I wager—I am using Ranulf’s words now!—I wager that those branded runaways will be scrubbers and washers and pot boys, put to the lowest kind of work. If they are at the river I will see them.
She wondered if she would recognize any, and hoped fervently that she would not.
A drunk, reeling and lurching to find a hedge or tree or underside of a cart to sleep below, lunged at her once, grumbling as she clobbered him with her “washing” and deftly avoided his grasp.
“Filthy, brazen bitch! You . . .”
She shut her ears to the rest, her heart thudding. Had he not been alone, things might have gone very differently. She had been too long a princess, protected by knights and beloved; now she was grubbing in the world outside the tourney and must sharpen her wits. Again, she checked that the dirty strip of cloth around her betrothal ring was secure.
“When I find them, please let them come to my camp,” she whispered, thinking afresh and with greater urgency of the branded villagers. “Please let them see there is a different life, a better one, with me and mine and Ranulf.”
How many would there be? Would they dare to run again from Giles? Would Ranulf protect them?
For certain he will, for he would not side with Giles in this. He must, surely, especially now he knows all about me?
Conscious of a nagging stitch in her side and of time passing, always passing, Edith stepped over a tangle of tent ropes. Going round the back of a wagon, keeping where she could to the less trodden parts of the camp, she hurried on.
Woodcock Wood was an old forest, the kind of musty, mossy, dragonfly-filled, trackless place Ranulf would have loved to explore as a lad—on foot. As he was now, on horseback, he watched his mount’s every step and his mouth was dry with concentration.
He was mired so deep in suspicion that he partly resented Edith for opening his eyes in this way. Without her warnings and shocking revelations he would have been savoring the dense undergrowth and the hot sun on his shoulders, both signs of a good day’s chase. Instead, an hour into the morning, he was peering for caltrops and pits and urging his beast after Giles’s so that his small, stocky courser trod the same path. As if Giles would have had time to lay such traps for him, or his men!
Why should he go to such pains, anyway? Giles is lazy and would not trouble so much. In this wood we could separate easily and be lost to each other for the rest of the day.
And then Giles could double back to camp. . . .
How much would I give to challenge Giles now! To ride with him, to see him again, knowing what he has done, is almost beyond endurance. If I could think of a pretext to fight him, anything that does not touch on Edith, I would do so in a heartbeat.
At least he had left her safe, Ranulf thought, glancing back to the distant tourney camp and scowling at the risen sun. The sooner he could get them both away and safe into his northern homelands, the better.
Is it not that you are finally growing up and seeing true? And look at Giles: the knight who drove his own people into a church to die—is it surprising you are wary of him? Olwen’s voice asked quietly. With a violent, neck-crunching shake of his head, he dismissed the idea. He wanted no more women talk, no more women in his head.
The hunt! It was a bonny day and the hounds were keen and Giles had brought nets and a crossbow.
Surely that shows his real intent? You have made a mistake in suspecting him. All Giles has planned for is today’s hunt and fresh meat, so stop fretting like a girl.
Still, Giles had ordered that massacre at Warren Hemlet. He was, in very truth, a smiling monster. And Ranulf could think of no just means, no genuine reason or excuse to fight him, save Edith. Each time he tried, he saw Edith’s fearful face, the pain in her eyes as she remembered the church in her former village.
Kill him and be done with it, his heart urged, but he knew that would make him no better than Giles; another smiling monster.
So he is, and if you are to keep him away from Edith, do your part now here, in the hunt. You will get justice for her and others, but not today, so do what you must to keep Giles at bay.
“I wager we shall have excellent sport this day,” he called out.
Riding ahead, Giles glanced over his shoulder and grinned. “’Tis long since I heard an ‘I wager’ from your lips. What say you to a race to that beech yonder?”
Speaking, he had spurred his horse and was already off, a green-gold blur racing in the browns and greens of the wood. Ranulf slapped his reins and took off in pursuit, his hunting horse whickering with excitement. He leaned into the rushing wind, feeling very strange not to be straight-backed and charging.
Down into a hollow they galloped, dust rising and the earth drumming and the men on foot slogging behind. Closing on the pumping haunches of Giles’s bay courser, he laughed, then wondered at a patch of white, straight ahead, pale as wild garlic.
Instinct saved him. He felt his courser plunge off to the right and went with him, urging his mount away, away. Giles’s horse was already snorting and Giles yelling as a massive animal charged, exploding out of the greenwood.
A wild cow and calf! One of the most dangerous beasts of the woodland, if crossed, or if a mother felt her calf threatened. The great white wave of muscle and sinew, the flashing short horns, crashed into Giles and Ranulf heard him howl as he fell from his horse.
“Away!” Reacting without thought to help a fellow warrior, without even being fully aware that this was Giles he was helping, Ranulf drove his mount between the maddened cow and Giles. Giles, who had tumbled into a hazel thicket and was struggling to find his feet, tangled also in his hunting net. The cow lowered its head and charged again.
Ranulf slashed at the beast with his bow, but it was like trying to turn a mountain with a feather. He saw it bear down, the close, musty air of the forest seeming to weigh like lead in his chest as the moment slowed and he could do nothing, nothing except urge his horse, over to the beech tree to use it as a shield.
In that same deadly slowness he saw the glint of the cow’s dark eye as she twisted her head, desperate to gore the louts who had dared to approach her calf. He felt the impact like a huge punch and heard his poor horse scream and saw the dark ragged wound appearing on the courser’s dark chestnut side.
Then it was over. He was panting and his horse was shuddering and the cow and calf were gone, thundering into the forest with the force and racket of lightning. Ranulf swung down off his mount, checking its injury, speaking softly, soothing the beast.
“You saved my life.”
You did, too, and more’s the pity! Less heart, more thought next time, if another chance comes.
Giles had freed himself and was offering him a flask. Ranulf took a drink and poured some of the mead over his courser’s wound. The animal shied and he whispered and soothed it afresh, wishing he could explain to the poor creature.
“You saved me,” Giles said again.
“You would have done the same.” Does Giles know I am lying now?
Giles stared then started to laugh, wild with relief. Whatever else he had planned for this day, he had certainly not aimed to be almost gored.
“My lord!”
“Sir, are you hurt?”
Snapping branches in their haste, pale with anxiety, the rest of the men rushed to them. Giles abruptly stopped laughing.
“I want that bitch cow.”
Ranulf shrugged. Revenge was so like Giles, though in truth they had been in error. Only an idiot threatened a cow with young. “You hunt alone, then. I must guide my courser to camp.”
“I will bring you its heart.” Giles was already brushing twigs from his hair and mounting up on his wide-eyed horse.
Ranulf nodded, turning again to his horse, relieved to be away from Giles and mightily glad to be returning to Edith. “I will keep the mead.”
It was a long walk back.
Chapter 35
On her return from the river, Edith skirted the tourney camp, clutching a pail she had found in the water. It had
a hole in it and so was useless, but with the damp bundle of hastily washed clothes it made her seem a maid of all work. At a distance the illusion held, and that was all that mattered.
She felt naked and vulnerable with her face unveiled, but the other wandering maids did not look twice at her. She cut across the churned-up great field, spotting a few rotting beans and peas still in the ground, and made for the wood running alongside them.
Memories of the throng in the churchyard kept her alert to every rustle and bird, but Ranulf was right. The restive crowd was long gone, as if it had never gathered. The limes and oaks gave her cover, and any maids or grooms weaving between the trees were there on their own business.
As she hoped Teodwin might be.
She saw a blaze of purple edge into a huge, hollow-centered holly and knew she had found her steward at his morning ablutions. For a former pig-man, Teodwin was surprisingly shy.
She waited until he emerged from the holly thicket and called to him.
He approached, limping on his poor leg and scowling as he had done in Warren Hemlet village whenever any woman or child had asked him a question.
“What do you do out there?” he demanded. “My lord told me you were sleeping late within his tent.”
“I am Ranulf’s prize, not his slave.” She had no time for further rebuttals. “There may be folk coming here throughout today, to the woodland near our camp. They will be frightened, Teodwin, very fearful. Have the others looking out for them and tell them to cover the strangers’ heads and faces as they can. They should be brought within our great tent.”
Teodwin looked as if he was chewing on a stone. “More stragglers and wastrels?”
“More wretches like our Lucy, ill-treated by Giles and his men! We must give them shelter if they come.” Compelled by her own revulsion, she gripped her steward’s arm. “He is branding them, Teo! On their foreheads, or cheeks. As if they are animals!”
“He would.” Teodwin spat and absently rubbed his lame leg. “So I will tell the others to watch out.”
Edith released the breath she had been holding. “How are Lucy and her babe now? And the children from the hamlet?”
A small smile finally tugged Teodwin’s thin mouth. “You may ask them yourself. They are playing over there, on the swing.”
The swing was new to her, and Edith made ready to praise it, for she could guess that Teodwin would have made it. Following his pointing finger she turned, hearing the piping of youngsters’ voices now, happy and unguarded.
“The North!”
That was Gawain, copying Ranulf’s war cry as he flung himself and the rope swing into the air. Standing on the earth bank behind him, Lucy cheerfully pushed him higher as he swung back. With her other arm she held her son Rano as he suckled under her gown. Sitting at her feet and leaning against her, Mary, the younger child from the pestilence village, concentrated on stirring a badger turd with a stick. Mary’s brother Simon meanwhile ate something in the long grass—he was always eating, Edith thought, hoping the lad would not make himself sick.
“She does well,” Teodwin said approvingly. “Maria moans about feeding and changing her babe and how weary she is, and she will not venture out of the tent, but see how good Lucy is with young Rano.”
A babe that is hers but not, Edith reflected, frowning a little as she considered the “miracle” of the child’s finding. In all ways, from nature to his first appearance, Rano seemed a blessed infant. Ranulf would say it proved the love of God and his saints. She was simply uncomfortable with the whole matter, but relieved to see Lucy thriving.
“Do you think she will have me?”
Teodwin’s question was not unexpected, not with the way he followed Lucy with his eyes and seized every moment to be close to the young woman. “You do not think I am too old for her?” he hurried on.
“Adam was older than you when I married him.”
“I will raise the child as my own.”
“Lucy will be glad of that.”
Teodwin puffed out his cheeks and his chest. “I intend to speak to her once we are home.”
We have no home. Not anymore.
Edith felt the earth tilt beneath her feet as if she was on a swing.
“Back in Fredenwyke,” Teodwin chattered on, unaware of her reaction. “My lord has promised me a place there.”
Edith became aware that she still had a cloth wrapped around her betrothal ring. She quietly unwrapped it.
“Pretty!” Mary called out, but she pointed to Gawain’s bouncing fair curls, not the ring. Gawain, lunging on the rope, thrust out his tongue and then shouted, “Come swing with me, Mary!”
Teodwin clapped his hands together. “Your lady is here.”
To Edith’s surprise, Gawain skidded to a stop on the bank, unhooked himself from the swing, and began to untangle his hair with his fingers. Mary trotted to her calling, “Lady, lady!” and even Simon finished his mouthful and wiped his lips. Lucy bobbed a curtsy—whether to her or to Teodwin, Edith was not sure. She forced herself not to clear her throat, but she felt oddly shy with these young, wide eyes fixed on her.
“Forgive me for the interruption, but you, too, should know that we may have visitors to the camp today.” Given the poor creatures’ appearances, her young ones deserved a warning.
“Mummy!” Mary shrieked, whirling round on the spot.
Edith’s spirits plummeted and she said quickly, “I think these people will be strangers to us.” She held up a hand. “Strangers or not, I hope we can welcome them.”
“There are many in this camp,” Lucy remarked. “How will we know them?”
It was a sensible question, but Edith hesitated. These youngsters had already seen and endured so much.
“You have seen brands on animals? Our visitors are marked in the same way.”
“Why have they been punished?” Gawain asked. “Were they bad?”
Edith felt her gut convulse with mingled pity and rage against Giles and she shook her head. “No, but their master was cruel. So we must treat them very kindly.”
Now Gawain and Simon nodded as Mary sucked her thumb, the discussion thankfully beyond her. Lucy clapped both hands to the sides of her face as if she had a toothache. “Poor things!” Edith heard her whisper and was angered afresh. Giles had done what was allowed by custom, but why should such tortures be allowed?
“We will watch for them,” Lucy promised, and the others, even little Mary, nodded solemnly. “How many will there be, my lady?”
Teodwin, as she had done to him years before in the church at Warren Hemlet, sidled close and trod on her foot.
“Enough of that,” he warned in a low voice. “Should you not be going back? If you are missed at my lord’s camp there will be a great outcry.”
“I am leaving now,” Edith said, hiding her ring again. No one had remarked on it, for which she was foolishly disappointed.
She gripped the pail with the hole in it again, and the bundle of cold, wet clothes, and looked through the trees, fixing on the bright banners of Ranulf’s tent. If her luck held, she would be able to return there, steal back inside, and Ranulf would be no wiser.
A lie by omission is still a lie.
She flinched at the thought, but it was true.
“I will do better,” she vowed to herself, hurrying along the track with the broken pail clattering against her legs. “When Ranulf and my people are out of all danger, I will be as true as the most chaste knight in Christendom.”
She must be. She had to be, for Ranulf’s sake.
Galloping after the careering cow, Giles howled as, again, the beast and her calf evaded him, twisting with devilish ease through briars and hazels that his own horse balked at.
“Hell’s teeth and damnation!” Giles whipped his courser as the flitting haze of white melted into the undergrowth, the sounds of the cow’s crashing hooves quickly deadened and lost in this gloomy maze of trailing ivy, spiders’ webs, and flowering honeysuckle. Giles whipped a streamer of
yellow flowers into the mud and trampled it.
“Where were you?” he bawled at his men, hurling his whip into the churned-up mud.
Their horses snorting as they themselves breathed heavily, his men hunched even lower into their saddles.
“Useless turds!” Giles spat at the nearest, his captain, who was looking anywhere but at him. “Get my whip!”
He knew no one wanted to dismount and risk a kick to the head from him. He lashed out at the hanging rope of honeysuckle for a second time and a belt of sparkling flowers floated down, a spray coming to rest over his boot. He stared at it, thinking not of honey-suckle but of lilies.
He patted the neck of his snorting courser. It was not his horse that had been gored, after all. If he returned to camp now he might catch Ranulf’s men napping, as his had been now, on this useless chase. Why not? He might finally win some time alone with the princess.
“Your whip, my lord.” A low servile fellow was cowering near to his heel, offering him the handle. He snatched it away and stood on his stirrups.
“We return to camp, gentlemen! Right now!”
In a different part of the forest, Ranulf shook his head as Edmund threw a stone at a rolled-up hedgehog. “Scarcely worthy quarry,” he remarked. “I did say you could stay with the main chase.”
Edmund pursed his lips, his habit when considering if he should speak.
“Out with it, lad.”
“Your mount is moving well now, sir.” Edmund took a step closer, away from their following men. “You could leave him with one of the grooms.” His thin, homely face suddenly glowed with inward fire. “I have a flower for my lady, if I might be permitted—”
His ready blush overcame him and he studied a patch of sagging wild garlic.
“For sure you can.” Ranulf ran his hand over the courser’s flank, glad that the good beast was no longer trembling. Edmund was most certainly right: he could safely leave the horse with a few of his men and ride to camp, perhaps catch Edith in her bath. He grinned at the thought.
A blackbird broke cover nearby and his men swung their horses toward the sound. Ranulf raised an arm.
To Touch The Knight Page 24