by Susan King
His companion rubbed his red-gold mustache and then snorted in surly agreement. “Aye, my lord, as ’tis like you and Lord Whitehawke to be at odds once again.”
“Leave it, Perkin, will you,” he snapped. “I have no desire to do this, yet I must follow the king’s orders.” As he lifted in his saddle, a sharp pain flashed through his thigh.
“Becalm yourself, my lord. You are even more irritable than when I left you here. How does your injury?”
“ ’Tis minor, as I told you.”
“We should search for the hunter whose arrow caught you.”
“Nay. ’Tis a scratch, a foolish accident.” He looked away, his mouth grim. Never, he thought, would he admit that a girl had accidentally shot him as he rode unaware through the greenwood. He and Peter de Blackpoole—Perkin was a boyhood nickname—had fostered together and were as close as brothers, yet Peter’s hungry wit was always eager for fodder; Nicholas was aware he would feast on this if he knew.
Peter scratched his unshaven chin, his beard glistening gilt and coppery, as he looked across at Ashbourne Castle. “Think you the chit in that keep is old enough to wed?”
“The chit is old enough,” Nicholas said curtly. “The four youngest issue of Rogier de Ashbourne still reside in the castle. The chit is the eldest of those. I assume they are adolescents.”
He assumed more, but kept the knowledge to himself. Years before, he had offered for the eldest girl’s hand in marriage, owing her father a debt of honor. But Rogier de Ashbourne had died unexpectedly before the agreement was made. And Nicholas had just learned that King John had given the girl to his father, Whitehawke.
“Well, motherless babes would be naught for Lord Whitehawke to conquer,” Peter said cynically. “He gains a young bride with a fine castle. You, my lord, did not fare as well.”
“Hardly,” Nicholas muttered. The king had assigned him custody of the three younger de Ashbournes. He nearly groaned aloud at the thought: nursemaid by the king’s decree.
“Where the devil is he?” he growled, scanning the road behind them. “ ’Tis late afternoon already.”
“Perhaps an enemy waylaid him in the greenwood,” Peter mused, his eyes, blue as the cloudless sky, twinkling merrily.
“Cease your jesting, Perkin, I have not the mood for it,” Nicholas said. “You know that my father will not set foot in a forest if there is a way around. He is perpetually late because of his silly superstitions. The warrior is becoming an old woman.” He stirred on his horse. “I vow, if Whitehawke does not arrive soon, I will leave this deed happily undone.”
“You grow impatient with age, my lord. Neither are you known for ease of temper,” Peter chided him. Turning his head, he suddenly narrowed his eyes. “Ho! There, along the old roman road, comes your illustrious elder.”
The ancient road lay like a pale undulating ribbon across the open sweep of the downs. A group of riders cantered along its length. In the lead, on a huge white destrier, rode a tall man dressed in black armor, his long white hair flying out like a silk banner.
“At last,” Nicholas said.
“Who is with him? A garrison of thirty—nay, forty. At least you had the grace to bring only eight. And—be damned—”
“Hugh de Chavant at the front.”
“That frog-eyed bastard,” Peter snorted. “Why is he here?”
“Would you speak so of my cousin? He is captain of my father’s guard now.”
Peter shot him a disgusted glance. “So he has won the trust of Whitehawke.”
“He always had that. Whitehawke has lately given him a small barony on the Welsh border, though there is scarcely a living in it. He is still forced to earn his keep as a garrison commander.”
“Well, I must have sympathy for him there. Being your garrison commander has not made my fortune, my lord,” Peter mused. “A landless younger son, left to seek my way in the world.” He rolled his eyes skyward with dramatic flourish.
“You could become a monk.” Nicholas cocked an eyebrow.
Peter laughed. “My sword is too happy by my side. And I yearn for land of my own. The tourneys have yielded me but two small manor estates. I must work harder if I am to rest in luxury.”
“I would gladly give you my position as Whitehawke’s heir,” Nicholas said. “He disinherited me again before Yuletide. But last month, when we were forced to smile and be kin for the king’s benefit at court, he informed me that I was his heir for good and all. Until he sees some other evil in me, I trow.”
Peter shot him a serious look. “Let us hope he does not discover the true evil in you, sire.”
“Aye.” Nicholas’ expression was grim as he urged his horse forward. “Pray God it does not come to that.”
The piercing shrieks emanated from within a small chamber, and were now joined by a higher, much angrier cry. Emlyn paused at the top of the stairs, then shoved open an arched wooden door. Although Isobel’s screams burst from a deep window embrasure, Emlyn noted immediately that the child was not in danger. The second set of keening wails came from within the curtained bed. Emlyn lifted Harry out and balanced him on her hip, clucking a soothing sound, then turned toward the other two.
“Christien! Isobel! Stop this!” she said in a loud and firm voice. Harry hiccuped in her arms and locked his warm, chubby legs around her waist.
Christien, brandishing a wooden sword, had backed away when his older sister had entered the room. Now he sheepishly lowered the point of his sword. Emlyn stepped past him.
Isobel lay curled in a deep niche, shrieking with six-year-old gusto, her back pressed against the cruciform opening meant to be used by crossbowmen and archers in defense of the castle. The aperture was large enough to let in air and sunshine, but too small for a child to put out more than an arm or shoulder. Years earlier their father had ordered an iron bar placed across the arrowloop, for the room was the children’s sleeping chamber, which they shared with Tibbie.
“Here, Isobel, come out,” Emlyn said, helping the sniffling girl out of the deep ledge.
Isobel turned to stare accusingly at Christien. Legs spread apart stubbornly, he folded his arms, his build sturdier than his twin sister’s fragile frame, his honey-brown hair lighter than her glossy dark locks, though both shared eyes the deep color of bluebells. Harry, calmer now, peered curiously from one sibling to another, his soft pale curls bobbing with his hiccups.
“She is my prisoner,” Christien said, appealing to Emlyn. “She is a Saracen warrior!”
Isobel, recovered quickly from her disturbance, stamped one little pointed felt shoe. “I am a Saracen princess! Knights may not ever wave their swords at ladies, nor push them from windows!”
“I did not push you! You cried because I bested you! And you are not a noddy-head princess!”
“You are King Richard and I am to be your queen!” Isobel shouted.
“I’ll have no queen!” Christien retorted.
Emlyn stepped between them. “Enough, both of you. This chamber is no place for playacting. Harry was asleep. And you know full well the danger of any window. Christien, your sister is your charge. You are the elder by minutes, and will be a knight one day. No knight ever treats a lady with such disrespect. Even a Saracen lady.”
“Warrior,” muttered Christien.
Emlyn sighed, looking at her brother. “You dearly need some boys to play with, I trow. Well, apologize to your sister, and best remember this in your prayers at bedtime.” She brushed soft waves of hair from his brow. “And ask Saint George to show you greater courtesy.”
“Aye, Emlyn,” he answered grumpily, and mumbled an apology.
As he spoke, Tibbie burst through the door, her wide bosom heaving. “By the horns of Moses! What have ye two been doing up here? Not Saracens and Christians again, is it, and waking our Harry as well. And where is the little servingmaid I put on yer tails when ye went to the bakehouse?”
Isobel and Christien looked guiltily at each other and stood shoulder to shoulder. “We left h
er there, eating honeycakes.”
“I shall take them to my chamber, if you would coax the babe back to sleep,” Emlyn said, and handed Harry to Tibbie. Sucking his thumb, he rested his head on Tibbie’s shoulder.
Emlyn led the twins out and down the short corridor to her own room. “If you are quiet, you may watch me work.”
The children burst enthusiastically into her bedchamber, a small room shaped from the thickness of the castle wall, and bounced on a cushioned window seat while she changed into a dry gown of soft blue wool. Setting a belt of embroidered silk low on her hips, she knelt to search under the bed for her felt shoes.
Tibbie disliked the disorder in Emlyn’s chamber, but a little cheerful chaos had always been natural to Emlyn. Even her years in the convent had not ended her tendency to gentle clutter. She had never conformed completely to the rigorous discipline of the convent, and had been told often that she was impatient and should pray for serenity. While the cloistered atmosphere had fostered her strong need for peace and quiet, it had not had much effect on her sense of organization.
When she had changed, she sat on the window seat and undid her thick braids to brush out the tangles. Rippled from tight plaiting, the silky length of her hair gleamed in variegated colors: pale flax mixed with golden-wheat blond and scattered strands of walnut, the color of her straight, serious brows. Brushed out, her fragrant hair fell to her hips, full as a cloud. She did not take the time to rebraid it, but set a white veil on her head of exotic, gauzy cotton, secured by a silk cord. Tibbie, she thought, will likely grumble about the loose hair.
Afternoon sun spilled into the room through the pillared, arched window, falling in golden bars across the red brocade cushion on the window seat. A wayward breeze dipped through the unshuttered window, bringing a faint waft of sweet orchards.
Emlyn inhaled the cool air and leaned her head against the window post, looking beyond the castle walls to the green crown of the forests and gently swelling downs. Out there, she thought, lay an unfettered, joyful, wild freedom, such as few men, and fewer women, truly had. Certain that she would never know such an existence, she sometimes wondered what life would be like without walls, or guards, or the strictures of duties and obligations.
“You missed supper,” Isobel observed.
“Aye, I went out into the greenwood to practice at the bow.”
“In the forest alone? A lady must never go out unescorted!”
“ ’Tis spring, so the Green Man’s about,” Christien said. “Look out, he’ll have your head with his axe.” Crossing his eyes, he hung his tongue out of his mouth. Isobel squeaked nervously.
Emlyn sighed. “I shall tell you something less eerie than the tale of the Green Knight next time. Perhaps I shall recite Bevis of Hampton. He fought a dragon,” she said. Christien’s eyes popped wide, and he nodded eagerly. “But never fear the forest, dearlings, ’tis a beautiful, peaceful place,” she added.
Most of the time, she corrected herself silently, though she resolved to go there again to hone her archery skill, what little talent it might be. Bowshot knights be damned.
“Will you work now?” Christien asked. Emlyn nodded, rose, and went to a slant-top desk, on which lay one loose parchment sheet, weighted at the corners with small rocks. Above that, a wall shelf held small clay jars of ground pigments, clamshells for mixing paints, assorted brushes, a horn of ink, and quill feathers. Emlyn reached up for a jar and two brushes, set these on the desk, then sat on a three-legged stool.
The flat parchment was partially covered with carefully made black and red letters. The words were not by her own hand, but she could read them, and write as well, thanks to the lady abbess in her convent, who maintained that noblewomen should have well-occupied minds as well as hands. Emlyn and the other girls had been taught reading, writing, a little mathematics, philosophy, and theology, in addition to the usual handicrafts.
The convent had a small scriptorium where the nuns copied and decorated a few precious books for their own use. Once the nuns discovered that Emlyn had a facile hand, she had spent many hours in the scriptorium, painstakingly copying letters until they swam before her tired eyes. Just the thought of such work set her right hand to rhythmic flexing, as if her fingers had a cramp. But she had always loved any chance to paint images.
Her father had approved of her training. His youngest brother, her uncle Godwin, was a monk in a York monastery, an established painter whose work graced the plastered walls of several churches and castles in the northern regions. Godwin was a scholar as well as an artist; she knew that he was currently writing a chronology of the kings of Britain, illuminating its pages himself.
When Emlyn was a child, Godwin had visited one Yule and had playfully showed her how to handle a brush and paints. She had loved the magic of the fluid, bright colors across the thick parchment surface, and had painted ever since.
A breeze lifted a curling lock of hair from her shoulder as she began to work. Propping the heel of one hand against the white cloth, she rotated the tip of a loaded brush to fill in the armor of a knight with grisaille, a gray wash. Painting the miniscule rows of chain mail for a scene of knights in battle was tedious, and she was eager to finish. But she was satisfied with the firm drawing and pleased with the slanted composition that conveyed the furor of battle.
Christien and Isobel stood behind her, breathing softly, uncharacteristically quiet as they watched her work. As she twirled the tiny hairs of the brush, she told them that this picture, along with others stacked on a shelf, illustrated the heroic French poem of Sir Gui de Warwyck. She read a little of the French text aloud from the parchment sheet. The children had heard part of the adventure story before, for Emlyn often read or recited tales to them at bedtime, or in dreary weather.
“I like the part about Sir Gui’s fight with the dragon,” Christien said.
“You only like dragons, and swords, and war-horses,” Isobel said disdainfully.
“See, now that I have done the last of the armor, I can start on the caparisons,” Emlyn said. “There are two blues here. Help me choose.” She removed the beeswax plugs from two small clay jars, and the children leaned over to see the rich hues.
The ultramarine blue, saturated and bright, was made from ground lapis lazuli, imported from the Holy Land and therefore precious and very expensive. Emlyn had only a tiny bit, which she used sparingly. The other was a darker indigo, made from a common woad plant. Both dry pigments had been mixed with whipped egg whites. For other colors, especially reds and greens, Emlyn had been taught to add a variety of ingredients to the mixture: yolks, honey, wine, beer. Her uncle Godwin’s painters, she knew, even added earwax to certain reds to produce luminosity.
They chose the woad and she filled in a cloak and a horse’s caparison while Christien and Isobel hung over her shoulder.
“Guy will treasure this manuscript,” Isobel said.
“He had better,” Emlyn said, laughing. “I have been working on this gift for him for nigh half a year.” She had continued to paint the manuscript despite her brother’s capture, feeling that to abandon it was to abandon hope for Guy.
Several months ago, she had purchased through her uncle Godwin an unfinished manuscript, which she had intended to complete as a New Year’s gift for Guy. Godwin had sent a packet of loose parchment pages, a copy of the story of Gui de Warwyck, made by a scribe in the monastery workshop. Several pages contained blank rectangles where she had added the painted illuminations. The finished manuscript would be sent back to Godwin to be bound, and covered in leather and wood and a little gold leaf, if she could afford it.
Finishing the blue cloak, Emlyn placed the brush in a small pot of water and picked up a clean rabbit’s-hair brush. She chose a jar of vermilion made from iron salts, allowed Isobel to pry loose the little plug, and asked Christien to fetch a clamshell to hold a dab of the new color.
A knock at the door preceded, just barely, Tibbie’s head. “Oh, my lady,” she said, her face lined with co
ncern.
“What is it, Tibbie?” Emlyn asked.
“Sir Wat wished to meet with ye in the great hall. He is on the parapet now, and ye may catch him there if ye hurry. There are riders coming this way!” she blurted.
Emlyn was seized by panic as she thought of the blue-cloaked knight in the forest, and fairly flew down the curving steps to the foyer. There, she opened a door and ran across a connecting platform, rather like a covered wooden bridge, which linked the keep to the broad curtain wall. She hurried along the wide wall walk toward Wat, stopping to glance over the parapet.
Moving up the road that led toward Ashbourne, a gyrating mass of color and sparkle resolved, in the late golden-pink afternoon, into a garrison of armored soldiers.
“Sweet Mother Mary in Heaven!” She drew in her breath sharply. Leaning forward, her fingertips pressing into rough stone, she had the curiously detached sense that she was watching an illuminated miniature come to life.
Forty or more helmets glistened and bobbed rhythmically in the sunlight. Two men rode in the lead, banners flapping behind them. One, on a pale horse, was dressed all in black, his brilliant white hair unprotected by helm or hood. Beside him, riding a black destrier, was a knight cloaked in blue, with steel mesh armor glinting beneath.
Her stomach clenched violently when she saw him.
Gaining the broad meadow that sloped up to the castle gate, the group cantered across the grass, the horses’ hooves sending up clods of earth and flowers as they came steadfastly toward Ashbourne. Pennants fluttered from a wooden pole attached to the bannerman’s saddle: the topmost flag showed the royal crest, while the other, displayed by a sudden gust of wind, carried a design of a green hawk on a white background.
Emlyn turned away from the edge of the parapet to lean against the hard stone. A low groan whispered through her lips, and she felt slightly sick.
She had shot an arrow into a messenger of the king.