‘Stay still, sir.’ The girl’s hand was gentle against his chest, her breath fragrant upon his chin, as her cool fingers examined his burning skin.
Stay still? Miles was utterly enthralled, hardly able to drag his gaze from the soft lips so near his own and yet … Was he bewitched, lured here by magic? The young knight, the vengeful beekeeper, and now this young woman with an angel’s smile, were they all facets of one gem? Glass jewels flashed at him, masquerading as moonstones in the silver caul that hid her hair. Why did she not wear it loosened to show her maidenhood? Whose was she?
The questions must have been brazen in his stare for her eyes widened in surprise. The straw hat dipped. Shyness, he presumed, but then she lifted her face and he was glad to be wrong.
‘You won this bout and rightly so.’ Miles captured her hand, lifting it to his lips with courtly grace. ‘But do not imagine this is over, mistress,’ he warned, reluctantly letting her fingers slide free. ‘There are subtler ways to take a castle.’
The infinitesimal pause in her breathing appeased him. ‘But surely in any campaign you risk capture, sir.’
‘True, mistress.’ His grin was predatory. ‘But such peril makes the victory infinitely more desirable.’
Her answer hurtled a cannonball through the courteous banter. ‘For you maybe, but not for the poor wretch who broke his wrist two days ago in this quarrel. No, nor your father’s man whose eye is blinded. God’s truth, sir, you are welcome to Bramley and … and its—’
‘—blushing underskirts?’ he added, roguish.
Hurt flared; he deserved a thwacking but she surprised him with a shimmering, self-deprecating smile. Cruelly, raised voices echoing from the courtyard spoilt the delicate truce between them.
‘You showed audacity in coming here, Sir Miles,’ she said.
‘A fox in the Ballaster hen coop? Yes, time to go, I think.’
Aye, he must, it was madness to become entangled further. He would not play Jason to her Medea. God knows this enchantress’s humour changed like a weathercock.
He kept pace as she hastened up the slope but then she faltered, clapping a hand to her ribs as if in pain. The beautiful eyes glazed over and her body tightened like a lute string. Another facet, Miles thought, roused at imagining her beneath him so, but this was no trickery; she was clutching his sleeve, her doe’s eyes wild.
‘Go back! Home, yes. Tell your father he is needed at home!’ And she started hurrying through the trees.
‘Come back!’ Miles shouted. What had she meant? Why …
He was close in pursuit when Mistress Ballaster misguidedly glanced back. Her long skirt snagged beneath her pointed shoe. Miles tried to catch her, but his boot heel slid upon the icy ground and he tumbled sprawling down on top of her. With maidenly embarrassment, the girl hastily twisted, trying to drag herself swiftly free from the tangle of sleeves, but one of Miles’s spurs had snared in the hem of her undergown.
Then the world went wild. A half score of men with cudgels burst through the gate.
The maiden’s nimble fingers extricated him, but a cage of boots barred his escape. Ugly stares examined his clothing for signs of disarray; surliness surrounded him, seething, threatening to boil over into violence. Knowing the picture they must present and cursing himself for a fool, he clambered from his hands and knees with as much dignity as he could muster. Although he was tempted to draw his dagger against their cudgels, he might as well have brandished a daisy stalk at the louts. With bravado, he reached down a gallant hand to the wench and said a prayer to whichever saint was good at calming virgins. The plea must have worked or else Heloise Ballaster was possessed with more common sense than most spinsters.
‘No, I can shift for myself, sirrah,’ her voice was calm as she rose gracefully. ‘What else was it you wanted to ask me, fellow, before I slipped?’ It was gracious of her, sparing him any blame.
‘Aye,’ muttered the most bull-necked of the pack salaciously. ‘Wot was ee goin’ to ask ’er?’ Growling, the Ballaster retainers closed in like a royal bodyguard, fencing him from their princess. Their fists were edgy, ready to smash him to a bloody pulp.
‘No!’ Her sovereignty was brandished calmly. ‘Put away your cudgels, all of you! Can you not see he is only a messenger.’ Miles, used to brandishing authority, winced at her mockery. Was he being taught another lesson? Brushing her hands clean, she was waiting, her hazel eyes laughing at him. ‘Well, fellow?’
When the words surfaced at last, his voice sounded alien to him. ‘My master says …’ One of the servants muttered behind the girl and hurt sparked across her madonna face. Would she be punished for this later? Miles swallowed and chose his answer with even more care. ‘My master says, mistress, that he will have his lawful inheritance from your father yet and that he knows full well who is the bravest of the Ballasters. Tell him so … I pray you,’ he added swiftly, remembering his disguise.
‘I shall tell him.’ Displeasure lined her voice but gratitude glimmered in her eyes, then she clapped her hands like a good chatelaine. ‘Two of you, see this man off our land, and back to work, the rest of you. I thank you for your care of me.’
‘Aw, mistress, can’t we give ’im a right dustin’ and tip him down the well?’
A feminine glance perused the prisoner consideringly and mischief flared fleetingly in her eyes before she said with a little sigh, ‘Oh no. Now if it were his master,’ she paused for emphasis, ‘well, then, that would be different,’ and the impertinent wench turned on her heel.
Miles stared after her, his mouth a hard line of suppressed fury, his mind reeling from bewilderment. One instant she was being solicitous, the next taunting him. And what had been that strange babble about his father needing to go home?
‘Come along, you!’ A rough hand shoved Miles and he was prodded from the orchard with a bunch of servants sniggering in his wake. They marched him behind Mistress Ballaster across the bailey, and he did not know whether he was glad she was still in charge, or shamed that she intended to watch him being ignobly ejected from his father’s property. When the fair girl and two children ran giggling to join her, his mortification was sublimely terrible.
‘Your dove cote needs cleaning!’ he snarled in valediction, his voice raised to reach her, and for thanks received a booting across the drawbridge.
*
Having cuffed his gatekeeper, and lectured his daughters in the solar before supper on suitable behaviour when accosted by strangers, Sir Dudley – who was still blithe from his miraculous recovery – repeated his warning to the entire household from the hall dais, dwelling somewhat emotionally on words like ‘theft’ and ‘virtue’.
Heloise refused to eat in the great hall but she listened to her father’s words from behind the solar door, ashamed that he was intent on sullying Sir Miles’s reputation. At this rate, every gossip in the shire would be sniggering at Rushden’s escapade. Why was her father doing this, knowing that it might bring the full wrath of their enemies? Miles Rushden would be angry and she needed him to leave. His very presence had mocked her, arousing a hunger for the fruits of life – a future denied her because of her despised hair. Her dreams at Middleham had been a warning; Miles Rushden was dangerous, especially for her.
*
‘Let me see the bailiff’s letter, sir!’ Miles flung the reins to Dobbe, and strode after his father into the house they had requisitioned at Monkton Bramley. He had just returned from his confrontation with the witchgirl to find his father preparing to depart for Dorset. His mother had been injured.
‘Letter’s on the bench there,’ muttered Lord Rushden, strapping a leather flask onto his belt. ‘With God’s grace, I’ll make good time if I leave now.’
‘Christ Almighty, Father!’ Miles looked up in disbelief. ‘She has broken a rib.’
‘Aye, I always said that horse would throw her one day’ A loving hand clapped his shoulder. ‘Godsakes, Miles, you have gone as white as a corpse.’
‘Where is the man w
ho brought this?’
‘Round the back in the byre. Rest easy, lad. Your mother will mend.’
The shapeshifter, Heloise Ballaster, had been right. Twice! Predicting she would best him on their next encounter and now this – his father needed urgently at home. No, this was utterly insane. How could she possibly have known?
Miles found the messenger dozing on the straw. ‘Did you tell anyone of your tidings on the journey here?’ he demanded, shaking him awake.
‘N-no, sir. I came directly.’
‘And no one waylaid you?’ Goggling, the man shook his head and Miles released his collar.
‘Changes matters, of course,’ his father was saying behind him, ‘having to return to Upton Stafford. Pity we never had a cannon here, we could have bombarded Ballaster into surrender. No need for you to come back to Dorset, Miles, seeing as you have to return to the duke, but you could snip this rooster’s tail feathers in the mean time.’
‘Of course.’ Miles tried to collect his shattered wits. ‘I need not leave for Thornbury till Friday but tomorrow, yes, I will create such hell for Ballaster that he will rue the day he set eyes on Bramley.’
‘That’s the spirit, Miles. Go over to Norton Magna and collect the rents, then send the rest of the lads on to me with the money.’
*
‘How much did they collect! Wait till I lay hands on that whoreson. I’ll geld him! Nail his feet to the floor while I do it too!’ Sir Dudley paced before the hearth in the great hall.
Sir Hubert, sober, received a warning glance from Heloise, who sat with a distaff by the fire, and cleared his throat: ‘I know the king has given you his good lordship, Dudley, but have a care. Old Rushden has been boasting that his son is high in Buckingham’s favour.’
‘Bah! That incompetent,’ Ballaster muttered, careful none of the servants heard him. He took a goblet of wine from Dionysia and sipped it irritably.
‘Ah, but you don’t run foul of any great lord in this life, unless you haven’t a sparrow’s fart of doing otherwise. Cut your cloth, Dudley, to match your arm. As to young Rushden, we might give him a beating yet, I daresay.’
‘Heloise would not like you to do that, sir.’ Dionysia darted a look at her sister.
‘Go to, Didie!’ Heloise shifted painfully. The truth of her caller’s identity had been beaten out of her and she regretted her treachery. She would not forget that Miles Rushden had braved the bees to speak with her.
‘Ha, never tell me you found something to pity in the pockmarked scoundrel,’ scoffed her father. ‘Offer to mend his face with fennel juice, did you? Pah, women! Didn’t he threaten to strip away your tassets and take his belt to you at Potters Field?’
Heloise looked away, with a prayer of thanks that the bees had stung Miles Rushden – and would they please set upon her father.
‘Stop worrying, you goose.’ Dionysia slid her arms fondly about her sister’s neck. ‘This serpent of yours is shortly returning to his duke. In three days’ time, he leaves for Wales. He told me so himself. I have my skills at extracting useful information from unsuspecting men,’ she added with a purr.
‘Now there is meat for the digestion.’ Sir Dudley’s eyes were gleaming of a sudden with malicious interest.
The room blurred, their voices faded as Heloise felt the pain and anger of a roped creature. She saw their enemy lying face down between the ruts of a stony road with blood upon his temple. ‘Jesu mercy,’ she whispered, needing air. Her father was destined to kill Miles Rushden.
Heedless of the cold, of her silken slippers, useless against the stony ground, she rushed out the door and across the courtyard to rest her cheek against the cold bark of the birch tree. Her breath was vapour, her tears like tiny moonstones. Above her was a dark sky with its sprinkling of silver tapers in the heavens.
‘Take him away,’ she whispered to the faery folk. ‘You must! Please!’
Chapter 5
It was an ambush – a rope taut across the bridle track at fetlock height. Dobbe, catching it first, went crashing down in a lethal thrash of hooves. Miles glimpsed it too late to draw rein. All he could do was spur Traveller across the ditch alongside the road to avoid the harm. A branch grazed his temple, but his horse staggered as a dozen masked rogues rose whooping from the undergrowth to drag him from the saddle. It took effort to roll free but he managed to cause havoc with his dagger, sending one of the ruffians to his Maker, but there must have been a half dozen still coming at him like hunting dogs while the others scrambled up to attack his men. Swords and pikes forced him back into the gully. Ditchwater lapped his toes, mud sucked at his heels, and grasping weeds tentacled his spurs. Before he could draw his sword, a net of thick rope fell across his shoulders. Half-blinded, he gave a roar of fury, thrashing out as they hauled him to the road. A fist drove into his belly and he staggered, bent double.
‘Mind his valuables!’ bawled someone
‘Aye and have a care to his face, remember,’ cautioned someone.
‘The Devil’s been there before us by the look of him.’ A cruel hand grabbed his hair and jerked his head back. ‘There’s more holes in this ’ere face than a coney warren, and no mending neither.’
A vicious blow caught him beneath the jaw and the world disappeared.
By the time his wits recovered, Miles’s head was slapping against a horse’s sweating flank like a loose stirrup and there was a rag stuffed in his mouth. When they yanked away the musty hood covering his face, it was the glittering windows of Bramley, reflecting the dying sun, that mocked him. The chimneys with smoky tendrils might have been the sulphurous oozing caves of Satan’s demesne, and Sir Dudley, laughing fiendishly at him from the doorway, could have been the Lord of Wickedness himself. In the stables, Miles was hauled from the horse, the gag yanked out, but before he could demand news of his men, a bucket of water slapped him straight in the face and he was locked into a small whitewashed room.
Icy water rivulets ran down beneath his camlet shirt as Miles slammed his hands against the door, calling down curses and yelling until he was hoarse and could shout no more, then he subsided against the wall and sank to the floor, his bruised body shuddering, his arms making a shaky St Andrew’s cross against his chest. A candle flickering upon a narrow table lured him to struggle to his feet and stretch out frozen fingers to its timid warmth. Beside the table legs sat a ewer and napkins, and lying across a small bench were dry clothes. He ignored both. Mud clung to his ripped hose and his doublet was soaking and filthy but he would be damned if he would cooperate, and then he shivered.
Someone was rasping open the doorbolt. Miles swung round, his hand going instinctively for his missing dagger. A curtain of grizzled hair valanced his visitor’s bald dome, settling in hanks across massive shoulders and framing a florid face that hinted at a surfeit of feasting – the giant he had glimpsed in the village. Flabby lips grinned amiably down at him. ‘I am Sir Hubert Amory.’ Of the siege at Nancy! Miles stayed unimpressed. ‘Ha!’ the colossus exclaimed, withdrawing his hands from behind his back to wave a wine jug and two goblets. ‘Thought you might have a thirst on you, young man.’ He swaggered unsteadily over to the bench, set the jug on the table, pushed the clothing to one side, and plonked himself down as if he was about to carouse in a tavern. ‘Not ready then?’ he asked, filling the goblets with a generous hand.
‘Ready? For what? And where are my men, damn you?’
Before Miles could grab him by the lapels, the old man whipped out his dagger with a surprising swiftness for a drunkard. ‘Style here not to your taste? I should hate to see you brought low by the cold, my boy. Nigh killed his grace the king last winter.’ Miles dazedly watched the tip of the rondel run adroitly beneath an already clean nail. ‘It is like this, Sir Miles, you can wash and dress yourself in clean raiment or we shall do it the faster way – empty a few more pails of water over you until you sniffle yourself into compliance. Or is your lordship waiting for servants to help you? That can be done too. They are a bit rough, but
they will peel you mother naked quicker than a dog can piss.’
‘Get out!’
‘No, my boy, I am sitting right here until you decide which way it is going to be.’
Miles furiously began unlooping the buttons of his ruined doublet. ‘I do not know what game your master is—’
‘Friend, lad. Sir Dudley is a friend and I owe him the favour to have you nice and clean with no more trouble. Nearly fought you at Potters Field, it seems, but I drank too much. Castilian soap there, lad, in the dish and a jar of some sweet smelling stink for you to swill over yourself if you’ve a mind to it. Where was I? Oh aye, poor little Heloise. I would never have got myself drunk as a lord if I had realised what would happen. Doing this for her. She really takes this family honour rather hard. But it is not the clothes that make the man – nor woman either. Values, my boy. Values!’
‘If that is the case,’ muttered Miles, untethering his sodden hose before he shed the rest of his garments. ‘I wonder you keep company with the likes of Ballaster.’
‘Go back a long way, we do. He paid my debts and gave me a roof over my head again. I was drunk in the gutter every nig—’
‘Spare me the minutiae!’
‘When did you have the small pocks, lad?’ the older man asked as if it were a mutually agreeable topic.
‘Two years ago.’ Miles muttered sullenly, towelling himself dry. His ruined face was not a subject that he discussed with anyone, let alone this old bibbler. He had come to terms with his appearance; what others made of him was their affair. With an oath, he pulled on the fine lawn shirt and Holland drawers, then sat down scowling to negotiate the woollen hose. One leg was scarlet, the other blue, a fashion he detested.
‘That’s what I mean, my boy.’ The dagger waved in the air to emphasis the meaning. ‘You are the same man beneath the skin, whether scarred or no. Pretty, were you?’
The Silver Bride Page 6