Hot Summer's Knight (3 page)

“Quite a lady indeed.”

“So she’s never strayed?  She’s never been tempted?”  Many women in her situation would have taken a lover, he knew.

“Never!  You know how things are in a little place like this.  There’s never been anyone else in her bed.”  William was adamant.

Gareth nodded.  “I see,” he said, but he wasn’t sure he did.

William’s small house was where Gareth remembered it, one of half a dozen inside the castle walls.  It had two rooms, on two floors.  The upper one William used for sleeping.  The lower floor was intended to be a living room, but he rarely entertained, or even ate there, preferring the company of the kitchen or the hall.

Looking around the living room, Gareth knew he’d be happy to sleep there again, with a straw palliasse and a rug or two.  A broad timber bench was fixed to the wall between the hearth and the single, small window.  As well as the bench, there was a table, another free-standing bench, and a large, iron-bound chest beneath the window.

William opened it, and took out some rusted pieces of armor and chain mail.

“I’ll take these to the armory, son, they’ve seen too many years already.  Then you can use the chest for your own gear.  I’ll send Esme over with some bread and some wine while I’m at it.”

Before Gareth could tell him not to bother, William had gone.  He looked out  the unshuttered window, across the yard to the Lady’s tower.  He wondered if she still slept in the second floor room.  Its one window opened onto the courtyard too.

An agile man could climb onto the kitchen roof, he thought, and, grasping the sill, pull himself into her room.  That same, hypothetical man would then be able to take the Lady in his arms, and kiss and caress her until she murmured with pleasure, and begged him to stay.

Sighing, Gareth turned from the window, sagged onto the bench, and leaned against the cool, stone wall.  His parcels and bundles were piled on the table before him.

Why had he come here, he wondered.  Was it idle curiosity, a last look at all he was leaving behind for good?  Or was it the memory of a perfectly oval face, and black wings of brows, and eyes as deep and dark and blue as the Mediterranean Sea?

It was dangerous to be here, far more dangerous than he’d anticipated.  If he’d any sense at all, he’d wait an hour or two while the horse rested, and then leave.  Ride away from here, forever.  No-one would notice the troubadour who arrived and then left again after half a day.

Except William.  There were streaks of pure white in his iron dark locks.  One day, not too far in the future, he would be too old to protect the castle, and too old to protect Berenice.

So she ran things, did she, in the name of the husband she hadn’t seen for eight years?  Gareth had ridden through fields, orchards and gardens on his way to the castle.  The peasants sang as they worked.  They were well clad and well fed.  The Lady, he had to admit, ran things well, which was all very well in times of peace, but what would happen when this prosperous, fertile valley caught the eye of a predator?  Like Fulk, for example?  How could she stand against the likes of him?

She could marry him, a small, nasty voice at the back of his mind whispered.  She could acknowledge her widowhood, as her parents had begged, and ally her lands with her nearest neighbor’s.

Gareth had met Fulk only once, long ago.  He hadn’t liked the man then, and the condition of his lands and his peasants, compared to Berenice’s, spoke volumes.  To complete the argument, the thought of Berenice beneath Fulk’s sweating, lecherous bulk set Gareth’s hands curling into fists.

So who did she have?  An aging knight and a useless monk of a brother.  If marriage to Fulk had occurred to Gareth, it was a fairly good bet it had occurred to Fulk as well.  Gareth didn’t need his instincts to tell him that.

He’d done what he’d promised himself he’d do.  Seeing her again, soaking up the sight of her like a garden soaks up rain, he knew it hadn’t been enough.  He wondered if it would ever be enough.

And now, seeing the gates half hanging off their hinges, seeing William so aged, seeing just a small part of the defenselessness of the castle and the valley, he knew he had to stay.  At least, for a while.  Long enough to know she was safe.

There was a knock at the door, and a woman, older and taller than Berenice, pushed through it backwards balancing a tray of food.  She slid it onto the table.

“My Lord,” she began, then her hand covered her mouth as she swallowed, “oh, dear, forgive me, Will told me not to call you that.  Gareth the Troubadour, he said.  Oh, how strange, calling you by a foreign name!  Gareth it is then, I’ve brought you some wine, and some bread, and a bit of cheese and fruit.”

It was enough to feed a small army.

“Esme, my dear lady,” said Gareth, rising and bowing over her hand, “you grow even more beautiful.  Sir William must be a happy man.”

“Oh, sir, oh…”  She blushed, and gnawed at her lower lip, “it’s good to have you back, after all this time!  And so changed to!  Will didn’t tell me.  You’re so much thinner, and with that strange beard, too.  Oh! I shouldn’t be saying these things!  Forgive me my lord, please.”

“There’s nothing to forgive, Esme, really.  I’m not the same man who left – in many ways, not just the way I look.  Sit down, and share this lovely meal with me.”

“Oh, I couldn’t!” she protested, perching herself on the end of the bench.

“Well, talk to me then, while I eat.  I want to know everything that’s happened in the last eight years.”

“Oh, my lord, I couldn’t!” she repeated, “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

He smiled, and patted the bench beside him, and she told him.

CHAPTER THREE

Berenice noticed subtle changes in the rhythm of the castle life within hours of the troubadour’s arrival.

She watched William trudge across the courtyard carrying an armload of rusted chain mail.  He was singing an old love song from his youth.  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard him sing.

Then Esme went missing for hours in the middle of the day.  When she reappeared, she was flustered and giggly, and totally unlike her usual calm, organized self.

By the time of the evening meal, Berenice was convinced something was going on.

She’d finished her baking, and checked the inventories in the huge cellars beneath the kitchen with Robert, the cook.  When she’d gone to her room to bathe and change out of her working dress, she’d found Esme had laid out one of her best gowns for her to wear to the evening meal.  It was a deep, rich blue, with gold embroidery at the cuffs and hem, and it fitted her like a second skin.  Esme had once said the color brought out the blue of her eyes.

Before she dressed, she took a moment to stand at the window of her chamber, and look down into the courtyard.  The ancient walnut tree her grandfather had planted was in full leaf, shading the seat built around its trunk.

There was little activity in the castle at this time of day.  The smithy was quiet, the animals in the stables seen to for the night.  Most people had been at work since dawn.  In ones and twos, they headed for the hall, ready for one of Robert’s hearty meals, a chat, a song perhaps, and then bed.

Berenice loved this time of the day.  Her small world was at peace.

She hoped the arrival of the troubadour would not upset the fragile harmony of her valley.  She smiled to herself, thinking of her strange reaction when he’d held her hand at the gate.  He’d unsettled her, there was no doubt about it, like a breeze ruffling the leaves of the walnut on a still day.  Despite that, she suspected the grey-eyed stranger would fit quite well into this little corner of the world.

She remembered the arrival of another stranger, many years before.  How different that had been!

***

Berenice stood at the top of the steps, her mother and Esme a pace behind her.  Her mother had asked her to wear her thick cloak of English wool over her gown, and now she was glad she had.

She shivered in the early morning chill.  The sun had barely shown itself above the hills, but her quiet, gentle mother, who never insisted on anything, had insisted they wait out here, and so they did.

The three of them had been up since well before dawn.  Hot water had been brought to her mother’s room, and Berenice had been scrubbed and scented.  Scrubbed, so the grass stains of her latest escapades no longer showed on her palms and knees; scented, so her future husband would appreciate the woman she was about to become.

Esme had brushed Berenice’s brown hair until it shone.  It hung almost to her waist, shifting and stirring in the early morning air.

Berenice was sixteen years old, and her betrothed was about to arrive.  She wondered what he would look like, what manner of man he would be.

Perhaps, if God were smiling upon her today, her betrothed would be kind and gentle and studious, like Godfrey de Freycinet, her father.  Or he might be as wild and free as the eagles in the mountains, as her brother Denis had been.  Or he might be serious, and a fighting man, like Sir William, captain of her father’s men-at-arms.  Or like her brother Odo, as studious as their father, but still capable of enjoying a good meal and a flask of wine.

These men she’d known since her cradle.  These men she loved.  Surely her father and the duke and the king would not want her to marry someone who was very much different to these.

She shivered again, not entirely from the cold.

Marriage.  She’d known, for as long as she could remember, she would be expected to marry wherever and whomever her father decided.  It didn’t make the prospect any less frightening.

It wasn’t as though she was ignorant of the realities of the marriage bed; she’d seen cows and bulls, the dogs in the courtyard, and even the ducks and the drakes.  She couldn’t imagine actually wanting to do anything like it.  The very thought filled her with horror.

And with a complete stranger, as well!  She prayed silently for the strength to endure the days and the weeks ahead.  Not to mention the years.

Whether in answer to her prayer or in denial of it, the morning breeze brought the sound of harness jingling, men singing raucously, and horses’ hooves pounding the dirt road to the castle gate.

He was nearly here.

They poured between the gates like wine from a spigot; young men and old, knights and retainers, great war horses, pack ponies and carts, with banners flying, pennons flapping, a riot of color and men and horses.  Where a few minutes before there’d been peace, now there was tumult.

Berenice searched the seething throng with her eyes.  Which one was he?  Huon de Fortescue, twenty four years old, tall and well-built, dark haired and handsome too, she’d been told.  Youngest son of a northern count, favorite of the king, come to collect his prize.

She felt like a doll she’d seen at the summer fair last year, perched high on the top shelf of the peddler’s stall, looking down at the crowds.  She’d been dressed in silks and brocade, and Berenice had been sure her hair was real.  Even her finely carved features had been life-like.

“Throw the three wooden balls into the slot, little lady,” the peddler had said, “and the dolls’ yours!”

She’d missed, of course, and the doll would have been carefully packed away for the next fair.  She suspected the peddler had made certain she missed, although she didn’t know how he’d done it.

Now she was the doll.  Huon de Fortescue had thrown his three balls for the king, and had won a sixteen year old heiress, with one brother dead, another in holy orders, and a father with one foot in the grave.  She wondered what he’d done to deserve not only her, but the valley, with its villages, a castle, a Roman bridge, and a forest to hunt in.

The seething, shouting mass in the courtyard was coalescing into some sort of order.  Her father and William were talking to two older men, the king and the duke she guessed.  The baggage train was being directed out of the gates to the field where they would erect the pavilions.  Near the kitchen door, a group of well dressed young nobles were dismounting, laughing amongst themselves, and passing around a wine skin.  There were several tall, dark young men in the group.  One of them had to be him.

As though hearing her thoughts, they all turned towards her.  Almost as one body, they swept off their various hats and caps, and bowed.  She nodded, acknowledging them, blushing furiously.

She didn’t go down to greet them.  Just this once, it was up to him to come to her.  For the rest of her life, it would be her duty to obey him in all things.

The significance of her small gesture of defiance was not lost on them.  One of their number was singled out.  The laughter and half-heard, ribald jokes resumed.  One man was dusted down, his clothing rearranged, and his hat placed firmly upon his head.  Then the group united, and propelled him towards her.

She watched him swagger across the courtyard, hurriedly removing his velvet hat.  His footsteps, she suspected, were not quite as steady as they could have been.

His garments, compared to those of his companions, were of good quality but sober.  His dark, straight hair was neatly trimmed to just below his ears, and he was undeniably handsome; a fine, straight nose, a square jaw with a trace of a cleft.

He was also huge.  Berenice though he must be the tallest man she’d ever seen, and he was broad, with the mighty arms and chest of one who regularly wields the sword and lance.  He was full fleshed too; this man clearly ate his fill at every meal.

He drew closer, and with each step, more vast in her eyes.  One of his friends called out a comment, and he laughed, showing perfect rows of gleaming teeth.

Berenice’s pulse was racing.  Her blood was pounding in her ears.  This could not be him.  It just couldn’t be!  The thought of this giant of a man doing unnamed
things
to her body brought the bile to the back of her throat.

He reached the foot of the steps.  He began to recite a love poem to her, and hesitated, whereupon all his friends laughed, and shouted advice.  Shamefaced, he began again, but gave up when his friends offered more suggestive comments.