Conversation lagged uneasily until a happy mention of the much-married Conrad of Montferrat set them scandal-mongering, and as the talk warmed into ease Marco gradually relaxed. He ignored with perfect equanimity both Diego’s gaping awe and Urraca’s open malevolence. Landry’s friendliness he accepted as genuine, if unbelievable, and Rodriga could read the wonder in the steady black eyes that seldom strayed from his face. Clearly he had never been so used before. When the servants had retired they lingered a little in companionable silence over the last of the wine. Landry fell into a sudden doze, his mouth open and the mat of red hair on his chest gently lifting and sinking. Marco slipped soundlessly away, and Rodriga sat on fanning flies and marvelling at her own liking for the half-breed.
Landry woke with a strangled snort as Ramiro announced Robert de Veragny and his seneschal. Laborious shufflings on the stair and the scrape of a crutch heralded his appearance, beaming good-will. He brought gifts to assist Landry’s convalescence; sugar, fruit and Italian wine. Rodriga felt like a Judas. He would not stay long lest he fatigue the invalid, and as Rodriga for courtesy accompanied him to the street door, he lauded her devotion in terms that set her flushing. Such exemplary love, he swore by all the Saints, merited a great reward, for which she could look to him. Then, to her astonished anger, he hobbled down the passage, ostentatiously unaware that Lothaire de Gallenard had blocked her way and was detaining her under the little colonnade.
She stepped back, and he laughed. “My fair one, your sortie last night, and your choice of company, are still secret from your father and my lord. Surely my forbearance warrants your kindness?”
“I have no secrets from my father, and you are keeping your lord waiting.”
“He is not waiting, rare flower of Spain.” And indeed the door’s thud informed her as much, and she understood his fatuous notion of a suitable reward. “Can no service soften your heart of adamant —and are you sure you have no secrets from your father? Or your mooncalf squire you are ashamed to acknowledge?”
She stiffened, and at that moment the girl Helga came round the corner of the stair and stood wide-eyed. There was no mistaking her, garish in her harlot’s dress; there had been no time to procure anything else, and no garment of Rodriga’s could have been strained over her full breasts and provocative hips. Lothaire’s jaw dropped in utter astonishment. Rodriga waved her away fiercely, but too late. He reached a long arm and pulled her to him.
“God’s Head! Helga of the Black Girl? What in the Devil’s name is she doing in your household—and what manner of household is it, my girl?”
Helga giggled nervously and tried, not very hard, to free herself.
He tipped her face up, kissed her on the mouth, and whispered in her ear. Rodriga caught furious breath.
“Loose her! She is now honestly wedded to my cook—”
“Wedded!” He squalled with wild laughter. “A cook—little Helga —what a dish!” He smacked her bottom, and whispered again in her ear. “What a waste of your talents, my pigeon!”
Rodriga wrenched the girl from him and thrust her into Urraca’s clutches. The Catalans were advancing from all sides. “Take your whorehouse manners out of this decent household!” she blazed at him.
The fair knight laughed. “Never fear, sweet Rodriga! Little Helga shall not come between us!” he promised outrageously, and strode after his master.
Little Helga was blubbering under savage instruction in the rules of seemly conduct. Her attire certainly justified all that Urraca had to say, and it was much, and Rodriga resignedly went marketing to find her more modest covering. Already her charitable impulse was a matter for profound misgiving.
She found Marco with her father; he was waiting for darkness to cover his going. Somehow Landry had cracked the oyster, for he was explaining the impediments of terrain and supplies that would hamper any campaign for Jerusalem. She gathered up her sewing and sat down to join in the talk, but almost before she had inserted her needle hurried footsteps crossed the outer room, and Ramiro lifted aside the curtain to admit Piers, eager and impetuous and speaking as he came.
“I saw you in the town, Rodriga, but too far to speak, and followed—” He halted as if he had been violently smitten in the midriff, gulped, and glared at Marco. “You?” he ejaculated, in accents of profoundest loathing. “Why are you polluting this Christian household?”
Marco’s face was the impassive mask he presented to his enemies. “By my reckoning,” he said icily, “it is discourtesy to provoke a quarrel in my host’s house.” He waited long enough to see the boy’s rage turn to confusion, and walked from the room.
Landry uttered an exasperated grunt and heaved himself up. “God’s Mercy, if no man has yet kicked your backside enough to teach you manners, I shall have to rise from my bed to see to it!”
“M-my lord, Rodriga, I ask your pardon!” stammered Piers, scarlet as if scorched. “The sight of him—I did not think—I am truly sorry for any offence!”
“Listen, lad. You are a young man of birth and some day, I trust, great possessions, and I an old ruin, but in my house my word runs! Marco is my guest, for reasons you shall hear. If you cannot keep peace here you need not enter.”
“My lord,” he muttered like a reproved urchin, “I promise to keep the peace with him under this roof.”
“Whatever brawls you attempt outside?” Landry asked with a grim smile. “It will suffice. You are not asked to swear brotherhood, only to refrain from war inside this house.”
The squire grinned sheepishly at them both. “My lord, I am rejoiced to see you so miraculously restored!”
“So much that you venture here in daylight,” Landry commented caustically. “Do you never think before you act? Call for wine, lass. And as for my miraculous restoration, I owe it to Marco.”
Piers gaped, but he listened with no more than expressions of marvel at snow in midsummer, and even grudgingly commended Marco’s deed in procuring it. Rodriga forgave him; no more charity could have been expected of him. She even ceased to trouble over his imprudence and invited him to supper.
Helga brought in the wine. Piers’s eyes started from their sockets. The girl, far from being abashed at this evidence of previous acquaintance, dipped him a curtsey and proffered a cup, smiling demurely. The effect was marred by her many-hued eye, but not even the seemly and ill-fitting gown she now wore could conceal the ripe curves of her body as she stooped before him. Piers made some strange croaking sound like a frog in a pond, which indeed he greatly resembled at that moment, and automatically took the cup.
Rodriga knew neither surprise nor dismay at this plain proof that Piers had also patronised the House of the Black Girl, but it was unfitting that he should be embarrassed by that proof in her presence. She stifled her unseemly amusement and signalled to the girl to go. She was pouring for Landry and failed to see the sign. A sound indicative of the last stages in strangulation came from Piers, and then he found voice, echoing Lothaire de Gallenard almost word for word.
“What in the Devil’s name is that harlot doing in your household?”
“Out!” snapped Landry, and as Helga delayed to set his cup nearer his hand, he dealt her a slap on her hinder end whose sound demonstrated that there was yet weight in his arm. She yelped and overset the pitcher, so that Piers had to scramble aside with more haste than dignity, his hose and shoes soused and squelching. Helga scuttled forth, and Rodriga heard her snivelling a little as she crossed the outer room.
“Sorry, lad,” Landry apologised blandly, betraying laughter-crinkles at the corners of his eyes. “The wench? Wulfric the cook has married her.”
“Married? Married? You mean—he has married that harlot, and you permit him to foist her upon your household?”
“Why not?”
He champed on reasons that would not come to utterance. “Your daughter—attended by a harlot?”
“Oh, she was willing to receive her,” said Landry placidly. Nothing would induce him to betray that his only p
art in the affair had been acceptance of an accomplished fact, but Rodriga disdained to shelter behind his broad and accommodating shoulders.
“I brought the girl in; my father knew nothing of it.”
His eyes almost left his skull, and he choked on that for a moment before speech returned. “What do you say? You accepted —as if it was not enough to take the man in, you let him saddle you with a trollop from the stews? Rodriga, that is charity run mad!”
“I bought her so that he should not kill Giacomo and be hanged,” she explained curtly. And it was no concern of his what she and her father chose to do in their own house, that curtness implied. He did not even notice it; he was too bewildered.
“You bought her? But who acted for you, with my lord sick?” Her father made a sign of warning, but deceit was not in Rodriga. “No one. I went to the house myself.”
The wretched young man reeled physically at that impact, and stood opening and shutting his mouth soundlessly. “Rodriga!” he croaked at last. “You did not—tell me you did not enter alone into the House of the Black Girl?”
“Marco escorted me. Truly, Piers, you are making a great coil over small matter! I could come to no harm with Marco, and indeed Giacomo was most discreet and courteous.”
“Christ in Heaven, Rodriga, have you run mad? To trust in such ordure? What will your name be when it spreads abroad that you entered there?” His voice warmed to concern, and he reached for her hand. “Oh, my dear girl, what if your crazy charity has ruined you? To put your fair name in those ribalds’ power—they can destroy you, or bleed your father of all he has, and all for a little whore not worth the lift of your finger!”
“For Wulfric,” she corrected. “And the men will keep silence.”
“That renegade—”
“I am safe with him.”
“If he had any regard at all for your welfare, he would have prevented you!”
“And what right has any man to forbid my daughter’s goings?” Piers subsided, but it was plain that he would have questioned most stringently the wisdom of allowing any woman liberty to order her own acts, had not respect for years and the slight awe in which he held Landry restrained him. He enlarged further on his deep concern for Rodriga’s good name, which could not be enhanced by the presence in her household of a strumpet from the most notable brothel in Acre, and Rodriga was touched by his anxiety. He began expressing his doubts about Giacomo’s discretion, remembered the source of his knowledge, changed colour and fell silent. Neither of his hearers was so unmannerly as to comment on his embarrassment, but Rodriga, considering her own indifference to his taste in amusement, wondered whether she were devoid of normal feminine jealousy or equally indifferent to Piers himself.
Such jarring shocks to his sensibilities had taken from Piers any appetite for supper. He declared stiffly that he would not fatigue his host longer in his present weakness, a consideration that Landry was not sorry to receive and yet did not particularly relish. Rodriga did not try to dissuade him, but accompanied him in silence. He checked at the stair-foot.
“If I have offended you I am sorry for it, Rodriga, but it was my concern for your good name made me speak so.”
“How dismally inappropriate a topic for a fair demoiselle’s ears!” drawled a languid voice beside them, and Lothaire de Gallenard stepped from under the colonnade and smiled insolently at them.
CHAPTER XIII
Rodriga’s heart thumped at the base of her throat. This was what she had feared and anticipated all along. Piers uttered a stifled oath, and she caught warningly at his arm. The harm was done; there was no mistaking him in broad daylight, and a bitter anger at his heedless folly curdled in her. He had been warned over and over. Behind Lothaire de Gallenard the girl Helga shrank away from the fury in her mistress’s face, a hand at her breast. Rodriga knew as soon as she sighted her whom to thank for his unannounced entry; the meddlesome little trollop could hardly have done more damage by malicious intent.
“Your chosen suitor, fair flower of Spain?” drawled the fair knight. “I have long been curious about your taste. You need not present him if it embarrasses you. This is my lord’s bastard half-brother and bitter foe.”
Piers snarled incoherently, and she nipped his arm smartly, dreading that he would blurt out the truth. He had his other hand on his sword-hilt, and his face was bleakly murderous. “No, Piers! I will not have blood spilled in my house! Out of it, recreant!”
“You would be wiser, sweet demoiselle, to dismiss your valorous squire, who is, I observe, already on his way.”
“God’s Life, I will run my sword through your Judas heart if you do not depart this moment!” Piers raged.
Catalans had gathered silently about the colonnade, and there were all the makings of a very ugly affray assembled. Rodriga caught at hard common sense. “Go, Piers,” she said quietly. “Leave us before he can bring your enemies upon you. He dare not insult me before my men.”
“Turn my back on my foe like a cur? Stand aside, Rodriga!”
“Do this because I ask it, if you have any regard for me!”
He could do nothing else in the face of that appeal, and Rodriga breathed more easily when the door slammed on his going. Lothaire de Gallenard nodded his satisfaction, and her hand itched to strike the smile from his face.
“You come to wisdom, my Spanish flower. Prove it again by granting me a word in private, apart from all your eager guardians.”
“Unwisdom indeed to be private with you!”
“Your cruelty desolates me, fair Rodriga. I am your devoted servant, pledged to your worship, so soften your heart of stone a little, I beg, and grant me but a moment’s speech.”
Rodriga was heartily weary of his histrionic portrayal of that fashionable innovation sung by the troubadours of the south, the distracted lover lamenting his unattainable lady’s obduracy, a convention that in any case she regarded as dishonest and ridiculous. She hesitated for a moment, wondering whether to take this straight to her father, and then decided that it might be best to hear the creature out. She turned and stalked to the pool in the centre of the courtyard, and turned under the fig-tree, in sight and javelin cast of all her people but beyond earshot. “Let the truth be spoken!” she said scornfully. “You pursue me solely because I am unwilling, and your vanity cannot endure rejection.”
She knew she had pricked him; the truth was not a commodity he cared to deal in. Yet he answered smoothly. “It is my unquenchable passion that drives me, fair Rodriga. Until you know love, cold lady, you will not know how its fires burn! See, I crave your forgiveness on my knee!” He sank with studied grace to one knee, his heavy-lidded eyes lifted to her face and his hands outspread.
Rodriga put her hands behind her to keep from clouting the sneering face. “Save your troubadour’s antics for the high-born dames who appreciate them!” she recommended acidly. “Get up!” He rose and dusted off his hose. “My fair Rodriga, you have no poetry in your soul to remain unmoved, though that I should have known from your deplorable taste. An unschooled boy! Do you conceal him because he shames you?”
“There was no concealment; my father was present!” she declared hotly, deliberately misunderstanding. The man was shrewd, and he was guessing dangerously near their greater secret. “You dare accuse me of wantonness?”
He gave her a speculative glance and cast himself down again. “Fair demoiselle, I crave your pardon! I know you for a maid pure as the snows of your own Pyrenees! Forgive my clumsy tongue, or I kneel here imploring your pardon until my flesh wastes from my bones!”
“And abominably inconvenient your skeleton in the courtyard will be!”
“Heart of flint, will nothing move you?” he mourned, and came lithely to his feet. Abandoning his extravagant manner, he said soberly, “Demoiselle, I would warn you. My lord and that callow stripling are bitterest enemies. So far he is your good friend, but if he learned of the entertainment you give the pup he would be your mortal foe.”
“Go tell him,
Sir Lothaire,” she challenged him gently. The palms of her hands were clammy with sweat, and her knees quivered slightly, but she determined to display invincible ignorance and leave the rest, to him.
“I am reluctant to see our fair friendship destroyed by a mere error, which my lord would regard as a betrayal. He is a vengeful man. Unless you dismiss the whelp, it is bound to reach his ears.”
There was the threat, and Rodriga eyed him contemptuously. The discussion could have only one finish now, but she would give him no help. “As speedily as you could carry it?” she asked bleakly. It wanted only a word from this serpent to his master, and Piers would be picked up in an alley with knife or arrow in his back. The significance of Landry’s inquiries would be correctly interpreted, and it would be his turn to be murdered. She waited stonily for him to come to his point, hoping that she had not betrayed her fear by paling, for her face felt oddly cold and stiff.
“My loyalty to my lord would demand it, sweet lady. Surely, fair innocent, you do not expect one whose soul yearns for you as mine to tolerate a rival? But if you have any regard for him—some softness, say, for a promising pup—you will save his life by dismissing him, and spare your father and yourself my lord’s hatred.”
“And your duty to him?”
“For your sweet sake no sacrifice is too great, and I reckon my honour well-spent.” He was on his knee again, reaching for the hand she jerked hastily and childishly behind her back, his eyes avid. “Ah, sweet friend, will you deny me even the touch of your soft fingers?” he murmured reproachfully, and dramatically pressed his hand to his breast, where his heart, she dared wager, had never changed its beat. “Have you no kindness to reward me with, when for your sake I have spent my honour?”
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