He prodded at something bruised and sore. She recoiled from the intrusion.
“I do not think that you are a virgin now, though. Am I wrong about that?”
She gritted her teeth. “Nay. Now are you contented? Will you leave this alone?”
“I want to know why you are afraid of this. Why does the pleasure die?”
She fought to control the dreadful emotions that his questions tapped, but they started oozing into her heart.
“Did something happen when that army came? After your men were killed and you were unprotected? Is that why you want to earn coin and meet a champion? Do you dream of avenging the loss of more than your family and home?”
She could not answer. She could not face him. She wanted him to stop asking about this. Wanted it so dreadfully that she desperately raised her face to kiss him. To distract him.
He accepted the offering, but did not kiss back. He broke it gently, as though he knew what she was about.
“Joan, were you raped?”
Mortification poured through her. Utterly engulfed her. Her throat and eyes burned as she struggled to suppress the onslaught of disgrace. Fear and disgust and deadening sadness blew through her.
And anger, too. At Rhys. He could not leave it alone. He had to dig and dig until he undermined her feeble defenses. He had to throw her back into it, just to satisfy his vanity that her denial was not a repudiation of him.
Barely controlling the pointless tears that she had sworn never to shed again, she roughly pushed out of his arms. She faced him, more furious than she had ever been in her life.
He wanted to know? He needed to know? Then let him know, damn it.
“It was not rape. I was not forced.” She started striding back to the wagon. “I went willingly. I sold myself.”
CHAPTER 14
THE DEVIL IN HIM had taken over, and now he sorely regretted it.
Joan rode the rest of the way in utter silence. Unmoving. A figure carved in stone, with all of her humanity drawn in beneath a hard surface.
He turned and glimpsed her eyes. Shadowed with pain, they peered inward and noticed neither his concern nor her surroundings. He knew that look. He had seen it before, on a dark-haired woman carrying a dead bastard in her womb.
They got back to the city an hour before sunset. Joan hopped out of the cart when he stopped by the stable, and scurried into the house. He unhitched the wagon as Mark arrived to take care of the horse.
“What is this?” Mark asked, lifting a large twine sack. “It is awful heavy.”
Rhys had forgotten it was there. “It is clay.”
“Clay? For Joan? Let me go tell her. She looks unhappy. This will brighten her up.”
“Nay, hand it to me. Let her be alone now. Take care of the horse, and then go visit your friend David.”
Rhys carried the bag into the garden and put it on the table. Since the sunlight was still strong, and since Joan needed her privacy, he uncovered the statue. Angling it low, he straddled the bench by the face and took up his fine rippler to finish the mouth.
Ursula, the virgin martyr. She had died rather than lie with the pagan leader of the Huns. Eleven thousand young women had perished with her, in the name of Christian purity. He decided that he did not like Ursula and the other virgin saints much, even if he loved this statue. What message did her story give to the Joans of the world who had to bargain with the devil in order to survive?
He lost himself in the work as he had hoped he would. And so he did not notice her in the garden until she set the cup of ale on the table.
Despite her unhappiness, she had gone to the tavern. The fresh ale had become a little ritual, and every evening it waited for him in the hall when he returned. If the night had grown cool she usually built up the fire in the hearth there, too, and placed the master's chair nearby. He rarely used that, though. He normally carried the ale back into the kitchen, and spent the time before supper with her and Mark.
He glanced at her face, and her sadness tore at his heart. He had guessed her story, but he had never suspected how raw her soul still was.
Too raw. She had accepted the things she could change, and had ignored the ones she could not, but that did not weaken the worst sorrows. A grief that was not embraced would have its day eventually. It slowly ate its way out of its hiding place, destroying whatever lay in its path.
She began to return to the house, but noticed the sack.He watched while she considered it, and poked its side curiously. She peeked inside. He returned to his rippler.
Nothing. No sound at all. Finally he looked over.
She still peered into the sack, but her expression had lost its deadness.
“You bought this for me?”
“The potter from Kent had extra. He was willing to give me some.”
“It is very fine clay. And it is a lot.”
“You can put some in water to save, nay?”
She pulled the sack down and stared at the lump, as though she did not remember what to do.
He got up and found a wide board. He set it across the other end of the bench. “You can work it here.”
“I have no kiln.”
“For a price, George will let you use his. And even if you can not fire them, it is the craft that gives satisfaction as much as the product. At least it is for me.”
“Aye, for me, too.”
He returned to his place. She contemplated the clay. Clawing away a big chunk, she carried it to the board. “It is too stiff. It requires kneading.”
Ignoring his presence, she unlaced her gown and slipped it off. Bare-armed and bare-legged, wearing only her shift, she straddled the bench and sank her hands into the grayish mass.
She did not lose herself in it, though. He might be gone, but her own thoughts were not. They silently quaked through the air. He felt her sadness as surely as the tool in his hand.
The clay proved very stiff. Almost unyielding.
“It needs a little water, nay?” he asked.
“Probably,” she said dully.
He rose and got some from the well, brought it back, and straddled the other side of the board. He dripped some on, and then lent his own hands and strength to the chore.
They kneaded together in silence. Her movements were rote and not very effective. Her bare knees peeked out from the hitched up shift, but she neither noticed nor cared.
“You knew,” she muttered.
“I guessed. I was not sure.”
“How?”
“Things that you had said. Bits here and there. I am somewhat practiced at hearing the thoughts behind a word or two.”
“So you had to ask, because you hoped it was not true.”
“That it is true matters not to me, Joan. Not in the way that you think.”
She glanced up with complete disbelief, then slammed her fist into the clay. “Well, it matters to me.”
He debated his course, and hoped that he chose the right one. “When I was a boy, just younger than Mark, a woman I knew caught the eye of a powerful man. He was the son of the local lord's overlord, and accustomed to having what he wanted. She refused him, but he did not relent. She was freeborn, of a craftsman's family, but it did not matter.”
She did not look at him, but her fingers stretched tensely through the clay.
“He might have just caught her alone and forced her, but that was not his way. Instead he made her suffer. Not just herself, but her family. He saw that no one sold them food or gave them work. He threatened everyone who might help, but he never directly hurt her. All of her kin went hungry, even the children.”
Her hands stopped. She stared at the clay. “What did she do?”
“What could she do? She went to him. Willingly, as his vanity wanted. But there was no will in it at all. If he had held a knife to her throat, it would have been more her choice than it was. Nor did he welcome her as a lover. He made her bargain for her family, so she would know his power. It was the first of many degradations.”
> She closed her eyes. A tremor shook her body.
He slid his hand over hers. “For what were you forced to bargain, Joan?”
She barely moved, but the hand under his clawed into the clay. “For Mark,” she whispered. “For my brother's life. He would have killed him, and no one else could stop it.”
Jesus. He grasped her hand tightly, as much to contain his own emotion as to soothe hers. She did not have to say who “he” was. It had not been some knight drunk on victory, but the man who flew Mortimer's banner. “You had no choice, darling. See that, and know the truth of it, and never say that you sold yourself again.”
Her shoulders bowed lower. The memories began defeating her.
He reached for her. “Joan …”
She threw up a hand to ward him off. “Nay. Please do not. Leave now. Please, leave me alone.”
He rose, reluctant to abandon her like this. She appeared terribly limp, and tragically, pitifully alone. He thought that his heart would break for her.
He caressed her head with his fingertips as he passed, lightly enough that she would not feel. But he did. “I am sorry, Joan. I should have seen it sooner. I fear that whenever I touched you, it only made you remember.”
She kneaded with all her strength, praying the clay would absorb the horror as smoothly as it did her hands. It didn't happen this time. The despair just grew and grew, filling her until it choked her chest and throat in its demand to come out. She used all of her strength to keep it contained, but its devastating power surged relentlessly until her hands and the clay blurred from the tears streaming into her eyes.
It was time, whether she wanted it or not. For over three years she had never really faced the despair, but she had no choice now. His questions had opened the frail scabs, and it just started flowing, like blood from a putrefied wound. She could not stop it this time. None of the old sanctuaries served her well enough. Not the anger or the hatred or even the clay.
She had often sought escape in her craft, but now she found release. She pounded and jabbed viciously as the emotions racked her. Gasping sobs groaned out of her so forcefully that they pained and bent her whole body. Tears fell like a waterfall onto the mass that she pummeled. The memories forced themselves into her mind so vividly that three years might have never passed.
Images of Guy, of his demands and touch, were the least of it. The real hell had not been at night, except when she woke and experienced the suffocating sense of entrapment. She had faced what occurred with her body long ago. Reliving the rest of it devastated her, though. The numbing of her soul. The lonely helplessness. The self-hatred and disgust. The sense of being so unclean that no bath could purify her.
She fought acknowledging all that, fought so hard that her body ached. It filled her anyway. It poured out of the places she had hidden it, swamping her until she groaned in surrender.
Sobbing uncontrollably, drowning in bleakness, she continued blindly attacking the clay. Her mind kept running away, trying to find shelter, but there was nowhere to hide.
Her head hurt. She thought that her chest would burst.The sobs choked her so badly that she couldn't breathe. She folded her arms over her body in a frantic attempt to hold herself together.
It felt like grief, the worst grief she had ever known. Giving it a name made it a little better, but also more intense. Facing the loss broke her heart. It sharpened the pain with a biting nostalgia.
She careened, pressing her folded arms into her bent body so hard that she hurt herself. She finally mourned for the life torn from her. Not the comforts, but the happiness and the innocence. The trust and faith. She mourned for her childhood, and the girl she had once been.
It blew through her like a deadly storm. She lost her mind for a while and only scathing pain existed. Pain that threatened to tear her to shreds.
Slowly, like all tempests, it eased a little. She tried to regain some control. Swallowing the anguish shot cramps through her body. Forcing back the tears seared her eyes and thickened her throat.
Calm came slowly. It brought a new knowing and a new acceptance and the vaguest relief.
She grew aware of herself, and the bench and the clay. Twilight had fallen on the garden. She unfolded her arms and slid her hands onto the mass on the board between her knees. Her violence had created lumps and pits and jagged valleys.
She squeezed and smoothed until she had a round, flat form. A compulsion to work it slid through her. Like the line of the sun spreading over a field after a storm, the hope of solace peeked through her misery and beckoned her.
She had found comfort in her craft before. Perhaps she could now. It was the one good thing to rise out the destruction. She would make something beautiful, an image from the old days, and give form to what was left of the part of her that had once known goodness.
Sniffing back the threatening sorrow, she let her hands move. She would not make a statue this time, but a plaque in relief. She scooped and modeled, making the forms rise and swell.
It absorbed her completely. Peace came, melancholy but secure. The light grew so dim that she could not see what she made. It just emerged, flowing directly from her soul to her fingers, skipping her mind. It felt so right, though. It would be perfect. Beautiful and perfect and good. A little monument to who she had once been and to what she had once known.
“What do you have there?”
It was Mark, coming toward her from the garden portal. She straightened and realized that dark had fallen. “I don't know for sure. A face, I think. Father's, I think.”
He went very still. She instantly regretted saying that. She did not want to draw him into her unhappiness.
“Bring me a candle, would you?”
He went into the kitchen and came back with a small taper. She took it from him. “Go and get some sleep now.”
He gladly obeyed. He would not want to see their father's face. He carried his own wounds, and licked them his own way. She lowered the little flame. Its flickering light sent the smallest glow over the clay. Her blindness had produced something fairly crude, but the visage was distinct.
Not her father's face. It was not an image from her girlhood, but a man from her present.
It was Rhys.
CHAPTER 15
HE WENT TO THE SOLAR window again and again. The sound of her grieving drew him there.
Night fell, and still she sat, straddling the bench. Not the soulful careening of before, though. She worked the clay now.
That was a hopeful sign. Her hands would express what her soul needed to know. Creating something from base materials was a spiritual act as well as a physical skill. There could be healing in it. He had realized that as a boy, and it was a big reason why he would never put aside the chisel, no matter how many buildings he planned.
A tiny light appeared. He watched it flicker while she sat motionlessly, holding it in her hand. She appeared calmer.
He turned away, leaving her to her privacy again. He sat in the chair where he had held his vigil while he listened to her sobs rise from the garden.
She would not like to know that he had heard. He would have preferred not to, because her sadness wrenched his heart. It was empathy that had kept him here as much as affection. It was also guilt. Not just for bringing her to this state, but also for not preventing the events that had shredded her life.
His mind saw himself as a youth, resolved to make his own justice for a destroyed soul. He had not thought of it as the right thing to do; it had simply seemed the only thing to do. The marcher lords held more power than barons did elsewhere in the realm. The son of the man who was the law would never answer to the law himself. And this crime had been shrewd. If a woman went willingly, how could she claim to have been forced?
There had been weeks of planning and practice with the bow. Days of silent watching. When the opportunity came, however, he had experienced an instant of cowardice. That hesitation had led to failure, and then to the run across England to escape the search for the hid
den assassin who had dared try such a thing.
If he had been braver and faster, Mortimer would have died that day. The realm would have been spared his ambitions. No army would have gone to Joan's home three years ago.
No henchman would have degraded her.
He had come to this city sworn to fight when necessary, and to never hesitate again. Not just for that woman, and not just against Mortimer. That commitment had gov erned his life and his choices as surely as the urge to build had.
But fate could be capricious. In the fight for justice, he had helped hand more power to the man whose ruthless-ness he had wanted to avenge as a youth. He had made a ruler of the rapist he had once tried to kill.
All his risks, all his ideals, were thrown in his face. Worse, he had actually been an agent in the corruption of his own beliefs.
He lifted a rolled parchment from the floor by his boot. He had grabbed some of his fantasies to bring in here to distract himself from the misery in the garden. That had been hopeless. He might peer at the drawings, but he had not really seen any of then. The part of him that mattered had been down there with her, feeling her pain, praying that those tears would purge the worst of the hidden misery from her heart.
He unrolled the plan. It was an old one, done during the rebellion. With war threatening, he had turned his imagination to castles. It showed a keep and walls, with all its parts articulated. It was very detailed, in ways few of his designs ever were.
He calls one of his builders to repair the walls. Someday that builder will be you.
She had seen to the heart of it at once. Seen more than he wanted to admit to himself. Her own sense of justice, still hot and pure, had recognized loss of faith when faced with it.
Slow footsteps sounded on the stairs. That would be Mark, bringing up water for the night.
A blond crown and lit taper emerged from the stairwell. Then a delicate face and very blue eyes. It was not Mark. Joan had decided to take this chore tonight.
She watched the bucket to make sure none of the water slopped out. She stepped into the solar and began to head to the bedchamber before she noticed him sitting near the cold hearth.
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