The Maiden and the Unicorn (39 page)

The pangs of guilt which had begun to haunt her were exorcised instantly. "You think he has gone drinking?"

"Mistress, if he has, he could be in any tavern between here and Caen." The big servant's eyes grew serious with concern. "Is it urgent? I wouldn't wager on my chance of finding him."

"No, he may drink himself to perdition but make sure you tell me when he returns,
if
he returns and I hope he does not!"

He looked relieved. "Like that, is it, mistress?" He touched his forehead respectfully and ambled off.

"Take that silly grin off your face, Long!" she exclaimed and he turned and saluted her good humouredly.

It was just before curfew when he discreetly reappeared at her side in the hall and, tucking his dull corn hair back behind one ear, he bent and whispered. "Mistress, he is back and in none too sweet a temper from the look of him."

"Has he been drinking?" Margery rose.

"I wouldn't swear to it, mistress, but he needs a shave. If he's been to Hell, the Devil's let him back out to annoy the rest of us."

"Take me to him."

"Nay, mistress, it were best you leave him until morning. He is not to be meddled with, if you want my opinion, but I suppose you don't."

"No, I do not. Make haste, if you please."

Richard Huddleston was on his way from the stables, a saddlebag flung over his shoulder. He was still in his brocade doublet but his black hose and boot caps were thick with road dust. He noticed them waiting like petitioners, but with a raised brow he walked straight past. There was a haggard, haunted look about his eyes and mouth, like the face of a courier who had ridden post-haste for three days.

This was not quite how she had imagined matters, thought Margery, picking up her skirts and hurrying after him; what she had intended was a qualified apology but now... Matthew read her expression behind his master's back and shrugged sheepishly. She gestured and he nobly hastened his pace.

"Thank the lord, sir. I thought—"

Richard whirled round on his servant, as if he were about to throttle him and Matthew flung up his arms and glanced sideways anxiously at Margery. "We-we thought..." His Adam's apple betrayed him as he swallowed nervously. Margery shared his discomfort for Richard Huddleston looked as though he had been chased by a gadfly across the breadth of France.

"...that you were howling drunk between some tavern wench's thighs," Matthew offered tactlessly, cautiously lowering his arms.

"As was my right," snapped Huddleston, but his attention was now centring on Margery. "So, lady, I wonder you confront me after your insults this morning."

"I thought you might have left for Honfleur, I..."

"Go on."

"Stop glaring at me like that. I cannot think."

"The truth at last!" He hissed and started striding towards the Great Hall again. "Between the pair of you, you might manage some intelligence the size of a walnut."

"Richard—" They hurried after him. "You are behaving as though we had caught you in some hayloft. Were you?"

"After pleasuring you all night?" he snarled over his shoulder.

"I think I should wait elsewhere." Matthew laid a warning hand upon Margery's sleeve.

Richard stopped and swung round again. "Yes, perhaps you should, Long."

But Matthew was being sweetly heroic. "We were worried, sir, that you were not yourself. The Lord knows, the thought entered our heads that you might drink yourself into a stupour and be set upon, robbed and—" Matthew must have read the dangerous look in his master's eyes for, with an apologetic glance at Margery, he shut his mouth with a snap.

Huddleston took hold of her forearm and dragged her on a few more paces out of his servant's earshot. He paused at the bottom of the flight of stairs which led to the upper yard. Behind him the dying sun was lighting up the craggy wall of the lower yard. It threw his shadow into menacing proportions. "I am my own master, lady! I do not belong to you or to your father or to the King of France."

"Yes, you do." Margery stamped her foot. "
You-are-my-husband,
damn you!"

As the green gaze slid away from her face and rolled up towards the greying sky, he appeared as fiendish as Lucifer looking back to Heaven. "Oh, by Christ's blessed mercy, the lady has at last admitted the truth." Margery tried to pull away from him, knuckling the tears from her eyes with her free hand, but his fingers were still around her arm. He inspected her streaked cheeks without compassion. "What I say, where I go and what I do are not your affair so if I choose to tumble any dirty tavern slut I can find in the town sewer and then lie with you, that is my decision, you hear me!"

Margery shook herself free. "No, I do not hear you, you upstart! Go and sharpen your tongue on my father's spurs!"

His face paled white with anger. Iron fingers tightened like screws upon her arm.

"Did I tell you the King of France has asked me to agree—for a very princely sum—that you should lie with the Duke of Clarence from this week on to learn his mind?" He shook her away from him.

Margery's jaw slackened, her anger blown away by the revelation. Was he in earnest? His manner was so icy, she could not tell. She drew herself up as grandly as the Countess. "I hope you told him I am not a courtesan."

A stare which held riddles scythed her. Above folded arms, he sneered at her. "Are you not? You take your clothes off for kings and diplomats so why not dukes? By Christ's blessed body, you little fool! Did I not warn you to be careful?"

Margery decided it was safer for her peace of mind not to believe him. He was playing games with her again. Flourishing a bait and wanting her to fly to it.

"Ha!" she scoffed. "Next thing they will want me sneaking back to Ned to be his mistress and learn
his
mind."

Indifferently, Richard gazed above her head. "That was aired."

She curled her lower lip down in fury, her tone smeared with venom. "So, how much did they offer you, dear Judas? More than the price of a jewelled collar, I trust."

"Offer
us,
my dearest wife." His grin would have made snakes look friendly. "Enough to make us wealthy if we live that long."
 

Somehow it was true. She could see that in his face. But who had suggested she prostitute herself? If the question was in her eyes, there was no answer in his.

"Jesu! What did you say to them?"

"I raised the price."

Her fist came flying through the air. He parried the strike and twisted her hands behind her back with such swiftness that she was breast to breast with him. It would have been a comfort to scream how much she hated him but the whole chateau would have heard her.

His smile tormented her. The green eyes piercing down into the depths of hers told her that last night's intimacy had not touched his heart, that he had given and taken bodily sensations and that was all. He had been her husband but not her lover. Now to be held so close to him without love was torture and he knew it.
 

She dragged her eyes away from his face and heard that calm voice, soft and ironic, above her head. "Enough of this folly. Learn from your mistakes, dearest."

"Let me go!"
She struggled, only to be aware that her body was reacting to his closeness, yearning for more.

"Are you referring to our marriage or to this present circumstance, I wonder? Unfortunately, I have inadvertently destroyed the one thing that could have enabled me by law to let you go. Besides, you may be carrying my son and heir within your womb so you will behave honourably, will you not, and stay away from the Duke. I want no probing from the King of France." He let her go. She rubbed her wrists and eyed him sullenly.

"Then you were lying just then."

"Was I? The King has more eyes in this castle than a peacock's tail." He raised a hand. "As God is my witness, it was known that I had quarrelled with you even as I arrived back here this morning. We are watched, you and I."

Cold fear streaked a jagged path down Margery's spine. "Because of de Commynes."

"Your Burgundian? Perhaps. Who knows how the twisting minds of the mighty work? His most Christian Majesty would suspect a flea of treason if it jumped too high."

The strain in his face convinced her that somewhere in this ugly conversation was a terrible truth. "You are merely saying all this to frighten me." She was trying to rationalise, to brush her fears into a smooth fabric.

An eyebrow arched at her. "Your grasp of matters is astounding. From fear comes caution if we are blessed."

Tilting her head, she examined him. Not a muscle of understanding moved beneath her scrutiny. It was like examining a painting, fixed and merely two dimensional, reflecting her own interpretation back at her.

"Jesu, sir, I came to mend matters but it seems you hate me as much as I detest you." It was a pinprick but it seemed to draw blood.

He moved, half-turning as if wearied by her company. "No, you inconvenience me. You, lady, are the fount of all my problems. You and yours. I would I had never set eyes on you again. No sane man would have behaved as foolishly as I did. I have become your fool and I will have no more of it, you hear me!" He glared irritably across the courtyard beyond her, and sighed impatiently. "How shall I put it? To be frank, your presence destroys my peace. Since I obviously destroy yours, I think it best that we avoid each other." It was as though he could no longer bear to look at her.

It would have been simple if she hated him but she was past that.

"The game is finished, is that it? Now that you have what you wanted, the excitement of the hunt is over. And, of course, now you have acquired the trust of my mighty father. Well, climb as high as you dare but you are still what you are. You have disappointed me, sir. For without question, you were correct this morning—you are still a boy and lack a man's courage. Your peevishness makes the Duke of Clarence in comparison a saint. Marriage is not merely the carnality of the bridal night, it is a future—one that we certainly shall not share!" She drew breath but could think of no more words to vent the depth of her feeling. With an angry swish of her skirts, she ran up the stairs and away before he could see further tears betray her.

Richard reeled back against the wall, flinging up a hand to mask the top half of his face. His head hurt and tiredness sucked at him through every pore. And, as if an unfair hand had hurled sand into his face, grittiness scratched his eyes as he squeezed his eyelids closed to staunch the gathering moisture.

"Master, come." Matthew's arm came about him and he surrendered to exhaustion.

* * *

Margery leaned her shoulder against the unsympathetic stone, her listless eyes staring at the sky. When they had sent her to the nunnery in disgrace, it had hurt her but it was nothing to this, this hollowness as though God had scraped all joy out of her and replaced it with misery. No, not just misery, hunger. She wanted Huddleston desperately in the same way he had wanted her. She wanted him in her bed needing her. If he was now trying to teach her a lesson or exacting revenge, it was in full measure. The decision she made then was not out of vengeance but to set them both free.

* * *

She was as fixed as the Pole Star in her resolve next morning as she made her way to King Louis's audience chamber. There was already a queue of petitioners outside. They must have scrambled in at dawn, as ravenous as a crowd of beggars around an overturned provision cart.

Merchants, clad in finery above their station, despite the sumptuary laws, queued beside lawyers in striped gowns. Plentiful, too, were rich and poor widows with faces ranging from plump to puckered within their coifs. The fetid odour of the ragged poor hung among the wafts of musk and ambergris from the overscented.

Margery took her place and more petitioners poured in to fidget behind her. It might take all day. She had told Alys to come to her to hold her place in the line while she went to mass. That was at least two hours away. If she managed to see the King that day, it would be fortunate because it was not just the other people ahead of her who had precedence but noblemen and courtiers who had business with Louis and were assured of entry. After more than an hour, she grew anxious that her father might espy her there. Besides, the man behind her kept edging uncomfortably close and the woman before her was a babbler with a French dialect that Margery could hardly follow.

"Mistress Huddleston?" A Scots accent warmed her ears and she peeped upwards into the blue eyes and freckled smile of the Lord of Concressault. "Nay, lass, forget the curtsey. What are you doing here?"

"The same as everyone else, my lord," she replied with a wry smile.

"Does your father know you are here, lass? There are other ways to pluck a chicken."

"I do not want him to know." She watched the Scot push the brim of his beaver hat back and scratch at his retreating sandy hair.

"Och, you had better come in with me. You dinna want to be idling here all day."

She could have hugged him; instead she clasped his hand with both of hers. "My lord, may I? That would be wondrous kind."

"Aye, lass. It is that I am a mighty curious fellow. You will own that I have to hear what you say if I take you in?"