The Mistress Of Normandy (6 page)

In the adjacent taproom, Lajoye and the soldiers discussed their forays, filling their bellies with bread and salt meat from the
Toison d’Or
and wine from a keg the brigands had overlooked. Some of the men vied, with lopsided grins and faltering French, for the attention of the girls.

Rand had avoided his companions since late afternoon. He was too full of unsettled emotions and half-formed decisions to act the commander. Meeting Lianna had left him as useless as an unstrung bow. One hour with her had threatened everything he’d ever believed about loving a woman. Before today, love had been a mild warmth, a comfortable, abiding glow that asked little of him. But no more.

The arrows of his feelings for the girl in the woods had inflicted a ragged wound, a heat that burned with a consuming, continuous fire. He felt open and raw, as if an enemy had stripped him of his armor, left him standing in fool’s attire.

Bypassing the taproom, he walked outside, looked around the ravaged town. Wisps of smoke climbed from a few chimneys. In the rose-gold glimmer of early evening, a woman stepped into her dooryard to call her children to table, while a group of men with their axes and scythes trudged in from the outlying fields. The town was beginning to heal from the wounds inflicted by the brigands. The woman waved to Rand, and he realized with relief that he was now looked upon with trust, not fear. An excellent development. If the Demoiselle de Bois-Long resisted his claim, he’d need to secure the town to use as a retreat position.

He followed a familiar, muffled curse to the paddock. His horses and those of his men occupied the stalls, Lajoye’s livestock having been taken by the
écorcheurs
. A bovine shape caught his eye. “Jesu, Jack, where did you find that?”

Jack Cade looked up from the milking stool. “Lajoye’s youngsters need milk,” he said. “Spent the king’s own coin on her, down in Arques.” The cow sidled and nearly overset Jack’s bucket. “Hold still, you cloven-footed bitch.” He grasped a pair of fleshy teats and aimed a stream of milk into the bucket. “I made sure Lajoye knows the milk’s from our King Harry.” Leaning his cheek against the cow’s side, he gave Rand a brief accounting of the events of the day.

“Godfrey and Neville ran down a hart and brought it back to Lajoye. Robert—er, Father Batsford, that is, went a-hawking. Giles, Peter, and Darby found the brigands’ route and followed it some leagues to the south, but the thieves are long gone, dispersed, probably, after dividing their spoils.”

Rand frowned. “I did want to recover the pyx from the chapel. ’Twould mean much to the people.”

Jack’s eyes warmed with affection. “Always trying to win hearts and souls, aren’t you?”

Rand smiled. Was he deluding himself to believe chivalry could achieve such an end? “Always skeptical, aren’t you?” he countered.

Jack shrugged. “Take them by the balls, my lord. Their hearts and souls will follow.” Wearily he rotated his shoulders. “I worked like a goddamned swineherd today. And yourself, my lord? Any luck?”

Rand swallowed and stared at the dust dancing in a ray of golden twilight. The rhythmic, sibilant splatter of milk against the sides of Jack’s bucket punctuated the silence. Presently Jack finished his task and straightened. “Well?”

“I met...a girl.”

The milk sloshed in Jack’s pail. Too late, Rand realized his voice had betrayed the feelings he’d kept folded into his heart since he’d watched Lianna run off toward the castle.

Eyes dancing with interest, Jack set down his pail, picked up a stalk of hay, and aimed it at Rand’s chest. “Has Cupid’s arrow found a victim? Welcome to the human race, my lord.”

“Her name is Lianna,” Rand said in a low voice. “She lives at Bois-Long.”

“Better still,” Jack exclaimed, rolling the hay between his fingers. “Surely it’s a sign from above. Merry, my lord, perhaps life won’t be so disagreeable with a ready wench at hand.”

Rand shook his head. “The married state is sacred. And I’d not dishonor Lianna.”

Jack laughed. “Knight’s prattle, my friend. Your commitment to the demoiselle is one of political convenience. No need to be good as gold on her account.”

Rand turned away. “If gold rusts, what would iron do?”

Jack tossed a forkful of hay to the cow and picked up the bucket. They walked out of the paddock. “I for one,” said Jack, “intend to grow right rusty wooing Lajoye’s hired girl. She’s got a pair of—”

“Jack,” Rand warned, drowning out the bawdy term.

“—to die for,” Jack finished.

“I’ve forbidden wenching.”

“Only with
unwilling
females,” said Jack. “But never mind. When do we go to Bois-Long?”

“King Henry insists on proper protocol. A missive must be sent, and the bride-price, and Batsford must read the banns for a few weeks running.”

“Still in no hurry.” Jack grinned. “That hired girl will be glad of it.” He walked back to the inn.

Caught in the purple-tinged swirls of the deepening night, Rand left the town and climbed the citadel-like cliffs above the sea. A nightingale called and a curlew answered, the plaintive sounds strumming a painful tune over his nerves.

Staring out at the breaking waves, he pondered the unexpected meeting and the even less expected turn his heart had taken.

Lianna.
He whispered her name to the sea breezes; it tasted like sweet wine on his tongue. Her image swam into his mind, pale hair framing her face with the diffuse glow of silver, her smile tentative, her eyes wide and deep with a hurt he didn’t understand yet felt in his soul. She inspired a host of feelings so bright and sharp that it was agony to think of her.

There was only one woman he had any right to think about: the Demoiselle de Bois-Long.

The nearness would be hardest to bear. To see Lianna’s small figure darting about the château, to hear the chime of her laughter, would be high torture.

End it now, his common sense urged, and he forced his mind to practical matters. The Duke of Burgundy was at Bois-Long, but his retainers were few. Clearly he did not plan a lengthy visit. Jean Sans Peur could ill afford to tarry with his niece when his domain encompassed the vast sweep of land from the Somme to the Zuyder Zee.

Aye, thought Rand, Burgundy bears watching.

But even as he hardened his resolve around that decision, he knew he’d go back to the place of St. Cuthbert’s cross where he’d met Lianna. The guns, he rationalized. He must dissuade her from working with dangerous and unpredictable weapons. Yet beneath the thought lay an immutable truth. Guns or no, he’d seek her out—tomorrow, and every day, until they met again.

* * *

“Gone!” said Lianna, running into a little room off the armory. “Lazare is gone!”

“Did you think your uncle of Burgundy would let him stay?” Chiang asked, his dark eyes trained on a bubbling stew of Peter’s salt that boiled in a crucible over a coal fire.

A warm spark of relief hid inside her. Ignoring it, she said, “Uncle Jean had no right to order Lazare to Paris.”

“Not having the right has never stopped Burgundy before.”

“Why would he send Lazare to swear fealty to King Charles?”

Chiang shrugged. “Doubtless to keep the man from your bed.”

She nearly choked on the irony of it. Lazare had taken care of that aspect of the marriage himself. And now that he was gone, she could not place him between herself and the English baron.

“Burgundy has left also?” asked Chiang.

“Aye, he claimed he had some private matter to attend to,” said Lianna glumly. “He had no right,” she repeated. She studied Chiang’s face, admiring his implacable concentration, the deep absorption with which he performed his task. His eyes, exotically upturned at the corners, seemed to hold the wisdom of centuries. He had a stark, regal face that put her in mind of emperors in the East, a distance too far to contemplate.

“You know he has it in his power to do most anything he wishes. Pass me that siphon, my lady.”

She handed him a copper tube. “That is what worries me about Uncle Jean. He also refused to send reinforcements to repel the English baron. He will not risk King Henry’s displeasure.”

Carefully Chiang extracted the purified salt from the vat. “Will the Englishman press his claim by force?”

“I know not. But we should be prepared.” She sat back on her heels and watched Chiang work, his short brown fingers handling scales and calipers with the delicacy of a surgeon. Sympathy, affection, and respect tumbled through her. Chiang had been a fixture at Bois-Long since the days of her youth. Like the man himself, his arrival was a mystery. Fleeing the capture of a mysterious ship from the East, he’d washed up on the Norman shore, the sole survivor of a vessel whose destination and mission Chiang had never revealed.

Only the Sire de Bois-Long, Lianna’s father, had protected the strange-looking man from a heathen’s death at the hands of superstitious French peasants. With his timeless knowledge of defense and his meticulous skill at gunnery, Chiang had repaid Aimery the Warrior a hundredfold.

But even now, the castle folk who had known him for years regarded him as an oddity, some gossips falling just short of denouncing him as a sorcerer. The men-at-arms begrudged him this small workroom in a corner of the armory and never failed to sketch the sign of the cross when passing by.

Chiang peered at her through wide-set, fathomless eyes. “And are you prepared, my lady?”

She hung her head. During the two days of the duke’s visit, she’d prayed and worried over a difficult decision. “Yes,” she said faintly.

He set aside his sieves and calipers and gave her the full measure of his attention. “Tell me.”

She tapped her chin with her forefinger. “I’ve sent a missive to Raoul, Sire de Gaucourt in Rouen, asking for fifty men-at-arms.”

“Did you consult Lazare in this?”

“Of course not. He knows nothing of diplomacy and politics. It matters not anymore. He is gone.”

Chiang showed no surprise at her defiance, yet she read disapproval in his calm, steady gaze. In appealing to the Sire de Gaucourt, she had betrayed her uncle. Gaucourt did not openly side with the Armagnacs, yet he was known to be sympathetic to Burgundy’s enemy.

“Was I wrong, Chiang?” she asked desperately.

He shrugged. His straight dark thatch of hair caught blue highlights from the coal fire. “You have shown yourself to be a poor judge of character, but Burgundy’s niece nonetheless. The duke himself would have done no less. Remember his tenet: ‘Power goes to the one bold enough to seize it.’”

Bolstered by Chiang’s counsel, she gave him a glimmer of a smile. “Very well. Shall we try the culverin?” The piece was new and had three chambers for more rapid firing.

He looked away. “I plan to do so. But alone.”

“What?”

“Your husband forbade me to work the guns with you.”

She leaped to her feet. “The
salaud.
How dare he dictate what I may and may not do?”

“Your laws dictate that you are subservient to your husband—or his son in his absence. Gervais has already said that he will enforce his father’s command.”

“We shall see,” she muttered, and left the armory to search for Gervais and tell him exactly what she thought of his father’s interdict.

In the hall she found the women at their spinning. Fleecy balls of carded wool littered the floor, and women’s talk wove in and out of the clack and whir of the spinning wheels. Edithe sat by the hearth, idly eating a pasty.

“What do you, Edithe?” Lianna asked, struggling to keep the irritation from her voice. “Why are you not helping with the spinning?”

The girl wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “Lazare released me,” she said, a faint gleam of smugness in her ripe smile.

Lianna stared. The wooden sounds of the wheels stopped, leaving an echo of expectant silence in the hall. Lazare had singled Edithe out to vent his lust; apparently all knew of it. Covering her dismay with anger, Lianna ordered the women back to work with a clipped imperative, then turned her attention to the idle maid.

Edithe made an elaborate show of finishing the pasty and licking the crumbs from her fingers. Fury welled like a hot powder charge within Lianna.

“I see,” she said, her throat taut as she exerted all the control she could marshal. “I wonder, Edithe, if you know where Lazare has gone.”

“Mayhap the mews,” the maid replied. “He does enjoy falconry, you know.”

No, Lianna didn’t know. Lazare had shared nothing of himself, and she had never asked. She didn’t care; she had his name, and that was all she needed for now. Still, his open infidelity stung her pride. With great satisfaction she said, “Lazare is no longer at Bois-Long, Edithe. He has gone to Paris.”

The maid’s eyes widened. Lianna smiled. “Lazare excused you from spinning. Very well, you are excused.” Edithe looked relieved until Lianna added, “You will do needlework instead. Aye, the chaplain needs a new alb.”

Edithe’s face crumpled in dismay. “But I am so clumsy with the needle,” she said.

“Doing boonwork for the church is good for the soul,” Lianna retorted, and strode out of the hall. Climbing the stairs to the upper chambers, she tried to formulate a speech scathing enough for Gervais. Keep her from her gunnery indeed. Her dudgeon peaked as she arrived at the room he shared with Macée. She raised her fist to knock.

A sound from within stopped her. A moan, as if someone were being tortured.
Nom de Dieu,
was Gervais beating his wife? But the next sound, a warm burble of laughter followed by a remark so ribald Lianna barely understood it, mocked that notion. Cheeks flaming, she fled.

Her fury deepened into an unfamiliar sense of helpless frustration. Shamed by the tears boiling behind her eyes, she rushed to the stables and commanded her ivory palfrey to be saddled. She rode away from the château at a furious gallop.

Please be there, she prayed silently as the greening landscape whipped by. Please be there.

Twice during her uncle’s sojourn she had managed to slip off to the place of Cuthbert’s cross; twice she’d found the coppice empty. No, not quite empty. The first time she’d found a single snowdrop lying on the cross, its waxy petals still fresh. The second time she’d found the emerald-tipped feather of a woodcock. She kept the flower and feather in her apron pocket, and often her fingers stole inside to touch the evidence that Rand had gone seeking her. Evidence that he wasn’t just a dream conjured by her troubled mind. Evidence that one man found her desirable.