I knew not what he meant, lifted my hand for the knife, but he struck it aside and put his mouth on mine, carefully transferring the ugly weapon to my teeth. I stood like a surprised dog who’s caught a bone, not knowing if I would be struck or petted for my trick. Enoch sprang back and whirled into the sulfurous mist as I slipped the sharp steel up my sleeve.
“Swill the yil-caup!” chanted the swarthy legions around me. “Bouse at the nappy.”
Needing no further urging, I drank eagerly from a large cup of ale. Then the traitorous false-friend Gruoth grabbed my arm.
“Cum, lass, ’tis time to be wed.”
I pushed her away and waved my skean dhu. “Don’t dare touch me, Gruoth. I’ll have no more weddings at the point of a knife!”
“’Tis Enoch’s orders,” quoth she, as if citing Scripture. “Ye mun be handfasted befar it has meaning.”
Even in my jug-bitten state, I comprehended she was saying that in some manner I was not yet espoused.
“I’ll not do it,” I proclaimed loudly. “Kill me dead if you will, but I’ll not be wed more.”
I might escape my fate yet.
But I was scooped up in strong arms, hoisted atop a sea of knarry shoulders and rode my human raft toward the river. In front of me sizzling pine torches showed the outline of Enoch who rode his own litter down the steep spinney. Yellow smoke rose from the torches and wound around the fingery branches. Suddenly we were by the river, water dark as a black cat’s blood. Ah, I thought, we’ll wed under water like monsters of the deep. Better that than nuptial bed. I was placed on a wide flat rock that jutted into the river. On the opposite side, Enoch was put down on a comparable spit that almost closed the tide. Only a narrow rill separated us, though a gulf as wide as the sea was between us in spirit.
Enoch sucked his thumb and thrust it toward me.
“Put yer thumb to yer tongue and touch his,” Gruoth ordered.
I did so. His thumb was as ice-cold as all demons’ are.
“Alix of Wanthwaite, I noo do handfast thee as my wife as lang as both shall live,” Enoch boomed in the stilly night.
“Now ye mun say the same,” Gruoth whispered, her eyes dead oysters in the dark.
“Never,” I said firmly and yexxed.
“Say it, Alix,” she warned. Suddenly she pushed me and the oily current yawned up to take me, except that the wench held my tunic in her hand. Deus juva me, better a knife at my throat than a plunge into that icy grasp.
I said the words.
“Very good, Alix; now hald this in yer hand.” She pressed a denier into my fingers. “Gi’e it to him.”
I did so, not liking the symbolism at all.
Then I repeated the words as she instructed: “Catch the plack, dear husband, for what is mine be also thine.”
However I felt somewhat better when Enoch said the same words and gave me a coin of his own.
Then we turned around thrice as the Scots chanted and waved the torches in eerie arcs over our heads. Owls hooted nervously in the void.
“Ah, ’tis a sign of the good witch Abunda when houlets croon,” Gruoth sighed. Together we stared upward at a shadow on the moon and I remembered how I’d received my caul the last time.
“Spring o’er the gutter, groom,” the men shouted at Enoch.
He did so, pulled to safety by Gruoth’s strong hand. My heart pounded in fear as he towered close in the darkness.
Gruoth’s husband, a sandy-topped wight with a turned-up snout, joined us on the rock.
“Time to eat the infar. Enoch gaes first, then the bride.”
He produced a round of shortcake; Enoch ate half, and I finished it. There was frenzied applause, and we were once again hoisted, this time to ride close as the panting Scots carried us back up the hill. Into the hall we went and were deposited on the hearth. Enoch handed me a broom.
“This tong be the symbol of our home together, wife. Clean it fer me.”
“Sweep,” Gruoth whispered.
I took a few awkward swipes.
“Noo ye be truly wed,” Donald cried. “Gi’e her a kiss, mon. She willna bite.”
I set my teeth to do just that, but Enoch attacked me like a tiger, pressing his own fangs into my mouth so that only his strong arms kept me from tumbling backward. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, thought I would be the first bride since the world began to be suffocated to death by her nuptial kiss. Dimly I heard shouts of laughter around us. Finally the Scot drew away, his eyes as black as the icy reams of the river.
“Awwww, dinna stop noo, lad,” Donald wheedled, “give her tither skelpin kiss.”
Enoch turned away. “Push me too far, lads, and I willna be able to stop!” There was another roar of mirth, as my own heart froze.
Again the dancers twirled. Again I swilled from cogs and cups as fast as they were offered. The villagers were now sufficiently jug-bitten to jig and whirl with the skirted savages and I danced with Archie, Thorketil, Tom and I know not who else, everyone I trowe. Then finally the torches burned low, the sky showed a faint gray and the moment could be put off no longer. Once again Enoch and I were half-carried, half-pushed up the narrow steps to my parents’ chamber.
“Blow the buck’s horn fer a merry hunt!”
“Reach fer the finch, mon!”
“Dight the bridge and tomorrow ’twill gae easier!”
“Spend every drop of gold! ’Twill replenish faster!”
“’Tis best to croke bolt upright!”
“Suck the cud, stick the hole and yell kape happy cows!”
Faces leered into the dark chamber; voices chanted lewd japes. Enoch laughed, then waved his candle and kicked the door shut.
He stood with his back to me, listening to the noisy crew outside. The candle flickered in his hand, the smoke curled around the outline of his wavy locks, and I held the little skean dhu in my fist ready to defend my honor.
I counted two hundred and forty-nine heartbeats before he turned. ’Twas the length of time it took for me to become cold sober. Carefully he placed the candle on a small trestle and walked toward me. My stomach tightened; my fingers twitched. And he passed me by. Puzzled, I turned to see him grope atop the bed. Then he jerked off a fur mantle and threw it to the floor by the wall as rosehips and laurel rained in the air. He rolled himself in the fur and lay still as a stone.
After a very long silence, I sat on the bed.
“Are you going to sleep on the floor?” I asked.
“Dinna ask tinty questions.”
I stared at the candle. “I suppose you don’t care that you’ve taken the only pelt. I’ll freeze.”
“For Goddes sake, slape between the mattress and board. And blaw out the light.”
Somewhat deflated by this anticlimax to the day, for I’d been preparing for a brawl, I killed the flame and climbed onto the hard splintery boards. I’d never intended for us to sleep together, but I’d wanted to reject him, looked forward to the moment as my only pleasure.
“You’ll not get Wanthwaite by marrying me, you know,” I said bravely, though our situation mocked my words.
His answer when it came showed that he was no more sleepy than I. “I paid King Richard a thousand silver livres for Wanthwaite.”
Shocked and a little flattered, I gasped, “You paid the king a thousand livres for me?” Never mind that he’d earned the money by selling me, ’twas a handsome sum.
He snorted like dry husks rubbing. “Nay, Alix. I bought the apple, got the worm fer free.”
“I think you forget that the worm owns the apple.” Then I could have bit my tongue for accepting his comparison. “And I’m not a worm.”
“Nay, I shouldna insult the wee slimy beasties, fer they’re honest snakes fer all they havena much appeal. Boot ye live to lie!”
I sat up. “I lied to live! My father told me to lie about my sex if that’s what you mean. He said I couldn’t move a yard as a girl or I’d be killed or abducted by some greedy varlet who wanted my estate. And you’ve
proved him right!”
“Filling me with false feinyeit words, making gekkis at me behind my back, pretending to be my brother! Ye’re a fork-tongued asp!”
“Better your brother than your wife! You learn on one day that I’m female and the very next day you contrive to get a writ to marry me! You’ve ruined my life!”
He, too, sat up, now a dark gray silhouette in the predawn. “I promise ye on my honor as a MacPherson, Alix, that ye and I will ne’er be wed in fact. I war forced to gae through the public act, same as ye, but I’ll not touch yer midding hole as long as I live.”
He thumped to the floor again and disappeared under his fur. I, too, squirmed underneath my mat but was too angry to sleep. King Richard and now Enoch, both of them repulsed by my body.
I watched the sky lighten at the arched window where my mother had groaned aloud for my father that last night, and thought of them in a new way, as a happily married couple. I believed they might be unique in the history of mankind. How I envied them! How I missed them still!
I watched the dawn through the prism of my own tears, sighed, reviewed the chain of events since I’d returned to Wanthwaite. When I reached my present point, I sat up suddenly in my bed.
Benedicite! Where was my head? Enoch had just made the most stupid blunder he possibly could. By canon law, if we didn’t consummate, we weren’t married at all in the eyes of the Church. Annulment was the simple matter of telling the priest!
I would have to give it a little time, of course, to make my complaint credible, but I could wait. I was still free after all! I went to sleep finally with a smile on my lips.
I WOKE TO THE HEAVY RATTLE AND SLURP OF RAINFALL. A puddle spread under the window, the air was thick and chill. Then I remembered Enoch. I peeked over my mattress: the fur was in a tangle, the Scot gone. Benedicite, my fantastick cells had swollen to twice their normal size, my tongue seemed to grow hair as if I’d dined on raw persimmons. I tried to recall my euphoria at dawn and the reason for it, but my roiling innards took precedence.
A few moments later, I stood at the top of the stair gazing down on an army of Scots laboring to put the hall in order. Rain came unimpeded through the new roof where the smoke hole had once been, so that the men and women sloshed in water ankle-deep as they tried to dismantle the dais, push away the soaked rushes and damp ashes from the fireplace. Shivering, I went back to the chamber and pulled Enoch’s sleeping fur over my shoulders before I descended to help.
“How did ye fare last nicht, Alix?” Gruoth greeted me boldly.
“How do you suppose?” I half-snarled. “Marriage at the point of a dagger is not conducive to love.”
She bridled. “I anely followed orders. Enoch sayed as how ye was tinty and couldna be trusted.”
Suddenly I recalled the reason for my early euphoria. Deus juva me, I could use this wench as my first witness.
Noting the avid eyes of two hussies squatted behind her, I leaned forward and whispered: “Nothing happened last night.”
“Nothing?” she asked aloud.
Signaling for her to be discreet, I leaned again. “He wants only my estate, not me.”
She tried to look surprised but her broad face was transparent and she knew I spoke the truth. “’Twill get better; it always do,” she muttered, and squeezed my hand.
Well, I’d made a start. She was too Scottish to be a primary witness, but she would be able to corroborate my plaint.
Enoch and a half dozen men then returned to the hall. “Ah, there she be,” he said curtly, nodding toward me. “Alix, gae to the chamber.”
None of the men who’d danced so gaily with me yesterday deigned to greet me even that much. I stared at my “husband” and the group around him, at first not comprehending this unfriendliness. They were not hostile: ’twas more as if I didn’t exist. I’d been a bride with an estate to covet: now I was a wife, chattel to the man who’d won my estate. Stunned to be so abruptly demeaned from baroness to drudge, I glanced at Gruoth and the women around her. Had they, too, gone through such a transformation? Aye, I believe they had.
“For what purpose should I go to the chamber?” I asked Enoch.
“Because I say so,” he snapped, his brow twisting.
“For what purpose?” I repeated.
He flushed as he leaned to me. “We mun talk about money, wife. We mun spend or starve. Be that clear enow?”
“I’ll meet you when the bell rings Sext,” I said. My heart was quaking but I kept my eyes steady.
“At Sext,” he conceded, and turned back to talk to the men.
THE SCOT CARRIED A CANDLE INTO the chamber, though ’twas the middle of the day, and placed it close to the bed. He then pulled two faldstools for us, using the bed as table, and spread three pages of water-streaked vellum on the mat.
“These be yer father’s records,” he began.
I pulled them close. Aye, ’twas my father’s hand.
“’Tis an inventory of all the equipment ye own—rather, that ye shuld own yif the estate is to work. Read it.”
I took the proffered sheet and saw a long list of animals and machines: two teams of six oxen each, fifty sheep to be herded by Ted, fifty by Bruce, a pigeoncroft with sixty birds, plows, saddles, chickens, pigs, horses and many other items where the writing grew small at the bottom. The Scot took the sheet and handed me another.
“This be services: baking, milling, cutting, planting, with a list of villeins and half-villeins. Those at the top in the second column be cottars.”
This was not what I’d expected at all, but I read every word with great care so I couldn’t be trapped.
“All animals and equipment hae been stolen. We have no pens for beasts, no shelter for workers, the mill wheel be rotted, the oven rusted. In short, My Lady, our condition be desperate.”
“I see.”
“Good, I hope ye do.”
He took the vellum back and rolled it tight.
“Yer father says in one place that he hae bought oxen with silver fram the treasure.”
Finally I saw his drift. My back stiffened and I stared at the slanted rainfall.
“Ye’ll take me to that treasure,” he said flatly.
I turned wide eyes. “I know of no treasure. If my father wrote that—and I didn’t see it myself—-he may have meant his silver scabbard, or maybe our silver nef which I vaguely recall.”
The Scot ran his tongue over his teeth and then pressed his lips. “I didna expect this to be easy, knawing well how ye ate and took fram me on the road whan all the time ye carried a fortune between yer legs.”
“Or what you thought could make a fortune,” I interrupted, referring to my false prick and his selling me to Richard, but he was too dense to comprehend.
“’Twar a fortune!” he shouted. “I felt it myself in Messina whan ye were hit by the broadsword. Saw it when ye swam. Ye didna pluck it fram trees. Yer father tald ye where to dig it up, and ye dug before ye left.”
“My father never told me a word about any fortune,” I replied truthfully; ’twas my mother who’d shown me.
“Then mayhap yer mother,” the Scot guessed with uncanny shrewdness. “Well, well, fer once ye looked guilty, caught in a lie.”
He leaned back, triumphant.
“Stop grucching about the money you spent on me,” I retorted, thinking it better to lead the subject away from the treasure. “I always meant to pay.”
I fumbled in my tunic, found a notched stick and threw it on the bed; took a drafsack from my waist and threw that as well.
“That’s a record of your expenditures and a bag of silver with the exact amount.”
Quickly he produced a notched stick of his own and held the two sticks side by side. “Why do ye not have this dent?” he asked, pointing to a notch on his stick.
I studied it. “That’s the period when you were with your hussy Poll, by the Rhône River. I was with Richard and Ambroise.”
He turned choleric red.
“However,” I
continued, “you’ll note that I am willing to pay for crumbs you gave me even when I served the king and supped most often with him.”
He flung the sticks down and pounded the bed so the silver jumped. “I doona want yer paltry payment! I canna run Wanthwaite on buckets—I mun go to the well!”
“Go to the well where you drew a thousand livres to purchase my estate!” I shouted, jumping to my feet.
He jumped as well, inadvertently pulling the silver so it spilled on the floor. “And it’s now mine! I’ll permit ye to live here and grub, but ye’ll pay yer way, by God!”
“I have!” I cried. “Haven’t I just offered you a small fortune?”
“I won’t take it!”
”’Fine. I’ll take it back then, but never accuse me of stealing from you again.”
I bent to collect the coins; just as quickly Enoch stooped as well and we bumped our heads with a mighty thump.
The next thing I knew, I was lying cradled in Gruoth’s lap and was surrounded by a circle of faces, Enoch’s in the middle.
“Where is …?” I tried to raise my head. The silver had disappeared. One look at Enoch’s bland innocent face told me where it had gone. He grinned like a cat licking cream from his whiskers, but the predatory gleam in his eye told me that he wouldn’t be satisfied till he’d eaten the pet bird as well.
Three days later thirty-eight men and women departed for Scotland in order to avoid the winter snows, leaving Gruoth, an older woman called Matilda, their husbands Donald and Dugan as well as six other knights, Enoch and me to contend with the elements here in Wanthwaite. Now the work began in earnest.
Our foremost problem was food. We all hunted every day. Gruoth and Matilda rode with bunched skirts, arrows over their shoulders, and both brought home at least a squirrel every time out. The men used Scottish deerhounds to go after the hart and managed to bring down three in as many weeks. For expedience, I donned my Plantagenet boy’s outfit to hunt and often went alone for wild goose and duck, plover, curlew, crane and dottrel. Oft I thought of burying my mothers vial and my fathers sword, but dared not go to the silver trove for my father’s sword, lest Enoch see me.
Alix of Wanthwaite 01 - Shield of Three Lions Page 50