"He will soon be ready to come out," Edith said, smiling at Maria while within she felt numb. Here she was, alive, well-fed, being gifted with gowns, while her brother rotted in a road-side grave and those poor creatures in the unnamed village had no graves at all.
"I will see this gown." Distraction, that was what she must do. "I will find some combs for you, Maria, for Mary's hair."
"We are doing well enough for now with my fingers," Maria answered, ever-cheerful. "Put that new robe on and give us a dance!"
Ranulf brought his small, silent page with him to Edith's tent. Hearing Gawain gasp, he knew the great fluttering mass of colours still worked its magic and was relieved. He would not have Edith—or should he still think of her as the Lady of Lilies?—revealed as less than a princess of the east. Perhaps she was from the east—the east of England, at least.
A small hand pressed anxiously in his and he crouched. "Those knights outside await my lady's first appearance," he told Gawain. "Sir Henry is not there."
But Giles was. Giles, waiting with the others under the canopy, glittering as the fading sunlight in tunic and mantle of blue and gold. Giles had not been at the joust today—few had been, for several knights had heard of the princess's absence and had come to her tent, instead. Still, Ranulf had not expected Giles to wait so long.
The gown I gave is blue and now they will match, he thought, alarmed, before good sense returned. He knew Edith detested Giles.
"Let us go in. We can go in, for the lady knows me." He ruffled Gawain's hair, wondering how the little lad would react to the tent and the two new youngsters within the tent. He had a hope that perhaps if Gawain had something to care for, he might be less fearful.
"Hello, Ran! I will come in with you." In a shimmer of gold and blue, Giles moved to intercept him.
Ranulf avoided his mock punch and blocked him. "Not this time." He watched Giles's smile thin and his blue eyes turn to chips of ice, his combat face, and was even less impressed. "Go elsewhere, Giles."
"I will win this contest," Giles hissed. "No woman can resist me once I set my heart on her."
"And I will not give you that chance," Ranulf countered, conscious, as Giles was not, of his page whimpering softly beside them.
"’Fore God, Ran, this Eastern maid has bewitched you!"
"I admit she haunts me," Ranulf said. "Now begone. I will be a while speaking to the lady."
Giles turned on his heel and strode away, while Ranulf tried to feel sorry that their friendship was probably at an end. He could not.
He took Gawain on his shoulder, although it was against all custom to do so, and crooked his head so he could see the boy's face. "We are going to see the princess."
The child nodded and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. For the first time that day he looked curious.
As am I, Ranulf thought, as he had one of Edith's "Eastern" heralds announce him. I wonder if she wears the blue gown?
Maria refused to leave the hot bath-water and refused to have screens put round. "I want to see this encounter." Her chin, the only sharp point of her these days, cut toward Edith. "You cannot order me otherwise."
"I can say it is our Eastern custom," Edith agreed, pinning her blue veil in place. Off in one corner, at a small table set between guide ropes, Teodwin fussed with cups and a jug of ale, exactly as he had done when Sir Tancred came calling, she thought with a pang. Then Ranulf ducked into the tent and she noticed no one but him.
"Princess." He bowed and approached.
For an instant she was afraid, for he now knew her true name, and then she was busy, marking the changes in him since yester evening. His fair to russet hair was wilder than ever, with two leaves in it—he had not combed it at all since last night, or else had missed those. His tunic was handsome, a dark scarlet, but he had forgotten his customary belt. His full mouth was not as pale as it had been in the pestilence village but there were deep shadows under his brooding eyes.
He has scarcely slept after witnessing those horrors, my poor, dear man.
To stop herself from saying something too revealing, she thought of Sir Giles, Ranulf's friend, walling them into the church. To prevent her rushing to his side to comb his raggy hair, she sat on her hands. Her bare hands, she now realized, with a jolt of alarm. She had forgotten her gloves.
Ranulf bowed to Maria. "Mistress Maria. Mary. Simon." He nodded to the children. Mary had stopped wailing and Simon dropped his pie into the water and pointed at Gawain.
"Yes. This is my page, Gawain."
Simon found the pie in the bath and held it out to Gawain, who stared at it as if it were a cow pat, Edith thought. Seeking to smooth the moment, she said, "Good evening, Gawain. My people and I are most pleased to meet you."
She bowed, but Gawain was staring now at skinny, woe-begone Mary.
"She does not like her wet hair in her eyes," he announced, in a clear, piping voice. "I do not like that." He tugged at his own fair curls.
"Will you help her, please, Gawain, as a knight should a lady?" Edith asked, aware that Ranulf's eyes had widened with astonishment, although he said at once, "Here is a comb, and a jug for pouring."
The jug seemed almost as large as Gawain's tiny chest but the child took it at once. Walking carefully to the wooden bath-tub that was almost as tall as he was, he gently swept Mary's soaking hair away from her face. Deftly, he dipped the jug and began to pour it over the little girl's shoulders.
Edith braced herself for a shriek and water everywhere but Mary sat placidly in the tub, turning her head this way and that as Gawain slowly poured more water.
"There is a wonder!" exclaimed Maria, frowning at Simon who was now smearing the remains of the pie along the top of the bath-tub. Realizing her scowl was being ignored, Maria changed her attentions to another male.
"You do not seem disconcerted by my state, sir." She addressed Ranulf directly and he, if he was surprised at having a maid speak to him, answered equally frankly.
"Nay, Mistress. My father would issue orders from his bath-tub and my mother would take us youngsters in with her to bathe."
"You have brothers and sisters?" Maria asked.
"A sister and brother, both older." Ranulf smiled as Gawain combed his own hair, to show Mary there was nothing to fear from his combing hers. "And you, princess? Have you siblings?"
"I had a brother," Edith said, pressing her fingernails into her thighs. She tried to explain but the memory of Gregory pressed on her like a boulder and suddenly she could scarcely see or breathe. She closed her eyes, fighting for control.
"Princess? Will you take a walk with me?"
"Gawain can come in the tub with us," Maria said quickly. "You should go. I mean, go my lady," she added, as a clear after-thought.
I should step out before Maria or another says something that I cannot explain. Edith rose and clasped Ranulf's hand.
On the way out, Ranulf said, "I think that a hot bath and caring for that little girl has achieved more for my page than days of my encouragement."
"He is the page you took from Sir Henry? He looks well."
"He does, yes." Ranulf's mouth set in a grim line. "Now he is no longer being beaten."
"I did not know." Edith hated what she was doing, pleading for Ranulf to understand. Still, the thought that he should believe she would countenance cruelty was not to be born.
He squeezed her fingers. "Be at peace, princess. I understand that of you, if little else. Will you tell me of your brother?"
"If you will tell of yours and your sister first." She did not want to speak of Gregory. She feared she would weep.
He launched into some long account while she picked up and carried her trailing sleeves and tried not to think of her brother.
"You like your new gown? It has cloth even around your navel."
His voice came to her as if from a distance. She tried to understand what he had asked.
He stopped and touched her face through the blue veil, cradling her cheek as if she had the too
th-ache. "You have not listened to a word I have said, princess." He drew nearer. "Were I to strip your face, I wager you would be as pale as Gawain when he first came to me."
She wanted to protest but found no words. She was in the village again, with all the dead, then on the road with Gregory dying. Gregory stretching out his hands to her as he writhed....
Ranulf saw her colour change and caught her before she fell. She had not fainted but her limbs would not hold her—he had seen it before, with men in battle.
Men he left to shift for themselves but Edith was another matter.
"Come, my prize." He beckoned two of his guards and sent them ahead, with instructions. "A warm tisane and a bath."
Returning with her to his own tent, he settled her on a chair and gave her a drink of warm strawberry and raspberry tisane. He did not speak of his day in combat, when he had fought in a cloud of darkness much as he had done when Olwen had first died, but told of the new lap-dog lady Blanche had brought with her to the stands.
He took a cup of the sweet stuff himself, forcing it down. That she seemed to notice.
"You need not drink to keep me company."
He marked how she sounded: tired, not amused, and wondered anew about her brother. He had surely died in the pestilence.
"It is my pleasure to do so, princess." He forced another mouthful down and reflected on his loving family, a treasure he had taken too much for granted. Silently and a little guilty at his gratitude, he thanked God that his parents and siblings still lived.
What would they make of Edith, sipping from a cup without ever showing her mouth? Lips he had kissed and would do again.
He knew she was not ugly or pox marked—he knew from tracing her features when he had been blindfolded in her tent—so why did she hide her face?
She knows Giles. She and Giles share a past. She fears being recognized, especially by Giles. Had they been lovers?
The idea burned like a brand in his body, until he looked at her. Head to toe in the gown he had chosen for her, covered in a veil as deep as the evening twilight, she looked hunted and haunted.
Pity welled in him as he watched her, so small and hunched, and the fire in his belly melted away. "Poor sparrow."
Though he meant no disrespect, her head jerked up at that. "I will have no man's pity."
"Why should I not pity you?"
He knew that would spur her and it did. She jumped off the chair and began to pace the tent, almost tripping over her sleeves in her haste. "Never do so, my lord." She fairly hurled the words at him. "Pity those like Mary and Simon."
"I do."
"And folk who are too ill to harvest their crops and so starve."
"I do."
"And bondsmen tied to harsh masters, and pig-men seeking justice in vain and farriers and smiths whose tools are taken from them —”
"Which makes the better blade, iron or steel?"
"Steel, but it is most hard to fashion."
She stopped pacing, staring at him with wide, wary eyes and he nodded.
"Truly, there are many surprises about you, and many mysteries I would examine."
"I am no witch to be examined."
"A gentle inquiry, only, princess."
The signal he had been waiting for happened. Outside the tent, his squire cleared his throat loudly and now marched in. "Your bath is ready, sir," he announced, red-faced. "Shall I bring candles and lanterns? 'Tis very dark."
"We shall need none. Thank you, Edmund." He offered his arm to Edith. "Shall we, princess? We may bathe and take our ease under the stars."
She looked at him with narrowed eyes. "You have not seen your gown yet, not in full light."
"There is always tomorrow," he said easily. "Do you not relish the thought of a hot bath? I know I do."
She raised her dark brows.
"You are not alone in owning a bath-tub," he prattled on—he would prattle like a gossip if it won him what he wanted—"We shall be screened and private. Indeed, the evening is now so dim we shall see nothing of each other but our eyes."
This was not true, of course, not when they would be under the arc of heaven, but it sounded convincing. When she said nothing he took her hand. "Let me serve you," he said, very softly.
Taking her silence as consent, he drew close and lifted her into his arms, ready to bring her to the bath.
Chapter 18
Confidence is a fragile thing, as delicate as eggshell. Edith knew she was entirely too yielding, soft as copper, but it was beguiling to be cosseted. After what she had seen in the village of pestilence she felt tired beyond despair, craving comfort.
Ranulf was a castle of gentleness. He smoothed off her gown and shift, his fingers like thistledown on her, leaving her head and face veiled for the moment. He tugged off his own clothes in a brutal strip where she heard cloth tearing and eased them both into the warm, dark bath-tub.
Supported by the steaming water and his arms, she realized he was sitting on a stool within the tub and she was on his lap. He was aroused, yet he made no move to grab her, enter her.
Her experience with Peter and Adam, her dead betrothed and dead husband, made her ask, "Should I give you ease?" Her own loins burned and ached but men expected to be given relief: Adam especially had demanded it of her when he was too weary after a day's smithying to be troubled with coupling.
Ranulf in contrast clasped her wandering fingers, brought her hand from the water and kissed it. "Nay, Princess Edith, maid of my heart, leave my sword. It shall be unsheathed tonight."
Savouring the "maid of my heart" Edith tried to interpret his face in the semi-dark and saw his smile.
"I do want to make love to you, again and again, but tonight is for you."
"It would please me, too, Ranulf. I want to please you." Even if their union was hasty and brought her no relief, as if had been too often with Peter.
"Bless you for that!" He laughed and touched the pin of her veil. "May I?"
She nodded and he released the pin, lifting the covering from her head and face and dropping it off into the dark. Before she could speak his mouth ransomed hers, kissing her lips, her lower lip, her nose, her upper lip: light, sparkling kisses that made her tingle down to her toes. She sighed and he hugged her.
"I believe, in truth, that you know little of this sport, my lady, but never fret. I will teach you."
"I am a widow. I know plenty," she protested, afraid he thought her virgin and so stop.
"Your mate was a smith?"
She nodded, then realized what she had admitted. "He was a prince who had an interest in such things."
Ranulf brushed his hand along her two shoulder bones and lowered his head. "You are naked and in my arms and sitting on my lap. I think the time for lies is past. You are the widow of a smith."
Distracted by his touch, she said nothing.
"Was he a brute?" another question and another distracting stroke, this time along her arms.
"He was decent. Why—?"
"Do I call him brute?" he finished for her. "Because it is clear he left you in need and you accepted this as his right."
"No!" Edith protested, wanting to say Adam had been kind and good, rarely scolding her, and only belting her if she was clumsy in the forge. She tried to put her words in order but her tongue was blocked by Ranulf, kissing her anew as he fondled her belly and flanks. His hand and the water made a double caress and his tongue lanced with hers.
"No man has kissed your belly or thighs before, I wager," he gloated, as they paused to stare into each other's eyes. "No man has pleasured you with his fingers and mouth and tongue. No denial, to say otherwise! I see the shine of freshness in your eyes."
He lifted her slightly off his lap, roughly repositioning himself as if his own arousal was nothing. "Tonight is for you."
"But what of you, my lord?" she whispered. If we join that will be very much for me, too, she wanted to say, but dared not. She had never been shy before, not even on her wedding night, but then A
dam had ordered and she had obeyed, as a wife's duty.
Even without lanterns, shielded as they were from candles or camp fires by dark cloths hung close about the bath tub, she saw his smile.
"I do not ride women like chargers."
When she tried to force herself to quip that it would not matter to her if he did, he added, "You are a young maid in your heart and I will treat you so. Pleasure is to be teased out, Edith. It is a gentle quest to start. And I wager I shall have much selfish pleasure this evening, seeing you bloom in my arms, knowing I have made you squeak and moan as no other man before."
"I never squeak!"
"You will, princess, with me." He squeezed her bottom gently with his large hands, whispering against her ear, "When I have you mewed up in my keep in the North, I will ravish you there as I please. And I shall attend to those many lies of yours." He flicked her rump, his slap softened in the water, and kissed a twisting line of fiery delight from her ear to her chin. “One day, indeed, I will put you over my lap and smack your bottom very soundly for all your lies, and you will thank me, after.”
In the dimness of the evening, with only the stars as lights, it was easy for Edith to imagine a black, tall keep for a black tall knight and herself in the great hall with Ranulf, before a roaring midwinter fire. No light but the flames and Ranulf’s men carousing and raising shadowy cups and the hall filled with merry-making, singing and noise while up on the dais their master pulled her over his knee and spanked her in the dark, his smacks and her cries covered in the general tumult.
He could tug my gown up to my ears and bare me and no one would know: the great table and the winter gloom would hide us. His hands would be very warm, but my bottom would soon be warmer.
She shivered, unsure if she feared or anticipated the event.
“Princess?”
Returned to this moment, she and Ranulf bathing together, she swallowed. “I am thirsty.”
“I have the remedy.”
She could not see from where he found the wine or cup but soon he was holding a wooden goblet to her lips, saying, "Taste the wine: it is warm and spiced with ginger."
Love and Chivalry: Four Medieval Historical Romances Page 96