Wicked

by Jill Barnett

  Chapter 12

  For Tobin, this moment was like facing the enemy on a battlefield. There was the same tension in the air. She stood across from him, unmoving. Her jaw looked as tight as his felt.

  The only sounds around them were the ruffling and scratching noises from the cages of the hawks and falcons. A few feathers floated out from a nearby cage and drifted to the dirt floor. There was the shrill, guttural sound of a raven, the piercing shriek of a hawk. But no human sound.

  The air grew thick and heavy the way it did when it was ready to rain or snow. She looked frozen, her hand resting against the stone of the entrance, her features stony and sharply defined, like a marble statue. Her only motion was the subtle rise and fall of her chest with every breath she took.

  It had been a long day of battles with her, this woman he had chosen to be his wife, the one whose hand he had to earn through service to the King. But when he looked at her like this, somehow those frozen nights in the north, when the rain and snow and ice pounded down on them, when there had been little food, all of it now seemed long ago and well worth the price.

  She was a beauty. Incredible on a man’s eyes and hell on his mind and body. Whenever he looked at her, which he was usually compelled to do by some strange need inside of him, he understood why every young nobleman he knew had wanted her to wive. He understood their frustration when she would have nothing to do with them. He understood their desperate need to claim her for their own and their anger and their need to avenge their broken pride when they failed.

  But after two long years of Edward’s whims, he had succeeded where they had not. She was his. The betrothal was set, signed, and blessed by the Church, and nothing short of death could now break that pact between the King and his father. ’Twould never happen.

  She stood there trying so hard to look at ease, but she was not. She tried to look indignant and poorly used. He almost laughed because he was not certain who was using whom today. Finally he decided he had given her enough trouble for one day, so he relented and spoke first. “You wanted to see me.”

  She did not speak, but stood there, not looking angry or petulant, but a little lost, as if she had just awoke and did not know where she was. This facet of her, this vulnerable side he had not seen before, made him back down.

  He closed the distance between them slowly, approaching her the way he approached the wildest of the de Clare horses. He spoke softly, not threateningly. Just said her name on a breath, again and again.

  She turned and stared up at him from those wild purple eyes, her lips soft and moist and waiting for him. He wanted nothing more at that moment than to close his arms about her and kiss her until they both needed more than only the touching of their mouths and the foreplay of their tongues.

  He reached out with one finger and traced her jaw softly, up to the line of her dark hair, near her shell of an ear, where there were thin and curly pieces of black hair that sprang and coiled around his fingertip when he brushed against them.

  He bent his head, moving his mouth toward hers. God, but he wanted her. When his lips were almost touching hers she blinked, as if she were just now seeing him there before her eyes.

  She shoved him back. “Do not!”

  Her voice was shrill, almost as if she were frightened. But Sofia Howard was not someone he thought was easily frightened, so he ignored that.

  She seemed to quickly compose herself. “We must talk.” Her voice was even now, calmer.

  He gave a sharp laugh. “If we are to talk, then both of us need to speak. I do not know why you summoned me.

  She mumbled something under her breath.

  “Sofia. I cannot hear you. Look at me.”

  She did, then her eyes narrowed as if she blamed him because she could not find the words she wanted. “I wanted to ask you a question.”

  “What?”

  She drew her shoulders up and raised her chin as high as a queen. “Why did you ask to wed me?”

  So that was what this was about. He wondered what she would do if he told her the truth: that he wanted her because she was a rare beauty, because all the other men he knew wanted her, because she was a challenge and he liked challenges, and for some reason he could not explain, he decided the first time he ever saw her that she would be his.

  If he lied and gave her a vow of undying love, if he played the besotted swain, she would use that vow against him and never give him any peace. ’Twould be a weakness exposed. She was not the kind of opponent to whom a smart warrior gave any ground.

  Pride was an issue here, as it always was between them. She already had an overblown sense of herself. He would not add to that. He leaned back against a tall column, crossed his arms and just watched her.

  She waited for his answer, while he tried to find the right one.

  “I am waiting.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Are you cooking up some lie? Is that why you hesitate?”

  “Nay. I will tell you. You have plenty of land and wealth, Sofia. Thanks to all your antics during the past few years, the King is desperate to see you wed.”

  She stood there without a single expression on her face.

  “The way I see it, if I don’t wed you, no one will.”

  She sucked in a deep breath; it made a sharp and long hissing sound.

  “You have to admit that you have chased away every suitor possible. I am about all that is left. I figure if I do not make the sacrifice, then—”

  “Sacrifice?” Her face turned pale, then her face and neck began to redden.

  “You know what I mean. Someone has to do it, otherwise Edward will be hell to live with. Every time you rejected a suitor, Edward levied scutage on his vassals so he could add more gold to your dowry. The truth of it is, none of us could afford it much longer.

  “And besides, why wouldn’t I want you? I can put up with almost anything for your rich dower price, even a spoiled woman with too much time on her hands to do much more than make mischief.”

  She was bright red and barely breathing.

  “Such mischief as those pig bladders filled with water or the toads in my bed.” He shoved away from the column and held up a hand. “And before you say anything, I know you paid the stable boy to put the toads there.”

  She looked angry enough to spit toads.

  For one moment he wondered if in his need to deflect her rebellion, to take her down a peg, he had gone too far.

  “Are you finished?” Her words were clipped. Her shoulders were stiff, and her hands were clasped tightly in front of her, the knuckles red and bloodless.

  “I believe that about covers my reasons.”

  “Fine.” She turned and walked away from him, her head high and her steps measured and even. He watched her go, watched the control with which she made her way across the bailey and into the archway, where there was a door that led up to the tower stairs and her chamber high above.

  For that one moment, when his memory was fresh with her quiet, controlled manner, and as the moon crept over the eastern wall, a sickle moon in the same shape as the tool the villeins used to cut live stalks of wheat, he wondered if he had made a mistake.

  She had made a mistake. She had allowed herself to believe that someone could love her. Walking away from him with her head high and her eyes dry was one the hardest things she had ever done.

  A fool! A fool! That was what her mind cried out as she took each step.

  Her lips began to quiver and she pressed them tightly together. Moisture rose in her eyes and burned in the backs of them. She blinked away the tears and took the stairs slowly, one at a time, until she was finally inside her chamber where the candles had not yet been lit and the room was dark in all its corners. Light from outside made a slight shadow on the floor as she turned and slid the door latch closed.

  A moment later she threw herself on her bed, buried her face on her arms and cried. He did not want her. He wanted a placid monarch and her dowry price.

  She
sobbed so hard that her breath caught in her chest. She cried for all she never had. She cried for what she had lost. She cried for ever believing that she could have something good and sweet, like love. She cried because she had nothing left inside of her but a thousand tears.

  It took a long, long time before she could sit up. By then the moon was just a glowing sliver in the black night sky. She looked down, ashamed, because she knew the truth then: she was not good enough for anyone to love. Her father could not love her. Tobin could not love her.

  All those suitors only wanted her because of what she looked like, she knew that. Every one of them failed the test; they could not prove to her that what they wanted was something more than only a beauty to wear on their arm the way warriors wore their swords. She was a possession. A decoration.

  She had foolishly forgotten the one single lesson she learned early in her life, the one taught her first by her father.

  In her desperate need and desire to have Tobin de Clare love her, she had forgotten that she cannot allow herself to need anything, particularly the things she could not have.

  She did not have a father and mother; she could not need them. She did not have love; she could not need love.

  She had been abandoned young, learned the lesson then that she needed to control everything. But she had forgotten that. She had forgotten why she distanced herself from those who claimed they would help her. The truth was, there was no one she could trust but herself.

  She began to sob again, crying for all those foolish and wasted moments when she dreamed that her life could be different. She could not hope or believe in someone other than herself. She could not, because they would only let her down.

  She walked to the table, lit the nearby candle, and took it from the iron holder above the table. Sitting on the table top was a polished metal looking glass, the one she used to check her hair in the morn. She leaned over and looked into it, saw the tears dripping down her face, the swollen lips and red eyes and the blotchy skin that all came from her tears, tears she should never have shed.

  She swiped them away and looked at her face, the face they all claimed was so beautiful. The face that was the reason people looked at her.

  She stared long and hard in the looking glass, then she threw it across the room. It slammed into the stone wall with a loud clanking sound.

  Beauty was a worthless thing. It never got her a mother. It never kept her father at her side. It did not make him love her or value her. Beauty never gave her anything but trouble.

  She stood and crossed the room, bent down, and picked up the metal looking glass, then she went to the chest near her bed and took out her sewing kit. She pulled the small scissors from inside, the ones shaped like a swan, and she went back to the table and propped the mirror against the stones of the wall.

  For a long time she stared at herself. Then she took the scissors and the small dagger from her belt. She stared at them, wondering which one would do the most damage. She picked up the dagger and raised it to her face.

  She looked in the glass, the dagger clutched in her fist. Tears came from her eyes and blurred the image before her. She grasped a handful of hair and she sliced it off. Then she grabbed another; and cut it. And another. Her long black hair fell to the floor in heaps, one section after another.

  When she was done, she lay down the dagger and used the clips to cut off more hair, until it stuck out from her head in clumps that looked like the spikes on the side of the western wall.

  She stood then and took a leather bag from a hook nearby, and she stuffed all the long black hair into it, then tied the strings into a tight knot. She lay down on the bed and curled into a tight ball, her hands clasping her arms so she was hugging herself. Her eyes were tired and burned from all those tears. She closed them and a moment later she was asleep.

  It was well after Sext the next day when Parcin, the captain of Tobin’s men-at-arms, came to find him in the stables, where his mount was chewing on hay and had showed no signs of lameness.

  “Sir?”

  Tobin turned. “Aye?”

  His man was holding a brown leather satchel. “I was told this was yours.”

  “Mine?” Tobin frowned. “Where did you get it?”

  “Early this morn, as we were riding out to hunt, a lad came up to me near the gates and told me you had purchased this. He asked if I would deliver it to you.”

  Tobin had not purchased anything. He took the sack and tested its weight, seeing if it was a trick. He knew of a man who was given a satchel, told it was a gift and there was an adder inside. This did not feel like a snake. It was not bulky. He dropped it on the ground, knelt and untied the strings. He looked inside and saw nothing but black.

  Frowning, he turned the sack upside down.

  Yards of gleaming black hair, Sofia’s black hair, fell into a tangled lump on the yellow straw below.

  He stared at it, shocked into silence, then he straightened and swore viciously. A second later he turned and slammed his fist against the wooden wall.

  His man flinched.

  Tobin spun back around. “What lad? Where?”

  “I do not know who he was, sir. He wore a broad-brimmed red hat, like the crofters. His face was filthy and black. He wore a woolen tunic, brown and rough, and braies.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “I do not know. I did not—” He paused. “She?”

  “Aye, the lad was my betrothed.”

  Parcin looked like he wanted to be ill. “I did not know it was her. I . . . I . . . ”

  Tobin raised his hand. “’Tis not your fault. But think. What else did you see?”

  “I did not see her after she ran out the gatehouse.”

  Tobin was quiet.

  “He, I mean, she left the castle about the same time as the supply wagons.”

  Tobin shook his head. It was late in the afternoon and she had a full day’s start on him. He left the stable muttering about women and hair and stubbornness and fools. His long legs ate up the ground and his hands were in fists as he walked toward the King’s rooms to tell Edward what she had done now.

  Off in the distance, near Canterbury and a few miles away from Leeds, a young, dark-haired lad in a red hat and rough woolen clothes, his face smudged dark and dirty with ash, caught a ride toward London with a small caravan of entertainers.

  Chapter 13

  For Sofia, the next days were truly a lark. She rode with a small troupe of performers led by a kind young man who had hair the same color as the copper pennies his acts earned. He was a juggler and a jongleur, named Alan of Wisbury, and he could make the crowds laugh and cry and charm them with his friendly blue eyes and freckled cheeks. With him was his wife’s father, Bernard, a massive man who was a rope walker and acrobat and who had a huge dancing bear, named Satan.

  There was Miranda, Alan’s wife and Bernard’s daughter, who told fortunes and could also walk the rope no matter how high it was strung, and their six year old twin daughters, Maude and Matilda. The twins liked to tumble and do somersaults through the air from their father’s and grandfather’s big arms.

  None of them knew Sofia was not the lad she pretended to be. To them, she was an orphan—which was the truth; a wanderer, which was the truth; and teller of fanciful tales . . . well, Sofia figured she had always lied well.

  Life in the King’s castles had taught her much about men, because there were so many of them around for her to observe. She learnt early that men swaggered and spit They boasted over even the smallest of incidences and made jests about privies and garderobes. She had heard the grooms tell stories about spying on the maids bathing in the river or watching the stablemaster in the hayrick with the cook. Basically, impersonating a man meant being about as arrogant and uncouth as possible.

  ’Twas not so difficult to mimic, now, when she needed a new identity. One night she managed to quaff a whole tankard of ale with the best of them and belch on the spot, six times in a row, while she sang a bawdy song. Sh
e won the first chunk of hot bread. She could even fart if need be, but she had to eat stringy mutton and turnips to do so, which was not too difficult, since that was what they ate almost every night.

  The small troupe had moved through the countryside and on to London, but they could not cross the bridge, because the week before four of the arches had given way, worn by time, lack of maintenance, and from the harsh ice from the winter before. Alan had paid their passage tolls with new ha’pennies that her cousin Edward had minted in lieu of the old coins, which were supposed to be cut in halves and quarters. But over the years when his father, King Henry, had reigned, the old coins had been cut, then clipped and shaved and clipped again until their coinage value was half the weight of what it should have been. Sofia had not seen the new coins until Alan had pulled one from his purse and shown her before he paid the tolls.

  Quarrymen poled them across the Thames to dark sections of the warrened city, part of London that Sofia had never seen before. There were narrow alleys where it seemed as if no one ever slept. On the houses and taverns there were still thatched roofs that could catch fire and spread with little more than a light breeze. Two buildings had burned down before her very eyes. The streets were a place where dogs moved along with the people, children hawked goods and where you could get your throat cut as easily as you could get your purse snatched.

  But for Sofia, sheltered as she had been, it was all a new adventure and she saw not the danger, only another, fascinatingly wicked side of living she had never seen before.

  To her delight, Alan had taught her to juggle the first night she joined them, and she was mastering the task rather splendidly, at least she thought so, since she could do it without her tongue sticking out of her mouth.

  So she stood on the street corner in the dark side of the city, before a small crowd, tossing three red wooden balls in the air as she balanced on a small log.