Lady Knight (4 page)

Eleanor halted in surprise. A few yards away, standing at the edge of one of the
fish ponds, she saw a familiar tall, strongly-built figure. He wore neither hat
nor coif, so she could see his short, warrior-cropped black hair.

“What’s wrong?” Cicely said.

Eleanor smiled. “There’s nought amiss. Quite the opposite. We’re in for a merry
time, indeed, if he’s to accompany us to Sadiston. Come, I’ll introduce you to
one of the Earl Marshal’s younger brothers. There are no men better company than
Lord Guy.”

Eleanor mentally thanked all the gods for whatever reason brought Guy to the
grove house at this time. She had yet to meet any woman, be she shrinking maiden
or ageing matron, who stood proof against Guy’s charm. Several days of mild and
perfectly harmless flirtation would do Cicely the power of good.

Eleanor only noticed the unusual fact that his profile was clean shaven as she
neared him.

“My lord,” she said, “you converse with the carp? Do they exercise your wit to
–”

He turned. He was not Guy.

A badly healed scar carved through the right side of his face from hairline to
jaw. Otherwise, though, he was so similar to Guy that he might have been a copy
made by a mortal sculptor from the original crafted by the gods. His angular
features made for a face handsome with character rather than comely prettiness.
Dark brows nearly met above the bridge of his nose. Strong chin. He even
possessed the same sensuous mouth that looked out of place on a warrior’s face.
But the green eyes were darker. More intense. He stared without Guy’s ready,
boyishly infectious smile.

For the first time in many a year, Eleanor felt the heat of embarrassment rising
to her cheeks. “Your pardon, sir. I mistook you for someone else.”

He continued to stare openly. The blatant admiration in his gaze, and his
complete lack of attempt to conceal it, robbed his attention of all rudeness.
Eleanor’s sense of humour reasserted itself and she smiled.

“I thought you Lord Guy, cousin to the queen,” Eleanor said. “I suspect that I’m
not too far in error. You, sir, must be one of his brothers?”

Where Guy would have replied with an easy remark, the man before her looked as
though he struggled to find words.

“I have a brother called Guy,” he said. “But I’m not his brother. By your leave,
lady.”

He bowed and stalked away. His long legs swiftly carried him to the gate and out
of the garden. A peripheral part of Eleanor’s mind noted that his voice was not
as deep as Guy’s, and that he had barely noticed her beautiful niece. Most of
Eleanor’s attention, though, wrestled the conundrum of his apparently
contradictory statements.

“Did we offend him?” Cicely asked.

“Any offence was of my offering,” Eleanor said. “Though I cannot think what it
might be. Perhaps he did not appreciate my levity in reference to the carp.”

Cicely looked uncertain. “How could he be brother and yet not brother to Lord
Guy?”

“That, I confess, has me at a loss. With any man other than the late Earl
Marshal, I would surmise he meant that he was a base-born son. But it is said of
the late Earl Marshal that he loved his first wife so well that he not only did
not remarry, but took solace in no woman’s arms after her death. Which is so
extraordinary, and contrary to every normal behaviour of men, that there must be
truth to it.”

Eleanor shook her head. “It seems unlikely that the late Earl Marshal populated
the countryside with by-blows. For certès, though, that man looked the image of
Lord Guy, and only a handful of years younger.”

Cicely cast a frown at the gate. “Does the Earl Marshal resemble him?”

“No. Lord Henry is not, I fancy, quite as tall, but is a much broader man. More
powerfully built. He looks strong enough to wrestle a bear.”

She did not add that, at four and forty years old, Henry was a good decade and a
half older than the man who just departed, with more grey than black in his hair
and beard.

“Is the Earl Marshal more handsome than his brother?” Cicely asked. “Still, he
must be.”

Eleanor’s eyebrow arched. Her niece had not considered him good-looking?

“The Earl Marshal isn’t horribly scarred, too, is he?” Cicely shuddered. “I
cannot imagine looking often upon that disfigurement.”

Eleanor compared her memories of the two similar faces – of Guy and his
tongue-tied brother – and, in fairness, had to concede that the better looking
was without the scar. Though, perhaps, not the more intriguing.

Eleanor dispatched a servant with an invitation for Naer Aveline to sup at her
table. She would have offered her hospitality to any other fellow traveller, but
this was not only a naer, she was sister to the queen as well. Her appearance at
Highford at this time could be no accident. Eleanor thus offered her niece the
opportunity to share the position of hostess rather than wait for an inevitable
summons to present herself to the naer.

It also occurred to Eleanor that Guy’s brother must be travelling with the naer,
and this would be her opportunity to satisfy her curiosity about him, too.

Naer Aveline entered the guest hall with the air of ownership. Eleanor smiled as
she dipped in a curtsy.

“Lady Barrowmere.” Aveline traced a blessing in the air between them. “Your
hospitality is most welcome after long hours on a dusty road. I confess that I’d
forgotten your intimate connection with the late earl. Your husband is kin to
the Earl of Lismore, is he not?”

“He was, Eminence,” Eleanor said. “He died some three years past.”

“Oh. You’re a widow?” Aveline smiled before turning to Cicely. “And this must be
the Lady of Havelock.”

Eleanor was unsurprised to see her niece on her knees in a submission more
appropriate to an aspirant than a countess. The adjustment would take a little
time.

“You’re most fair,” Aveline said. “My cousin will be well pleased with his new
bride.”

Cicely’s pallid cheeks developed flaming spots of colour. Eleanor brushed aside
a fleeting worry. Any woman who had attained the rank of naer before her
fortieth birthday would have the wit not to enquire what the bride thought of
her forthcoming marriage. Aveline did not ask.

Guy’s enigmatic copy entered and joined them. The scar gave him a stern and
remote air that did not invite conversation. Perhaps because she was accustomed
to Guy’s easy and affable manners, Eleanor speculated that his outward reserve
could be a façade that concealed a similarly attractive personality. She
wondered how long it might take her to breach those defences and find out. She
remembered his admiring look, and thought, perhaps, it would not take so very
long.

“Cousin, you’ll not have met our hostess,” Aveline said. “Lady Eleanor of
Barrowmere. She is aunt to Lady Cicely, Countess of Havelock, who is to become
your sister by marriage.”

By rights, Cicely should have taken precedence in acknowledging him, but sensing
her hesitation, Eleanor curtsied and offered her hand. He took it in warm
fingers and bowed stiffly.

Eleanor smiled. “You’re most welcome at my table, sir.”

“I thank you, lady.” He turned to offer Cicely another of his formal bows.

Eleanor noted but could not understand Aveline’s evident amusement as she
watched her cousin and Cicely. Cicely again sank in a too-submissive curtsy.
His impassive expression betrayed neither disapproval nor amusement at her
gaucherie.

“It… it gives me pleasure to meet a… a relative of my betrothed.” Cicely spoke
so softly that Eleanor barely heard her.

“The pleasure is mine, my lady,” he said.

“My cousin has been living in foreign lands for the better part of the last
decade,” Aveline said. “We have our Wise Mother to thank that she has returned
to help us celebrate this most illustrious of weddings. Is that not so, Lady
Riannon?”

She?
Eleanor’s gaze shot up to the scarred face. Lady Riannon?
A woman?

Cicely gasped and tugged her hand free of Riannon’s fingers. She stared with
open horror. Eleanor mentally cursed whoever had taught the girl her manners,
wished she could give her niece a slap, and quickly stepped into the awkward
moment.

“Lady Riannon, I have the satisfaction of not having been wholly astray in
seeing a strong likeness to your brother, Lord Guy,” Eleanor said. “Which is
such a balm to my vanity. The boards are set and the cloths laid. Mayhap we
should take our places to eat? Your Eminence?”

Eleanor gave her niece a discreet push to get her to escort the naer around to
the place of honour. Riannon must have been offended at Cicely’s reaction, but
Eleanor could read nothing in her expression. Her face was as unrevealing as a
knight’s helm with the visor pulled down.

At table, Riannon sat on Eleanor’s right, which presented her unscarred profile
for Eleanor’s study. Closer, her features seemed finer than a man’s, though not
noticeably feminine.

Riannon briefly met Eleanor’s gaze when she rinsed her hands in the
rose-perfumed water, but did not speak. Eleanor swiftly balanced the desire to
gloss over Cicely’s discourtesy with the greater good in acknowledging the
mistake and apologising.

“My niece was pledged at a young age to the robe,” Eleanor said. “She’s not yet
accustomed to moving fully in society. She’s somewhat ill at ease with the
sudden change in her fortunes. She meant no disrespect.”

Riannon nodded.

Eleanor only half listened to the prayer as she worried the problem of Cicely
having truly offended Riannon. That would be an ill-omened start to her entry
into her new family. Although, now that she thought on it, Eleanor remembered
some dark edge of scandal surrounding Riannon. Aveline mentioned a long absence
from the kingdom. In the years that Eleanor had been on easy terms with Guy, he
had not mentioned a younger sister.

Eleanor reached for the salt cellar. With impeccable courtesy, Riannon picked it
up and set it close to her. That errant part of Eleanor’s mind, which oft times
took on a life all its own, noted that Riannon had unexpectedly beautiful hands.
They were long and tapered.

“You do not strike me, lady, as one given to vanity,” Riannon said.

Eleanor nearly dropped the salt off the end of her knife in surprise. Riannon’s
expression still looked remote, but her tone might have been teasing. Eleanor
hurriedly ran back through their conversation to discover what might have
prompted the comment. It was her remark about having not been mistaken in seeing
a relationship between Guy and Riannon, and her pride in being correct.

“Though it is a mortification to be forced to admit weakness of personality,”
Eleanor said, “I’m afraid that, sadly, it’s true my vanity is easily pricked. I
cannot abide being incorrect. So, you see, I’m doubly damned. Once for being
vain, and a second time for my vice taking the highly unfeminine character of an
intellectual nature rather than the more acceptable frivolous obsession with my
looks.”

“No one could think you unwomanly.” Riannon politely moved the jugs of wine and
water closer to Eleanor. “Nor that your looks excite false vanity.”

Eleanor found herself in the unusual position of having no ready reply. How did
Riannon mean that? Oblique criticism? Eleanor stared at the angular profile as
Riannon bent her attention on a dish of venison and frumenty.

That night, as she lay in her bed with Cicely softly snoring beside her, Eleanor
frowned at the dark hangings. Her supper guests both put her on her mettle. Naer
Aveline struck Eleanor as a woman who watched and weighed everything and
calculated to a hair-splitting nicety. Still, even the daughter of a king would
not have risen so high in her order so swiftly without some talent of mind and
ambition. Her cousin, on the other hand, presented altogether different
difficulties. Eleanor had been seriously caught off her guard with her
assumptions from the garden. Riannon was a woman, and yet unlike any other.
Where Guy would have teased, Riannon responded with formal courtesy so stiff
that it bordered on the daunting.

Eleanor wriggled onto her side. Agnes, another who shared Eleanor’s bed, mumbled
to herself in her sleep.

Eleanor scratched her memory for events of eight or nine years ago. Having seen
Riannon of Gast, the greatest dullard could guess the nature of the scandal
surrounding her. That a daughter of the late Earl Marshal should take to
dressing as a man would be cause enough for gossip. If Eleanor was not mistaken,
though, that elaborately decorated dagger Riannon wore at her right hip was a
symbol of membership of a chivalric order. Riannon used a second, plain knife,
for eating. Eleanor’s eyes narrowed as she relived the scene in the garden. Yes,
Riannon had worn a sword. Could she be a lady knight? Eleanor had not heard of
one before.

Eleanor also remembered Riannon’s look of open admiration. Her frown deepened.
She had received enough such looks to recognise sexual appreciation. Yet,
Riannon was a woman.

Eleanor’s last memory before finally slipping into sleep, though, was of a
different pair of green eyes and the sharp interest on Aveline’s face when
Eleanor admitted her widowhood.

Riannon nodded to Lady Barrowmere’s marshal and turned to stride through the
noisy chaos of saddle horses, laden sumpter horses, carts, grooms, esquires, and
pages. With Aveline deciding to travel with Lady Barrowmere, their combined
entourages resembled a small army and proved only slightly less difficult to
manage. Finally, though, they were ready to move. Servants and grooms had gone
ahead to secure lodging for the night and purchase provisions. That much, at
least, the two marshals – each jealous of his office and the prerogatives of his
mistress – had been able to cooperate on when Riannon stood over them.

Aveline emerged from the main grove hall with the high priestess her anxious
shadow. Riannon kept well clear of them. Aveline, who disliked riding, headed
for her cumbersome covered wagon. Lady Barrowmere’s luxurious travelling
carriage would be no faster, though the five horses pulling it looked in better
condition than the naer’s. Their swollen train would be lucky to cover twenty
miles a day.

Alan waited with Riannon’s horse. “It was less of a headache going to war.”

Riannon did not disagree. She took the reins from him and swung up into the
saddle.

“But at least one of the ladies is uncommonly easy on the eye,” Alan said.

“Which no one could ever say about my Lord Damory,” Riannon said.

Alan laughed. “A pity it is that she’s taken to the travelling carriage.”

Riannon knew he did not mean Aveline. To her surprise, she soon saw Lady Eleanor
mount a fine grey palfrey. It had not occurred to her that Alan referred to the
lady’s niece rather than herself. Beside the handsome aunt, the niece paled to a
nervous nonentity who excited compassion rather than admiration.

The cavalcade finally began to move. Lady Eleanor rode at the head, away from
the dust. One of her mounted escort included a minstrel. The lady intended to
convey her niece to her wedding in fitting style. Riannon thought it a great
shame that the Lady Cicely possessed none of her aunt’s wit or spirit. Still, a
livelier woman might suffer more being married to her eldest brother, if he were
anything like her memories of her blustering, bullying, boorish sire. Riannon
would have wagered her teeth that Aveline felt no qualms for the match she had
designed even now that she had met poor Cicely. After all, Cicely’s personal
inadequacies diminished the value of her inheritance by not a single acre or
knight’s fee.

They had gone less than two miles before an esquire rode back to invite her to
join the Lady Eleanor. Riannon urged her horse forwards.

Eleanor wore a snowy white wimple framing her face, as befitted a widow, beneath
the broad-brimmed straw hat that shielded her from the sun. Her long overtunic
was a highly expensive shade of crimson, which looked all the more striking
against the pale grey of her mare. Even the loose ends of her girdle glittered
with decorative gold work. Nothing about the lady did not catch the eye, though
a woman with so fair a face and figure would have drawn Riannon’s gaze even had
she worn an undyed woollen mantle about her shoulders and stood up to her knees
in mud outside a peasant’s hovel. Conscious of not wanting to stare, Riannon
risked only the most fleeting of glances at the lady’s face before fixing her
attention beyond her horse’s ears.

“In such weather, we should make good time today,” Eleanor said. “Do you not
think, Lady Riannon?”

“Yes, lady,” Riannon said.

After a pause, Eleanor said, “And the road is in an excellent state of repair.
Let us hope that more than half my pottery survives this leg.”

“Yes, lady.”

“Entertainment is an excellent way to pass a long and tedious ride, do you not
agree? And what could be more agreeable than rich conversation?”

“Yes, lady.”

For the next mile, Riannon responded to Eleanor’s bland remarks about the
weather, the countryside, the state of crops, and all manner of commonplaces.
The road wound through a checkerboard of arable land thick with ripening oats
and vetch, and forests resplendent in greenery. In places, the hedges and
undergrowth needed severe cutting back where they encroached on the road and
could provide plentiful cover for brigands. Not that so large a party as theirs
need fear ambush or attack.

Happily, the ford their horses splashed across proved wellmaintained and would
be no major obstacle to the carts and carriages. Riannon had asked the marshals
about the state of the bridges ahead and received reassurances that they need
not divert for want of a safe river crossing. The years of her exile left her
ignorant of all but the vaguest idea of the route they would travel north to the
central royal stronghold and city at Sadiston. What memories she retained were
coloured by her angry, violent rejection by her father and her desperate flight
away from the lands of her birth. She should have expected such unpleasant
thoughts would intrude as she neared the location of those scenes.

“I’ve previously believed myself fortunate never to have experienced a siege,”
Eleanor said. “But I find myself now regretting the knowledge I might have
gleaned.”

Surprised, and unsure she had heard right, Riannon turned to the lady. Eleanor
looked thoughtful, as if she worried a problem of gravest importance. Riannon
belatedly realised that the lady’s escort had fallen back. She and Eleanor rode
side by side out of anyone else’s hearing. The arrangement could not be
accidental and should not have been one she had been unaware of whilst lost in
her gloomy past. Riannon caught Eleanor watching her.

“I’ve never had the privilege of meeting a lady knight before,” Eleanor said.
“I suppose that you know much about siege craft.”

“Somewhat, lady.”

“Pray be so good as to tell me, then, which is the more effective, the frontal
assault or encirclement?”

Riannon cast a searching look at Eleanor and encountered only an expression of
quizzical interest.

“The approach to any siege depends on many factors,” Riannon said. “The size of
your army. Morale. The quality and number of the opposing garrison. Their
stores. If there is a weakness in the defences that you can exploit. These are
but some of the considerations that weigh in your decision. Surely, lady, you do
not plan to go to war?”

“Not a war. A single campaign. My army is small but, I flatter myself, not
without valour and determination. Though the defences I face are truly
formidable.”

Riannon glanced sidelong. The lady’s eyes shone with amused challenge. Riannon
suspected she was being outflanked.

“I suppose I could concentrate my artillery on the walls,” Eleanor said. “That
is an accepted method for battering down defences, is it not?”

“Yes, lady. Have you ballistas or mangonels?”

“Which is the more powerful? My weaponry is of no mean calibre.”

Riannon grinned.

“I shan’t accept defeat,” Eleanor said.

“Perhaps, then, lady, you should offer to parley.”

“Oh, I wish for more than just a brief discussion under flags of truce. My aim
is a breach in those defences and a lasting, amicable accord to follow.”

Confident that she now understood, Riannon tugged off a glove and offered it to
Eleanor. “My surrender, lady.”

Eleanor laughed and accepted the glove. “To your virtue of courtliness, I must
add great forbearance. You take my sporting in good part, and I’m greatly in
your debt for it. I must warn you, though, Lady Riannon, that my threadbare
stock of good qualities does not include gallantry. You see, I’ll tuck this
glove in my girdle rather than promptly return it, because I wish to take
shameful advantage of our détente.”

Riannon retained her amusement, though she braced herself for questions about
her scar or the circumstances of her knighting.

“You must have travelled widely,” Eleanor said. “I envy you that. Tell me about
some of the fabulous places you’ve seen. I once heard a merchant tell of a land
where men have faces as dark as mid-winter mummers with soot smeared over their
skins.”

Riannon gave Eleanor a long look. “Yes, lady, I’ve been to where it is never
cold. Not even when it should be the deep of winter. Men there have dark skins.”

“Do they wear the same clothes? If they suffer no winter, they’d have no need
for fur-lined mantles. Do their crops grow all year around if the ground does
not freeze at any time?”

Riannon frowned as she cast her mind back to the half a year she spent broiling
in the employment of a Themalian prince. Eleanor asked probing, intelligent
questions quite unlike any Riannon expected from a woman who mocked herself as
frivolous and light-minded. In doing so, Eleanor betrayed an already large store
of information about foreign lands and people.

“I correspond with all manner of folk,” Eleanor said. “I’m not above pestering
anyone with letters and demanding like in return. You see, another of my
besetting sins is gluttony.”

With the benefit of several hours’ acquaintance, Riannon knew the lady did not
speak literally in referring to a weakness for food. A single glance at her
shapely figure would have dispelled any such notion.

“My greed is for knowledge,” Eleanor said. “I am insatiable. No merchant or
traveller is safe from my snares. I hunger for stories, fables, adventures, for
the fantastic. I hoard words from all corners of the world.”

“What do you seek?” Riannon asked.

Eleanor’s expression dropped all trace of levity. “I wonder that myself,
sometimes.”

Eleanor smiled again. “Most of the time, of course, I think very little. Life is
much easier that way.”

Riannon was unsurprised by the lady’s deflection. Eleanor used self-mockery as a
warrior might a shield. Riannon wondered how frequently Eleanor let her guard
down like that. She could not read the significance of the event. Perhaps she
might if she knew the lady better. The learning would be no hardship.

Aveline woke with a gasp. She felt as cold as if a shadow curled inside her.
Yet, sweat slicked her skin where it touched that of the warm body of her naked
bed mate.

Aveline gently kissed a pale shoulder. The young priestess remained lost in
soundless sleep as Aveline eased herself out of bed. The curtains around the bed
hung loose, though it would have been less stifling had they been tied back.
Privacy made it necessary, since the chamber contained four priestesses from
Aveline’s entourage asleep on pallets around the walls.

Aveline stepped to the open window. Not a breath of breeze stirred the night.
She sucked in humid, suffocating air, yet something cold coiled inside her.
Mortal warmth could not touch it. Aveline put a hand to her chest and looked out
at the engulfing night with awe at feeling, once again, an echo within her of a
divine whisper. She groped in the moonlight for her robe. She didn’t bother with
her linen chemise, but fastened her girdle, with its hanging purse, about her
waist.

Her bare feet slapped on the hard-packed floors as she groped along the dark
corridor to find an external door in the unfamiliar grove house.

Aveline walked out into a courtyard washed in grey light. A cat bolted away from
the door with silent haste. Aveline sucked in air that proved barely less
oppressive than in her borrowed bedchamber. The coolness still nestled behind
her ribs and cradled her heart.

“I come to obey your summons,” she whispered to the night.

The murmur of snores and footfalls of her entourage carried from the main
courtyard on the other side of the modest stable block. Most of her servants
slept in blankets on the ground for want of better accommodation at this grove
house. The Lady of Barrowmere and her large retinue lodged half a mile away at
the manor house of one of her dependents.

Lady Eleanor of Barrowmere. Finding her at Highford had been an interesting
surprise, and not unwelcome for relieving Aveline of the necessity of holding
the bride-to-be’s limp hand all the way to the basilica door. Aveline should
have known Lady Eleanor’s connection to the new countess. It was unlike her,
too, to have forgotten that the lady’s husband had died. Wealthy widows made
marriage prizes second only to heiresses.

Aveline strode across the courtyard and past the solitary kitchen building
wreathed in the stench of rotting food scraps. She paused to take her bearings.
The grove must be that way. She headed for the ghostly trees, where she found
the well-beaten path and turned to follow it.

Her feet trod the dust stirred by countless priestesses and worshippers. She
might be the most important woman called this way by the unspoken will of the
Lady of Destiny, but for certès she was neither the first, nor would she be the
last.

The first pool looked black. Shadows from the surrounding trees stretched
towards it and bled into it. Aveline halted only long enough to sight the way
through to the sacred water. Only initiated priestesses trod this path. Aveline
pushed a low branch out of the way. In the morning, she would tell the senior
priestess that she needed more careful maintenance of the area. That should put
the fear of the Goddess into the servile creature.

At this grove, underground springs fed both holy pools. Not even the whisper of
trickling water broke the silence. No, not silence. Rustlings of unseen
creatures moving across the dry twigs and leaves of the forest litter cracked
the night.

Aveline stood listening. On a night like this, cloaked in moonlight and
solitude, she felt like parts of her dissolved – as if the sharp edges that set
her as a thing apart from the rest of creation blurred, and the outer reaches of
herself merged with the greater whole. Not lessened, but more alive to the rest
of the Goddess’s will. The Goddess called her with divine murmurs and hearing
required more than ears.

Aveline knelt at the edge of the sacred pool and muttered the prayer of
beginning. She stroked the surface with two fingers. Even the water was tepid
this summer’s night. She lifted her wet fingers to trace the quartered circle on
her forehead and put her fingers to her mouth to touch blessed water to the tip
of her tongue. She smelled sex on her hand from her energetic encounter earlier
with the nubile young priestess. She smiled. The Goddess would understand.