Revenge of the Rose (24 page)

Willem froze, gaping now at the blanket, at his own solicitousness in picking it up. He threw it down and looked hard at her. “Does Lienor know about this?” he demanded. “Have both of you been playing me for a fool behind my back?”

Jouglet waved a hand dismissively, reassuringly. “I’ve never told Lienor a thing. And I have never played you for a fool, Willem. I was perhaps a fool myself, and you were the victim of my foolishness. That’s not the same thing at all.”

For another long moment he kept staring at her, skeptically. She stood with resignation, arms at her sides, head high so he could scrutinize the suddenly alien face.

“Why?”
he finally demanded.

“Why live as a man?” she replied with the usual Jouglet shrug. “Have you not noticed what my options are otherwise?”

“I meant why
me
? Why did you bring me here?”

“So I could have my dearest friend near me in a place where we might both prosper,” Jouglet said. “Whatever else you have ever believed or might ever believe about me, Willem, please trust the truth of that.”

Willem looked uncertain. “What else?” he demanded.

She made a defenseless gesture. “Only what is obvious! I hoped that you and I might advance your sister, whom I do cherish, even if my courting her is just an artifice. And I hoped to benefit my emperor, because he
would
benefit from both you and Lienor in his court. And I thought we— you and I— would have a grand time with all of it. Which we have. I did not mean
this
to happen, though, I swear I didn’t.” A pause. Jouglet took a careful step toward him. “But it has, and I think— I hope— I will not regret it. If you don’t.” Another step in his direction, with a tentative smile.

Looking alarmed at her approach, he took a large step backward and bumped into the camp bed, then crossed away from that too. “I have no interest in possessing you,” he said awkwardly, almost defensively.

“Really? You considered it when you thought I was a youth.”

Willem hesitated. “You are an attractive young man. You are, forgive me, not such an attractive young woman.”

Jouglet laughed. “It’s the same face!” And added pointedly, “It is your friend’s face.” Again she took a step toward him.

Again he pulled away. “You’re not a virgin, are you?” he said in the same defensive, almost desperate tone.

“Willem!” said Jouglet in exasperation.

“If you’re not a prostitute, or married, or— “

“
You’re
not a prostitute or married, or a virgin,” Jouglet pointed out.

“I’m a
man,
” he said.

“There are a dozen witty responses to that insightful observation, but I’ll refrain. No, Willem, I’m not a virgin. But,” Jouglet added, in a softer tone, “I’ve always been on the road, without intimates. You’re the only man to whom I have entirely revealed myself, and the first with whom— ” He looked so alarmed she was afraid to say anything too direct. “The first with whom any embrace would not be a casual encounter.” She risked another step toward him.

“Ah. So you’re a harlot, then,” he said, sounding unconvinced.

“You deserve another bloody nose,” she snapped, and in a huff went to fetch her drawers. She pulled them on as she spoke, her hands shaking with anger so that it was hard to tie them. “I am not a harlot, Willem, I am someone with desires that you were not displeased about earlier, and occasionally—
occasionally
— I find a way to fulfill them. It would be unhealthy not to. Do not ask me to be passive and pure as the morning dew until the moment that I’m in your arms, and suddenly I’m vital. I’m
always
vital, Willem, that’s part of what you’ve always liked about me.” The drawers finally tied, she looked around for her belt and the purse she kept tied closed hanging from it.

Willem saw it before she did and grabbed it from the rushes where she had dropped it. “You’ve just given me the biggest shock of my life, I am entitled to be beside myself for a little while,” he chastised.

Immediately she held up her hands in a yielding gesture. “I grant you that,” she said, and with a small confessional laugh, added, “you gave me quite a shock yourself, when you came back to me on the stairs. I thought I’d managed to scare you off. I would never take you for a sodomite.”

“I would never take me for one either! You underestimated your own charms,” Willem said gruffly.

“I underestimated
you,
” said Jouglet.

There was a moment of unsettled silence between them, with Jouglet’s eyes looking almost plaintively at the belt and purse, forgotten in Willem’s large palm. “My belt, please,” she said as offhandedly as possible.

Willem glanced down at what he held. “What is it, then?” he asked, patting the small purse. “Obviously not herbs to keep your boyish treble.”

“If you must know,” Jouglet said in a grudging tone, “among other things, it’s a concoction of nettle seeds and staghorn to keep my monthly flux as brief and light as possible, and also white pepper ampules from Jeannette, to assure there will be no little Jouglets running around— “

“Oh,” Willem said hurriedly and handed it to her. She tied it on, and this time when she took a step toward him, he didn’t back away. She reached out tentatively to touch his face. He took a hard, quick breath when he felt those familiar fingers touch his skin.

The gesture whipped something to life in him— he grabbed Jouglet’s wrist and twisted it harshly to the side, so that the minstrel had to leap around beside him to keep it from snapping. “Willem!”

“You are a deceitful wretch,” he hissed.

“My wrist— for God’s sake, Willem!” Jouglet gasped.

“Apologize for deceiving me,” the knight demanded, glaring.

“I didn’t do it to deceive you, I’d— ah!” she cried as he twisted it more. “Stop,
stop,
Willem, you’re a knight and you’re hurting a woman— “

“I’m hurting a liar,” he corrected angrily but let her go. She snatched her hurt wrist against her body and cradled it with her other arm, scampering several paces back from him and the fire, feeling trapped in the far corner of the small room. He turned away from her and looked into the flames. “Get out of here,” he said in disgust and sat down again with a sigh born of too many bruises.

“You don’t mean that,” Jouglet said.

“Of course I mean it!” Willem thundered, turning again to glare into the darkness. “
I
am sincere—
I
never say or do anything untrue.”

“Neither do I,” she said quietly.

“You are the very
embodiment
of deception! I have no stomach for it, you’ve robbed me of my dearest friend.”

“I
am
your dearest friend,” Jouglet protested.

Willem shook his head adamantly. “No. My friend is not some lying woman.”

“That’s right, she’s not— I have never actually uttered a lie to you about my— “

“My friend is not a woman
at all
!” Willem clarified furiously, barely remembering to keep from yelling.

“Yes he is,” the minstrel said with quiet anger. “Your choices are now to maintain the friendship or forswear it.”

“I’ll make that choice once you admit that you were deliberately disingenuous,” Willem snapped impatiently. “A lie by omission is still a lie, Jouglet. It offends me you would hide something like that from me. It is a crime against friendship.”

“And when should I have told you?” Jouglet asked in a reasonable tone, and took a step out of the corner.

Willem looked confused. “The first moment you had impure thoughts about me,” he said awkwardly.

The minstrel laughed. “That was precisely the moment that I needed most to
hide
it from you,” she pointed out. “I am a woman of prodigious appetites, Willem, I— “

“Don’t tell me that!” he said desperately, shaking his head as if he could toss the words out of his memory. He stood up and crossed to the outer door. “I want you to leave now. You are not welcome in my presence.”

Sudden fear made her blanch. “I’ve endangered myself revealing this to you. If Konrad or any other— “

“Your wretched secret is safe with me,” he said brusquely, looking at the floor near her feet. “What do you take me for? But leave now, for God’s sake, until I’ve recovered from this shock.”

“Are we friends?”

“Ask me tomorrow,” Willem said impatiently, still staring at the floor near her feet. He couldn’t bring his eyes to look any closer at her, even now that she was dressed again; he did not want to look at Jouglet and see a woman’s face.
“Go.”

A little while later he was still pacing frantically through the rest of Konrad’s suite, as the dogs eyed him suspiciously and Charity, the hooded falcon, squawked in concern from her pedestal. Willem heard the minstrel’s musical warble waft up from the courtyard, in defiance of the croonings from the great hall. Of course it was a woman’s voice, he could hear it now— a low, husky alto, not a delicate soprano like Lienor’s, but lacking any real bass. Erec’s drunken slur joined in, a little flat, and some other voices that Willem did not recognize. There was laughter, and then eventually the only sound was mournful overwrought harp music coming from the hall windows.

He went back into his assigned room, feeling as if he might go mad. Finally, mastering his impulse to scale down the curtain wall and flee, he exited the same door from which he had ejected Jouglet and stepped onto the grand stairs that led down to the courtyard. The moon was just past half full, and the courtyard, still torchlit, smelled of spilled ale and wine, cold stone, and perhaps a little vomit.

Erec sat with a woman on his lap near the bottom of the stairway. He looked over his shoulder and smiled up at Willem. “Cousin!” he called up in a loud whisper, pleasantly and drunk. “Come down and have a drink with me! His Majesty summoned this little lady for the tournament hero to play with, but you’ve been sequestered, so I had a round with her myself. She’s got plenty of staying power if you’re up to it— there’s a convenient little place behind the kitchen cistern there.” The female figure giggled, a low giggle that was almost a purr.

“Oh,” said Willem quietly in disgust. “No, but I will join you for a drink. I’m amazed they’re still serving us, it must be after midnight.”

“For the champion? They never sleep!” Erec announced grandly and gestured toward the kitchen, where indeed a light still burned.

Willem descended the stairs and settled beside Erec and his purring burden— and then he recognized the burden. “You’re Jouglet’s friend,” he said in an accusatory voice.

Jeannette smiled suggestively. “I am everybody’s friend.”

“She’s certainly been
my
friend,” Erec slurred happily, with a sudden, huge yawn. “Done wonders for my French vocabulary.”

“Where’s Jouglet?” Willem demanded.

“Did you quarrel?” Erec asked, sounding as if he were falling asleep as he spoke. “He was pissy when he came from speaking with you.”

“Where is Jouglet?” Willem repeated, directing the question at Jeannette.

She shrugged. “I imagine he took himself back up to the hall.”

Willem was irrationally furious and had to take a breath before he could trust himself to speak. He glanced around the courtyard to make sure he would not be overheard, and then whispered irritably, “Oh,
he
took
himself,
did he?”

Erec was entirely uninterested in this discussion, but Jeannette sat up a little straighter on his lap, her eyes widening. “Oh,” she said softly. “Perhaps I know what you quarreled about.”

“We did not
quarrel.
We had a…
gentlemen’s disagreement,
” Willem said angrily.

Jeannette considered him, looking disappointed. She seemed about to speak to him but turned her attention very deliberately to Erec instead. “Milord,” she chirped, running fingers over his little point of wispy beard to get his wandering, sleepy attention back to her. “If a female in distress places her trust in a knight, and he casts her away from him for any reason, is that not accounted unchivalrous?”

Erec began to ponder the question, and her nearer breast, with grave concentration in the torchlight. Willem said in a quiet, wooden voice, “What if she is not in distress, what if she is simply lying?”

Her face still turned toward Erec, Jeannette answered in a low voice, “What if she is lying
because
she’s in distress?”

“She’s not in distress,” Willem snapped. “She has frightening control over her destiny— over
many
people’s destinies.”

“And that has damaged you, has it?” Jeannette asked, looking toward him, suddenly harsh. “Her machinations have ruined you, is that right? When you chastise her for duplicity, don’t forget to chastise her for bringing you here and making certain you became a hero overnight.”

It shocked Willem to be spoken to this way by an inferior, and for a moment he just stared at her. Erec, drunk to obliviousness, had rested his cheek on her breast and was dozing off.

“If I were like other men I would make you pay for speaking to me in that tone,” Willem informed her with quiet anger.

“If you were like other men you would be terrified of a woman’s strength,” Jeannette answered evenly. “You would cast out the most deserving one because she dared to defy your expectations of her. How admirable that you are not like other men.” She gently removed Erec’s head from her chest and gingerly got off his lap. She tried to help his inert form to a supine position on the steps. He snorted a little and made sounds that his groggy mind probably thought were intelligible words, and then he was still again.

She began to step away from the staircase, but Willem’s huge hand reached out and grabbed her wrist. She started and looked down at his hand, then back up at him.

“Why is she distressed?” he asked.

Jeannette tossed her head with contempt. “If you don’t know that, you don’t deserve to know,” she said, and broke free from his grasp. “Especially since it is right in front of your face.”

She excused herself and left. The harp had stopped. Konrad was in his room at last; the castle would soon be asleep. Willem stared up beyond the towering walls of Koenigsbourg, into the slate-grey sky, pondering Jeannette’s words and listening to the sound of his own heartbeat pounding in his throat.