Silk and Song

by Dana Stabenow

  “What?” Jaufre was hunched over Wu Li’s book, calculating from Johanna’s drawings of the past summer’s journey through England where they should be and when during the following summer’s buying trip, so as to produce some kind of schedule for Captain Angelique.

  “We’ve spent our whole lives on the Road, Jaufre,” she said.

  “What?” He looked up.

  “We’ve spent our whole lives on the Road,” she said. “We don’t know how to live in one place.”

  He closed Wu Li’s book and put it down carefully. “I thought you liked it here.”

  “I love it here,” she said. “I’m coming to love the people here, too, and the land is beautiful. But it won’t be enough to satisfy me my whole life long, or you, either.” She laid a hand on his arm. “You need to find another Jaufre, and train him up as you are being trained. A trustworthy man from the village, known to the people here.”

  “Another Jaufre,” he said. “To take the reins when we are gone away for a time.”

  She grinned. “Someone, preferably, who won’t usurp us in our absence.”

  He took it to Tregloyne, who saw the sense of it at once. “You’ll be gone every summer on buying trips. You’ll need someone sensible in authority while you’re gone then, too. Let me think on it.”

  Shortly thereafter Shasha announced, “No one in Glynnow can read or write.”

  She looked at Tregloyne, who raised his hands. “And for what would they be needing that, lady?”

  “They at least need to know how to sign their names,” Shasha said severely.

  “They can make their mark like everyone else,” Tregloyne said.

  So Shasha started a school for the children at the house most afternoons, beginning with writing their names. She taught them in French, because it was the language of trade from Ludlow to Venice. Some of the children were very quick to learn their letters, some not so. The quicker ones she began to teach their numbers, too. If they were going to be members of a merchant’s company, they would be that much harder to cheat if they were in possession of both skills.

  During a spell of fine weather in February Alaric made another trip to Launceston, for salt for the kitchen, he said, but really for news, as they all well knew.

  While he was gone Angelique took advantage of that same fine weather to make a quick trip from Harfleur, carrying spices, dried fruits, bales of linen, wool and silk, and Firas.

  Shasha stood at the top of the path, watching the assassin take long strides toward her. They disappeared into their new room and were not seen again until the following morning, both ravenous with hunger. Alma and Hayat and Hari sent their regards from Paris, where Alma had discovered the existence of a library even larger than the one in Venice and had, according to Firas, been translated straight to heaven. Hayat had found a swordsman who didn’t disdain teaching a woman and a weaver of silk who was willing to take her on as a paying apprentice. Hari had disappeared inside the cathedral of Notre Dame, which in Firas’ opinion while magnificent did not hold a candle to Chartres.

  The Alps having proved passable, Firas continued on to Venice. “I found Ser Gradenigo at home,” he said, “and he is very excited about this venture of ours. His new ship is scheduled to be launched in May. He had me meet with the weavers’ guild, and they, too, are very excited at the prospect of getting their hands on English fleeces without having to pay excise taxes on them from Dortend to Cenis to Ravenna.”

  “And Laloun?” Johanna said. “Did Sieur Imbert have any word of her?”

  Firas smiled at her. “He did. She is working in his house. I spoke with her, and she is happy there.” HIs smile faded. “She was very sorry to hear of her mistress’ death, but she told me to say that she was glad she did not have to die in L’Arête.”

  “Any news of L’Arête?” Jaufre said.

  “There is rumored to be a new lord of L’Arête,” Firas said, “but nothing more than that. Except—”

  “Yes?”

  Firas toyed with his mug, making them wait. “This new lord seems less inclined to teach his tenants how to fly.” He looked up, smiling beneath his beard.

  “Do you think the new lord is Florian?” Johanna said.

  “Who knows?” Jaufre said, pushing himself to his feet. “And who cares?” He gave Firas a brief smile and went out. Johanna watched him leave but stayed where she was.

  Alaric returned home a few days later with a long face. “Parliament assembled at Westminster after Christmas, and insisted that Edward be replaced by the Duke of Aquitaine. It was done on January twenty-fourth, and the new king crowned on February first.” He shook his head.

  “The old king was a bad king, and bad for England,” Tregloyne said.

  “Perhaps,” Alaric said, “but the new king is barely fourteen years old. It is Isabella who rules England now, with her lover Mortimer at her side.”

  “What have they done with the old king?”

  “He is imprisoned in Berkeley Castle, under the closest watch.”

  “They should kill him and be done with it,” Tregloyne said.

  Alaric was shocked. “He was anointed by God!”

  “Proof positive that even God can make a mistake. He’s a constant danger to the new king, a point of rebellion for every noble who lost out in the new order. There are always some who back the wrong horse and are then aggrieved and scheming for revenge and redress. Pah.”

  “Tregloyne,” Johanna said, “I have often wondered why there is no priest in Glynnow.”

  Tregloyne’s smile was broad and sharp. “Why, lady,” he purred, “it is simple. There is no priest in Glynnow because there is no church in Glynnow.”

  Johanna laughed. Alaric looked perfectly appalled.

  Spring arrived like an invading army, if possible even more aggressively than the previous year, pushing aside the melting snow with vigorous shoots of green grass and brightly-colored wildflowers. Brambles sprouted a profusion of roses red, pink and white, swarmed over by bees drunk on nectar. Hawthorns budded in the hedges and the blooms perfumed the air with an aroma that was said to smell like a woman in need. Shasha harvested the flowers and the berries from one tree for the distillation of an excellent tonic for an unsteady heart, and then allowed herself to be seduced beneath it, all in the name of the study of medicine, she assured Johanna, who noticed that Shasha had had recourse to her special tea herself.

  Johanna and North Wind spent most of the daylight hours together and Glynnow became accustomed to the sight of the bronze-haired young woman clinging to the back of the great white stallion, the two of them galloping at full speed across the grass-topped cliffs of the coast. It was scandalous, to be sure, a woman on a stallion and that woman in trousers besides, but the people of Glynnow were learning to take a certain pride in the eccentricities of their new master and his woman. They certainly weren’t ordinary.

  Captain Angelique returned with the Faucon, and they gathered at dinner that evening to set out the details of the summer’s buying trip and fix dates for Faucon’s departures, hopefully with a hold full of high grade fleeces.

  “I know there is an excellent livestock fair at Launceston,” Jaufre said, “but then we’ll have to feed the pack animals all the way to Ludlow. I think we should wait and buy our pack animals there.”

  “You know what they’ll cost in Launceston,” Tregloyne said. “You have no idea what the prices will be in Ludlow.”

  “Even if they’re high, we’ll have saved on feed and pasturage en route.”

  “And we’ll be able to travel faster going north,” Johanna said.

  “Are we Wu Company, or Jerome’s Jongleurs?” Tiphaine said.

  “Wu Company,” Jaufre said firmly, and relented a little when the girl looked disappointed. “We can perform if the price is right, but we pick and choose and we don’t wear ourselves out singing. We’re traders first.”

  Tiphaine sighed.

  “Who runs things here?” Firas said.

  “Ah,�
� said Tregloyne, and beckoned to a small man with dark hair and eyes, calloused hands and an air of quiet authority. “This is Kevern. He is the headman of the village, and a carpenter by trade.”

  Johanna nodded. Kevern was responsible for most of the work done on the first floor of the house.

  “He’s a Glynnow man back ten generations. Everyone knows him and everyone trusts him, including me. And—” Tregloyne winked “—he has a large enough family that he’s happy for the extra income.”

  “How big?” Shasha said.

  “Thirteen,” Kevern said, not without pride.

  “Talan and Kerra among them?” Johanna said, Talan having said that his father worked with wood.

  He nodded.

  “And Cador, I believe,” Shasha said. “He’s one of my best students.”

  “So we leave Glynnow in good hands,” Tregloyne said, rubbing his own together. “How soon can we be off?”

  “The sooner the better,” Captain Angelique said.

  “The merchants of Harfleur anxious for our wool?” Alaric said, almost genially.

  “Better,” she said, and produced documents that guaranteed sales at a set price per bale that made Jaufre smile. “No limit on amount,” she said, pointing.

  “Well done, sister,” Alaric said, sounding almost respectful.

  Captain Angelique actually smiled.

  It seemed spring in England could cure anyone of anything.

  “Do we take North Wind?” Shasha said.

  “Can anyone stop him from coming?” Jaufre said.

  Johanna laughed.

  They set forth the first week of June, this time with Tregloyne in tow, who, having seen little of his native land beyond Exeter was anxious to see more of it before he set off with Captain Angelique to explore foreign lands. They performed as minstrels when the purse was right, and accepted those races for North Wind when those requests were made by those too powerful to refuse, but otherwise Jaufre was insistent that they move up the road with all dispatch. They took one detour for Alaric, passing near Berkeley Castle, where Edward of Caernarfon was imprisoned, and where they asked as many questions as they dared. Most were too wise to say anything, but one older farmer did say, “Oh, aye, they have the old poofter locked away up there. No one has seen him since they brought him in, but there is talk he won’t be there long.” He gave them a significant wink, downed his mead and went on his way.

  “A rescue attempt?” Jaufre said in a low voice.

  “Not much of one if the local people are already talking about it,” Alaric said, looking disgusted, and went off to find the tavern where the castle guards drank, because there was always that tavern in a fortified town. It was the one nearest the gate, called, imaginatively, the Crown and Castle. He returned late that evening to their campsite after they were all asleep.

  “No news of Wilmot, then?” Johanna said tentatively the next morning.

  Alaric shook his head.

  They hastened up the road to Worcester, where there was a fine livestock fair that was able to supply all their needs. They led this much longer caravan to Ludlow and environs—“Now it feels like we’re back on the Road,” Jaufre said, grinning —and spent the next eight weeks going from grazier to grazier, collecting fleeces as they went. They prospered so well that Jaufre began to wish they’d bought twice as many pack animals, but Johanna overruled him. “Better to sell all we have than have more sitting around mouldering in the cave,” she said. “Besides, we don’t know how many donkeys the Launceston livestock fair can absorb.”

  As it happened, the Cornish tin mines further west were always in need of more donkeys and they were able to dispose of their stock for a penny more per head, which even Johanna admitted was a triumph. They reappeared in Glynnow on the first of September to find that nothing had burned down and no landless lord had appeared to seize the estate by force. Kevern’s chest swelled when he reported the size of the harvest, and animals and villagers alike were healthy. Everyone fell to with a will to transport the bundles of fleeces to the cavern below, there to await shipment to Harfleur and, possibly even trans-shipment to Venice, if Gradenigo had managed to find his way up the coasts of Spain and France to the correct port.

  Jaufre, without prompting from Tregloyne, declared a holiday and held a harvest festival. Mead, wine and small beer ran like water and there was a whole roast pig and small mountains of fruit pasties. The company sang songs not yet heard by the villagers and Tiphaine startled them all by conducting a choir of village children performing “O Wandering Clerks.” Hearing those shrill young voices raised in that particular song took Johanna straight back to Kashgar and the first time she had heard Félicien sing it, dressed in her black robe and cap, her head thrown back, her high, pure voice rising up and reaching out and enveloping them all in song. She had to close her eyes against sudden tears. She felt Jaufre’s arm come around her and opened her eyes to see that his were wet, too. “We will not forget her,” he said.

  That night Jaufre said, “I love being on the Road, wherever it leads us, but it’s good to come home, too. For one thing, we don’t have to work so hard to find a place where we can be alone.” He closed the door of their own room firmly behind them, and dropped the bar into the brackets.

  Johanna reached for her braid and began to loosen her hair, her heart beating high in her throat. Was it like this for every woman and every man who came together? Perhaps she should ask Shasha.

  He walked toward her, pulling his tunic over his head, pushing his trousers down and kicking them to one side.

  Perhaps not.

  He reached up and replaced her hands with his own, unplaiting her braid and tousling the bronze-streaked hair into a wild mane. She shook it back from her face and raised an eyebrow, waiting. He smiled and reached beneath her tunic to yank her trousers down and pushed her on the bed. He thrust into her without waiting and she cried out at the shock, but she was ready for him. He reached between them and rubbed and she made a sound deep in her throat and tried to move her hips. He wouldn’t let her, holding her down, rubbing that place where all the pleasure came from. She whimpered. She begged. She pleaded. “Jaufre. Move. Please. Move.”

  “No,” he said, his voice a deep growl, and he shoved her tunic up and sucked a nipple hard into his mouth, and all the while he was this hard, hot, unmoving presence within her and all the while his thumb was rubbing, rubbing and she tried to move and couldn’t. She reached up and caught the hair at the nape of his neck in her hand, forcing him to look at her. His eyes were slits, his lips drawn back, his neck corded. She smiled, a feral, predatory smile, and contracted her muscles around him.

  He very nearly shouted. “Ah! Johanna! That’s not fair!”

  “Move,” she said, her turn to growl, and he did then.

  They lay together in an exhausted tangle, watching the last of the light leave through the tiny window in the thick stone wall. “Yes,” she said, her voice slurred from pleasure, “it is nice to come home.”

  He laughed and nuzzled her neck. “It almost doesn’t feel real.” When she raised her head and looked at him, he said, “I’ve thought of this, of us like this, for so long.” He traced the line of her spine. She arched involuntarily, and he smiled. “It’s still hard for me to believe this is real.”

  “Some people take a lot of convincing.” She touched his face, tracing his eyes, his nose, his lips, threading her fingers into his hair to pull him back to her. “So was it worth the wait?” she said against his mouth. When he didn’t answer at once she rolled on top of him, caging his hips in her thighs and shoving his arms back against the bed. His sex stirred against her and she smiled. “You are at my mercy,” she said. “Answer me, or be destroyed.”

  She looked flushed and triumphant and rumpled and he’d never seen anything so beautiful in his life. Best of all she was naked and in his bed, and so was he. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe I’ll take destruction.”

  A thunderous knocking woke them well before
dawn. “What?” Jaufre said, feeling for the sword that hung always within reach before his eyes were half open.

  “Who is it?” Johanna said, awake and alert in an instant and already pulling on her clothes. She heard doors opening and other voices, and when she had their door open everyone else was already in the hall and making for the stairs, and everyone was armed. “I knew things were going too well,” she said to Jaufre in an undertone.

  “Nonsense,” he said, stealing a quick kiss before leaping the last three steps into the great hall. He strode to the door and said in a loud voice, “This is Jaufre, master of Glynnow. Who disturbs our rest at this hour?”

  Tregloyne, last down the stairs, smiled.

  “Wilmot, friend to Alaric de Claret. I must speak with him.”

  Jaufre looked at Alaric, who stood next to him with his sword drawn. “Is that his voice?” Alaric nodded.

  They unbarred the door and Wilmot stumbled in. He was alone and distraught, and they immediately barred the door again behind him. Shasha stirred up the fire on the hearth and heated some wine and Wilmot drank it gratefully. He looked thinner than when they’d seen him last, and his clothes were worn and shabby. “What’s amiss, Wilmot?” Alaric said. “Is it the king?”

  Wilmot nodded as Shasha refilled his cup. “They’re going to kill him.”

  “Good,” Tregloyne said, but he said it beneath his breath and only Shasha heard him. She gave him a speaking glance.

  “There have been three attempts to free him,” Wilmot said, “one in April, one in July, and one just this month that nearly succeeded. Isabella and Mortimer will no longer tolerate his presence. It is too dangerous to them.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to get him out of Berkeley and across the Channel to the continent. You said you had a ship. Do you know when it will call here next?”

  “No, but soon,” Jaufre said. “The captain knows we have goods to carry to Harfleur at this time of year.”