by Lisa Hendrix
Lucy sighed. “In other words, we will lie.”
“Then you will help.” Eleanor threw her arms around Lucy. “I vow, you are a better sister to me than any of those who own the title.”
“A true sister would stop you, as I should.” Lucy pried herself free and started toward the door, muttering to herself, “I am the worst kind of fool.”
“Lucy?”
“What?”
“I will tell him of Richard, I promise. As soon as I am certain of his heart.”
Lucy stopped with her hand on the door and slowly shook her head. “That thing you feel in your belly, my lady? That is not his honor but your own guilt. I know, because now I suffer of it, too. I will fetch Miriam to fix your hair.”
She did her courtesy without looking at Eleanor and headed off to the retiring room, where she’d last seen Miriam. But the maid had vanished, and none of the other attendants knew where she was. Lucy dispatched a page to hunt her down and started back, and as she passed back through the solar, she thought she might as well check to see whether Sir Gunnar had come yet. Eleanor was going to ask anyway.
He hadn’t. She leaned her aching head against the screen and closed her eyes.
When she opened them a few moments later, it was to find Henry Percy leaning against the same screen, barely a yard away, watching her with a bemused expression. “Who is it that you pine for, fair Lucy?”
“No one, monsire. I was resting, not pining. I did not hear you come in.”
“Because I was already here.” He tipped his head toward Lord Ralph’s high-backed chair, sitting by the fire. “I thought I might try it for size, having lost my own for the time being. You won’t tell Westmorland, will you?”
He sounded much like he had when he had visited York as a boy and tried to get away with filching a sweet. “No, monsire, I will not tell. You are hardly Geoffrey the Bastard, trying on King Henry’s crown.”
“You remember that story?”
She nodded.
“Well, I feel like him.” He shifted to peer through the screen as she had been doing. “I saw you on guard here last evening, too. Surely you search for someone. Or does Lady Eleanor send you to watch on her behalf?”
So, it began. At least she could handle Sir Henry without a lie. “She doesn’t even know I am here.”
“’Struth?”
“’Struth. She sent me to fetch the woman to fix her hair, but I could not find her. I thought to steal a moment before I go back.”
“Avoiding a scolding, eh? Has the lady developed a sharp tongue? I remember her as quick-tongued, but sweet-tempered.”
“She is for the greatest part. I watch because it pleases me to see the hall fill up—though ’tis less interesting now the tourney is over.”
“So you watch all the men.”
“All of them and none of them.”
“But no one in particular?” There was an odd quality in his voice, and Lucy studied him a moment before answering.
“No. No one holds my special attention, monsire.”
“How unfortunate for the men of Raby.” Straightening, he reached out to tuck the edge of Lucy’s head rail back where it had fallen forward. As he pulled back, his fingers grazed her cheek. “Unfortunate indeed. Perhaps that will change someday soon. By your leave.”
He bowed and sauntered off, leaving Lucy to stare after him and wonder what had gotten into the water, and who it was going to make go mad next.
By the way her pulse was racing, it might be she.
ELEANOR MUST HAVE convinced her father, because the next night after supper, they danced.
Gunnar had forgotten how much pleasure there was in dancing. The music. The jollity. The women.
Especially the women.
He hadn’t touched so many women in one evening in all his accursed life. Granted, the touching was just hands and the occasional brush of veil or skirt as they glided past, but that was more than he usually enjoyed, and best of all, the touches were given freely. Most times, he had to pay for a woman to touch him, to buy her with a measure of silver or at the very least a sweetly spoken lie. These women touched him for no reason at all beyond the dance, and every one of them seemed more desirable than the last.
But most desirable of all was Eleanor.
His senses were full of her, alive to every movement and laugh and flick of her braids, even when she was on the far side of the hall. Yet as he trod heavily through the few simple hayes and round dances he’d picked up over the years, she moved in and out of his grasp exactly like the others, giving so little sign of what had passed the night before that he began to doubt his recollection. A dream. He must’ve fallen asleep for a few moments and dreamed it.
But then she passed by in a promenade, and her eyes met his and flickered unwittingly toward the solar screen, and he knew. ‘Twas no dream at all. She had come down in the night.
And he’d had to walk away.
She likely thought he’d spurned her, when in truth he’d only left because he had to, lest he change right there in front of her. Cursed sun. Why couldn’t it go down and stay down?
He had to fix this.
The music carried her away on the next beat, but when it carried her back, he was ready. He took her hand and led her around the circle.
“I had a dream last night,” he said they turned into the center. “Near dawn.”
Her eyes widened slightly, then crinkled at the corners as she understood. “Did you?”
“Aye.” They faced each other and stepped back and forward. “In it, I was visited by a sprite, a wisp of cloud taking the form of a maid.”
“Most strange.” She feigned disinterest, glancing around the hall as though searching for someone.
“Most wondrous,” he countered softly, and watched her blush.
“This dream,” she posed a moment later as they turned shoulder-to-shoulder with each other. “Have you had it before?”
“No, my lady,” he said as they wheeled around each other, clapping. “But I hope it visits me again.”
She spun away, circled Henry Percy, and came back to him.
“Earlier,” he said. He fell out of rhythm and bowed half-a-beat behind the other men.
She looked up, startled, as he caught up and they touched shoulders again. “What?”
“I said, I hope my dream finds me earlier in the night, so that I may fully …” It was his turn now to fly off and circle her sister Margaret. He left his words hanging till he came back to Eleanor. ”… enjoy it before I must rise and ride away.”
“Oh.”
Another bow, another courtesy, and she passed forward to Percy while Margaret came up from behind to join him. They didn’t come back together again before the final chord ended the song.
The master of the dance announced a turn Gunnar didn’t know, and he quickly made his excuses and headed for the cup of wine he’d left sitting on a table. Dancing was difficult enough; playing this odd game with Eleanor while wrestling the music had all but drained him. He emptied the cup in one draught, had a boy refill it, and carried it over to where Lord Lumley and one of the earl’s aging retainers studied a nard board.
Lumley looked up, grinning. “Made your escape at last, eh, Sir Gunnar?”
“Yes, my lord.” He tipped his head toward the couples leaping and gamboling to the music. “I make a poor March hare.”
“You’re too big for it, is why,” said Lumley. “That is a dance best suited to young, skinny lads like Percy there. There’s no dignity to it or them.”
Gunnar turned to watch. Henry Percy did indeed bound along with an energetic grace many of the others lacked, but it was his partner that caught Gunnar’s eye: Eleanor. Cheeks glowing with good spirits, she danced and clapped the time, with eyes for no one but Percy. A sudden font of jealousy bubbled up, souring Gunnar’s stomach.
He started to turn away and spotted Eleanor at her father’s side. “What?” He looked back and forth, sorting it out in his head. “Oh, tha
t’s Lucy with Percy.”
“Thought it was Lady Eleanor, did you?” The retainer chuckled. “Most of us have been caught in the same error, sir. Especially when Lucy wears one of her lady’s cast-off dresses.”
Gunnar shook his head. “I can tell them apart up close, but from a distance …”
“Lady Anne once demanded that the earl require each of them to wear different colors, for that very reason.” Lumley captured a piece and waved it beneath the retainer’s nose. “There. I have you now, Fitzhugh.”
Gunnar watched a little longer, then found a spot off to the side where he could watch and be left alone. That lasted only until Eleanor swooped by to urge him to rejoin the dancing, dragging along one of the fostering lads to blunt any appearance of impropriety. Gunnar obliged for those dances he knew, trying to take a position where they would meet in passing, where he might touch her.
The dancing went on into the small hours. As the last tune wound down and Eleanor came around to say her good nights, she was stifling a yawn behind her hand.
“You look tired, m’lady.”
“Aye, and ’twill be a short night. My lord father does not hold with letting us sleep beyond the usual hour no matter how late we stay awake.”
“That comes from dealing with men-at-arms. Left to their own, they would drink and wench all night, then sleep until Nones.”
“I would be happy if he would give us till Terce.” She yawned again. “Dawn is not far away. There will be little time for that dream of yours to find you.”
“There will be other nights.”
Eleanor glanced away, her forehead wrinkling in thought. “Perhaps. Dreams are odd and inconstant things. They do not always return when you command them. Sometimes, they do not return at all.”
So she was rethinking her boldness. His chest tightened. There was much between them that needed the kind of privacy that could be found only in the dark of midnight and he very much wanted to urge her to come to him. But Lucy was right there, eyes sharp despite the late hour. Did they share a bed? Had she noticed her lady gone last night? It struck him that he should have been courting Lucy’s goodwill, as well, in order to have access to Eleanor. Ah, shite. He wasn’t very good at this.
“If this dream never came again,” he said carefully, “I would still be thankful I had the one glimpse of it, but I hope it will return when the time is right.”
Eleanor kept her eyes averted, so he couldn’t see what was in them. “God’s rest to you, Sir Gunnar.”
“And God’s rest, my lady.” He bowed to her, then to her watchful cousin. “And to you, Maid Lucy. I hope you sleep well.”
And soundly.
CHAPTER 8
The Welsh Marches
“I’LL GIVE YOU a mark for it, sir.”
“The gold alone is worth twice that.” Ari plucked the heavy gold chalice out of the smith’s hand and held it up to tap his fingernail on the big amethyst in the bottom. “And that doesn’t account for the drunkstone.”
“That could be a piece of church glass for all I know of stones, good knight. And the gold itself is old gold. It may not be pure.”
He was right about the age—Brand had found the chalice and a pair of equally ancient cloak pins while searching for their amulets—but that didn’t make the smith right about the value.
“Assay it,” said Ari. “Your fire is hot.”
“I would, sir, but I don’t have the proper waters. I ran out and haven’t yet been to town to buy more. But I can give you one and three.”
Ari snatched up the cloth and started wrapping the cup to go back into his scrip. Curse the vision that had led him to stop here, in the hinterlands of the Welsh border, at the house of a country silversmith. It was a wasted effort. “I’ll go on to Shrewsbury, as I planned. A proper goldsmith will be able to tell the worth of the thing.”
The smith, seeing his chance at a tidy profit about to ride off, chewed on his lip and hemmed a little. “I do have a touchstone. Let me see it again, if you would, sir.”
He had him. Ari fought a grin as he unwrapped the chalice again. The smith pulled out a bit of slate and some tiny pins of gold of differing purities. He scratched the pins over the stone, then made a mark with the foot of the chalice. He and Ari both bent over the stone to see which pin mark best matched that left by the cup.
“You see?” said Ari, vindicated. “Pure. And for doubting me, the price goes up. Two marks and six shillings.”
“Ach!” The man’s mouth opened and closed a few times, then he put the chalice back on the scale. As he checked the weights, a dark-haired lad of about six years came in and peered into the pan.
“That looks very old.” The boy scratched his head.
“I was just telling this good knight that very thing,” said the smith. He bent over a wax tablet and scribed a few marks. “I can do one and six.”
“You begin to provoke me, man. Two and two.”
“One and eight.”
Ari shook his head. “You know very well I can do better in town.”
“Perhaps, sir, but it would cost you most of a day to ride there and back.”
“I have all the time in the world.”
The smith made a face and bent over his figuring again, counting on the fingers of one hand as he wrote. The boy took a step closer to Ari. “Have you killed anyone?”
“Mind your manners, boy. He’s a noble knight and your better,” said the smith without looking up.
“Sorry, m’sir.” The boy bobbed his head in a half bow. “Have you killed anyone, sir?”
“I have,” said Ari. “But only when I had to. What is your name, boy?”
“Morvran, sir.”
“Well, then, Morvran, are you Master Dafydd’s son or his apprentice?”
“His son, sir. But I go to apprentice after harvest.” He dug at his head again. Lice, no doubt. “I have something old, too.”
“Don’t bother the gentleman,” mumbled the smith.
“He is no bother,” said Ari. “What do you have that’s old?”
The boy dug his finger under his collar and fished out a leather cord, at the end of which appeared a small bit of tarnished metal. A wink of red caught Ari’s eye, and he looked closer.
His heart began to thud in his ears. By the gods. Could it be right here, on a child’s neck? “Let me see that more closely, Morvran.”
The child assessed him a moment, then pulled the cord over his head and lowered his treasure into Ari’s open palm. Ah.
“’Tis a dragon, sir. See the red eye?”
“I do see it.” Ari rubbed a thumb over the little garnet and then over the empty socket next to it. Blind in one eye, Gunnar had always said. He’d lost the stone someplace in the oat fields while plowing, long before they’d sailed. Thank you, Odin. Tears pricked Ari’s eyes, and his throat tightened so that he could barely speak. “But this is no dragon. It is a bull.”
“A bull,” said the boy, clearly disappointed. “Are you certain, sir?”
“I am. I have a friend whose sign is a bull very much like it. How did you come by it?”
“I found it a while back.” He glanced at his father, who looked up.
“He and Wat were chasing rabbits in the waun two summers ago,” said the smith. “Found it in the dirt at the mouth of one of the holes, he did, like it had once been buried and kicked up by one of the beasties.”
The boy, instead of confirming the tale, merely stared guiltily out the door and scratched some more.
“Hmm. You know, I think my friend might like the piece,” said Ari, trying not to sound too interested. “I’ll give you a penny for it.”
“I don’t want to sell it,” said the boy. “I like it, even if it is only a bull and poor silver.” He reached for it.
Ari closed his fist around the amulet, determined to take it. By force if need be. “Tuppence, then.”
The smith stepped around the bench to stand behind his son. The boy thought a minute. “Four pence and ’tis y
ours, monsire.”
“Good lad,” said Ari as the smith thumped his son on the back. “Four pence it is.” He opened his purse and counted four silver pennies into the boy’s palm.
The lad immediately turned around and handed them over to his father, who bit the coins to check them, then handed one back to the boy. “For all your own. We’ll quarter it later. And the rest, I shall put aside for when you go off to Master Siarl.”
“You have a wise father, Morvran,” said Ari. “And if, in his wisdom, he will let you show me where you found the bull, I will let him have the cup for one and ten.”
“Done,” said the smith quickly. “Though I doubt you’ll find aught of interest. I dug around a bit after, hoping there was more. All I found were coney turds.”
“I only want to be able to tell my friend where the trinket came from.” As the smith counted out coins, Ari broke the knot on the cord and handed the bit of leather back to the boy. He popped the little bull into his purse and stowed the purse inside his shirt, then put the smith’s payment in the scrip to go on the saddle.
With the boy up behind, they headed out of the village. When they were well away from the smith’s house, Ari asked, “So, where did you really find it? Don’t worry. I won’t tell him.”
“Eh?” The boy twisted to look back over his shoulder, as if he expected his father to come running after. “How did you know, sir?”
“It was in your eyes. It wasn’t in the rabbit warren, was it?”
“No, sir. It were by the old fort on the hill. I told Father wrong because he’d told me and Wat not to go so far, and never to go up there at all. He says ’tis an evil place, where witches play at night. But it were near the mouth of a burrow. A badger’s, I think.”
“You’re lucky, then. Badgers have nasty tempers. You might have been bitten and caught the mad fever. Will you show me? It is not night, so witches won’t be about.”
“Well … it were part of the bargain, so yes, sir. I’ll show you. But could you ride toward the warren first, so my father doesn’t know?”
Ari rode him ’round the warren and up the backside of the hill until the boy pointed. “There, m’sir.”
It was indeed a badger hole, and the fresh tracks at the entrance said it was still occupied. The beast had burrowed deep under the few remaining stones of a fortress so ancient it had probably been a ruin when the amulet was first hidden. It was only chance that the badger had kicked it up where it could be found, and more chance that the boy had stumbled upon it. But then the gods had stepped in to send that vision. For once they’d helped instead of hindered.