Joanna wriggled her hips against his thighs to distract him. They rode past a darkened hut, then an orchard, then a field of some crop too dark to see.
"Enough," Hugh said then, and he rode Lucifer off the track into the field. In another moment they had stopped, Lucifer was grazing the crop and Hugh had pulled her, and his saddle, off the stallion's broad back.
Before she could speak, Hugh had dropped the saddle off into the darkness and was kissing her.
"You will marry me, or I will tie you over this saddle and use you thus until you beg that we are wed." He cupped her backside as he had earlier that day and lifted her off her feet. "I know your passion, harem girl, and I will use it in my favor."
His hands were where she most liked them, caressing, scooping, lifting, tickling. His manhood rose like a standing stone between them and all Joanna could think of was of ripping back his clothes. "Use me, Hugo," she moaned, barely aware that she had spoken aloud.
He had barred her breasts but now he paused. "Say yes."
The night air peaked her nipples but she felt as warm as the summer. "Yes?" she whispered, tonguing his chest through his tunic.
"To our marriage. Yes?" He lowered his head and sensation flooded in her as he kissed her breasts, first quick and darting, then slowly.
Her legs buckled but he had her safe. Caught in his arms he floated her safely down amidst the sweet-smelling crop of hay.
"The priest will marry us at his house. The churches may be closed by the will of the pope and King John but he will see us truly wed."
He was drawing off his cloak and lifting her skirts and she was saying nothing. When he dragged the saddle out of a nearby ditch and rolled her onto it, face-down with her rump in the air and her head cushioned in his arm, she said nothing.
He did not enter her, as she hoped, but stroked her flanks and her bottom, kissing down the length of her spine.
"You are a little more plump, my lady," he drawled. "A little rounder here and here. I think you are in lamb."
"You are the expert when it is we women who bear?" Joanna gasped, not as keenly as she would have liked, for Hugh was caressing her more intimately. Even as a nightingale burst into midnight song from the nearby hedge, she was singing and soaring herself, in her head.
"I have seen mares in foal." Hugh drew her more over the saddle, wrapping an arm about her middle. "You are in foal to me, and I will have your answer: do you say yes?"
"But my father —”
"I spoke to him at the start of that never-ending feast. He is happy we wed and says I must do as I will. I will this."
His stroking hand had quickened, his fingers questing more deeply. Joanna clenched her teeth and tried to ignore the building pleasure within her. She wanted to tell him first of Elspeth's generous gift.
"I have a dowry!" she gasped out.
"From the lady Elspeth? I guessed as much. And when were you going to tell me that, eh? Wicked wench." He smacked her lightly and said in a more urgent tone, "Good girl, rise yourself to me. Come now."
The moon broke through another bank of clouds and Joanna raised her hips, feeling the delicious reward of Hugh's fingers exploring, fondling, playing between her thighs. With her face half-smothered by the cloak and half on hands and knees over the saddle, she raised herself again to follow Hugh's caressing hand.
"Yes!" she cried, as the silver moonlight seemed to change to rose about her and the sweetness of her yielding was richer than gold.
"Marry me, Joanna." Hugh had turned her again and now they were face to face and he was in her, deep within her. "Say you will."
"Yes."
"Say you will." He began to move.
"I will."
"Say it!" He was kissing her and staring at her, his eyes fierce with possessive tenderness.
"Yes, yes, yes!"
He caught her rhythm and moved with her, their joining suddenly urgent yet luscious, honey of the body and spirit. As he reached his climax he roared her name; as she crested her second she was beyond speech but that no longer mattered. In this they had their own language, their private language, one they were constantly learning and reshaping.
As one they flew into slumber, rocked and locked tight into each other’s arms. When the new day dawned, it was only the alarm call of a blackbird and Beowulf’s baleful howling that roused them reluctantly from sleep.
“To the priest’s house?” Hugh asked.
“To the priest's house,” Joanna agreed, privately hoping that the holy father might give them breakfast, too.
Epilogue
Late September rolled out like cloth of gold, rich and mellow and warmer than midsummer. Hugh had lately returned from a joust in Picardy, loaded with money, and at once addressed himself to the challenge of their orchard.
"How long has he been picking apples?" David asked.
Joanna looked up from her furnace and frowned. She was counting down in her head and did not want to break off. It was Solomon who answered.
"My son-in-law has been battling with crabs and Pearmains since first light," he remarked. "I believe the lady Elspeth and your father are now with him."
"My father was fussing, was he?" David asked.
Solomon glanced at Joanna and nodded. It was common knowledge in both households that Hugh's father was besotted by the thought of his first grandchild. As Hugh had observed, he and Joanna between them had finally beaten his eldest brother Nigel to a claim for Sir Yves' attention.
Joanna worked the bellows and closed the door to the small furnace. She rubbed at the small of her back.
"I will see to the rest, daughter," said Solomon. "You must walk now."
She nodded and eased her way past the delicate glassware on the workbench, smiling at her father as she passed him.
"I am glad I have no stairs to climb here." She stepped out of the small workshop directly into the yard. "Father loves it here, too. He can star-gaze as much as he wishes with clear views of the whole sky."
"It is a very pretty place," David agreed, falling into slow step with her. "This was a gift of the lady Elspeth's, I believe?"
"It was. Her parcel of land. The old shepherd's hut was already here and Hugh and father built the workshop. It was the first thing Hugh did, before he went off to tourney."
"You do not mind his coming and going?"
"It is his trade." She laughed at David's startled expression. "Forgive me. That is how I think of it. He has his trade and I, when he is away, have mine. 'Tis true that he has cut down on the number of jousts he attends. He says he no longer has the taste for it and he thinks the time is coming when King John and his barons may wage war against each other here in England."
David offered her his arm as they crossed over a ditch and out into the narrow track leading to the fields and orchards. "You are comfortable walking?"
Joanna glanced down at her own wide midriff and nodded. In truth she had felt well throughout her pregnancy, although standing tired her.
"Are you comfortable now, David?" she ventured.
"I am accepted back within my order. They accept I have no relics from the Holy Land."
"Truly?" Joanna still was uncertain about David and the relics but again he was adamant.
"I have no relics with me."
He did not say he never had, Joanna noted. The mystery remained, although she found that she did not greatly care. “But are you content?”
“I do well enough at Templecombe." He turned and walked backwards for several paces, watching her rather waddling gait. "I paint when I can. That brings me peace. I finished a new painting yesterday evening: the head of Christ. The head of the preceptory is to install it in his house."
"He gave you leave to visit today?" Of late David had begun to call on her and Hugh: the entire Manhill family seemed utterly fascinated by her burgeoning pregnancy.
David coughed and shifted to stride forwards again. "Sir Brian knows I am here," he said evasively. "But Joanna—" He stopped her with an arm. "Why
are you and my brother on this little small holding? You have a full, rich household and lands."
"A new stone castle with well-stocked kitchen and buttery, and lands bordering these here," Joanna agreed. "Lord Roger-Henri delivered most generously on his promises." To Hugh's delight and astonishment. "But for my own work this place is best."
"Secret, certainly," remarked David. "I cannot see the homestead now, surrounded as it is by trees and the curve of the hillside."
"Discreet," said Joanna firmly, and now she decided to sharpen their conversation. "Why are you here, David? You came but two days ago!"
"I have news. News Hugh will enjoy." He smirked, suddenly shedding twenty years and looking almost a lad again. "Bishop Thomas of West Sarum is under investigation by his Archbishop. The chatter at Templecombe last evening was that he may face charges of heresy, and questions as to his treatment of prisoners."
"Not so!"
"Indeed."
"Lord Roger-Henri again?"
"Who knows? Does it matter?"
"Not to me," Joanna admitted. Nor, she suspected, would Hugh care greatly. She stepped up to a wattle gate and ditch, the boundary of their orchard, and stood aside for David to go first. "If you will tell Hugh I am here, he will fetch me in."
"I can lift you over the ditch and move that gate," David offered, but she shook her head. "I have had this already with Sir Yves. Hugh is most determined it should be him and no other."
"I would be the same," David remarked. Surprising her then, he kissed her softly on the cheek and touched her forehead, as if he blessed her.
As he hurried away, Joanna thought of how matters had resolved and sublimated of late. Thomas under investigation, David reconciled within himself, Sir Yves closer to Hugh than he had been for years.
And Hugh, her powerful, wonderful Hugh, her new husband, running to her through the orchard, the sunlight honey on his restored, midnight-dark hair. She waited his coming, secure in the knowledge of his love.
“Dear heart!” He reached her and swept her up, big and heavy as she was, circling with her slowly, so she would not feel sick. “You do well, little one?”
“Very well, Hugo.” It amused her vastly that he still called her little. “And you?”
“How can you ask? You are here. The keeper of our child. My beloved.”
She kissed him. “Are you sorry now you took me hostage?” she asked, to tease him a little.
“How can I be?” His blue eyes shone with love and trust as he kissed her in return. “You hold my heart hostage. We are quit in debt. We are equal, love.”
“And safe,” she said. Finally, after years of wandering, she and her father were safe.
“Rich, too, which always helps!”
Laughing, Hugh lifted her again, over the ditch and into the orchard, where she readied herself for many tales of his battling with the apples.
A KNIGHT’S PRIZE
Prologue
Summer 1349. Warren Hemlet, England.
"He has walled us in alive! Our own lord has abandoned us!"
"He cannot do this!"
But he has done so, Edith thought, as she crouched to give her shivering cow a drink from a bucket of water. Sir Giles de Rothency, their brutal lord of Warren Hemlet, had driven all of them, villagers and beasts alike, into the church and had ordered his men to seal them within to die.
He might have spared her, for she was the smith's widow, skilled in metal-working and so useful, but she had entered the simple, windowless church willingly enough. It could be that they would all die of the pestilence soon, and she wanted to be with her own people.
"We have wine and water," she reminded the others, rising to her feet and speaking above the hammering as their lord's men barred and sealed the door. "We are in a holy place." She hoped her voice would not waver as she said this—she had fallen out with God. "We are together."
"What use is that when our lord herds us in here, the hale and the sickening, so all perish?"
Edith trod on the loud-mouth's foot.
"We are together," she repeated. "Those men outside will not stay for long. If we go quiet and stay quiet, they will think us dead. We know this has happened before, in other places."
Around her the villagers grew silent, thinking perhaps, as she was, of the ghastly rumours concerning the pestilence. Only last month a peddler had come to Warren Hemlet with gruesome stories of people going to bed healthy and dying in the night; of people dying in the fields, in the washing houses, in the streets. No one was safe, or spared. She had seen it herself, all this last week, in her own village. So many had died. From their village of four-score souls, only three and twenty were left. Of these, Anwyl was already coughing in one corner and Peter the shepherd lay shuddering and whimpering amidst his scrawny sheep, his neck covered with red boils.
And then their lord had come—not to save them, but to ensure the sickness did not spread to him. Which was how they came to be here, in the church: a stone building Sir Giles intended would be their tomb.
"But we shall escape," she said aloud. If she was to die, she wanted to do so out of doors, under the blue sky and trees. "We shall break out."
"And flee this place, that God and his saints have left," said her brother quietly. Gregory could always speak and be heard: he was the priest here, so people listened.
"How do we do that when we are locked in?" demanded the loud-mouth.
Edith threaded her way round the villagers to the stone font and picked up the baby she had carried into the church with her and laid in the dry stone bath. She unwrapped the "baby's" saddling bands to reveal her own metal-working tools, bundled together in a rough blanket.
"We shall get out," she said.
"And then?" demanded the loud-mouth.
He was as noisy as a miller, Edith thought, but she did not say that. Their miller had been one of the first to die at Warren Hemlet and since then there had been too much death, and talk of death. She glanced at her brother, but Gregory was tending a shuddering old man, Martin, who lay against the south wall of the church, giving him his own cloak. Soon, Edith guessed, he would be leading his depleted flock in prayer, but her thoughts ran to more practical measures.
"First we must be quiet. Those outside will not leave until we are." To mark her point she crossed back across the nave to her cow and settled down beside Daisy, taking a small comfort from the warmth of the animal. When she said nothing more, the other villagers began to lament afresh, then they too fell silent.
Edith closed her eyes, pretending to sleep. She had plans. If they lived, she had many plans that would bring them food, riches, honour and a different life to slavery in their lord's fields. Gregory disapproved, but so he must for he was their priest, and he had sworn to keep his distaste to himself. He had grudgingly admitted they had few choices, and none virtuous.
Edith considered her scheme afresh. Again she was glad her grandfather had once been a sailor, and that her old husband, Adam, had been so excellent a smith. From these two worthy men she had a fund of stories she could draw on and more besides: bundles of cloth, paintings on the tops of tables, strange devices, knowledge of steel and surgery, fine pottery. The things were buried in her herb garden, the memories in her head. She would need both.
If they survived....
Chapter 1
Castle Fitneyclare, near Fitney Major, Oxfordshire, Summer 1351
"Ranulf, what are you doing, talking to that wheezing old crust? The games of love are soon about to begin!"
Ranulf had his back to the speaker but he recognized the ringing voice. "Such trifles can wait, Giles," he replied, without turning round in the narrow tent, "I wear no token save my late wife's, you know that. I must speak with my steward now." Seeking the next name, he bent his head lower to the parchment spread out on the small table.
"But the ladies will be there at the castle!"
"Not my lady." Ranulf pointed to the next name on the list. "How fares Alfstand village?" he asked his s
teward Offa, who had once been Olwen's man. "Have they men enough for the hay harvest or do you need coin to hire more?"
Offa, a steady, sturdy man, had sense enough to ignore Giles's huffing behind them and answered promptly, "More men will be needed, sir. The hamlet is most piteously afflicted by the general pestilence. I would say we need seven or eight."
"Make the ones who are left work double," said Giles, sounding to Ranulf as if he was stifling a yawn. "Leave that, Ran, and come out into the sun, or you will soon be as sallow and puny as a clerk. No way to win a new lady!"
Ranulf thought of Olwen, of her pale beauty and secret smiles, and he longed to knock Giles's smugly handsome face against the tent post. Why had God granted him and Olwen so little time together? Why had their time been so marred? He was a widower at six and twenty, with no wife or sons and a host of bad memories. Was he a fool for still loving Olwen? For still missing her?
"I will come later."
"Ranulf, you cannot hide away in that black armour of yours forever."
"Later, Giles."
"Hell and damnation, Ran, you are as dull as a priest these days! When was the last time you went wenching?"
"Giles—"
But Giles was already leaving, with a final jab—"The Lady of Lilies will be there; not that the princess will favour you and your miserable hide"—and Ranulf's heart and head burned afresh. He stared blindly at the list of names, wishing he could go back to bed. Every day was the same, a dragging of his useless limbs around whatever joust or tourney he and Giles were at. If the pestilence overwhelmed them all in the end it would be a relief to him.
But not, perhaps, to his people in the north: they depended on him. He sighed and looked at the list again.
"She is said to be very mysterious. It is said she can predict who will win at jousts."
Ranulf grunted and tried to find the next name.
"To be very beautiful, also."
"Who is, Offa? The queen of elf-land?"
Love and Chivalry: Four Medieval Historical Romances Page 85