To Touch The Knight (9 page)

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Authors: Lindsay Townsend

BOOK: To Touch The Knight
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“Too many mysteries,” he said aloud, disliking everything.
“How do you compare us, Princess, Sir Giles and myself?” he demanded, wishing to take the question back the instant he spoke it.
 
 
She could not tell him:
your friend sickens me
. Like for like, her former master was the taller, with eyes as blue as cornflowers against Ranulf's handsome brown eyes. Giles's hair was as dark and well-fashioned as finely carved ebony, contrasting with Ranulf's fair-to-russet shaggy mass, and he had a squarely handsome face, more conventionally pleasing than Ranulf's austere look. Ranulf's face was leaner, his nose and forehead were slightly sunburned, and he was not so broad.
“You are the better fighter.” She was suddenly tired of gallantry, of lies. “I know not if you are the better man.”
He turned his head and looked at her steadily. “We do not know each other, Princess. For all I know, you may be betrothed to Giles. I cannot say for sure, yea or nay.”
“I can for sure,” Edith began, realizing she was beating her fist upon her knees before she stopped. “Are you friends, even as he claims?”
Please let him say no. Please let him say they hate each other.
“As much as warriors can be, yes. He is a doughty man to have on your side in a fight, is Giles.”
His simpleminded acceptance of Giles sickened her afresh. She pulled away slightly, reluctant to lean against his warm, sheltering arm, feeling a bolt of cold crawl down her back.
“Why was Giles here, and alone with you?”
That was straight on target, she thought, blinking. “Should that be your concern?” For an instant she almost confessed that Giles had not been welcome, that he had stolen in without permission, but how could she say anything of that nature to Ranulf? She could not tell
Giles's friend
that her people had fled in fear of their former master. “Is it any of your business?”
“Maybe not, but I find it is.” Still in a crouch, he spun on the balls of his feet and pointed to the open entrance. “If word goes out that you admit knights without a chaperone, you will be diminished, Princess.”
“I have Sir Tancred.” Why did he have to say that?
Diminished
. She wanted to crawl into the straw pallet and hide.
“Sir Tancred, yes—a knight who all now know is ill.”
“He is recovering.”
And I pray when he wakes he will be well and willing to travel. We must get away from here.
“Is Giles your lover? If he is, he should be proud and open with it.” Ranulf cracked his knuckles together, adding darkly, “I wager he likes to be secret, for Giles loves his secrets, but it does you harm, Princess.”
“My lover? I never met the man before today!” She could not believe what he was saying. She would not have thought him so jealous, so remarkably stupid.
“He entered my place unasked and unlooked for,” she snapped. “He makes a habit of that.”
“How do you know? If, as you say, you have not seen him before, met him before today, then how would you know that?”
Edith flung down the cup and whirled off the stool in a rush of silks, slamming her hands against Ranulf's shoulders, trying to push him down. It was like trying to shift a boulder, but she could use words as weapons, and did: “How dare you? I am a Princess of Cathay and I will not be questioned by a northern brute of a soldier whom my father would not take into his service as a pot-boy! Get out!”
He was crouched at her feet, staring up at her, his lean features as set and rigid as steel, and as pale. Without a word he rose and strode to the entrance, looked back at her once, nodded, and was gone.
Chapter 12
Ranulf knew he should be preparing for the afternoon joust, but instead of returning to his own camp, he found a woodland path and followed it. Stealing through the elders and hazel, listening and keeping a wary lookout for wild boar, he witnessed the cautious return of the lady's servants. They emerged from the greenwood, shy as squirrels, and hurried away on the paths leading to her great tent. Some were as brilliant as church wall paintings in their bold new clothes, others were as discreet as sparrows in browns and grays.
But I will not see my maid here, and now I believe I know why the princess wears gloves.
As a fighter he knew fear. He knew the look of it, the stench of it. The princess had courage. She faced him and hurled words like knives, but she was terrified of Giles. The paling of her skin and tightening of her hands which he had taken at first as signs of shame, of being discovered with her lover, he now recognized as fear.
He regretted his questions now, and his jealousy.
I have learned nothing since poor Olwen—when will I learn to be less judging? Who am I—God? Why does my princess doubt all but the evidence of her own senses? What has happened to her? And how does she know Giles?
The more he considered the matter, the stranger it became. Giles, by his extravagant smiles and winsome behavior, did not know the princess. He was never so fulsome with women he knew.
If this is what I believe, then whatever my Eastern firebrand thinks, she needs a strong protector. Or her whole device—and device I think it must be—will unravel like thread off a spinster's distaff. I wonder that no one has noticed.
But he had not, or if he had, he had not greatly cared, until the advent of Giles had forced him to consider. She had cast her device well, with her veils and wanton costumes.
Perhaps she is a witch
. His flesh crawled and his scalp itched at the thought. Was she leading them all to hell? If the whole world was dying of pestilence, as priests fleeing from stricken towns and villages claimed, then were she and her court demons?
“By Lucifer, she cannot be!”
His denial was so strong that he startled a blackbird, who fled alarmed into deeper cover. He strode over a patch of dying daffodils and placed his open hand on the wide trunk of a massive beech tree, remembering the young beech the little maid had hidden by.
Olwen said I was over-hasty, too keen to condemn. I will not be the same with these mysteries. Let them play out more.
Whatever she was, she was no knight, bred to speak the truth.
“Little liar,” he said softly, and he smiled grimly. She still owed him kisses, too.
 
 
At sunset Sir Tancred died unexpectedly, in his sleep. Edith was sitting on the bed beside him, talking quietly to Christina and Maria, when she heard his breath slow. Christina heard it, too, and she began to weep.
“We need a priest,” Maria said, crossing herself and backing away on the bed.
“Fetch Teodwin,” Edith said, and she took Sir Tancred's cool hand in hers while Christina, on his right side, took his other hand.
Edith tried to remember the prayers she had heard Gregory make, but her brother was now loose in her mind and what she saw and heard was his death, his final, gasping moments, his awful choking and writhing and ear-splitting screams of pain. Sir Tancred was going peacefully.
Teodwin put his head round the curtain, then walked closer, his face solemn. “I could send a lad to the church,” he offered.
Christina bent low and whispered something in Sir Tancred's ear.
Edith shook her head. “No time. He goes with the sun. Will you say a prayer?”
There was no time to find any priest, she told herself, as Teodwin knelt by the bed and began to pray. She knew she should send someone to fetch Sir Tancred's men, but she could not choose who should go. She felt numb. She wished Gregory was here. He would know what to do.
“I will go for his squire,” Maria said, moving as swiftly as her bulk would allow.
“No, not at this time with so many dagger-girls wandering about the camp, seeking lovers. Martin and Walter should go.” Edith forced herself to think, though all she wanted was to lie beside this dying, gentle man and howl. “Let them go and let whoever of Tancred's men in. Draw back the curtain and open the tent flaps. Go to our wagon, Maria. Stay there with the children.”
The tent became a whirlpool of activity as braziers were brought and Tancred's men began to hurry to their master's bedside. Edith stayed, holding Sir Tancred's limp hand and joining in what prayers she could.
He died at sunset, in his sleep, surrounded by his men, his friends, his woman Christina, and Edith.
“A good way to go,” several of his men murmured as they left the tent for the womenfolk to wash the body and to lay him out. By agreement, he was to be carried to the small church, where Christina and Edith would keep watch, among others, through the night.
No one remarked on a Princess of Cathay doing this, for which Edith was dimly grateful. For the rest, she was stunned. She had not thought Sir Tancred so old, so vulnerable. And already the captain of Sir Tancred's men was speaking of leaving, of the men needing to find another lord. Even plump, pretty Christina surprised Edith by announcing that she would soon travel to London, to find and live with her widowed sister.
“You are most welcome to stay,” Edith reminded her, wishing she could stop time, reverse the day and make Tancred live again, feeling events moving relentlessly on, as swiftly as a stream in a winter flood.
Christina shook her head, red-eyed. “This world is too grand for me. I only stayed for Tancred.”
She began to weep again, quietly, and Edith hugged her, stroking the woman's lifeless blond hair as Christina cried, “What will become of us? We are lost, quite lost.”
Not lost, stranded
, Edith thought as Christina cried harder, breaking down completely.
We cannot leave now. I have lost a good friend, a teacher, a kind ally. He must be buried well, with honor. We cannot go
.
Chapter 13
Ranulf did not attend the burial of Sir Tancred. He knew it would remind him of Olwen's interment, and he was not ready for that. He sent Edmund in his place and, taking the dead knight's horse, rode to the shrine where Tancred had taken the princess, just last month. There, in quiet, with only a busy squirrel and a squawking jay for company, he prayed for the gray knight, who had in truth been too old for the gouging, hacking world of the tourney.
Take care of her
, Sir Tancred pressed in his mind.
“I will,” Ranulf vowed. He knew how he would do it, too.
Work quickly before Giles makes his move
, warned Olwen, her voice so clear that he whipped round to see if she was standing by his shoulder, his heart thundering with impossible hope.
He was alone. Sorrow gnawed at him afresh, with black razor teeth, and he gripped the token in his fist very tight, fighting the dark mood until his knuckles cracked and his eyes lost water. He could not give in, not now; he could not fail his brown maid princess as he had his wife.
Only when he had returned to Tancred's horse did he open his hand and discover the scrap of pale silk in his palm.
“We must get back to her, Hector,” he said.
The charger snorted and tossed his head, spurring off as soon as Ranulf mounted him. They rode back smartly to camp and past the camp to Castle Fitneyclare, where Ranulf paid a groom well to tend Hector and then settled on the dais in the great hall to wait for the return of Lady Blanche.
 
 
“Can we leave tonight?” Teodwin asked. He was looking haggard, less well groomed than usual. Edith suspected they all were.
“I cannot see how, without our being noticed,” she said. She was tired, feeling unclean, and beset by memories of Gregory. Sir Tancred was in the ground and she missed him terribly: his scratching at the tent flaps, his kindness, and yes, his admiration. It had been very pleasing to be so adored.
Now there was Ranulf: suspicious, a friend of Giles. Could she trust him? Dared she?
Dear God, there is Giles himself.
She could sense his interest, deadly as a snake's. He would find an excuse to come here, she knew. She had retired after the service and had put Maria and Christina to bed, not daring to sleep herself. She needed some energy and wit to keep her former master at arm's length, without provoking him. She could not make him her outright enemy.
She racked her brains, then found the answer.
“I am for the castle.” She rose off the stool and plucked her heaviest cloak off a peg. “Is the captain of Sir Tancred's guard still outside?”
“For the moment, yes. He and his men will be off tomorrow, and Christina with them.”
“Tonight will be enough for my purposes.”
It had to be
. “I will ask the captain to escort me to Lady Blanche, and for the rest of his men to look after our camp. Teodwin—”
She paused, wanting to be sure he heard and attended to her next words—“If I remain at the castle tonight, then you and the others go with the captain and his men tomorrow. Take the wagon and valuables and leave the tent. I know it is a shame to leave it behind, but you may mingle with the men-at-arms and their followers easily enough, and so escape, but the tent coming down will be noticed.”
Teodwin scowled. “What of you?”
“I will be well enough, believe me,” Edith replied, fibbing with her accustomed ease. She forced herself to smile. “You know I always do well.”
Surely the other villagers would be safe if Tancred's men were with them. Surely Giles would depart as soon as he learned she was not here. Surely Teodwin would see the sense of her plan if she was forced to remain at Castle Fitneyclare.
Surely Lady Blanche would agree to what she was about to propose?
 
 
Lady Blanche arranged her skirts more carefully over her seat and looked down from the dais into the subdued great hall. Eating a scratch supper at the trestles, the knights and men were quieter than usual, with no catcalls, no demands for music or more ale. Any other evening and she would have been glad of the silence, but not at the cost of losing Sir Tancred.
And now the wretched Eastern Princess, who had never condescended to appear in the great hall before today, was approaching, escorted by the captain of Sir Tancred's guard. Along the great table, Lady Blanche saw Sir Ranulf half rise and Sir Giles, who had more manners, glance at her and her lord, ready to take his cue from them.
Courtesy compelled her to greet the princess, invite her to table beside her on the dais, call for cup and plate for her, where Lady Blanche would have preferred to ignore her. With no knight in her company, the princess was a nuisance, unescorted, a danger to married knights.
She was at least dressed modestly for once, with a great furling cloak covering her usual outlandish costume.
No doubt she is pox-marked behind that veil
, Lady Blanche reflected, as she had many times before, and smiled, then hid the smile.
“Princess. A sad day, is it not?”
“Indeed it is, my lady.”
The princess did not pick at the soft bread or cheese on her trencher and would not even sip the wine. Lady Blanche took a larger gulp from her own cup, exasperated with the younger woman. She thought of a very pleasing, most pat suggestion that Sir Ranulf had made to her earlier that evening: that the princess's camp be incorporated into his. Sir Ranulf, who was still standing, waiting to catch her husband's eye.
She nodded to the black knight but Sir Giles, sitting beside Sir Ranulf, also spoke.
“My Lady Blanche,” Sir Ranulf began, as Sir Giles said, “My lady, I would beg a boon.”
Both men broke off and into the silence the princess said, “I, too, would beg a boon, my lady.”
By custom Lady Blanche knew she should ask the princess to go on, but, as her husband leaned over the salt to stare at the veiled figure, she pointed at Sir Giles.
“Pray, continue, Sir Giles.”
The tall, dark-haired Giles rose and bowed. He was as handsome as any knight from a romance, Lady Blanche thought, hearing her maids commenting between themselves, behind their hands, on his proud bearing and good looks.
“My lady, my request is simple. The princess needs a protector now that Sir Tancred is gone. I would be that knight.”
Lady Blanche stopped her jaw from clenching in anger. She had not expected such a demand and disliked the attention it brought to the creature seated on her right—as if she needed any more! Bitterly, she regretted asking Sir Giles to speak first, especially as the men on the benches stirred and banged their cups on the wooden boards, and Ranulf spat something she did not hear at his taller, more comely companion.
“Madam, please!” Even the princess would not be still, but was clenching her gloved hands in her lap, tension making her as stiff as a church statue. “Please, believe me when I say that I need no protector. I am the same as I ever was, a Princess of Cathay, a traveler in your good lands, and all I would ask is your generous grace of a few days, so I may mourn.”
“I propose another answer,” Ranulf interrupted, pitching his voice easily above the princess's. “Let her be the next prize of the joust.”
“No!”
Giles and the princess together were on their feet, shouting.
“Excellent! Excellent!” Lady Blanche's husband Lord Richard was clapping, his ragged mustache quivering as he roared his approval. “As Master of the Joust, I say yes, 'tis excellent sport!”
Spurred on by the tumult as the rest of the great hall burst into laughter, shouts, and applause, he added, “I will give a dowry also. Let the battle commence tomorrow, in memory and honor of Sir Tancred!”
Lady Blanche took a very long drink of wine and prayed for the rest of the day to be over.

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