To Touch The Knight

by Lindsay Townsend

  Edith braced herself for a shriek and water everywhere but Mary sat placidly in the tub, turning her head this way and that as Gawain slowly poured more water.

  “There is a wonder!” exclaimed Maria, frowning at Simon, who was now smearing the remains of the pie along the top of the bathtub. Realizing her scowl was being ignored, Maria changed her attentions to another male.

  “You do not seem disconcerted by my state, sir.” She addressed Ranulf directly, and he, if he was surprised at having a maid speak to him, answered equally frankly.

  “Nay, mistress. My father would issue orders from his bathtub and my mother would take us youngsters in with her to bathe.”

  “You have brothers and sisters?” Maria asked.

  “A sister and brother, both older.” Ranulf smiled as Gawain combed his own hair, to show Mary there was nothing to fear from his combing hers. “And you, Princess? Have you siblings?”

  “I had a brother,” Edith said, pressing her fingernails into her thighs. She tried to explain, but the memory of Gregory pressed on her like a boulder and suddenly she could scarcely see or breathe. She closed her eyes, fighting for control.

  “Princess? Will you take a walk with me?”

  “Gawain can come in the tub with us,” Maria said quickly. “You should go. I mean, go, my lady,” she added, as a clear afterthought.

  I should step out before Maria or another says something that I cannot explain. Edith rose and clasped Ranulf’s hand.

  On the way out, Ranulf said, “I think that a hot bath and caring for that little girl has achieved more for my page than days of my encouragement.”

  “He is the page you took from Sir Henry? He looks well.”

  “He does, yes.” Ranulf’s mouth set in a grim line. “Now he is no longer being beaten.”

  “I did not know.” Edith hated what she was doing, pleading for Ranulf to understand. Still, the thought that he should believe she would countenance cruelty was not to be borne.

  He squeezed her fingers. “Be at peace, Princess. I understand that of you, if little else. Will you tell me of your brother?”

  “If you will tell of yours and your sister first.” She did not want to speak of Gregory. She feared she would weep.

  He launched into some long account while she picked up and carried her trailing sleeves and tried not to think of her brother.

  “You like your new gown? It has cloth even around your navel.”

  His voice came to her as if from a distance. She tried to understand what he had asked.

  He stopped and touched her face through the blue veil, cradling her cheek as if she had the toothache. “You have not listened to a word I have said, Princess.” He drew nearer. “Were I to strip your face, I wager you would be as pale as Gawain when he first came to me.”

  She wanted to protest but found no words. She was in the village again, with all the dead, then on the road with Gregory dying. Gregory stretching out his hands to her as he writhed. . . .

  Ranulf saw her color change and caught her before she fell. She had not fainted but her limbs would not hold her—he had seen it before, with men in battle.

  Men he left to shift for themselves, but Edith was another matter.

  “Come, my prize.” He beckoned two of his guards and sent them ahead, with instructions. “A warm tisane and a bath.”

  Returning with her to his own tent, he settled her on a chair and gave her a drink of warm strawberry and raspberry tisane. He did not speak of his day in combat, when he had fought in a cloud of darkness much as he had done when Olwen had first died, but told of the new lapdog Lady Blanche had brought with her to the stands.

  He took a cup of the sweet stuff himself, forcing it down. That she seemed to notice.

  “You need not drink to keep me company.”

  He marked how she sounded—tired, not amused—and wondered anew about her brother. He had surely died in the pestilence.

  “It is my pleasure to do so, Princess.” He forced another mouthful down and reflected on his loving family, a treasure he had taken too much for granted. Silently and a little guilty at his gratitude, he thanked God that his parents and siblings still lived.

  What would they make of Edith, sipping from a cup without ever showing her mouth? Lips he had kissed before and would again.

  He knew she was not ugly or pox-marked—he knew from tracing her features when he had been blindfolded in her tent—so why did she hide her face?

  She knows Giles. She and Giles share a past. She fears being recognized, especially by Giles. Had they been lovers?

  The idea burned like a brand in his body, until he looked at her. Head to toe in the gown he had chosen for her, covered in a veil as deep as the evening twilight, she looked hunted and haunted.

  Pity welled in him as he watched her, so small and hunched, and the fire in his belly melted away. “Poor sparrow.”

  Though he meant no disrespect, her head jerked up at that. “I will have no man’s pity.”

  “Why should I not pity you?”

  He knew that would spur her, and it did. She jumped off the chair and began to pace the tent, almost tripping over her sleeves in her haste. “Never do so, my lord.” She fairly hurled the words at him. “Pity those like Mary and Simon.”

  “I do.”

  “And folk who are too ill to harvest their crops and so starve.”

  “I do.”

  “And bondsmen tied to harsh masters, and pig-men seeking justice in vain, and farriers and smiths whose tools are taken from them—”

  “Which makes the better blade, iron or steel?”

  “Steel, but it is most hard to fashion.”

  She stopped pacing, staring at him with wide, wary eyes, and he nodded.

  “Truly, there are many surprises about you, and many mysteries I would examine.”

  “I am no witch to be examined.”

  “A gentle inquiry only, Princess.”

  The signal he had been waiting for happened. Outside the tent, his squire cleared his throat loudly and now marched in. “Your bath is ready, sir,” he announced, red-faced. “Shall I bring candles and lanterns? ’Tis very dark.”

  “We shall need none. Thank you, Edmund.” He offered his arm to Edith. “Shall we, Princess? We may bathe and take our ease under the stars.”

  She looked at him with narrowed eyes. “You have not seen your gown yet, not in full light.”

  “There is always tomorrow,” he said easily. “Do you not relish the thought of a hot bath? I know I do.”

  She raised her dark brows.

  “You are not alone in owning a bathtub,” he prattled on—he would prattle like a gossip if it won him what he wanted—“We shall be screened and private. Indeed, the evening is now so dim we shall see nothing of each other but our eyes.”

  This was not true, of course, not when they would be under the arc of heaven, but it sounded convincing. When she said nothing he took her hand. “Let me serve you,” he said, very softly.

  Taking her silence as consent, he drew close and lifted her into his arms, ready to bring her to the bath.

  Chapter 18

  Confidence is a fragile thing, as delicate as eggshell. Edith knew she was entirely too yielding, soft as copper, but it was beguiling to be cosseted. After what she had seen in the village of pestilence she felt tired beyond despair, craving comfort.

  Ranulf was a castle of gentleness. He smoothed off her gown and shift, his fingers like thistledown on her, leaving her head and face veiled for the moment. He tugged off his own clothes in a brutal strip where she heard cloth tearing and eased them both into the warm, dark bathtub.

  Supported by the steaming water and his arms, she realized he was sitting on a stool within the tub and she was on his lap. He was aroused, yet he made no move to grab her, enter her.

  Her experience with Peter and Adam, her dead betrothed and dead husband, made her ask, “Should I give you ease?” Her own loins burned and ached, but men expected to be given
relief. Adam especially had demanded it of her when he was too weary after a day’s smithying to be troubled with coupling.

  Ranulf in contrast clasped her wandering fingers, brought her hand from the water, and kissed it. “Nay, Princess Edith, maid of my heart, leave my sword. It shall be unsheathed tonight.”

  Savoring the “maid of my heart,” Edith tried to interpret his face in the semidark and saw his smile.

  “I do want to make love to you, again and again, but tonight is for you.”

  “It would please me, too, Ranulf. I want to please you.” Even if their union was hasty and brought her no relief, as it had been too often with Peter.

  “Bless you for that!” He laughed and touched the pin of her veil. “May I?”

  She nodded and he released the pin, lifting the covering from her head and face and dropping it off into the dark. Before she could speak, his mouth ransomed hers, kissing her lips, her lower lip, her nose, her upper lip: light, sparkling kisses that made her tingle down to her toes. She sighed and he hugged her.

  “I believe, in truth, that you know little of this sport, my lady, but never fret. I will teach you.”

  “I am a widow. I know plenty,” she protested, afraid he thought her a virgin and so stop.

  “Your mate was a smith?”

  She nodded, then realized what she had admitted. “He was a prince who had an interest in such things.”

  Ranulf brushed his hand along her shoulder bones and lowered his head. “You are naked and in my arms and sitting on my lap. I think the time for lies is past. You are the widow of a smith.”

  Distracted by his touch, she said nothing.

  “Was he a brute?” Another question and another distracting stroke, this time along her arms.

  “He was decent. Why—?”

  “Do I call him brute?” he finished for her. “Because it is clear he left you in need and you accepted this as his right.”

  “No!” Edith protested, wanting to say Adam had been kind and good, rarely scolding her and only belting her if she was clumsy in the forge. She tried to put her words in order but her tongue was blocked by Ranulf, kissing her anew as he fondled her belly and flanks. His hand and the water made a double caress and his tongue lanced with hers.

  “No man has kissed your belly or thighs before, I wager,” he gloated as they paused to stare into each other’s eyes. “No man has pleasured you with his fingers and mouth and tongue. No denial, to say otherwise! I see the shine of freshness in your eyes.”

  He lifted her slightly off his lap, roughly repositioning himself as if his own arousal was nothing. “Tonight is for you.”

  “But what of you, my lord?” she whispered. If we join, that will be very much for me, too, she wanted to say, but dared not. She had never been shy before, not even on her wedding night, but then Adam had ordered and she had obeyed, as a wife’s duty.

  Even without lanterns, shielded as they were from candles or campfires by dark cloths hung close about the bathtub, she saw his smile.

  “I do not ride women like chargers.”

  When she tried to force herself to quip that it would not matter to her if he did, he added, “You are a young maid in your heart and I will treat you so. Pleasure is to be teased out, Edith. It is a gentle quest to start. And I wager I shall have much selfish pleasure this evening, seeing you bloom in my arms, knowing I have made you squeak and moan as no other man before.”

  “I never squeak!”

  “You will, Princess, with me.” He squeezed her bottom gently with his large hands, whispering against her ear, “When I have you mewed up in my keep in the north, I will ravish you there as I please. And I shall attend to those many lies of yours.” He flicked her rump, his slap softened in the water, and kissed a twisting line of fiery delight from her ear to her chin. “One day, indeed, I will put you over my lap and smack your bottom very soundly for all your lies, and you will thank me, after.”

  In the dimness of the evening, with only the stars as lights, it was easy for Edith to imagine a black tall keep for a black tall knight and herself in the great hall with Ranulf, before a roaring midwinter fire. No light but the flames and Ranulf’s men carousing and raising shadowy cups and the hall filled with merrymaking, singing, and noise while up on the dais their master pulled her over his knee and spanked her in the dark, his smacks and her cries covered in the general tumult.

  He could tug my gown up to my ears and bare me and no one would know; the great table and the winter gloom would hide us. His hands would be very warm, but my bottom would soon be warmer.

  She shivered, unsure if she feared or anticipated the event.

  “Princess?”

  Returned to the moment, she and Ranulf bathing together, she swallowed. “I am thirsty.”

  “I have the remedy.”

  She could not see from where he found the wine or cup but soon he was holding a wooden goblet to her lips, saying, “Taste the wine. It is warm and spiced with ginger.”

  She sipped, finding the drink hot and sweet and full. “This will make my head spin,” she murmured, catching a glimpse of the pale cup as Ranulf drank from it in turn.

  “Cheese and raisins?” he asked, feeding her a dried fruit as she nodded, and then a small morsel of cheese. He kissed her as she chewed.

  “Ranulf!” She tried to protest when she could speak.

  “’Tis more delicious, filched from your mouth,” he said calmly, ignoring her slap in the water that sent spray over both of them.

  “Should we not bathe, before the water chills?” she asked. She wanted them to make love and, at the same time, wished only that this tormenting seduction was over. She trusted Ranulf not to betray her now, but what if he changed in his feelings toward her?

  As if he divined her unease, Ranulf began to wash her hair, combing his fingers and then a comb dipped in rosemary-water through the whole, heavy mass. Free of cloths, pins, and ribbons for once, her head felt light and free, and she surrendered completely to his hypnotic attentions, sighing as one of his hands and then the other gently kneaded her scalp.

  “Poor sparrow, never to have known this. Can none of your Eastern followers wash a lady’s hair properly?”

  She did not admit that she tended her own, and she was too warm and comfortable to be annoyed at his pet name, lowering her head when he asked her to and sighing afresh as a warm shower of rose-water trickled over her head.

  “You have handsome hair, Edith, brown and shiny as ripe acorns. You should display it.”

  “You have pretty hair, too, though ’tis badly cut,” she replied, thinking of his fair-to-russet-to-gold thatch.

  He grunted in amusement. “Perhaps you will cut it for me?” He poured the last of the warm rose-water over her neck and shoulders, cupping his hand across her breasts in turn and dripping the liquid lightly on her nipples. Her wet head was now nestled against his shoulder and she moved in toward him, hoping to caress him in turn. In their dark cavern of the bathtub, his lean, long body seemed to glow like molten bronze.

  “Leave me for now,” he whispered, his dark eyes intent as he carefully mopped her face. “Tell me of your brother. What was his favorite game?”

  “Gregory was always thoughtful. He had little time for games.”

  “He could smile, I suppose, this solemn, dour brother?” Ranulf trickled water down her spine, tickling her, almost daring her to laugh.

  “He was no such! He loved to sing. He loved to dress up and tell stories.”

  “Ah, a dandelion brain, rather soft in his mind.”

  “A hardworking man whom others could turn to in times of trouble,” Edith said firmly, and now the living, vibrant Gregory took hold in her memories and she understood what Ranulf was doing.

  “You goaded me into remembering him as he truly was,” she said. “Before the sickness took him.”

  “That is how he would wish you to remember him,” Ranulf said, “and I know this because you have taught me already, with Olwen.”

>   Astonishment robbed her of a voice, but he knew what she would have asked and answered. “Dealing with you, Princess, has forced me alive again, and now I find I can remember the good there was between Olwen and myself: the sweetness, as we have here.”

  I cannot be so mean as to be jealous, Edith thought as a burn of dull pain twisted through her middle, followed swiftly by a ripple of pleasure as Ranulf softly brushed a washing cloth along her stomach.

  “My brother Michael taught me to swim in our local beck—that is what we call a stream in the north,” he went on, easing his large hands over her flanks as he continued to bathe her. “Michael taught me and I showed Margery, my sister.”

  “How is it you are Ranulf, when all your family have names of ‘M’?” Edith found herself asking.

  She was rewarded by a chuckle. “My mother, bless her, rebelled when I was born. I think the old man would have called me Mark, but she named me herself.”

  “Your father permitted it?” Adam would have belted her for sure for such wifely disobedience.

  Ranulf said nothing but lowered his head and tipped up her face. His eyes were a warm dark, interesting as cooling bronze and flashed with crosses of gold: thinker’s eyes, builder’s eyes, not those of a coldhearted fighter.

  “Was your marriage so much a bond? ’Tis no marvel you argue now, with so much locked within you before. But see, a couple can be sweet. Olwen and I wasted too many days on foolishness, but we were snug and sweet at the end, thank Christ.”

  God had nothing to do with it, thought Edith rebelliously, as she wanted to ask Ranulf what had happened to his wife, but all ideas of rumor or the past were blotted out for her. Ranulf swept his hand between her thighs and began to caress her.

  All pretense of washing was over. He wrapped his other arm tight about her waist and locked her into the crook of his shoulder, kissing her full on the lips.