The Knight's Conquest

by Juliet Landon

  ‘Yes, and Father’s.’

  ‘And Grissle’s!’ The duet was accompanied by a rising scale of laughter, not entirely charitable.

  Eloise pulled her face back into a mask. ‘She’s so sad, Jollie. I didn’t see her smile all day. Not once.’

  ‘Well, I don’t suppose she was too pleased with Father, for one thing.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘Didn’t you hear? He sent six of Rolph’s men home in disgrace at noon.’ Jolita slid down over the cushioned seat and came to sit on the bed that Saskia had turned down for the night. Its blue coverlet now revealed a light linen sheet and a grey fur rug, with embroidered pillows, one of which Jolita took and hugged to herself, lovingly. ‘Bad behaviour, Henry said. Serves them right. They’ll probably be flogged.’

  Eloise controlled her voice with difficulty. ‘What did they do?’ she said.

  ‘Insulted one of the guests, apparently. That’s all I know. I expect they’ll be more angry at missing the jousting than getting a flogging. But Ellie, were you not so excited by Sir Owain’s performance? Isn’t he the most amazing man on a horse? I knew he’d win. Everybody did.’

  Predictable or not, Sir Owain’s demolition of three men’s opposition, one after the other, had been nothing short of incredible, particularly as the last contestant, the redoubtable Lord Pace, was by far the most dangerous. His experience was greater than Sir Owain’s but his vigour and skills were no match for the younger man and, though the contest had run for three rounds, Sir Owain’s last lance knocked Lord Pace’s clean out of his grasp and sent it flying across the lists into the wildly cheering spectators.

  He had not sought Eloise’s favour on this second day, but had tied her green ribbon and popinjay feathers around the pink tippet on his arm, which everyone knew had held her hair that morning. As he had intended, her hair stayed loose, falling around her shoulders in thick auburn waves like a cape. Saskia combed it and gathered it up ready for the nightly plait.

  ‘Leave it, Saskie,’ Eloise told her. ‘It’s late. I think you should go now.’

  Saskia laid down the ivory comb. ‘We have to make an early start in the morning, remember. I shall have to rouse you before dawn.’

  ‘I know. I’ll be ready. Goodnight, love.’

  ‘Say your prayers. Rub your teeth. Snuff the—’

  ‘Saskie!’ the sisters chorussed, laughing.

  The door closed behind the maid, guttering the candle flames. ‘Did you know that Henry’s father had to forfeit his horse to Sir Owain?’ Jolita said, squeezing the pillow. ‘But Sir Owain gave it back. He kept the others he’d won, though. He must be immensely wealthy by now, Ellie, and I’m so glad you’ve decided to—’

  ‘Jollie, I haven’t decided anything except to hold my peace for a day.’ Eloise pulled at the length of linen with which she had dried herself, tucking it beneath her arms and hiding the corner between her breasts. She lifted her arms, scooping up her hair and holding it back in a loosely tied cord made of plantain stems, then came to sit cross-legged opposite her sister. ‘And that gives me good time to make my escape before he’s astir in the morning.’ She grinned, mischievously. ‘Gone!’ she said, spreading her hands. ‘Just like he did.’

  Jolita, whose mind was racing ahead, missed the connection. ‘And now I can tell you my news,’ she said. ‘Henry and I are coming to London with you. We’re to stay on the Strand in his parents’ house. Isn’t that wonderful? It’s not so very far away from you and father at Sheen.’

  After almost a year of separation, the news brought a smile of relief to Eloise who had not entirely been looking forward with enthusiasm to the days ahead. ‘You’ll be with me?’ she whispered.

  ‘Of course we will, love.’ Jolita reached forward to lay a tender hand on her sister’s arm. ‘Whatever the outcome, you’ll have us there. Try not to worry.’ She had it in mind to offer further platitudes, but knew that these would be of little help when the outcome was not likely to be in Eloise’s favour. The king was notoriously hard to bribe unless the remuneration was irresistible.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re happy,’ Eloise said, caressing Jolita’s hand. ‘Your Henry is not what you thought, then?’

  Jolita grinned at her over the top of the pillow. ‘I cannot believe how mistaken I was,’ she said, twisting her betrothal ring. ‘I think I’m in love, Ellie.’

  ‘And what about losing the archery contest? Have you paid your forfeit?’

  The pillow flew away as Jolita leapt off the bed in one bound, her hair swinging like a brown sail changing tack. ‘Saints’ alive! My forfeit! He’ll be waiting…oh, my lord! ’Night, Ellie. Sleep well.’ With a quick peck on her sister’s cheek, she was away through the door like a rabbit down a burrow, her feet making no sound on the stone steps.

  For a few moments, Eloise listened to the sounds of the night, to the cry of the night watch in the town who assured everyone that all was well, an opinion that failed to take into account the state of at least one confused heart. The pictures of the tournament that Jolita had drawn returned to her in full colour, slowed down for analysis, every expression recalled, every move, word and gesture. Owain’s performance at the jousts had thrilled everyone, but only she could claim, though she did it silently, that the champion wore her favour on his arm. He had received from Jolita a wreath of flowers for his head and then presented it to her, Eloise. She had worn it all that evening and then hung it on the bedpost where she would see it last thing and first thing. That, of course, was not his only prize for, during the evening’s dancing, he had been awarded a magnificent diamond. If only Sir Piers had been so successful, Eloise’s financial worries might have been less.

  Sir Owain had been attentive to her, courtly and gallant, but not overtly affectionate so as to embarrass her or draw extra attention to them as a pair. Sir Crispin and Lady Francesca had watched but said nothing, though Eloise knew by their faces that their concern was not wholly to do with the success of the festivities. For their sakes, and for her sister’s, she had not regretted the truce: for her own sake, she was glad of the excuse to enjoy his company.

  She slid off the bed and replaced the stray pillow, smiling at her sister’s joy and wondering how many forfeits would be as gladly rendered as hers. She, Eloise, had gone with Sir Owain to see her brother before retiring, her fourth call of the day, and found him recovering well, considering his injuries. As before, Sir Owain had stayed with him to recount the action while she had bid them both a courteous but formal goodnight, concealing a pang of wistfulness that that would be the memory of him to which she would have to cling for the foreseeable future. A kiss for her knuckles was to be his last touch. Another episode of her life over and done with.

  Her arms encircled the flower-adorned bedpost as hot tears stung her eyes, closing them against the fractured and crazily dancing candle flames that should have steadied by now. A draught of air breathed over her back. The door had opened silently and closed again. She half-turned, expecting to see Saskia with a last piece of advice for her well-being. But it was not Saskia.

  He stood by the door as if conjured up by her longings; tall and taut with sinew and muscle, a scattering of dark hair below his throat, his narrow loins wrapped round with a linen cloth, as she was. ‘Eloise,’ he said.

  Speechless with disbelief, it made no sense for her to long for his presence and then to protest at the fulfilment, but such an immediate response to her needs took the wind out of her sails, and the bedpost to which she had been clinging as a substitute a moment before now became her support.

  The first word that sprung to mind was no, which emerged as a whisper but had no effect on the apparition except to make him smile. That gave her courage. ‘No…no, you cannot,’ she said, while a spark of wickedness flared at the back of her mind to show her how, once and only once, she could wound him as he had once wounded her, how she could give herself to him and then leave him to starve for a lifetime afterwards. Tomorrow, she would be gone. The spark flared
and faded. ‘I cannot do it,’ she said, suddenly afraid.

  ‘Can you not, my beauty?’ His smiled faded as he reached her, his strong hands around her wrists opening her fingers like flower petals and peeling them away from the bedpost. The woman was a smouldering mass of contradictions, hard, brittle, and raging with an anger so fierce that she would wound herself in the process of wounding him, yet inside she was still vulnerable and fearful of emotions which he himself had released years ago without knowing it. He could feel her trembling, pulling away from him, making him realise that the origin of her fear was the memory of another less accommodating lover. Her late husband.

  He released his hold of her and went to stand in the pool of candlelight that illuminated his body, showing her the bruises where the impact of his shield had caught his chest and shoulders, where his arms carried red weals, where the slam of the high saddle had marked his thighs. He had said nothing of them all evening, nor had he intended to, but now her natural concern overcame her initial shock, and he used them as a key to unlock her limitless loving. He saw her attention refocus on his bruises, propelling her slowly towards him as if walking through water, her face still tear-stained.

  She touched the red-blue marks on his shoulder with gentle fingertips, her eyes full of pity in the candlelight.

  ‘Salve me, Eloise,’ he whispered. ‘Tend me, as you did for Rolph. Reward me. Do what you will.’ He reached to the back of her head and snapped the plantain stalk, loosing her hair in a silken flood down her back.

  She placed her lips where her fingertips had been and saw him flinch as if she had applied an astringent lotion. Searching tenderly, she followed the path of her hands with kisses, wondering at the magnificent body and tasting the warm firmness of his skin, breathing him in through her mouth and aware of a new situation in which, instead of being flung on to a bed and forced to endure the molestation of a clumsy husband, she was now being led with care along her own path. And when she found that her hair was falling around her face, she pushed it aside and whispered through its veil, ‘I’m not dressed for this, am I?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re not.’ His hands were deft where the linen clothed her, and she heard his gasp of admiration as it fell away to reveal the luscious landscape of her skin, its sheen and shadows. Again, for the first time, she was allowed to savour the indescribable caress of a lover’s eyes before his hands touched, to see desire open his lips before words did.

  Her inexperience brought her to a standstill and, looking at the swirl of dark hair upon his chest, her words stumbled out. ‘I think…I believe…er, that my own wounds may be of a different nature. Not so visible. Not earned, either. Would it be possible…?’

  ‘For me to tend them, my lady? Yes, I can heal you, if you will give me time. And I can help you to forget. Which is why I came.’ He took her arms and, linking them around his neck, carried her across to the cool linen-covered bed where he placed her beneath him and let her feel his full weight spread over her without a hint of menace. Reaching down, he pulled at the linen that covered him and flung it aside, causing her to quake with anticipation at the intimate heat of his body. ‘Let go,’ he whispered. ‘I know where your hurts are.’ His kisses lured her into forgetting and, long before the first of them was finished, his hands had begun a seductive path of the sweetest healing her body had ever known.

  It did not enter her head, as it had before, to wonder how his expertise had been gathered in the arms of others or whether this was his best loving, or perhaps second-best. Nor did she spare a thought for her own contradictions, for the mad inexplicable surrender at which she would have scoffed only that morning while rejecting a truce. And if she had thought, even for a second, that he would be the one to suffer most by her flight on the morrow, she might also have realised with a terrible sense of dread that the reverse was just as likely.

  Lying sated in his arms with her head rising and falling rhythmically on the great swell of his chest, she had time to recall how he had controlled his undeniable passion so as to give her time, whispering to her as he would to a wild creature, gentling, stroking, reassuring her, calling her his beauty, his woman, the one he had waited years for, almost despairing. Stealthily, she slid herself over him and resumed her salving of his bruises with her hands and lips, bathing him with her hair while he lay as if sleeping, which she knew he was not.

  Chapter Six

  The comfortable brown cob picked its way carefully over the dust-filled holes in the track, ignoring the excited hounds around its hooves, their yapping competing with the tinkle of bells that hung along the edge of its green and gold rein-guards. The neat ears swivelled to catch the muted chatter of riders, the first eloquent song of a blackbird, but the horse’s own rider was silent, deep in thought.

  Riding pillion behind one of the Gerrard grooms, Saskia put her mistress’s silence down to a certain heaviness of heart and tried a cheery word to lighten it, clutching at the groom’s belt as the horse lurched gently beneath her. The remark was not wholly effective.

  Eloise glanced at the pink sunrise and smiled dutifully, her thoughts firmly bedded in the dark warmth of a man’s arms, the imprint of his body still on hers, his expert kisses still searching over previously unexplored surfaces, luring her into an abandonment she had never known before and making her realise how little she knew of loving. Their mutual rewards had lasted for hours until exhaustion claimed her in sleep, and she had woken to Saskia’s urgent call to find no sign to show that he had been there except for the linen towel he had been wrapped in. Hers was missing. He had obviously picked up the wrong one in the dark.

  Puzzled by his silent departure, she had lain for some moments trying to recapture not only the events of the night but also her vaguely revengeful intention to leave him without explanation, as he had once done to her. She recalled how, in a brief respite between loving, she had dismissed the idea at last as being unworthy, only to find at the end that he had again disappeared with neither explanation nor farewell. Saskia had told her that the chamber below hers was empty and that he and his party had already left for Whitecliffe, twelve miles away. Eloise experienced first disbelief, then an anguish so searing that the pain almost crippled her. Now it had turned to numbness that left her unable to find an explanation for this second cruel abandonment other than that she should have expected it from a man of his reputation. It was her own fault. She should have known better.

  Yet, try as she did, she could not negate the happenings of the night as if they had been of no consequence, nor could she believe that she could so soon join a long line of conquests when his loving had been fashioned to her personal needs with such care.

  The discovery of a leaving present did not help in any way to resolve the question. She had found it under her pillow in the small blue velvet bag in which it had been presented to him that evening. The diamond, the largest and most brilliant she had ever seen donated, apparently, by Lord Pace as his contribution to the tournament. She had held it for some time, trying to understand its message. Was it a reward? A bond? A token of esteem? Payment? God forbid—not payment, surely? A palliative to soften the blow, perhaps? What, then? She had placed it deep within her girdle-pouch for safety, resolved to return it to him at the first opportunity.

  His linen towel had been placed with her own personal belongings in her saddlebag, a precious but most unglamourous remnant of an unforgettable night in his arms that had far excelled the fabrication of her dreams and had helped them both to forget their injuries. She almost smiled at last, lingering over the thought that few if any of his previous lovers would have known how to soothe his aches as well as she, how to massage him, even if her attempts had ended in a predictable tangle. The pain returned as sharp as ever.

  Jolita and Sir Henry drew level with her, eager to talk, to share their happiness, not realising until later what it cost her to join in, nor what pain their gentle teasing caused at the mention of Sir Owain’s skill in softening a lady’s heart. If onl
y they had known the truth of it.

  Sensing that all was not well, Jolita sent the slightest of signals to Sir Henry to say no more. Had Eloise seen Sir Rolph before they left? she asked.

  Yes, she had seen their brother to say farewell, noting the absence of Father Janos and the appearance of a new man who had already been primed by the monk-physician in their method of healing. Attempting to draw some conclusions from the fact that Father Janos had mentioned neither his own impending departure nor Sir Owain’s, Eloise was still at a loss as to why she had been left with no word of explanation. Had Sir Owain known of her plans to start for London at dawn? Discussed them with her father, perhaps? To ask her father would seem strange, in the circumstances.

  Poor Rolph’s excursion to Handes Castle, however, had been every bit as disastrous as her own except that he would be immobile for at least another week before he could travel. His disconsolate expression wrung her heart and, in a spontaneous surge of pity, Eloise had tucked a bag of gold coins into the sheet folded over his chest. ‘To be going on with,’ she said. ‘I’ll see what else I can do. Meanwhile, this’ll help to make Griselle happier.’

  That had caused a wry smile which, on later reflection, might have been a grimace close to tears. She had not hung about to see, but had responded to the tug on her hand with a quick kiss to both cheeks and a whispered farewell.

  ‘Good luck,’ was all Rolph said, and she believed he meant it, though it was both a vain hope and a meagre return for all her efforts.

  By the end of the second day, Sir Crispin’s party had reached the prosperous town of Coventry where, not far from the church of St Michael, the magnificent new guildhall and a large private dwelling stood side by side, ready to take on the joint hospitality of the King’s Deputy Keeper of the Wardrobe and his daughters. Eloise shared a chamber with Jolita and their maids, their first chance to talk coming in the semi-privacy of a cosy bed, the curtains of which they closed against the noise from below.