A Knight’s Enchantment (20 page)

“I do not blame you.”

Hugh straightened a little as she said this. Glancing about to ensure that none of the Templars had noticed that Sir Gaston was no longer with them, he scowled at the page holding Sir Gaston’s gloves. “I truly hoped they would help. Face-to-face, I thought David’s brother monks would not refuse me.”

“I know.” It pained her to see his hopes so dashed.

“What are these relics you mentioned? Has David told you something?”

Joanna shook her head. “He has told me nothing. I spoke of what I hoped would catch Sir Gaston’s interest.”

“Pity it could not have kindled his courage, also.” Hugh swung back into the saddle behind her. “This may be a rough ride. My men will know to follow: we have fled such traps before.”

Joanna nodded. The prospect of the wild gallop did not alarm her as it should have done: her head was busy with other matters.

He called me wife. Hugh called me his wife.

Lady Elspeth greeted them in her small orchard. Though she was in truth very surprised to see them, dirty and disheveled with travel and Hugh’s men glowering at anything that moved, she took care not to show it.

“Not a success, I take it?” she remarked, waiting for a scowling Hugh or a pale Joanna to answer.

Hugh cursed long and heartily, several of his men joining in as they all sat slumped on their horses, steaming with tiredness and ill temper. She allowed them to rant and put down her basket of apple blossom to study Hugh’s girl more closely.

Joanna, sitting before Hugh, was proud and straight in the saddle, although to Elspeth’s experienced eyes she looked ready to fall off Lucifer.

“No one died,” she said now.

“No grief to me if they had.” Hugh launched into another spate of baleful language, which Elspeth ignored. Something more important had happened than Hugh and his troop having to outrun more armed men: Joanna was weary and triumphant together. She looked as Elspeth’s daughter had looked just after giving birth to a healthy boy.

“What has happened?” Elspeth asked.

She listened to a garbled tale of Hugh’s. The Templars had refused to help. He had told them Joanna was an alchemist and instead of being impressed and asking her for gold, the head of the preceptory had called her a sorceress. The Templars were ungrateful, idle pigs.

“We left after I had knocked de Marcey unconscious. The others scarcely gave chase,” he finished, in deep disgust.

“Terrible indeed,” said Elspeth, marking how Joanna had not interrupted or corrected this account. Her eyes were very bright and her cheeks flushed with color.

She looks loved and in love,
Elspeth thought. She was glad, and for a brief, selfish moment, envious, but mostly she was happy for this handsome young couple. She wished them both very well.

“You and your people rest here tonight, Hugh,” she said, mentally checking through her stores and deciding she had sufficient bread and leeks for Hugh and his men. She had a good venison tart, too, and she and Joanna would have a taste of that in her own private solar. Out of the way of men, Joanna would be happy to talk, she guessed.

Elspeth smiled, anticipating a gossipy, girlish evening.

“What did you talk about with Elspeth for so long?” Hugh asked later. He stretched out like a great cat on the sheepskin rug before the fire.

“Our own private room.” He looked about, his eyes lingering on her, sitting on a stool with a small psalter in her hands. “Very fine indeed. Elspeth has not let me in here before, nor anywhere near her precious books. The last time I stayed, I was out in the hall with my men.”

“Good,” Joanna said honestly, before she realized she had spoken her thought aloud. “We chatted on women’s matters.” Elspeth had urged her to tell Hugh more of her past. She rose from the stool and carefully put down the psalter. “Will you have more mead?” She plucked a flagon of Hugh’s favorite drink off the floor.

“You will need to come closer than that to pour it.” Hugh tugged off his tunic and tossed it down as a pillow for his elbow as he lounged on his side. “The fire feels good.”

“When I first saw you, I thought you a salamander, a true lover of fire,” Joanna confessed, edging closer with the flagon and knowing she was hesitating.

“Still shy with me, sweet? Is it because this is our first real bed?” Hugh’s blue eyes lightened as he smiled. “Should I sleep on this rug?”

“Do you want to?”

He stretched his arms above his head. “Pour me my mead, wench, and stop fussing with nonsense.”

There was a knock at their door. “Enter!” Hugh called.

Henri pushed open the door but remained on the threshold. “Sir, I am sorry.” His round, shiny face was puce with embarrassment.

“Out with it, lad.” Hugh was already rising to his feet.

“James and Malcolm are playing dice in the great hall. You said I should tell you, sir, if they were gaming.”

“You did right.” Hugh kicked aside the rug as he strode for the door, calling over his shoulder, “Take your ease, Joanna. I may be a while with these fools: they dice and quarrel in equal measure. Hell’s teeth! They are already at it!”

He stormed out, Henri stumbling after him, as there was a crash from the great hall, and the cry of a maidservant, and the breaking of pottery.

Joanna took her cup of mead to the fire and sat on the rug where Hugh had been. Staring into the twisting flames, she thought of her father. How was he faring? Was he safe? Did Bishop Thomas know she had left Castle Manhill? How could she find out about Solomon? Could she and Hugh somehow bring her father and David out of their captivity? How could they do it?

The walls of the manor fell away. It was no longer spring but winter and she was no longer snug and safe inside a house but out on the road. Limping and cold, she labored on alone, wondering where she was.

The wolves came out of the freezing winter fog and raced toward her, teeth barred and tails aloft like war banners. As she backed against a tree with no head-holds to climb, the wolves changed into men.

“Filthy Jew!” the leader shouted as they closed in on her, pawing her with hot, greedy hands.

“Joanna!”

Hugh was holding her, smoothing her hair. “You are safe, Joanna. It is a dream. You are safe.”

The wolf-men vanished as she opened her eyes and looked into Hugh’s calm face. He waggled his ears at her, a trick she had never seen before from him and which, in another mood, would have delighted her.

“Finally a smile.” Hugh swung her onto the bed and covered her with a blanket. “I have sent for some tisane. You are chilled to the bone. You need soft bedding and care.”

“I let the fire go out.” Her tongue felt stiff and she was too ashamed to look directly at Hugh. “Did I make a lot of noise?”

“Enough to arm the guards. No, love—” He pressed her back onto the bed. “I jest. You were sleeping by the fire grate when I returned. You were moaning, so I came to you at once.”

“You have just got back?”

“This moment. And I am glad I did.” He took her hand in his. “What were you dreaming? Do you remember?”

The denial flew to her lips but she recalled what Elspeth had said: that she should tell Hugh the whole.

“It may have been a memory,” she admitted. “Before we came to West Sarum, we moved many times.” She paused, taking faith in Hugh’s acceptance of the Jewish Joshua as a warrior. “My grandfather had converted to Christianity and we kept the faith most carefully, but still we were persecuted.”

Hugh lay beside her on the bed, on top of the covers. He put an arm across her, to comfort and warm her while a burning brand was brought to them from the kitchen to relight their own fire. In the darkness of the room she could only just make out his face, not his expression.

“How many times did you move?” he asked.

“One year, we fled to sixteen different places. That was when my mother was alive. It was hard on her, not to have a proper home of her own.” She rolled onto her stomach, remembering too much. “I learned the signs. Whenever people questioned me on my family name, or asked me about Christ, or remarked on my coloring, I knew it was time to leave again.”

Hugh felt helpless in the face of such grief. He wanted to say something, but words failed. He wanted to cuddle her, but she might despise such comfort as being too earthy, not fine enough.

I cannot read and she is so learned. What can I say to her?

There was a knock at the door and he jumped from the bed to let in the maids with a drink of hot strawberry tisane and a shovel of burning brands for the fire.

He goes from me. The bishop did the same. Perhaps now he knows for sure what I am, the stock I came from, he no longer wishes to touch me.

Joanna curled into a ball. She wanted to flee again, rush from the room. The maids were leaving now and Hugh was looming above her. The relit fire glinted on a copper goblet.

“Drink while it is warm.” He took a sip and the smell of strawberries seemed to fill the chamber. “Try it.”

He was willing to share with her. Heartened, Joanna sat up in bed and Hugh fussed the cushions behind her. The copper goblet was almost too warm to hold.

“Here.”

A shadow dropped onto her lap. A glove, she realized, picking it from her thighs. She put it on and the palm dwarfed hers but she was glad to wear it, because Hugh was happy that she did.

They sat together, sharing the tisane and staring at the fire.

“This is not the same glove you left with me first,” she said, seeking to tease him a little. She waited for an answer, her nerves taut like Beowulf straining after a scent.

“It fits you ill. I will give you better.”

They sat quietly again and Joanna fretted over his answer. What did he mean? Was he sad? Distracted? Bored?

Her mind conjured Bishop Thomas’s face out of the shadows in the corner of the chamber, and his scorn struck her like a fist. “Your bed bores me, Joanna. You have as much wit in a man’s arms as a tavern whore.”

Hugh cleared his throat and the memory exploded like a puff of smoke. Her fingers clenched in the huge glove and she almost spilled the tisane.

“You are my first love to last longer than a day and a night,” he said. “The women I knew before you never wanted more than hectic bed-sport, as if I was an itch to them that must be scratched. After they had scratched their fill, they wanted no more of me or my company.”

He touched her cheek. “I am so happy you do. I like being with you and I want you all the time.” His black brows drew together. “You do feel the same, do you not?”

Joanna nodded, then dreaded he could not see. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Thank Christ!” Hugh took the goblet from her hand and put it down into the dark. He lifted the bedcovers and reached for her, caressing her everywhere.

She woke the following morning, naked and warm. The golden gown was draped over a chest. The rest of her and Hugh’s clothes were coiled in a heap at the bottom of the bed. She closed her eyes again, smiling as she remembered how he had kissed and praised her breasts, her flanks, her belly. More still, for he had kissed her
down there.
She had been horrified at first but he had pinned her close and ignored her squeals of protest, kissing and tonguing her until she did not know truly where she stopped and he began.

It was a heady feeling, to know she was truly desired. In so many lovely ways, Hugh was no Bishop Thomas. He reveled in her and in her company: in every touch he seemed to discover a new wonder. It was the same for her: an unending journey of delight.

She touched Hugh’s back. “I love you,” she whispered. She wanted to say the words but did not want to wake him, not when he was sleeping so peacefully.

“Marry me,” he growled. Rolling over, he trapped her between his powerful thighs. “I will not let you go until you say yes, so say it. Marry me, Joanna.”

He saw emotions skid across her face, complete surprise and then joy. She blazed like a ruby, her dark eyes glowing as she brought both hands up to hug her face, then his.

“Oh, Hugo!”

“Say yes.” He tried to sound threatening. He clutched her more tightly, then released her in case he hurt her.

She jumped out of bed and sped round the room.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for my shoes.”

Amused, he held up the pair, small and neat and so tiny he wanted to kiss them, both heaped at the bottom of the turmoil of clothes that was now their bedding. “Joanna?”

He knew when she turned from profile to full face and dropped a shoe what her answer would be.

“Hugo.” She dropped to her knees as if she were the one who had proposed. “Hugo, that is lovely. A lovely idea, but it is impossible.” She tried to tug at something, then seemed to recall she wore nothing and pulled at her hair instead. “You should marry a beautiful”—her voice cracked—“a beautiful, fair lady with a castle and rich lands, not a female alchemist who is ever under suspicion by the church.”

“Then what of us?” he demanded, deliberately blunt, perhaps even a little cruel to force the question. For her to think he would be interested in some insipid blonde annoyed him.

The glow in her face became a furnace as she blushed right down to her throat. “I could be your mistress?”

He saw that if they spoke more on the matter she would break down utterly, so he did the unexpected. He poured himself the last of the mead and sat up comfortably in bed. “Very well, young mistress mine. We will speak no more of it. What is the day like? Is it dry? Can you peep through the shutters?”

The scorching glance she gave him then would have been like Medusa’s and turned him to stone had he not another plan already up his sleeve.

No, not his sleeve, for he too was naked. This plan was held in the depths of his heart, where Joanna was.

“If the day is bright I shall wear red,” he announced, his heart thumping wildly as he began to work out a new strategy.