To Touch The Knight

by Lindsay Townsend

  Ranulf raised his cup in a mocking salute. “You did not need to thank me, Princess, although that would be more courteous. Your way would have been through lies. Mine is better.”

  “Ohh!” She launched herself at him, but he smothered her clumsy arms-and-legs attack by simply gathering her in.

  “Peace,” he warned, as she tried and failed to knee him. “I have had a trying morning so far and have no appetite for nagging.”

  He spotted the priest’s pallet and sat down on it with her, offering the wine, which she stiffly refused. “More for me, then,” he said.

  He had won. He had brought them out. So why did this not feel like victory?

  Chapter 26

  Edith sensed his disappointment. A new weight of dread settled into her belly and bones, making her feel heavy and inert.

  He dislikes me. Soon he will despise me. I am losing him.

  How can I win him back?

  She had played the only coin she had: her body. Now he had enjoyed that, she had nothing more to offer.

  I am losing him!

  Close to her feet, Maria gave a low moan and tried to rub at her back.

  “I ache everywhere,” she complained. “No thanks to some.” She thrust out her lower lip and glowered at Ranulf, who did not notice. He was steadily drinking, filling and refilling his cup.

  Edith looked at Maria properly for the first time that morning. She looked weary but her eyes were very bright. She had taken no obvious hurt from Ranulf’s mauling, although Edith was ashamed that she herself had said nothing when he had yanked on Maria’s hair.

  He would not have done that to a lady, would he?

  But she was obsessing again about Ranulf—his thoughts, his actions—and she should be paying heed to more. She drew back from Ranulf—he let her go with a shrug—and padded to the door. Listening, she could hear no sound of any approaching mob, which gave them a little time, at least.

  She crossed back to Maria. “Let me see. I can help.”

  Luckily, Maria was used to her touching her, accustomed to her checking the position of her babe within. As Edith massaged the rigid muscles of her maid’s back, she felt over Maria’s belly.

  Her breath stopped. She felt again, to be sure, then glanced at Ranulf.

  At once he stopped drinking and came to her. “What do you need?” he asked softly.

  If she had believed in God, she would have thanked him then for that heartfelt response.

  “Gather the rushes together here. If you can find a hearth and build up the fire, that will be good. Also—may I have the rest of the wine?”

  He nodded. “It is yours.” He jerked his head at the squirming maid.

  “The baby’s head is on her,” Edith mouthed, hoping he was not the kind of man to start howling or panicking or shouting.

  He raised his eyebrows in surprise, then began to kick and gather the rushes as she had asked into a rich, deep nest.

  Edith drew Maria to it, saying, “Come, sweetheart, you will be more at ease if we loosen your gown.”

  Teodwin opened his mouth, saw Ranulf’s glower, and mumbled, “I will see if there is a well nearby.”

  “Let no one see you,” warned Ranulf.

  “Do you wish to go with him?” Edith asked as she untied the last of Maria’s lacings, but he shook his head.

  “I would not have you by yourselves here. What if the priest returns or someone else comes?” He stepped into the shadows of the hut and returned with a bucket, for which Edith wanted to kiss him.

  Simple, practical help, without fuss. Here was another side of her lord.

  By now, Maria was scowling. “I know not what is amiss with me. I think I have soiled myself.”

  “Do not worry,” Edith said easily. “Squat over this bucket now—ignore the menfolk, they are busy elsewhere and can always turn their backs—that’s right!”

  A spasm of pain crossed Maria’s face and she reached out with her hands, gripping Edith’s arm in a grasp so tight as to be painful.

  “Count for me,” Edith coaxed, realizing that Maria was even further along than she had guessed. She whipped up the woman’s skirts, shoved the bucket aside, and got behind her, supporting her as Maria went into a crouch. “Count, Maria—”

  Her mother had taught her that: it gave the birthing mother something to think on and encouraged her to breathe in and out as she spoke.

  “One, two, three—”

  Maria’s face turned bright red and she sagged against Edith’s arms. “Four—ah!”

  “Push again, sweetheart, you are almost there!” Edith encouraged. She had wanted to wash Maria’s birth parts and her own hands with the wine, but there was no time; the babe was here.

  “Five!”

  An unearthly wail seemed to issue from the rushes, but Ranulf, crouching swiftly, caught the emerging, red-faced, slippery bundle.

  “A healthy girl!” he announced as Maria collapsed back against Edith and Edith, unable to bear her weight, fell back onto the rushes. “Safe and sweet and whole.”

  Edith felt Ranulf’s eyes on her and knew he was thinking, as she was, of the half-fashioned child Many had given birth to. This time, there would be no secret burials. This was a miracle from the beginning.

  She tore off her head-veil and passed it to Ranulf who, like all men at a birth, was starting to look bemused and rather panicked.

  “Wrap her in this. I will tend Maria and then they should both rest.”

  “I think we are all due that,” muttered Teodwin from the doorway.

  Edith turned to see to the afterbirth and ensure Maria was not bleeding overmuch, although in truth she had never known an easier birth.

  “Lucky,” she murmured.

  “Or blessed,” Ranulf corrected her. He kissed the whimpering baby, who quietened at once, staring back at him with bright blue eyes.

  Edith chuckled at his look of amazement. “Pass her to her mother,” she reminded him. Maria was snug on her side in the rushes, yawning and holding out her arms for her child.

  Ranulf lowered the tiny baby girl beside the maid, murmuring something that to Edith sounded like a prayer. When he knelt back he caught her eye and gave her a wink—this swift, happy birth had brought them together again, united them in a common purpose.

  Her heart soared as high as a lark in summer; foolishly, she wanted it to last forever. “How long do you think we can stay here?” she asked, hoping he would say, “A week.”

  He cocked his head, listening to the distant roar outside. “Till sunset? I think there will be preaching until then.”

  “Pray God nothing more than that,” said Teodwin as Maria cooed and gurgled at her newborn.

  “Amen,” said Edith.

  “Edith,” said Ranulf, “come with me now to gather firewood and kindling. We can light a small, clear fire here and be more at ease. We shall not go far,” he added to the anxious Teodwin. “Have you some men with sense back at your camp?”

  The steward nodded, counting off on his fingers as he reckoned how many of the former villagers had “sense,” as Ranulf termed it.

  “Excellent! My men have their wits about them, too; they will scour hereabouts and find us presently. We need only wait.”

  He held out his hand to her and smiled. “Come.”

  Chapter 27

  “Can we truly stay until sunset?” Edith asked once they were outside. She could hear distant screams and chanting. A pall of dust hung around the base of the church and the churchyard. Urged on by the shrieking preacher, the mob were stamping their feet.

  She shivered, imagining afresh what must have happened to Sir Henry and his friends. The knight had not been Ranulf’s ally, but no one deserved to be battered to death in an English churchyard.

  “I think you know we have no choice,” Ranulf answered, “And pray God this preacher is the priest’s friend. The fellow will have them marching soon and attacking whom he wishes—they would be wise to barricade the gates at Castle Fitneyclare.”


  Edith thought of her brightly colored tent with its riches, flowers, and spices, all open, all impossible to defend. “I must get my people away!”

  Turning her back on the church, she tried to run to the main tourney encampment, but Ranulf tugged her into the shadow of the hut. “Make no sudden moves, or we shall be spotted,” he said urgently, keeping a tight grip on her arm and about her waist. “You must trust your men to see sense and to get the others out into the wood to hide.”

  “But our goods!”

  “Better lost goods than lost lives. Will any more than Maria have been tempted to join the preacher?”

  Edith thought, then shook her head. She picked up a dry branch, recognized it as good firewood, and dropped it. What was the use? Ranulf had his lands to return to when he had a mind. Without their goods, her people would have to seek work, and now it would be the backbreaking labor of harvest.

  Foreseeing all this, she sat down heavily in the shadow of the hut and put her face in her hands. “I have led them to nowhere.”

  Ranulf swiftly recovered the dry branch, gathered more from the sides of the track, and settled beside her. “You no longer need bear this alone, Edith.” He tapped her knee with his fingers. “If you marry me, they shall be my people, too.”

  She glanced at him fiercely but his face was in shadow. “Why should I do that?” she asked carefully, not daring to presume upon any hopes.

  He tapped her other knee. “Because you are my prize and I would see your face every day. Because I have seen your household, and although it is without order, it works. Besides”—he leaned forward and she saw the smile on his face, the glow of affection in his eyes—“it is the only way I may wed a princess.”

  The crowd by the church was chanting and stamping still, but all Edith could hear truly was her own pounding heart. She studied his open, jubilant face, wondering why she did not speak.

  He does not say a word of love. Am I a fool to want any?

  “You and yours will be safe with me,” he said. “Say yes, Edith.”

  Why does she hesitate? The knight in Ranulf inwardly seethed. He was a warrior of England, with men and arms and lands. Any damsel would be delighted, grateful, to accept him. She should be on her knees, thanking him.

  Would you be another Giles? the man in him warned. If you do not think her worthy of marriage, why ask for her hand? What do you want?

  He did not realize he had spoken this last aloud until Edith answered, “I want to be with you.”

  He wanted the same. He wanted her with him, all the time, so he could watch her, watch out for her and keep an eye out. She was his prize. The idea of her spending time with any other, flirting with any other, made him want to smash heads.

  Is this love, Ranulf ? prodded Olwen in his memory. Or possession?

  “Stay with me, then,” he said, impatient for an answer. “Marry me and stay.”

  She made a strange, strangled sound that might have been a cry.

  “Would we leave here at once? Could we be married in the north?”

  His heart leapt but he answered steadily, “If you wish.” He did not wonder at her haste to leave, not with the mob in the churchyard.

  Or Giles. The thought slammed into him and he spoke. “How do you know Giles?”

  Let her speak the truth, he prayed, as she looked him directly in the eye.

  “I know him because I know of one like him, in my homeland.”

  Softly, Ranulf. We are almost there.

  “Where is your homeland?”

  She gave him another frank look but her mouth trembled. Again, he understood why she had chosen to appear veiled. Her beauty was dazzling but full of small revelations of her thoughts and feelings.

  He took her gently onto his lap, sitting with her in the shadow of the priest’s hut. His men would be a while yet, making their camps safe, sending heralds and spies out to the castle, the rest of the camp, and that volatile churchyard, as they sought him out.

  He kissed her mouth, very softly. “Trust me, sweeting. I would never harm you or yours. You have marched under false colors: so be it. I did the same once, in France.”

  He had forgotten, too, until now. “It was necessary,” he added.

  She nodded, also understanding, and began to speak.

  “I was born to the east of here.”

  Tell him everything, Gregory prompted in her mind as she glanced at Ranulf’s grave, listening face. But she dared not. In the end she had flinched from admitting she knew Giles well—too well. They were both knights, and Ranulf might not believe what she could say of his former friend. She and others had lived it, and still the experience seemed a thing of nightmares, too impossible to be real. Some truths were too hard to tell.

  “A little to the east of here,” she went on.

  “A little English, then,” murmured Ranulf. He sounded amused, not shocked. “How did you manage to make yourself so exotic?”

  “The language we speak among ourselves—that is our old dialect, as spoken by our grandfathers.” From there it seemed natural to mention her grandparents.

  “My granddad was a smith and a sailor. He served on many ships when he was a lad and a young man. He loved to travel.”

  “You knew him?”

  She nodded. “He lived for a long time, did my Grandfather Walter.”

  Ranulf smiled and kissed her cold fingers. “I had an Uncle Walter. He must have been a good man for tales, your grandfather.”

  “Yes, he was. He had a gift of words and memory. I loved it when the nights grew dark and work had to stop. I could listen to his stories then.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “To Venice. To Genoa. To Jerusalem. In Jerusalem he made friends with a traveler from the city of Damascus. That man had also been to the court of the great Khan in the further East.”

  “Not Cathay?”

  She shook her head. “Cathay sounds exotic, so I used it. My granddad traveled to the Indies. He adored spices, ginger and cinnamon especially, and he fell in with a caravan going along the silk and spice road from Jerusalem.”

  She could picture him, sitting on his stool in the corner of the family house, close to the fire, his wrinkled, tanned face lively with recollections. He had been toothless then, and drooled, but his mind was still as sharp as a pin.

  “He loved to draw. He drew the paintings in our church and in the reeve’s house. He drew on boards and tables, on anything he could use as a surface to paint on. When I could, I saved his drawings and hid them.”

  “You were his ally,” Ranulf said, understanding at once. He brushed her skirts. “The silks were his, too?”

  She nodded. “He brought them back with him. He gave them to my grandmother, who loved the softness and sheen of them but considered them too fine and showy for the village. She tucked them into the bottom of her clothes chest, and only the family were allowed to see them.”

  “So your costume?”

  “My granddad said women of the Indies wore such silks and light cloth, even ordinary women. He drew them for me. They were like no robes I had ever seen.

  “One year, a troop of players came to our village. I saw how people love a show, a spectacle. I saw how one man may dress and act as another and become a different person, even a woman. I remembered it all.”

  “You have your grandfather’s memory.”

  Ranulf traced the red line of an old scar in the center of her palm, a slow, tingling semi-caress that made her think of things other than her story.

  “Were you a smith because of your grandfather?”

  Blinking, Edith forced her attention back, down the years. “I was to be a midwife, like my mother. I helped her and my granddad and father. I was either with her, going to women in the villages, or at the forge.”

  “Not much time for play.”

  “Had you, as a page?”

  “Not a bit,” Ranulf chuckled, then he frowned. “I never thought of it till now. How old were you when you married?”

>   “Ten and four.”

  “To Adam. Then you were widowed?”

  She nodded.

  “So you would be more independent and, as his widow, would be required to continue in his trade. Was that before the great death came?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you were betrothed to another?”

  “Yes, when I was ten and nine. To Peter, who brought new tools and another anvil to the forge.” Remembering, Edith felt herself blush. On the morning of their betrothal, Peter had laid her over that anvil and taken her that way, with her old, patched woolen skirts around her middle, to “seal the deal,” as he put it. It had been very early, before the rest of the village was stirring. The anvil had dug against her middle but even so, she had found her taking pleasurable. She had hoped Peter might do that again, but he never had, preferring to have her ride him. Save for that time when she had been sick and he had insisted. . . .

  “Did he die before you were married?” Ranulf broke into her less-than-happy thoughts.

  “Peter drowned two nights before our marriage in our lord’s fish pond,” Edith admitted. That was all she wanted to say.

  Ranulf studied her a moment, then he tugged her long plait of hair. “Do the women of the Indies wear their hair thus?”

  Grateful for the respite, Edith answered, “So my granddad told me.”

  “And you remembered, because you loved him and you were his favorite, the one with whom he shared his adventures.” Ranulf counted off on his fingers. “You had the silks, the knowledge of the East, the skill of a smith, the wisdom of a wise-woman. You put it together to make yourself a shield: Lady of Lilies, the Princess of Cathay.”

  “The rich and the royal are never questioned,” Edith said, raising her chin. Did he expect her to feel ashamed? “It worked well for us.”

  “It did indeed!”

  “It gave us a chance at a new life.”

  “And how did that happen? Was it the pestilence that drove you out of your homes?”

  So easy then for her to lie, to agree. It would avoid more questions. Edith opened her mouth to say yes.

  “Our overlord feared illness,” she heard herself say. “He saw how the great death came, striking all, spreading, sparing few.”