The King's Man

by Elizabeth Kingston

  He nearly opened his mouth to assure her that there was naught in the buttery that was worthy of such alarm, but her palpable dread stopped him. Perhaps there was reason to fear. This place had ghosts enough.

  But just as quickly as it had come into her face, the unease vanished. He felt, rather than saw, the great effort it was. What a will she had.

  She accepted the keys, and nodded at Hugh. “May God protect and reward you for the safe keeping of this hold, and may all who dwell in it be so blessed.”

  She seemed to run out of words, only staring silently at Hugh while all eyes looked to her. She took a breath as though deciding something, cleared her throat, and resumed with more confidence. “Nor have I talent for courtly speech and fine manners such as ye will expect of your lady, but by God’s grace I will endeavor to be worthy of your love. Is all in preparation for supper?”

  Hugh Wisbech nodded. “But a moment and it lies ready within the hall, my lady.”

  She raised her voice. “Then let us waste no more time on talk, but hasten us to break bread together.”

  This was met with a smile from Hugh, broader than any Ranulf had ever seen on the man’s face. The men dusty with travel gave great sighs of relief, and everyone began to move, easy talking and laughing, spirits high. Even the dirty white mutt took up its whining again, running in mad circles about their ankles.

  The combination of road-weariness, his love and loathing of this place, and the strangeness of having her – having anyone – at his side while he stood in this court, made him almost giddy. He found himself laughing, unable to stop.

  She only looked at him, a furrow in her brow and no amusement in her face. She never laughed. The merest hint of her smile was a rare triumph. A grave and serious wife, who looked at him like his laughter was a sign of possible illness.

  He reached for her hand again, to put on his arm. “Haps you have no talent for courtly speech, but never doubt your skill in greater matters.” He leaned in close so only she could hear him as they moved before the throng. “You use well what you have learned from leading men – cease talk, commence eating, and all will love you.”

  She seemed not to see the humor in it. Haps there was no humor in it, but only his giddy mood that made him laugh. There was no such giddiness in her. She gave a slight grunt and a short nod, as if it were an observation that needed her assent.

  “I have seen that men will gladly bear a strong hand if it be also just, and their stomachs are filled. But love and loyalty are not the same, and it is unwise to confuse the two.”

  Her face was calm, no haughty judgment or hint of malice there. She had not said it as a criticism or a suggestion, but merely a casual statement of a fact so obvious to her, and so new to him, that he was struck dumb.

  Loyalty of a household was only bought with fear. He had never known it to be otherwise. And yet he had seen Gwenllian’s men look to her with pride and admiration, and no such terror. She might be thinking of King Edward, or of Ranulf himself, or perhaps she was only thinking of her own experience.

  But they were here at Morency, where talk of love and loyalty was no easy thing. Too close was the memory of Aymer, who had wanted loyalty from all his household, and love from none of them. None except Ranulf himself, and there he had not been disappointed. Not until the moment of his death.

  Now she was answering Hugh that yes, she would visit her chamber to bathe herself, be they pleased to bring hot water, and then come to supper. The steward looked utterly delighted at this, which could only mean that he had spared no expense in heeding Ranulf’s instruction to make the place fit for a lady. He wanted to laugh that there had been no need, that such effort to delight a lady’s refined senses were wasted on a woman who had spent her life being as like a man as she could manage.

  But the easy mockery left him when she looked at him, an unheard question on her lips, and he could only think of her in her bath. The image came to his mind as if he had seen it a thousand times, how the firelight would warm the white skin of her breasts, water in little streams along the slight curves of her naked body.

  “My lord will want hot water in his chamber as well,” she said to Hugh, who beckoned a servant.

  Her eyes came back to his with an alluring sweep of lashes and he remembered the feel of her tightening around him, hot and greedy, her ripe mouth gasping out his name, the sweet sound of her panting, demanding more. Now the taste of her filled his mouth.

  She must have seen his thoughts, for her eyes slid from his and a flush spread on her cheeks. Her modesty now brought to mind her abandon of their nights and his hunger for her grew. It amazed him now, that he had ever thought she was a heavenly messenger, fever or no. No angel of God could incite such lust.

  He watched her turn away and follow a servant up the stairs to the keep. He could not think why it should look so strange to see her walking alone to her chamber, until he caught sight of her young squire Davydd. The boy was hovering near the stairs, uncertain. He clearly did not know what to do with himself if he could not serve his mistress. Ranulf wondered if she stood in her lady’s chamber now, missing the company of her cousins.

  “With me, boy,” he said brusquely.

  CHAPTER 13

  Davydd followed as readily as the dog, up the winding stairs to the chamber above the hall. But within it there was no bath, nor his baggage. There was only a cold hearth and a bare floor. He turned to find a servant on the threshold behind him, staring confused and appalled before at last he bowed low to the ground.

  “Up!” He gestured impatiently, and the servant stood. The way he cringed grated on Ranulf. The fool likely thought he would be thrown down the stairs for impertinence. “Make haste to find the steward. I wait here for my room to be made ready.”

  With a stumble, the servant fled as though pursued by demons from hell, leaving an awkward silence behind.

  “Shall I bring you mead, my lord? Or ale?” Davydd stood near the door, clearly desperate for something to do. A fine squire, bereft of a knight to serve.

  “Nay, it will be brought without you wander to discover it.”

  Barely had he said it when the sound of feet pounding on the stairs reached them. He gestured at Davydd to move farther into the room, so that he was out of the way when Hugh Wisbech rushed in.

  “I beg mercy, my lord.” Hugh’s breathing was labored with the rush up the stairs. From his deep bow he gestured with urgency to the servant behind him, who brought forth a satisfyingly large cup of ale. “In my foolishness did I have the lord’s chamber prepared instead.”

  “But I am the lord and this be my chamber, Hugh.” His voice was steady, calm. The steward blanched nonetheless.

  Ranulf observed the two servants who appeared now, carrying a carpet between them and looking at him as though he might order them roasted for his supper.

  The anger came sudden, like a storm from off the sea. It was beyond reason, he knew as he felt it sweep through him and steal his breath. But the panicked way they looked at him, when he had done naught but stand silent and waiting, maddened him. He was not a beast, no matter that they looked at him so. No matter that he felt like one, when they startled at his least movement.

  He wanted to shout at them for it, to throw them bodily from the room. Puling infants, to look at an unarmed man with such dread. But he steadied himself with a swallow of ale. He schooled his face to reveal nothing but a benevolent lord. Whatever that may look like, he thought helplessly.

  Loyalty and love, she had said only a few moments ago. He did not know much of either, but he reckoned it would serve neither to throw the cup at them in a rage and command them to end this excessive cowering.

  It was not an unreasonable thing, to prepare the wrong room. Before this, he had always slept in the small room in the west tower. And Aymer had slept in the apartments in the north tower. Those had been built and furnished for the visiting king a century ago, and Aymer had thought them more suited to his own greatness simply because they ha
d been intended for royalty.

  But this room where they stood now, above the hall, was the lord’s chamber of old, before there was any lord named Aymer. Of course the servants would not know it. He had only written to Hugh Wisbech that he would move into the lord’s chamber.

  “These will be my rooms,” he said simply. “Come, cover the floor and bring my bath, and waste no time. The meal awaits us all.”

  The servants immediately began to bustle about under the direction of Hugh.

  Ranulf handed his ale to Davydd and bid the boy to drink while the bath was prepared. This one, at least, did not shrink from his every move. He could not think of the boy as a servant, nor even as her squire – not when she wore no armor. He thought to treat Davydd as an honored kinsman, but he could not be sure if that was what she wished for the boy’s training. He would ask her, but for now he only wanted the boy to take his ease after the long days of riding, no matter how it might look to the servants.

  At last the bath was ready. He reached to pull off his boots, and found the dog still there at his feet, looking hopefully up at him. He could not quite bring himself to kick it, but it was small enough to push away with his foot. It stumbled away a few steps, then trotted back and sat down an inch from his foot.

  Hugh Wisbech, in the midst of ordering servants about, noticed this and hurried over.

  “My lord must not think we did not know of your displeasure with the beast when last you were here.”

  “And the time before that,” he felt compelled to point out. He did not dislike dogs. It was only that this one was forever at his heels.

  “Aye my lord, and you did also charge me to keep the household safe and prosperous. So it was that when we discovered the dog to be an uncommon good ratter, I thought it best to keep as guard to the pantry.”

  “This,” he muttered as he stripped himself of his linen, “is not a pantry. Take it out, and leave me to my bath.”

  In moments, it was done. Rush mats and a carpet on the floor, fire laid and bath steaming, servants filing out, the dog under one of their arms. A bustling and happy household it was, with showers of petals and hot baths and mongrels underfoot.

  “Hugh,” he said, before the man was out the door.

  The steward looked back, brows raised in expectation of his next command.

  “Thank you. For arranging a fine welcome.” He looked away from the steward, who was so immensely pleased that he looked fit to burst with it. “Full deserving is Lady Morency of the honor you have shown her.”

  Hugh lowered his head and gave a nod. “In faith, she is worthy of it.” For another moment of silence, the steward stood hesitating at the door. Finally, he looked at Ranulf directly. “For the love we bear you, we do honor to her. But is the return of their lord that moves your people to merriment. Sorely have we missed you, my lord.”

  Finding no ready answer to this improbable declaration, he nodded. What good would it do to ask how it was that these who so loved and missed him also cringed and trembled in fear of his wrath? It was hope and not devotion that flung flower petals from the highest tower. But in Hugh there was only an earnest belief, that such hope was warranted.

  He looked up at the steward, a man near his own age, and remembered when they were boys. The memory stole over him suddenly and completely, more like a haunting than merely remembering: he was newly come to Morency, and it was one of the first times he witnessed Aymer’s rage. It had been directed at Hugh’s father, steward before him. Ranulf had not understood why there was anger and shouting, but a terrible air of foreboding hung in the hall. He had hidden, his fear at the sudden burst of malice driving him to conceal himself behind a thick wall hanging where the scrawny, scared boy named Hugh stood still as a mouse and stared at him with silent, wide eyes.

  How that boy could have grown into the man who so clearly loved this place was a mystery to Ranulf.

  “I mean for it to be different, Hugh.” He looked at the steward until he knew the man took his meaning. “It can be different.”

  Hugh nodded and looked at him steadily. “Aye, my lord. It can.”

  At a nod of dismissal from his lord, the steward bowed and left.

  Ranulf was left alone to bathe and think. When he had written of coming here with a Lady Morency, he had made clear that he would stay this time. He had not imagined it might be news to cause celebration. Aymer had been feared and loathed, a danger to any who crossed his path. Ranulf had been called dishonorable and debased, to slay a helpless man – a great lord who called him son – where he lay in his bed.

  He had thought himself as equally reviled as the man he had killed, but it seemed not so. There was no predicting what fantasies the common people would conjure. No doubt they had decided Aymer’s sins greater than his own, or certainly more personal to them. Perhaps they were like everyone else and cared more about his reputation as a swordsman.

  Win and be loved. It was the only kind of love he had known.

  It was not something he cared to think on for long.

  With only one silent servant to wait on him, he was quick to wash himself. Steam still rose from the water when he reached for the towel, anxious to be done. It was too quiet here, alone. The walls were too close and the surrounding stone too heavy to bear for long.

  He dressed himself in blue and gold samite, buckled a jewel-studded belt over the tunic, and found himself eager to be in the full and noisome hall.

  The last light of the day filtered in through the high mullioned windows, lending a glow to the vaulted oak ceiling. The dais was decorated with banners bearing the cross and starburst of the Morency arms, a canopy of red silk spread over the high table. Never in his memory had he seen more than two trestle tables for the people below the dais. But now there were five of them, and many people stood, the hall full to bursting. There were minstrels in the gallery, and more servants than ever he had seen at Morency before this day.

  When Aymer was alive, tenants and townspeople would find any excuse to avoid the place. But Hugh Wisbech had done good work these last few years, in making the castle a more appealing place. No matter what the steward said, Ranulf knew he himself could not be the sole cause of such gaiety. It was word that the castle had a new lady that had brought so many here.

  Even as he thought it, she appeared. Her hair was caught up in a golden net and she wore a rose-colored dress, a delicate blushing color he could never have imagined would become her so well. Anyone looking at her would see only an elegant lady.

  But he saw how her hands worried at the cloth, how her eyes darted about the hall as she fidgeted. All her easy confidence that had so irritated him as they hiked through the muddy woods was gone. How well he knew that suppressed panic, the obvious wish to be free of a suffocating trap. How well he could see, now, that glimmer of himself in her.

  She heaved a deep breath as though readying herself. It made him remember her with her back against a tree, fighting for her life against a brigand. Trust and honor, she had said – and he had stayed to fight by her side. Edward ordered marriage, and she had not run from it. It was becoming a habit, this standing together in dire times.

  He strode toward her and caught her hand, ignoring the slight tremble in it. A smile, even the ghost of one, would do.

  “Fair lady, there be no bread that can hope to sustain us so well as to look upon you.”

  She looked at him blankly. Well, and she had only lately warned him that she had no talent for courtly speech. He tried again.

  “Full pleasing is your gown, my lady.”

  She blinked and gave a hesitant nod. “It is my finest.”

  Her discomfort in it was so evident that he almost wished he could apologize. Instead, he squeezed her hand firmly and swiftly, then brought her to her chair.

  “You have found the chamber to your liking?”

  “Aye,” she said, dipping her fingertips in the bowl of water presented by a servant. “There are windows of polished amber. I have never seen their like.
”

  “Amber is found on the shore here.” He stopped himself from saying that there were many pretty bits of it about, set in ladies’ baubles. Wherever those bits were, he could not offer them to her or to anyone. Like so much of the riches of this house, they were carried off by servants when Aymer died.

  But he needn’t have bothered to offer her jewels, as her next words proved.

  “I shall walk in search of it, I think. Master Edmund is always in want of amber for his sore joints.”

  He gave a short laugh. “My lady, I am amazed you do not pry it from the walls to serve your ceaseless physicking.”

  She set down the bit of fowl she had been preparing to eat. Her fingers picked it up again, rolling it about.

  “You think it unseemly, that I should gather remedies.”

  It was almost a question, her voice hushed and hesitant but still betraying a note of defiance under it all.

  In a sudden rush of understanding, he knew what she feared. It was not just the strangeness of being out of armor and away from her men, or the weight of responsibility. It was all the eyes on her, while she was so ignorant of how to be a lady.

  “I think it a great asset to Morency, and to all who dwell in it,” he assured her. It was true. She had saved him from a fever that would have killed him, with naught but bits of leaves.

  She looked at him, startled. Those wide gray eyes.

  “Why did you learn it so well? Is rare a lady study so deep.”

  He meant it to distract her from her nervousness, to put her at her ease so that the hall full of people would not see a shrinking bride shying away from a villainous lord. But he was glad he asked it, surprised again to discover the depth of his desire to simply know more of her. So strange had been her upbringing. He drank wine as she told him, quite simply, that it had pleased her to learn. She spoke of her Master Edmund, whom she loved well and who appealed to Lady Eluned to allow her to devote time to the study.