The Mistress Of Normandy

by Susan Wiggs

  “I like not the shield you use, Mondragon.”

  “Yet she is more impenetrable than steel.” Gervais lifted his arm. “Kill him,” he said to his men.

  “No!” Lianna’s voice sounded strange—desperate, pleading, full of feelings she’d battled for two days. Behind her, Gervais stiffened. She fumbled for a more even tone. “Really, Gervais, you are too rash.” Her face haughty, she stared at Rand. “The man is a baron, and for some reason I cannot fathom, the English king values his hide.”

  “All the more reason to cut him down, to see the flower of English chivalry wilt under the heat of a French blade.”

  A knight lifted his sword.

  “Hold, damn you,” she snapped. Rand’s death would end their marriage and keep him from seizing her home. But to see him cut down, bleeding his life away because she had lured him into his enemy’s snare... “Don’t be stupid. Would you sacrifice a fortune for the momentary thrill of spilling English blood?”

  “A fortune?”

  Rand made a sound of disgust.

  “Aye.” She turned to Gervais, forced a smile. “You’re angry, distraught over your father’s dead. But think, losing my uncle’s patronage and supporting Gaucourt’s knights has depleted our coffers. King Henry is sure to part with a goodly sum for my...” She hesitated. “This man’s ransom.”

  Summoned by the blast of a hunting horn, Gaucourt’s hobelars arrived one by one. Lianna felt ready to burst with tension. She looked at Rand; he stared back at her with a stranger’s eyes.

  Finally Gervais spoke. “Bind his hands and take his reins. We ride for Bois-Long.”

  Twelve

  Rand stared into a blackness so complete that it mattered not whether his eyes were open or closed. Mildew and decay pervaded the chamber and soured the air. He likened his surroundings to the state of his heart: cold, dark, and empty. He could not sleep; waking nightmares tortured his mind.

  He loved a woman who hated him.

  He’d lost a man and slain another.

  He was prisoner of a man who would soon learn that he’d not extract so much as a sou in ransom money from a king whose every resource was applied to mounting an invasion.

  Rand’s filth-encrusted hand strayed along the slick, wet wall until he found the set of scratches he’d made in the stone with one of his lace points. One, two, three...He’d counted off each day of confinement, marked by the regular arrival of silent jailers who brought him a bucket of swill and emptied the chamber pot. Four, five, six...The wall seeped, indicating that the chamber sat below the waterline. Seven, eight...

  I’m here, Harry, he raged silently at the young monarch across the Narrow Sea. I’ve come to Bois-Long at last.

  Sitting back on his haunches, he scowled into the dense blackness. Eight days since he’d felt the sun on his face and the wind at his back. Eight days since he’d seen Lianna’s face. His last glimpse of her drove like an arrow into his heart. Crouched in the arms of Gervais Mondragon, her face a cool, beautiful mask, she’d dismissed her husband as if he were no more than a common poacher. True, she’d called a warning to him during the fight; she’d bought him a few extra days with the ransoming ploy. Yet she was obviously content to let him rot in the bowels of her castle.

  He should have killed them all. He could have. But Gervais’s knife at Lianna’s throat had stayed his sword. He’d once dreamed that she would be his strength; instead she was his vulnerability.

  The thought brought him surging upright, weakened limbs creaking sorely with the motion. His head cracked against the ceiling, raining moldering mortar upon his shoulders.

  Cursing, he brushed away the debris. His hair hung about his face in matted hanks; his body held the stench of neglect; his hands felt gritty.

  While slowly rotating his aching shoulders, he brooded upon his dilemma. His attempts at overpowering his jailers had earned him bruises from their bludgeons, cuts from their pointed daggers, even a burn on his hand from a torch. Unarmed and weakened by poor food and confinement, he prayed his men would find a way to gain his freedom.

  But that was impossible, he conceded. Gaucourt’s knights and Lianna’s guns would foil any rescue attempt. And Burgundy, ever riding the fence, was off at Compiègne.

  He found himself thinking of his father. Marc had been a prisoner, too. Nineteen years he’d lived at Arundel, a captive of the English and of his wife’s disregard. Year after year she had ignored her husband’s pleas to tender the ransom. So he’d made a new life in England, gotten a bastard son on a peasant woman, and died in obscurity.

  Rand picked idly at the rotting wall. Now it seemed that he, too, was destined to fulfill a legacy of neglect. But under these conditions he’d not survive nineteen years.

  He drove his fist into the wall, barely flinching when the flesh of his knuckles split. Like his father, he had a wife who cared nothing for ransoming him. But unlike Marc, he intended to get free.

  * * *

  “Eight days,” Lianna said to Gervais. “Nom de Dieu, it has been eight days.”

  He paused in his midday meal, one dark eyebrow slashing upward with cynical coldness. “Aye.”

  “I wish to see him.”

  “For the last time, no. He’s no high-minded knight who claims Bois-Long for England, but a dangerous outlaw.”

  “He’ll die down there.”

  “He’s strong as a bloody rouncy. Relieved a guard of two of his teeth just this morning.” Gervais pulled a succulent leg from a capon and bit into it.

  She clenched her fists at her sides. Time and time again she’d told herself Rand was her enemy; he’d betrayed her and deserved no better than to be tossed, forgotten, into the cell. Yet images haunted her sleep, and memories plagued her wakeful hours. She could not rid her mind or her heart of Rand. His tender lovemaking had suffused her with new, exquisite sensations. His undemanding friendship had filled a pain-edged void in her life. Even his betrayal could not obliterate remembrances of a sunny glade and a man who had pledged his love to a confused, disheartened girl.

  She knew him better now. He was a lover, but he was a warrior, too. With nightmarish clarity she recalled his attack on the French knights. She pictured him fighting his jailers, and realized why Gervais sent them to the cell in groups of four or five.

  “Why did you send Chiang to Agincourt?” she asked suddenly.

  Gervais looked away. “I told you, to buy hemp.”

  “Eight days is long enough to do his trading and return.”

  “Perhaps he was detained.”

  She pressed her lips together in frustration and fear. She knew why Gervais had sent Chiang away. Gervais feared the master gunner, for Chiang alone seemed to understand that Gervais meant to enforce his claim on the château. She glanced around the hall, seeking allies. Instead she saw only the indolent men of Gaucourt and the confused knights of Bois-Long, who knew not which master to serve.

  “I wish to see the Englishman,” she repeated.

  Gervais eyed her closely. “I find your pangs of conscience tedious.”

  “’Tis not my conscience,” she said defensively. “I merely think we should adhere to the rules of chivalry in our treatment of a prisoner of rank.” She heard the echo of Rand’s words in her own. She was defending the very conventions she’d scorned.

  “Why?” asked Gervais. “He’s worthless.”

  She went cold, inside and out. She stared at Gervais, saw the flash of a secret in his dark brown eyes. “What?” she demanded. “What are you hiding from me?”

  A smile slid across his face as he reached into his doublet and removed a parchment scroll. With a trembling hand she unfurled it, angled it toward the weak, misty light filtering in through a high oriel window. She recognized at a glance the royal seal of the King of England.

  “You’ve read this?”

  Gervais nodded complacently.

  “But you don’t read French, much less English.”

  He shrugged. “Guy does.”

  She tried
not to let her dismay show. Always when a scurrier arrived with news, Guy, in his capacity as seneschal of Bois-Long, apprised her of it. Lately, though, the castle folk deferred to Gervais—swayed, no doubt, by his lenience and the promises he made of reducing boonwork and increasing rations.

  Her eyes darted to the page. A quick perusal told her what she already knew, what she’d known since she’d pleaded with Gervais not to slay her husband. King Henry would not ransom Enguerrand of Longwood.

  The paper dropped from her numb fingers and drifted to the rush-strewn floor. Rain drove relentlessly against the castle walls. Like the dampness weighting the air, despair pressed on her heart. Rand’s life was worth nothing now.

  “What will you do?” she asked.

  Gervais shrugged again. “I’m through harboring an enemy.”

  “You will not murder him.”

  His hard, glittering eyes narrowed. “Better the murder of one Englishman than the slaughter of scores of Frenchmen when Henry launches his attack.” He finished his meat and tossed the bone to an alaunt hound under the table. Glancing up at the open window, he said, “It’s been raining steadily. The river is rising.”

  Shaken by the implied threat, she fought for control. “I am chatelaine, Gervais. The decision is mine.”

  “With my father dead, the estate is entailed to me.”

  “Not if...” She bit her lip. No, she thought. Not now. Gervais must not know yet of her marriage and the babe she carried.

  “If what?” he prompted.

  “If you continue with your foolhardy spending and idle ways, you’ll not have an estate to manage at all.”

  He smiled and shook his head slowly. With an airy gesture of his hand he indicated the lower tables. The castle folk and Gaucourt’s knights crammed the trestles, their laughter and conversation made bold and raucous by the extra wine Gervais allotted them.

  “You’re wrong,” he said. “I have the land. I also have the loyalty of the people, and their love.”

  “Love,” she snorted, hiding her pain. “You play lavish with the stores and excuse them from their work.”

  “You presume to tell me of love?”

  He was right in questioning that, at least. Until recently she hadn’t known how to love. Now she knew it well, for its loss left a hollow chamber deep inside her.

  * * *

  In the kitchen, maids dipped candles from a vat of beeswax while Bonne supervised and Lianna tallied the work on a notched stick. The scent of wax and woodsmoke mingled with the rain smells from outside. Macée had offered to take a hand in the chore, but she’d been distracted by a wandering tinker whose Spanish lace and Venetian beads had sent her off to cajole Gervais for a bauble. The scene was warm and homey, the perfect task for a rainy spring afternoon.

  “Another dozen, my lady,” said Bonne. When Lianna didn’t react, the maid spoke louder. “Another dozen.”

  “Yes,” Lianna replied, marking her tally stick. “Of course.”

  “I doubt Gervais allows him a single taper,” Bonne muttered.

  Lianna stiffened. “Who?”

  “Your husband. Don’t pretend your mind’s not on him.”

  “Keep your voice down,” Lianna whispered. “I did not tell you the truth about Rand only to have you sow gossip.”

  “Sorry, my lady. Your secret’s safe.” Turning away from the other women, Bonne spoke in a hushed voice. “Will you let him die, then?”

  She bit her lip. “He’s the Englishman who betrayed me.”

  “He’s the knight who won your heart.”

  “He used me in the basest manner. Manipulated my affections to conquer my castle.”

  “You used him to get yourself with child.”

  “I hate him.”

  “Do you? Or is it yourself you hate for having lost your heart, for feeling compassion for him still?”

  “Your tongue is too bold.” She stalked to the window. Sheets of rain smeared a smoke-colored sky; the riverbanks swelled with rising water. Soon high tide would roll in, and...

  A vision of Rand, trapped in his cell while the water closed over him, set her mind ablaze. Her own terror of water brought the image into sharp, deadly focus.

  Leaving the kitchen, she stopped in her solar to draw on a deep-pocketed cloak.

  She ducked her head to avoid the rain, dodging puddles as she made her way to the long open corridor, deserted save for a few stray chickens. She came upon Gervais’s page, who sat against the wall, whittling a piece of driftwood. At the end of the cloister, an iron-studded door stood open to a black stairwell.

  She entered the cellar and paused, sucking in a deep breath of chilly, fetid air. Jesu, how could a man survive even a day under such conditions? She pulled an iron ring of keys from her girdle. Sorting through them one by one, she felt for the key to Rand’s cell. She’d seldom used the key but knew it was the one with the cloverleaf top.

  The first search did not yield the key. Tamping back a sense of urgency, she forced herself to sort through them more methodically.

  An orange light appeared behind her, casting her shadow against the damp wall. “You won’t find it,” said a calm, smooth voice.

  Startled, she dropped the key ring. Iron clinked against stone as it hit the floor. She whirled to find Gervais and three men-at-arms standing in the corridor.

  Gervais smiled. “I removed the key from your ring.”

  Her heart sank to her belly as she stooped to snatch up her keys. “You had no right. A chatelaine’s keys are sacred.”

  “As is my right to control the castle.” With deceptively gentle fingers, he smoothed back her hood so that it fell down over her shoulders. “Although I am certain I know the answer, I suppose I should ask exactly what you’re doing down here.”

  “I want to see the prisoner.”

  He chuckled and withdrew his own cluster of keys. “Do you, now?”

  Her mind raced. Perhaps if Gervais believed she sought Rand’s death as eagerly as he... “I wished to be the first to inform the Englishman that his beloved king has forsaken him.”

  Torchlight gave his features a sinister caste. “Perhaps I underestimated your lust for English blood.”

  “Never underestimate me, Gervais.”

  “What mischief are you up to?”

  She fixed him with a guileless stare. “What could I possibly do?”

  He strode into the belly of the cellar, paused at the last door and fitted a key into the lock. “I should warn you, he’s not nearly as pretty as the man who rode out from Le Crotoy to reclaim you.”

  She lifted her chin. “No man claims me now.”

  He motioned for one of the men to come forward with the torch. He turned the key and pushed the door open.

  * * *

  Rand looked up from his crouched position against the far wall of the cell. Momentarily blinded by torchlight, he squinted. Slowly his eyes focused, and he recognized the urbane face of Gervais Mondragon, and then the small, velvet-swathed figure of Lianna.

  “My lady?” he said, the rasping mockery in his voice belying the courteous greeting. He swept into a painful bow. “How do you?”

  Hearing her quick intake of breath, he looked up to study her face―a cold, vengeful mask. Only a short time ago he’d seen affection in the silvery depths of her eyes; now she sliced his soul with a dagger-sharp glare.

  “I am well,” she said icily. “Not that my welfare is any of your concern.” Her hands came up to worry the drawstring of her cloak.

  “Would you like to do the honors, Lianna, or shall I?” asked Gervais.

  She straightened her shoulders, her hand still on the laces at her throat. “We’ve had a reply from your devoted sovereign. He will not ransom you.”

  He’d known all along that his life was cheap, that the preparations for war had scoured the royal coffers clean. “He’s saving his coin to conquer you complacent French,” said Rand.

  Gervais frowned down at his pointed shoes. Water lapped at the elegant, vel
vet-clad toes. “The Englishman seems to care little for his hide. Come, Lianna. When the tide comes in, this chamber will flood to the ceiling.”

  Rand absorbed the gruesome tidings with the odd detachment of a doomed man.

  She tossed her head. “Oh, my, I’d quite forgotten that flooding occurs after a long rain. I must get some men to remove the gunpowder from the chamber just above here, so the ordnance doesn’t get wet.” She cast a worried look at the low, crumbling ceiling. “Tonight’s full moon brings a high tide.”

  “Quite so,” said Gervais, backing toward the door. “Farewell, my lord. Perhaps when your king learns of your failure, he’ll think twice about invading France.”

  Casting a last, oddly frantic look at Rand, and then at the crumbling ceiling, Lianna turned to follow Gervais. The cloak fell from her shoulders and whispered to the floor.

  “Merde,” she said. “My cloak.”

  “Bring it along,” said Gervais. “Perhaps the filth can be laundered out.”

  She shook her head. “Not even Bonne’s industrious hand could remove the stink of this place. Leave the cloak. Perhaps it will keep the god-don warm as he drowns.” She stepped daintily over the sodden heap.

  Gervais smiled at Rand. “The very soul of mercy, isn’t she, my lord?”

  Fired to mindless rage, Rand lurched forward, his fists doubled.

  One of the men levered a sharp halberd at his chest. Rand kept his cold, raw hands at his sides to stay an impulse to drive his fist into that smiling face. But he did nothing to check the murderous glance he settled on his wife.

  His fierce look seemed to discomfit her. She moved back; her throat worked as she swallowed. “What did you expect?”

  “I didn’t expect you to gloat.”

  She sent him a long, unreadable look. “Curb your temper. You’ll set the place afire with it.”

  They left without another word. As he heard the key grinding in the lock, Rand smashed his fist against the wall, wishing it were instead the face of Gervais Mondragon. Coldness stole into his veins; the walls seemed to close in on him. Half-crazed with impotent rage, he snatched up Lianna’s cloak and rent it in two with a savage tug.