“I don’t know how to answer you,” she
whispered.
“It wasn’t a question. But I’ll show you how
much I’ve grown to trust you. I’ll leave you alone here for a
while, to wash in private. There is a covered slop pot under the
table if you need it.” He paused with one hand on the door latch.
“Of course, Hugo or Marcion might walk in at any time.”
“Thank you.”
“For granting the privacy, or for warning
that others may intrude upon it? Surely you understand by now that
it can be difficult to be alone for more than a moment or two.”
The familiar quirk of his mouth suggested to
her that he was teasing. She felt absolutely certain that he had
penetrated her disguise days before, yet most of the time he gave
no indication that he knew the truth about her. Only occasionally,
when no one else was present, did he let the barriers between them
slip even a little. As he did now. Something remarkably close to a
smile touched his lips, and his cool eyes turned gentle.
“Later,” he said, and left her.
* * *
It was Hugo who interrupted her, but not
before she had washed her face and hands with the harsh soap and
tried to straighten her hair with her fingers. When she heard a
light knock on the door she went toward it, but Hugo came right
in.
“Have you finished?” He gestured toward the
water pitcher. “I’d like to wash myself.”
“I’m not sure what to do with the dirty water
in the basin,” India confessed.
“You could pour it into the slop pot,” Hugo
said, “but we don’t know how often it’s emptied, and there’s no
point in filling the pot too soon. I’d say, toss the water out the
window. I see a garden down there; you can sprinkle the
flowers.”
Stretching, India leaned across the table to
peer out of the window. There were no flowers in bloom so early in
the year, but she saw two feminine figures pacing along a gravel
path.
“Someone’s down there,” she said. “I don’t
want to spill the water on them.”
“It’s easy enough to avoid.” Hugo had
stripped off his woolen tunic and undershirt. He came forward
bare-chested, to stick his head out the window and shout, “Beware
below!” Picking up the basin, he tossed the water through the open
window with no further regard for anyone who might be splashed.
India saw the smaller of the two figures in
the garden look up toward the window at Hugo’s cry. She caught a
glimpse of two long, silver-gilt braids and a pure, delicate face,
before the second figure seized the girls arm, turning her so her
back was to the window.
“What a pretty girl,” India said.
“Where?” Hugo had already poured fresh water
into the basin and was lathering his hands. He craned his neck,
trying to see better, but the two females in the garden were making
their way toward a door set in one wall. Hugo shook his head in
disappointment. “I’m sorry I missed seeing her. It must have been
Savarec’s mysterious daughter.”
“Why is she mysterious?” India watched Hugo
rub soapsuds onto his face. He had a barrel-like chest with lots of
light brown hair on it and hard, bulging shoulder and arm muscles.
He was thoroughly masculine, yet there was in him nothing to stir
the combination of danger and attraction that underlay all of her
dealings with Theuderic. She could stay in the same room with
bare-chested Hugo all the day long and still feel only a mild
affection toward him.
“Ow!” Hugo bellowed suddenly. “I’ve got soap
in my eyes.”
“It’s probably made with lye,” she said,
handing him the towel. “I’m sure it stings.” She watched him wipe
at his eyes, then rinse and dry his face.
“Tell me about Savarec’s daughter,” she
said.
“There’s not much to tell.” After glancing
out the window, Hugo threw away the water, then reached for his
undershirt. “Because there are so many men moving in and out of
this garrison all the time, Savarec keeps her well guarded. I don’t
know of a single man who has ever seen her, to report on her looks.
For all anyone knows, she could be a monster.”
“She didn’t look like a monster to me,” India
said. “If it’s the girl I saw, she has blonde hair and a sweet
face.”
“Has she?” Hugo adjusted his tunic and took
up his sword belt. “You’ve seen more than most, then. I wish I
could see her, just once.”
“It can’t be a very agreeable life for a
girl,” India said. “Kept under close guard, not allowed to meet
people of her own age. It sounds lonely to me.”
“She goes to a convent school,” Hugo
revealed. “She will meet other girls there. I come through here
fairly often. Sometimes she’s here, visiting her father. Sometimes
she’s at school.”
Marcion came in just then, with Theuderic
close behind him, so the conversation about Savarec’s daughter
ended there, but the image of that upturned, delicate oval face
stayed in India’s thoughts.
True to his reputation for setting a fine
table, Savarec provided a bountiful feast to honor his guests.
Fresh green vegetables were scarce at that time of year, but there
were plenty of boiled turnips and several huge platters of cabbage
stewed with herbs. There were dried apples and raisins for sweets
and more than enough fresh-baked bread, but most of the meal
consisted of meats. There was mutton boiled with onions and garlic,
large trays of game birds of various kinds that had been cooked on
spits over a fire, and half a roasted ox. There were pitchers of
the sweet, lightly carbonated wine that made India think of cheap
grape soda.
Theuderic, India, Marcion, and Hugo all sat
at the head table along with Savarec and a few of the
higher-ranking officers who helped him maintain the outpost meant
to keep the river crossing safe from the Saxons so it would always
be ready should the king of the Franks need to transport an army
into his lands in Saxony. There were few women present, none at the
high table, and no sign of Savarec’s daughter, an absence that did
not surprise India after what Hugo had said earlier. Most of the
feminine shapes that India noticed were servants, though there were
some painted ladies at the lower tables, whose function seemed
fairly obvious.
At first, Savarec talked mostly to Theuderic
and Marcion, asking each of them intelligent questions about
conditions in Saxony.
“I was in Paderborn last summer for the
annual assembly,” Savarec said. “The Saxons who presented
themselves to Charles there seemed peaceable enough. But I say,
never trust a Saxon, even if he allows himself to be baptized. The
Christian church means nothing to them. They are all pagans at
heart.”
“They have their own religion,” Theuderic
said mildly. “Converting them will take time.”
“It would take less time,” Savarec answered,
“if so many fighting men were not being withdrawn from eastern
Francia to take part in this summer’s campaign.”
“You don’t seem to be lacking in men just
now,” Marcion put in, looking down the crowded hall, where every
seat at the long tables was filled.
“Here I am well staffed,” Savarec admitted,
“but I am worried about the lands farther east. If the Saxons take
advantage of Charles’s absence in Spain this summer, who can tell
what will happen?”
“I share your concern,” Theuderic said. “As
for the campaign planned for this summer, I have no great liking
for it myself. When next I see Charles, I will tell him what you
have said. We won’t change the arrangements he has already set in
motion, but we might convince him to release a levy or two to help
you and the others on the eastern frontier to hold back the Saxons
should they rise while Charles is occupied in Spain.”
“For that I thank you.” Savarec now turned to
India to ask her a few questions more penetrating than she would
have liked about her home and her life there. “I would be pleased
to lend you a horse, Lord India, to ride until you have reached
Aachen. Enough people travel back and forth to allow it to be
returned to me easily.”
“Riding is not common in Lord India’s
country,” Theuderic interrupted this generous offer. “It is safer
if I keep India on my own horse, with me.”
India believed this reluctance to let her
have her own mount was the result of Theuderic’s concern that she
would disappear. She did not see how he could think she might try
to run away from him. There was no place for her to go, and he
surely knew it. Until Hank found her, she was safer with Theuderic
than anywhere else – if spending yet another night beside him could
be called safe.
“May I ask, Lord India,” said Savarec,
leaning closer to her as if to speak in confidence, “if you are wed
or betrothed?”
She thought for a moment about how to answer
him. She had a feeling that Theuderic, sitting on Savarec’s other
side, would be listening with great interest to whatever she might
say to the garrison commander, so she kept her reply short and
simple, telling Savarec only, “No, I am not.”
“I have a daughter,” Savarec said to her.
“She is innocent and well-schooled, a charming girl.”
“I’m sure she is.” By now she sensed that not
only was Theuderic listening, he was surreptitiously watching her,
too, and Marcion and Hugo as well had stopped eating to pay
attention to the conversation between herself and their host.
“Like you, my Danise is not yet betrothed,”
Savarec said, and India could tell from his tone of voice that she
would have to do some quick thinking.
“Sir, I believe I understand your meaning,”
she responded. “But you know nothing of my situation in my own
land, nor of my prospects for the future.” She said that last word
with a bitter inflection that made Theuderic look sharply at her,
but he said nothing to help her out of the quagmire in which she
was foundering. She wondered wildly if real men ever felt this way
when parents approached them about marriageable daughters. She knew
she would have to extricate herself from this embarrassing and
potentially dangerous situation without hurting Savarec’s pride or
in any way insulting his daughter, and she had to try to do it
without revealing her gender.
“You can be nothing less than a noble,”
Savarec said. “You are well-spoken, though your accent is strange.
The clothing you wear, travel-stained as it is, still is of the
finest quality. And, of course, there is the medallion.”
With her mind trained to late
twentieth-century caution in social matters, she thought that for
all he really knew of her, she could be a brutal axe murderer who
would ravish and kill his daughter. For the briefest of moments she
wondered how anyone with any claim to intelligence could be so
gullible, or so careless about his own child’s happiness. But after
another moment’s thought, she knew why. Arranged marriages among
noble families were common at every period of history. As Theuderic
and his men had judged and accepted her, so had Savarec. In
appearance and speech, she seemed to them a foreign noble. Alone
and unarmed, she presented no physical threat. And Savarec,
according to Hugo overly concerned with status, would doubtless
think it an honor to ally himself with a noble foreign house. He
might even think it would raise him in his own king’s
estimation.
There was only one way she could think of to
resolve the dilemma presented by Savarec’s offer. It was a
typically medieval way that would have been more effective in the
later Middle Ages, after the idea of chivalry had been firmly
established, but considering what she knew of Savarec’s character,
it just might work on him.
“Though I am neither married nor betrothed as
yet,” she said carefully, “still I am not free. My late master sent
me upon a quest, which I must fulfill before I can think of my own
life or what I might want.”
“I see.” Savarec received this information
with perfect seriousness. “May I ask what this quest is?”
“That is the problem when it comes to
responding to the remarkable proposition you have suggested to me,”
India confided, lowering her voice and taking great pleasure when
she saw the unhelpful Theuderic tilt his head to hear her better.
“I am sworn not to reveal the nature of the quest to anyone except
the king of the Franks. When I have spoken with him, if he sets yet
another task for me, I am then bound to obey him. So you will
understand, Savarec, that though I respect you and honor your
daughter because she is your child, I am unable to answer you in
any way.”
“I do understand,” he said, and India began
to breathe freely again. But there was one more matter about which
she wanted to be certain.
“I have a request to make of you,” she told
Savarec, afraid the man might not give up so easily after all. “If
it should happen that some suitable arrangement can be made for
your Danise, I beg you to take advantage of it. Do not prevent your
daughter from knowing the happiness of a wife and mother for the
sake of one who may soon depart from this world.”
“Nobly spoken,” said Savarec. “I agree to
your request. You have a generous heart, Lord India.”
“Indeed yes,” said Marcion from further along
the table. “If Lord India speaks with as much wisdom and diplomacy
to Charles as he has just spoken to you, Charles may well send him
on a mission of peace to the king of the Saracens at
Jerusalem.”
There was laughter at that, and the
conversation turned to other subjects. It was not until much later,
when India and Theuderic were in their shared chamber with the door
closed that he made reference to Savarec’s offer.
“Do not imagine he’s a foolish man for all
his apparent willingness to give his daughter to an unknown noble,”
Theuderic said, his face serious in the light of the oil lamp that
flickered in a dish upon the table. “Savarec has not lasted for
more than ten years in this outpost by being careless. Had you
shown any interest in his Danise, he would soon have discovered all
there is to know about your past, your parentage and rank, and your
prospects for the future before he finally agreed to give the girl
to you.”