Sapphire in the Snow - Award-Winning Medieval Historical Romance

by Townend, Carol

  Beatrice wrenched the tapestry curtain almost off the rod in her haste to blot out his face. ‘Don’t call me that,’ she hissed at him through the fabric. ‘I am not your pretty.’

  ‘I wonder who’s you are, then?’ the jeering voice floated back to her. ‘The Saxon upstart’s?’

  Beatrice did not deign to reply. Marching to the bed, she stripped off her overdress with hands that shook. She placed her candle by the bed, and crawled in gingerly next to Anne so as not to disturb her. As she reached out to extinguish the flame her eyes lit on the wine-cup Anne had placed by the bed earlier.

  No doubt this was the St Agnes’ Eve magic brew. Beatrice had not fasted, and did not believe a word about the vision of her future husband appearing if she drank the potion. But she was thirsty and tense, and the wine would help her to relax. She looked at the dark liquid swirling in the goblet and sighed. Trusting the drink to calm her disordered nerves, she drained it in one draught.

  The spiced wine was no longer warm, its heat had long since evaporated into the cold night air. It tasted pleasantly sweet. Beatrice closed her eyes and sighed again.

  ***

  When Beatrice awoke, she knew instinctively that much time had passed. The candle she had forgotten to extinguish had gone out and the chamber was pitch-black. Her first thought was that the potion had calmed her nerves, for she had fallen asleep at once. A freezing draught blew across her shoulders and she shivered. Anne must have pulled the covers away from her again. Anne always managed to end up with more than her fair share of blankets. Beatrice gently eased them back in her direction. But how had it got so cold? The bed was freezing. She shivered again and tried to snuggle deeper into the covers.

  A horrid suspicion entered her mind and she reached to touch her cousin’s warm body. Her hand encountered – nothing. She gasped, the air hung icy in her lungs. Anne had gone; her half of the bed was empty! And to judge by the cold bedding, her cousin had been gone some time. Still half-drugged with sleep, Beatrice struggled to sit up.

  Her eyes were slow adjusting to the darkness. The window shutter had come unfastened, hence the icy blasts. A full moon shone palely through the aperture, silhouetting as it did so a shape. It was a man! A man who was seated beneath the window on Anne’s travelling chest, silently watching her. Her heart skipped a beat.

  ‘Who is it?’ she whispered, and shrank back into the blankets, realising the futility of her action as she did so. If the man intended to harm her the bed was no place of safety. ‘Where’s Lady Anne? What have you done with her?’

  The man-shape did not move. ‘Do you not know me?’ it said.

  ‘Edmund!’ she cried and bounced upright, her loosened hair falling forwards. ‘How did you get in here?’

  She saw him shrug and heard his sharply indrawn breath. The wound troubled him. He could not move comfortably even to shrug his shoulders.

  ‘It was easily done. The priest set himself to sit with me in the chapel, and de Brionne posted a guard outside. The guard found our northern winters too harsh for his liking, and knowing the priest was with me, asked if he could go and warm himself by the fire. They thought I slept. Your priest agreed to shout the alarm if necessary and the guard departed to toast himself.’

  ‘You’ve not harmed Father Ralph?’ Beatrice asked, chewing on her lower lip.

  Edmund shook his head. ‘He’s trussed up tight, but there’s not a mark on him. I even gave him my word I’d be back. I thought to see that you were safe tonight.’

  A warm glow ran along her veins. ‘Safe? Oh, from de Brionne. Aye, I am safe.’ She would not tell him that the Norman had threatened her. She did not want to jeopardise the shaky truce that had been established between the two men.

  ‘What would you have done if I had not been safe? You could not have killed him. His men would have been on you in an instant. And they would not have hesitated to kill you. They still might if they find you here. It was folly to have come.’

  Edmund rose and came to sit on the edge of the bed. He grinned down at her, his face a pale blur in the moonlight.

  ‘I’m glad you’re safe,’ he whispered, moving closer. ‘I own I don’t feel like killing tonight.’ His hand came out and touched her unravelled hair. The fragrant scent of lavender lingered in the long tresses. His fingers threaded themselves into its rich softness. ‘Beautiful, like silk,’ he murmured.

  The feel of his hands in her hair made her cheeks grow hot. She looked away. He was too close. She felt shy of him, and hoped he could not see her discomfiture in the poor light.

  ‘Where is Anne? Did you send her away?’ she blurted, squirming out of reach.

  ‘Anne obviously has some assignment of her own. Damn it, woman, come here. You’re not afraid of me are you?’

  He put a long finger under her chin and gently turned her face up to examine it.

  She shook her head and swallowed. ‘N-no. That is no, n-not really,’ she stammered, unable to meet that searching gaze. She lowered her head and kept her eyes fixed on her hands.

  ‘Tell me.’ His voice was soft.

  ‘It is...oh, I’m confused,’ she said, glowing like a beacon. ‘Nothing is clear any more. But I do know I’m not afraid of you. Even though you are Saxon. I think I...like you.’ She lifted her eyes to his.

  ‘Then kiss me,’ he commanded, huskily, ‘or do you only kiss wounded warriors who are close to death?’

  ‘I’d never kissed anyone until today, and now I’ve been kissed by two men,’ she reminded him, and then wished she hadn’t, for his face grew cold.

  ‘He shall not have you,’ he muttered, and she was pulled firmly into his embrace.

  Edmund intended the kiss to be simply a light and reassuring caress as before. But Beatrice slipped her arms around his neck and held him to her with irresistible eagerness. He groaned, and this time it was not pain that caused him to do so. He found himself pressing her back into her pillow. She did not protest, and Edmund covered her face with light, butterfly kisses. Her lips met his, and clung.

  When he finally pulled away, both were breathless. Eyes still closed, Beatrice murmured a soft protest and tried to pull him back to her. She thought the hand that stroked her cheek trembled slightly, but could not be sure. She opened her eyes and gazed up at him dreamily.

  ‘No, I don’t think you do fear me,’ he spoke lightly, and smiled. ‘But this must stop. Don’t look at me like that, it doesn’t make it easy.’

  Abruptly, he sat up. Beatrice’s arms fell away from him. She wondered how his mood could change so fast. He made her feel ashamed that she had responded to him with such shameless abandon.

  Edmund glanced at her expression and sighed. He covered her hands with his.

  Already he thought her a nuisance. His face had grown quite hard.

  ‘I have to go back to the chapel. Your cousin will be returning soon,’ he announced, crisply.

  All the warmth had gone from his voice. Beatrice stared at him, unable to believe he could change so swiftly from considerate lover to...to...what? Wide eyes watched the man who had kissed her so tenderly and she wondered if she had touched him at all.

  ‘I need you to do something for me – to hide this.’ Edmund indicated a small iron-bound box on the floor next to Anne’s wooden trunk. ‘Is this your travelling chest?’ he asked.

  ‘No, that’s one of Anne’s. Mine’s this plain one by the bed.’

  ‘Give me the key.’

  The key hung with her cross on a chain round her neck. Silently she handed it to him, and in a moment he’d unlocked the coffer and buried the casket under her clothes.

  ‘What’s in it?’ she asked.

  His eyes met hers. Cold as ice.

  ‘Try and forget you ever saw that casket,’ he said, tossing her the key. ‘I hate to leave it with you, but I have no choice.’

  ‘You can trust me.’

  ‘I hope so. I certainly hope so,’ he replied coolly.

  Beatrice stiffened. He implied he could not trust he
r. After what they had just shared? How could he spoil something so beautiful with ugly suspicions? Maybe he hadn’t felt the magic in the kisses they shared. Maybe she had not reached him at all.

  Edmund stood looking down at her, tall and dark. His long hair was a potent reminder of his Anglo-Saxon heritage and of the unbridgeable gulf which yawned between them. She was Norman. And he was using her.

  ‘Edmund,’ a pleading hand reached out through the darkness.

  ‘What is it?’ His voice was curt. He was listening to something else, turned towards the doorway. She couldn’t reach him. The chasm gaped wider.

  ‘I must go now, before your friend de Brionne finds I’ve left the chapel.’

  ‘He’s not my friend.’

  ‘Farewell.’ Edmund frowned back at her. He caressed her cheek absently with his fingertips, smiled all too briefly, and was gone, leaving Beatrice to stare, bereft and dismayed, at the swinging tapestry in the doorway.

  She strained her ears to catch any sounds of commotion or alarm and, hearing none, she rose to peer through the tiny unglazed window. The moonlight illuminated a shadowy shape flitting into the safety of the chapel. She let her breath out in a sigh of relief, and slowly latched the shutter. She fingered the key, still warm from his hand, and looked at her travelling chest. She was sorely tempted. What was in that casket? One little peep could not hurt anyone...surely?

  ‘No!’ She found she had spoken aloud. She would not look. She would prove worthy of his trust.

  Back under the freezing bedcovers, Beatrice hugged the blankets and wolf pelts close about her neck.

  Sleep did not come easily the second time. She shivered. She tossed and turned for hours. Try as she might, she could not get the Saxon warrior, Edmund of Lindsey, out of her mind.

  He was an enigma – capable of kindness – for he’d been gentle to her. And yet there was a ruthless streak in him... Was he as calculating as the baron? Most likely he’d only come to her chamber to persuade her to hide that box. He’d said that he was concerned for her safety. No. He’d set himself to flatter her, to charm her. He was probably very adept at charming Saxon maidens. He was certainly handsome enough with that raven hair and those haunting blue eyes. And she had fallen for it without a murmur.

  Beatrice tried to pull her thoughts in another direction, but it was no good. They ran stubbornly round and round in circles. Sleep retreated even further away.

  Hilda. She’d forgotten Hilda. No doubt this Hilda thought him charming. Did Hilda enjoy Edmund’s caresses as much as she did? An unwelcome vision of the unknown rival cooing in Edmund’s arms pushed itself to the forefront of her mind. Beatrice sat up and pummelled viciously at a lump in the mattress. Then she lay down again. She dismissed her faceless rival from Edmund’s embrace. Much better to imagine herself in Edmund’s arms. She began to relax.

  Finally sleep came back to claim her, and she did not stir even when Anne returned to bed near dawn.

  Chapter Five

  Beatrice yawned and stretched. Ella’s clattering as she clumped into the chamber with a steaming ewer of water had woken her. ‘You look happy this morning, Anne,’ she observed shrewdly, watching her cousin dress for the day.

  Anne’s smile was smug. It told of secrets that were better left unspoken. Beatrice shrugged, and looked at the plain, unpainted trunk where her own secret lay. She flung back the heavy bedcovers and her skin shrank, chilled. Lord, what she wouldn’t give for a fur cloak like Anne’s this day.

  Fishing down in her coffer for the warm robe her cousin had given her, Beatrice wondered if she’d imagined the Saxon casket. In the bright light of day, Edmund of Lindsey’s presence in their chamber seemed like a dream – a St Agnes’ Eve visitation. But her groping hand encountered the hard edges of an oblong box. Solid proof that the midnight meeting had taken place.

  She drew out her new green robe, and donned it. Clasping her belt about her slender waist, she was fumbling for her shoes when her fingers struck another unfamiliar object. She drew it out, puzzled. It was neatly wrapped in a silken cloth.

  Beatrice glanced furtively over her shoulder at Anne, but her cousin was too engrossed in her toilette to be paying her any heed. Ella had gone. Careful to keep her hands out of Anne’s sight, Beatrice unwrapped the package.

  She stifled a gasp. It was a jewelled sheath to partner Edmund’s dagger, and it was exquisite. There was no doubt that the two objects belonged together. The garnets had been cut by the same craftsman; the intricate design into which the stones were set echoed the pattern on the hilt of the dagger.

  Beatrice slid the dagger from a notch in her belt. She’d been wearing it unsheathed, despite Anne’s warning that she might cut herself on the blade.

  ‘What’s that?’ Anne demanded, suddenly standing at her elbow. She was bright-eyed with curiosity.

  ‘You’ve seen the dagger before,’ Beatrice answered warily.

  ‘Aye, but I hadn’t seen the whole of it.’ Anne plucked both dagger and sheath from her cousin’s hand and examined them minutely. ‘Very pretty,’ Anne pronounced, and instead of plying Beatrice with questions, she handed the sheathed dagger back to her cousin and returned to brushing out her hair.

  Beatrice buckled the small weapon at her waist, conscious that the warm glow of pleasure was spreading through her again. It was meant as a gift. He would not have wrapped it so carefully if he had not intended it to be a gift.

  She forgot that a girl in her position should not receive gifts from a Saxon nobleman, or any other man. She forgot that she intended to return to La Trinité. She smiled. She covered Edmund’s casket with her old grey robe, locked her travelling chest, and returned the key to the chain on her neck.

  She perched on the edge of her coffer and shook out the folds of the soft green gown. Anne swore under her breath.

  ‘What is it?’ Beatrice asked.

  ‘It is naught. I was foolish enough to dismiss Ella, and now I can’t do my hair. Beatrice will you...?’

  ‘My pleasure,’ Beatrice said, and removed the comb from her cousin’s unpractised fingers.

  ‘Cousin, I am happy.’ Anne told her. ‘It seems there is some truth in the St Agnes’ superstition after all.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Beatrice’s hands paused over her cousin’s dark tresses.

  ‘It’s nothing really. I should not speak of it. Not yet,’ Anne answered vaguely. ‘Beatrice, do you think that Father Ralph would hear my confession this morning?’

  Beatrice resumed her ordering of Anne’s hair. ‘Your confession?’

  ‘Indeed. I want more than a miserly crust this morn. I could eat a boar, and I’d like to make my confession before I break my fast.’

  Beatrice widened her eyes. This sudden show of penitence was a strange thing in her cousin. ‘I’m sure Father Ralph will be most pleased to hear your confession,’ she replied slowly. ‘He’ll be in the chapel, I think.’

  Anne smiled. ‘It is well! I’ll go straight there. The sooner I confess the sooner I can fill my belly.’

  ‘There,’ Beatrice said. ‘Your hair is done. I’d make a good lady’s maid, don’t you think?’

  Anne ran her fingers over Beatrice’s handiwork, and grinned. ‘That you would. Far better than me.’ Anne snatched up her veil, her full skirts swished, and she flung her cloak about her shoulders in a flurry of cold air.

  ‘Anne, there’s something I would confess to you. I–’ Beatrice broke off. Anne had left the chamber.

  Downstairs, the bedding lay piled at one end of the hall and the trestle tables were already up. The wreckage of a light meal of bread and ale littered the tables. Loaves had been torn to shreds, ale-pots emptied and left upended by ravenous Norman soldiers for whom the scant early meal was never enough.

  Hardly a crumb remained.

  A solitary loaf and jug of ale sat, out of bounds and safe from marauding hands on the top table. Beatrice wondered which thoughtful soul had salvaged them and placed them there. She took her place at the board and
reached for the ale-jug. Her nose wrinkled. She was unused to the bitter brew, but supposed she must accustom herself to it. Wine seemed to be a rarity reserved for nobles in these northern parts.

  ‘Walter? Shift your carcass over here!’

  De Brionne’s harsh bawl made her hand jerk and she almost spilled her ale. She had not noticed the baron hovering in the gloom. Walter shuffled on the edge of her vision. His eyes were wide and staring, and he was sweating despite the cold.

  A glance at the baron revealed him to be in a grim humour. His narrow lips were pursed, he was scowling, and the eyes that stared out from under his brows were black as death.

  ‘Come hither, clod! Don’t think you can escape by cringing into the plaster! I’ve some questions for you, and you will heed me. You are not to take food from the stores in the middle of the night, or any other time. That’s theft.’ De Brionne’s voice softened dangerously. ‘Do you know the penalty for theft, half-wit?’

  Beatrice scrambled to her feet, her bench scraping on the floor. ‘Baron, I beg you not to shout at Walter like that. You’re frightening him. He wouldn’t take anything.’

  De Brionne’s large hands hooked on to Walter’s tunic. He hauled him in. ‘I saw him myself,’ the baron said, shaking her manservant so hard that his head snapped back and forth.

  ‘My lord!’ Beatrice put out her hand, afraid for more than Walter’s neck.

  A triumphant gleam lit the dark eyes. ‘I know why you’re defending him. You’re just as much a thief as he is.’

  Beatrice had opened her mouth to deny it when she saw the baron look pointedly at the weapon hanging at her waist. She clamped her teeth firmly together. De Brionne must realise that it was Edmund’s dagger and not the dagger of the Saxon boy he’d killed. He knew she’d picked it up from the chapel floor where Edmund had hidden. The baron’s soul was corroded by sin, but not his brain – stupidity was not one of his faults.

  ‘Well, churl, will you admit to taking that food?’ the baron demanded.

  Walter licked his lips, eyes darting nervously from Beatrice to the baron. De Brionne’s hands closed round Walter’s throat. Walter made a choking sound.