The drawbridge came down smoothly and settled gently into a fitting that was seemingly fashioned just for the receiving of it—nothing like the crude bridge that welcomed a body to Ayre’s unkempt courtyard. Rhys spared a moment to admire such fine construction, then reined in his mount and looked back over the way he had come. As interesting as the keep might have been, it surely didn’t compare to the fields he had just crossed.
By the saints, the land was beautiful.
It had been all he could do to keep himself in the saddle that morn. What he had wanted was to be wandering through those fields, bending to feel the warm earth slide between his fingers, smelling the grasses and flowers. He had wanted to walk over every inch of it, feel it beneath his feet, and lose himself in the dream that such a place might be his.
“Rhys?”
Rhys turned to look at the man who had spoken to him. He jerked to attention out of habit. “Aye?” he asked.
Montgomery of Wyeth, the captain of Bertram’s guard, smiled. “Little lad, you’re staring the wrong way. The beauty of Segrave finds itself inside the walls, not out.”
Rhys shook his head. “Your eyes fail you, Captain. Nothing can compare to what I’ve already seen.”
“Ah, the wisdom of youth,” Montgomery said, not unkindly. “Have I not told you enough tales of the maid of Segrave to pique your curiosity?”
“What is a maid but a means to land?” he asked. “Besides, she is very young.”
“She has nine summers,” Montgomery said with a knowing smile, “and she shows every promise of inheriting her mother’s considerable beauty. Come, young one, look on her and see if I don’t have it aright.”
“As you will,” Rhys said reluctantly, and he wanted to add, What good will such a thing do me? Gwennelyn of Segrave was so far above him in station he stood little chance of ever being in the same hall with her, much less being allowed to gape at her. Besides, she was a child. He had no interest in children.
Her land, however, was a different tale entirely.
But there was also no sense in lusting after what he could never have, so he followed Montgomery across the drawbridge and into the bailey. Lads came to take their horses. Rhys dismounted and started toward the stable, but then halted when he heard his foster father call to him. He turned to find Bertram approaching.
“Let them, son,” Bertram said. “You’ve no need to see to such things now.”
Rhys inclined his head respectfully. “Thank you, my lord, but I prefer to tend my own mount.”
Bertram looked at him for a moment in silence, then shook his head with a smile. “As you will, Rhys. Come join us in the hall when you’ve finished. I’ll introduce you to William of Segrave, as he asked specifically to meet you. I suppose he wishes to see for himself how a lad knighted so young carries himself.”
Rhys nodded and made his way to the stables. He was accustomed to, if not fairly uncomfortable with, the notice his knighting had garnered him. By the saints, it wasn’t as if he’d asked to be knighted at the battle of Marchenoir, especially having just reached his fourteenth summer. But who had he been to say nay to Phillip of France? Especially considering his family’s relations with the French monarch. Though he had chosen a different path from his father and grandfather, he was still a de Piaget and Phillip considered him his.
By the time Rhys had tended his horse, he’d ceased thinking of political intrigues and Segrave’s soil, and turned his mind to the filling of his belly. Perhaps William would exchange an introduction for a hearty meal. Rumor had it that Joanna of Segrave laid a fine table indeed.
He hadn’t taken two paces from the stables when he heard a horrible noise coming from the pigsty. He looked about him, but no one seemed to find it out of the ordinary. Men carried on with their tasks, though some of them were smiling. Rhys shrugged and started across the bailey to the hall, but found himself stopping but a pace or two later.
Those were not sounds that normally came from a piggery.
He found that his curiosity was a more powerful force for once than his desire for a full belly. He turned about and made for what sounded like a beastie from the forests venting its anger. He rounded the corner of the stables and came to a dead halt. There was indeed a body making those horrendous noises, but it wasn’t something foul from the forest.
It was a girl.
She sat in the muck and wailed for all she was worth. Rhys suspected that she might have tried to make an escape, for there were smears upon the gate in the shape of hands, and there were indentations in the muck where evidently she had stomped about in frustration. Not being a practiced judge in these matters, Rhys couldn’t tell how old she was, though he supposed her to be of a fair age. She was not a girl full grown, though certainly old enough to have escaped the sty on her own. Perhaps there was more to it than what he could see. Rhys approached carefully.
The girl looked up at him and, blessedly, stopped wailing.
Rhys leaned upon the gate and stared back at her. “Trapped?” he asked.
She only blinked, then nodded, her chin beginning to quiver.
“Someone lock you in?”
She nodded again. “Geoffrey of Fenwyck.”
Rhys knew of Fenwyck, but nothing of his son. Obviously a lad of little chivalry, but a fair amount of imagination judging by the cleverness of the knots binding the gate closed. Little wonder the girl hadn’t been able to let herself out. Why she hadn’t climbed the fence he didn’t know, but that was a girl for you. The reason she found herself therein, however, was another matter entirely. Rhys leaned on the fence and looked at her speculatively.
“Why’d he do it?”
The girl scowled. “In return for my locking him in the tower chamber I suppose.”
Rhys felt one of his eyebrows go up of its own accord. “That took some doing. Is he so foolish then?”
“Nay, ’tis that I have a very practiced imagination. My mother tells me so often.” She seemed to take her declaration as simple fact, for there was no look of boasting hiding under all that mud on her face. “I saw him filch a bottle of my sire’s finest claret. When he threatened to toss me in the dungeon if I told, I took the empty bottle, put it in the chamber, and sent a messenger to tell him that yet another bottle awaited him there.”
Rhys stroked his chin thoughtfully. This was not a normal young girl he faced here. He wondered how many white hairs she had given her sire already.
“I assume you’re here,” Rhys mused, “because he knew you arranged that. Did you turn the key in the lock yourself ?”
“Aye,” she said, and there was pride in her face this time. “He deserved it, the wretch. He told me but yester-eve that my ears stick out from my head most unattractively and that no wimple ever stitched would hide them.”
Rhys put his hand to his mouth and chewed on his finger to keep from laughing. The child wore no wimple at present, and he couldn’t help but agree with Fenwyck’s description of her ears. But ’twas passing unchivalrous to say so. And he suspected he would do well not to irritate her. She spoke with the tongue of a woman full grown, and Rhys suspected her schemes were just as ripened. Best to remain in her good graces.
He undid the gate and looked at the captive.
“You’ll have to hurry, lest the piglets escape as well.”
Said piglets were rooting enthusiastically at her skirts. At least the sow was nowhere to be seen. Credit young Fenwyck with some sense about that.
The girl, however, only sat and looked at him.
“Well, come on,” he said, gesturing to her. “You’re free now.”
She started to rise, then her feet slipped out from under her and she fell back into the muck with a very wet splatting sound. Her chin began to quiver. When tears started to leak from her eyes and forge a trail of cleanness down her cheeks, Rhys knew he had to do something. It was tempting to hasten the other way, but the noise in his head made by his sword kept him where he was. That and the weight of all the lectures he’d hear
d from his foster father over the years. A chivalrous knight would remain and rescue the maid from her plight. Rhys sighed. He wasn’t overly fond of the thought of layering his boots with muck, but there was obviously nothing else he could do if he intended to live up to the standards Bertram of Ayre had set for him.
He stepped into the pigsty. With another sigh he reached down and pulled the girl up and into his arms. He forced himself not to complain when she threw her arms around him and buried her face in his neck. And as he stepped from the pen, he came to a conclusion.
Chivalry was a messy business indeed.
He set the girl down outside the piggery, then shut the gate. Then he turned to her and used the sleeve of his tunic to wipe away some of the mud that was smeared over her face. She looked up at him with pale, tear-filled eyes.
“My gratitude,” she sniffed.
“’Twas my pleasure,” he said, trying to ignore her smell, which had now become his smell.
She looked down at her gown. “’Tis ruined,” she said sadly.
“Perhaps if you let it dry.”
“’Twas my finest stitchery,” she said, showing him the hem of her sleeve. “See?”
He meant to obey, but made the mistake of looking at her and truly seeing her. And for the first time in the extensive experience fourteen years had given him, Rhys felt himself grow a tiny bit weak in the knees.
The girl had the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen.
“See?” she repeated.
It was with effort that he dragged his eyes down to her sleeve. He looked at the mud-encrusted fabric and nodded gravely, as if he actually could see the stitches worked there.
“Terrible tragedy,” he managed. “Truly.”
“I should be avenged. The knave should pay for his dishonorable assault upon me.”
Well, obviously this one had been listening to too many chansons, but Rhys refrained from saying so. ’Twas a simple matter to remain silent, actually. The girl had rendered him speechless.
“I’ll need a champion,” she said, looking up at him appraisingly.
“Um. . .”
She looked down at his sword. He could feel the metal heat under her gaze. It came close to burning a stripe down his leg even through the sheath.
“You’re young to be wearing a sword,” she said.
“Well, I—”
Then her eyes widened. “By the saints,” she breathed, “you’re Rhys de Piaget. My father told me of you. You were knighted but a pair of months ago for saving Lord Ayre’s life. Why, you’re a knight of legendary prowess!”
She wiped unconsciously at her face, leaving a large swath of mud running down her cheek. Then she seemed to remember her ears, for she reached up to rearrange her hair about them. More dung was left behind.
“My mother’s minstrels already tell tales of your skill.” She looked at him worshipfully. “You could be my champion.”
Rhys blinked. This was Gwennelyn of Segrave? Lays had been written describing in intimate detail the beauty of her mother’s face and her goodness of heart. Bards, players of instruments, and artisans all came to kneel at the feet of the former lady-in-waiting to Queen Eleanor and offer up to her their finest work. Rhys had not been so distracted by his swordplay that he hadn’t listened now and then to the rumors of the woman’s beauty, or the rumors of how the promise of that beauty rested heavily on Joanna’s daughter.
Was everyone blind, or was he himself so distracted by the overwhelming stench of pig manure that clung to the both of them that he couldn’t see what others had been raving about?
As he contemplated that, he found himself torn between looking at the muck now in Gwen’s hair and squirming under the weight of her assessing gaze.
“Aye,” she said with a smile, “I couldn’t ask for a more chivalrous knight to restore my honor to me. Already I can imagine how the battle will go.”
So could he and it would finish with him trotting off to her father’s gibbet. But before he could tell her that Geoffrey of Fenwyck was a baron’s son and mere knights did not go about challenging baron’s sons, she had taken him by the arm and started back to the hall.
“Challenge him after we sup,” she advised. “I’ll have a wash so that I might look my best while I watch you dispatch him. You will dispatch him, won’t you?”
One thing he would accord her; she had the most stunning pair of aqua eyes he’d ever seen. How could a man, even a young man such as himself, say nay when finding himself lost in them?
He tried to shake himself back to some semblance of reason. He reminded himself that she had no more than nine or ten summers and that it could not matter what she thought of him. He would never have a one such as she, so disappointing her should mean nothing to him. Yet when she turned the full force of her shining eyes on him, he found words rushing out of his mouth he surely hadn’t intended.
“Aye, I’ll challenge him,” he blurted out.
And then he knew that the only course of action left to him would be to draw his sword and fall upon it. As if he could actually dare such cheek. By the saints, he should have clamped his lips shut!
“You will?” she asked with a dazzling smile.
“Ah . . . I’ll demand an apology,” Rhys amended quickly. Perhaps he could shame the fool into giving Gwen one.
“Will you use your sword?” she asked breathlessly.
“If necessary,” Rhys said, feeling the urge to drop to his knees and pray for deliverance from his own wagging tongue. “But first I’ll give him a chance to comport himself well without violence.”
“If you think it best,” she said, sounding somewhat disappointed. “Though I would surely like to see him poked a time or two for his crimes.”
Evidently her disappointment was not so great that she was ready to release him from his errand. She took hold of his hand and dragged him back toward the keep. Rhys searched for a means of escape, but saw none until he happened to glance upon Sir Montgomery. Montgomery stopped the sharpening of his sword to look at them.
“Escorting our lady to the hall, Sir Rhys?” he called.
“He is my champion, Sir Montgomery,” Gwen returned promptly. “He’s going to avenge my bruised honor. Plans to use his sword if he has to.”
Rhys threw Lord Bertram’s captain a beseeching glance, but Montgomery only smiled.
“Well done, lad,” Montgomery said approvingly. “Trot out that chivalry as often as possible. Keeps your spurs bright, as Lord Ayre always says.”
Rhys wondered what Lord Ayre would say when he found out his foster son had been talked into taking to task the son of one of the most powerful barons in the north of England. Likely something along the lines of, “Best of luck to you, you chattering fool,” as he headed back to Ayre, leaving Rhys to be carried off to Fenwyck and left to rot in the dungeon. Considering Fenwyck was a good two weeks’ travel north from Ayre, Bertram could rest easy knowing he’d never have to hear Rhys’s dying screams.
“I’ll deserve it,” he muttered. “Never should have picked up a sword.”
“You said something?” Gwen asked.
Rhys shook his head. “Nothing of import.”
“Then let us be about our business,” she said enthusiastically.
Rhys sighed and let her pull him toward the great hall. He should have contented himself with the keeping of a field or two instead of lusting after knight’s spurs. It would have been safer. It also might have been safer had he paid more attention to filling his belly than to rescuing a fair maid in the mud—only to find himself Gwennelyn of Segrave’s champion.
But in his heart of hearts, he found that being chosen as such was quite possibly the sweetest pleasure he had yet had in his fourteen years. Foolish or not, he felt his step, and his heart, lighten. Gwen turned on the threshold to look at him and he gave her his best smile. He suspected that even his mother had never had such a smile from him.
Gwen smiled in return, and the sight of it smote him straight to the soul.
r /> Aye, he found himself feeling that there was much indeed he would do for the girl before him.
“A favor,” she said, patting herself.
“Another one?” he asked with a gulp. By the saints, serving this girl could take up a great amount of his time.
“Nay, I meant a favor for you to wear upon your arm. ’Tis how it is done, you know,” she informed him.
“Of course,” he said, wondering if he should have spent more time paying heed to Bertram’s minstrel.
Gwen continued to pat until she pulled forth from some unidentifiable portion of her mud-encrusted gown a thick ribbon. Rhys could only speculate upon the color. He thought it might have been green. It likely still was, under all that dirt.
She tied it around his arm with great ceremony, then smiled up at him again. “Now you are truly mine. Coming?” she asked, taking him again by the hand.
How could he say her nay? He loosened his sword in its sheath and cast one last prayer heavenward before he ducked into the great hall behind his lady.
3
Gwen lay next to her mother in the large, comfortable bed and found, for a change, that the events of the day were far more interesting than the happenings she usually made up in her head to put herself to sleep.
“Gwen, please stop squirming.”
“Oh, but, Mama, was he not wonderful today?”
Her mother sighed, but Gwen recognized the sigh. It was her I-wish-this-girl-child-would-fall-asleep-but-even-so-that-won’t-stop-me-from-listening sigh. It was a sound Gwen was very familiar with. She’d overheard her mother say that she had only herself to blame, that it was her fault that Gwen’s head was so peopled with characters from chansons and bardly epics, so she as well as anyone should pay the price. But it had been said gently and followed by a loving laugh from her father, so Gwen knew her parents weren’t displeased with her.