The Champion (41 page)
‘Who eats plain bread when he can have honey on it?’ John responded, advancing on her. ‘Hamon offered me a woman as a matter of course. I could have tumbled any one of a dozen, but I didn’t want them, I wanted you.’
She stared at him, a small frown between her brows.
‘You really don’t see, do you?’ John said in a voice husky with desire and surprise. ‘It’s not pretence at all.’ He was close enough now to touch her cheek, to feather its outline with a fingertip. Most attractive women were conscious of the power their looks wielded, but she seemed unaware of her allure, as innocent as a virgin. The thought sent an impatient flare of lust through his body. He had to have her. A fallen angel, almost, but not quite pure, and still so very young. The lures were irresistible, and John had never been a man to abstain in the name of conscience.
‘I am not a whore,’ she said, and her voice shook slightly, but she did not turn her face from his touch.
‘I have never bedded with a whore in my life, and I am not about to begin,’ he said scornfully. ‘I am offering you a place in my household – as a sempstress, with, shall we say, special duties? I will pay you handsomely for your needlework.’ He smiled, his tongue poking at the side of his cheek. ‘Now you can either slap my face and stalk out, or put down that robe and come to bed.’
She looked through her eyelashes at the man who was tracing the line of her jaw. He had wealth and social position at his command; the riches she had dreamed about could be hers for the speaking of a single word. She wondered what he would do if she did slap his face. Probably no woman had ever dared … except perhaps his mother.
‘Well,’ he prompted, the dark eyes narrow with amusement and a hint of impatience, ‘are we to stand here until dawn?’
Monday shook her head. ‘I am afraid,’ she confessed.
‘Of me?’
‘Of taking so great a step. Here at Lavoux, I have a safe home for myself and my son.’
‘It is no great step from here to my bed,’ he said coaxingly. His forefinger trailed down her throat into the neck opening of her gown, where further enquiry was prevented by the silver brooch. ‘I will be good to you, I swear it. Besides, how safe do you think your haven really is?’
‘What do you mean?’
John abandoned the brooch and instead set about removing the circlet and veil from her brow. ‘Hamon de Rougon follows you with his eyes. How long before his wife’s jealousy sees you out in the gutter?’
It was an overstatement, but nevertheless it contained a morsel of truth, and fed Monday’s hidden anxiety.
‘You will be doing yourself a great service, and giving me great pleasure,’ he murmured, and stepped back, her wimple and circlet in his hand. ‘A murrain on all head coverings,’ he said. ‘A woman’s hair is meant to be admired.’ He wrapped the fabric around the circlet and tossed it on the bed as if casting a quoit. Then he took the torn robe she had been clutching and disposed of that too. ‘Loose it for me,’ he commanded softly.
With shaking hands, Monday reached to her braid and untied the silken ribbons plaited through it. As she untwisted her hair and shook it down around her shoulders and hips in a brown-gold skein, she knew that she had taken an irrevocable step. For better or worse, she had entered the lion’s den.
Monday had not known what to expect of the lord John. She had no experience by which to judge him, except the one brief incident that had led to Florian’s birth. The memory of his begetting was a haze of drunken, molten lust. She had seen the whores of the tourney camp, had heard her parents behind the screen of hangings in their tent, and had observed Hamon and Aline indulge in the less intimate stages of foreplay, but it was not knowledge enough. When he laid her down on the bed and began to caress her, she was strung with tension, and this time she was as sober as a stone.
John seemed not in the least set down by her ignorance or shyness. When he saw that she was disturbed by the half-open door, he closed it on his squires, and snuffed all but one of the candles, leaving just enough light so that he could see to undress her. Monday closed her eyes so that she would not see what he was doing, but just as swiftly opened them again, feeling too vulnerable.
‘I do not know what you have heard about me,’ John said wryly, ‘but I am no ravisher. I prefer my women willing. Here, would you like some wine?’ He rolled to the side of the bed and reached out to the coffer.
‘No!’ Monday’s throat closed on the very suggestion. ‘No,’ she said in a more controlled voice, as she saw him look at her askance. ‘I was … I was drunk the last time.’
‘Ah.’ He nodded knowingly. ‘And that was the first time too, I suppose.’
Her face flamed. ‘Yes.’
John poured wine for himself, ‘Then it does seem that I have an unfair advantage, but life is never fair.’ He dabbled his forefinger in the wine and anointed her left breast in a spiral of pinkish droplets leading to her nipple. Her flesh stiffened and stood proud, partly with the cold feeling of the wine, partly with the delicate pleasure of his touch. ‘You can see yourself either as the victim of a predator, or the pupil of a widely travelled scholar,’ he murmured as he applied more wine to her other breast, and drew a trail down over her belly, stopping as he reached the dark triangle of pubic hair.
The timbre of his voice, the slow meandering of his touch were both arousing, but what finally allayed her qualms was not his manner, but the words themselves. A victim or a pupil. He was offering her knowledge, as once she had sought the knowledge of the quill from Alexander. The more she learned, the better equipped she was to deal with life. And John would be paying her to learn.
‘So, you are leaving us?’ Aline eyed the folded clothes and effects packed in the small travelling chest, and then, with speculation, the young woman preparing to close and strap the lid. ‘What is he like as a lover?’
Monday blushed. Since she had spent the entire night in John’s bed, and he had insisted that she and Florian sit at the high table with him to break their fast, it was common knowledge throughout the castle that the Count of Mortain had taken a fancy to Lavoux’s young sempstress. And it was a fancy that had outlasted the dawn, for here she was, preparing to leave with him. Curiosity, not just Aline’s, was rife.
‘I do not know,’ Monday said as she latched the straps and nodded to the waiting servant. He toted the box on his shoulders and strode from the room, the sound of his whistling trailing jauntily in his wake.
‘What do you mean, you don’t know!’ Aline laughed incredulously. ‘You spend all night in his bed and sit in his lap this morning and you do not know!’
‘Well, how should I?’ Monday retorted. ‘How many lovers do you think I have had to be able to make comparisons?’
Aline swiped at her, only half in play. ‘Don’t be facetious, tell me. After all, I directed his interest your way.’
‘You did?’
‘Of course. If I had not wanted him to notice you, I would never have instructed you to do your mending right beneath his nose. And if you remember, I gave you that rose oil to perfume your skin, and helped dress your hair.’
Not for the first time, Monday felt a spurt of irritation at Aline’s penchant for manipulating the lives of those around her. It was also annoying that Aline should think her incapable of attracting John without assistance. ‘Why should you want him to notice me?’ she asked frostily.
Aline shrugged and looked at her fingernails. ‘You were wearing a rut for yourself ‘ she said, but her words carried no conviction. ‘Besides, you have a royal protector now, one who enjoys reading books as much if not more than Hamon does.’
There it was, the crux of the matter, Monday thought grimly. Aline wanted her out of the way so she would not be a threat to her marriage. The knowledge hung unspoken between them. They avoided looking at each other, each aware of the resentment they would find. ‘And if he tires of me when I am no longer a novelty, what then?’ Monday demanded.
‘Either you must make sure that he does not or if you think you can only keep him interested for a while, then you must save enough in the good times to outlast the lean. But at the back of your mind, you know that already.’
Monday fiddled with the clasp of her cloak and knew that she had more cause to be grateful to Aline than to bear a grudge. Already on her middle finger, beside her silver ring and the one that had been her mother’s, there gleamed proof of John’s largesse in the form of another one of faceted gold set with three garnets. She knew from her life on the tourney field that such a jewel would purchase food and lodging for at least a month. He had promised her a Spanish mare to ride upon, and her choice of the mercer’s booths in Rouen to fashion herself fitting garments for the mistress of a prince. But there was more to her situation than just the garnering of wealth and knowledge. She only had to think of the wine poured out on her body to shiver with sensuous remembrance.
‘I know you mean well for me,’ she said, turning to Aline, ‘and it is of my own free will that I am doing this now. You have been very good to me, and I will always remember your care.’ Without warning, there were tears in her eyes.
Aline gave her a warm, impulsive hug. ‘And you have been less of a servant than a sister to me,’ she responded. ‘Take care of yourself and Florian. Write to me, let me know how you are faring; I will hold you in my prayers.’
‘And you in mine.’
The two women embraced again. Then Aline released Monday and slanted her a look sidelong. ‘You still haven’t told me what he is like as a lover,’ she said mischievously.
John’s dogs roved the bedchamber, sniffing the earthy scent of new plaster on the walls and nosing the rushes which were freshly strewn and still redolent of the river meadows from which they had been cut. Everything about the great Château Gaillard was new. Two years ago, Richard’s mighty fortress on the Seine at Andeli had not existed by so much as a single stone. Now it towered over the landscape, mocking King Philip of France with its saucy virility in what was supposed to be neutral territory. And the work still continued, with scaffolding embracing new sections of the wall and an army of craftsmen toiling night and day to increase Gaillard’s imposing magnificence. Everything that Richard knew about castle building had gone into her construction, and so had a mass of wealth, raised by fines and taxes, by reliefs and the selling of offices.
‘What’s inside his braies is not so impressive,’ John remarked as he followed his dogs around the chamber, sniffing like them, his nose wrinkled, and a cynical twist to his lips. ‘Building his cock in stone is the only way he’ll ever make it rise.’ He wandered to the window embrasure and stared broodingly out.
Monday said nothing. She had not been travelling with John for long, but already she knew that he suffered from mercurial twists of mood; that a single remark could sour his temper and unloose a stream of venom upon the victim. She had also learned in this last half day, how much John admired, resented, and feared his great, golden brother Richard. She suspected that Château Gaillard was as much a thorn in John’s side as it was in King Philip’s.
Attendants were still carrying John’s baggage into the room, and the staff of his household, his clerks and mercenaries, chaplains and body servants, flitted in and out. Florian sat on the floor, alternately sucking his thumb and a square of old linen to which he had become inseparably attached. For a two-year-old, the day’s journey had been exhausting. Scooping him up in her arms, Monday took him into a small side chamber where she made him a bed from her cloak and sat with him, smoothing his brow until he fell asleep.
She was rapidly discovering that the life of a prince was not so different to that of a tourney knight. There were long days spent in the saddle or sitting in one of the baggage wains as John’s entourage rumbled along the rutted roads of Normandy. The only difference over the tourney circuit was that the destinations usually had stone walls, tiled roofs, and the comforts of privilege.
When she returned to the main room, John was no longer there. Two servants were putting together his bed which had been unloaded in pieces from the baggage wain, and his clerks were already at work, seated at a trestle with their writing equipment. Monday went to her small, battered travelling chest which stood against a wall, began to unpack it, then changed her mind. John had not said whether she would be sleeping in his chamber or not. Perhaps he would just summon her when she was required, and she and Florian would sleep with his other servants, such as his laundress, and the man who filled his bath. But where they were billeted in this enormous labyrinth of a fortress, she had no idea.
She wandered over to the clerks. ‘Do you know where the Count of Mortain has gone?’
One of them studiously ignored her, but the other raised his head and fixed her with intelligent, bright blue eyes. He had earnest, freckled features and his hair was an unruly brown halo around his tonsure. ‘To meet with his brother and King Philip,’ he said, adding before she could ask, ‘I do not know how long he will be gone.’
Monday nodded. What had she expected him to say? John’s preoccupations were with affairs of state. It was stupid of her to think that he would spare a thought for her bewilderment. A headache began to beat behind her eyes.
The clerk laid down his quill. ‘We will be working long into the night,’ he said, rising to his feet. ‘I am going to find us food and drink. Would you like some too?’
Briefly, Monday wondered what John would do if he returned and found her eating with his clerks, but she banished the doubt with a frown of irritation at her own folly. She was tired, and creating problems where none existed. If John had wanted to house her with the rest of his servants, he would have dismissed her long before now. ‘Thank you.’ A smile lit up her wan features.
The clerk smiled in return and departed on his errand, returning very soon with a wicker basket crammed with enough provisions to feed a small army. There was a large stone jar of wine, two loaves, some small, savoury meatballs made of pork, herbs and breadcrumbs, hard boiled eggs, cheese wrapped in vine leaves, honey cakes, fig pastries, and sweet-sharp apples.