A walk outside would clear his head, he decided. A stroll in the garden…
He found her crouched by a rosemary bush, brushing her hands over its green spines.
“Do the same,” she suggested, without looking up. “The scent will help your head.”
“Did your spies tell you about my encounter with Henri’s mace?” In less than a week, Joanna had pages and maids talking with her as they never spoke with him. He envied her that ease of making friends.
“I saw it myself.” She looked up and beckoned. “It truly will help, Hugh.”
He knelt, and when she held out her fingers, he sniffed. He did not want her scolding. She was damnably right, though: the pungent scent cleared his head a little.
“You did take quite a knock. Follow my finger.” Joanna moved her hand before his eyes, her narrow face solemn as she concentrated. “How many fingers am I showing you?”
“One.”
“And now?”
“Three—Joanna, I have taken far worse in practice and in tourneys.”
“You are not seeing double? Feeling sick?”
He shook his head, then wished he had not.
She laid a cool hand across the back of his neck, devilishly soothing. “Have you ever drunk sage tisane?”
“No. Will you make me some?”
“For my knight? Gladly.” She smiled and the furnace in his head cooled more. “I have finished here.”
She rose and picked up a basket, balancing it on her hip. “I have a powder, too, in my chamber: I make it and purify it myself. My father and I use it when our heads ache or we are feverish. The same should help you.”
She took his block of a fist between her slender fingers and raised him. “A drink and a sleep. That is what you need, Hugh.”
I am going soft, Hugh thought, as he allowed her to lead him away. And what did she mean, calling him her knight?
He did not care. Sage tisane and some strange alchemist powder, however filthy, had never seemed more appealing.
Within the castle he drank what she prepared for him, swallowed what she told him to take. After that, she suggested he lie on her bed and close his eyes.
Had his wits been less mazed he would have joked about sprawling on her pallet, but somehow the words would not come and he was already too comfortable. A warm languor was sweeping through him and he buried his head under the pillow, hearing her pad about the room. She was singing softly to herself, in words he could not understand, but her voice was sweet and true. Imagining Joanna singing to a babe in a crib, Hugh relaxed and fell asleep.
He woke to find a blanket over him and his father in the room, sitting at a table while Joanna pounded something with a mortar and pestle.
“I can wash bandages and make salves and make more of the white powder,” she was saying.
“That is a wonder, that powder,” his father said, more animated than Hugh had known him, except when Yves was speaking of a new food. “Now, do you need any help? That maid under the blanket: will she be of any use?”
“Of course, SirYves,” Joanna answered, as Hugh had to bite on the pillow to stop him laughing. “Once her sick day is over.”
“Very good!” There was the scrape of a stool as Yves clambered to his feet. “I shall leave you now and see you at dinner.”
“My lord.”
After she had bowed him out, Joanna came to the bedside. “I told your father you were a lass sickened with her monthly course. I knew he would let you bide there, then. How are you?”
“Very well.” Hugh emerged from the blanket and stretched both arms above his head; he did feel very well indeed and he wondered how he might conjure Joanna onto the bed with him. He wanted to ask how long he had slept, for how long his father had been chatting so easily with her, but began with an uncontroversial question. “How did you guess I was awake?”
“I have sharper ears than Sir Yves.” She stopped grinding and pointed her mortar at him. “You should leave now, my knight, or find us a chaperone. Tongues will wag, and you cannot rip them all out.”
“Nor would I!” Hugh answered, stung by the image. Did she truly think so little of him?
She laughed, a merry, generous sound that made him want to kiss her.
“Ah, you are so easy to tease, my knight.”
Hugh had flung off the blanket and was rolling off the low pallet, the better to catch her in his arms and claim, he hoped, a forfeit kiss. Now her use of that title twice in as many moments was a disconcerting reminder of his less than knightly conduct.
I keep her because of David. Hugh shrugged off his guilt again and made a play of folding the blanket. Anything so Joanna would not see him looking thoughtful, soft as a cleric.
“You are safe here. My father would never harm a guest.”
“You say Sir Yves adores gold, expects results, yet will never harm me? That is a strange mixture, is it not? Were I to put such essences into a flask, I think they would explode.”
Joanna resumed grinding with the mortar. The scraping seemed to scratch along the insides of his ears. He spotted the wolfhound slinking out of the door and was tempted to do the same.
“Why do you call me ‘my knight’?” Anything to stop that scratching.
“You are mine, are you not?” She pointed the mortar again. “You must be, since you have taken me from the bishop’s household and bed. And did you not wear my token?”
I have it still. That, and the golden tassel….
Hugh coiled the blanket into a messy ball, his insides coiling, too. The idea of Joanna with that loathsome slug Thomas made his eyes burn and teeth ache. “I suppose you expect me to quest for you?”
She stopped her work. A scent of fire and wax and cinnabar swirled in the air between them, like a demon’s kiss. Hugh shook himself to rid his head of the fanciful image. “We have no time for games of courtly love,” he said. “Tomorrow, you should be on your way back to the bishop’s bed.”
“The messenger will take longer than that.” She held out the mortar and pestle. “If you truly wish to quest for me, as you put it, then you can help. I want this ground down to a fine powder, please.”
Hugh stared at the tools, affronted at the very notion. “I am a knight in arms—”
“Then you will be strong enough to do it quickly.” She tilted her head to one side, her eyes bright and knowing.
“How fine?” Hugh rapped back, almost snatching the mortar from her.
“As fine as good salt,” Joanna replied, turning back to her worktable. “Then we have some bandages to wash, you and I. I promised your father I would clean them well, and I like to keep my vows.”
Somehow, the matter of the chaperone had been forgotten, but Hugh decided not to mention it.
Chapter 12
Three days had passed. Her father was three days closer to being cast down into the prison pit. Surely the bishop would not expect her to keep the deadline now, while she was a hostage? How long would it be before the messenger returned? What would he say?
Joanna rolled over and sat up in her bed. She was alone in the chamber, with the shutters on the small window opened to their widest, to admit fresh air. Earlier in the day, Hugh had complained of the stink in the room and she did not want him moaning tomorrow. The chamber was more pleasant, she was forced to admit. She had become used to the scent of sulphur and had not noticed, until Hugh pointed it out.
Hugh had come every day after his practice to help her. He had even washed bandages, a job she secretly disliked because she did not care for the sight of blood. He seemed determined to prove he was a good knight.
His father, Yves, she noted, treated him with cool formality, speaking to his son only when necessary. Once, rushing to the garderobe, she had overheard Yves spit at Hugh, “Do not speak to me of David! He made his choice! You gave your mother none!”
Listening to the servants, she had learned that Hugh’s mother had died soon after giving birth to him. His father had disliked him ever since.
/> “Called him a devil when he was but a young lad, scarce able to toddle about,” the laundress Bertha told Joanna, over a cup of ale when Bertha came to collect Joanna’s gown for washing. “Always hard on him, though in truth the master was at fault, too. Mistress had birthed easy before and so the master did not send for the midwife until things began to go badly. Mind, have you seen the knack Master Hugh has with creatures? There is something devilish there, I warrant.”
Joanna, who had also been called a devil in her time, said nothing.
That evening, when Hugh came, she did not goad him quite so much, did not remind him that he had snatched her from her home, or that he was an ungentle knight for trampling Sir Tancred like a broken doll.
The following day she was aggrieved with herself. Hugh was her captor; she owed him no courtesy. That day she asked for and was given permission to leave her work and join Sir Yves for lunch. She was even allowed to sit close to him, on the high table. There she flaunted all the courtly manners she could recall from seeing embassies at the bishop’s palace and let it be known she was indeed the mistress of Lord Thomas. In the evening, Hugh’s face was dark with suppressed anger.
“I say nothing and then you tell the world you are that man’s whore!” He stabbed at a pair of small bellows as if they had attacked him. “Have you no decency?”
“A mistress is no whore!” Joanna retorted, seething at the suggestion but also glad that he was so put out. Yet when Hugh left early, storming off with a curse and Beowulf following with his tail between his legs, Joanna soon stopped work. She felt out of sorts all evening, and her dreams that night were evil.
Now that she was awake again, Joanna admitted she was ashamed. To be a noble lord’s mistress was not unworthy, but for her to broadcast that she was leman to a man like Thomas? Was it seemly? Yes, she enjoyed goading Hugh, working out the frustration of her captivity on him, but did that help her work?
“It does not,” Joanna admitted softly, staring down at her bare legs. They looked ghostly and insubstantial, not at all lean or tanned, and she was naked in bed, as was the custom. She thought of Hugh—Where did he bed down? In the corridor outside? She had no way of knowing: the castle walls were thick and icy cold, even with the wall hangings. Although it was spring, she was glad of the small new furnace in her room and glad it remained warm as she “baked” and dried off some newly washed bandages, a trick of healing she had learned and tried from an Arab text on alchemy and medicine. She cautiously touched its domed surface, wondering from where Yves had acquired it. For now, SirYves remained amiable, but if he turned against her, would Hugh protect her?
Thinking of Hugh, she rubbed her bare legs, guessing that he too would be naked. What would he look like? Long and lean? Would he be long and lean all over?
Why are you interested? What are you to him, apart from a means to an end?
“He likes me,” she said aloud. “I think.”
But that was before she had confessed to the world that she was the mistress of the bishop. Now, in the fastness and quiet of the night, Joanna admitted that she loathed the idea of being Thomas’s leman, especially where Hugh was concerned. Or was he sleeping soundly with another woman?
If he is, why do you care? Gathering the blanket he had handled earlier, she draped it across her back and sat on the edge of her bed. The rough warmth of Hugh’s cloak was a comfort and, when she sniffed, she thought she caught his scent: musky, intensely masculine.
What would it be like to be Hugh’s leman?
She leaped off the bed as if her mattress was on fire and strove to dress as rapidly as possible. Looking out through the window, she saw the bright star Venus, the sign for female and all that was mutable, a signal for growth. The work must save her and her father. Nothing else mattered.
And she must charm Hugh back.
Later that same day, around midday, Sir Yves appeared with a page who handed her a bucket containing three dirty-looking lumps of ore. “Can you assay this for gold?” Yves asked.
“I can,” Joanna replied. “Do you wish me to try for gold and silver, or purely gold?”
“Oh, purely gold, I think.” He gave her a broad smile that he probably thought was charming.
“I can do that, too.”
“Good! I shall leave the task in your capable hands.”
He hurried off, no doubt to his lunchtime table, but the page lingered. He was a lanky, curly-headed, curious boy whom Joanna had seen before, loitering in the corridor outside.
“Do you wish to stay and watch me?” she asked. The work was no secret and simple enough.
The lad nodded, the freckles on his forehead and chin showing up like blisters as he colored with excitement. Joanna smiled: she, too, had once been this keen.
“Very well—”
“Peter,” the lad supplied.
“Peter. If you pay heed to all I say we shall see wonders together. But you must stay back when I tell you. Substances that are undergoing transformation can be very volatile and dangerous.”
“I know. I have watched smiths at work.”
There was something about his glib answer that she did not like, but then she decided she was being overprotective. When she began her studies in the art, she had been far younger than the page.
“This is a process called cupelation,” she explained, showing Peter the small clay vessels or cupels which she would use. “It draws the impurities from the lead, leaving any pure gold behind.”
“I know,” Peter said.
“You have seen it done?”
“I have heard of it already. Where do you keep your unicorns?” Peter prodded one of the flasks with his dagger, his bottom lip jutting in disappointment as the flask refused to emit a unicorn or any other magical creature.
“I do not study that branch of the art,” Joanna answered, torn between amusement and exasperation. “Careful,” she warned when he hung over the furnace as she opened its door to stoke it. “You must stay back. Vessels can explode.”
“Only if they are faulty,” Peter replied.
She debated then whether to ask him to leave, but he took up a place by the end of the table, far from the furnace, and she decided to give him another chance.
“Look, ask, but do not touch,” she warned again.
“I know.”
Peter did not speak again, or move, and soon Joanna was lost in the assay, adding salt and barley husks to drive off any silver and using bellows to blow air over the molten metal. Intent for any sounds of cracking or scents that would warn the assay was not going well, she watching the walls of the cupel discolor as the impurities were oxidized and burned off.
“This is dull stuff,” said Peter, yawning and rubbing his belly. “I am bored with it.”
Joanna did not remind him that it had been his choice to stay. “It will not be long now,” she said, pointing to the cupel and explaining the significance of the discoloration, “but you must stay where you are when I fully open the furnace door.”
Moving carefully in her bulky leather apron and heavy gloves, she heard the chamber door open. To her surprise, for he was not usually so early, she sensed Hugh entering, knowing him by that peculiar thrill low in her belly that she always felt whenever he was nearby. Sometimes when she looked at him she expected the very air between them to crackle, so loaded did it seem with expectant possibilities. This noon, busy with her task, she merely nodded and kept her eyes on the cupel as she lifted it clear of the furnace.
The page was not so restrained. “We are making gold—look, look!” He flung his arms wide and lunged toward the furnace, forgetting Joanna’s instructions and ignoring her shout of alarm.
Hampered with gloves and tongs, she could do nothing as the lad lurched closer to the scorching, dangerous sizzle of the furnace, but Hugh seized the lad’s collar and yanked him back, clear of the fire.
“You want to be burned, or worse?” he demanded, giving the page a rough shake. “Stay where your mistress bids you!”
“Thank you, Hugh,” Joanna said later. Unscathed and a little more thoughtful than he had been in the morning, Peter the page had gone to report to Sir Yves, and she wanted to say something while she and Hugh were alone. “I realize you are here early today and I am glad you came when you did. I had told him to take care. I am most grateful. You saved him.”
“Only from his own idiocy,” Hugh growled, sitting on the bed with his back against the wall. “But then that bold young fool takes no notice of anyone.” He raised his cup of sage tisane to her. “I am glad to have been of service, my lady.”
Joanna raised hers in turn—it had become a custom of theirs to drink a cup together while mulling over the day, and this midafternoon was no different—“And I thank you again, my lord.”
A new look of challenge burst into Hugh’s handsome, saturnine face. “May I claim a kiss, in fellowship and peace?”
“Of course, my knight.” Chaste embraces and kisses were part of the courtly game that she had instigated. And she could, after all, tease him: an added bonus.
A single kiss, she thought, kissing her fingers and extending her hand. “Here is your kiss. You need but claim it.”
“Before Beowulf does? Away, hound!” Hugh clicked his fingers and the dog approaching her padded back and jumped onto the bed, sprawling as his master rose. Joanna’s heartbeat accelerated as Hugh closed on her, her hand raising in a half-gesture of defense.
“Fear not.” He smiled down at her, touching the tips of his hand lightly against hers, trailing his fingers into the soft shadowed hollow of her palm. “A single kiss, ’tis all, and from you, Lady, enough.”
His large, battle-hardened hand drew up and down her narrow fingers, smoothing and caressing, his touch tingling her from her hands to her feet. He was smiling, his mouth curved and generous, his blue eyes soft as the down of ducklings. His fingers swept over hers again, swirling, tickling, making her whole spine prickle with delight.
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