He had not told Edith everything that had befallen him in France. He had grown sick of the stink of war and the screams of women and children. There was little honor in torching peasant hovels and stealing their winter food, even if they were French.
He watched her breathing. Her cheek was as soft as a spider’s web and as delicate. Her lashes fluttered as she dreamed.
He fell into a daydream of his own: He and Edith at home, harvesting together, making hay. She would admire him afresh, and this time he would make sure she had the chance to adore him in a loving way. When she touched him it was the very bliss of heaven or a devilish pleasure; he was not sure which, and he did not care.
Did she know how to brew ale for the harvesters? He would need to find out, but there was plenty of time, another whole year round.
Thank God I am the younger son. My parents would protest greatly, otherwise, and speak of alliances and dowries. They have done all that with my brother and sister and with me, with Olwen. Now I may do as I please.
She had been married to a smith. No princess would ever be married so low. Were she and her people peasants, fleeing a harsh master? Was that how she knew Giles?
The thought made him uneasy. Not because of her lies—only a naive idiot would tell the truth in such circumstances—but because of his own lack of curiosity. When had he ever considered how Giles treated those beneath him? He had seen Giles harrying his servants and had sometimes intervened, but he had never really thought about those others, the ones who labored for Giles and his kind out of sight.
Such notions were gloomy things, and he was relieved to put them behind him as he saw Edith stir.
“Good morning, Princess.” She matched her name, and it pleased him to tease her with the title. “You slept well?”
“Splendidly, my lord.” She sat up, raised both arms above her head, and stretched.
Ah, so today he was going to have the bold Edith. Excellent.
“Today, my prize, we shall go hunting, to add to the bounty of Lady Blanche’s table.”
She was actually shaking her head. “I dare not go, my lord. If Maria should go into labor and I am not there, who will tend her? And the children, our new little ones, they may be frightened—”
“And Maria has been about to give birth and not doing so for the last month, I wager. Why should this day be any different?”
She blushed, crossing her arms over her full breasts. “Please, Ranulf,” she said in a low voice, stumbling a little on his name, “all babes must come sometime. Maria is overdue, by my counting.”
You are very good at feigning meekness, he almost said, but that stumble and her anxious face and her use of his name made him reconsider.
“I will send Edmund on the hunt. The change will delight him.”
“Thank you.”
She could not keep the smirk off her cheeks—was this another reason she wore a veil, because her expressions were so transparent? It would be the work of moments to hook his arms about her middle and catch her close, but instead, mindful of her anxiety for the ever-pregnant Maria, he hid his arousal and watched her dress.
He was still uncomfortably aware of his own desire, but it was oddly satisfying to see how she arranged her hair and donned her exotic costume. The skirt first, with her paying great attention to its pleats, arranging them all in neat lines, and then to the halter top, which she laced snugly over her breasts. Her head-veil was next, and last another face-veil, this one in plain white, brought out from a secret pocket or other and which she pinned and secured with many pins.
She shook her head so that her plait was straight and glanced at her bare hands.
“If you are missing your gloves, tuck your hands into your veil. You will find some gloves of mine.”
She nodded, suddenly and adorably shy. “Thank you. You are so good to me. Until I met Sir Tancred and you, I did not know knights could be kind, simply for kindness’s sake.”
He knew now what she looked like behind the gossamer wall of silk, and, hearing the shy tenderness in her answer and seeing the hero worship in her great eyes, he was tempted to take her back to bed. But that would undo his simple kindness, so he turned regretfully away to gather up the crocks and bedding.
“Do you miss Tancred?” he asked as they walked through the stirring camp.
“Every day. He had a way of always seeing the best in others, in always finding things I liked.”
Careful, Ranulf, warned Olwen in his memory, as jealousy threatened to strangle his breath, this is a dead old man. Do not dare to ask her if she slept with him. You know, at heart, that she did not.
“What do you like best, my lord? I would know.”
It was as if the sun rose anew with Edith’s question. Now he could hear the singing birds and see that the day was bright.
He sucked in a great gulp of air to answer, but their quiet conversations of the early morning were stopped by the wild pealing of bells. No, not a peal, he realized, but a single low toll, on and on, like a drumbeat: a death knell.
He turned to the church, but Edith was still resolutely walking uphill, to her own camp. He strode after her and caught her hand.
“Do you not wish to know who has died?” Emerging from the morning mists he could see people all going the other way, to church. He thought it callous and disrespectful not to join them. “It may be Lady Blanche herself.”
Edith tried to wrest her hand from his. “I must go to my people.”
“But look! Everyone is going to the church.”
“Then I shall not be missed. Maria needs me.” She tilted her face to him, her forehead a blaze of color, her eyes snapping. “I can do nothing for the other.”
“And if it was me on the bier?”
She flinched at his question, stopping so suddenly on the track that he almost rammed into her. Ignoring them, a growing stream of people—squires, dagger-girls, peasants, maids, and heralds—all jostled past.
“Do not say such things, Ranulf, even in jest,” she whispered.
“I meant no jest, lady.” He was appalled that she did not seem to understand the disrespect in her conduct; for the first time since he had known her, he was truly shocked.
“And if it is the pestilence?” she asked, in an even lower voice.
“Still we should go. They would not toll the bell for a nobody.”
“We are all children of God, eh?” She turned his words against him, but she also watched the figures now speeding by, some repeatedly making the sign of the cross. “We could ask.”
“Hey!” Ranulf called to a passing peddler, such men always knew the news. “Who do they toll the bell for here?”
“Have you been napping, knight?” came back the rude reply. The peddler felt himself safe from cuffs amidst this shoving mass. “A great preacher has come! He knows the cure for the great pest!”
The color seeped from Edith’s forehead like a draining sponge. “Maria, oh no—” Catching up her skirts, she yanked her hand from his, twisted about, and sped off, rushing now toward the church.
He slammed through the surging crowd and seized her wrist.
“Make haste!” she cried. “Maria believes everything—any pardoner, any relic seller, any preacher. She will be working her way to the front of the nave, even now!”
“Teodwin will stop her.”
“No one stops Maria, once her mind is set.”
I would, Ranulf thought grimly. This whole household needs more discipline. I must see to it.
He strode ahead of Edith, leading her instead of her him. She would notice little in this press of stale bodies and yapping dogs but his height gave him full view of the small church and the encircling mob. How many had already gathered? They looked to be five deep and growing. He had not realized so many were still living in the world.
A minstrel held his bagpipes aloft to save them from the crush and a child stumbled, falling with a shriek into the mass. Ranulf dived down, battering away legs, and scooped the child back up,
handing the little girl to her distraught mother. Edith also stumbled but slammed an arm against a peddler’s bulky pack and righted herself.
“Bitch!”
The spitting, red-cheeked peddler swung a fist at her. Ranulf blocked the fist and hit back. The peddler toppled sideways and disappeared into the mob, his cursing fading under the tramp of feet.
“You are unharmed?” Ranulf asked, threading an arm around her middle. Her veil was half ripped from her face, but otherwise she seemed unhurt.
She nodded, her dark brows drawn close together as she concentrated on darting and stepping through the gathered multitude.
“I did not know there were so many,” she muttered.
“Nor I.”
Their eyes met and she smiled and he felt reunited with her again, he and Edith against the world.
“How can I reach her?” his bedraggled princess asked aloud, standing on tiptoe to see over bobbing heads. “Can you see anything?”
“There!”
Ranulf swung her round with him and set off, plowing through the ranks of people, ignoring spits and curses. In the distance, by the church door, he could see a figure standing with outstretched arms, as if to welcome the sweating crush gathered about him. Off to his right, huddled in the third rank, was a small, coiled woman, almost as wide as she was tall, her pretty, tanned face glowing with anticipation. Beside Maria, Teodwin was conspicuous in his purple in this mob of faded scarlet and undyed woolen cloaks, and looking as nervous as a restive horse.
Ranulf nudged Edith’s shoulder. “A most unwilling convert.”
“I hope she does not start here,” answered Edith, clearly not listening.
Ranulf understood her concern and the problem, especially as they shuffled into place by Teodwin, who acknowledged them with a strangled, “My lord, my sweet lady,” and Maria, who blissfully ignored them. Her pale forget-me-not blue eyes were fixed upon the holy man.
He was somewhere between being small and of middle height, somewhere between being sturdy and fat, somewhere between being comic and compelling. Snub-nosed and pox-marked, dressed in a plain monk’s habit, he carried a staff in one hand and a cross in the other. He flung his arms out as he spoke, and his cross and staff shook with the force of his emotion.
It took Ranulf a moment to understand the fellow’s speech—his accent, somewhere between London and East Ham, was strange—but as he did, he began to look about the crowd again for men or women with knives. Edith was scowling behind her veil—he could tell that from the way her eyes were pinched and narrowed.
He knew she was agitated, too, because she had forgotten that her hands were not gloved. She had not tucked them out of sight into her veil or skirts but held them rigidly by her sides, clenched into fists.
“I like him not, too,” he hissed by her ear. “Hark how he shrills!”
“Quiet!” snapped a woman beside Teodwin, while Maria nodded each time the preacher’s shouts rose into a shriek.
And what things he was shrieking!
“It is because of the Jews and the Infidel that we suffer! It is because of their sins that we die! They commit acts of gross evil, and God sees and punishes them and he strikes us, for we do nothing against them!
“The fine great lords in their castles are not without guilt. They feast and hawk and ride out in fine silks while the poor at their gates are left with nothing. Not even the scraps they feed to their lapdogs! God sees and punishes them, the pestilence reaches even them, for no tower or door can hold back the wrath of God!”
The crowd about moaned and nodded. Silently, Ranulf removed his cloak and wrapped it about Edith, covering her bright silks. “We should leave!” he hissed.
Edith said nothing, merely pointed to where Maria swayed with the rest, taking up the rising chant as if born to it.
“Death to the devil!”
“He stalks amidst us!” the preacher screamed, his eyes bulging with effort as he raked the heavens with his staff and cross. “The evil one is with us! In our food, when we do not share it. In our love of luxury! In the knights who play at war here while you, good people, toil and break your backs in the fields! Shame on them! Did Adam, the first man made by God, sit in a tower and leave his sons to labor alone? He did not! So why should they?”
Ranulf had heard more than enough. He shoved sideways through the mob toward Maria and whispered urgently to her, promising her much gold if she would come away.
“We need no gold in our new kingdom,” returned Maria, clapping her hands as the preacher spat another gobbet of words at gentlewomen and their liking for spices. “I will stay here.”
“Then your babe will be born here, for your shift is wet with blood,” said Edith roughly as she came alongside.
“For pity’s sake, girl!” begged Ranulf, disliking Edith’s ready lie but going along with it.
Maria chewed on her lower lip. “You must carry me,” she ordered Ranulf. “If I am so near my time, I must not walk.”
She was as large as a hut, so perhaps she thought her demand impossible, but Ranulf was already moving.
“Done!” He stretched his arms about her shoulders and beneath her knees, braced himself, and lifted. She was heavier than a sack of treasure and limper and smellier in his arms than a day-old fish, but he carried her with care, taking small steps to ensure that he did not trip.
His arms ached as they did in training by his twentieth step, and his back burned as it did after a day in the lists, but that was all right: they were leaving. They made good progress through the ranks, Teodwin leading, then him and Maria, then Edith. Breathing deeply to absorb the weight, Ranulf heard Edith ask urgently after the children—Where were they and who was with them?—but a shriek from the church porch raised the hairs on the back of his neck. He almost dropped the bulging maid, especially as she clawed at him to stop.
“The Holy Man is speaking to us!”
“Would he were not,” Ranulf growled, but a space had already opened around them as the people shrank back, reluctant to be tainted by what was coming next.
“Perhaps the high-and-mighty knight, the black knight, believes he knows more than God?”
Ranulf turned to face his tormentor and Maria squirmed in his arms. It was like wrestling with a man, except that he could not pound her. Edith also turned, but he snarled, “Look to your maid and leave this to me!”
He seized Maria’s wrists and clamped her hands over her middle. “Think of your babe!” he hissed. Bracing her partly on his leg so he could handle her with one arm, he spoke to the crowd and the preacher.
“You asked me a question?”
He heard those close to him suck in deep breaths and felt Edith stiffen and start forward, clearly aching to speak, but he ignored all but the rabble-rouser.
The monk’s face darkened. “Seize him!” he yelled, clearly furious at any kind of interruption and uninterested in any kind of debate. “Stop that spawn of the devil!”
Ranulf set Maria behind him and lashed out with his fist and feet, ruthlessly felling any who stood in his way. A shepherd dropped his crook and he snatched it up, swinging it like a club.
“Stop him!” shrieked the preacher again, but neither the shepherd nor peddlers wanted to close with him. Ranulf barged forward, flailing about with the crook and giving Maria a rough shake as she tried to bite his ear.
“Move!” he growled. “Be silent!” he warned Edith as she trotted alongside, her color high. Teodwin at least had sense and had slipped into the greater mass, working his way out of the tumult. Although at that moment the crowd were eerily silent. The preacher mouthed something he did not catch when he sensed a change, a movement, closer to hand.
Edith cried, “’Ware!” just as he brought up the crook and the tip of a sword skidded off the wood with a huge crack. As the knight swung again and four men-at-arms muscled through the people to join in the fray, he left Maria to Edith: these five, Sir Henry and his supporters, would set on him all at once.
“Fred
enwyke!” Sir Henry missed, his strike going long. Ranulf ducked under the next sword cut, hearing the whine of the blade, and smashed his elbow into the bellowing mouth. Sir Henry toppled and he butted him with the crook as he sprawled.
Ranulf whirled round, jabbing with the crook, and two men-at-arms screamed, one clutching his bloodied nose, the second coiling into a ball, huddled around his battered groin. The other two backed off, giving Ranulf a clear way out of the mob.
He seized Edith’s arm and hauled her along.
“Maria!” she gasped, but at this point he did not care if the maid came or not: this brief gap would close like water over a drain and then they would all go down.
“Move!”
He stalked back a pace and grasped a handful of Maria’s curls. Near her time or not, it was time she used her legs. “Get going!”
The maid shrieked as loud as the preacher had done but she obeyed, trotting as he dragged her by the hair. Ranulf stalked swiftly, expecting a knife at his back any moment, but the crowd was already closing on the fallen men-at-arms.
New, urgent screams rent the churchyard behind them, and now Maria was waddling as fast as she could.
“In here!” Edith had found the priest’s house open and empty. They piled into the little low-thatched dwelling and, an instant later, Teodwin burst in, too.
“No one saw us enter!” he gasped, to Ranulf’s barked question.
As Maria sank sobbing onto the rushes, Edith closed the door, standing with her back to it. “Was that well done?” she asked.
Ranulf ignored her, threw down the crook, and looked about for some ale.
“I could have got us out,” she said.
“Our lord brought us here to safety!” protested Teodwin. He, not Edith, found Ranulf a cup and some fresh, young wine.
Edith tugged down her veil. Her face was white with shock and anger. “I could have done it,” she repeated. “Without harm and without danger. Your way could have found us ripped to shreds by a mob!”
To Touch The Knight Page 17