Suzanne Robinson (2 page)

By now her voice rivaled Hugo’s roar. Her father winced and glanced back at the group around the fireplace while her mother rolled her eyes and sighed. Waving his hands at Juliana, Hugo lowered his own voice.

“Peace, peace, daughter.”

Juliana’s boots pounded a drumlike rhythm. Her basket clattered in time with her steps and she waved her free arm as she uttered a stream of oaths.

“Holy saints, scourge and pestilence!”

Juliana whirled on her father, her face a darkening pink. Her gray eyes might as well have flashed small bolts of lightning. If her hair hadn’t been caught in a net at the base of her neck, it would have flowed about her like a black storm cloud.

She thought of another oath. “By our blessed Lady of Mercies—”

Hugo threw up his hands again in the face of his daughter’s colorful and intemperate display. The whole of Wellesbrooke castle knew he could face battle with the French king’s army with better fortitude than he could withstand Juliana’s temper. Now he blustered and grumbled as he turned away from his oldest daughter.

“The lot of the damned, that’s what I have, the lot of the damned to be cursed with so evil-tempered a daughter. I don’t wonder she’s without suitors. Her humor is as black as her color. And no doubt that devil’s whelp of a stripping bandit will return to plague my tournament and make my suffering unendurable.” Hugo turned to his wife. “He’ll swoop down on one of my most important guests and take his clothes, I know it. He’s done it before. An impudent thief and a black-natured, willful daughter. I must have the fortitude of a saint.”

Havisia placed her hand on Hugo’s arm and murmured words of comfort. A beauty in the accepted mode of white skin and golden hair, Mother had always pitied her eldest daughter for her coloring. Juliana watched her parents turn away, Hugo complaining, Havisia consoling. Her booted foot tapped against the floor. Slanting black brows drew together and her fingers drummed against the basket. She turned abruptly on her heel without another word and stomped out of the hall with Alice in her wake.

Holding her skirt high, Juliana charged down the keep stairs and out into the icy morning air. Winter had stayed late this year and hurled cold winds across Wellesbrooke in an attempt to forestall spring. The sun was floating up over the battlements now, and the castle was awake.

Cooks scurried back and forth between the kitchen building and the keep. Children chased dogs, a stray piglet, and each other around the yard in front of the
boar pit. Juliana ignored the din issuing from the smithy, the armory, and the carpenter’s workshop. Sparing no glance for the dozens of castle folk in the bailey, she turned her back on the newly constructed hall with its glass windows. Wellesbrooke wasn’t the largest castle in the kingdom, but Hugo was determined to make it one of the most modern.

She marched past the brewhouse and laundry, and by the time she came to the stables her steps had lightened. She and her father often engaged in such clashes, but she’d grown accustomed to them. Their temperaments were alike, too alike to avoid noisy battles. In any case, her mood was foul because of the coming tournament. Hugo was holding it ostensibly to celebrate Yolande’s sixteenth birthday. An heiress of great wealth, Yolande de Say had been entrusted to Lady Welles’s training. Hugo, ever the wily maneuverer, was hoping to match the girl with his nephew Richard.

“Thunder of God, I hate tournaments,” Juliana said under her breath as she waited for the grooms to bring her mare.

“But this be the last one before we move to Vyne Hill. You said so, mistress.”

“Thanks be to God.”

Juliana scowled across the bailey without seeing the shepherds, brewers, cooks, and armorers in her view. For her, tournaments had always been an occasion of humiliation. So had May celebrations, festivals, and feasts. So many occasions at which she sat while her sisters flirted, teased, and danced with suitors.

At Wellesbrooke on May Day last month there had been a feast and dancing. It was a custom for the youths and young men to gather flowers and make garlands for their favorite lady’s hair, and this year as in most, Juliana went bareheaded. Oh, she had received a garland from
her father, and one from his oldest retainer, Sir Barnaby. Tokens of pity. She’d thanked Hugo and Barnaby, separated the garlands and worn the flowers on her gown.

Barnaby appeared leading her mare. “Good morrow, Mistress Juliana.”

Barnaby’s years could be counted by the number of gray hairs that were rapidly obscuring his brown ones. Even his thick mustache was mostly gray. His skin was weathered like old wood and cracked like drought-dried earth. He had a small fief from Hugo and had known Juliana her whole life.

“Barnaby,” Juliana snapped as she saw the mare’s saddle. “You know well I ride astride on long journeys.”

Blinking at her, Barnaby pretended surprise. “I forgot.”

“When donkeys sing carols you’ll forget,” Juliana said. “Oh, never mind. I’ve lost too much time already. Are you coming?”

Juliana mounted her mare before either Barnaby or a groom could assist her. Barnaby shoved Alice on another mare.

“Aye, mistress. I’ll follow directly.”

Alice sneezed again. “Oh, mistress, you know how I am with horses.”

“Alice, I’m not going to listen. The rushes on the floor make you sneeze, geese and chickens make you sneeze, new-dyed cloth makes you sneeze, horses make you sneeze. Pull your head-rail up over your nose.”

Juliana arranged the voluminous folds of her overrobe and cloak and checked the set of her leg over the sidesaddle. Her eye caught the built-up heel of her right boot. All her footwear had to be made this way, for her right leg was a thumb’s width shorter than her left. The sign of the devil, her chaplain said, a sign that Juliana was cursed and must guard against evil more than most. Her lips
thinned and pressed against each other, forming a tight seam like that between the stones in the castle walls.

Hugo complained of her stormy temper, but who wouldn’t feel disgruntled. Everyone either pitied her for her deformity or feared her as the minion of the devil. Alice said she brought much of it on herself by glowering all day long and by her contrariness. Juliana had no time for pleasantries. They did her no good.

“Well, come on, then,” she said to Alice and Barnaby. She patted the sack fastened to her saddle. “We’ve over three hours’ ride ahead and I want to get these herb seeds to Vyne Hill so they can be planted.”

“We should take more men,” Barnaby said.

He urged his horse alongside Juliana’s as she rode across the bailey and through the gatehouse.

“No time, and I don’t need them. Damnation, we’re only going to Vyne Hill.”

Vyne Hill was a manor left to her by the Countess of Chessmore after she’d saved the old lady’s life with her herbal skills. Juliana had caused a scandal by insisting upon occupying the rundown estate. Hugo had ranted and bellowed, with his usual success. Mother had demurred, but Mother had given up finding a husband for her after that disastrous aborted marriage ceremony with Edmund Strange. Had it been a whole year? The shame still seared her as if he had rejected her last night.

Her parents had negotiated a marriage with Edmund, who was Baron Stratfield’s nephew and cousin to Gray de Valence. Juliana had been uncertain, but obedient. The ceremony was performed. There was feasting and merriment, and then the bedding ceremony. Juliana’s thoughts veered away from that memory. It was the reason she’d balked at having anything to do with another suitor. She secretly suspected that her parents dreaded
trying to find her a husband of the proper rank almost as much as she.

Now, after a year’s persistent refusal on her part, no one objected to her spinsterhood. She had convinced Hugo that she was like a Beguine, one of those religious women who took minor orders and devoted themselves to service in the world. Juliana suspected that, like herself, her family was looking forward to August, when she would move permanently to Vyne Hill. Then she would have peace, and so would they. In the meantime, it was a fine day for a ride.

She led the way beneath the giant iron teeth of the portcullis and out of the castle. Wellesbrooke castle had been erected on a spit of land that jutted out into the river Clare and divided the stream into two branches. The castle loomed over the divergence, connected to shore by two bridges, one over the east and one over the west branch.

Juliana threaded her way through the foot traffic on the west bridge—farmers bringing produce, huntsmen, reeves, bailiffs, women bringing dough to be baked in castle ovens. As so often happened, Juliana’s temper improved with the distance between her and Wellesbrooke. Once off the bridge, she turned north along the track beside the Clare.

She rode in this direction through fields and then woods for over an hour. By the time she reached the stream that marked her turn eastward, she’d had her fill of Alice’s sneezes and complaints about her delicate health. The maid was a big woman, plump, with burnished, flyaway hair and a nose that was always pink. Juliana was guiding her mare along a portion of collapsed stream bank when Alice moaned.

“Me back. Me back’s near broke with riding this bony nag. Ah-ah-ah-ahchoooo!”

Juliana glanced back to see Alice’s hands fly up to her face. The end of a rein flicked her horse’s ear, and the animal bolted. Jumping the stream, it careened into the forest along a muddy track that pierced deep into the North Wood. Alice shrieked and bounced in the saddle.

“Watch your seat,” Juliana shouted as she kicked her horse and rode after her maid.

Barnaby came after her, but he was old and rode much slower. Juliana plunged down the narrow track dodging branches wet from a night’s heavy rain. Alice vanished around a twisting curve in the track. Soon all Juliana could do was follow the sound of her wails. She swerved along the jagged path. Mud flew in her face as her mare galloped, but she urged the horse on, fearful that Alice would lose her balance and fall or be dragged.

She heard another scream, and then nothing. Rounding another sharp bend, she slowed and came to a halt. Alice sat in the middle of the path. While Juliana dismounted, the maid got on all fours, put her hand on her back and moaned.

“Me back, me poor back. It’s broke, it is.”

Barnaby joined them and sat on his horse gawking at the muddy and moaning figure of the maid. Juliana stalked over to her.

“Hush. Have you no pluck at all, woman? Here, take my hand.” Juliana pulled the maid to her feet and began poking and prodding her to the accompaniment of Alice’s groans. “Just as I thought. Nothing broken.” She looked around and spotted a spray of ceramic shards. “Nothing except my herb jars, by God’s grace. Thunder of heaven! If you’ve broken all my pots, I’ll skin you, I will.”

“I couldn’t help it,” Alice wailed.

Juliana winced at the sound, then sighed. “I know, Alice. Pay me no heed. This tournament has me right
evilly disposed. You rest here. Barnaby, you find her horse, and I’ll go back for the basket. I’ve no doubt she dropped it back there somewhere.”

She walked her horse slowly back down the track. To the side, beneath a dead shrub, she spotted a squat blue jar. Dismounting, she hiked up her skirt and picked her way toward it through dead leaves and mud. She’d been wise to wear an old gown of coarse wool and one of her mother’s oldest cast-off cloaks. The end of the garment trailed in the mud. Juliana stopped to pick it up and sling it over her arm. Then she began to pick up herb jars.

She worked her way down the path, leaving it occasionally to retrieve a pot. Her boots soon wore thick coats of mud. It was growing harder and harder to walk in them. She’d made a sack of the end of her cloak, and it was filled with small stoppered pots, each carefully labeled.

Juliana stopped for a moment beside a water-filled hole in the middle of the track. It was as long as a small cart. She remembered splashing through it when she chased after Alice. A little way off she could hear the stream churning on its way to join the Clare. She would have to turn back soon, but she was reluctant. She still hadn’t found the jar containing leaves of agrimony, a plant with spiky yellow flowers. She needed the agrimony, for one of the daughters of a villein at Vyne Hill had a persistent cough.

The child, Jacoba, needed to drink a decoction of the herb flavored with honey. Juliana didn’t want to admit that much of her ill humor arose from her concern about Jacoba and her desire to get to Vyne Hill as soon as possible and dose the little girl. Yesterday Jacoba had been worn out from the violent spasms. If she lost more strength, she could be in danger.

Clutching her cloakful of pots, Juliana searched the
woods to either side of the track for the small white jar. All at once she saw it lying on the opposite side of the path at the base of a stone the size of an anvil. So great was her relief that she lunged across the track. She sailed over the puddle of water, but landed in mud. Her boots sank to her ankles.

“Hell’s demons.”

Stepping out of the ooze, she picked up the jar, balanced on the edge of the mud, and bent her knees in preparation for a jump. At the last moment she heard what she would have noticed had she been less intent on retrieving the jar. Hoofbeats thundered toward her. Teetering on the edge of the mud, she glanced in the direction of the stream. Around a bend in the track hurtled a monstrous giant destrier, pure black and snorting, with a man astride it so tall that he nearly matched the size of his mount. Juliana stumbled back. She glimpsed shining chain mail, emerald silk, and a curtain of silver hair before a wall of black horseflesh barreled past her. An armored leg caught her shoulder. She spun around, thrown off balance by the force of the horse’s motion. Her arms flew out. Pots sailed in all directions. Legs working, she stumbled into mud and fell backward into the puddle. As she landed she could hear a lurid curse.

She gasped as she felt the cold water. Her hands hit the ground and sent a shower of mud onto her head and shoulders. Juliana sputtered and wheezed, then blinked her muddy lashes as she beheld the strange knight. He’d pulled up his destrier, and the beast had objected. The stallion rose on his hind legs and clawed the air, snorting and jerking at the bridle. Those great front hooves came down and landed not five paces from Juliana. More mud and dirty water spewed from beneath them and into her face.