"My lord Giles does not know that the priest and his flock have flown their church coop. Does that matter? Should I tell him? I do not think he will pay to know this: he does not like bad news."
That was the real question: should he tell?
Chapter 31
Ranulf stalked through the thronging camp, busy with women grinding bits of wheat on low querns, youngsters darting and chasing each other with half-filled pails of water and men doing hasty repairs on wheel spokes and carts. Hardly any of these folk seemed to have heard the call of the preacher, way below in the churchyard, for which he was glad, but for the rest he was furious. A rooting pig heard his approach and burst through a pile of refuse, squealing as it fled.
Had he been five years younger he would have chucked a stone after the beast, now he merely clenched his fists and scowled.
Edith had sent him a message by way of one of those slim, dark-haired youngsters with garlands round her youthful neck and wrists: a swift-by-your-leave and then the rest.
She was not coming to find him. Maria and Lucy were anxious over their infants' navel strings and she must see to those. Maids' foolish notions, ahead of him!
"You grumble like Giles, man," Ranulf whispered through clenched teeth, aware he was being unfair. But Edmund's news was grim.
Why tell her, then? Why involve her?
He knew why, of course. His annoying, silver-tongued maid-princess would not panic. She would not look for demons or portents but stay back, question, probe and use her wretched good sense. She had seen the pestilence more than him, she knew its dangerous workings.
"And she was going to find me, in my camp. She promised she would."
He saw her, veiled and jewelled again, standing by her main tent with a tiny bundle in her arms and the adopted maid Lucy sitting on a low stool, tilting her face into the sun. Lucy was very slender still but pretty, he realized with a jolt, with young, firm flesh, a mass of fair hair and a tip-tilted nose. For the first time since encountering her, he could see how she might have been "Many" to hungry men.
Hovering close, with a cup of something, and glancing at Lucy with a look of proud satisfaction, was the steward Teodwin. He was wearing his purple tunic the right way round, and had combed his hair and beard.
More than I have done, thought Ranulf, longing to trip the fellow into a pile of dung.
How well his Edith looked with a babe in her arms was his next thought. The grimness of the day lightened a little, the more so when she saw him and waved. At once he had not the heart to scold—she was at a woman's business, after all, and her promise had been only a small one.
Do not judge, warned Olwen in his head. He determined he would not, until he saw her smile at Teodwin: he knew she did because of the way her eyes crinkled.
"You swore to come to me."
There, it was out, the one thing he knew would hurt.
He heard her breath stop, but otherwise she gave no sign of being heart-scorched, merely lifting the child in her arms and offering the baby to him. "Is it not better, my lord, that you come to me and my god-son? His name is Rano, after you."
After me? All thought of how they had managed a christening was gone. After me? "Should he not be swaddled?" He took the gurgling infant, terrified of the babe's smallness. A pair of wide blue eyes drifted a gaze across him.
"It is too pretty a day for him to be bundled." Edith came fearlessly beside him, where she dropped a kiss on the baby's downy head. Smelling the babe's freshness and the scent of her lilies, Ranulf found that the anger he had been boiling in his gut dissolved into white clouds.
A tiny white hand clasped his finger and he stared. "Strong grip, little one."
"Rano is a good, lusty babe," said Edith. "Maria would tell you that hers is too, if she and hers were not sleeping inside."
"Good." That seemed a safe enough thing to say.
"New life and hope," murmured Edith. "Is it not a wonder at this time?"
He had to tell her, then. He did not want to pierce this white-cloud moment, this simple joy, but he must.
With infinite care, he cradled Rano back to his mother and turned to Edith again. "I have something I have to show you. Something bad, I fear."
Understanding at once, she closed her eyes a moment, then nodded. "We should go quickly, then," she answered, very soft.
She was quick, he thought, but of course these days what else could the threat be except the black sickness? "I would it were not so, princess, but yes."
Ranulf wore the expression Adam had done when she was doing something he considered amiss in the forge. Edith told herself to ignore it for the moment and instead listened very closely to a tale of hunting interrupted. Edmund, her lord's squire, had gone hunting with a brace of men. One had thrown up while riding and Edmund, keen to begin the chase in a once-royal parkland that was now free of royal foresters due to the pestilence, had told the man to return to camp. Perhaps the sick man had tried to do so, but he had not made it. He was now, according to Edmund, stricken with some kind of fever and shivering in a charcoal maker's hovel. Edmund had told Ranulf that it had taken the rest of the hunters most of the day since noon to track the man. And the hunting itself had been poor: a rabbit and an ancient pig that should have been left to fatten for the winter.
"They fear to approach him," Ranulf said, and he shook his head. "My own men... cowards."
"If he has the worse sickness they were wise," Edith remarked, knowing her words probably condemned her to him but keen to speak her heart. She had rarely spoken out with Adam or Peter and they had still scolded; better she find out what kind of husband Ranulf would be and prepare herself.
"This is the track, by the lime," was all he said, bending a branch back for her.
As she stepped by, a new, strange thought came to Edith, as the idea of being an Eastern princess had sprung into her, years ago. She was free to refuse him, and his hand.
And what if he takes revenge against your people? Gregory warned in her head.
If he does, brother, then he is a man I want none of, for he is a man like Giles. I know Ranulf is nothing like Giles.
That certainty comforted her and her spirits soared as Ranulf took her hand and kissed it, growling, "I know you talk good sense, clever wench, but for a soldier, any warrior, to leave a man behind, to desert him, is the worst."
"We are going to him," Edith reminded him. "Do you know his name?"
Ranulf turned on the track and barked the question at Edmund, who, with five other shame-faced men clad in hunting browns and greens, toiled warily a few steps behind. Edmund would not look at her—was that due to shame or had he heard rumours about her? Had he shared those with Ranulf?
Stop it! Stop looking for shadows at noon, for is there not trouble enough already? You do not want to leave Rannie, so stay with him and win your place, as you always have.
It was the love-making, Edith decided, as she acknowledged that the sick man was called Nigel and she gave her lover's hand a reassuring squeeze. In bed, Ranulf made her feel soft, cherished, vulnerable and alive in ways she never knew she was. Even now, going to who-knew-what, she was distracted by the tiny hairs on the back of Ranulf's hand and the tingling comfort his palm around hers—a kind of tingling promise to come. She half-jogged along, because they were hurrying, in a kind of giddy whirl, and she almost felt like a girl at a dance. The day of sun and birdsong did not help; about her in the trees squirrels and finches darted like living jewels.
The dance became darker when they reached the charcoal-burner's hut. In a clearing of cut, stacked logs, black heaps of charcoal and piles of ash, the hut was hunched in a corner beside a stand of gnarled hawthorn. An air of desolation clung about the place, exaggerated when a distant wail and slow, indistinct chanting began from the churchyard in the valley below the woods.
"They are getting busy again," said Ranulf. He must have thought her anxious, for he winked and added, "As long as they do not ring the bell, though, I think we are safe." H
e picked up a long branch and prodded at the half-closed door of the hut, calling, "Nigel? Are you there, man?"
A low gargle and cough was the answer. Ranulf started forward and alarmed at his haste, Edith grabbed at his belt. "Tell him to crawl out!" she hissed.
"The man needs our help!" Ranulf's eyes glittered and he loosened her wildly grasping fingers off his belt as if she had no more strength than a blundering moth.
"I agree! And he must have it, but first let him show himself. We must know." If he could be saved, she meant, but did not want to say it, not in the poor man's hearing.
Abruptly, Ranulf caught her by the shoulder and dragged her close. "Why must you be right, damn you? Your cool head remembers where mine forgets." He gave her a rough kiss, through her veil, slapped her rump and set her down again, shouting now, "Come out here, man, and take some ale, then we shall get you back."
"Sir, take care." Edmund's croaked warning became a whisper as Ranulf turned a glare on him, sharp as a lance.
"You, you, and you, cut branches and lash them together to make a board to lie him on. Well, lad, will you gawp forever? Snap to it!"
The squire and two others pelted into the greenwood to obey as Ranulf crouched in the ash and leaf-litter of the charcoal camp, oblivious of the grime, as Teodwin would never be, and coaxed anew.
"You must be thirsty in there, Nigel. Come out and take a drink with me. I have a good flask here, full to the top."
Edith found a flat rock to stand on, out of the ash, and waited, forcing herself not to ram her fingers into her mouth. The men clumping through these woods were already at a stretch of nerves—she saw it in their faces and smelled it on their sweating bodies. As so often in these last years, she must be outwardly calm.
Ranulf saw what she did and nodded once, a terse acknowledgement, and she was happy with his approval. It was important to her that he approved: she longed for his good will.
Showing your true base nature? whispered Gregory slyly in her mind.
But she had no time to rebut her dead brother. A fluttering heap of limbs lurched from the darkness of the hut and crawled, gargling, across the threshold.
Behind her Edith heard the wild chopping and breaking of branches stop, then resume with renewed ferocity as Ranulf swung round. She did not stir—if she moved forward, Ranulf would be sure to go with her and she did not want him put in danger.
She snatched the flask from him and rolled it to the quivering figure.
"What in God's name —?" Ranulf clapped his hand after the tumbling flask but she had been too quick: his reaching fingers knotted on air. To stop him reacting further she tugged down her veil, careless of any of the other men seeing her face.
"Please, wait, I beg." She dropped onto her knees on the hard stone.
His russet and fair eyebrows jutted like jetties over his darkening eyes, but he did not move. Edith was glad of it—her knees were flaming in pain.
"I am not a fool," he said quietly.
Edith felt the blush surge into her face. She could not look at him any more, she was too ashamed.
He touched her head and pointed.
The sickly wretch was draining the flask, drinking in a desperate, greedy way that filled the whole charcoal clearing with the sounds of choking and swallowing.
Ranulf crouched so his head was almost level with hers. He clasped her chilled hand and rose to his feet, drawing her with him. "Never fret," he said softly. "Tell me again the signs of the worst sickness."
Her sticky feel of gratitude appalled her—she had never been this way before with any man. Fighting to keep her unruly emotions within bounds she told him, adding, "If he has lasted this long, I do not think he has the worst. And though he coughs, he has not spewed blood."
They both looked closely at the man, Edith seeing with pity and relief that though he had voided himself he was not trailing blood. Beneath his filthy stubble he looked grey-skinned but not boil-ridden. There were no buboes clustered under his chin and, brutally, he did not crawl like those who had gross swellings in their groins.
"Nigel has seen better days, but that looks like the eating of a bad fish pie to me," remarked Ranulf beside her.
Reaching the same conclusion, Edith nodded. "I think you are right, Rannie."
He smiled briefly at her nickname, then straightened, becoming lord again.
"Then I shall carry him to our rude litter and we shall bring him home." He glanced at her. "You are smeared with ash, my lady."
Better ash than blood, she almost said, but there was a gleam in his eye that told her she would be the next one to be carried, and doubtless all the way into camp. So she said nothing.
I am learning, and he is learning me and I think we do well together, she thought, as he took her in his arms and fell into step behind the litter. She closed her eyes, light-headed with relief.
Chapter 32
Mark the spy was astonished when he returned to the tourney camp, sometime after moonrise. Giles, in one of his swift mood-changes, had swerved back from his intended tour of his lands. He was standing in the midst of the tourney camp, bawling out order after order to scampering maids and pages. In the growing dark there was much tripping and cursing, but Giles was determined that his people should continue to pack and load.
Mark swung down from his horse and led the beast to the river to cool off and to drink. He did not want to encounter Giles in this busy, angry mood.
Beside the sluggish stream he found a woman, still washing clothes. A man was with her, as company and guard, for at this late hour foot-pads and worse could be abroad. Mark greeted them both: he wanted no sling-shot flung at him or his flagging nag.
The pair kneeling by the summer-parched, drying river shrank back, giving ground in such dusty, cringing haste he was astonished. He meant to call out afresh, wish them good-evening, say he was no threat, when the half-moon broke free of some wisps of cloud and shone bright on them.
Only long habits of silence kept him from gasping aloud. Both the man and, worse, the woman, were branded—burned—on their arms, and most sickeningly on their foreheads, with a badge and banner he knew well. The wounds, even in this half-dark, looked angry and fresh, with black trails running down their cheeks and hands that Mark guessed would be dried blood.
Giles must have discovered these creatures on other lands than his, working maybe for a kinder lord or for themselves.
They had survived the scourge of the pestilence, taken their chance to move to better land and would have thought God smiled on them.
But the devil was with Giles. By some fantastic chance he had actually recognized these peasants as his. And to make certain of his claim, he had branded them.
They are runaway serfs. They ran and paid the price.
Mark knew he would dream of those terrified, wounded, branded faces for nights to come. And if these, who would be next?
He turned his horse, praying that Sir Ranulf would be a more lavish lord and paymaster than Giles had been.
Edith removed her veil, wrapped Ranulf’s cloak more tightly about her and walked to the edge of the wood. She recalled berries growing here and wanted to gather some for Ranulf.
She was alone. Ranulf’s guards ringed this part of the camp where her tent and his were pitched, so she was safe. Ranulf thought one of her maids was with her, and she had promised him it would be so. At the last moment, seizing the chance of solitude, she had changed her mind. Her lord was off in another part of the camp, speaking to his captain, so he did not know. He would not know, either: she would return to their tents before he did.
Her head was throbbing: she wanted quiet and stillness. She longed to stretch out under the trees and listen only to the rustle of branches and bats and small beasts. Walking under these limes and elms, feeling the night air on her face, inhaling the nightly perfume of watch-fires, roasting meat, lime blossom and Ranulf's scent that lingered, sensuous and dark, upon his cloak, gave her respite. She wished her mother was still alive, and s
he could talk to her. She missed Sir Tancred and his kind concern.
Why does being in love frighten me so much?
It was the fear of loss, she knew. Ranulf loved her but part of him was ashamed of her: she knew that most keenly. She longed to be perfect for him, as she was for other knights.
She feared God would notice her happiness and crush it.
“Stop moaning and gather those berries,” she chided herself, now picturing Ranulf’s grin as she gave them to him. She could make a new game with him: kisses and strawberries; kisses and cherries; kisses and -
What was that?
She did not freeze but continued walking softly and steadily to the nearest elm and pressed her back against its warm, rough bark. She ducked her head so the moon would not reflect in her eyes and listened intently, wishing her heart would not hammer on so.
No adder, she decided, nor a scuttling shrew: this blundering oncoming beast made too much noise. But not a boar, neither: at each mad snapping of branches there was a sudden stop, a moment of pause.
A man, then, trying to be quiet.
Her insides felt to turn into ice as her armpits tingled with dread and her mouth went dry. Was he stalking her? He was closing now much too near for her to stir again without her movement being seen.
You should have obeyed Ranulf and brought a maid, scolded Gregory.
"A maid would be no use," Edith hissed, under tight breath. How is it that I, who have made so many blades, have none to hand? Her eating dagger was altogether too blunt. "A stone, now, a rough pebble, large as my fist—that would be very good."
But the undergrowth of dry bracken, brambles, dying-back wild garlic and shiny bluebell leaves yielded no such wonder. Peering down into the darkness by her feet, Edith longed again for a decent knife and more for a good, brightly-burning torch. She liked fire and knew it well: it would work for her against any scurvy knave....
Love and Chivalry: Four Medieval Historical Romances Page 105