by Janet Lane
“Rest? When Hungerford's men are at Coin Forest?” Tabor protested.
Cyrill gently pushed Tabor, who was taken aback at how quickly his knees buckled. He fell back on the bed with a groan, and Cyrill prodded the wound in Tabor’s chest.
Tabor drew a sharp breath.
“’Tis deep. How would it be to tell your mother you died, as well?”
“But the king . . . ,” Tabor paused, as all men did. England's king was but eight years old. He might understand that Tabor’s holdings had been unlawfully seized, but he was off in France and even once he was notified, the child wouldn’t grasp the need to intervene before the knave Hungerfords stripped the castle of its riches. “Regent Bedford must be notified, but he and the king are away at Rouen.” England's war with France plodded on and Bedford was looking out for England’s holdings in Southern France.
“We’ll get word to Gloucester, the Protector. In a few days you can return and we'll rout the vermin.”
“Thanks be my mother is at Fritham,” Tabor said. “But William.” Memories of his brother formed in Tabor’s mind—William’s arrogance, prancing his horse after winning at tournament. The time they scared the Hawkridge girls by bursting pig bladders when they were in the garderobe. He’d spent his youth in William’s shadow, but held no ill feelings, only admiration and deep camaraderie. Fresh grief ripped through him. “Hungerford will pay.”
“But what of the three knights left behind?”
Tabor’s gut wrenched. Secrets spilled under the pressure of torture, even with the most loyal. “The treasury—”
“They won’t find it.” The hesitancy in Cyrill's eyes betrayed his words. He squeezed Tabor's arm in sympathy, bade a hasty goodbye and left.
A woman entered the tent. Etti, his friend and head of the dancers. Her black hair fell well past her shoulders, brushing his hand. She nudged Tabor onto the bed, forcing him to lie down. “Fie! Tabor, your face.” She shuddered.
Above high cheekbones, her ebony eyes flashed. Lines clustered at the corners of her eyes and mouth, leading Tabor to believe she had lived at least forty summers.
“Thank you for safe harbor. I’m in your debt.”
She laughed. “Ah, now I have a landed noble in my service. Music to my ears.” She produced a small vial, forced his eyes open, and splashed a liquid in them.
It stung. “Agh! What is it?”
“Just eyebright and ground ivy.” Etti was one of the dark skinned souls who came from a place called Little Egypt, a handsome people with a talent for horses, music and healing. She removed the crude bandages on his chest and gasped softly. She sprinkled liquid on linen and dabbed gently at his chest wound. “I’ll be back to stitch this closed.” She poulticed it and handed him a small blue flask. “Here. Swallow this for the pain. And spare me your thoughts on the taste.”
“I need to go.”
“Ha! You’ll stay until you can travel.” From a chest she pulled an armload of crude linen. “With that face no one will know you, but your clothes will draw attention. Here.” She held up a shift of russet cloth and rolled him to his side, helping him change. “There. You’ll be taken for a commoner now, Lord Tabor.” She winked in that playful way her people possessed, and tended the fire.
She’d called him Lord Tabor. Hearing his new title reminded him of his loss, and fresh pain stabbed him, a pain no tincture or bandage could heal. His brother, William, was dead. And Aurora. In the quiet that followed, Tabor thought of her. Like the sensation of inhaling smoke from a torch's fire, a sharp pain burned in his chest, below the gaping wound. He turned his head toward the wall. She had never been his. She’d only played with him, used him to get close to William, heir to the title and lands. Though she sought only station and wealth, his love had been real. He heard a soft moan—his own—and then sleep overwhelmed him.
* * * * *
A clicking sound awoke him. The herbs Etti had given him made his mind blur. How long had he been sleeping?
A woman knelt in front of a chest of clothes. No, a child; a girl not yet upon her womanhood. She hummed a hymn, her voice a light velvet, her tone as sure as the monk singers at Winchester. Her arms were thin, her skin lighter than Etti's but still swarthy, like a ripe walnut. She twisted her long black hair into perfect rolls then slipped into a formal headdress, using a polished metal mirror in the chest lid to adjust the veil.
“Ooh,” A tiny voice purred, and pudgy fingers grabbed the edge of the chest. The golden curls of a child's head appeared and a hand reached upward, short fingers grasping for the veil. “Mine. Mine!”
The older girl laughed and handed the child the veil. “Be gentle, Kadriya.” Scooting a bucket to the overhead lines of clothes, the older girl pulled down a smock, slipped into it, covered it with a gown and tied the laces. Standing on the stool gave her enough height for the flowing skirt, though the bodice sagged on her flat chest. Tabor smiled at her slightly believable illusion.
Kadriya squealed and placed the large veil over her head like a blanket.
“Lovely, Lady Kadriya.” The older one straightened her back, lifting her nose toward the tent top. The movement made the lace of her veil dip past her tailbone. Tabor caught a glimpse of her silhouette and her raised eyebrows. Too entertained to interrupt, he remained silent.
She held a rag in her hand and waved it like a fine kerchief. “You fancy my necklace, do you? ’Tis a family heirloom.” Aiyer-loom. Her tongue twisted around the phrase, leading him to believe she may have just learned the words. ’Twas a gift from the king himself.” She turned a few degrees and dusted the air with her rag. With great flourish she offered her hand to the tiny girl. “Come, Duchess. Sit with me in the great hall and we shall have a feast.” She shrank from an imaginary enemy. “Away with you. Such a knave you are, and me a fine lady. Guards, protect us. Take him away.” She turned from her imaginary knave, leaving him in the custody of her equally fanciful guards.
She spun too quickly and the long skirts caught under her foot. Her arms swung in big circles and she tilted out of balance. With a cry she stumbled off the bucket, landing in an inglorious heap on the hay-strewn floor.
Kadriya gasped and covered her mouth.
Laughter bubbled up in Tabor's throat, but the effort brought sharp pain to his ribs. He groaned.
She gasped and stood, clutching the dress to her chest.
Kadriya scrambled behind the girl's skirts.
The older one approached. “Who are you?”
Tabor held out his hand in a gesture of peace. “I crave your pardon. I should have spoken up. I enjoyed your singing.”
Her hair fell free from the left bun and her brows drew with suspicion. “Indeed.” Her gaze dropped to his chest, then back to his face. “Your hair is burned. You have tangled with the devil, I see.”
“Forsooth. I’m sorry to have startled you. Etti invited me to stay.”
Her frown diminished. “Etti knows you?” She loosed the other bun and her hair fell free, shining and black as ink.
“We’re friends. I’ll be here for a few days.”
Her eyes widened, and she approached him.
Her oval face featured high cheekbones, and the curve of her face reminded him of the soft line of a willow branch bending in a summer breeze. Her nose was thin and straight, perched neatly above a generous mouth that was parted in curiosity. Her eyes were dark brown, astonishingly direct and framed by thick lashes.
Tabor blinked. Realizing he had been holding his breath, he exhaled. In a few years she would become a beautiful woman.
“What is thy name?”
“Arthur,” he lied.
She moved closer, lifted the blanket and appraised his clothing from neck to feet. “You’re poor.”
Surprised at her boldness, he found his voice. “Aye. But I will find a way to repay Etti for her kindness.”
“Good. Mayhaps you can be put to work on the stage. ’Tis creaking so badly that the dancers cannot hear the music.”
Co
ncerned that she thought him a commoner, capable only of low labor, he teased her. “And what is thy name, my lady?”
“I am Sharai.”
Sharai. It rhymed with “Dare I” and the sound rolled off her tongue as easily as fresh berries from a plate.
“I am laundress to the dancers.” She thrust her chin out. “But not for long. Soon I will leave here and live in a grand castle. You shall see me in finery. Come, Kadriya.” She lifted herself tall again and glided out of the tent.
Kadriya followed like a dainty golden shadow, her large eyes fixed on Tabor until the tent flap closed.
Silence fell around him. The tent seemed smaller, the air less charged without Sharai’s presence. He shrugged the feeling aside. She was just a child with giddy dreams.
* * * * *
The next morning it hurt to breathe, but his eye was healing, and he would travel on the morrow before his face lost its swelling, which would put him at risk of being recognized by Hungerford's knights.
He needed to return home. The treasury—sweet saints, if they found it, ’twould be almost as good as stealing the entire castle. The tapestries—he shook his head. Best to forget that, but he would need assets from the treasury to replace the horses and stock, the buttery and wardrobes, at the minimum, to get Coin Forest through harvest.
He flexed his arms, testing them, and rose to a sitting position. Swinging his legs over the side of the cot, he struggled to sit upright. He needed to regain his strength, join Cyrill, and oust Hungerford.
The colorful fabrics blurred, and a pattern of black dots filled his vision. He grasped the bed linen and eased himself back onto the bed. God’s teeth, he couldn’t even sit upright. He rested, welcoming the clarity that returned when his head hit the pillow.
He looked toward the tent flap. No sound had alerted him, but he sensed a presence.
Tabor grabbed his dagger and closed his eyes enough to appear sleeping yet still track the prowler's progress.
Greaves protected the man's massive calves. Tabor could look as high as the intruder’s chest without revealing that he was in fact awake. The man wore a padded hauberk, equipment marking him as a knight, but no armor. Friend, or foe?
“Tabor.” A familiar voice.
God's bones! Rauf, Hungerford's son. His bulbous nose was swollen, bruised and broken from William's blow. Rauf, the swine who’d killed his brother. “How did you—”
“Find you? Rats leave droppings. The dark-skinned hag is washing bloody linens in the river, and this is her tent.” He grunted. “I see your garments now reflect your true station. Peasant.” He raised his sword and lunged.
Tabor rolled toward him, stabbing Rauf's thigh.
Roaring, Rauf pulled his sword from the mattress and grabbed his thigh. “Devil's whelp.” He raised his sword again.
Tabor thrust his dagger, slicing Rauf's arm. “Rot in hell.”
Rauf's sword pierced Tabor in the side.
Pain seared through Tabor, and red flashed behind his eyes. Pinholes of blackness gathered, clouding his vision, and he fell back on the bed.
Rauf bellowed again.
Tabor heard Sharai’s shriek followed by a string of unfamiliar words, punctuated with a cry of “Chut! Chut! Chut!”
Women's voices joined Sharai's, and, swinging their baskets and pails at Rauf, they raised a large chorus of the strange chant. Sharai pulled a heavy kettle from the dead fire. Using her lower body strength to swing it, she made clumsy connection with the side of Rauf's head.
Rauf fell.
Sharai dropped the kettle and pounced on him, her dagger flashing. With a wild cry she drove it into Rauf's back.
Rauf moaned from the floor, then became silent.
Sharai stood, her small chest heaving beneath the thin fabric of her soiled smock.
Etti appeared. “Take what's left of him to the marshal.”
The gravity of his situation struck him. By the saints, he had been saved by a handful of women. Heat crept up his neck. Saved by women!
Sharai placed a small hand on his forehead. “Fie. He's torn your stitches. Etti will need to sew you again.”
Etti offered him a vial. He drank the potion and fell into a welcome darkness where pain and its gnawing tentacles could no longer reach him.
When Tabor awoke, the rains had stopped and the tent glowed with the horizontal light of evening. Heat from the fire warmed his bones. Moving with care, he raised his hand to examine his body and noted new bandages on his side.
And the girl, Sharai, stood above him. She wore the same short, soiled smock over a stained blue skirt, and bare feet. Her ebony hair fell past her shoulders. “I brought you some ale.”
“Thank you, my lady.”
She sat cross legged atop the nearest chest. “Stop teasing me.”
He attempted a smile through the pain. “I mean no harm.” He thought of her courage. “You saved my life.”
“Low-class sod, he was, attacking a wounded man.”
“Such language from a lady.”
“’Tis true,” she sniffed. Her eyes narrowed. “Be you a murderer?”
“Nay.” He thought of the women dragging Rauf from the tent. “What did you tell the Fair Marshal?”
“That he attacked us.” She patted her leg. “I’m quick with my dagger.” Her wide brown eyes seemed to reach into his mind. “Why did he wish to kill you? What did you do?”
“Naught.” He would not attempt to explain the long standing feud between Rauf's family and his, or the intricacies of their claim to his family's properties, but Tabor appreciated her mettle. “I’m no thief, and I promise you, Sharai, that I’ll remember your help this day.” He reached for her hand and squeezed it. “Thank you.”
She looked so young to him. Her innocence was beguiling, and her strength and skill with a dagger exceptional.
He released her hand. “Where are you from?”
A brief flicker of pain shadowed her eyes, then she recovered. “Little Egypt.”
That story again. He’d heard it first from the growing numbers of dark skinned people in France, and now a handful of them were here in England. They claimed to be of noble blood, disinherited of their lands and on some manner of pilgrimage. Some of the dancers, he’d learned, were skilled in the carnal arts. He found them charming, though strange in their nomadic ways. This little one was most intriguing. “How old are you?”
She stood taller. “Ten and two.”
He wondered what this dream filled girl would say of her background. “Are you a noble, then?”
“I am.”
“And someone has stolen your finery?”
Her eyes darkened. “All has been stolen, but I will regain it.”
“How so?”
“I have it all planned. I shall snare me a noble to wed.”
Her words shattered the glow of charm that had surrounded her, and Tabor pulled back. Snare a man, would she? As some hunter would trap a witless rabbit.
Her dream was impossible. She’d saved his life, and she was so young, with time to learn. H would help her see the error of her plan. “Never. I know of Gypsies from my travels in France. There your people are known as heathens. Palm readers. Potion makers. King Henry and his royal advisers will never allow it. If a noble weds you, he’ll be dispossessed of his lands and turned out like a beggar. Then you’ll be in worse shape than you are now.”
“Your king does not recognize royalty from other lands?”
“Yes, but—”
“I am a princess. And a Christian. I attend church. I have been baptized by a priest from St. Giles Church.” She gestured toward the church tower just ten stone throws away. “Would your king call me a heathen, then?”
“No, but surely you—”
“Then you’re mistaken. I forgive you.”
Mayhaps she had no choice in the matter. “To wed a man for station alone—there are cruel men, like Rauf, the man who attacked me. He’s a noble. Would you wed such a man?”
She s
eemed to think about that problem.
“Your parents have chosen this path for you?” Tabor asked.
“My parents are dead. I choose it for myself.”
It may be the practical way of things, he knew, but Tabor cringed inwardly. He’d seen men and women in love, read the stories of marital passion, and he wanted nothing less than that for himself.
He would explain it to her and set her on a better path. “With no family duty, you need not look at station when you choose your husband. You’re free to follow your heart.”
“I shall follow my hand, thank you, right to my mouth and the mouth of my babes.”
Her eyes, so round and earnest. She’d likely seen her share of misfortune, felt more than her share of hunger and fear. He tried to dismiss the bleak thoughts of Aurora’s betrothal but could not. “Nobility involves duty. Sacrifice.” He said it as much to himself as to her.
She gave a short laugh. “You, in your well-worn rags. What would you know of nobles?”
Despite her age, her words of dismissal jabbed at his pride. “’Tis plain by your dress you’re no lady. Nor do you speak as one. However can you hope to rise to such a level?”
A knowing look came into her dark eyes, a cynicism beyond her years. “Habits of the nobility are easy to learn. I watch the women. After worship. They hold their hands low, in front of them, and they move in short, slow footfalls.” She stood and took mincing steps across the tent, as if she were walking on quails’ eggs. “They hold a trencher thus.” She mimed sliding meat off a server, bending her little finger. “They drink like this.” Elbow high, she lifted an imaginary goblet.
On behalf of his birthright and his mother’s grace at court, he took offense at her mocking summary. “You may parrot a lady’s movements, but what of letters? Embroidery? Courtly etiquette?”
“I know some letters. The St. Giles priest trusts me to launder their finest ceremonial linens. In return he teaches me to read.” A radiance in her eyes revealed her determination.