She scrubbed at her face and neck, her skin burning both from the vigorous washing and the cold water. Then she dipped into the bodice of her dress, huffing out her breaths in “ha-ha-ha” as her skin threatened to shiver from her flesh. The spots under her arms and breasts were the worst, by far, but the fresh scent of sandalwood from her soap did ease the discomfort a bit. After her legs and private areas were swiped clean, she rinsed the rag in the river and laid it on a nearby rock while she loosened her skirts and then attacked them with her hairbrush.
Even the full-body chill that had seized her was not strong enough to shake the image of a freshly-clean Piers from her mind. She had been right at her earlier guess that a bit of washing up would do wonders for his person, but she could never have imagined the sight which would be revealed beneath all that dirt and old robes. The gooseflesh on her arms and legs were only partly due to her damp skin now.
Noble, strong of body …
And he had helped her down the ravine—actually extended his hand and touched her without her request. Alys could not help but think that perhaps he was beginning to soften toward her. She paused for a moment, her hairbrush held mid-stroke over her skirt, as a realization occurred to her. Alys had not known that Piers’s bag contained something as meaningful as the signet ring when he’d left it in her care, but Piers had.
A sudden breeze swept through the ravine over the river at her toes and Alys smelled smoke. She turned her head toward the bank and saw Piers crouched down near the opening of the overhang, a column of smoke fluttering sideways under his hands.
He was making her a fire!
A slow smile crept over her face and she felt a warmth in her chest beneath the field of prickly flesh. Perhaps the risk of a fire was a repayment for the food she had obtained them, or perhaps he was simply weary of bearing the cold, as well. Alys hoped those weren’t the only reasons, though.
She watched him pull his straggly, uneven locks of hair away from the growing flames, and an idea struck her. She gathered up the slippery soap and damp rag. Stepping gingerly in deference to her thin-soled, silk slippers on her wet and frozen feet—she hadn’t wanted to get her only pair of shoes suitable for walking wet—she made her way over the rocky river bank to the ravine wall, and began to climb carefully.
Piers only glanced at her as she came into the overhang—he was busy skewering the onion between a pair of apples and situating them over the flames. The sidemeat was already leaning over the fire at a sharp angle, so that its juices would run down the slab and into the little wooden bowl she recognized from Piers’s pack. Doubt came into her mind for a moment, and as much as she was looking forward to the meal and the warmth, she hoped they weren’t taking a foolish risk by having a fire.
“You think it’s alright, then?” she asked, as she was putting her things away, save her slippers which she had kicked off by the fire. She tried to watch him closely as she pulled the drawstring tight, having learned already that Piers’s emotions were fleeting across his face. She wanted to be sure to catch them if they showed.
He looked over at her, his eyes not quite reaching hers before he brought his attention back to the food once more. “What’s alright?”
“The fire.” She approached him and sank to her bottom, already feeling the delicious warmth radiating from the flames. The meat popped once, a prelude of the grand meal to come.
He shrugged. “‘S’fine.”
“I hope so, because I don’t believe I’ve ever felt anything so lovely,” she sighed and began brushing at the bottoms of her feet with her hands before slipping into her leather shoes. “If you told me we had to put it out, I’d likely throw you from this cliff.”
He snorted. “You couldn’t throw Layla from this cliff.”
“You underestimate me again, husband. I’m quite strong for my size.” She thought he would rise to the bait of her calling him by that title, but he just huffed and shook his head. He was proving quite difficult to draw into conversation unless he was angry.
“Did you do that?” she asked, pointing to the little carved bowl collecting the drippings.
He nodded, and then after a moment, said, “It was a way to pass the time while I was healing.” He glanced at her. “It’s not very good, I know.”
“I think it’s a lovely bowl,” Alys argued. “It’s round, and—” She searched her mind frantically for some other quality to praise. “Not very deep, which can be bothersome in a bowl. And it’s very … well, round. Nicely so.”
He made no comment.
Oh, well. Nothing else for her to do but go on and ask.
“I want to cut your hair,” she blurted.
His movements ceased abruptly and he froze for a moment. Then he turned his face slowly toward her. “What did you say?”
“Your hair.” Alys cleared her throat, wondering at his hostile stare. “I want to cut it.”
“That’s what I thought you said. No.”
“No? Why?”
“Just … no.” He brushed his hands together and rose to his feet.
“It looks simply dreadful, Piers,” Alys argued.
“What do you care what my hair looks like, eh?”
“It’s not entirely for my benefit,” Alys reasoned. “You can’t give audience to the king looking like … like—” She broke off when he turned to look back at her expectantly, and then she settled for waving her hand in the general direction of his head, and pulled a frightened face.
To her surprise, he gave her an amused grin. “Grendel, perhaps?”
She gasped, snapped her fingers and pointed at him. “That’s it exactly! Grendel!”
He huffed a laugh and shook his head, squatting down once more near his bag to retrieve the roll of bandages. He spoke as he pulled a length of the cloth from the ball which still held his ring tight in its center. “I had two men chop at my hair in a fortnight, neither with my permission. You’ll forgive me if I don’t allow you to do the same.”
“Why were two men cutting your hair? And so badly, at that?”
He sliced off a length of bandage with his blade, and seemed to think on her question as he draped the piece over his knee and replaced the roll in his bag. Alys waited while dusk crept quietly around their fire, as if to sit with them and share their company. She welcomed the dark, felt more safe with each tree across the river that was lost to her sight, consumed by the advancing, hungry night. Piers turned slightly away from her while he rewrapped his fingers where Layla had bitten him, and Alys realized he was not going to answer her without encouragement.
“Of course, the style of the day is for men to wear their hair rather long,” she commented nonchalantly. “But it’s most oft fashioned to be straight, and certainly no longer than the shoulder. Yours is much longer—in, ah, parts, that is—and quite, um … wavy. Ish.”
“Wavy-ish?” Piers teased.
“Yes. And I do believe I can see your scalp above your left ear. It’s not at all becoming to you, if you’ll forgive me for saying so.”
He pulled the knot of his bandage tight with his teeth. The tangy scent of cooking pork was blooming in a warm cloud around them.
“The last man to cut at my hair was the monk who saved my life,” he said quietly. “He did it while I was unconscious, in order to tend the wounds on my head.”
“And before that?” Alys prompted.
Piers sighed and looked to the ground between his knees. “Bevan. Before he tried to beat me to death.”
Alys swallowed, shocked, but unwilling to break the spell of the conversation by an exclamation of horror. “He thought you Samson?” she asked lightly.
“Perhaps.” Piers nodded absently. “He said I was always vain of my hair. It repulsed him, reminded him of the common trash I was. More likely he was envious of it, the bloody-headed bastard.” He looked to her suddenly. “Do you know him?”
“I have seen him on scant occasion,” Alys admitted. “His head is quite the nastiest part of him, I agree.”
/> “If only that were true, mayhap he would not be so evil.” Piers moved to the fire to adjust the meat, which was now sizzling in earnest. The wonderful smell of pork roasting over glowing coals seemed almost too pleasant, playing in accompaniment to Piers’s grisly anecdote. The wide blade of his smooth-edged knife caught the fire like a mirror as he prodded the fruit.
“Any matter,” he continued, “both were unpleasant experiences, to say the least.”
Alys nodded. “I’m sorry. But Piers, you can’t go into Edward’s court looking as you do now. You’re to request something of the king, are you not? That’s why you’re going?” She didn’t want to reveal her suspicions of his mission too soon.
Piers nodded, but said nothing.
“Then you must approach him with respect, for him and for yourself. No man worthy of audience with the king would dare enter his court looking less than his very best.” She waited. “Surely you can’t think to leave it like that … forever?”
He shook his head and sighed. “No. I’ve considered my appearance as well. You’re right.”
Alys’s heart leapt. She’d never thought to hear those words from his mouth.
He looked at her again, and in his eyes, Alys saw doubt bruised with distrust. “How much would you cut?”
Alys winced. “All of it, I’m afraid. There’s nothing else to do, Piers. If you could only see—”
“I know. I know how it must look, just by the feel of it.” Still, he had not consented.
“You can sharpen your knife until it would cut a kiss,” she encouraged. “And I have a hairbrush, and—”
He held up a hand, cutting off her enthusiastic speech. “Fine.”
“Fine?”
He swiped the blade, flat side, against his thigh and then spun the knife expertly in his hand, offering it to her handle first. She took it hesitantly, worried that he might snatch it back in the last instant.
But he did not. “I must succeed with the king, Alys. If cutting my hair will help in the smallest way, so be it. I can not fail. If I do, I am truly a dead man.”
“Then you shall not fail,” she assured him solemnly, shaking her head. Then she cracked a smile for him. There was no need to be so dour. “I am Lady Alys Foxe, and I will not allow it.”
To her relief, he returned her grin. She rose to fetch her brush from her bag once more as he relaxed fully to his backside.
She came to stand behind him, and an only slightly sinful notion occurred to her. “You should take off your shirt.”
He glanced over his shoulder at her.
“You’ll itch,” she explained sensibly, trying to keep her eyes from going wide.
He nodded and an instant later, his broad back glowed in the firelight. Alys frowned at the old bruises, still yellow and green, painted across his ribs and lower back. My poor Piers, she said to herself. She wanted to touch those marks, comfort him.
Instead, she began brushing his hair, jerking the brush through the half dried snarls roughly so that he would not suspect the tears in her eyes or the weakness of her heart in that moment.
He was beginning to trust her, and that was enough for Alys.
For now.
Chapter 10
It was well past midnight when Sybilla Foxe received the first progress report on the search for Alys and the rogue commoner, Piers Mallory. And although there was no purpose for anyone else to be about the hall at this hour, she was—quite to her disgust—not alone.
Fallstowe’s steward, Graves, stood at Sybilla’s back, as usual, and his was the only presence Sybilla welcomed. She could be completely alone in the old man’s company should she wish it, or at once have the most trusted and loyal inhabitant of Fallstowe at her council. But Clement Cobb had come running at word that one of Fallstowe’s soldiers had returned, and at his very heels trod Judith Angwedd. The sight of the woman was enough now to make Sybilla nauseous, she of the large teeth, girlish coif, and sickeningly sweet mannerisms. Sybilla did not hold the reins of Fallstowe through stupidity or naïveté, and like her mother, she was an expert at knowing when someone was trying to play her false.
While others might have missed the signs, Sybilla had known that morning that Judith Angwedd had seduced Clement Cobb. It was almost as if the air in the hall had been scented with betrayal. Sybilla had ordered the entire massive stone floor and all of the furniture scrubbed with strong soap, and incense burned even now—a nod to her mother’s old ways. She knew that it was likely the reason Etheldred Cobb had taken to her guest rooms all the day with her maid—she was hypocritically mortified by her usually meek son’s blatant indiscretion. Sybilla didn’t know where Bevan Mallory was, nor did she care.
She watched Clement Cobb, pacing below her dais, wringing his hands. Judith Angwedd sat at the end of a nearby table, her predatory gaze following him with a transparent smile of contentment. Sybilla was yet unsure as to why Judith Angwedd had bothered with the sensitive and distraught young man, and she considered the possible explanations while she waited for the soldier to be brought to her.
Perhaps she thought to marry him, increasing Gillwick’s—and her son’s—worth, not to mention her own station.
Perhaps she hoped Clement knew some piece of information that would aid the search for her dead husband’s bastard, although that seemed too much of a stretch. Clement did not exactly socialize in the same circles as illegitimate farmhands.
Or perhaps—and Sybilla thought most likely—Judith Angwedd only sought to interject strife and despair at Fallstowe. Sybilla had felt the woman’s green loathing of her the instant Judith Angwedd Mallory had first entered her hall. Should Alys be found alive—pray God—it would be no little blow to her pride for Clement Cobb to have been found unfaithful to his newly betrothed, only days after they were promised and while she was missing and feared dead.
As much as Sybilla detested Judith Angwedd, she surmised the woman was clever. Clever and mean, and it would be in keeping with her character to ruin anything she could that she deemed more or better than what she herself had.
Sybilla would never force Alys to wed a man of so obviously little discernment, but Alys would have to accept someone else quickly. Their time was running out. Perhaps John Hart would still consider the youngest Foxe sister—he had seemed quite eager to find a bride.
As soon as Alys was safely away from Fallstowe, Sybilla would press Cecily for a decision regarding her religious vows. If none was forthcoming, Cecily, too, would wed. Sybilla had ignored and then blatantly disobeyed Edward for too long. Already, the king had called his tenants-in-chief to appear with all owed military service to Worcester at Midsummer for, Sybilla assumed, an attack on the Welsh. The next time he summoned her and she refused, Sybilla knew that the king would have an endless army at his disposal with which to lay siege to Fallstowe and take it by force under charges of treason.
Or try to, any matter.
But if Alys was already dead, then all her precautions to protect her sister had been in vain, and none of it would matter any longer. She would have failed her mother, betrayed her. Betrayed them all.
The soldier approached, his quilted tunic dirty, but his steps sharp, his expression intent. In his right hand he carried a small cloth pouch. At the man’s entrance, Clement Cobb rushed to the dais, his pale, trembling hand gripping the edge of Sybilla’s table. Sybilla saw Judith Angwedd’s ears—like some feral bitch’s—practically perk.
The soldier’s cracking footsteps came to a halt before Sybilla’s table, and he bowed. “My lady.”
“Have you found her?”
“Not as of yet, milady. We picked up an odd trail of two persons traveling afoot from Fallstowe’s gate into the wood—a large man, and someone smaller, likely a woman. There seemed to be some sort of a tussle by the way the brush was flattened, but both were well enough after to continue.” Sybilla was shocked that Alys had been at the very threshold of her own home and then fled, and her mind flew with the possible reasons. But she held her tongue
, letting the man finish his report uninterrupted.
“The trail led southeast, the side of the road opposite the river. We found what we think was a camp, although they had no fire. There was strange scat near the site, containing what seemed to be pomegranate seeds.”
At this, Clement gasped and looked to Sybilla. “Mother’s pet?”
Sybilla did not bother to look at the despicable weakling, only nodded to the soldier. “Go on.”
“Several miles farther, the tracks crossed the road and went down a ravine and to a riverbank. The trail was fresh, we could not have been more than a quarter hour behind them, the daylight still plentiful. But at the river, the footsteps diverged, the man heading away down stream. The smaller footprints backtracked up the ravine and then disappeared.”
Sybilla raised an eyebrow. “Disappeared?”
“The tracks were difficult to follow through the forest without the larger set to mark them,” the soldier explained without apology. “She did not take to the road. But we continued on to the most likely destination for a young woman traveling alone, with night swiftly approaching.”
“And that would be?”
“The village of Pilings, milady. We saw no sign of her, but there was this.” He took a single step forward, deposited the pouch on Sybilla’s table, and then returned to his previous stance.
Sybilla picked up the cloth bag—it felt largely empty. She pulled open the drawstring and upended the pouch into her palm. She looked down.
A gold coin, a stylized image of the king on one side. Sybilla turned it over, and her blood ran cold at the sight of the large, scripted F.
Fallstowe.
She looked up at the soldier, and he had her answer ready before she could voice the question.
“A village woman offered it, reluctantly. Said a young girl had come from the wood begging for food. The woman thought her quite mad until the end of their encounter, when she was offered this in payment for the charity, and then asked if the road through the village was the London Road. The girl left the village in that direction, but there was no trail to follow.”
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