He shouted out, “Who goes?”
“My lord, we have brought back the bathing tub.”
Severin grunted, went to the door, and opened it. He didn’t allow the servant into the chamber. He lugged the tub into the bedchamber himself, slammed the door, and dumped in the other buckets of water. He looked over at Hastings, who hadn’t moved, then climbed into the tub. His sex was covered with the white cream and with his seed. He hadn’t hurt her. He said over his shoulder as he lathered the lavender soap on the bathing cloth, “Dress yourself and see to my evening meal.”
She said very clearly, “No.”
He twisted around, astonishment writ clear on his face. “What did you say?”
“I said no. I will have nothing further to do with you. You do not deserve me nor do you deserve Oxborough. My lord Graelam and King Edward made a grave mistake. My father probably saw right through you, saw the kind of man you really are, and recognized a kindred evil. I will have nothing more to do with you, Severin. Nothing.”
“You will come here and wash my back.”
“I will put a knife in your back.”
At that, he rose, water pouring over the sides of the tub. “You threaten me? You, a woman, dare to threaten me?” He struck his palm against his forehead. “I just took you. I probably should not have used the cream. I went easy with you. Do you never learn restraint, woman?”
She simply shook her head, rose from the bed, and walked slowly, bent like an old woman, to where the drying cloth and her bedrobe lay on the floor. She looked weary. He watched her pull on the bedrobe.
“You are very white. If you would but moderate your speech, if you would but tend me when I tell you to, there would be no need for cream, no need for me to have to force my way into your belly. You are supposed to enjoy me, yet you refuse to.”
She looked up at him with blank surprise. “Enjoy you? That is a cruel jest no woman would believe after the first time. Aye, you’re right, Severin. It is all my fault. I think you should have hurt me because what you did was your punishment. Aye, you showed your weakness by using the cream. You should have showed me how very merciless you are, what a powerful warrior you are, how I am nothing compared to you. Am I truly supposed to enjoy you? Am I truly supposed to scream with delight when you drag me to the bed, insult me, and stuff yourself into me?” She turned on her bare heel and left the bedchamber.
He yelled, “Don’t you dare leave. I did not give you permission.”
But she didn’t turn. She closed the door very quietly. Slowly, Severin sank back down into the water. He finished bathing himself. There was only the drying cloth she had used. It was damp. He dried himself as well as he could, then slowly he began to dress. Trist made no sound. He just looked at his master, his eyes dark and clear.
“She continues to fight me, Trist. I did not hurt her. You saw that I did not hurt her. She just lay beneath me like a sacrifice. Aye, she was soft and warm, but she wasn’t there, Trist. She cared not.
“I did not wish to marry, Trist. We made our way quite well until we returned to Langthorne, and there was naught but devastation, and you know I had to have an heiress then. Ah, and now I have everything a man could wish. I am a man of substance, a man of worth. What is a wife? An annoyance, nothing more. I will take her, be she an unmoving log.”
The marten kept staring, making no sound.
“She is but a woman, a wife, she must learn to obey me. She threw water on me, all because I was looking at Alice’s bottom, and you saw how Alice was sticking her bottom nearly into my face. And then even that one turned on me. Alice said I was just a man but that she and Hastings had been friends for a long time. Surely that makes no sense at all. Of course I am a man. What did she mean just a man? A man is a complete man, not just a man, whatever that means. And I am the master here, not some sort of low villain. All that is here is mine.
“What is going on, Trist? Mayhap I could have gone more gently with her, but I doubt it would have mattered. Besides, she deserved my force. And still she won’t obey me. Still she said she hated me. Still she called me an animal. I saved her from Richard de Luci. Well, perhaps not exactly, but I would have if his assassin hadn’t stabbed me before I could hunt the bastard down. Damnation, Trist, what have I done to deserve her woman’s spleen?”
The marten closed his eyes and rested his head on his front paws.
Severin grunted and dressed in clean clothing, his tunic a rich pewter gray. He wished his damned squire, Mark, would come to help him. Mark treated his every word, his every request, with deference. Mark never goaded him or pushed him off his verbal course with wit. He would have to do something about Hastings. He just didn’t know what yet.
Hastings remained in her chamber, sorting and mixing herbs, humming, as was her wont, for it calmed her. She wiped her brain clean of him, concentrating on the blossoms and stems on the flat board in front of her. Dame Agnes came in some moments later, bringing a tray. “You will eat something, Hastings. I will not have you sicken just because you do not know how to handle your husband.”
Hastings was so startled she knocked over three foxglove stems, the blossoms thick and beautiful. She was on her knees in a moment, picking them up. She said without looking at her old nurse, “Did you know that the ancient Druids considered foxgloves their own flower? They believed that each blossom looked like a Druid hat.”
“Enough of that nonsense, Hastings. You use your herbs and their lore to distract both yourself and the person you’re speaking to, particularly if it isn’t something you want to hear. I’ll wager you even treat Lord Severin that way. He says something and you tell him a brief story about one of your plants.” Dame Agnes frowned. “Why are you being so careful with the foxgloves? They’re not good for anything, you know that. Why do you have them here with your healing herbs?”
“They’re beautiful, no other reason.”
Dame Agnes shook out her skirt, moved to smooth the cover on Hastings’s bed, and turned, saying, “Listen to me. Everyone knows that Severin forced you. Alice informed even Eric the falconer, and you know that his mouth flaps looser than Belle’s breasts. The lowest servant in the kitchen knew before the evening meal. There is no laughter, no loud conversation, no arguments below in the great hall. Severin’s men have tried to be normal, but they are met with sullen silence. It is like someone has died. Their only sounds are slurping, chewing, and belching.”
Hastings straightened. “I suppose Severin told you to fetch me down?”
“Oh no. I suspect your husband would just as soon leave Oxborough. Surely it is a great holding and he is now a man of wealth, but there is no pleasure in it for him. He eats, he even speaks occasionally to Eloise, but nothing else. The marten is stretched out beside him and stares at him, unblinking.”
“There,” Hastings said. “There is the truth for you. You act as if this is all my fault, but Trist knows better, he knows his master’s cruelty, his lechery, his—”
“If you were a child, I would slap you. Unfortunately you are now a grown woman, indeed, the mistress of Oxborough and the three other keeps that now belong to Lord Severin. Listen to me, Hastings. You are a woman. You are not stupid. Alice told me how you have no notion of how to maneuver a man like Lord Severin into paths that are pleasing to you. She told me it smote her to see you floundering about like a fish in a net, insulting him for no good reason, enraging him until he had no choice but to punish you. And, of course, he did. Did he hurt you badly when he took you?”
Hastings felt the stiffness in her legs. She still felt a soft pulling deep inside. A man had come into her body. He’d touched her womb. He’d felt her belly and her hips to see if she would easily bear his children. The bastard. If only she told Dame Agnes what he’d done, she wouldn’t be blaming Hastings for all this. But he had done so much more and Alice had told Dame Agnes. She couldn’t believe Dame Agnes was speaking to her like this. Blaming her. It wasn’t right. Surely she wasn’t to blame for her new husband’s acti
ons, surely.
“Nay, he didn’t hurt me, but that is not the point. I do not suppose that Alice admitted that Severin very nearly took her in his bedchamber, not ten feet from me?”
Dame Agnes laughed. She laughed. “Aye, she said she thought you’d gone behind the screen to dress. She said she was removing Severin’s boots, bent over, her bottom to him, and showing him that she would bed him willingly if he chose. What is wrong with that, Hastings? Alice is a fine, strapping girl.”
“He is my husband.”
“I want you to put away your herbs. I want you to come and sit on your bed and listen to me.” There was a light knock on the door.
“Enter,” Hastings called.
It was Alice, and she was looking as unhappy as Hastings had ever seen her in her life. She looked furtively toward Dame Agnes.
Dame Agnes said, “Alice, would you like to help me give our mistress some instruction?”
Alice perked up at that. “Hastings? Are you all right? Did he hurt you? I don’t see any bruises.”
This wasn’t right. Hastings stared at two women she’d known all her life. He wasn’t to blame unless he beat her? “He humiliated me.”
“What does that mean?” Dame Agnes said, stepping close. “Humiliation? Men do that well as a rule. But what did Lord Severin do to you?”
“He measured me with his hand to see if I could easily birth babes.”
Dame Agnes nodded. “Aye, he would do that to prevent worry about you. You must needs have an heir quickly, Hastings, but he did this not to humiliate you but to assure himself that you would be able to birth them without dying. This is the humiliation? This is all that he did?”
“He was going to put his hands on Alice’s bottom, then thought better of it.”
“Of course he would. You were standing there, weren’t you? He spared you humiliation. It seems to me, Hastings, that you have sorely mistreated your new husband.”
Hastings squawked, opened the rose drawer, took out some of the drying blossoms, and ate them.
Alice said, lightly laying her fingers on Hastings’s sleeve, “Men do not think clearly and sensibly as women do. They like to fight—to test their manhood and to clear their blood—to eat and drink, and to have sex as often as they can. There is little more to any of them.”
“That is an excellent description, Alice,” Dame Agnes said, nodding in approval. “So, Hastings, you have really mucked things up here. You have taken a simple man whom you could have led about by the nose if you’d just thought about it. Instead you have treated him to fits of outrage and given him only quarrels. You have argued with him when there was no need. You have yelled and ranted and carried on at great length when all you would have had to do was smile.”
Hastings grabbed another rose blossom and ate it, chewing viciously. “By Saint Godolphin’s shins, he has never kissed me, not once. He doesn’t like me. He thinks I’m ordinary, well, he did say that I was not an ordinary heiress.”
“An ordinary heiress?” Alice repeated, frowning. “What does that mean?”
“It means that Severin always believed that an heiress would be ugly. I am not ugly, but I don’t have anything else to please him. He doesn’t like me, even after I saved his life. Bedding me is a duty, nothing more. You are wrong about him, Agnes. He does not want sex with me.”
“Ah,” Dame Agnes said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means, Hastings,” Alice said with exaggerated slowness, “that you are angry because he did not show you proper gratitude. He is a man, a warrior. Such a man cannot tell a woman that she is brave and courageous and that he will revere her above all others for the rest of his life. Men are not like that.”
“Aye,” Dame Agnes said. “To be felled by an assassin, it probably shriveled his soul as well as his manhood. Then to have you save him, well, it is as Alice says. A man of his stature would find that more than difficult to accept.”
“This is all very confusing,” Hastings said, and took another bite of a rose blossom. Then she sighed and began to carefully wrap the foxglove blossoms in soft linen.
“And then you cured him.”
“Aye, Agnes,” Hastings said, jerking up. “That was a mighty crime on my part. Mayhap I should have kissed his feet instead? Mayhap I should have just leaned down and let him put his heel upon my neck.”
“Do not become impertinent with me, Hastings. Now, sit down and eat the bread and stew Alice brought you. Rose blossoms are fine, but you need MacDear’s stew.”
Her nurse pointed to the bed, saying no more, until Hastings, shrugging her shoulders, sat down and allowed Alice to place the tray on her legs. She picked up the crusty bread and took a nice bite. Her stomach growled.
“You eat and we will talk. If you wish, you may ask questions. I wonder, Alice,” Dame Agnes said, turning away from Hastings, “do you believe we should fetch Belle from the great hall? Her knowledge of men is legendary.”
Belle, Hastings thought, her eyes widening. She was old, fat, and had scarce a tooth left in her mouth. Her hair was long and thick, however, very black with only a bit of gray showing. She had been wedded to four men, all of whom were dead now. However, Old Morric, the blacksmith, was casting his eyes in her direction and everyone poked everyone else with their elbows and whispered behind their hands, laughing. It was very confusing.
“If we discover that we need Belle, we will call her later,” Dame Agnes said.
“Aye,” Alice said. “I believe she was dallying with Morric. He looks besotted, his mouth hanging open, his eyes crossed. She will probably make him take wing tonight. I would not want him to shoe my horse on the morrow.” Alice laughed. “He would likely put the shoe on the horse’s rump. Aye, by the end of summer, he will be her fifth husband.”
Hastings chewed on her bread, took a bit of the wondrously flavored beef stew with a thick sauce and onions and peas. It was salted to perfection. “MacDear has used sage in the stew. It adds a biting flavor. I like it.”
Alice rolled her eyes.
Dame Agnes said, “Now, Hastings, this is what you will do. No, keep chewing your stew, I do not wish to hear any arguments from you. And aye, it is sage.”
Nearly an hour later, Hastings was finally left alone in the bedchamber, staring blankly at the two tapestries, one showing a banquet, the other a jousting tournament. At one corner of the tapestry there was a cup that Hastings knew held an infusion of flowers and leaves from the borage plant. It was believed to give courage to a man before he went into the tournament. If she squinted, she could see the tiny letters, b-o-r-a-g-e, in perfect stitches on the cup.
What was she to do? Was she to become a limp, well-washed rug and let him tread upon her? Was she to smile when he casually tossed out his insults? Was she to ignore his looks at Alice’s bottom? Was she to ask him if he enjoyed himself when he took another woman to his bed? Was she to smile when he mounted her, told her that she was only adequate, and rutted on her like an animal?
No, she would kill him.
He didn’t come to her. She quickly changed into her night shift, a loose cotton gown that came nearly to her knees. She crawled into bed, thinking, thinking. Could it be possible that she was in the wrong?
Alice had said slowly, as if instructing an idiot, “It is pleasant to have a man rut you if he goes slowly and easily, and knows what he is doing. I asked Gwent about his master’s habits. He told me that Severin was usually very careful with a woman, that he enjoyed her and caressed her until she enjoyed him as well. Gwent said he does not understand why the two of you are prepared to slit each other’s throats. He said it made no sense to him unless you were overly prideful, and such a thing in a woman would surely displease Severin.”
Hastings couldn’t believe that. Severin was careful with a woman? No, that couldn’t be the truth. Nor could she believe that all the Oxborough people were discussing Severin and her. She wondered if Dame Agnes would demand to watch them mate to see how each of them behaved tow
ard the other.
Saint Francis’s staff, they should probably mate on one of the trestle tables with all their people looking on, offering advice, telling her how to arrange herself so that Severin would find the most enjoyment. She would never believe that a woman could possibly enjoy this mating.
She wasn’t overly prideful.
She wasn’t.
11
HASTINGS AWOKE EARLY THE FOLLOWING MORNING TO shouts from the inner bailey below the window. She jumped from the bed and ran to look down. There were Severin and at least twenty-five men—some men-at-arms from Oxborough and some Langthorne men. Where were they going? She realized then that he had not even slept in his bed last night. No, he had not come to her at all. Nor had Trist. She watched them ride out, Severin, garbed all in gray, his chain mail glittering in the early morning sun, at their fore.
He had not said a word to her.
She dressed quickly and ran down the solar stairs. Gwent was in the great hall, speaking to the steward, giving instructions to the thirty-some men-at-arms remaining at Oxborough. He looked up and smiled when he saw her.
“Severin is journeying to his other holdings. The castellans there must swear fealty to him. He will make certain there are no problems, no insurrections brewing.”
“I should be with him. It is the way things are done. It is expected.”
“He did not wish it. No one mentioned it except you. Why would you wish to be with him if you don’t like him?”
“It is the way of things. Liking has nothing to do with it.”
“Severin wished to go alone.”
“I am not overly prideful, Gwent.”
“Mayhap. Mayhap not.”
“When will he return?”
“A fortnight, mayhap longer.”
“Does he also journey to Langthorne?”
“Not as yet. This is more important.” Gwent looked down at the cut on his forearm that did not seem to be healing. He’d been careless. During practice with the quintain, he had fallen and cut himself with his own sword.