Raymond stared out at the lands stretched before him, and found them appealing—but not as appealing as the lady who awaited him inside the keep. What was the last thing his father had said before riding for Henry’s court—and perhaps for the Vatican? “We would do anything to end your marriage. Anything.”
Aloud, he answered his father’s vow. “And I will do anything to keep my marriage. Anything.”
“Surrender, knave.” Raymond pressed the point of his sword against the Adam’s apple of the trembling Denys.
Denys tried to nod his head, and Raymond pulled the sword back. “Nay, Denys, when steel is pressed close against you, it is imperative you do not move. Signify your agreement with a single, ‘Aye,’ briskly given. That way ’tis clear that though you are defeated in fact, you are not in mind.” He sheathed his sword and extended a hand to the youth on the ground. “Come, let’s go or Lady Juliana will give us nothing but old bread and sour wine.”
Trembling with fatigue, Denys allowed Raymond to hoist him to his feet. With a despair only too obvious, he asked, “Will I ever defeat you, my lord?”
“Not soon, I hope.” Raymond flung his cloak around his shoulders, then picked up Denys’s cloak. “When you practice sword work in the cold,” he lectured, “make sure you warm yourself afterward.”
Denys wiped beads of sweat off his forehead. “I am warm, my lord.”
Raymond glanced around in satisfaction. The bite of winter had eased as Ash Wednesday approached, and now on this, Saint David’s day, the temperature encouraged the first flurries of work that presaged spring. All around them, kettles of water were boiling with lemon balm. Women from the village stood over them with huge paddles, stirring the winter’s scum off the bed covers. Juliana had threatened that before Easter everyone would have to strip to the skin and have their clothes boiled, but that dreaded day could be ignored for now. For now, Juliana flew around the castle with her hair pulled back in a kerchief, directing operations with a snap that had the serving women praising her renewed spirit at the same time they bemoaned their duties.
Raymond wrapped Denys in his cloak. “Nevertheless, you should wear this. You’ve improved these last weeks, but until you fill out and develop the muscles of a man, you haven’t the weight to put behind your blows.”
“Then of what use is this daily practice?” Denys asked, picking up his sword off the chilly earth.
Intent on soothing Denys’s wounded pride, Raymond answered, “You’re a good sparring partner for me.”
“For you?” The youth’s eyes widened. “Lord William of Miraval said you’re the best warrior in France.”
Raymond roared with laughter. “But not in England, eh?” He laughed again. “William is ever aware of his own greatness.”
“He is a great warrior, isn’t he?” Denys asked wistfully, trudging toward the keep, dragging his shield.
“Don’t do that. You should take care of your weapons. Here, let me take it for you.” Raymond hoisted the shield on his shoulder with his own. “William is indeed a great warrior, and I was his sparring partner just as you are mine.” He ran a judicious eye over Denys. “I was smaller than you by two stone, and had not your strength of arm until my seventeenth year.”
Denys beamed and straightened his skinny shoulders.
“Watch your belly. It takes a long time to die from a belly wound, and ’tis an unpleasant death.”
Denys laid hands on his flat stomach.
“And don’t be afraid to sweep under my guard. That’s why we wrap the swords in cloth. You’re smaller and weaker, so you must take advantage where you find it.”
“How odd,” Denys mused. “That’s what Sir Joseph told me.”
“Sir Joseph?” Raymond bent his critical gaze on his protégé. “When did you speak to Sir Joseph?”
Denys flushed guiltily. “He, ah, he sought me out the first night I came and discussed my, ah, mother. My prospects.”
Raymond squelched his first impulse, which was to give the youth a scolding. Denys’s valiant defense of Juliana lingered in his mind, and he contented himself with an austere, “Seeking the advantage is the only thing Sir Joseph and I agree about.”
“Aye, my lord.” Unhappy with even that mild reprimand, Denys scuffled the dirt. “I try not to think about what he said.”
“He was a mischief maker,” Raymond said.
“Oh, nay! More than that,” Denys insisted. “He was an evil man.”
Disturbed, although he didn’t really understand why, Raymond answered, “Perhaps so, but he’s gone now.” Denys raised his gaze, and it burned with a fervor Raymond had seen only recently. Had seen, but couldn’t recall.
“Thank Saint Sebastian for that.”
“Papa!”
Raymond looked up to the second-story platform that led into the keep.
Margery waved at him. “Papa, Mother says to come in right now or she’ll serve you stale bread and sour wine for supper.”
Raymond grinned and nudged Denys. “What did I tell you?”
Denys didn’t answer, and Raymond was surprised to see a look of hunger on Denys’s face as he gazed at Margery. Raymond felt the first stirrings of fatherly indignation, strong and fresh. Margery was a child, eleven years old, almost too young to marry. How dare this young pup stare at her as if she were a woman?
“Tell her we’ll be there soon,” Raymond called, and grabbed Denys by the nape of the neck. Denys squawked, but hurried along with Raymond until they reached the horse trough. Then he balked, but too late. Raymond plunged him in, headfirst, let him go, and backed away as the youth flung himself out. Hands on hips, Raymond spread himself in his most imposing stance and said, “Don’t even think about Margery.”
Shocked by the water, shocked by Raymond’s accusation, Denys didn’t try to pretend ignorance. “My…my lord,” he stammered. “’Tis not my intention…’twas never my intention.…”
And Raymond’s paternal affection for Margery sank under in a wave of kinship with the mortified Denys. For all the wealth of his parents, Raymond had been just as poor as Denys. With the humiliations of his own impoverished youth heavy on his mind, he removed his cloak and briskly rubbed Denys’s hair. “Face life realistically. You have no prospects. When you’re knighted, you’ll become a mercenary, following the tournaments and the wars. Use the serving maids—there are many who’ve been eying you. But Margery’s a maiden of good family.”
Stung, Denys cried, “I’m of good family, too.”
“I know you are, but you’re poor, orphaned, and landless.” Raymond could feel the heat of humiliation burning off of Denys, and he wished he knew of some other way to break the brutal truth to the boy. He did not. “Margery is beyond your reach. Stay away from her. Stay…away…from her.”
17
So annoyed he scarcely moved his mouth to speak, Raymond said, “She’s trifling with that youth again.”
“Who’s trifling with a youth?” Juliana left the basket she was packing with bread and cheese and moved to the arrow loop where Raymond stood. In the bailey below them, Margery stood talking to Denys, and Juliana smiled. “She’s honing her womanly skills on him.”
“She shouldn’t do that.”
“She has to learn sometime. I learned myself once. I remember how merry it was, how innocent.” She looked at him, a mixture of sadness and spirit in her face. “If Margery must learn the ways of a maid with a man, I’d rather she did so under my eye. Denys is safe.”
With grim amusement, Raymond questioned her. “Safe? No youth of that age is safe.”
“He is.” Juliana squeezed his arm. “Haven’t you noticed? He’s in love with her.”
“I’ve noticed,” he said forbiddingly. “She’s too young for that type of attention.”
“That sounds fatherly,” she teased.
He stiffened even further. “I think I’m feeling fatherly.”
She patted his arm. “Good, because Margery’s in love with you.”
His annoyanc
e cycled into rage, and he roared, “What? I thought you said she was practicing her womanly wiles on Denys.”
Startled by his ferocity, she said, “He’s in love with her. She’s in love with you. ’Tis nothing but lamb love, the result of spring and youth together. I know if we ignore their infatuations, they will fade. He’ll hear her screaming at her sister. She’ll see you scratching your belly in the morning. This kind of love is crushed by the first signs of reality. The worst thing we could do is challenge them about it. That would change an infatuation to a crusade, and you know how fervent young people are about crusades.”
She returned to her basket, and Raymond wondered if his guilt showed. He had challenged Denys about his infatuation. He had thought Denys would take his admonishment with the same good sense he’d shown with all of Raymond’s admonishments. But the young man’s affections seemed different from his fighting abilities—or perhaps Denys considered Raymond an expert at arms but not at love. Whatever the reason, Denys was now cool, thoughtful, and given to watching Margery with a calculation that made Raymond all the more dubious. “Juliana,” he said. “Are you at ease about this expedition?”
“Well.” She shrugged. “’Tis only a trip into my own woods to pick Lent lilies and gather the first greens. Layamon and his men will stay here to watch from the walls. Valeska and Dagna remain within the keep to wait for our return. You’ll be with the girls and me, and we’re taking the castle serving folk. They’ve got stone fever from staring at these walls. So I’m as much at ease as I can be, and I have to go out sometime.”
“I don’t want you to be afraid.”
Crossing to him in a rush, she flung her arms around his waist. “You’re a wonderful man.”
He wrapped her in his grasp. “So I am,” he agreed. Laying his cheek on the top of her head, he gathered comfort from her the way steel gathers strength from a forge.
Once he’d been a wanderer, never knowing the comforts of love, and he scorned them as a fairy tale. Then Henry had given her to him, and all unknowing, she’d begun to break away the shell that had held him prisoner since his release from Tunis. She’d maddened him by refusing to accept their marriage, and he’d been determined to defeat the unknown Lady of Lofts.
He’d challenged her, and she’d seemed to yield. He’d thought he won a battle, only to discover her strength and courage had defeated him—and she didn’t even know it. She’d taken the lonely, wandering man who’d forced his way into her life and given him a home, a family, and a love that would outlast his very soul. His forebodings slipped away, and he straightened. “Stop loitering, woman. There’s something in the woods I want to show you.”
She lifted her shining face to his. “What is that?”
“Something you’ll like very much,” he promised with a leer.
“Aye, spring has a way of making everything grow, doesn’t it?”
Juliana gazed at her folk with a bone-deep satisfaction. Their appetites were satisfied, they had picked the greens, and now they sprawled about the woodland grove, entertaining each other with songs, dancing, and feats of daring. Tosti sat nearby, flirting with the female servants. Restless Denys leaned against a tree.
Drunk with spring fever, Fayette and two of the maids stood before the castle servants and sang a bawdy tune about the mating habits of birds, skunks, and other woodland creatures. “To hear them tell it,” Raymond murmured to Juliana as she packed the remains of the meal away, “the animals cavort about in one long debauch.”
Juliana answered, “The singers just wish to inspire their swains, I trow.”
“Fayette’s a fine figure of a woman.” Raymond tucked his knee up to his chest and propped his arm up on it. “Her swains should need no inspiration.”
Smacking his arm with her fist, she chided him. “You’re not supposed to notice.”
“How could I help it? The first night I arrived here, you practically threw her into my arms. I had to see what I was rejecting.”
She’d forgotten that, and she mumbled something, not even she knew what.
“But I wanted only the best.” He pulled her, struggling, onto his lap. “So I held out for you.”
The people around them grinned and nudged each other, and Tosti called, “Just ’cause you own th’ tree, doesn’t mean ye can’t look at them other apples, eh, m’lord?”
Juliana intercepted a glance of masculine tribute passing between Raymond and Tosti, and lifted her head off Raymond’s arm. “I’ll take no more insolence from you, Tosti.” She turned swiftly to catch Raymond’s grin. “Nor from you, my lord.”
Before she’d realized it, he’d lifted her near and, using the most devious of weapons, wrested her resentment away. Her eyelids weighed too much to lift when he finally raised his mouth, and she wondered if the laughter and amazement that filled the grove were for her or for the performance before them.
“I think,” he said into her ear, “you’d better look at this one. ’Tis Margery and Ella, performing the most extraordinary feats of acrobatics.”
She sprang erect and stared at her daughters. Someone had stretched a taut rope between two sturdy tree trunks, and Ella—her Ella!—strolled across it. Well, not strolled, exactly. Crept would be a better word, but regardless, the child was standing up and, putting heel to toe, moving across the rope. Raymond clapped his hand over Juliana’s mouth before she could scream a protest. Only then did she notice Margery stood below, juggling three shrivelled apples—while eating one of them. She slumped against Raymond.
The castle folk were silent, too, straining to watch with an intensity that told Juliana how much they wanted the girls to succeed. Once, Ella wavered and would have fallen off if she hadn’t grabbed a convenient branch. Once, Margery dropped her half-eaten apple, but before she leaned to pick it up—while still juggling the other two—she said, “Almost dropped that one.”
Everyone laughed in one explosive gasp, and Raymond removed his hand from Juliana’s face. Ella reached the other side, jumped the five feet to the ground, and the ensuing applause saved him from a reply. Juliana applauded more enthusiastically than anyone, and welcomed a hug from each of her beaming children. “Well done, dearlings! I was thrilled. Now run along and play. We’ve had enough entertainment for the day.”
“Let’s play hoodsman bluff,” Tosti proposed, and a chorus of argument greeted him. Eventually, he organized a ball game, and Juliana turned on Raymond again.
“Who taught my children such skills?”
“Valeska and Dagna.” Raymond spread his hands in an innocent gesture. “Haven’t you deduced who those old women are?”
She shook her head.
“Camp followers tagged along after our Crusade to the Holy Land. So did anyone with a taste for adventure. Wandering tailors, priests, cooks, leeches…and entertainers of every shape and color. They came from every country. They played music, the strangest sort of tunes. They sang in the strangest sort of languages. And”—he tapped her forehead—“they performed acrobatics and juggled.”
“Ah.” Juliana understood now. “When the Crusaders were captured—”
“Aye. Every tailor, priest, cook, and entertainer was sold, just as I was. Valeska and Dagna were slaves, valued for their entertainment and their healing arts, and they wisely preserved the skin on their backs while I squandered mine. They kept me alive, although I cursed them for it.”
“So you helped Valeska and Dagna escape in gratitude for their gift of life.”
He looked amazed, then amused. “Not at all. We needed them to scale the Saracens’ walls for us and secure our ropes. We needed them to attach the ropes from the dock to the ship. They helped us escape.”
Juliana stared with open mouth until Raymond pushed it shut with a finger under her jaw. “I’ll have to treat them with greater respect,” she said. “Right after I do them a violence for teaching my children such hazardous games.”
A yawn caught her unaware, and he suggested, “Lie down and rest.” He patted his lap,
and she eyed it with interest. He shook his head at her in reproof. “Rest, I said.”
With a disappointed moue, she settled her head on his thighs, shut her eyes, and dozed until Raymond dangled a daffodil above her nose. The scent, rich with the earth’s promise of spring, woke her. She opened her eyes, and the vivid yellow petals hung so close she could see every velvet vein. He touched it to her lips, and she could taste the sweetness of its caress. “Mm.” She sighed and asked, unnecessarily, “Did I sleep?”
Raymond laughed. “Aye, that you did. ’Twill be dark soon, so we must leave.”
She hated to go. The trees above them had leafed out, it seemed, even as she slept, but not even the beauty of the trees could compare with Raymond’s face. She raised her hand to his cheek; he caught it and kissed the palm, then each one of the fingers.
“Only one more thing could make this day perfect,” he told her in a husky whisper that reminded her of beds and sweaty bodies. “Privacy.”
“Tonight,” she promised.
“Aye. Tonight.” He stood, stretched, and called the servants.
They came running to shoulder their packs, and Ella arrived on Fayette’s sturdy shoulders, crying, “Where’s Margery? She promised she’d play with me, and she didn’t.”
“She’s here somewhere.” Frowning, Juliana looked around. “Although I don’t see her. Has anyone seen Margery?”
The servants murmured and shook their heads; then Fayette said, “Last I saw her, she was talkin’ t’ Denys.”
“Denys?” Raymond roared, “Where’s Denys?”
“Raymond.” Juliana took his arm and shook it. “We’ll find them. They’ve probably just strayed—”
“Search the woods,” Raymond instructed. “See what you can find.”