Standard of Honor (61 page)

Sylvester shrugged. “I don't know. I've never thought about that. I always use the fire pit in the front cave.”

“Hmm. Well, we'll soon find out. There must be a chimney of some kind in the roof there. If light can get in, then air must be able to get out by the same route.”

THE DOWNPOUR HAD NOT ABATED
by the middle of the afternoon, but the temperature had plummeted so deeply that it felt more like a winter's day in England than anything one might ever expect to encounter in
Cyprus. And then the wind came up, gradually at first, then strengthening to a gale and later still to a howling, lethal fury the like of which none of them had ever seen. In the forest below their cliff face, whole trees were uprooted and sent flying while others, older and more established, were shattered and sundered by the power of the winds, weak forks ripped apart and great limbs and branches torn away and transformed into flying weapons. Awe-stricken, but too wet and tired and miserable to really care about the reasons underlying the phenomenon, no one could explain it and no one tried. When they grew bored with watching the catastrophe, they concentrated all their energies upon drying themselves and their clothing, and staying warm.

The wagons had arrived and been unloaded long before the wind arose, every able-bodied man in the party turning to the task of carrying cargo up the treacherous slope of shifting shale and rocks beneath the cliff face and stowing it in the front cave, where a veritable bonfire now roared. When everything was safely moved, André sent them all out again, this time to find a sheltered spot in which to conceal the wagons and horses, and then to gather firewood to stave off the rapidly increasing cold. He had gone with them, as had Sylvester, leaving behind only a single elderly man from the cook's crew to tend to the ladies, should they require anything. That, too, had been before the storm winds really asserted themselves, and they had still been gathering piles of wood when one savage, icy gust of swirling wind plucked one of their number up bodily and threw
him down the rocky slope to land unconscious, one arm broken and his head bleeding against a stone. That caused them to cut short their fuel gathering and settle for transporting what they had gathered up into the safety of the caverns as quickly as they could move.

There had been no question of continuing the hunt in such weather, or even of making the journey homeward to Limassol, for they had all seen with their own eyes the power of that wind. Instead, St. Clair had set all hands to preparing for a night in the cave. The twelve men-at-arms had been put to work at once, building an angled wall of stones and rubble across the narrow entrance to the cavern in order to deflect the force of the gusts that howled through the opening. The top of it was still half the height of a man short of the entrance's highest point, but it was high enough and strong enough to reduce the howling force of the wind to tolerable levels. Behind the wall, in a wide ring around the central fire pit—the floor of the main cavern was easily thirty paces long and almost the same in width—they had set up four leather tents as sleeping quarters, where they would be out of the wind gusts that still spilled into the cave from time to time. They could not drive pegs into the stone floor, but they were able to raise the tents solidly nonetheless by securing the guy ropes to heavy stones, and while all of that was happening, the cook and his crew were roasting a haunch of venison on a spit that they had placed over a second fire.

Sylvester had also ordered small fires lit in the central and rear caves, and the one in the rear chamber burned
clean and well, as he had thought it would, whereas the one in the central chamber had to be extinguished immediately, before its smoke drove them all out into the storm. Having proved that the rear chamber could be kept warm and ventilated, he offered the two Queens the option of sleeping in the main cave with the rest of the party, in one of the four tents, or of sleeping by themselves in the rear chamber. He was unsurprised when they opted for the latter, for Ianni the steward had already been hard at work fashioning beds and seats by the fire from piles of tents and blankets, and generally converting the space for the women's use, even to the extent of lighting fat candles in standing sconces against the walls and having portable tripods set up as washstands, with ewers of heated water for their ablutions.

André bowed to the Queens and told them that he would have some hot food sent in to them when it was ready, but as he turned to leave, Berengaria called him back and thanked him, although for what, he could not have said. Her courtesy surprised him, for they had barely exchanged ten words all day, but he bowed slightly in acknowledgment and thanked her in return, and then was truly surprised when Joanna asked him to be seated for a moment, since she had several things to say to him and to ask about.

Someone had moved four knee-high boulders close to the fire that Sylvester had built close by the back wall of the chamber, where the smoke rose swiftly and cleanly upward, disappearing into the heights without causing any discomfort, and two of them had been
converted to seats by the simple addition of a wad of padding to each. André thought the padding might be folded leather tents, but even as he looked at them, one of Ianni's men came by with a third pile of cushioning and set it atop another boulder, pressing it into shape. André nodded his thanks to the man and crossed to it, looking inquiringly at Queen Joanna, who stared back at him openly, then sat down across from him, crossing her booted, leather-clad legs and gripping her knee between interlaced fingers.

The effect of that simple movement hit André squarely beneath the rib cage, taking his breath away. He had been looking at both women all day and had, he thought, grown inured to the fact that they were women dressed as men, but they had been wearing heavy woolen cloaks all day, too, and all of them, himself included, had been concentrating on other things, and that had greatly dissipated the impact of their appearance. Now, however, they had laid aside their cloaks and the leather cuirasses they had worn for hunting, and both had found time to brush their hair, but they had not yet had any opportunity to change their clothing completely and they were now wearing only light, knee-length tunics, much like surcoats, over leather breeches that revealed, shockingly, the shapes of their legs and hips, so that by raising her armored knee and grasping it the way she had, Joanna Plantagenet had filled his mind and vision, instantly, with the awareness of her body. In looking away so quickly, he had undone himself further, because Queen Berengaria,
similarly clad—although the word that came to him instantly was
unclad
—had been moving towards him, bending slightly forward so that the shape and fullness of her breasts were emphasized.

He closed his eyes instinctively, feeling the warm flush of redness creeping over his face, but when he opened them again, neither of the women appeared to have noticed anything amiss.

“I have been most impressed with you today, Master St. Clair,” Joanna said clearly. “The task you were given is an imposition that could easily have been placed upon someone else. I know that, because I am the one who asked that you be given it, for my own selfish reasons. But you have discharged it admirably, with great patience and without a single frown or complaint, albeit it has turned out to be a far more hazardous and lengthy task than any of us could have guessed at. You have performed your duty and fulfilled your obligations wondrously, and my brother shall hear of it directly. My sister here thinks the same and will add her voice to mine. And for all you have done for us today, we now thank you.”

“It was my duty, my lady, as you say, but it was also pleasurable. May I—may I ask why you asked for me?”

Joanna flicked a glance at Berengaria, then looked back at St. Clair, her head tipped slightly to one side and a tiny frown of annoyance, or it might have been perplexity, creasing the skin between her brows. “Because I thought you have a mind, sir, and might be capable of conversing sensibly, so why would you jeopardize that opinion by
asking such a foolish question now?” When she saw the uncomprehending look that drew from him, her frown deepened. “I think—” She sat up straighter. “It cannot have escaped your attention, surely, Sir André, that the majority of your fellow knights can barely speak at all, once the topics of exercising, training, killing, and warfare have been exhausted. My brother tells me you can read and write with fluency. Is that correct?”

“It is, my lady.”

“Then that alone sets you apart from all your so-called equals. I have been aware for years of an appalling truth, but I heard it expressed again by Bishop Charles of Beaulieu, less than a month ago, and it shocked me afresh: not one knight in any two hundred chosen at random can either read or write. And they do not even care! In fact they sneer at people who can, and for reasons that are obvious most of those are clerics, who must read and write in order to fulfill their obligations. And thus the gulf between knights and clerics is deepened with bullish stupidity. The fact that you are literate, Master St. Clair, marks you as being different from the ruck of your fellows and raises the possibility that you might be able to talk of things other than war and warfare—topics that a woman like me, or my royal sister here, might enjoy listening to and talking about. That is why I asked for you by name.”

“I see.” André nodded. “And I see, too, why my question annoyed you. Forgive me, my lady, I was not thinking clearly. Quite honestly, it had never occurred to me that anyone might find the ability to read and
write to be an admirable trait. I have taken abuse over it for so long that I try to keep the ability secret nowadays.” He paused. “You said you had some things to say to me and to ask about. I am at your disposal.”

“Ah, if only you were …” Her face betrayed nothing of what she was thinking, and for a moment André grappled with the meaning of her comment, so that he missed what she said next, becoming aware of it only when he realized that her voice had been raised in interrogation and she was now staring at him, clearly awaiting an answer to a question. He pulled himself back to attention quickly.

“Pardon me, my lady, but I was distracted for a moment, and I missed what you said last.”

“I was talking about whether or not Richard might be concerned by our failure to return to Limassol tonight. I asked you if you had thought to send a man back to tell them that we are well but will remain here until the storm abates.”

“Ah. No, I sent no one.” He picked a twig up off the floor and flicked it into the fire. “Your brother is clever enough to see that these conditions are foul and intolerable, and to deduce that we will find some place to wait out the storm.”

“Yes,” Joanna agreed, nodding. “Bu—”

“Besides”—André, staring into the fire, was not even aware that she had begun to speak again—“any man out alone in weather like this, and in territory as wild as this, would run a grave risk of being killed or injured—blown over a cliff somewhere or killed by a falling tree. Had
I sent someone out, and he had been hurt or injured, then nothing would have been achieved except the loss of a valuable man, and we would be faced with coming back again to look for him or find his body. No one in Limassol may know where we are now, but by the time they can organize a search party tomorrow, we will be well on our way home again and we'll meet them coming towards us.”

Joanna nodded her head at that, accepting his logic, and after that they made more small talk for a while, until one of the cook's men cleared his throat from the entrance to the chamber and announced that the food was ready and would be served to them within moments. André rose quickly to his feet and left the women to prepare for their meal, then made his way back into the main cave to join Sylvester and the other huntsmen.

It had been a long and tiring day, and when their stomachs were full, no one appeared to want to move far from the fire, although a hardy few made their way outside to relieve themselves. Around the fireside the talk was desultory at best, and soon heads began to nod here and there and men began to make their way into the tents and out of the way of the occasional gusts of wind that still burst into the cave and whistled and buffeted around in the vaulted heights above their heads. Before long, the first long-drawn-out snores began to roll, and when André caught himself nodding in the fire's warmth he struggled to his feet and helped himself to a double armful of bedding, then made his way back to the chamber where the women were.

He coughed to let them know he was outside their quarters, then told them he would keep guard there, sleeping across their doorway, just to ensure that no one from the outer cave would be tempted to go wandering in the middle of the night. The possibility of that, he knew, was minuscule, but he made his bed on the floor from a double layer of folded leather tents, laid his unsheathed sword, his helmet, and his mailed gloves alongside it, and wrapped himself warmly in blankets over his leather hunting clothes before he lay down. Moments later he heard the sounds of someone throwing wood onto the women's fire, and then came a few brief whispers. Ianni emerged from the cave, carrying a candle, and stepped carefully over André, bidding him a whispered goodnight as he passed.

For some time after that, André lay listening to the sounds of the two Queens talking. He could not make out a word, although he did not really try, and he wondered what they were doing and what they looked like as they prepared for bed. But he soon fell asleep, despite his prurient imaginings.

HE CAME AWAKE
in a surge of panic, surrounded by flickering yellow light and struggling to sit upright and to reach for his sword at the same time. He did not know where he was, only that someone's hand had covered his mouth and nose while he slept. Before he could struggle upright or cry out, however, the hand tightened, pinching his nostrils and pulling him backward, and a sharp voice hissed in his ear, telling him to
be quiet. It was a woman's voice, and all at once he remembered where he was and his vision cleared, so that he saw the woman's face close to his own and promptly froze. Joanna's eyes were wide, as though with fright. He relaxed, and she immediately released him and moved back, placing her hand between her breasts and inhaling, a deep, quavering breath.