The Valcourt Heiress

by Catherine Coulter

  “That is nonsense. Only a blockhead would believe that.”

  “You, a simple girl of no importance at all, dare to call me a blockhead? Do you know, if you were a man I would likely throw you off this wall for calling me that? As for you, if I wished, I could throw you off this wall with one hand.”

  She appeared to think about that. “Very well, in that case, I will mind my tongue even though it is sometimes difficult.”

  He could but stare at her. She’d sounded wicked, and she’d done it on purpose. He found he was charmed to his boot heels. He said suddenly, “I remember my father believed a woman should be chastised whenever she misspoke to her lord.”

  “I should chastise a man if he misspoke to me. What is your point?”

  “I mean he struck her when it pleased him to do so.”

  “I should kill my husband whilst he slept if he struck me.”

  “You sound much too fierce to be a girl of no importance at all. No, now don’t make up a new lie. Actually, I do not remember his ever striking her. But enough of that. Last night I could hear Miggins snoring from thirty feet away, over all the snoring of my men. And you slept beside her.” He eyed her. “Ah, why do you not sleep in the small chamber where your father slept?” He immediately raised his hand. “I know, I know, it pains you too much to sleep there.”

  “Very well, I will not tell you that.”

  “Then tell me how you slept with Miggins snoring in your ear?”

  She gave him a big grin that made him stare at her mouth and at the deep dimple in her cheek.

  “I sang to myself,” she said, “sang every song I knew until I was so bored I fell asleep. When I opened my eyes, it was morning.”

  “Sing me one of your songs.”

  She cocked her head and sang in a pure, sweet voice,“I was a simple angel,

  Sitting on a cloud,

  A fair knight smiled up at me

  And beckoned, voice loud

  to come to him.

  “I left my cloud and flew to earth

  But it was not my fate.

  I died since I’m an angel,

  Not meant to pass through earthly gates.”

  “I have never heard that song before. Your voice is acceptable, but your song is too sad. It is the saddest song I’ve ever heard.”

  “Sad? Aye, I suppose that it is, but surely not the saddest. I wrote it myself and I will tell you, it is not easy to make rhymes.” And then she puffed right up. “I sang it to our jongleur and he praised it.”

  “I did not know there was a jongleur at Wareham.”

  That chin of hers shot up. “There was a jongleur where I once lived.”

  “Mayhap I’ll change my mind and demand the truth from you once I have seen your list.”

  “Mayhap, if you do not leave me be, I will not show you my list.”

  “You may go back to Miggins now and sing your songs. I will see you and your list on the morrow.” He nodded, turning away from her to stare out over the North Sea. “Do you know, during dinner, I heard laughter and arguments and belches. It was a fine sound.”

  She turned, climbed carefully down the ladder, raised her skirts, and ran back across the inner bailey to the great keep. He called out, “An angel? Did your father believe you an angel?”

  She paused a moment, shouted back at him, “My father believed the sun rose only to shine upon my head.”

  17

  Robert Burnell chewed the last bit of sweet brown bread, patted his belly, and said to Garron, a bit of a frown on his aesthete’s face, “The king finds you useful. He believes you still innocent of guile and slyness.”

  Innocent of guile? Garron didn’t think he liked the sound of that. Was he as useful to the king as Merry was to Wareham?

  “The king also told me once you had remarked that violent intent had a distinctive smell to it, that you had smelled it on every man who had tried to attack him. I told him that sounded too mad not to be true.”

  Garron merely nodded.

  “I am sending two of the king’s men to Furly and Radstock to see if this Black Demon attacked them. When they return, we will know if your keeps are safe and what are the inclinations of your castellans before we ourselves visit them upon your return from Winthrope. If Sir Wills and Sir Gregory know what is good for them, they will readily accept you as their new lord. Now, do not argue with me, the king wishes me to ensure that you will be safe. I will guard Wareham in your absence. The king also said you have a rich and cunning brain.”

  Garron liked that better than smelling violence.

  “I wonder what will next year bring?” Since Burnell was vigorously rubbing his buttocks as he spoke, Garron grinned. No matter the number of blankets atop the straw-filled mattress, a cold stone floor wasn’t what Burnell was used to.

  “I will use all of my rich and cunning brain as well as prayer that next year brings renewal to Wareham,” Garron said. “Walk with me, sir.”

  “A thorough prayer, I have found, requires a good deal of exertion to be done correctly. Sometimes a thorough prayer, one of great length and complex composition, makes one chafe.”

  When they stepped into the inner bailey, Garron said, “But look, sir, every able-bodied person is working—yon, a man is drilling holes in a plank of wood with an auger, another is wielding a pitchfork, digging into sheaves of hay to make new mattresses, another carefully makes pegs to be driven by hammers into wood for benches and tables.”

  “Aye,” Burnell said, “and I know men are bringing in trees cut from the Forest of Glen, supervised by that that old gizzard Inar, a man of great talent, so his equally old sister told me when she served me ale.”

  Garron said, “Tupper told me it was good to see Inar smiling again. He is calling out orders, there is a bit of a strut in his walk.”

  But he needed more skilled men. Garron felt himself worrying again until he heard the loud braying of Eleanor’s goat, Eric, who was trying to tug an ancient boot from the little boy Ivo. His brother Errol was stuffing a piece of bread into his mouth, as if he feared there would be no more. He saw the boys’ mother, Elaine, speak to each of her sons, then walk briskly across the inner bailey toward the weaving shed, her arms filled with bolts of woolen cloth. Her shoulders were back, her head held high. He was pleased. Her husband had been one of Arthur’s best archers, Tupper had told him, a fine man, and they’d buried him with great care. Now it was time to have new looms made. Old Borran told him two of the looms could not be repaired.

  He watched Merry skip down the stone steps, watched her speak first to Miggins, then to every single woman she passed. They all nodded and smiled. She was the mistress, he thought, and they accepted her as such. She’d taken over so effortlessly. He wondered for an instant what it would be like if Merry weren’t here, if it was only Miggins. It was a thought to make him shudder. Ah, but he had a brain, a rich and cunning brain according to the king, and he would have managed. Garron saw that Burnell was watching her as well.

  She called out to him, waving a small rolled parchment. “Here is my list, my lord. I have consulted all the women and compared my list to the goods the queen sent us. I have heard Winthorpe is an excellent marketplace, much larger than your closer towns, although I think it wise to purchase as much as possible from your towns since you will want them to flourish. You will be able to hire men to come back with you and I—”

  He held out his hand to silence her and she immediately shut her mouth. She proudly handed him the scrap of parchment he’d given to her the previous evening. He unrolled the parchment and looked at the beautiful script. There were no ink splatters. Couldn’t she have made at least one mistake? His writing looked like a savage’s in comparison.

  He scanned the list, then pulled out his own very different one.

  He broke out with a laugh when he realized they had both written soap near the top of their lists.

  “It is probably the least useful item on our lists,” he said. He sniffed her. “Ah, you smell li
ke the soap I gave you. Is there any left?”

  “Nary a bit. I did offer the soap to Miggins before I used it. I thought she would faint she was so revolted. She told me her mother bathed once a year and had to spend a week in bed afterward to recover.”

  “So the gracious Lady Anne taught you the glories of bathing?”

  She grinned at him shamelessly. Bless St. Cuthbert’s boiled bones, there was humor in his voice now. She remembered there’d been no humor in her father’s voice the sicker he became.

  “Just so,” she said.

  “Ah, you have written down a score of herbs I have never heard of.”

  “There is no healer here. The queen sent some herbs—rosemary, bramble, betony, chamomile, and horehound—but I will need—”

  “How do you use horehound?”

  Burnell cleared his throat. “Horehound is used for stomach pains, for colds in the head, and to counteract various poisons.”

  Garron wasn’t surprised Burnell knew about horehound. In his experience, the man knew a bit about everything. He raised an eyebrow at Merry. “So you feel I must find us a healer?”

  “Perhaps not. I had begun lessons with our healer, even though he didn’t wish to teach anyone what he knew, but he knew he would die soon, so even though he hated it, he began my lessons. I learned enough to make a difference.” Merry thought of her father’s devastating stomach pains, the constant vomiting at the end, the wasting of both his mind and his body, and how the little she’d known about herbs hadn’t helped. She’d sent a message to her mother since she’d been told her mother was vastly learned in the ways of herbs and their powers, and the power of other things as well. But her mother had not even acknowledged her message.

  “The cloak you are wearing, it belonged to Lady Anne?”

  She nodded and gave it a tug since it, like the gown, was too short, and its overlong sleeves made every task difficult. Merry didn’t care. It was beautiful.

  Ten men and one woman rode from Wareham an hour later, Burnell looking down at them from the ramparts. Merry rode on Garron’s right, Sir Lyle of Clive on his left. He wanted to get to know the man. However, he knew he wanted to know about Merry more. Exactly who she was didn’t seem so important at this moment.

  He hadn’t been around women all that much, the ladies at Edward’s court, certainly, and he’d enjoyed several of them when they’d cast him their sloe-eyed looks, but he’d never understood them, these soft-skinned creatures with their beautiful bodies who seemed to enjoy stroking him. He remembered his first girl, Con-stance. He’d been twelve, she an ancient fifteen, married to the fat draper, twenty-five years her senior. She’d died the following year in childbed. He remembered the draper had remarried three months later. So very young, he thought, and he heard her laughter in that instant, remembering how she had shown him what pleased her. He gave a sideways look at Merry. Her face was raised to the sun, her eyes closed. Did she yet know anything of a man’s mouth caressing her? He didn’t think so. When she’d told him the night before that he was well made, there had been no knowledge in her voice or her eyes.

  She was riding one of the horses they’d taken from the dead robbers. He worried the coal-black brute was too big for her, too vicious, but she was handling him well.

  Garron wasn’t wearing armor today. His tunic was dark gray as were his trousers, his sword fastened to the belt at his waist, his stiletto snug in its sheath inside the right sleeve of his tunic, strapped to his forearm. He wore dark hose and boots. He was bareheaded. He felt good. The morning breeze cooled his face, ruffled his hair. Tupper had been right—the storm that had raged throughout the night was gone, and in its place was a beautiful day. He heard a quiet laugh and looked at Merry.

  He said, “The horse you are riding belonged to a robber. I don’t know the horse’s name. If you like him, you can name him.”

  Of course she knew the horse; she’d ridden on it, seated in front of that huge villain with his foul breath and heavy fist, now dead, thanks to Garron. She remembered his name was Bollon. She cocked her head at Garron, and the hood she wore fell away. She wore her red hair in her typically neat braids twined atop her head, blue ribbon plaited through it. He remembered the ladies at court tended to wear their hair in coils over their ears, or if they were maids, their hair was loose, with silk bands around their heads.

  He frowned. He was becoming an idiot.

  He gave a start when she said, “To honor his former owner, I will name him Satan.”

  For an instant he didn’t realize she was talking about the damned kidnapper’s horse.

  A horse whinnied and he turned in his saddle to see Gilpin’s horse bite the neck of the horse next to him. For a moment, there was pandemonium, horses rearing, shouting, and ripe curses, until a ferocious-looking man with a pocked face separated them.

  Garron turned to Sir Lyle. “Your man, his name is Garn? He handled the horses well.”

  “Garn is a magician with horses,” Sir Lyle said. “I would say he is better with horses than he is fighting, and thus his worth to me. He can break them, train them, determine their abilities. He told me your man Hobbs is also excellent with horses.”

  “Aye, he is.” Wareham’s head stable lad had been killed, and there was no one to take his place. Hobbs was in charge of the stables at the moment, but Garron needed to hire a new head stable lad. He’d forgotten to write it on his list. He saw that Merry was looking at the trees surrounding them, so at ease he feared she might fall off her horse.

  Garron felt a punch of lust as he looked at her damned hair. One of those ridiculous ribbons had come unthreaded and was dangling in front of her ear. Hair was hair, who cared? Was that a small braid he saw twined in that ribbon?

  He said, “You don’t have freckles.”

  She jerked in her saddle and he reached out his hand to steady her. “What? No, I do not. Neither does my mother—I mean, my mother didn’t either, so my father once told me.”

  So now I am a party to your lies and you expect me to swallow them. He realized he would. He said to her with a good deal of dislike, “I will leave you be, so long as you are useful to me.”

  18

  They stopped briefly at the two small towns now under Garron’s protection. Thanks be to St. Allard’s beautiful voice, neither Abbenback nor Stour had been visited by the Black Demon, but both towns had heard what had happened at Wareham. They welcomed the new earl enthusiastically, particularly when they realized he was buying goods. Everyone treated Merry like his wife.

  They spent the night near Stour after Garron sent back three men with goods purchased at both towns bound for Wareham.

  Late the next morning they arrived at Winthorpe, a much larger trading town set at the mouth of the Porth, a short snaking river that fed into the North Sea. Winthorpe’s protector was Baron Norreys, a foul man Garron had met when he was but a young boy, a man no one considered friend, including, Garron remembered, his own father.

  The road that bisected the town was hard and dry. Clouds sat high in the sky, the air was warm and ripe with the smells of bodies, manure, fish, and, oddly, jasmine. There was activity and noise everywhere. Stalls filled both sides of the main roadway. Haggling was loud and fierce, the very air pungent with arguments and insults.

  He learned quickly enough that Merry could bargain with the craftiest of merchants. When he was satisfied she would spend his money wisely, he left her with the four mules and the three men he’d assigned to assist and protect her. He found skilled laborers, including a master carpenter to join Inar, a smith, and an assistant mason. He offered them all steady work until Michaelmas, with the possibility of remaining at Wareham. Twenty of them accepted.

  He was rubbing his hands together, praying Merry hadn’t spent all the coins he’d given her, when he spotted her near a stall at the very end of the vast trading center. She was surrounded by his men, the pack mules now piled high with roped bundles.

  As if sensing his presence, Merry looked up and gave h
im an excited smile.

  “What have you got?”

  “It is Book One of Leech Book of Bald, written two hundred years ago. Our healer told me about it, told me how amazing it is, how he’d studied from it, but did not have a copy. I was told my mother also has—had—a copy. And now here it is in Rabel’s stall. This is Rabel, my lord. He told me it once belonged to a monk who stole it from his monastery many years ago. He says its infusions and decoctions are still as effective in this modern day as they were in William the Conqueror’s time. Look, in Chapter Sixty-three, it says to cure lunacy one must add a goodly number of different herbs to ale and drink it for nine mornings. Hmmm, it also says to let the lunatic give alms and earnestly pray to God for his mercies.”

  She raised her face to his, holding the book tightly to her chest. “Rabel sells all the herbs I will need as well.” She drew a deep breath. “I think it would be wise to have this book and the herbs.”

  “Would it also be wise to see if Rabel wishes to live at Wareham?”

  “Why did I not think of that?”

  But it was not to be. Rabel, nearing his fiftieth year, his stiff white hair haloing his head and his seamed face, could not leave Winthorpe. He lived with his daughter and her husband and three boys, and helped support the household.

  “With this amazing book, my lord,” Rabel said, “the lady will be able to become a fine healer.”

  “There are not many pages in it,” Garron said as he paid out surely too many of his few remaining coins. “How many illnesses can you cure with so few pages?”

  “Look here, Garron, fennel is used for insomnia, indigestion, and vomiting. And just look at the beautiful illustrations,” Merry said, pointing. “One can see exactly what to do. Rabel is right. I can learn, my lord. I will learn.”

  “I now have barely enough coin to buy the additional tools to repair the barracks at Wareham.”

  “To make a man well again is surely more important than giving a sick or dead man tools, my lord.”