He smiled, as if the question concerned him not at all. "Have you done this with your betrothed? This kind of teasing? Or is he a solemn fellow, more suited to church than a lady's bed?"
Sunniva blushed, disconcerted by the way her own mind and imagination betrayed her; supplying a giddy rush of pictures of herself and Marc in bed together. Naked, in bed together...
"He is not so rough," she choked out, sagging briefly back onto his chest as he brushed her cheek with his free hand. Why, when they were thus, should his touch make her feel so thoroughly unstrung? "You should not," she gasped, "We should not —”
"You would have me gentle?"
"I would have you let me sleep unmolested!" she exclaimed, through clenched teeth. The truth was she had never known such play between herself and a man, but he must not know that: she would be even more undone. Not brave enough to kick him, she kicked at the ground. "Where is this treasure, then?"
"Here, this good, soft earth, and tickly moss." He wafted a small clump in her line of sight. "Tickling," he mused.
"You must not!" Sunniva protested, but although she stiffened and tried to break free she was lifted as if she weighed no more than the clump of moss and lain on the ground and now he was straddling her and his long fingers were tickling her, under her arms and beneath her ribs, under her arms again.
She giggled and thrashed, torn between indignation and a fear he would stop. "No!" she cried, even as her body arched for more.
"Has your betrothed ever tickled you like this?" Marc asked, pausing for an instant and in that moment, swooping lower to snatch a kiss from her unguarded mouth. "Has he?" Another kiss. "Has he?"
Abruptly, he rolled her over and swatted her backside lightly.
"That's enough for tonight," he said, and stalked off into the twilight, to the horses, leaving Sunniva trembling, her body and lips burning where his lips and hands had been.
Chapter 16
That evening set a pattern. Ever after, Marc was courteous through the day as they travelled but determined to make camp at sunset. He would race with his girls and they would fall asleep quickly and easily, often before twilight. They slept soundly. Sunniva was in no haste to wake them, rather she longed to lie down with them.
Marc thwarted such plans. Shamelessly, he shifted her bedding away from that of the girls. More brazen still, he would pluck her from his nieces' sleepy embraces, unwind their slim arms from her neck, lift their soft limbs from hers and bear her off to his side of the fire.
She appealed to his honour. He smiled and did as he pleased. She threatened him with the wrath of Saint Cuthbert: he remarked they were now a long way from the saint's shrine. She asked him why and he replied, "I have you close to me for your safety, and because I am curious," nothing more. No other explanation.
She tried struggling but it was like resisting a flood. Always, there seemed to be an arm blocking hers, a leg barring hers, and when she opened her mouth to scold she was tickled — not kissed, roughly, or handled roughly but brought to the brink of submission by laughter.
And his questions!
Had she and her betrothed done this, or this, or the other? Had her betrothed kissed her on the mouth like this? Or on her hands and up her arms like this? Or across the bridge of her nose?
"You have no right to ask!" she protested, when she could speak. "I do not interrogate you on your lovers!"
He had broken from her early that evening, as if her words shamed him, but the following night he kept beside her, one arm and leg draped over her in lazy possession, until well past moonrise. He had talked to her of Constantinople: the palaces of white and rose marble, the churches filled with gold and incense, the dark-browed, swift, argumentative people, where a cobbler would dispute with you over the nature of God. She had rested against his firm shoulder and flank and listened as he unveiled the city for her. That night she had fallen asleep in his arms before he moved away.
Did she fight him hard enough? She did not bite him, nor scratch him. He seemed impervious to kicks and punches. She did not use his nieces against him: she had not told Alde of his behaviour, nor enlisted her help. Most treacherously, her mind sometimes rebelled against her, observing in Marc's own deep, warm voice, that he did indeed gather her to him "for her own safety." Am I weak, or wise, she puzzled, stretching out when Marc left her each night, desperately feigning sleep when he returned from tending the horses.
That was the rub: he might torment her but he did not abuse her. Each evening she could sleep in peace. Even when he tickled her mercilessly under her ribs, his fingers never strayed to her breasts.
Does he not want me? she caught herself thinking, even as she resented the carelessness with which he could toy with her. She was wary of provoking him and told herself she did not bite for that reason.
Remember he is said to be a woman-killer, she reminded herself: too often, these days, she was in danger of forgetting.
The days were simpler in that both of them were busy marshalling the girls and horses and the mule, and in keeping a look out for strangers. Days were for riding and for thinking of Cena, Edgar and the twins. Already her memory of them was fading, like the bruises they had been so apt in giving. She tried to miss them, and she did pray for them, but could do no more. In the end, whatever they had been, they had rejected her. She was Cena's heir but no longer his daughter.
"Will you live at your home or in Whitby?" Marc asked, during one hot, airless noon-day when they had stopped by a stream to water and rest the horses. "Will your people want you to live amongst them, or will you go to your betrothed's?"
"Ah —” Sunniva was already leaping ahead in thought, one stage further than Marc's question. Her people would want her to marry — but not to a woman-killing Breton adventurer, who had no lands to speak of in England.
"I will leave that to my future husband," she said quickly.
"Good," said Marc. "I like a girl who is biddable."
His eyebrows jerked up and down, as if he was trying to suppress laughter, but Sunniva was not interested in his jest.
Tell him you are free, her emotions clamoured, while her conscience chanted, He is a stranger, he is a killer, he is not English. Cena's people would never follow him.
"Look at her!" shouted Alde, "Sunniva is blushing!"
Worse, Sunniva thought, turning away to the stream. I care for a man who does not care for me. If Marc cared, he would not trouble me so.
Or would he?
She is incorrigible, Marc decided, watching Sunniva from the corner of his eye as she plunged her arms into the stream up to her elbows, no longer taking a drink but briskly washing her hands and forearms. Always ready to copy, Alde had already done the same and now Judith was flicking Alde and Isabella with water: in a moment there would be a quarrel.
There was, between Isabella and Alde, which he broke up by suggesting to Alde that she look for dried pine cones in his pack. The cones were useful as firewood.
Hearing him, Sunniva whirled round from the water's edge so quickly that the end of her head-square streaked away and became tangled in a low-growing alder branch. "You mean to stop?" she asked, as she strove to detach her head-rail from the branch. "Should we not move on while the roads are clear?"
"They will remain so, in the north. The forces are moving south," Marc answered automatically.
A pause greeted his statement. He and Sunniva stared at each other, Sunniva's hands frozen in her task.
"Watch me, Uncle Marc!" Judith shouted. "I am swinging on this branch!"
"Careful, Judy," Marc said, while Sunniva whispered, "He has crossed the narrow sea. William of Normandy. That is why these lands are empty."
Marc realized he had scarcely noticed, being so preoccupied with Sunniva and anticipating their evenings, but he knew at once she was right. He nodded.
"Can you see?" she asked, glancing to check Judith had not pitched herself into the stream by her branch-swinging antics. "Can you sense who will win?"
Ma
rc met her sea-green eyes and let himself be lost in them. He sought darkness, fore-shadow, but all he could see was light. "No," he said. He crossed to her and gently untied her head-square, aware, with a pang of something like pity, of how threadbare it was. "Forgive me. I cannot always see," he growled. "It comes and goes."
Her bright interest melted into a mellow sympathy. He could revel in her eyes all day, like a wasp in honey. What was he doing? Why, in good conscience, were they stopping? It was not evening.
And you should not be treating her badly, his mother nagged in his mind. Since when did no mean yes to you? He could picture his mother saying this, her wavy thin brown hair falling over her high forehead into her piercingly direct eyes. Sometimes his mother behaved as if she knew everything, that she could order him about as if he were still six years old. The worst of it was that quite often she did exactly that, and her advice was useful, if incredibly annoying.
Sunniva does not fight me. I do not hurt her, Marc thought.
She is half your size, Marc de Sens. You are no better than every other man she has known.
If she would tell me the truth of her maiden state.
You know it already. You should not be doing this: trying to make her fall in love with you. You have changed your appearance for the sake of seduction: since when did you shave every day and travel in your best clothes? And if you succeed in your dubious quest, what then? Will you take her or reject her?
It is not all one way. She kisses me back. Yesterday evening, she ran her fingers over my arms and shoulders. She admires my best clothes.
These are excuses, Marc.
"May I ask something else?" Sunniva, breaking through his mess of thoughts, was welcome, and he smiled. It was easy to smile at her, especially as she was, standing by the water in a blue gown, the sun streaming through her thin russet head-rail, igniting the glory of her hair. Tonight, he would have that hair undone.
You do wrong by her, said his mother in his head, relentless and exasperating here as she was in life. Hot and cold. She will not know where she is with you.
She has not stuck one of her knives in me yet, he thought, and now he spread his hands. "Ask it, Sunniva."
"If we are truly stopping now.... Can I wash our clothes?"
Chapter 17
That evening, before they made camp, the weather changed. It began to rain, very hard, and within moments they were soaked. They found shelter under an arch, part of some vanished, larger structure that Marc said was an old aqueduct, designed to bring water to a city. Sunniva wished the aqueduct could take water away, especially as she could not light a fire. It took the spark from two of her knives to coax even an ember into a bundle of thistledown and then she had to work hard to tease it into a flame. Her hands were filthy and aching before she had finished and could raise her head.
Marc had unpacked a cooking pot, tended the horses, slung two windbreaks at either end of the archway and made up their beds. The girls were already under their blankets, each one shivering and abnormally quiet. His face, when she called softly to him that she was going out for water, was bleached and drawn with worry.
"I will go," he said, rising at once from Isabella's side. "I would not have you stricken, too."
Her heart went out to him. "Children are resilient, Marc. Come the morning, they will be merry again."
"Pray King Christ you are right." He crossed himself and snatched up the cooking pot, stamping past her with a muttered, "I cannot stand to see them brought down. What kind of guardian am I, if this happens to them?"
He vanished into the swirling murk before she could answer and was quiet for the rest of the evening.
The children were also silent and ate little of the vegetable pottage she made, although Marc hovered about them with a bowl of it and spoons, declaring it "delicious". He kept close to them throughout the night, often touching their foreheads and hands. Sunniva tore up an old head-square to use as rags and damped them to use as soothing compresses. She prayed to Christ, Mary, Saint Cuthbert and Freya, explaining to Marc that Freya was a saint her mother Ethelinda had evoked whenever she was ill as a little girl. She searched through her things for a lovage potion for fever and told Marc what it was and how often his girls could have a dose. She mopped Alde's face and behind her ears and neck and Marc did the same for Judith and Isabella. Once their hands touched when they both stretched for the pail of water, but that was the only contact between them.
Sometime around midnight, Sunniva fell into an uneasy doze, with a red-cheeked, sweating Alde tossing fretfully beside her.
In the morning, Marc shook her awake. "They are worse," was all he said.
Sunniva smelt their fetid breath and noted their shuddering limbs and swollen throats and could only agree. "We need to get them under cover."
"A proper home, I know, you need not preach on it!" Marc snapped, and then he grimaced and dragged both hands through his damp hair. "I am sorry. This is not your fault."
"No matter," Sunniva replied, forgiving him at once when she saw his swollen, sleepless eyes. "We shall find a house and they will take us in."
"God willing," Marc murmured.
"My people are a hospitable race," Sunniva retorted, for she could see no benefit in assuming the worse. "By noon today we shall have found a place, you will see."
He gave her a strained, fleeting smile as he stripped down their rough hangings and gathered together their things. "It seems I am not the only one who can predict the future."
"No, you are not," said Sunniva, tying Isabella's rag doll to the little girl's stomach with a shawl. "I can take Alde upon my horse," she went on, with a briskness she did not quite feel. "Can you manage Judith and Isabella?"
"I can," he said, "and thank you."
Sunniva smiled in return although, looking at the three girls still lying on their rough pallets, she prayed they would reach a homestead soon.
After less than half a day's travel, with rain beating upon their heads and bowed shoulders, they came to a farm. No dogs skidded out of the windowless long house or the two hog-back barns to yowl at them, no spit-boys or stable-lads poked their faces out of doors as Marc and Sunniva wearily prodded their horses across the crumbling boards laid over a shallow, rubbish-filled defensive ditch.
"Is anyone alive here?" Marc asked aloud, feeling as if a slab of ice had been thrust down his throat while Judith and Isabella, lolling in front of him and half-dangled across Theo's broad neck, sweated and burned with fever.
"Hello, at the house!" Sunniva called out, shrugging as Marc narrowed his eyes at her. "They will know now we are no threat." She slithered off her horse, lifted Alde into her arms and set off across a wide turf and stone path shaded by an old rowan tree.
"King Christ in heaven, are you mad?" Marc gathered up his two remaining nieces and lunged after her, reaching her as she put her shoulder to the main door. "Stop there!"
The exasperating baggage ignored him and kept pushing and he could only curse as they crossed the threshold together, him conscious of attack yet carrying two ill children, her as blithe as a week-old pup.
"Do not trouble yourself, Marc de Sens," she remarked, moving swiftly to the bare, cold fire-place. "I knew this farmstead was deserted. We may rest here and take stock."
For once, Marc found himself speechless.
When Marc had fed and watered their animals in one of the deserted stable-cum-milking barns, he returned to the dwelling. He stood for a moment on the threshold of the main house, his weariness dropping away as Sunniva approached and drew off his cloak for him. Already, working some of kind magic with few resources and little time, she had made this place a home again.
The earth floor was freshly swept. She had set a bench and trestle by the fire-place, where a bright, sweet-smelling blaze warmed a cauldron of water and a griddle was being heated, ready to cook a batch of oat-cakes. Sheepskin rugs were pinned around the thatched walls, adding to a feeling of comfort and safety. An earthen jug stood by the fire,
filled with some newly-opened roses Sunniva had gathered from the kitchen-garden to the south of the long-house.
The children's pallets lay beside the fire, heaped with more sheepskin rugs. More blankets, taken perhaps from the series of chests ranged against the far long wall, were draped over a wicker hurdle to air. Stripped and covered with fresh linen cloths, Alde, Isabella and Judith were resting on their low beds, a wooden cup of weak ale beside each of their pillows. Their shoes were hung drying over the fire on a spit, their damp gowns bundled at the end of the trestle.
"I have found eggs and cheese in the keep-chest," Sunniva was saying. "I can make us something with that."
She smiled at his astonishment. "I was brought up on a farm like this," she said. "I could guess where everything would be."
Marc finally found his voice. "You have done well." He opened his arms widely, feeling as if he was embracing the transformation, and glad to do so. "More than well, Sunniva."
She ducked her head, as if unused to such praise, saying quickly, "I do not think the folk who lived here will begrudge us a few comforts: I can leave them the linen as payment. Or some of my embroidery."
She had bedded his girls in her cloth, Marc realized, growing hot along the back of his neck and in the pit of his stomach when he considered such generosity. Were these the actions of a shallow, heartless woman?
"Your youngsters are sleeping peacefully now. I have given them more potion and mopped them down and combed their hair," Sunniva went on, as if she felt it necessary to give him an account of what she had been doing. "I pray they shall do better soon. Where do you think they are?"
"The farmer and his people?" Marc answered, buying a little time as he reacted to her swift change of subject. "How did you know they were not here?" he countered.
Love and Chivalry: Four Medieval Historical Romances Page 40