Sing Me Home (4 page)

“
S
o, you’ll turn me into a ‘proper’ minstrel, will you?” Maura slung Nutmeg’s basket over her shoulder as she caught up with Colin on the road. “Is there even such a thing?”

She was breathing hard as she kept pace with him, tired from packing all the cooking utensils back on the donkey, a job she set to with haste so she wouldn’t have to think too hard about why Colin was grinning so much after Arnaud’s agreement.

“Tell me, Maura.” Colin turned that piercing blue gaze upon her. “Why do you despise us all so much?”

She blinked. “I don’t despise you.”

“Yet just the idea of training to become a minstrel puts a scowl on your pretty face.”

She opened her mouth to speak but words of denial died in her throat. Was she really scowling? She supposed she should be acting more grateful, considering the circumstances, but scowling?

And did he really think she had a pretty face?

She shook away the vain thought, promised another Hail Mary before bed, and then tried to control her muddled mind. She couldn’t deny that she didn’t embrace the idea of becoming a minstrel. The Abbess—the woman who had taken her in—had told such terrible stories about the sinfulness of traveling players. The senior sister had kept the nuns and novices shut inside the convent whenever a troupe passed through Killeigh. Maura had only managed to see them yesterday because it had been market day, and their stores of food were down to nothing, it being so soon after Lent. She suspected the Abbess had relented in the hope that Maura would go see the butcher’s boy.

If Maura was honest, it was the
Abbess
who despised minstrels, and Maura believed whatever the Abbess believed. Why would Maura doubt a woman so well educated that she knew Latin and geography and all sorts of wondrous things? Certainly the Abbess came by her opinions fairly.

“There are three kinds of good people in the world,” Maura said, using the Abbess’s own arguments. “Those who pray, those who sow and reap, and those who protect the weak. Minstrels do none of the three.”

“Ah, but we make all three of them laugh.”

“Yes, by encouraging lechery with your acrobats,” she said. “And by taking a poor man’s hard-earned coin by encouraging him to wager on wrestling matches.”

“We let them forget their troubles for a little while—”

“—and their responsibilities.”

“Of which they’ll always have both. What harm is there in giving them a few hours’ reprieve?”

She thought about this as she picked her way around the puddles on the road. His words held truth, but she was having trouble focusing on it, too distracted by the scent that wafted off him, an exotic fragrance that made her imagine strange things—Turkish campfires, Saracen robes, the perfume of desert nights—things she’d only heard about listening to the convent girls’ whispered, heated fantasies in the middle of dark nights.

Stop.

She closed her eyes and muttered three Hail Marys and then three Our Fathers, but knew that her sins were piling up. She needed to see a priest—and soon—for absolution.

Until then, she had to find a way to speak to this man without thinking about things she shouldn’t.

“Your friends,” she said, waving ahead to the rest of the troupe. “They seem very quiet today.”

“Too much ale can leave a wad of wool in the mouth in the morning. They’ll be themselves before evening.”

“Tell me something about them.”

That gaze again, the crinkles beside the eyes, that expression of knowing amusement.

“If I’m going to be traveling with them,” she said, the back of her neck tightening, “I’d best get to know their names at least.”

“Most certainly.” He looked like he was trying to hide a smile as he gestured to his friends. “The man without the ear, the sooty-faced one who entertained all the children with his magic tricks yesterday. We call him Maguire Mudman.”

“That’s an odd name.”

“Padraig—the piper—is called Padraig Smallpipe.” He gestured to the man dancing as he led the way. “And the lady in waiting is Matilda Makejoy.’’

Maura glanced at the pregnant, dark-haired woman swaying upon a donkey—no husband in sight, though Arnaud seemed attentive—and thought how very far she’d traveled from the convent where the worst of sins was to waste a bit of good beef.

“You know Arnaud,” Colin continued. “He’s a cranky Gascon who goes by the surname Groshomme.”

“Fatman?”

“Ah, you speak French, and not just to your pet.”

“Our Abbess is from Avignon, so she teaches the novices both French and Latin.”

“But you’re no novice.”

“The Abbess made sure I received many of the same lessons as the novices and the laywomen there just for their education.” She changed the subject by gesturing to the blind man walking with the acrobat twins. “Who’s the harpist?”

“We call him Fingar Full.”

She saw the harpist heft a handful of female backside. One twin playfully batted his hand away.

She said, “Fitting.”

“And the twins,” he added, “are Slaine and Sinead Shortskirts.”

“Slaine and Sinead? Well, there are two names among you that have known baptismal water.” She looked at Colin sidelong, ignoring the urge to tug that single, slender braid that trailed over his shoulder in the Irish way. “What is your nickname, then? Colin the Cuckolder?”

His teeth flashed bright. “I knew you had a tongue for this trade.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

He shrugged an impressive shoulder. “They call me King Colin.”

“Doesn’t that fit like an old slipper.”

“They fancy me a lost king,” he mused, spreading his hand to the woods on either side of the road, “in search of my lost kingdom.”

“King of an alehouse, I suppose?”

“Easy, Maura. You’ll be getting a name, too, sooner rather than later, and it’s likely I’ll be the one to give it to you. ‘Abbess’ doesn’t quite fit.”

“Maura will do.”

“I wonder if it will.” He cocked his head at her. “On the road you have a chance to become someone you are not. Have you never wanted that?”

The question confused her. At the age of five she’d left her milk-mother and came to the convent to sweep floors, where she’d had the presence of half a dozen mothers always around. As she grew, she remembered seeing girls her own age working in the fields from dawn until dusk, but her duties were restricted to the small convent garden, and later, to the warmth of the kitchens. She’d thought herself well-placed, well-loved, for a girl without family, a babe left abandoned.

But then she’d been given the ring—the gold, crested ring that had been wrapped in her swaddling clothes—the ring now constricting her third finger. That’s when she realized that her life was a false one, and there was someone else she was supposed to be.

“Your silence speaks for you,” Colin murmured.

She shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“There isn’t a soul on two feet who doesn’t wish, now and again, to be someone else. I can teach you how, Maura.” He squinted at the woods on either side of the road and then stopped walking. “This place will do as well as any. It’s time for our first lesson.”

Colin slid his fingers under the strap of Nutmeg’s basket and then tugged it off her back. She reached for it but caught nothing but air.

“But the troupe,” she said, glancing over her shoulder, “they’ll be halfway to Athlone if we stop—”

“I know the way well enough.”

She tightened her grip on her other pack as he curled his fingers around a strap. “If we delay I won’t be able to cook a midday meal.”

“Arnaud and the minstrels have lived a long time without your cooking skills. They’ll make do while I teach you what you need to know.” He gave her pack another tug. “Come, we have work to do.”

With reluctance, she dropped her shoulder so the pack slid off her back. He placed it against the nook of a tree along with Nutmeg’s basket. Startled by the sudden movement, Nutmeg jutted his head out and sniffed at Colin with a twitching black nose, before clambering atop the basket and darting into the woods.

She glanced over her shoulder to see the last of the minstrels—Fingar Full and the Shortskirt girls—disappear beyond a bend in the path.

Alone, then, on this sliver of a road surrounded by woods.

Alone, with Colin.

He came back to face her. “Late tomorrow,” he said, “you’ll be playing the part of a minstrel in Athlone. Athlone is the center of the king’s cantreds, a city the English control, much to the chagrin of the surrounding O’Conors and McAuley’s. The English like their entertainment almost as much as the Irish, even if they don’t like the Irish as much.”

“If they like hymns,” she said, “then—”

“No hymns, Maura. You shall act in a play with me, taking Matilda’s place.”

“A play.”

“For your first lesson, you shall pretend you are the young and lovely wife of a clerk. And I shall pretend, at first, to be your aged, miserly husband.”

She planted her fists on her hips. “Play wife to your husband?”

“It’s just a play, Maura. A
fabliaux—”

“Give it a fancy French name, but I still know what it means.”

He paused. “You’ve never seen a play, have you?”

She lowered her eyes. Maura was beginning to realize that there were many things in the world she knew nothing about.

“A
fabliaux,
” he said, “is like a liturgical play at Easter or at Christmas. I’ve no doubt you’ve seen enough of them.”

“Of course. I’ve even played in one.”

“The Virgin Mary?”

“A lamb.”

A strange look rippled across his face. He opened his mouth to speak but he stopped and then shook his head. “It’s best if I do all the talking. Just do what I tell you to do, and this will work out fine.”

He stepped closer to her. Though he didn’t touch her, she felt the pressure of his presence magnify as if the wood itself were closing in on them. She wished he would tie his tunic properly, it was always gaping open from the unhooked edge and showing a stretch of tight, muscled chest. The man had the tall, brawny body of a legendary Fenian warrior, hair the black of the mythical Milesians, and eyes a laughing, vibrant blue.

She let her gaze drop to the hollow of his throat. It seemed the safest part of him to look at.

“The play begins,” he said, “like this.”

He raised his voice as if he were standing on a wooden platform rather than on a road pocked with cart-tracks and the imprint of horses’ hooves. He began a rhyming recitation about a clerk ‘full far in his age,’ and the lovely wife ‘he knew so well.’ The words filled the place, as if they stood under the arched roof of some cathedral and not under the shade of trees whose boughs stretched above them. They were not touching, but his voice rumbled through her in a strange, intimate way.

He held out his hand as he finished the first stanza. “Walk to me, Maura. Listen to what I say and act as I bid.”

“Foolishness,” she muttered, but she slipped her hand into his nonetheless. His hand was warm, broad-knuckled, strong, and nicked liberally on the back—scars, no doubt, from wrestling for wagers. He urged her to walk in a circle around him, and she felt like Nutmeg being pulled on a leash.

“The woman he wived was no more than a girl,
With skin as white as the sheen on a pearl,
And eyes as green as the young summer grass,
Full of innocence and vinegar and brass …”

He tugged her a little closer with each circling loop, until she came so near she could feel the heat of him through her clothes.

His voice lowered in timbre.

“Her hair swayed and rippled like wheat in the field,
with each movement of hip and leg and heel.
Broad buttocks she had, and breasts firm and high—”

“That’s quite enough of that.” She turned her face away. “So this isn’t about a saint’s life, I see.”

“It’s a morality play nonetheless.” The corner of his lips twitched in that maddening half-smile again.

She sighed. “Get on with it, will you?”

He tugged on her hand again, but this time he laid her palm flat on his chest. The touch was a shock—his body hard and warm, his chest rising and falling, and all her senses seemed to shift to her palm and the swellings and angles of the man beneath it. She locked her elbow to keep her distance.

He continued reciting while a wind rustled the woods all around them. He talked about how one day a minstrel came to the village. She could only raise her brows as he switched parts from husband to minstrel, leaning in as he looked down at her with a twinkle in his eye. He lifted her hand and pressed his lips upon her knuckles. The touch was wet and rough, and it made her heart skitter.

Colin kept talking, but the words became a dull murmuring in her addled mind. Between stanzas he whispered,
walk around me,
and she did as she was bid.
Stay still, keep your eyes lowered.
And so she did, as they continued to circle one another.
Turn your back on me, walk away from me.
And she did so, only to gasp as he seized her by the arm and jerked her against him so her back slammed against his chest.

The world went still. The birds stopped twittering in the trees around them, the wind stopped rustling through the leaves, and the clouds became fixed in place. Colin went silent. His breath ruffled the hair on her head. She felt his heart beating against her shoulder blade, steady and hard and fast. He shifted his grip to slide his hand across her abdomen. Maura felt something move deep inside her. A slow, sliding sensation that she didn’t understand.

Splaying his fingers, he pressed her closer.

She waited, breathless, her pulse throbbing in her throat, waiting for him to recite the next line. All her senses focused on the rise and fall of his chest and the heat of him pressed against her.

He spoke just above her ear. “What would you do, Maura, if the man you loved held you like this?”