“Jerval said you took quite a blow, but that your head is so hard, it wouldn’t hurt you very long.” He paused a moment, then said very clearly and slowly, “I was forced to tell him that I am very grateful to God that you are neither my wife nor my responsibility.”
His words struck her to the bone, adding to the pain that swamped her, but she said nothing for the moment, just sucked her fingers, for the meat was hot. Then, “It was not my choice to be any man’s wife or responsibility.”
Mark shook his head, and when he spoke again, his voice was as cold as the sea breeze chilling her flesh. “Jerval is my best friend. We were raised together. It is unfortunate what has happened to him. You say that you never wanted to be any man’s wife or responsibility. By God, I’ll wager that he now wishes he had known that.”
She chewed on a bite of rabbit, knowing what he said was true. She just wished the knowing didn’t hurt so much. But even that didn’t matter now. Nothing, at the moment, appeared to matter. She said, “I wonder why Alan Durwald chopped part of my braid.”
“A trophy. If he manages to survive this raid, and now I am certain that he will, I can see him wearing it about his arm for all the world to see. He took Jerval de Vernon’s woman, be it only for a few hours. He will tell the world about that, about the golden hair he wears. He might even boast that he took you, that he returned you to your husband mayhap with his babe in your belly.”
“Then he would lie. Who is he?”
“He is a very hard man, smarter than he should be, merciless to his enemies, a man who is also a very dangerous renegade.”
“What do you mean?”
“Durwald was in line for a rich estate in Galloway, but King Alexander would not back his claim and gave it instead to his cousin. You see, Durwald would not swear fealty to his king. Unfortunately, the trouble is now ours. He’s not stupid. He never wreaks enough damage to gain the attention of King Henry or King Alexander. He has been until recently content to raid farther to the east. But now he is here, and we must kill him or he will pick our bones.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
“There was no reason not to tell you. There is nothing harmful you can do with the information. Good night, Chandra.”
“Do you hate me so much?”
Mark rose to his feet, looked down at her for another moment, then turned on his heel and left her without a backward glance.
A short time later, Jerval wrapped himself up in his blanket and lay down near his wife. He knew she had to be in some pain. That was too bad. He wondered why he’d bothered to give her a blanket. She had her conceit, her god-awful arrogance, to keep the chill night air at bay.
The fire was nearly out, but from the dim shadows cast by the orange embers, he could see clotted blood over a cut near her jaw. She deserved it.
They were a few miles north of Camberley late the next morning when Jerval turned in his saddle and waved his hand toward Chandra, who was riding by herself at the rear of the troop.
For a moment, he believed she would ignore him.
Then, just a moment later, she reined in beside him. “Aye?”
He never looked at her, just said, “I have thought about what to do with you. I gave you all the freedom you had at Croyland, until you broke trust with me. Even then, I allowed you your manly trappings. After your ridiculous performance with the Scots in the tiltyard, I ordered you to learn from my mother, hoping, praying, it would temper your actions. That did naught but make my mother howl in frustration.
“But now, I will make no more excuses for you. No, you will not interrupt me. Close your mouth and listen carefully, for I can assure you that all hell will break loose once we are home.” He felt the pain rumbling through him even as he forced himself to say, “I have done all that I can to change your feelings for me. I give you a woman’s pleasure every night. Then I feel your tears against my shoulder at what you believe to be your humiliation, your subjugation, by me, your husband. You see it as a battle and see yourself, after you have recovered from the pleasure I give you, as having somehow lost something and been bested by me, your enemy. I believe you are incapable of recognizing that there is caring between us, and your passion with me is a sign of your caring for me.”
Her face was frozen.
He continued, his voice harsher now, because the pain cut him so deeply. “Every morning, you flee from me. Tell me why you must run away.”
He did not believe she would answer him, but she did. “I have no choice. I cannot stay.”
“Why?” She remained silent, and he said, “If you did stay, and I awoke with you, then I would bring you pleasure yet again and that is something you would never forgive yourself for. Is that it?”
She said nothing. The dried blood itched on her cheek.
“It would be in the light of day, and you would have to see me in that full light, not in the dim shadows of night, and you would know I was looking at you and you would see my mouth and my hands on you and you cannot bear that, can you?”
He didn’t think she would answer that, but she did, saying slowly, “You’re right. I cannot bear it.”
“Why the hell not?”
And that she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, answer. Which, she didn’t know. She stared down at her scraped and torn hands and remained silent.
He said at last, “This last example of your thoughtlessness, your childishness, your absolute selfishness, has shown me clearly that you have not a pittance of sense, or maturity, and no regard at all for my wishes.” Indeed, he thought, as a husband, as her lord, as a man to whom she owed respect, he had failed spectacularly. She’d accused him of changing after they’d wed. Now, he knew that he must change.
“You will practice no more with the men, nor will you again wear your men’s clothes. You will spend all of your time learning from my mother the things a lady should know. Never again will you set yourself against me, or I will deal with you as befits a disobedient, ill-tempered wife.”
It was more than she could bear, more than she would let pass. “I am not ill tempered.”
He nearly laughed at that one. “Mayhap that wasn’t what I meant exactly. You are more heedless, mayhap more oblivious, than ill tempered. There, does that suit you?”
She said nothing at all.
“Just look at you. Some lady I bound myself to. You’re filthy. Your hair is tangled around your face.”
“The same applies to you, Jerval, save that you have a dirty, scratchy growth of beard on your face to hide the dirt.”
She was right.
“It will take me an hour to bathe and soothe ointment into all the cuts and scratches on your body.”
“I will do it myself.”
“Aye, if I did it, then I would see your body in the full light of day. I would touch you, and you are afraid that you would like the feel of my hand on you and would want more.”
“All right, then you will do it. I care not. You think I would want you to touch me more? That is a man’s conceit. By all the saints, I hurt too badly.”
Again, he nearly laughed. “If I wish it, then I will. Now, do you have any questions about what you will do?”
She said nothing, just dug her heels into the stallion’s sides and rode away from him. He wondered what she would do.
A half hour later, he saw her beside the rutted road. He would have grinned had he been able, for he realized that she did not have the courage to enter the keep without him.
He merely nodded to her, and she guided the roan beside him, not looking at him. There were shouts from the men lining the outer walls, and as he expected, his parents were awaiting them in the inner bailey. He could hear his father’s sigh of relief upon seeing Chandra. There were two spots of angry color on his mother’s cheeks.
Chandra slithered slowly off the roan’s back. She heard her mother-in-law call her name, but kept her head down and walked quickly to where her husband stood.
“Jerval,” said Lady Avicia, “thank the Virgin yo
u have brought her back safely.”
“By all the saints, we did not know what she would do,” Lord Hugh said, limping toward them, for his gout was particularly noxious today.
“I know,” Jerval said. “Let us go within and I will tell you everything.”
Once in the hall, Lord Hugh said, “What of the Scots? Did you get our cattle back? Capture the bastards?”
Jerval pulled Chandra down beside him on a trestle bench. He said, “We killed many of them, but their leader, Alan Durwald, escaped. I expect Ranulfe will catch up with the other Scots and will bring back the cattle.”
“Oh, my God, your hair!” Lady Avicia was staring at Chandra, pointing.
Chandra hurt, both in body and in spirit, but it appeared that there was nothing she could do about either. She shrugged, but it cost her dearly. “Their leader, Alan Durwald, chopped off my braid. Mark believed he did it because he would have a trophy. It doesn’t matter. It is just hair.”
Lady Avicia’s eyes bulged. “You were in the fighting? But, Jerval, you told me you would not allow it.”
“She did it anyway,” Jerval said, and nothing more.
“You smashed my glass window,” Lord Hugh said. “By all the saints’ blessed deeds, you should be beaten.”
Lady Avicia rose to stand over her daughter-in-law. “This nonsense must stop, Jerval, before she is killed through her own foolishness.”
Jerval rose and brought Chandra up beside him. When she would have pulled away, he just tightened his hold. He said very calmly, “Yes, it will stop. Now Chandra and I will bathe off our dirt. Mother, please have some ointment sent to my bedchamber. As you see, my wife is covered with cuts and bruises that must be tended to.” He paused a moment, then said over his shoulder, “When Alan Durwald saw that we had cut him off, Chandra managed to fling herself off his horse and save herself. Unfortunately, the ground was not smooth.”
“Hold still.”
She had no choice. Before he’d stripped off her torn, filthy clothing, he’d given her a potion to drink. “It will ease your pain. Now you will bathe; then I will see how badly you are hurt.”
He hadn’t left the bedchamber while she bathed. Indeed, he’d held a towel for her when she stepped out of the tub. “Lie down,” he’d said, and she did, on her stomach on the bed.
“Hold still,” he said again, only she hadn’t moved. Her body hurt and her spirit wanted to die.
He said nothing more, but she felt his hands on her, gentle, his fingers covered with the ointment, touching her here and there, looking at her everywhere. “Turn onto your back now.”
She turned onto her back. She hated it. She lay there, naked, and he was sitting beside her, only there was no caring in his eyes as he looked down at her, only duty, perhaps also impatience, and anger still simmering in him at what she had done.
“I played my part well even though you hadn’t given it to me. I was a fine tethered goat. I brought them out for you to fight and capture. You managed to kill most of them.”
His fingers were on her belly. They stilled. “Tethered goat? Oh, yes, you were my bait.” He didn’t tell her that when he’d first seen her surrounded by the Scots, he’d nearly lost all control, he’d been so afraid for her. But she was all right. He looked down at his fingers still lightly touching her smooth belly. He wanted her, and it surprised him. He wanted her very badly.
She said, “I managed to get away from Alan Durwald by myself.”
He moved quickly away from her belly. “Aye, you did. I even told my mother and father that.”
He was rubbing the ointment into several cuts on her legs.
“I do not believe that I should be punished to such an extreme. It was just that I was unlucky. Surely—”
“Be quiet. I don’t care a single damn what you believe. You have even cut your feet. No, don’t say anything more. I am tired of your excuses, your justifications.” When he was done, he rose and covered her with a light towel. “Do not move until I tell you to.”
She closed her eyes, feeling the ointment leach the pain out of the worst of the cuts and bruises.
She heard him speaking, knew he was ordering clean hot water for himself. She said nothing, merely lay there, not understanding why she wasn’t yelling at him to free her, to take part of the blame for what had happened. But the fact was, there was nothing inside her now—no anger, no fear, nothing at all. She felt both numb and battered. At that moment she truly didn’t care if she lived or died. She closed her eyes.
He was dressed when he sat beside her again. “Has the pain lessened?”
She nodded, her eyes still closed.
“Sit up and let me comb your hair.”
She did. It didn’t take him long. “At least he didn’t make you bald. I never liked you wearing a braid. Now your hair is too short to allow it. After you feel strong enough, you will dress in one of your gowns. I will speak to my mother and tell her what, when you are well enough, it is you will do from now on.”
He looked over at the window. All the broken shards of glass had been removed. “If you are industrious enough, I might consider it payment for breaking the glass, though I doubt that my father will. Did you ever bother to consider that Camberley is the only keep in the north of England that has glass?”
“A warrior’s keep shouldn’t have glass windows. But it was beautiful. I am sorry I had to break it.”
Well that was something, particularly since Lord Richard had raised her in his very image, with all his beliefs, all his prejudices. “As I said, you will now learn all the responsibilities of a lady. If I am pleased with your progress, see clear evidence of your cooperation, if your moods and conversation are pleasant, then mayhap I will allow you to once again ride, practice your archery. Perhaps I will even allow you to hunt again. But you will do none of these things without my permission.”
She heard herself say, as if from far away, “I want to go home to Croyland.”
“It is a pity, but you cannot. Your father would not want you back. No, you don’t believe that, do you? Actually, I would just as soon you returned as well, but it is not to be. We are wed, and that’s an end to it. You believe you are trapped? Believe me, Chandra, I am caught in the same snare with you.”
She flinched. He wondered why, but he didn’t ask.
He wondered if he should simply take all her boy’s clothes, her armor, her weapons. But no, he wouldn’t. He would gladly beat her if she dared to flout him again.
When he saw her two hours later in the Great Hall, Mary at her side, he smiled. If the smile didn’t reach his eyes, everyone knew why it didn’t. Her hair fell to her shoulders, a golden band holding it back from her face. Her gown he recognized as one she had worn at Croyland, soft pink silk, its long, loose sleeves lined with bands of miniver. The cut on her cheek ruined the effect.
He had spoken privately to his parents and told them the details of what had happened, preferring them to hear it from him rather than from the men. He had also told them what he now expected from his wife. “It is over,” he’d said. “I believed I could ease her into being a wife. I was wrong. I have no choice now. Mother, I would ask that you try to go easily with her. As much as she knows about a warrior’s weapons and skills, she knows nothing about a lady’s duties. You wondered why her mother, Lady Dorothy, didn’t teach her. I don’t know the whole of it, but I do know that she dislikes her daughter intensely. I also know it wasn’t Chandra’s fault. Now, do not try to break her. Just instruct her. Will you try?”
“The girl should be thrashed every day,” Lady Avicia said. “She is worse than a thorn—she is a blight. Oh, very well, I will treat her as well as I can.”
“She could have been killed so easily,” Lord Hugh said, shaking his head even as he stroked Hawk’s massive head. “I do not understand how her brain is fashioned.”
“I have wondered many times myself,” Jerval said. “I will have the glass replaced, Father. Then it is her debt to me.”
The evening m
eal, luckily, passed without any unpleasant incident. Chandra was as silent as the roasted pheasant on her trencher. She didn’t eat much of the meat and kept her head down even when Julianna mentioned to all those within hearing how a woman’s hair was her pride, and a woman who lost her hair, no matter the reason, wasn’t a woman any longer, now was she? Not a word out of Chandra. Jerval wasn’t used to this. He almost told Julianna that she was being cruel and to shut up, but he managed to keep his mouth shut.
He didn’t touch her that night, though he wanted to very much. No, she was too sore; there were still too many painful cuts on her body. Still, when he awoke at dawn the next morning, she was gone.
What had he expected?
That afternoon, Jerval and two dozen men set out from Camberley for Oldham. Jerval cast one last look over his shoulder at the huge towers, shrouded in early fog.
“She will come about, Jerval.”
“It seems you are privy to all of it, Mark. You spoke to Mary?”
“Aye. She told me some of it. It is a strange and wonderful thing, but Mary would fight to the death for Chandra. She refuses to hear any criticism of her friend. All she told me really was that Chandra acquitted herself quite well, that she’d fought as well as any of us—I couldn’t deny it—and that I was just being an oaf and blindly following your lead, which wasn’t fair of me. She stuck her chin in the air as if to challenge me, and then said this was according to Bayon and he wouldn’t lie to her.”
“Bayon much admires her.”
“I don’t like that. Mary deserves better than he,” Mark said.
“No, I meant that Bayon admires Chandra.”
“He is young yet. Now, I saw Mary and Chandra speaking together last night and it seemed like a very serious conversation.”
“Mary is probably advising her how to behave with your mother.”
After a few moments, Jerval said, “Soon we will know if Sir John is in league with Alan Durwald. Even though I am certain that he is guilty, I still have difficulty believing the fool has the gall to betray us.”
“I agree with you. Oldham is not well fortified. We could take it in a week, if he tried to break his oath of fealty. Do we stop at Penrith?”