by Susan Wiggs
He followed a familiar, muffled curse to the paddock. His horses and those of his men occupied the stalls, Lajoye’s livestock having been taken by the écorcheurs. A bovine shape caught his eye. “Jesu, Jack, where did you find that?”
Jack Cade looked up from the milking stool. “Lajoye’s youngsters need milk,” he said. “Spent the king’s own coin on her, down in Arques.” The cow sidled and nearly overset Jack’s bucket. “Hold still, you cloven-footed bitch.” He grasped a pair of fleshy teats and aimed a stream of milk into the bucket. “I made sure Lajoye knows the milk’s from our King Harry.” Leaning his cheek against the cow’s side, he gave Rand a brief accounting of the events of the day.
“Godfrey and Neville ran down a hart and brought it back to Lajoye. Robert—er, Father Batsford, that is, went a-hawking. Giles, Peter, and Darby found the brigands’ route and followed it some leagues to the south, but the thieves are long gone, dispersed, probably, after dividing their spoils.”
Rand frowned. “I did want to recover the pyx from the chapel. ’Twould mean much to the people.”
Jack’s eyes warmed with affection. “Always trying to win hearts and souls, aren’t you?”
Rand smiled. Was he deluding himself to believe chivalry could achieve such an end? “Always skeptical, aren’t you?” he countered.
Jack shrugged. “Take them by the balls, my lord. Their hearts and souls will follow.” Wearily he rotated his shoulders. “I worked like a goddamned swineherd today. And yourself, my lord? Any luck?”
Rand swallowed and stared at the dust dancing in a ray of golden twilight. The rhythmic, sibilant splatter of milk against the sides of Jack’s bucket punctuated the silence. Presently Jack finished his task and straightened. “Well?”
“I met...a girl.”
The milk sloshed in Jack’s pail. Too late, Rand realized his voice had betrayed the feelings he’d kept folded into his heart since he’d watched Lianna run off toward the castle.
Eyes dancing with interest, Jack set down his pail, picked up a stalk of hay, and aimed it at Rand’s chest. “Has Cupid’s arrow found a victim? Welcome to the human race, my lord.”
“Her name is Lianna,” Rand said in a low voice. “She lives at Bois-Long.”
“Better still,” Jack exclaimed, rolling the hay between his fingers. “Surely it’s a sign from above. Merry, my lord, perhaps life won’t be so disagreeable with a ready wench at hand.”
Rand shook his head. “The married state is sacred. And I’d not dishonor Lianna.”
Jack laughed. “Knight’s prattle, my friend. Your commitment to the demoiselle is one of political convenience. No need to be good as gold on her account.”
Rand turned away. “If gold rusts, what would iron do?”
Jack tossed a forkful of hay to the cow and picked up the bucket. They walked out of the paddock. “I for one,” said Jack, “intend to grow right rusty wooing Lajoye’s hired girl. She’s got a pair of—”
“Jack,” Rand warned, drowning out the bawdy term.
“—to die for,” Jack finished.
“I’ve forbidden wenching.”
“Only with unwilling females,” said Jack. “But never mind. When do we go to Bois-Long?”
“King Henry insists on proper protocol. A missive must be sent, and the bride-price, and Batsford must read the banns for a few weeks running.”
“Still in no hurry.” Jack grinned. “That hired girl will be glad of it.” He walked back to the inn.
Caught in the purple-tinged swirls of the deepening night, Rand left the town and climbed the citadel-like cliffs above the sea. A nightingale called and a curlew answered, the plaintive sounds strumming a painful tune over his nerves.
Staring out at the breaking waves, he pondered the unexpected meeting and the even less expected turn his heart had taken.
Lianna. He whispered her name to the sea breezes; it tasted like sweet wine on his tongue. Her image swam into his mind, pale hair framing her face with the diffuse glow of silver, her smile tentative, her eyes wide and deep with a hurt he didn’t understand yet felt in his soul. She inspired a host of feelings so bright and sharp that it was agony to think of her.
There was only one woman he had any right to think about: the Demoiselle de Bois-Long.
The nearness would be hardest to bear. To see Lianna’s small figure darting about the château, to hear the chime of her laughter, would be high torture.
End it now, his common sense urged, and he forced his mind to practical matters. The Duke of Burgundy was at Bois-Long, but his retainers were few. Clearly he did not plan a lengthy visit. Jean Sans Peur could ill afford to tarry with his niece when his domain encompassed the vast sweep of land from the Somme to the Zuyder Zee.
Aye, thought Rand, Burgundy bears watching.
But even as he hardened his resolve around that decision, he knew he’d go back to the place of St. Cuthbert’s cross where he’d met Lianna. The guns, he rationalized. He must dissuade her from working with dangerous and unpredictable weapons. Yet beneath the thought lay an immutable truth. Guns or no, he’d seek her out—tomorrow, and every day, until they met again.
* * *
“Gone!” said Lianna, running into a little room off the armory. “Lazare is gone!”
“Did you think your uncle of Burgundy would let him stay?” Chiang asked, his dark eyes trained on a bubbling stew of Peter’s salt that boiled in a crucible over a coal fire.
A warm spark of relief hid inside her. Ignoring it, she said, “Uncle Jean had no right to order Lazare to Paris.”
“Not having the right has never stopped Burgundy before.”
“Why would he send Lazare to swear fealty to King Charles?”
Chiang shrugged. “Doubtless to keep the man from your bed.”
She nearly choked on the irony of it. Lazare had taken care of that aspect of the marriage himself. And now that he was gone, she could not place him between herself and the English baron.
“Burgundy has left also?” asked Chiang.
“Aye, he claimed he had some private matter to attend to,” said Lianna glumly. “He had no right,” she repeated. She studied Chiang’s face, admiring his implacable concentration, the deep absorption with which he performed his task. His eyes, exotically upturned at the corners, seemed to hold the wisdom of centuries. He had a stark, regal face that put her in mind of emperors in the East, a distance too far to contemplate.
“You know he has it in his power to do most anything he wishes. Pass me that siphon, my lady.”
She handed him a copper tube. “That is what worries me about Uncle Jean. He also refused to send reinforcements to repel the English baron. He will not risk King Henry’s displeasure.”
Carefully Chiang extracted the purified salt from the vat. “Will the Englishman press his claim by force?”
“I know not. But we should be prepared.” She sat back on her heels and watched Chiang work, his short brown fingers handling scales and calipers with the delicacy of a surgeon. Sympathy, affection, and respect tumbled through her. Chiang had been a fixture at Bois-Long since the days of her youth. Like the man himself, his arrival was a mystery. Fleeing the capture of a mysterious ship from the East, he’d washed up on the Norman shore, the sole survivor of a vessel whose destination and mission Chiang had never revealed.
Only the Sire de Bois-Long, Lianna’s father, had protected the strange-looking man from a heathen’s death at the hands of superstitious French peasants. With his timeless knowledge of defense and his meticulous skill at gunnery, Chiang had repaid Aimery the Warrior a hundredfold.
But even now, the castle folk who had known him for years regarded him as an oddity, some gossips falling just short of denouncing him as a sorcerer. The men-at-arms begrudged him this small workroom in a corner of the armory and never failed to sketch the sign of the cross when passing by.
Chiang peered at her through wide-set, fathomless eyes. “And are you prepared, my lady?”
She hung h
er head. During the two days of the duke’s visit, she’d prayed and worried over a difficult decision. “Yes,” she said faintly.
He set aside his sieves and calipers and gave her the full measure of his attention. “Tell me.”
She tapped her chin with her forefinger. “I’ve sent a missive to Raoul, Sire de Gaucourt in Rouen, asking for fifty men-at-arms.”
“Did you consult Lazare in this?”
“Of course not. He knows nothing of diplomacy and politics. It matters not anymore. He is gone.”
Chiang showed no surprise at her defiance, yet she read disapproval in his calm, steady gaze. In appealing to the Sire de Gaucourt, she had betrayed her uncle. Gaucourt did not openly side with the Armagnacs, yet he was known to be sympathetic to Burgundy’s enemy.
“Was I wrong, Chiang?” she asked desperately.
He shrugged. His straight dark thatch of hair caught blue highlights from the coal fire. “You have shown yourself to be a poor judge of character, but Burgundy’s niece nonetheless. The duke himself would have done no less. Remember his tenet: ‘Power goes to the one bold enough to seize it.’”
Bolstered by Chiang’s counsel, she gave him a glimmer of a smile. “Very well. Shall we try the culverin?” The piece was new and had three chambers for more rapid firing.
He looked away. “I plan to do so. But alone.”
“What?”
“Your husband forbade me to work the guns with you.”
She leaped to her feet. “The salaud. How dare he dictate what I may and may not do?”
“Your laws dictate that you are subservient to your husband—or his son in his absence. Gervais has already said that he will enforce his father’s command.”
“We shall see,” she muttered, and left the armory to search for Gervais and tell him exactly what she thought of his father’s interdict.
In the hall she found the women at their spinning. Fleecy balls of carded wool littered the floor, and women’s talk wove in and out of the clack and whir of the spinning wheels. Edithe sat by the hearth, idly eating a pasty.
“What do you, Edithe?” Lianna asked, struggling to keep the irritation from her voice. “Why are you not helping with the spinning?”
The girl wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “Lazare released me,” she said, a faint gleam of smugness in her ripe smile.
Lianna stared. The wooden sounds of the wheels stopped, leaving an echo of expectant silence in the hall. Lazare had singled Edithe out to vent his lust; apparently all knew of it. Covering her dismay with anger, Lianna ordered the women back to work with a clipped imperative, then turned her attention to the idle maid.
Edithe made an elaborate show of finishing the pasty and licking the crumbs from her fingers. Fury welled like a hot powder charge within Lianna.
“I see,” she said, her throat taut as she exerted all the control she could marshal. “I wonder, Edithe, if you know where Lazare has gone.”
“Mayhap the mews,” the maid replied. “He does enjoy falconry, you know.”
No, Lianna didn’t know. Lazare had shared nothing of himself, and she had never asked. She didn’t care; she had his name, and that was all she needed for now. Still, his open infidelity stung her pride. With great satisfaction she said, “Lazare is no longer at Bois-Long, Edithe. He has gone to Paris.”
The maid’s eyes widened. Lianna smiled. “Lazare excused you from spinning. Very well, you are excused.” Edithe looked relieved until Lianna added, “You will do needlework instead. Aye, the chaplain needs a new alb.”
Edithe’s face crumpled in dismay. “But I am so clumsy with the needle,” she said.
“Doing boonwork for the church is good for the soul,” Lianna retorted, and strode out of the hall. Climbing the stairs to the upper chambers, she tried to formulate a speech scathing enough for Gervais. Keep her from her gunnery indeed. Her dudgeon peaked as she arrived at the room he shared with Macée. She raised her fist to knock.
A sound from within stopped her. A moan, as if someone were being tortured. Nom de Dieu, was Gervais beating his wife? But the next sound, a warm burble of laughter followed by a remark so ribald Lianna barely understood it, mocked that notion. Cheeks flaming, she fled.
Her fury deepened into an unfamiliar sense of helpless frustration. Shamed by the tears boiling behind her eyes, she rushed to the stables and commanded her ivory palfrey to be saddled. She rode away from the château at a furious gallop.
Please be there, she prayed silently as the greening landscape whipped by. Please be there.
Twice during her uncle’s sojourn she had managed to slip off to the place of Cuthbert’s cross; twice she’d found the coppice empty. No, not quite empty. The first time she’d found a single snowdrop lying on the cross, its waxy petals still fresh. The second time she’d found the emerald-tipped feather of a woodcock. She kept the flower and feather in her apron pocket, and often her fingers stole inside to touch the evidence that Rand had gone seeking her. Evidence that he wasn’t just a dream conjured by her troubled mind. Evidence that one man found her desirable.
But today a token would not suffice. Encased by the icy armor of betrayal and confusion, she needed Rand—his generous strength, his tender smile, the liquid velvet of his voice. She needed to gaze into the same green depths of his eyes.
He was there.
Lianna checked her horse, dismounted, and tethered the palfrey to a bush where Charbu grazed. Rand sat leaning against the cross. His winsome smile reached across the distance that separated them, to beckon her.
Her heart lifting, she hesitated, then approached at a slow walk. The scene was almost too perfect for her worldly presence to disturb. Rand sat cross-legged, surrounded by an arch of trees and meadow grasses that nodded in the breeze. An errant shaft of sunlight filtered through the budding larch boughs, touching his golden hair with sparkling highlights. In his lap he held a harp. The fingers of one hand strummed idly over the strings. Stepping closer, she saw that his other hand cradled a baby rabbit. I nearly slew its mother, she thought absurdly.
Rand’s eyes never left her. At last he spoke—to the rabbit, not to Lianna. “Off with you, nestling,” he said, and set the creature down, giving it a nudge with his finger until it scampered away. Then he laid aside his harp and stood.
She stayed rooted, frozen by new and awesome sensations that pulsated through her like the wingbeats of a lark. Rand was a deity in a dream garden, and suddenly she feared to enter his world. Lazare’s duplicity and her uncle’s scheming had soiled her. She couldn’t belong here.
But that was Belliane, an inner voice reminded her. To Rand she was Lianna, brave and unsullied in her anonymity.
He stepped forward, put out his hand, and brushed his knuckles lightly over her cold cheek, an inquiring gesture, one that demanded a response.
The restrained tenderness and gentle warmth of his touch melted the ice encasing Lianna. Thawed by his kindness, a single tear emerged, dangled on the points of her lashes, then coursed down her cheek. He traced its path with his thumb, caught the second with his lips, and then the broad wall of his chest absorbed the hot floodtide that followed.
Four
Stricken by her grief without understanding it, Rand wrapped the small, shuddering girl against him. Whatever he’d expected—a shy smile, a tentative greeting—was swept away by the depth of her naked emotions. For long moments he stood holding her, stroking her tense back, her rounded shoulders, bending to touch his lips to the wind-cooled silk of her hair. “Hush, pucelle,” he whispered. “Please don’t cry anymore.”
He’d felt guilty coming here, giving in to an impulse he knew he should not indulge. Now her need drove away the guilt and filled him with a powerful sense of rightness. Although pledged to Lianna’s mistress and bound to style himself the girl’s overlord, he could not withhold his comfort.
He tightened his throat against speaking further, for to speak now would be to admit to emotions he had no right to feel. Instead he cradled her small, qu
aking body against him.
At length her weeping subsided. She clung to him, kept her face buried in his tunic. When Rand curved his fingers under her chin and lifted her face to his, she stiffened and resisted. But the gentle force of his will won out, and he found himself staring into the battered silver of her eyes.
The pain there was so deep, so vivid, that he felt as if a fist had reached down inside him and squeezed his heart.
“Tell me, pucelle,” he whispered.
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
His finger caught the sparkling drop of a tear from her cheek and brought it to his own lips; he tasted the faint, bitter salt of her grief. “I’d break a hundred lances if the deed could drive the sadness from your eyes.”
That brought a tiny smile. “I am no damsel in a chanson de geste. I need no dragons slain for me.”
“What do you need, Lianna?”
“A friend.” Her voice sounded faint, as if she were reluctant to confess such a human necessity.
He touched his lips to her hairline, breathed in the light scent of her fragrance. Soon enough he would be forced to betray the childlike trust that softened her features. “I’ll be your friend, pucelle,” he said.
She unwrapped herself from his embrace. Long, loose strands of her hair clung to his arm, linking them. Gesturing at his harp, she said, “Sing me a song.”
He smiled. “I was prepared to break lances for you.” He brought her to sit by the cross and took the harp in his lap.
Fascinated, Lianna watched his strong hands close around the frame of ashwood worn smooth by years of handling. Long masculine fingers caressed the gut-spun strings, bringing forth a sweet shiver of sound. The tones lifted to mate with the spring breeze, and Lianna felt an odd sense of intimacy, as if the notes were whispered in her ear. She drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms about them.
He sang an old troubadour’s lay of unrequited love. He had a voice like none other she had heard—vibrant, clean as rain, powerful as the wind singing through the crags.