Revenge of the Rose (37 page)

“Oh yes? What would save me, Konrad’s profound regard for women? At best he would have me banished to someplace far enough away that nobody would know he had been gulled.” She moved to stand before him, almost scolding. “I will not be a woman in this court, Willem. Women in this court are chattel. We are not the happy couple of
Erec and Enite.
This is not a romance where love and marriage have the chance to commingle and take precedence. I am not your lady, and I’m not your wife, nor am I fit material for either.”

Willem made an angry noise and stood up, fists clenched. Then, just as abruptly, he deflated and sank back onto the bed. “That is not proper, Jouglet. And I cannot expect Lienor to be superior to me. I was thinking about this last night, it is part of what kept me awake. If she must be proper, then so must I.”

“What does that mean?” Jouglet asked, certain she did not really want to know. She took a step away from where he sat.

“Reveal yourself.”

“No,” she said with absolute finality.

“I want to make what is between us
right.
No more shameful secrets.”

“Stealing my breeches, and all the freedom that comes with them— that would make it
right
?” she demanded, leaning against the wall. “I fail to see how.”

He sighed and threw himself back on the bed, trying to think of how to say what was disturbing him. “I don’t want to steal anything from you. But I want things irreproachable, and
proper.
I want a proper
woman.
”

“There is one under my clothes,” Jouglet offered drolly and reached for her belt.

“I don’t mean
hidden
!” Willem said with exasperation. “I need there to be nothing suspect in my reputation. We are in real danger with Paul.”

“I know that!” Jouglet said impatiently, letting go of her belt. “Why do you think I’ve been so careful about our assignations all week?”

“I mean I need to be generally known as having a woman.”

“I know that too! I offered to help you snare a lady, and you declined the offer,” Jouglet said, in a tone not of complaint but observation. “Now you want a lady after all?”

“Not like that. You were offering to find me someone to woo for appearances and gain,” Willem countered. “I don’t want a lady in that sense. I want someone whose regard for me is a reward both in itself, and in the eyes of the world. A wife, even a concubine. A
mate.
”

Jouglet settled onto the chest beneath the window and looked down at her calloused hands, the long-fingered hands roughened by a youth’s exposure to the elements. “That’s expecting rather a lot from the average lady,” she said. “You may find some sweet simperer who’ll fondle your cock dutifully but have no idea what to do with your mind— but won’t that bore you?”

“I’m not talking about fornication!” he said, and sat up. “I’m talking about companionship.”

“I am your companion!”

“The
companionship
of a known
female.
Who
behaves
like a female.” He was reaching exasperation.

She slouched back down onto the chest, lying faceup. “So you want your companion as yielding and passive— all the time— as she would be in copulating with you.”

“That is
not
what I want, and you know it,” said Willem angrily. “I’ve never said a female must be yielding and passive. Consider the behavior I’ve allowed my sister.” His voice rising, as if she had challenged him, he added, “But then, consider what that allowance has led to! It shows me the value of the natural, the…the
normal
way of things! This…” He waved one arm. “This…between us, this is not normal.”

“It is not
ordinary,
” Jouglet corrected softly, her fingers reaching up to wipe dust from the windowsill. “But it is glorious. At least, I thought so.”

Willem grunted, distressed, and threw himself back onto the bed faceup. “This would almost be easier if you really were a man,” he said, accusatory.

She laughed. “Do you think I’ve never had that thought myself?” she asked.

“I meant it would be easier for
me,
” he growled. “If you were either a man or a lady. Then I would know what to
do
with you!”

“I can be a lady,” Jouglet offered, and giggled in shrill falsetto. She leapt up from her slouch on the chest and scurried across the room to him and perched beside him on the bed. “Oh, my lord Willem, I’ve been sitting here sewing all day just thinking about you and how lucky I am to be among your chattel.” She made delicate hand gestures, exaggerated imitations of Lienor, and as she spoke she wobbled her head a little, girlishly. “I had such an interesting day, first I carded some wool, and then I spun some wool, and then I wove some wool into a tapestry that shows you winning a big-big tournament, and then my brain turned into wool, and I have a little wool between my legs, would you like to see it?” She leapt up and lifted her tunic, pulling down her breeches, giggling shrilly. It was her manic playfulness, as much as her pudenda, that affected him.

“You’re a shameless harlot,” he announced, and pulled her down on top of him.

T
he
air was so clear and bright after the rain that Erec was recognized when he was still a mile away. Lienor, excited by the mystery and urgency of his galloping approach, hurriedly began to dress to receive him. She was in such a giddy mood she thought she’d even humor him by wearing something low cut, and so, clad in only her shift, she was debating between a dark violet from Flanders or a green from Douai.

Downstairs, Maria was ordering the steward and the cook to fetch wine and prepare a plate of fruit and cheeses for her nephew when he burst in unannounced through the front door of the hall, filthy, breathless, and red-faced.

He had, during his journey, calmed a little. At one point he almost resolved to turn back toward court but decided that he needed at least an explanation from her. For perhaps ten miles, he doubted the story entirely and was eager to hear her defense, had decided he would believe it no matter what it was— but when he tried to imagine that face, those smiling lips and teasing eyes, protesting her sexless innocence, he could not reconcile that with what his body insisted she really was. By the time he approached Dole he was angry again, and at the sight of Willem’s manor he was overwhelmed with rage and spurred his exhausted horse into a final sprint. The closer he came to her the more he was newly convinced she was fallen. The knowledge made him feel unaccountably victorious.

“Where is she?” he shouted from the doorway, without otherwise acknowledging Maria’s presence.

“Nephew,” Maria said, shocked at his wild appearance.

He brushed past her. “Is she in her chambers?” he demanded, looking around.

“Of course,” Maria said politely. “Dressing to greet you.”

“I’m sure she is!” Erec laughed harshly, and turned back out of the hall to run to the far side of the small sunny courtyard. Maria went after him, more slowly. The servants in the courtyard followed his path with incurious looks, and went about their business. Cousin Erec was a known quantity around the household.

He threw himself up the stairs, stairs he had not climbed since he was at his nursemaid’s knee, and hurled open the large oaken door that for years he had gazed at with burning curiosity from below.

Lienor yelped when she saw him, startled to be accosted half-dressed in her own room. He drew his sword, and in almost the same moment pulled a knife from his belt with his left hand to face her doubly-armed, as if she were a Saracen, his eyes huge and angry and his temples sweating. “Whore,” he spat.

“Erec, what are you doing in here?” she demanded, rushing to grab her bed-robe.

He anticipated her and reached the bed a step before her, dropped his knife, threw the robe out of reach on the rushes and grabbed her wrist. She cried out wordlessly in shock and pain; he shoved her hard onto the floor at the foot of the bed and she gawked up at him, silent with amazement.

He stepped, deliberately, onto the skirt of her linen shift with his dusty boot, pinning her there, and pressed the tip of his sword against her stomach. She shrieked briefly but did not dare try to move.

“Show me, you whore!” he ordered, his face violet beneath the coat of road dust. “You’ve disgraced us all now, forever! Show me the damned rose!”

“The what?” she mumbled feebly, too shocked to understand the demand. The summer shift barely covered her nipples, and she automatically folded her arms across her chest protectively.

“You will not play coy with me anymore!” he shouted. Tossing the sword aside, he knelt down, grabbed the skirt of her shift, and ripped it from the hem up to well above her knee, exposing her lower legs.

Lienor screamed so shrilly that dogs in the yard below began barking. Maria’s voice suddenly sounded, drawing nearer, crying out for her daughter.

With shaking hands Lienor desperately tried to pull the two sides of the torn skirt back together, but Erec struck her hard across the cheek and ripped them further. She flinched and brought her hands to her face, trying to talk to him with her head turned away, cajoling, pleading:
“Erec, what are you doing?!”
But her protestation only inflamed him and made him more determined. She tried to squeeze away from him, but he straddled her right leg and pushed her left leg away so that she lay, limbs splayed, on the floor; with rough and calloused hands he grabbed her bared thigh and twisted the soft pale flesh in his grip.

“Erec!”
she shouted in pain and fear.

“Where is the rose? Show me the
evidence
!” he demanded furiously.

Finally she understood. “My birthmark?” she gasped, breathless. “All this fury for a birthmark?”

Still clutching her thigh between his fingers he hissed, “Show me. Sit up and show me or I’ll break your neck now instead of later.”

Fighting off sobs, Lienor pulled her upper body from the floor and nervously lifted the skirt higher than his rip had revealed. The sight made his heart thud, and he looked up. Even traumatized, she was still maddeningly beautiful, but he couldn’t keep his eyes on her face because the sight below was so much more transfixing.

“Damn you!”
he shrieked abruptly,
“Whore-bitch-harlot-cunt!”
Furiously, he tore the shift open all the way up her body to the hem at her neck and pushed her back so that she lay entirely exposed beneath him. She whimpered with fear. “You’re dying today for the shame you’ve brought the family— “

“What shame?”
she begged hysterically.

“Lienor!” her mother gasped from the door, afraid to come in. “Nephew! Get off of her!”

Erec glanced up at his aunt with an ugly expression. Servants cowered behind her on the stairway. “You don’t tell me what to do, Aunt. I’m your liege lord, and you’ve raised a whore, a harlot who will open her legs to any cock that asks— “

“What are you
talking
about?” Lienor begged, sobbing with confusion, trying again to pull the shift closed over herself. Angrily, Erec slapped her hands away, grabbed the knife, and pressed it against her naked breastbone.

“Don’t try to hide your shame!” he roared. “You gave yourself to Konrad’s man!”

“I don’t even know Konrad’s man!” she protested in teary bewilderment as her mother said, “Who is…oh! Marcus! The steward— “

At the name, Erec looked up again. “There! You admit it!”

“I never met him!” Lienor cried. “I was
sequestered.
”

“She didn’t meet him, Erec, I’m the only one who spoke with him,” Maria insisted tremulously from the door.

Erec gave Maria a contemptuous snort. “You stupid old woman, she had him right under your nose and you didn’t know it!”

“What is your proof?” Lienor demanded desperately.

“The rose! The rose is the proof! He described your perfect little rose!” Shifting the knife to his left hand, he used his right to maul her thigh again, but this time, overwhelmed by the warmth of her flesh, his hand moved up to the birthmark and then even higher. She stared at his hand, sobbing loudly, afraid to move. “This was not yours to give away,” he hissed. “You’ve made it common property now.”

“The rose!” Maria suddenly shouted, realizing. “Oh my God the rose— put up, Erec, put up, let her go,
I
told him about the rose! It’s my sin, Erec, not hers!”

He looked at his aunt through narrowed eyes. “A feeble pretext to defend a harlot,” he announced harshly and turned his full attention back to the space between his cousin’s thighs. Pulse throbbing in his ears, he moved his hand even higher and was dizzy by the snarled fight between desire and disgust. Lienor was sobbing uncontrollably, trying to scream but unable to find her voice.

Maria, in a terror of self-recrimination, ran to them. Taking advantage of Erec’s unseemly distraction, she snatched the knife out of his grip. She stood over him and pressed the blade hard against his throat; he was incredulous to find himself disarmed by an old woman.

“Get away from my daughter,” she ordered in a choked voice. “Lecherous cur.”

“Don’t speak to me like that!” he said contemptuously. She shoved the point harder against his flesh and with a shock of pain he pulled away a little, glaring at her.

“It was I,” Maria explained hoarsely. “He spent ages downstairs talking with me, and I forgot myself. I told him about the birthmark, in a story from her
childhood,
Erec— even the way he heard it had nothing indiscreet about it. I don’t know what he’s done with what I told him, but it’s my fault, not my daughter’s. Kill me if your over-blown sense of honor requires that you kill someone.”

Erec stared at her in amazement, mostly because he’d never heard her speak so many words at once, and never any words so adamantly. She used the threat of the knife to move him away from Lienor, then stepped between them and with her free hand, pulled the robe close enough for Lienor to grab it. Shaking violently, Lienor managed to stand and pull it on, turning away from them, sobbing still, but now from relief.