He did not mount to her chamber for the staircase was narrow and hazardous, but tipped her out onto his bed. She opened her eyes to find her mother and Agnes hovering anxiously.
Gervase had subsided onto a stool, his fingers to his temples. “God forbid I ever have to do anything like that ever again,” he muttered as Jankyn pushed a winecup into his hands.
“Is all well then?” Lady Constance sank in a billow of skirts onto the bed and rocked her tearful daughter against her fur-edged bodice, but Johanna freed herself—it was not where she wanted to be.
As if sensing more than she understood, her mother rose complaining. “And you need not starve yourself any longer. Why did you not tell me sooner, you foolish girl?”
Johanna turned her face away into Gervase’s pillow. “I thought I could manage.”
Unperturbed at the subtle dismissal, her mother nodded. “Rest then. I know you have still some preparation for tomorrow. Gervase . . .” He stood up as she turned to face him. “Thank you for what you did.” She kissed his cheek and then included the others in her smile. “If you can do as well with words tomorrow . . .”
“We will do our best,” he murmured, walking with her to the door. “I think yon lady might be better for a sleep before we go over matters a final time.”
“No, stay sir.” Even though he looked exhausted, Johanna could not let him go with the others.
“Would you like me to help you up to your chamber?” Geraint asked huskily, no longer daring to look at her—the black hair enmeshing his pillow, her red lips parted, one pretty arm flung up behind her head in wanton innocence. It would be a triumph indeed to thieve what he should not.
“I should not take more, but I would like a drink please.”
“Of course, what a churl I am. I should have—” How could his hand that held the burning spike tremble as he filled the beaker? Her availability tantalised him unbearably. He came across and held the wine out to her, watching her slowly stretch and turn to lean on her elbow. “I-Is there any discomfort?”
She ran a hand over her belly, unaware that she was arousing him further. “Sore,” she whispered. “Oh, but it is like being liberated after a siege—the pleasure of eating again and knowing there is a tomorrow. Do not stand there so afraid, Gervase. I wager you are more embarrassed now than I.”
“I am not embarrassed,” he answered in a choked voice, turning away. He had known the temptation would come, but not so soon. But he would do nothing. It could take months to accustom her to a man’s hand again and he had another life. “Johanna, no!”
Slim feminine arms girdled themselves around his waist, the whole sweet length of her was against his body.
“I wanted to say thank you. What you did today was the bravest thing I ever saw. And,” she leaned her forehead against his spine, “I apologise for being so . . . so difficult. I did trust you deep down, believe me. It was when you tied me up, it was so much like . . .” Gervase nodded but made no move to turn or hold her. “Were you afraid?” She was trying to fill the air with words to keep him as if she feared he might vanish like vapour through her fingers.
“Yes.” The word was a breath. He turned abruptly and caught her by the wrists, his thumbs against her palms.
“Do you understand what you are doing to me?” His face was a visor of self-restraint, his voice ragged. She hung within his grasp, her lips parting unhappily. The last thing she wanted now was to give him sorrow. “You are beautiful, you know that, Johanna? Seeing you lying there just now, I wanted you.”
He must have seen the astonishment mingled with fear in her eyes for he let go of her and stared up miserably at the arras.
Johanna had thought that friendship with him was possible. “Oh, I wish that Hell would take me now!” she exclaimed, sitting down heavily upon his bed.
Courteous amazement replaced the anguish in his face. Glad that he could bear to look on her again, she flung her hands in the air. “Why does life have to be so . . . oh . . . so difficult? Where are you, Gervase?”
“What do you mean, where am I?” he asked bewildered.
“The man who is always trying to make me laugh. Is this the real you, the stranger I have never met, the man with the other name?” Tears sparkled on her lashes, veiling him from her. She paced to the door, not to leave but to hide her face from him.
“Johanna. We . . . we went through a great deal this morning. Forget what I said just now. It is a reaction, nothing more. You do not have to fear me. I would not harm you.”
“Do you not think,” said Johanna through clenched teeth, “that I would reward you if I could? Do you think I like being unwhole, different?”
“You are not different. I could heal you.” Geraint had not meant to offer a false promise. Even were he to stay, it might be beyond him. He paced to the open embrasure, staring out at the thickening grey clouds, angry at his own weakness. Vanity or sinfulness? He was entangled in a mess of emotion, losing his common sense.
“Then . . . then try.”
“What!” He whirled round to stare at her.
She was breathing wildly, her mind, raped and pillaged, desperate for order. She must be lunatic, she thought. Where had the words come from? But she had held him just now of her own volition. It was a beginning. And when he had carried her from the forge—dear Heaven, her body was warring with her mind.
The man before her, colossus-like, was gazing down at her in disbelief. “Goosehead, do you know what you are saying?”
“No,” she muttered testily, sitting down heavily again. “I feel hysterical. Forget what I said. Maybe my brains were all safely locked up in that . . .” She could not go on, there were no words for her to describe the monstrosity that had bound her.
Glaring at him through her curling hair, she discovered him in as much a confusion as she was. “Well, I shall try.” He drove his fist resolutely against his thigh.
“W-what?”
He sat down decisively beside her. It was not the wobble of the bedstead at his weight that set her insides trembling. “Aye, why not?”
“W-w-why not! Because you shall not.” With him close to her, large, male and predatory, her old fear returned.
“Johanna, I have other names. Gervase de Laval is an illusion, but for a little space I shall be whatever you please. If I can restore you, you will thank me for it. After I leave Conisthorpe, you should be able to find someone to cherish you as you deserve. Think about this when you are calmer and then give me your answer.”
She rested her chin glumly in her hands, her elbows on her knees. It was friendship she wanted; someone who could make her laugh again, not a creature clothed in steel mesh who ignored her by day only to enter her bed and pump his seed into her for a few grunting minutes by night. But was she in error—were all men the same? Did Gervase tease and laugh as he enjoyed a woman?
She studied his profile through her lashes. A golden-maned stallion of fable. Noble and brave? Or was he in truth a gorgeous, opportunist rascal? “Who are you?” Johanna pleaded again.
“No one very important, lady.” Geraint reached out and set his large hand over hers reassuringly, “But I have ambitions and am not without friends.” Even if most of them are manacled to walls.
“I knew it.” Something in her fizzled into darkness like a sodden firecracker. “You need to marry an heiress to improve your fortunes.” His lack of denial hurt. And I have no great estates, she thought. But why am I thinking like this? I can become an abbess in time. It is his companionship that I find valuable.
“It is the way of the world.” The blue eyes were intense. He had covered the distance before she suspected. His right hand moulded the back of her head, preventing her drawing back from him, and his mouth came down on hers. Soft, insistent, playful, then he drew back from her.
“You did not fight me.”
“Hmm, do you have a range of kisses or is that it?”
Geraint laughed, his white teeth grinning at her. “Johanna, you cat! I will mak
e you purr, lady, I swear it.”
“Purr?” she frowned, unable to manage this weather-cock, this man spinning as his words tossed, first reassuring then alarming her. And now, he was definitely smiling in a quite unprincipled manner. Whatever did a man do to make a woman purr—tickle her behind the ears or just stroke her gently?
She pinkened and rose, running a palm down her kirtle. “You certainly will not. I beg you as a knight—well, I mean, as if you were a true knight, to forget this conversation. We really should go across to Father Gilbert and make sure everyone’s depositions will corroborate ours.”
“Very well,” he answered in a somewhat sulky tone as he got up. “But you will have to understand that the proximity I am forced into with you is going to be a strain.”
“Nonsense,” she said briskly. “You just need to pray for strength of spirit, that is all.”
“My lady,” he opened the door with a sigh. “Believe me, I wish it was so simple.”
Twenty-three
GERAINT HEARD HER screaming in the night and flung himself up the moonlit stairs to find Agnes bending over the bed with a candlestick in her hand, crooning reassurance.
“A nightmare, sir. My lady dreams she is still at Enderby.”
Johanna was sitting up, the fingers of her left hand clutched across her mouth. But it was her tousled dark ringlets wild upon her naked shoulders that caused Geraint agony. Seeing him, she clutched the bedsheet tightly to her bare breasts with virginal shyness, but the expression she offered him was too trusting for his peace of mind.
“I must have woken you, sir. Forgive me, it was knowing I have to answer that foul devil’s libels again tomorrow.”
Agnes set down the candle. “Oh sir, you return to your bed. I will settle my lady.”
But the dark-haired witch who haunted his wakefulness was not prepared to be merciful. “No, do not go, sir,” she pleaded, raising eyes that were devastatingly innocent. “Talk to me a little, anything that will take my mind off tomorrow. That is, if it pleases you.”
It was dangerous letting him stay. Did she realise that? But the tiring wench was there to keep him sane—or was she? Agnes’s smiles were becoming rather warm and she was dimpling at him now.
“I do think that might be a good idea, sir,” the wench told him conspiratorially and, without waiting for an answer, she padded back to her palliasse.
Geraint shivered. Picking up one of Johanna’s gowns, he draped it ridiculously in the style of a gorget over his hastily donned tunic and sat down on the clothing chest at a decorous distance. Once upon a time, he thought, there was a man who could not take much more temptation. He wriggled his toes and stared at them morosely. Which would send him back to bed first—the cold or his lust?
“So.” He cleared his throat. “Would you like me to whistle a lullaby and set the dogs howling? Or I can tell you a scurrilous tale of the three tailor mice of Hinckley Ridge who lost their tails and whiskers.”
“Heaven forbid!” Johanna spluttered. “But you did promise to tell me why King Edward has had Thomas of Lancaster beheaded.”
“Now?” He gawked at her as if the moonlight had rendered her witless.
“Yes.”
He sucked in his cheeks and gave her a resentful glare as if she had spoilt his mood. “Women!” With a groan, he pushed his hair back from his forehead and wondered where to begin.
“You could try it in epic verse,” she pointed out dryly and received in retaliation a hot yet reproachful look that hinted he might have had other, lustier thoughts in mind.
“I will only give you the bare bones, nothing more.” Huffily he rearranged her gown around his throat. “Before the old king, Edward Longshanks, died, he exiled his son’s friend, Piers Gaveston. When Prince Edward inherited the crown, the first thing he did was summon Gaveston back and load him with titles and gifts. He made him Earl of Cornwall which is a title usually reserved for royal blood and that offended many of the prince’s kinsmen, especially his cousin, Thomas of Lancaster. As king, young Edward began to rely very heavily on Gaveston’s advice and forswore the counsel of the other lords, including Thomas. This infuriated them even more and after some years of civil strife several of the leading barons—”
“Warwick!”
“Yes,” Gervase answered with a sigh, “he was one of them. Try not to interrupt, my lady. I am not exactly at my intellectual zenith at this hour in the morning. Where was I? Ah yes, as you know, the barons managed to capture Gaveston and execute him. Lancaster was one of those responsible and the king never forgave him.”
“But there was peace for a little while?”
“Yes, some good came of it. The lords forced the king to accept certain ordinances for the well-being of the kingdom. He did so albeit with an ill grace. Then he found another favourite.”
“Hugh Despenser the younger.”
He frowned as if uneasy. “You have met him, my lady?”
“No, only his father, remember?” Johanna wriggled onto her side. “I am told Hugh has eyes like a cat.”
“A cat!” Gervase’s lip curled. “I suppose you might say that.”
“Then you have seen him?” She leaned her chin upon her elbow. “Is he as devastatingly handsome as Gaveston was?”
“I never saw Gaveston. Hugh Despenser is of average height, has a small beard and—”
“How boring you make him sound. They say that all the Despensers are charming. They sit at table with you and smile in your face while their servants saw the legs off the bench you are sitting on.”
His face tightened, close to anger. “Am I doing the telling or you? Just like Gaveston, Hugh”—again that flash of a sneer—“was brought up in the royal household as a companion to the prince. At first he belonged to the faction supporting Thomas of Lancaster but he sought to rise high in the king’s favour together with his father, old Hugh, who was then well respected. Once Gaveston was dead, Hugh the younger seized the opportunity to make himself invaluable to King Edward.”
“Ha! In many ways! The king had an unnatural affection for Gaveston, so I am told. Is it the same for Sir Hugh?”
Gervase stiffened his shoulders haughtily. “These matters should not be discussed.”
Oh, he was touchy tonight. She supposed he despised the younger Despenser for pleasuring the king. Was Hugh an affront to the brotherhood of knights or did Gervase seek to hide some personal grievance? “Why are you of a sudden so pompous, sir? Everyone says the king is a sodomite.”
“But it is not wise to say so.”
“But to you.”
“Not even to me! I am going to bed.”
“What of his wife? Give me the distaff details before you retire in a sulk or I might just have a nightmare in an hour’s time and wake you up again.”
“I am not in a sulk.” Gervase scowled at her as she folded her hands in demure supplication. “I shall catch an ague and be too sick to appear at the hearing.”
“Ha! Tell me about Despenser’s wife.”
“Nell—Eleanor de Clare is the Earl of Gloucester’s sister. When Gilbert de Clare died at the battle of Bannockburn, his demesne was divided between his three sisters. Hugh Despenser was already married to Eleanor, the eldest, so he did very well.”
“Gaveston’s widow was also one of the sisters, was she not?” Johanna chirped, but her storyteller had gone pensive again. “I have heard that Hugh Despenser’s father is as greedy and ruthless as his . . . Sir?”
Gervase, deep in his own thoughts, raised his head and returned reluctantly to his story, ignoring her question. “What many people do not realise is that there is a bloody feud between the Despensers and the house of Mortimer over the slaying of the Despensers’ grandsire. It continues still.”
“Is that why the Mortimers do not like to see the Despensers grown so thick with the king?”
“Aye, and over manors too. Hugh the younger was set on acquiring more holdings in the Welsh Marches, and so he soon came into enmity not only with the Earl
of Hereford and the Mortimers, who are—were—great in those parts, but also most of the other Marcher lords. Together these lords forced the king to send Hugh and his father into exile, saying they estranged King Edward from his people and usurped his powers. Early this year, however, the king managed to arrest Sir Roger Mortimer and has him in the Tower of London—alive still, I hope.” He sighed morosely, staring unseeing at the wall above her head. “That is why he was not at Boroughbridge.”
“Mortimer. He is supposed to be a demi-god to look upon.” She critically studied him sitting there bare-legged, comparing him with her imagination of the handsome Roger.
“I suppose so,” muttered Gervase, “if you like hair the colour of earwax and eyes that cannot stop roving.”
“Earwax! Such a marvellously envious description. I cannot wait to meet him.” She hurtled a provocative smile at him and watched her storyteller squirm as if he had given away some secret. She must stop teasing him, but tonight it was so easy.
“I jest,” he muttered as if it was her fault she had mistaken him. “Mortimer is a worthy and valiant man. Do not keep interrupting!
“Anyway, after his arrest the king routed the Marcher lords and Thomas of Lancaster down at the Trent, and harried them north. Earl Thomas was trying to escape to his castle at Dunstanburgh in Northumberland. The rest you have heard already—the king’s officers managed to block the Great North Road at Boroughbridge. And now Lancaster has been beheaded.”
“Sir Ralph reckoned Lancaster was trying to make a pact with the Scots.” She shifted, leaning once more upon her elbow, the sheet straining somewhat over one breast.
“Yes, and there was truth in that,” he answered rapidly, studying his feet again. “He had been having some truck with them for a while, and to my way of thinking it was not honourable. Now,” he slapped the chest he was sitting on angrily, “he is suddenly a martyr and a saint to the common people. Did your mother not tell us yesterday there is some talk of miracles occurring at his tomb at Pomfret? Observe that there were no wondrous cures claimed at Gaveston’s tomb. Mind, the king did have him privily buried at Langley where he might mourn him without the world gaping.” Gervase seemed to be babbling like a flooded beck, but his glance kept sliding sideways to her. “No, Lancaster was no saint, definitely not, although Jankyn would have it otherwise. Why, Thomas’s wife ran off with an esquire, for Heaven’s sake.”
The Knight And The Rose Page 34