A Knight’s Enchantment

by Townsend, Lindsay

  “You are in good health?” he asked Joanna.

  “I know all about my daughter’s abduction, my boy,” murmured Solomon, wiping his long black mustache with his fingers, a habit of his when nervous. “There is no requirement to dissemble.”

  “I am in perfect health.” Joanna smiled at both men, thinking how bright and fair David was beside his dark, looming brother. Aware that David might report this to Hugh, she was gratified to add, “I have known worse roughhousing from Giles the spit boy.”

  Solomon raised his fine dark eyebrows and took a long drink of beer. David gave her a measuring glance, then nodded.

  “Hugh is the very best of brothers. I know he has a temper worse than fire, but I swear on my soul that he would never harm a woman.”

  “Amen,” said Joanna, thinking of the glove. Aside from her pride she was unhurt, but what is injured pride but a blow to the spirit? Would Hugh or David have liked a gauge thrust into their mouths to silence them?

  “But the hounds this morning?” Solomon asked. “I know those alaunts of old, and they are not cheerful beasts. Big as donkeys, too. Large, white donkeys with huge teeth.”

  “How did he persuade them to obey him? That I do not know. It is Hugh’s peculiar skill, and he has had that uncanny gift since boyhood. He is the same with horses. In the Arab kingdoms he would be much sought after, I warrant, as a keeper of hawks.”

  “Or women,” remarked Solomon unexpectedly, an interjection which Joanna found less than amusing. She raised a hand, wanting to distract her father, but David was already answering.

  “Ah, not women, my friend! My younger brother is a confirmed bachelor. Or, I should say, no woman has caught his heart yet.”

  Listening, Joanna found her own heart beating faster, although she told herself it was because of Bishop Thomas’s earlier threat. “You think he will return tomorrow?”

  “As certain as the rising sun. His word is as strong as Saladin’s.”

  Even in West Sarum they had heard of the famous, chivalrous Saladin, scourge of King Richard while that great warrior king was on crusade. Another time and Joanna might have prompted David for a tale of Saladin, or of the wise men of Saladin’s court, for David knew many such stories and was well versed besides in the learning of the Arabs. He knew a little of her work and they had spoken together of it. He had read the famous texts of Jabir and had even heard of Joanna’s own heroine of alchemy, Maria the Jewess. Today, though, her interest was in the Templar’s younger brother.

  “Is he learned? Cultured?”

  “My brother? I doubt it. He cannot read and his signature sprawls like a spider’s web. He knows nothing of music and less of mathematics.”

  “You cannot pick his brains for the red work, then,” said Solomon, chewing now on a lump of cheese.

  “As if I would!” Joanna told herself it did not matter. She already knew that Hugh Manhill was a scoundrel, so why should his lack of refinement disappoint her?

  “He is no fool, my brother,” David added quietly. “Unlike some.” He half turned to admit the smiling, sated Mercury into their midst.

  “If Mercury is slow-witted, then I am a bear,” Joanna whispered back.

  “Surely a bear cub?”

  “Hush!” She was never comfortable when the Templar knight flirted with her. A donjon was no place for courtly games, least of all when she and her father had been threatened with the underground prison and David himself held as a blasphemer. “This is not the time!”

  “Nor the place,” David agreed. “Good meal?” he asked Mercury in the tongue of the Languedoc. “I notice you ate all the fish.”

  “But yes, it was so delicious and I was so hungry,” Mercury replied, bowing over Joanna’s hand as if she were the lady of the bishop’s palace. “Do not look so troubled, Joanna, my heart! My memory will return”—he tapped the side of his head and snapped his fingers—“and I will bear you off to my manors and farms, to eat more fine things and dress in cloth of gold.”

  “You have seen cloth of gold, then?” Joanna countered. “You remember it?”

  “But yes! Though when you smile I forget again. It is a shimmer of a thought, no more.”

  “Still, that is progress if you can recall anything, and know you have manors,” Joanna remarked, charmed but not convinced by Mercury’s boyish smile. “How is your head today?”

  “It aches,” came the predictable response, while he bethought himself to pat one side of his perfectly shaven cheek. “I think it aches a little less. But perhaps not. Who knows? Not I! I do not remember my own name!”

  Joanna avoided David’s quizzical eye. Over these last few days she had often wondered how much of Mercury’s memory loss was real. He had been brought in a few days earlier, with the rabble of prisoners now caged in the yard. Those men were notorious brigands, well known in the district for mayhem and kidnapping, and although Mercury appeared to be of their party, he had been brought in unconscious and when he stirred, he swiftly denied being one of their “gang.” He had denied everything: who he was, where he was, and what he was doing in woods close to West Sarum. His fine dress had attracted Thomas’s greed and interest and the bishop had ordered him brought up here, to be kept safe with the other “special” prisoners.

  Since then, Mercury had rapidly recovered his appetite while at the same time he continued to assert that he had no idea who he was. If that was true, Joanna wondered how he could be so carefree. But Mercury was clearly of a sanguine humor.

  “Do you ever wonder what will happen if you never remember?” David asked, but Mercury merely shrugged.

  “Someone will know who I am.”

  “Suppose no one comes?” David persisted.

  “Like your order?” Mercury replied, with that quickness—slipperiness—that Joanna had named him for.

  “That is enough,” one of the guards warned, with uncanny timing, saving the young Frenchman the trouble of adding more. “The prisoners have eaten now and Joanna must go back to her studies.” The guard spoke gently: Joanna had given him a tincture last summer that had eased the aches and pains of his grandmother.

  There was nothing else for Joanna to say or do but gather up the baskets and leave. This guard at least allowed her to embrace her father, and as she did so Solomon whispered the ancient alchemical wisdom: “One becomes two, two becomes three. Mark it well, my daughter!”

  “Out of the egg comes gold,” Joanna replied, speaking this secret of “red work” to give him heart and to encourage herself.

  But how would she find gold in less than a month? And if she did not, what would happen to Solomon?

  Leaving the baskets with the spit boy, she climbed the stairs back to her chamber workshop with an uneasy mind and an aching heart.

  Chapter 3

  She lost herself in work, spending hours refining an elixir that Bishop Thomas had demanded of her to give him more “manly vigor.” Joanna dared not suggest that such potions were unseemly for a man of God. She could only pray that if her lord was thinking of using the mixture with someone, that the person he desired also wanted him.

  Calling it a love elixir made her hands more nimble as she pounded together dill, thyme, garlic, and yarrow for vigor, adding mint for good digestion and marigold for the couple’s hearts. Simmering and distilling what remained, drawing off impurities, testing its color by candle flame, Joanna tried to focus on excellence.

  Toward midnight, opening the narrow door to her chamber and allowing the moonlight from the arrow slits to clothe her workshop all in silver, she found herself thinking not of the work, or gold, but of love. When would she know love? When would her essence mingle with another’s?

  She remained standing at an arrow slit for so long that she fell into a curious dreaming state: a daydream at night. She was walking beside a shallow, sparkling river with a long-stemmed red rose in her hand. A man strolled with her, his arm threaded through hers, his face in shadow from the overarching trees. He pointed to an alaunt, splashing in t
he water, and they both laughed at the dog’s play. Then he turned to ask her something and she saw his face.

  It was Hugh Manhill.

  It means nothing, Joanna told herself for the hundredth time the following morning. A daydream of Hugh Manhill is just that, a dream.

  Still, she could not shake off feelings of excitement and anticipation. Her heart kept racing and her breath shortened each time she thought she heard horses outside. The very palms of her hands tingled as she sped about her workbench, endlessly checking, endlessly devising reasons why she had to leave the corbel-roofed chamber and peer out through the arrow slits into the yard.

  If I am looking out for him, she told herself, it is only as a favor to David. I can call out to David when Hugh returns.

  She did not consider for a heartbeat that Hugh would not come back.

  Even so, she could not forget the threat looming over herself and her father. That, and professional pride, ensured that she made the bishop’s “love” potion with the utmost care and skill.

  She was pouring the sweet-scented elixir carefully into a very pretty blue glass bottle when Richard Parvus reappeared in her doorway.

  “Bring your toys,” he ordered her brusquely, hovering on the threshold in a miasma of pursed-lipped disapproval. “That Manhill pestilence is back and our master wants a show.”

  “He is here? Already?” Unconsciously, Joanna put her hand up to her lips as her heart stampeded within her body. She was about to see Hugh Manhill again. Would he speak to her? Had he dreamed of her, too?

  “A show, girl! Or is even that beyond you?”

  “Will it be here? I can assay gold here in my furnace and test Manhill’s coin to see if it is pure gold.”

  “My lord hold an audience in this poky, stinking chamber? I think not.”

  “But still a show?” she asked, disappointed that Hugh Manhill would not see her workspace or her greater skill. Attempting alchemy in the audience chamber would be almost impossible: the fire there would not be hot enough to drive off impurities from the materials she used. But she could do one thing, she thought, dipping beneath her bench to find a large carrying basket and sling. “Naturally, I can do that.”

  This was not the first time she had been compelled to corrupt her work. And she would have to give Thomas his potion some time in her “performance”: the bishop would expect it. The thought of handing over that pretty blue bottle while Hugh Manhill watched made her want to crawl into her furnace and shrivel away into ashes—yet what did Manhill’s opinion matter?

  She began placing candles, cinnabar, and other ingredients in the basket. “I will exceed all wishes and expectations,” she added as her heart felt to plummet somewhere deep into her belly and then instantly began to rise, like a skylark, in a sweet blaze of excitement. “But I shall need more supplies afterward. I will need to go into the city to fetch them. Please tell my lord bishop this.”

  “If it were up to me, you would not go.”

  “But it is not, sir, and the bishop will allow it.”

  “Foolishness!” grumbled Richard Parvus, starting back down the stairs.

  Joanna ignored him as she rapidly gathered the rest of her equipment. A visit to the city would give her a chance to visit other scholars and alchemists within West Sarum, and she did not intend to waste it.

  Yet, as she carried her things down from the tower, step after step, taking care not to spill anything or jostle the volatile substances, her main thought was of Hugh.

  I am about to see him again.

  Hugh had brought the bishop’s scribe with him, returning the hostage as a sign of his good faith. To reinforce his argument, he had also brought along half his men, treasure, plate, coin, and Beowulf, who would show the alaunts how to behave. Beowulf growled as they entered Thomas’s audience chamber, hung today with silks and tapestries, and Hugh touched the wolfhound lightly on the neck.

  “I dislike it here, also,” he said softly, “but we must do this for David.”

  His brother was already waiting in the chamber, un-chained, standing pale but steady between two heavily armored guards. Hugh’s spirits leapt to see him—today, they would walk out of Thomas’s palace and ride at full tilt as they used to as boys. Today they would drink a lake of ale in every ale-house they found, and wink at every tavern wench, and—

  Joanna is here.

  Hugh straightened, conscious of the single glove at his belt. For a foolish moment he tried to make himself smaller, hunching over Beowulf as his face and body sweated, as hot as if he had run a mile in armor. She was not even turned to him but he would know her anywhere: that bright riot of waving brown hair, monk-brown robe, and trim figure.

  She had her back to him and he saw the supple arch of her body as she leaned over a low table, busy with bowls and cloths. She crouched lower, bending to pour something, and the pert roundness of her bottom was instantly suggested by the curving pleats of her skirts. It would be a lush pleasure for her sweetheart to throw up her gown and have her there, facedown across the table, amidst the shimmering bowls.

  Hugh felt himself immediately aroused by the image and the idea. Trying to disguise his state he crouched and fiddled with his boot ties, glad of the distraction when Beowulf attempted to lick his ear. “Down!” he muttered, both to the dog and to himself.

  Somehow, Joanna heard him and now she twisted about to face him, her robe slapping against the table leg as her head snapped upward. He braced himself for a glare, for her to jab her own lips, for her to protest to her lord. Instead, she nodded at David, as if silently saying, “Here is your brother. Do your best for him.”

  I will, he thought, glad of the reminder, gladder still that she was there. He did not wonder at the reason why: to see her again and realize that she did not consider him lower than a worm was sufficient. Still kneeling, he smiled at her, while the bishop’s steward cleared his fat throat and called for quiet.

  He was grinning at her, the arrogant pig. No, Hugh Manhill was no pig: he was too large and fast. A modern Goliath, Joanna decided, thinking she had wasted her silent warning on him. If he gained his brother she would be overjoyed, but if he failed today, David would be the loser. She sent up a swift prayer for Manhill’s calm success as Bishop Thomas settled more comfortably on his chair and resumed “negotiations.”

  “I have seen better silver cups in a common tavern,” he started, smirking at his steward, “and more gold under a peasant’s mattress. Do you think such paltry offerings will redeem your brother, Hugh de Manhill?”

  Joanna glanced anxiously at Hugh, whose color and countenance had not changed as he rose slowly to his feet. Only his trim, well-brushed wolfhound, glowering at the cowering alaunts, revealed any tension.

  “This is for his lodgings only.” Hugh swept a negligent arm in the direction of the treasure chest and bags of coins. “I have more in readiness for his release.”

  Thomas raised his eyebrows. “And the relics? My relics?”

  “You have your scribe,” Hugh reminded him, nodding to the man, “and it is no grief to me to speak to the Templars.” He ignored David’s slight head shake and spread his hands, inviting a response.

  Instead of which there was silence, broken only by Parvus’s harsh nasal breathing and the cheeping of sparrows nesting in the roof.

  “How now, my lord bishop?” Hugh asked softly, as the silence drew on. “Or shall I speak of the rumors I have heard concerning the lascivious corruption present in this see?”

  Watching with lowered head through half-closed eyelids, Joanna felt herself becoming more uneasy. So far, her lord had not asked Hugh to approach or be seated on one of the benches lining the walls of the audience chamber. He was even sucking a sweet—no doubt one of her peppermint pastilles, which Thomas insisted that she make. In a dragging, clammy realization, she recognized that he was merely toying with Hugh. A quick look at David’s tense, unhappy face told her that he thought so, too.

  But I cannot help!

  “Idle goss
ip,” Thomas observed, refusing to be drawn on the murky matter of his own morals. “I am waiting to be amazed.”

  That was an omen to her, and a cue she could use. Before she thought herself out of it, or became too afraid, Joanna acted.

  “My lords!” Calling out, she stepped away from the low table, unfurling the huge circular sheepskin she had brought down with her as she swept a deep curtsy to her lord and everyone in the room. Briefly as she bowed she saw Hugh’s deep blue eyes, darker than the lapis lazuli she used in her work, fix upon her and stay with her. He was frowning, whether at her or for her she could not tell.

  There was no time to tell: she must be swift and faultless and win the attention she had commanded.

  “Look, my lords. Witness and observe.” She whirled the sheepskin about her where it draped across her narrow shoulders in folds of shimmering gold. She moved to catch the light from the half-open shutters and heard the muted gasps at her sparkle.

  “My fleece of gold, my masterwork,” she intoned, feeling the men in the room sublimate to her—be ignited and changed by her—a heady feeling, if she allowed it to take hold. She raised her arms, holding the pose for an instant.

  The fleece shimmered about her, seeming to draw the day and candlelight to it. It was a real golden fleece, its wool drenched in gold that Joanna had painstakingly gathered from many streams in a bare, treeless land far to the southwest of here, where she and her father had spent a joyous free summer between patrons. Following the advice of an ancient copper miner for whom she had made a pain-relieving salve, Joanna had taken a sheepskin and pegged it in a stream. The following day she had lifted out the dripping fleece and found it had snagged small nuggets of gold.

  There had been many other strips of fleece and other streams since then and now this cloak was the result: heavy with gold and iron pyrites—fool’s gold—and painted over by Joanna herself with liquid gold. It gave her presence and weight and wearing it always gave her confidence, as if some of the spirit of that great female alchemist, Maria the Jewess, had passed into her.