Elizabeth Chadwick (28 page)

It was dusk when Fulke and his companions entered the great forest of the Andreadswald and almost dark by the time he arrived at the place where he had left his men. The Andreadswald stretched from the outskirts of Canterbury westward to Chichester. It was ancient woodland, its sparse population governed by harsh forest laws. All dogs were to have three claws extracted from their front paws so that they could not chase game, and any man caught “red-handed” over the body of a slain deer was liable to be hanged. The royal foresters responsible for capturing miscreants were feared and hated. No one was going to tell them there were outlaws in the vicinity. Let them discover for themselves.

The men had felt safe enough to build a fire for cooking and comfort, but Fulke ordered them to kick it out and be prepared to ride at a moment’s notice if need be.

“Christ, unless they’re following right on your tails, they’re not going to burst into this clearing and overwhelm us,” William objected, although he did as Fulke bade. “No one but a complete idiot would take to fighting in the middle of a wood at night.”

“I agree,” Fulke said shortly. “If I were commanding a troop in pursuit, I’d follow the smell of smoke and the sound of voices until I found the fire. I’d wait until the dawn and strike then.” Sometimes he wondered if William was ever going to learn. “Still,” he said as William flushed with chagrin, “whatever you’ve been cooking smells good and my stomach is nigh clamped to my spine with starvation. And my lady wife’s too, I should not wonder.”

“Wife?” William’s voice rose a notch as Fulke swung from the saddle, thrust the reins into his brother’s hands, and lifted his arms to Maude. She came down lightly into them; he could feel her slenderness and her supple muscle tone through the concealing layers of the unbecoming woolen gown. He could not quite believe that she was his, that despite the danger, she was here with him, a brightness in her look that answered his own.

“We were married by the Archbishop himself in the presence of her father with Jean and Barbette for witnesses,” Fulke said.

“And under King John’s nose,” Maude added with a hint of mischief as she stepped forward to kiss William on the cheek. “I have been an only child, but now I’ve to become accustomed to a passel of brothers.”

William looked slightly nonplussed, but managed a bow. “And none of us has ever had a sister,” he said. Suddenly his brown eyes gleamed. “I hope you’re good at sewing tears and stitching wounds.”

Maude laughed. “Not when I’m as ravenous as a she-bear and my backside feels as if it has been used as a threshing floor!” She rubbed her rump. “Saddle-sore!” she added quickly as William’s eyebrows rose toward his parting.

“Aye, well, too much hard riding will do that,” he said, and ducked beneath Fulke’s swipe.

Fulke’s other brothers welcomed her into the family and congratulations followed from the rest of the troop. Fulke was slapped heartily on the back and robust, not to say ribald, comments flew. He took them in good part but was a little uneasy as to how the rough jocularity of his men would sit with Maude. She was, after all, the former sister by marriage of the Archbishop of Canterbury and Theobald in his last years had been of monkish tendencies. These men were young bachelors and the women in camp consisted of four “laundresses” whose morals were as grimy as some of the shirts and braies they beat on stones in passing streams.

Maude, however, seemed equable enough. She ate an enormous bowl of hare stew and polished off as much bread as a grown man. Fulke gazed in astonishment at her slender frame and inquired if she had hollow legs.

“I told you I was hungry.” She licked her fingers daintily like a cat.

“I’ll make sure we load an extra pack pony with rations for your personal use.” Fulke grinned. “I never realized that you had the appetite of a gannet.”

“There are many things you do not know about me,” Maude said and gave him a sidelong look that made his breath catch.

“I intend to find out.”

Suddenly the atmosphere between them was charged like the air at the heart of a thunderstorm. Their eyes met and held, the connection sparking between them. Maude licked her final finger, and then her lips. Fulke struggled against the urge to grab her hand, drag her into the darkness of the trees, and take her without any consideration but the driving need of lust. One minute, two, was all it would take. He was as hard as a sword hilt and he could tell by her dilated pupils that she was as moist as honey.

The moment was broken by William who joined them, seating himself on the ivy-covered tree trunk and adding the light of his own candle lantern to the small one that had illuminated their meal. He presented Maude with a leg from a pair of linen chausses. There was a three-cornered tear at the knee. “Do you feel able to do some sewing now?” he inquired.

Fulke did not know whether to be angry or relieved at William’s intervention. “Surely you can do that yourself, or plead with a woman of your own,” he said irritably.

William gave a disarming shrug. “The laundry girls are too busy and…and they’re not family. Our mother made these chausses for me. I want the stitches to be set in by another woman of the family.” He looked pleadingly at Maude.

“I am not a skilled seamstress, especially by this light,” she laughed, but, moved by his request, accepted the garment and the needle and thread he took from his pouch.

“I have heard some excuses…” Fulke growled, giving William a narrow look.

“It’s the truth.” William spread his hands. By the flicker of the lantern light, his features were a mingling of woodland faun and lost child. “You think I live for adventure, that I’m reckless and wild. In part it is true, but there is another part of me that remembers how it was. When a day’s hunting was as wild as we got and when Mama sat at her sewing in the embrasure and told us stories about serpents and gold.”

Fulke’s expression mellowed. “We all remember,” he said softly. “I know we can never go back, but one day I hope to do nothing wilder than go hunting for the table or listen to my children’s mother tell tales of serpents and gold to our offspring.”

Maude raised her head from the chausses to give him a luminous look. “What need of tales when the truth will keep them occupied for all the years of their childhood?”

Her remark led on to the manner of their marriage and escape. Between them, they told the tale in full to William, but soon had a larger audience. Fulke’s pride in Maude increased. She was no haughty lady who regarded the gilded trappings of a keep as her natural habitat but was as resilient and adaptable as good sword steel. Whatever he asked of her, she was capable of performing. He wondered if he was as worthy of her.

She finished stitching William’s chausses and presented them to him with a flourish. “The first and last piece of sewing I do for you, brother,” she said, her eyes sparkling, her lips pursed with amusement and yet with a hint of warning that she had no intention of being taken for granted.

William took the chausses from her and clutched them to his breast. “Thank you,” he said, “this means a deal to me.” He cleared his throat. “In token of my appreciation, I would like to present you and Fulke with a marriage bed.” He gestured off into the darkness.

Fulke raised his eyebrows. “What have you been up to?”

“Nothing,” William said nonchalantly. “I just organized something while you were eating. After all, before you can tell tales to your offspring, you have to beget them. Come and look.”

He led them to the edge of the clearing. Green boughs had been cut from a nearby beech and curved to form an arbor. Sheepskins lined the base of the shelter and blankets were draped across the entrance forming a crude screen.

“Troubadours are always singing songs about leafy arbors in the woods—aren’t they, Jean?” William looked over his shoulder for approval.

The knight smiled. “It is a constant theme,” he said.

Fulke was touched. William’s scapegrace antics were often ill conceived, but not this one. “Our marriage bed could not be better even if it was a feather mattress in a royal palace,” he said.

“That’s a lie,” William retorted, but he looked pleased. “We’ve put dry ferns under the skins so it should be soft.” He cleared his throat and looked embarrassed. Normally at wedding celebrations wine flowed freely, loosening inhibitions. There were ribald jests and a boisterous bedding ceremony before the bride and groom were left in peace and the guests returned to the feast. Here there were no such conventions to follow, no priest to bless the bed. Maude was a great lady, and a recent widow.

“Thank you, that was thoughtful.” Maude took the moment into her own hands by kissing William’s cheek affectionately before vanishing inside the shelter and lowering the blanket screen behind her.

“I promise we won’t listen outside,” William said.

“I will kill you if you do,” Fulke vowed. He looked at the dropped screen, wondering if it was an invitation or a rebuff. Should he join her, or return to his men? He compromised, spending half an hour talking to the knights on matters of strategy so that all knew their part should they be pursued on the morrow. He made sure that guards were posted and alert, then removed his mail and gambeson, knowing that the task would be impossible within the confines of the “arbor.” At last, a wine costrel in his possession, he went to join Maude.

She was sitting on the blankets and had spread her cloak on top of them. Although still fully clothed, she had removed her wimple and in the light cast by a single candle lantern, her braids shimmered like silver on gold. Christ, she was lovely, Fulke thought as he dropped the blanket screen behind him. There was no room to stand, although plenty to lay side by side. Once he had drawn a line in the dew between them, but there was no barrier now.

He handed her the costrel and laid his sword to one side. “I do not need to be drunk,” she said with a wry smile. “I know what to expect.”

He accepted the return of the flask and took several swallows himself. It was not politic to ask what kind of a lover Theobald had been. A considerate one, clearly, because she was not cowering and there was no distaste in her expression. Likely an infrequent one too, given his advancing years and his interest in religion.

The onus was on him to find out what she expected and to exceed it. But he was not sure that he could. An outlaw’s leafy bower might lend a wild and romantic ambience to a mating, but there were drawbacks. They had an audience even if the men pretended to be deaf, and with the threat of pursuit so close, it would be foolhardy to remove their clothes and indulge in naked abandon. The latter would have to wait, pity though it was. They could, of course, just chastely kiss and go to sleep, but Fulke was not that much of a martyr. Besides, an unconsummated marriage was one that could be dissolved.

He touched her braid, entranced by its sheen, then laid his fingers tentatively on the delicate skin of her throat. He felt the sudden leap of her pulse, heard the rush of indrawn breath. Outside someone laughed loudly at the fire, and was silenced by a terse warning from William.

He tried to ignore the sound and covered her mouth with his. Her lips parted willingly and her arms encircled his neck. They rolled together among the fern-cushioned sheepskins. Heat surged into Fulke’s groin so hard and tight that it was as much a physical pain as pleasure. He cupped her breast, seeking the sensitive center with his thumb, circling and rubbing, feeling her nipple bud against his touch. Maude made a sound in her throat and pressed against him, arching and rubbing like a cat. Even through various layers of clothing, the sensation was so intense that Fulke tore his lips from hers and muffled a groan in the silk of her hair.

Knowing he would be finished before he began at this pace, he tried distracting himself by thinking of other matters: the morrow’s journey, the likelihood of reaching safety and of keeping his prize. Such thoughts, however, only made the urgency keener. There was naught to do but endure for as long as he could.

He set his hand beneath her skirt on her hose and slowly smoothed his palm over the fine silk. She shuddered as he reached the soft skin of her thigh between hose and loincloth and so did he. Christ Jesu, this was torture. Unfastening her loincloth, he caressed higher, feathering his touch upon the springy hair of her pubic bush, seeking, parting. At the questing touch of his finger, she arched against him with a muffled oath. She was as slippery and hot as molten honey and as he stroked her, he heard her breathing become a disjointed sob and felt the muscles of her belly tensing.

He kissed her, and she returned his kisses fiercely until they were breathless. Her hands sought beneath his tunic and shirt to find his skin. She rubbed her palms over his ribs, then smoothed them down over the small of his back, and under the drawstring of his braies to the curve of his buttocks. Then she pulled him over on top of her and tilted her pelvis in a wordless, primordial demand.

Fulke unfastened his braies, pushed her skirts out of the way and, closing his eyes, thrust into her. It could not last for long; it was too intense. Fulke strove to hold back, both desperate and reluctant for release, but Maude’s whimpering, her stifled gasps of pleasure, and the way she writhed down on him, forcing him deeper, were goads he could not resist. When she stiffened and clasped him with her legs, her nails digging into his spine, he was lost. Claiming her mouth, so that neither of them would cry out for the entertainment of his men, he pushed forward a final time and shuddered in a spark-shower of release.

The rush was blinding: pure pleasure followed by a moment of oblivion. He lay on her, his eyes closed, lassitude stealing through his limbs. She lowered her legs and her fingers smoothed through his hair in a caress. After a moment, she gave him a gentle push.

“You weigh as much as an ox,” she murmured.

He rolled over, pulling her with him. “I feel like a poled one,” he said. “Chastity and desire make for a potent brew, not to mention the spice of danger and some hard traveling.” He laughed softly. “I doubt I could fight my way out of a flour sack just now.”