A Knight's Enchantment

by Lindsay Townsend

  “All this from a kiss?” he said softly, as she swayed a little on her feet. “How would we be if you allowed more, eh?”

  Still smiling at her, he lifted his hand away from hers, leaving it hanging in the air between them like the sacred promise of a saint, painted on a church wall. He withdrew as deftly as a herald, backing from the chamber without colliding once with chest or stools or earthenware vessels, his eyes never leaving hers.

  Chapter 13

  The following day the messenger returned to the castle. Bishop Thomas had gone to Oxford on church matters and the messenger had missed him. Now more horses must be found for the messenger to try again, to trail after the bishop’s party and, pray God, catch them soon.

  Joanna heard this news from the castle laundress, listening in appalled horror as the woman recounted how Sir Yves had hurled a mutton bone at the hapless messenger in the castle great hall.

  “Dislikes his dinner being interrupted by bad news,” the laundress concluded. “Shall I take this headscarf? It is stained along the edge.”

  “Thank you.” Joanna waited until the slim, dark woman had sped from the room and then she began her work afresh, grinding, testing, burning, mixing. The air in the chamber became thick with smog and still she worked, first by daylight and then by star- and candlelight.

  I must find something.

  She labored on through the night. The white powder, a mixture of chalk and other mineral compounds, was ready in its presentation box: an elixir to cure the ills of the stomach and head. Joanna knew she should find a better title than this but she could not think: she was too fretful and weary. SirYves and Bishop Thomas would be pleased with her elixir, yes, but they wanted gold. They wanted that most rare, most precious, most perfect of forms and she had only a few scant pieces from Orri’s hoard, the nugget from her assay of the previous day, and odd grains from the river.

  She tried a new experiment, with the blackened cupel left from her assay from the lead and silver ore. Perhaps if she heated this to white heat, the purifying element of fire would grow her more gold from the dross of the silver and lead. She set to using the bellows with a will, pumping furiously into the furnace until her arms ached like the toothache and the very walls of the castle chamber seemed to be sweating…

  “Hey, hey, you will tear yourself to shreds.”

  Hugh took the bellows from her and she tottered, scrabbling after them. “Give those back! I am no puffer!”

  She snatched for them, just as the table and furnace seemed to turn over and slide away. Feeling as if she was falling off the edge of the world, Joanna tumbled down. She yelled and struggled to surface through a haze of blackness, tasted soot and then wine.

  “Taste the wine again. It will restore you.”

  Hugh was holding her somehow, and they were outside—not merely of the chamber but of the castle.

  “Where are we?” she croaked.

  “The garden. I returned from West Sarum this evening to find you huddled over your furnace like a fighter with his last lance. What is going on? The servants tell me you have not eaten or slept all of yesterday or today.”

  Joanna took another sip of wine and tried to recollect. “Have I been so long?”

  “It would seem so.”

  “And you have been away?”

  Hugh smiled. “So much for asking if you missed me. I never knew so intent a maid, once you are lost in your work.”

  “Do you stop when you are in mid-joust?”

  He laughed and waved a chunk of cheese before her eyes. “Eat. Do not talk for a space. Feed yourself and I will tell you of West Sarum, although in truth, there is little to say.” Frowning, he took a drink of wine himself. “I trawled the town for news of David and found none. No one would talk, not even for coins. There were guards around—not many, but enough, and their presence quelled all gossip. And before you ask, I was not stopped or questioned because I was disguised as a herbalist.”

  “But—but what wares did you have?” Joanna stammered, trying and failing to imagine Hugh as a herbalist.

  “None!” came back the cheerful answer. “I knew I would sell nothing; the West Sarum folk are careful with their chattels. Though I did tell many a goodwife and carpenter about your sage tisane.”

  He had remembered that. Joanna felt a rush of tender feeling unbuckle her body. To her horror, her eyes blurred with tears. “Stupid woman!” she muttered, smearing a hand across her face.

  “Hey, I know that you like David, but you need not fret. No news means no change.” Hugh dangled a piece of white bread before her. “Agreed?”

  Joanna opened her mouth to say that no news meant nothing of the kind, but she felt too dispirited to argue. “You do not need to tempt me like an ailing horse, Hugh.”

  “That would make you a nag, eh? Now I know you are not yourself; you would never have left such an easy opening for me, else.” He nodded as she took the bread and began chewing. “So are we agreed?”

  “David is not alone in the donjon.”

  At her quiet observation Hugh put down the cup of wine. “You do not mean that French fellow, do you, but the older man who is with them. Is he your father? And why, if you are the bishop’s woman, is he in prison? What did he do that was so terrible?”

  “He is innocent and has done nothing! We have never done anything, yet we are harried and hunted—” She was so furious that she could no longer speak: the very words seemed to be choking her.

  A wall came about her, warm and steady, with a living, beating heart: Hugh, drawing his arms around her waist and easing her so that she rested with her head tucked comfortably into his shoulder. She was on his lap, she realized—how had she simply accepted this before? She had not even struggled!

  She thought of squirming now, decided it would be absurd, and wondered again how she had noticed but not noticed her position. Comfort, she thought. She felt comfort and a tingling safety in Hugh’s arms, which was a powerful contradiction. She was his captive, yet she felt safe with him. More than safe. It was pleasing to sit on him, to feel his muscled thighs beneath hers, to sense, by his powerful tension, that he was attracted to her.

  After peace, a reckless sense of goading, of pricking him, overcame her. “Are you jealous of the bishop?” she breathed.

  He stiffened further and she almost cheered. “I was before,” he said.

  It happened between them. Joanna lifted her head and Hugh lowered his and their lips touched.

  Volatile yet permanent, Joanna thought, sighing as she closed her eyes and kissed him. For a wild instant she imagined a whole heavenload of stars, shining gold and silver above them. Her eyelids fluttered and she glimpsed Hugh’s eyes, also closed, his lashes dark and lustrous as rare black silk. It was twilight, and the sky was the color of Hugh’s eyes, and the herbs about them were as fragrant as his breath.

  “Lovely,” Hugh whispered, tracing her eyebrows, nose, and the gentle curve of her face with his thumb. “A grace of God in truth, and a worker of wonders, besides. I can only destroy, but you—” He kissed her eyes and nose and mouth. “You make, you heal, you read—”

  “My father, too,” Joanna prompted, smiling as Hugh smiled at her. The world between them was so all-embracing she wanted to float in it forever, but she must not forget Solomon and he must not forget David.

  “Tell me about him,” Hugh said, but now Joanna heard Sir Yves’s heavy tread on the path behind them. She skimmed down from Hugh’s knee onto the bench and they were sitting modestly side by side when Hugh’s father hailed them.

  “Hello! Taking in the fresh air? How are you, Joanna? Have you grown more gold?”

  “I am in hopes of doing so,” Joanna answered, the reply she had often given the bishop. “I have your elixir ready, my lord.” Seeking to escape before Yves could ask more searching questions, she stepped away from the bench. “I will bring it to you directly.”

  “A page can surely do that,” Hugh said, glowering at his father. So far, the two men had not gree
ted each other.

  “I will be quicker.” Joanna moved off, though not before she heard Hugh saying to Yves, “Why must you be always so impatient? Is Joanna not doing enough that you must harry her?”

  “Pah! You cannot recognize work when you see it! Not everyone has your lazy streak—”

  “I am no more idle than you are a cowardly glutton, Father.”

  “How dare you, sir?”

  “Say that with our combined forces we might storm the bishop’s palace? Why not? It is the truth.”

  “And where are the Templars in this grand plan of yours? Why do you not ask them and hear their answer? You know what it will be because it is madness and cannot be done, yet still you berate me, as you have always done….”

  “I berate you? I berate you, Father, when you have filled my days with a thousand, thousand complaints?”

  Alarmed that she was the cause of this quarrel, Joanna wove back along the garden path toward the castle, flinching as a moth flew straight out of a lavender bush and fluttered past her head. Above her the sky was now the black of night, sprinkled with stars, and a slender moon.

  The moon was new, but it was there now, and it was rising and growing. And when it was full, Lord Thomas would cast her father into the prison pit.

  God help me!

  Chapter 14

  Rushing past the beds of springtime flowers, all silver in the moonlight, Joanna spotted Peter, hiding from sight of the castle and kitchen windows. He was crouched behind a stand of hyssop and thyme, playing a solitary game of dice.

  Seeing him, Joanna recalled Hugh’s previous comment and greeted him at once. “Peter, well met! Will you fetch a box of white powder from my chamber and deliver it here to Sir Yves? He has asked for it most urgently.”

  “Unnn—” Peter assented, coming slowly to his feet, his face a beacon of shame at being discovered.

  “And hurry,” Joanna pressed, keen for the lad to be away.

  As Peter slouched off to do her bidding in some fashion, she scanned the high walls of the castle garden. If there was a gate, or a tree close to the wall she could climb, she might escape the keep. She had her own pitiful share of Orri’s gold with her—she always had her gold on her—so she would have something to give the bishop. Pray God it would placate him for a space, and win her more time.

  Why not wait to see what the messenger says? her reason argued, but her feelings were all urging her to flee. The truth was, she did not trust Bishop Thomas. Hugh had taken her as a valued hostage, but what if she was not? What if the bishop did not care? He could get other women to share his bed, and other alchemists to try to grow him gold. At least back at West Sarum she could be useful in many ways: making rose water, elixirs, sweets, helping in the kitchen. Now she was away from him, Thomas might forget her altogether and her father would be left to rot in the donjon, or worse.

  “Let me find a gate,” Joanna panted as she traced another high wall without any opening.

  Her prayer was answered at once. No gate, but a wild crab apple that must have seeded itself from the woodland outside and was now growing beside the wall. Its sturdy branches reached beyond the huge, smooth stones and a wide canopy of blossom gleamed as beautiful as stars in the deepening twilight.

  “Thanks be to God,” Joanna murmured, stretching her arms up to the tree. Its bark was grainy under her hands and a piece flaked down into her face, but she was too jubilant to care.

  “Are you not old to be climbing trees?”

  Hugh’s question startled her and she lost her grip, scrabbling for a hold as she plummeted toward the swaths of violets, pinks and black-looking speedwell.

  Hugh caught her and silenced his dog’s howling abruptly. “Enough, Beo! She is not hurt.” He gripped her more tightly, his arms as firm as a ship’s ribs beneath her trembling legs and shoulders. “She is safe.”

  He touched her face, lightly brushing away the scrap of bark from her lips. “You are as light as a moth.” His blue eyes gleamed with a mixture of amusement and exasperation. “And as treacherous.”

  Joanna found her voice again in her raw, dry throat. “I was merely examining the blossom.”

  “That is an idea, but I have a better one. I will assay you for cuts—have I the word right?—and examine you to ensure you are not bruised.”

  He was enjoying this, the devil, but even as he spoke, Joanna found herself imagining Hugh studying her. It was the kind of game she had never played with a man, but how might it be with him? To be touched and touch in return…

  Joanna wrung her mind from a disturbing mêlée of images, desperate to fob him off somehow. “I must—I must use the garderobe,” she whispered.

  “I am not surprised, after such excitement. I shall escort you there and thence to your chamber.”

  It seemed he meant to carry her to both places.

  “We shall be quicker if I walk,” Joanna said.

  “But not if you run. You may run too far.” Hugh allowed that none-too-subtle hint to hit home and then changed the subject. “My men speak highly of your white powder. It soothes their aches better than any other tincture they know. I have found the same.”

  He raised his arms slightly, to lift her smoothly over a rosebush.

  “I am most intrigued as to what it is. Can you speak of its basics? How did you make it? How did you choose its parts?”

  Had she not been trapped by him and the bishop’s deadline, she would have been glad of, even a little flattered by his interest. As it was, feeling aggrieved with all men and their power games, she answered sharply, “All my work is secret.”

  “A way to keep control. I understand.”

  His soothing reply exasperated her more. “Do you tell other jousters how to win? It is the same for me.”

  “Competitive alchemy?”

  “We all have exacting patrons.”

  He shrugged. “Find some other labor if you dislike it so much.”

  His smug, overweening, ignorant superiority made her burn with rage.

  “As you would, if you did not spend your days dashing out your opponents’ brains? And what new labor would that—?” Joanna began, then snapped her teeth together. She would not give him the satisfaction of a waspish answer. Besides, they had passed the outer stair of the keep and were heading rapidly for the inner staircase and she was anxious as to what Hugh might do next, faced with the tight narrow spiral.

  “I can walk ahead of you upstairs,” she said quickly.

  “No, you are plainly overset. We will keep as we are.”

  “Do not put me over your shoulder!” Joanna warned, shaking a finger at him.

  “To carry such a wee bag of bones as you? I think not.” He lowered his head, kissed her finger, and now bore her in one brawny arm up the spiral, shielding her head against the stones with his shoulder. The smooth, steady rush would have been exhilarating, had she not been so irritated.

  “There.”

  Finally he set her down, outside the door of the garderobe. She knew he would be lurking when she came out again, and so he was.

  “Stay with her, Beowulf,” he told the wolfhound. “Guard.”

  Instantly the dog began to pace to and fro, exactly like a human guard, and Joanna realized what would happen if she attempted to move along the narrow corridor. Staring out from an arrow slit at the dark garden, she relieved some of her feelings by cursing Hugh, Sir Yves, Bishop Thomas, and even David.

  “I wish I were a unicorn,” she grumbled. “Too magical to hold.”

  “I would have had you for a lioness,” said Hugh behind her. “Valiant as a queen.”

  “And you would be the lion?” she asked archly.

  “A phoenix,” came back the prompt, unexpected reply. “Then I could burn away to ash and be reborn with no hurt to anyone.”

  Joanna thought of Hugh’s mother, dead in childbirth, bearing him, and said nothing. She had heard of fathers blaming offspring for the deaths of their spouses but had not witnessed its raw pain until encounter
ing Hugh and Yves. A memory of her mother, more precious than gold, shimmered a moment before her eyes. Miriam had been small and dark as she was, merry and chattering and with hands softer than silk. She had loved to comb and dress people’s hair, even her husband’s own sparse locks.

  “What are you thinking?” Hugh asked softly. “You seem far away.”

  Joanna shook her head. To speak of her mother when he had never known his was unkind. To talk of Miriam was to invite questions, and she was not ready yet to answer the worst one—how her mother had died.

  “Do you have no other captives to pester?” she demanded.

  “No,” he said, without apology. Instead of drawing back as she wanted, he stayed where he was, absently rubbing his lower back.

  “Long hours in the saddle,” he remarked, catching her look. “How are your legs now?”

  “Better. Why do you ask? Are you thinking of riding me into the ground tonight? Riding with me?” she amended, horrified by what she had just said. A picture of her and Hugh, rolling together on the soft earth, slammed into her head and stayed there.

  “You need not fear me, you know.”

  What did he mean? Had he noticed her mistake? Joanna did not hit back with the obvious answer, that she did not fear him. She lifted her head and looked at him directly, spearing her eyes at him, facing down him and her own imagination. So she had daydreamed of his touching her, of him embracing her as a husband does a wife. Could she not enjoy that notion?

  Even as she admitted to herself that she did, Joanna knew she was torn between wanting to touch Hugh and wanting to escape him. She made a mummer’s show of a yawn, hoping he would take the hint and leave her on the corridor. Then she would try again to weave her way out of this castle keep.

  “If your legs are well now,” Hugh went on, seemingly oblivious to her inner turmoil, “then I can help you.”