LordoftheHunt

by Anonymous Author

  He wanted not one speck of dishonor to touch his huntress.

  And he wanted her in his bed. Without delay. As soon as Ravenswood was secured for the crown.

  He needed to bring his full force from the surrounding countryside and take possession, but now with Christopher dead, Adam realized he had no one to summon his troops.

  He could not go himself. Beyond the suspicions that might provoke, he would forfeit the tournament. Until the very last moment, everyone must think his goal was Mathilda. When his men were in place, he would lay claim to all of this. Mathilda could go to a convent and the bishop to the devil.

  Would Mathilda choose a man who involved himself with another woman, a woman he’d been warned to look at less? Never.

  Adam smiled as he dashed through the bailey and took the keep steps two at a time. He’d done far more than look at Joan. And more than touch her tawny skin. Thinking of her was like having a fine madness boiling in his blood.

  Never had he known such a woman. She had marshaled the hounds to save him against a boar when she could have run. She had who cared enough about him to leap into an icy pond.

  His last mistress would have stood on the bank, weeping over her muddy slippers and wringing her hands. Mathilda struck him as cut from the same cloth.

  The guard opened the great doors to him. The hall was crowded, almost every seat taken, including the one he had been elevated to at the previous supper. Rather than confront the slack-faced suitor who had usurped his place, Adam strolled about the hall, keeping an eye on his men. It pleased him they behaved with great restraint despite a day indoors. They had separated themselves as well to garner gossip he might find useful.

  He paused in mid-stride and hissed in his breath.

  Not because Mathilda and her women were arrayed before the fire like gems on a merchant’s table.

  Nay. A thought hammered him like a blow to the chest.

  Joan had leapt into the pond to rescue a man she’d assumed to be him. Had Christopher been struck down by mistake?

  Servants filed past him with pitchers and began to fill empty tankards. Others offered loaves of bread and fresh butter. Had one of these suitors wanted him dead? He put his hand to his dagger and found his ribbons gone.

  Adam hooked Hugh by the arm. “I must speak with you.”

  They stood in the arch that led to the storerooms below. Adam crossed his arms on his chest in an effort to look at ease, though inside, his mind was in a turmoil.

  “I believe I have made a rather distressing discovery,” Adam said.

  “I tried to resist her.”

  Adam stared at Hugh’s face. “What?”

  “I tried to set her from my mind. I have pretended I do not want her, but, in truth, I met her years ago and twice in Winchester within this past year. She preys on my mind and I’ve tried to forget her, but I cannot do it.”

  “Hugh. What are you saying? You knew Joan before—”

  “Joan?”

  “Her…you said her.”

  “Adam, I’m going to ask you a question, and you had better give me a truthful answer.”

  “If it’s within my power, I will do so.” Some truths were not his to give.

  “Are you in love with the huntress?”

  “Jesu, lower your voice.”

  “Forget I asked. ‘Tis none of my business. As to me, I confess to liking the huntress quite a bit. If I ever decide to wed, I’ll come back for her.”

  “The devil you say!” Adam frowned.

  Hugh slung an arm around his neck and ruffled his hair, then pushed him away. “I’m just testing you. And the expression on your face says much. If you like the huntress, have at her. She would be perfect for you, as I’ve said before. Lush ass, worthy breasts, and I would imagine very strong thighs to ride you after a hunt.”

  Adam raked his fingers through his hair to smooth it down. He must not respond to such bait. “Listen, I’ve had a most disagreeable thought. The young man who drowned…he looks much like me.”

  “What? That’s what you wanted to talk to me about? You fear the dead minstrel was mistaken for you?”

  “My first thought when I saw Christopher was that he looked more like me than my own brother.”

  Hugh scratched his chin. “It makes sense someone would kill you. You are the most likely man to win Mathilda.”

  “So who has the mettle to try it?”

  “I’d have to say only de Harcourt has the mettle.”

  Hugh’s answer did not sit well. No matter Brian’s hostility toward him, Adam liked the man.

  Adam headed for Mathilda, who stood out from her colorfully garbed women by wearing all white. She also wore her hair loose.

  He thought of Joan’s hair, not smooth and combed like Mathilda’s, but wild and curling about her head. And not this yellow either, but the color of ale streaked with gold.

  Joan had been a virgin. As a virgin, she was more precious than any gold. It meant she was completely his, untouched. Richard or Brian might have loved her, wanted her, but they had not had her.

  What if she had not been innocent? Would it matter? Not if ‘twas Richard who’d loved her. A dead lover was only a threat in the afterlife. But, if it had been Brian…

  Acid burned up Adam’s throat. Brian was a formidable rival. Mathilda seemed enraptured of his conversation at this very moment.

  A woman’s first lover must, by rights, remain in her mind and possibly her heart, always. Or so the jongleurs sang. He remembered his first woman. And his second. He frowned.

  Although she had not lain with them, had Joan loved both Richard and Brian. And in what order had she loved them?

  What ailed him? It only mattered whom she loved now.

  “My lady,” Adam said as he reached the dais. He bowed to Mathilda and gave Brian a curt nod.

  The rushes were strewn with sage and lavender, mingling their odors with that of the damp wool and muddy leather of the men. Great logs burned in the mammoth fireplace and a sheen of perspiration glistened on Mathilda’s forehead.

  “We missed you, Sir Adam,” Mathilda said. “Where have you been hiding? In the privy again? And why do you not wear your ribbons?”

  Adam propped one foot on the dais and touched his dagger hilt. “I’ve lost the ribbons, my lady, but not in the privy.”

  Mathilda giggled and floated like a fairy being to where he stood. “How did you lose your ribbons? Not gaming, I hope. I’ll not wed a gamer.”

  Hugh, who had sat down at a nearby table, shook a dice cup and called out his joy as the dice landed his way on the table.

  Adam frowned at his friend’s unusual behavior. Hugh hated dicing. “Nay, my lady, I lost them drawing a drowned man from your fish pond.”

  Silence fell around them; then whispers broke out. Mathilda drew her delicately arched brows together. “A man drowned in my fish pond? What say you? How could this be?”

  She looked at the bishop, who waved a negligent hand.

  “It was one of the minstrel’s company, I believe,” the bishop said. “He must have taken too much drink at the fair and mistaken his way home.”

  Mathilda put out her hand to Adam. He took it. So small and free of blemish it was compared to Joan’s strong freckled one. Had Mathilda ever done aught but ply a needle and thread?

  She squeezed his hand. “I must thank you for caring about the man. If you drew him from the pond yourself, it speaks of a compassion men often lack. I must reward such kindness and regret I have no ribbons on my own gown to give you.”

  So saying, she pulled the jeweled dagger from his belt—very slowly. She walked along the row of her women, then back again. To gasps of dismay from her ladies and cheers from the men, Mathilda sliced ribbons from their gowns.

  Mathilda ignored a sharp reprimand from Lady Claris, and with a wide smile, walked back to Adam. Every eye in the hall was on them. She knelt on the dais. Slowly, she slid his dagger back into its sheath and wrapped the ribbons about its hilt.

 
Adam felt the provocative nature of her actions, yet she looked as innocent as an angel, her expression as guileless as a child’s, as she knotted the finery.

  When she was done, she surveyed her handiwork. “Ah, there is one more thing to make this complete.”

  On the dais, she had not to rise so high to reach his mouth. The kiss was short, a brush across his lips. When she stood back, she said in a carrying voice, “Oh, forgive me. It was one kiss for each ribbon, was it not?”

  If she wanted a spectacle, he would give her one.

  Adam clamped his hands on Mathilda’s arms, lifted her into the air, and held her level with his mouth. This kiss he planted himself, bruising the delicate pouting cushions of her lips. He set her down just as quickly, turned and saluted the crowd, now cheering his efforts.

  The hall erupted into disorganized conversations and a resumption of games. Serving maids offered more ale and wine, dodging the roaming hands of the men.

  Adam consumed a trencher of jellied eels, then walked about the hall, questioning his men. None of them had seen the minstrel, or for that matter, Joan’s missing lymer.

  Amidst the clatter of eating and drinking, dicing and bragging, Mathilda banged her eating dagger against her cup. Attuned to her ways, the hall grew quiet.

  “The beast that rages without keeps us from hunting other beasts this day. In the place of that dear activity,” she said, with a small smile, “I have planned a few games here.”

  “That word play must be accidental. She’s not the wits to think of it on her own.” Hugh shook his head. “There is only one thing worse than a dull-witted wife.”

  “What?” Adam asked.

  “A man who wants her anyway.”

  When Mathilda clapped her hands, two men carried in an arrow butt from the practice field. It was placed at the end of the hall by the door. A few serving women shrieked when men entered, bearing bows and quivers of arrows.

  “We’ll be putting another body in the graveyard next to that hapless minstrel,” Hugh said at Adam’s ear.

  “I may not be the finest bowman in the land, but I’ll wager I can do better than Roger.”

  “I don’t wager.”

  “What was that you were doing just now?” Adam nodded to the table that still held the discarded dice.

  “Making sure Mathilda had someone depraved to compare your compassionate nature to.”

  “I think the gesture was lost on her.”

  “She’s a cock-tease,” Hugh said with some heat.

  “She’s an innocent child.”

  “She knelt within kissing distance of your enfourchure.”

  Adam stifled a smile. “Then she will know the way there when I am wed to her.”

  “If you wed her, you’ll not wait many months before you find her kissing someone else’s enfourchure. You’ll never know if your child is your own.”

  “If she is locked in a convent, I need not concern myself with her at all.”

  The bishop stood up and gestured to the archery butts and said in his usual deep, slow voice, “We have only a small field in which to compete, so we shall make the task more difficult.”

  One of the bishop’s knights held out a length of cloth. “Would each of the suitors please advance.”

  Nine men, as Yves with his broken wrist must sit out this competition, approached the dais. They tossed dice to choose their order for shooting. Roger was first, Adam eighth.

  Mathilda had her stool brought to where Roger stood. She mounted it and the crowd gasped, men shoving each other aside to escape the hall, when she used the length of cloth to bind Roger’s eyes.

  The bishop’s man set the bow and arrow in Roger’s hand, turned him three time, and set him straight. Roger wove in place, but kept his feet planted. More spectators fled the hall. It pleased Adam that none were his men. They stood out like pepper in a white sauce, sprinkled throughout the dwindling crowd in their black garb.

  Roger, like most well-trained knights, had no need to see to ready the bow. But his aim sawed back and forth before he settled himself and drew the string. The arrow flew. It smacked viciously into the wooden doorpost, ten feet adrift of the butt and inches from the guard who stood there on duty.

  Women screamed, more men fled the hall, but Roger’s men shouted and whistled for their leader.

  One by one each suitor took their turn, submitting to the blindfold, the turning, the blind aim. The hall, though greatly diminished in company as wild shots drove even more spectators into the rain, nonetheless echoed and rang with cheers and stomping men.

  Only one suitor remained before Adam, the youth, de Coucy. The boy’s shot went low, skimming the butt to the astonishment of all. The collective gasp made the young man grin when he took off the blindfold. He was the only one to touch the target. The boy licked his lips and when he turned his back to Mathilda made a quick graphic thrust of his hips that sent Adam after him.

  He snatched the boy up by his tunic and shook him. “You’ll not have the lady with crude gestures.” He set the boy on his feet and acknowledged the rousing claps from his men.

  Mathilda looked puzzled, and he merely bowed to her. But behind her, Lady Claris shot Adam a look so hard, so full of malevolence, he thought she might be a Medusa sent to turn him to stone. Acknowledging he might have made an enemy, Adam took his place.

  Adam decided that he must close his eyes behind the blindfold and picture the butt on the practice field, take longer than necessary to aim so his head had time to settle.

  He submitted to Mathilda’s artful tying of the blindfold. Was he mistaken that she caressed his ears with her fingertips as she knotted the cloth?

  His head swam after the three turnabouts. He took his time raising the bow. His eyes, closed all the while, looked inward, but not at an imaginary greensward. Nor did he visualize the narrow alley of space in the hall. Instead, he imagined he was a raven coursing the dawn sky. He heard, without any real noticing, the chant of the crowd, who stomped in time to his heart’s beat.

  With a slow, deliberate motion, he pulled the string by his ear. He saw the arrow fly, rising to join his imaginary raven to ride the golden rays of morning sun.

  The smack of the arrow into the butt made him rip the blindfold off. The arrow was embedded in the top edge.

  “Not center, but not bad at that for a blind man,” Hugh said, clapping him on the shoulder.

  Adam acknowledged his men’s cheers with a wave of his arm, then handed off the blindfold to the last contender, Brian.

  When Brian stepped up for his turn, there was still only one arrow in the butt. Adam’s.

  Mathilda blindfolded the only man Adam truly felt could defeat him if manly form and prowess on the battlefield were the means of choosing. The lady did definitely skim her fingers on Brian’s ears as she had on Adam’s. There was no mistake. It was a favor laid on only for them.

  Brian submitted to the turning, then did as Adam had. He waited for his head to right itself, making much ceremony of raising the bow. The arrow whistled through the air and thudded into the target.

  A silence swept the hall, then de Harcourt’s men leapt onto benches and shouted for their master.

  The arrow quivered at almost dead center. Brian walked the length of the hall, arms out, nodding to the delighted crowd. Adam’s men hissed and stomped their feet as Brian slowly drew Adam’s arrow, casting it to the floor, then knotting the blindfold on the shaft of his.

  Mathilda laughed and clapped her hands. It was Brian’s turn to receive a ribbon. She blushed a pretty pink as she knotted it to Brian’s belt buckle, only a few inches from his enfourchure. Ribald comments flew about the room as men nudged each other.

  “See,” Hugh said, “a wanton.”

  A few drunken men rose and stood upon the tables. They sang as was their wont. No minstrel company entertained today; instead they kept a vigil over their friend in the chapel.

  Adam joined them a few moments later. He knelt and prayed for Christopher’s soul,
deeply saddened that the young man might lie cold and silent before the altar for no reason beyond the color of his black hair and beard.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Joan took her time slicing bread for her supper. Nat was not about. It worried her that he might still be out looking for the lymer in the dismal weather. When the rain eased, she would go back out herself no matter what hour it was.

  “Joan?” Oswald stepped into the cottage without waiting for permission. “Are you alone?” Water ran off his mantle to drip on the rushes.

  She nodded, stepping closer to the hearth and keeping the knife in her hand.

  “Your father asked me to tell you he is going out with with some of his men after more venison. The bishop ordered more for the feast after the tournament.”

  “More?”

  “Aye. As if there was not already enough.” He sat at the table.

  “What do you want?” She placed the knife on the mantle and crossed her arms over her chest. Her nipples felt sore against the linen of her gown. She wanted nothing more than to go lie on her pallet and think of Adam.

  Oswald licked his lips and smoothed his hair back. “I saw you with Quintin.”

  “And?” Had Oswald read her thoughts?

  “And our lady might object to what I saw.”

  Joan took a deep breath. “What is it you want?”

  “I want to warn you. I would hate to think our lady would dismiss you for your attentions to one of her suitors.”

  His words paralleled some of her own thoughts. “Thank you for the warning. Now, I have much to do.”

  He didn’t rise. He gripped his hands tightly together as if praying. “I much admire you,” he said softly. “The way you handle the hounds, a hunt.”

  Her throat went tight.

  “I hope you understand this business between my Lord Roger and Nat, is just that—their business—not ours.”

  She waited. Did he want more money?