by Lynn Kurland
Master Erneis, however, seemed even now to labor under the woman’s shadow. Anne couldn’t fault his knowledge, though, or his skill. But he was, after all, just a man. Anne wondered mightily if Berengaria might have possessed a few skills that no simple healer should have.
“My lady?”
Anne blinked, then shook her head. “Forgive me. My mind wanders.” She turned her attentions fully back to the table. Now that she was the lady of Artane, if only for a little while, it would behoove her to know more about the healing arts. That was why she had ignored her discomfort over the idea, forced herself to cross that courtyard with its smooth stone, and presented herself at the healer’s house for a lesson.
Even though the smell was less than pleasant.
The door opened behind her and Anne couldn’t help but feel a bit of relief over a possible reprieve. She looked behind her only to find Edith standing there. And in spite of herself, she shivered.
“Cold, my lady?” Erneis asked.
Anne shook her head. “Hungry perhaps. I should likely see to dinner inside. Thank you for your aid—”
She would have said more, but she caught a flash of silver and turned just in time to see Edith producing a blade from somewhere on her person. Anne shrieked, then watched the blade as it flew.
It pinned a rat to the floor.
Edith look at her with puzzlement. “My lady?”
“Nothing,” Anne rasped. “I’m overwrought.”
“I’ll walk back with you—”
Anne held up her hand. “Nay, Edith, but I thank you most kindly for the offer. I wouldn’t want to interrupt your business here.”
And with that, she moved as quickly as possible to the door and out into the fresh air. Once there, she lifted her face and looked into the late afternoon sky.
By the saints, she didn’t trust that woman.
“Lady Anne?”
Anne blinked, then saw Jason standing before her. She smiled in relief. Now that Jason was there, all would be well. Anne took his arm.
“The saints be praised,” she said with feeling as they walked slowly. “Would that you had come hours ago while I was captive in the solar.”
“Captive, my lady?”
“Joanna bade me stay until she had finished her work with your master. I vow if I’d had to put another stitch in a tunic, I would have gone mad. ’Tis only recently that I’ve escaped her.”
Jason cleared his throat, a bit uncomfortably to her ears. “I daresay, my lady, that my lord has the same feeling.”
Anne looked at him and smiled. “A difficult afternoon for him?”
“If he appears for supper, ‘twill be nothing short of a miracle,” Jason predicted.
“What could the lady Joanna possibly have done to him?” Anne asked in surprise.
“I couldn’t begin to describe it,” Jason said. “I’ll leave it to you to see the results.”
Anne kept her curiosity under control and ascended the steps carefully to the great hall. She watched her feet as she crossed to the hearth, lest she trip and take Jason down with her. He stopped and she stopped with him. She raised her head.
It was all she could do not to gasp.
Well, it was certainly Robin, but it was a Robin she had never seen before. She now understood what Jason had meant by stitches in tunics.
Never in her life had she seen a shirt so adorned with buttons, ribbons, and—this she could hardly believe—feathers. Anne looked down and marveled at the pointed toes of his shoes. She could scarce believe Joanna had convinced him to put them on. She worked her way up past the hose, back up past the bedecked tunic, and up to meet Robin’s scowl. She couldn’t tell if he was resigned or furious. She suspected it might be a bit of both.
Then there was his hair. It was substantially shorter, and Robin continually pulled on it, as if by doing so he could restore some of its length. One thing it did was reveal his ears, which she was certain she had never seen.
They were, she had to admit on closer inspection, perhaps ears that were better left under hair. They resembled his mother’s a great deal and such substantial protrusions were her bane.
And then a most startling realization struck her.
He was wooing her.
His grandmother had laid out in great detail her plans to civilize Robin, once she had poked and prodded enough to learn that Anne wasn’t praying for an annulment. Anne had listened politely, certain Robin would never, ever allow himself to be dressed up like a pampered lord at court.
Yet apparently he had.
For her.
Had she ever had any desire to laugh, it disappeared at the dangerous glint in his eye. She suspected that if she even came close to any expression of mirth, she would never be forgiven for it. So she put on the most serious look she could muster and moved to stand near him.
And then she sneezed.
Robin’s look of irritation had turned to faint alarm. She watched him sniff about his person anxiously. He wrinkled his nose at what he found, but shrugged it off. He turned to her and made her a low bow, sending another waft of perfume her way.
She sneezed thrice in rapid, uncomfortable succession.
“Something in the hearth,” she said quickly, waving her hand in front of her face. “Bad wood.”
Robin’s look of dismay didn’t diminish much, but at least he wasn’t making any more sniffing forays in his immediate vicinity.
And then the hall began to fill with garrison knights and the like, come to partake of their evening meal. Anne watched them catch sight of Robin and prayed—for their sakes—that they did not giggle.
Robin’s men, who either had been trained very well or were so battle-hardened that they were no longer surprised by anything, marched in and took their places happily at one of the lower tables. Rhys’s men, ones who were either less well-trained in keeping their thoughts to themselves or had just rotated in for their yearly service, stopped so suddenly in the middle of the hall that they formed a knot of men who were suddenly staggering about, trying to keep their feet.
Robin’s expression darkened considerably.
The gaping turned to grinning on some faces and Anne had the feeling those men would pay dearly for their sport at Robin’s expense. Robin gave her a curt nod before he strode across the rushes and stopped but a hand’s breadth before the foremost man.
“Something amuses you?” Robin demanded.
“Nay, my lord,” the man said, but he was unsuccessful in wiping the smile completely from his face.
Robin looked at the rest of the men gathered there. “Anyone else unable to repress their chuckles? Ah, I see a few lads here who find something to tickle them.”
“The feathers on your tunic, my lord,” one of the men said with a guffaw.
Robin found that man, put his arm around his shoulders, and led him to the other lower table. He beckoned to the other men and bade them sit as well.
Anne suppressed a shudder.
“Enjoy your meal,” Robin said, patting the shoulder of the first man he’d seated. “Then meet me in the lists.”
There was a small chorus of ready ayes. Robin walked back to the hearth, a satisfied smile on his face. He made Anne a low bow.
“My lady?”
She could hardly contain her surprise. “You aren’t going to kill them?”
Robin shot his grandmother a quick look and Anne turned in time to see her sharp shake of the head. He sighed.
“Apparently not. But fortunately my sire has a fine healer. I imagine he’ll be busy with much stitching tonight.”
“Robin,” Lady Joanna warned.
“Maiming, Grandmère,” Robin growled. “I promised no death, did I not? But that doesn’t mean they can’t be taught a lesson in respect.”
Clearly someone had informed the most outspoken of the lads of Robin’s reputation because there was a groan and thump as one man fell backward off the bench and cracked his head soundly against the floor under the rushes. Robin merely rai
sed his eyebrow and offered Anne his arm.
She took it, wondering absently just how Robin intended to teach anyone any lessons in the lists while wearing those shoes. He barely made it to the table without pitching forward half a dozen times.
She soon found herself on his right while his grandmother sat on his left. As she smothered a sneeze and began fanning away as surreptitiously as possible Robin’s perfume, she suspected that this might be one of the longest meals of both their lives.
“Ah, food,” he said as the dishes appeared before him. He placed his trencher directly before him and began piling a goodly amount of food atop it.
“Robin,” his grandmother whispered fiercely, “what do you?”
Robin’s sigh fair blew over his wine goblet. “I’m eating. I’m allowed to do that, am I not?”
He pulled off a huge piece of the trencher as well, and managed to get it most of the way to his mouth before aged, bony fingers came to rest on his arm. Rest was, perhaps, not the word for it. Anne watched in fascination as Joanna slapped her fingers on Robin’s arm and jerked it down.
Anne watched Robin turn to look at his grandmother. Joanna was making motions that he should replace the bread. Robin shook his head forcefully enough to send several feathers on his shirt flapping. His grandmother whispered something to him in urgent undertones. Robin cursed, then put the bread back on the table and made an attempt to rejoin it with the mangled trencher.
His grandmother began to sigh.
“What have I done now?” Robin demanded.
“Share your trencher with Anne, Robin,” Joanna exclaimed. “By the saints, boy, where have you been dining the past few years? At a trough?”
Robin grunted, but said nothing.
Anne soon found the trencher closer to her than it had been, but not by much. Robin almost managed to eat something, but he was again thwarted.
“The best pieces go to her.”
“Grandmère, I am fair starved to faintness!” Robin exclaimed.
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me!”
“What should matter to you, grandson, are your manners!”
Robin growled, then snatched a goblet and drank before he could be stopped.
“Wipe off where you’ve sipped, then offer it to your lady.”
Robin took the cloth that covered the table, wiped the rim of the cup, then began to wipe the rest.
“Best remove all my traces,” he grumbled. He then offered it to Anne with a scowl. “It would seem, my lady, that ’tis only now the cup is fit to drink from.”
Anne raised the cup to her lips, then couldn’t control the hearty sneeze she left lingering in said cup. Robin pursed his lips at her, then looked at his grandmother.
“What now, O Wisest of Advisors?”
A sharp slap to the back of his head left him hunching down over his half of the trencher. Anne couldn’t blame him. Between the perfume that emanated from his person and the feather that seemed to be protruding from his shoulder and lingering beneath her nose, it was all she could do to down anything at all for her sneezes. She had to admit it was with a sense of relief that the end of the meal came. Robin seemed to be just as relieved. He shoved his chair back from the table without hesitation the very moment he was allowed to.
“Jason!” he bellowed. “My boots!”
He stood, ripped off the tunic he wore, scattering feathers, buttons, and assorted other baubles across the table and floor. Several of Joanna’s following gasped in horror and leaped up to rescue their work. Robin sat down, jerked off his shoes, and flung them across the great hall as well. Anne could have sworn one of Joanna’s lads began to weep.
Robin stood up with a purposeful clearing of his throat. Mail was brought and donned. He turned and Anne found her hand grasped in his. He leaned over, then was stopped by his grandmother’s hand on his shoulder.
“You don’t kiss,” she said.
Robin turned and gaped at her. “What?”
“Isn’t that so, Stephen?” she asked one of her lads.
“Aye, my lady,” Stephen said, bounding over enthusiastically. “’Tis a new thing at court, but very well thought of, to my mind. The gentleman bends over the lady’s hand and feigns as if he kisses it. It leaves less spittle on her fingers, which might give her a distaste of him before he can pursue his suit with her.”
Robin’s jaw had gone slack. “What’s the point then?”
“’Tis all in the art, my lord. The art of wooing.”
Robin looked at him, then looked at Anne. She had never seen a more perplexed look on a body’s face. “He’s daft,” he said, then released Anne’s hand and backed away. He looked at Stephen. “I’m for the lists where when a man comes at you with a blade, he means it! By the saints, I do not understand this wooing business!”
And with that, he vaulted over the table and strode across the great hall.
“Out,” he said to his previously selected evening’s entertainment. “I’ve business with you all outside. In the lists,” he threw over his shoulder at his grandmother pointedly. “Where men are men and do manly things!”
The door banged shut behind him to be opened rather less enthusiastically by the men who followed him out. Anne watched them, then looked at Stephen and Joanna who were shaking their heads.
“I can wield a sword,” Stephen protested. “And very well, if I might say so.”
“Of course you can,” Joanna said. “You’ve merely chosen to spend your energies of late in studying the finer points of courtly manners. There is no shame in that.”
“Look at what he did to that tunic!” one of Joanna’s seamstresses said, holding out the offended garment.
“And the shoes!” the apparent keeper of the footwear said with a great deal of distress. “He caught me between the eyes with one of these!”
“He’s a barbarian,” another man said with a shudder.
“Aye,” Anne said happily.
“This will never do,” Joanna said with disapproval. “We’ll have to work on him again tomorrow, my friends. A good night’s rest and up early before he escapes off to the saints only know where.”
“He’ll never submit again,” a man said, a man who was sporting a very swollen and abused eye.
Anne could only assume he had tried to subdue Robin the first time.
“He will,” Joanna said, looking at Anne. “If he wants the prize, he will.”
Anne shook her head as she excused herself and made her way upstairs to Rhys and Gwen’s bedchamber. Her bedchamber, she supposed, though it was certainly not meant to be hers alone. Robin had likely had enough civilizing for his lifetime and she would only be surprised if she ever saw him anywhere else besides the lists.
But as she made ready for bed, she couldn’t stop either a final sneeze or a smile over his efforts that day.
Feathers and buttons indeed.
33
Robin awoke in his father’s solar, but couldn’t force himself to open his eyes yet. He remained rolled in a blanket on the floor and gave serious consideration as to whether or not all these machinations were worth it. Surely most men did not go through such tortures to woo their brides.
Nay, he thought with a snort, most men wed with women they scarce knew, much less loved, and the question of wooing did not enter into things. His was a different tale entirely.
He didn’t begrudge Anne her due. After all, she’d had to endure his poor manners for years. And he’d ruined her wedding day with the unfortunate incident in the chapel, though he wasn’t going to take responsibility for Isabelle losing her breakfast so abruptly.
In truth, though, he could scarce believe the events that had transpired on Artane’s holiest ground. He should have been more vigilant. He should have taken more time to investigate, though in fairness to himself, he had looked the servants over carefully several times. He had never seen Maude, of that he was certain.
Or had he, and just not realized who she was?
He had to concede that perhaps that was possible. He flexed his hands. Killing a woman—now that was something he had never had included in his lengthy list of deeds before. He sighed heavily. It wasn’t something he would have done, or could have done, had he known who it was who threw herself at Anne. How could he? No woman had ever felt even a blow from him, or the flat of his hand. Well, save Amanda, and he had only taken his brotherly due of a friendly swipe or two at her backside.
Nay, women were God’s most precious gift to man. He believed it fully. He had never betrayed that belief.
He sincerely hoped Anne would understand. It was not how he would have had her day proceed. He would do much to make it up to her.
But even with all that on his conscience and a fairly strong desire to redeem himself before his lady, he wasn’t sure he could bear another day of civilizing. Thrashing the lads in the lists the evening before had been satisfying enough, but he hadn’t been at his best and he blamed his grandmother for it. The anxiety he’d felt whilst trying not to trip in those damned shoes before supper had drained his strength. He would surely not be wearing anything else so foolish on his feet.
He opened his eyes, then yelped in surprise. His grandmother sat in a chair next to him. Indeed, she was fair sitting upon him and he could scarce believe he hadn’t heard her come in.
“You,” he said, sitting up and willing his heart to stop pounding, “are a wily old woman.”
She only smiled, a feral smile that set the hairs on his arms to standing. The saints only knew what she had in store for him today.
“Am I?” she asked pleasantly.
“Aye, you are, but you can cease with your plans for the day. I’ve business to attend to.”
“Your business is taken care of,” she said smoothly.
“What?” he exclaimed. “How could you possibly—”
“Know how to run a keep?” she finished. “I can do many things, whelp, not the least of which is keeping your father’s lovely hall from falling into ruin for the whole of a single day.”
Robin pursed his lips. “I have things only I can see to.”
“I think not. I’ve put one of my lads in charge of your business. Things will proceed perfectly well without you attending to them for one day. Besides, you have other things to concentrate on today.”