss the view of her golden braid trailing down her back. He had thought she would speak more now that the silence between them had been broken, but three more wordless days proved him a fool to expect it.

  Well, the days were not entirely wordless. “Which bit should I give her?” she had asked yesterday, beaming at the falcon from afar, one hunter admiring the skill of another as she cleaned the small heron that Tiffin had brought down. Nan bade him good night every evening, and good morning too, almost like those few words were a duty she had neglected. And of course when the dog made too much noise she hissed his name in admonishment. Fuss.

  No more words than that did she ever speak, nor did she need to. When he offered her coin for serving as guide to Lincoln, she only looked at his outstretched hand, shook her head, and stayed silent. Her expression said that though she was not offended at the offer, she had no interest in his payment. It said that she let him travel with her because she wanted to, and no other reason. This morning when she turned the mule eastward, he asked why – and her answering look said as plainly as any words that they went this way because it would lead to their destination.

  The paths they had traveled ran parallel to the wide north road and now that they turned east, they must cross over it. As she did so often, she sent the dog ahead before them. When it came trotting back from the road with an expectant look, her obvious relief told him without words that she was no more eager than he to encounter other travelers.

  They emerged at a crossroads. Lincoln was to the north, and Gryff had opened his mouth to ask her which villages lay to the east and west when he saw the gibbet. It was empty, and looked as if no criminal had rotted there in recent memory.

  Sometimes he dreamt he was hung on one just like this, burning in a desert sun, bored. He would ask passing travelers who had put him here and why, and the answers were always different: the sheriff because he was a thief; the king because he was a traitor; his father for no reason at all. When he woke, it always took too long to remember that it was only a dream.

  Gryff did not realize he had stopped to stare at the gibbet until something at his feet drew his attention away from the grim sight. It was little Bran. “Fuss,” he said, trying out the name.

  He followed the dog to where Nan waited on the far side of the road, and they walked into the trees together. It was true forest here, and on the narrow way he must walk behind her. But this place made him uneasy, and he could take no pleasure in the sight of her now.

  As if to confirm his fears well-founded, the dog began to bark at something ahead of them. It was a frantic noise, and caused Gryff to grip the only thing he had that could serve as weapon: an eating knife he had bought in the same market where he had sold the hawk.

  It was nothing. He knew it was nothing even before he saw her quick movement, a flash of something in the underbrush and then stillness. He could see it was nothing by how unconcerned she was, how she only tried to quiet the excited dog, how no one and nothing came at them through the trees.

  It was nothing, but he could not convince his body of it.

  He stood tensed, not thinking about how Brother Clement had begged for his life among trees just like these. He was not thinking of it. He would not think of it ever again.

  Nan was suddenly before him. She had stepped closer, only inches from him now. She put a hand to his wrist, a soft touch against the tight muscle above where he gripped his knife.

  “Gruffydd,” she said, and waited until he met her eyes. “There is naught to fear.” She held up a lifeless hare, and he understood this was what had startled the dog. “I will make it a stew, and your falcon may rest from the hunt for a day.”

  For the space of a heartbeat, he did not see her beauty. She was only an ordinary person, calm and sensible, who soothed him even as she startled him by saying his full name. It was the first time in years he had heard it, and pronounced perfectly. It brought him back to himself. He blinked, and she was unbearably lovely again, the forest was just a forest, the dog was still making too much noise.

  The look she gave Gryff was piercing, bright blue eyes assessing him keenly until she turned away and silenced the dog with a scornful, “Fuss!”

  It was only a moment – a strange moment, but easily forgotten. Or so he thought.

  They walked on in silence and at midday they came upon a stream where they rested and let the mule drink. Gryff shut everything out of his mind except for the sound of the birdsong in the trees, a joyful riot. Then her voice came, as it always did, unexpected and startling.

  “Is a mistake, to hide from the memory, whatever it is.” She did not look at him as she tied the newly filled flask of water to the mule’s pack. “You only give it strengt
h.”

  It made his breath speed up, the quiet confidence in her. She spoke as if she answered a question he had not asked. After a long pause to think how he should respond, he said, “You confound me.”

  He only meant he was baffled that she spoke now to say this, when she had withheld her speech so carefully.

  “I see you. You try to make yourself forget.” She looked at him, held him in her frank gaze. “You won’t. You make it worse.”

  It was how she spoke, so bold and yet in the accents of a servant, that gave an edge to the anger that sparked in him. He bit his tongue against asking how she dared speak to him so. After all these years, it seemed he was still capable of haughty disapproval.

  It must have shown in his face, for she lowered her eyes even as he unclenched his jaw enough to scoff, “What do you know of it?”

  Her answer was to fall back into silence, and this time he was grateful for it. They resumed the journey, with only birdsong echoing in their ears.

  When they stopped for the day, he watched her as she prepared the hare with practiced, efficient movements. He had tried to help by cleaning the game, but she had taken it from his hands. Whether this was from habit or because she was particular about the cooking, he did not know.

  In truth, he knew nothing about her, or about her life. This was what he had been thinking as they walked all afternoon, after she had spoken so bold. She was servant to Morency, clearly lowborn, but like no servant he’d ever known. She inexplicably spoke perfect Welsh, and gutted rabbits and men with equal skill.

  She never spoke idle words, and he was a fool to have dismissed anything she said only because some remnant of pride still lived in his breast.

  “What do you know of it?” he asked, and this time without scorn. She looked up from cutting the meat. “What see you, when you look at me? How am I so mistaken?”

  It was a long time her steady eyes held his, her hands stilled. It meant something, that look, but he did not know what. Eventually she turned to her work again, carefully placing the bits of meat into the pot on the fire.

  “I’ll tell you a story,” she said over the sizzle of the meat. “I had a husband once. Oliver was his name, and he worked in the stables. We were very young. Nor did I want a husband, but I thought it would be my protection from a great lord who lusted after me.” She reached for the wooden spoon beside her and peered into the pot. “This was long before I came to Morency. I worked in kitchens, and for a time served ale in the hall of the king himself.”

  His heart reacted to this news, a thump of alarm in his chest as he wondered if she had ever served him on his visits to court. But he knew that was impossible. He would have remembered her. He could never forget such a face, even on a serving girl.

  “There were many there who chased me, as men will always do when there is too much drink and not enough maidens. But this lord made sport of me, and I feared him. So I married Oliver as my protection, but still the great lord chased me. He commanded me to his bed, and before the night I was to go to him, Oliver tried to kill him.” She gave a little shake of her head, rueful. “It were not in Oliver’s nature, murder, and he was caught when he tried it.”

  She stirred the sizzling meat, only looking up to glance to where the dog sat. He was meant to be keeping guard, but kept looking back at the smell of the meat. She paused to wash her hands before pouring water into the pot. Then she pulled out the sacks of spices she kept, carefully measuring handfuls and pinches, methodically sifting them into the pot as she spoke.

  “Well then, the lord thought it were a plot by a rival to have him murdered. He sent his men to drag me from the kitchen because he knew I had served a lord he suspected. He bade me tell him all I knew of this rival and this plot. I knew naught but said whatever would please him – anything at all, for he held a knife to Oliver’s throat.” Her spoon stirred, scraping along the bottom, a hollow sound. “But naught pleased him, and he killed Oliver. Right there before my eyes.”

  The words were very calm. She pulled an onion and two turnips from the sack. The knife sliced into the onion first, peeling off the outer layer. Her hands were perfectly steady.

  It was more than she had ever spoken, and he did not know if this was the end of her story. Questions rose up in him, impatient and hot, but she had said I’ll tell you a story. He knew he was not meant to interrupt, that she must say her piece and his only task was to listen well. So he held his breath, attuned to her smallest movement, and waited. It was a discipline born of years spent in training fierce creatures to trust him.

  “He was a very great and powerful lord. He kept me there as his amusement. It was a hunting lodge, for he had been on the hunt. Oliver served him and his men, kept the horses for them. Nor can I remember what game they hunted.” She furrowed her brow a little, like it troubled her to forget this detail. “It were more than a week, I think, haps two. I did not count the nights.”

  She sliced the onion to pieces and added it to the pot before looking him in the eye. “You would know more?”

  There was no belligerence in it. She asked it a little indifferently. He wanted to say no, that there was no need to tell him. But he did want to know more. He wanted to know so many things.

  “Did you kill this great lord?”

  She laughed with real humor, a short yelp of a sound that broke the spell she had woven. Lines of mirth appeared at the corner of her eyes.

  “Nay, I did not know how then, and would not have dared. I would never have dared. I was no more than a timid mouse.” The laughter faded from her face as she looked down at the turnip she now held. “A mouse that he wanted, that’s what I was, and there was naught to stop him having me. But he did not, in the end. Not in that way.”

  Gryff opened his mouth to ask how she had been spared rape, but he found he could not say the words. She saw his curiosity, though, and returned her attention to the turnip. Her knife began to cut away the peel in one slow, long strip.

  “I was all over terror, every minute, until he reached for me. But each time he pulled me close, the fear died in me. It were like a miracle, though I prayed no saints to intercede. I only...” She paused, looking hard at her turnip. “When his breath fell on me, I would think – let him do what he will, for it won’t be worse than what he done to poor Oliver, left to die and rot on the floor. And the thought would stop my trembling, and that ruined his sport.” Now she pulled the long curl of peel free and held it in her hand. A look of wry amusement came over her face. “It were a good lesson I learned: a woman without fear is like a winter wind on a stiff cock. For a man like him, anyway. If I looked him in the eye and did not cringe, it withered him without fail. And lucky for me it did.”

  She cut the peeled turnip to pieces, dropped it in the pot, and picked up the other. All the while, his mind raced. A great lord, cruel and lecherous. Name after name passed through his mind, all men he would have thought too chivalrous for acts so vile. But then, chivalry was reserved for ladies, not their servants. Indeed her lack of outrage, as though her story were the most common of tales, seemed to mock his assumptions. If he asked her to name her tormentor, would he find it was someone he had called friend?

  “How came you to be free of him?” he asked, because that was an easier question.

  Her hand paused. She looked into the fire and seemed to glow. “A great lady saved me.” There was reverence in her voice. “I tell you true, it was only her goodness that saved me, for I was not worthy of her regard.”

  “Who–”

  “It was her who taught me this, after. How to go on, I mean.” She raised her eyes to look squarely at him now. “That’s my purpose in telling you the tale. You ask what I see when I look at you, and I see you cringe and shrink as I did in the days after. Not just from shadows and hares, but from your memories of it. You look to hide from it, and that is what I call a mistake.”

  He could feel heat flare in his face. Cringing and shrinking. That was what she saw, and he would only look more foo
lish if he tried to deny it.

  He dropped his gaze to the half-peeled turnip in her hands, too distracted by her face to think clearly. He turned her words over and over in his mind.

  “A great lady taught you – what? To throw knives at villains and play the mute for days?”

  Nan shook her head. “She said, ‘even do you never care to speak again in your life, Nan, you must not lose your voice.’” Her hands resumed the slow paring. “She taught me when you run and hide from a thing, you make it into a monster that can only live in your darkest dreams. Without your running, it’s naught but a thing that happened once. Now it is only a story for me, and not a great beast that seeks to tear me apart.”

  He raised his eyes to her face in the firelight and saw she was completely serious. Baudry and his men – what they had done, what he had seen...and she thought it was a simple matter of words. He fought against scoffing outright, but there was still a trace of scorn when he said, “This is your great wisdom, that it is but a story that needs telling?”

  There was a stubborn set to her jaw. “I claim no wisdom, but I know what I know. When you make it a thing you can hold in your two hands, it belongs to you. Until then, you belong to it.”

  It was better to say nothing than to tell her she was wrong. Or even if she was not, he preferred forgetting, and was far more skilled at it. He let the silence stretch out between them, and thought how he had spent days wishing she would speak. He watched her hands remember their task, gripping the knife, carefully sliding the blade under the peel as she spoke softly into the hush.

  “I was made to strip my clothes every night, and his men threw water on me to clean me before they took me to him. They tethered me with a rope, same as you.” Her hand faltered, a minute slip of the blade that cut the perfect curl of peel that had almost come away in one piece. She looked at where it fell in the dirt, the only moment in all her recitation that was not dispassionate. She pointed at him with the knife still in her hand, a faint but emphatic gesture. “So don’t think I don’t know how it is.”