Almost Innocent (10 page)

The two knights on massive destriers entered from opposite ends of the lists, but instead of waiting for the marshals’ ritual call to arms, they both rode forward to the Lancastrian loge. There they raised their visors and spoke as one.

“My lord duke, we request to do battle
a l’outrance.”

From the gallery tiers people craned forward, demanding to know what was being said. The peasants and servitors who had scrambled up to the barriers the
better to view the sport began a low-voiced grumble at this delay.

Magdalen, well aware of the unorthodox nature of such a request, felt her husband’s eyes upon her. He wore her favor, a scarf of silver gauze twisted around his helmet, and he held her gaze for a long, burning moment. Puzzled, she glanced sideways at John of Gaunt. His displeasure was apparent.

“The rules of this tourney state that all combat will be
a plaisance.
Is this some private quarrel you bring to a trial of skill undertaken beneath the banner of friendship?”

“We make request, my lord duke,” Edmund said simply.

“Young hothead!” The voice was that of Guy de Gervais. He appeared suddenly at John of Gaunt’s elbow, his jupon of blue and silver over his armor, but he was unhelmeted and wore only the two-pronged dagger at his belt. He had taken part in the morning’s combat but would not enter the lists again until the final melee.

A low-voiced conversation took place between the duke and de Gervais. Magdalen strained to catch some word of what was said without obviously turning her head. Surprised and not a little embarrassed by this disconcerting turn of events, she avoided returning Edmund’s look, keeping her eyes fixed on the waving pennants of the knights’ tents beyond the stockade, occupying her mind with trying to identify them, remembering lessons in heraldry from her months in the de Gervais household.

The two young knights sat their destriers, rigid with honor and purpose as they awaited judgment on their request to fight in earnest.

The lords and ladies of the duke’s household sitting around Magdalen made no attempt to hide their curiosity, and their whispers and glances were directed more often than not at the young wife. Newly established at the king’s court under the aegis of the House of
Lancaster after her husband’s return from France, she was an object of fascination and not a little envy for many. Her husband was young and noble, had distinguished himself in the campaign in Picardy, and was now in possession of his wealthy fiefdom. They were a couple upon whom the world smiled, it must be believed. So what lay behind this disruptive request of the Sieur de Bresse?

John of Gaunt listened to de Gervais, then he turned his head and his eyes rested on his daughter. A bleak shaft pierced the brilliant blue of his gaze. He said something to de Gervais, then took the emerald-studded hanap held by the squire at his elbow and tossed back the contents. Leaning forward, his hands resting on the arms of the chair, he spoke.

“The rules of this tourney state that all deeds of arms will be
a plaisance.
You will abide by those rules of combat.”

There was nothing further to be said. The knights dropped their visors and returned to their own ends of the lists. But this combat had acquired unusual interest for the spectators, even for the majority who had no idea what issue had been raised before the duke. Something unusual had taken place.

“In the name of God and St. George, come forth to do battle!”

Guy de Gervais stood beside his liege lord watching as the marshals gave the call and the two bore down upon each other in a crash of steel. The length of stirrup and the high ridge of saddle ensured that they were all but standing on the backs of the mighty horses, all the better to control and empower the thrust of their lances. They met. The lances, correctly foiled as the rules of
a plaisance
combat decreed, clashed and splintered evenly. They separated, received new lances from their squires, and settled for the second course. Lance slid off shield, wood splintered, the dry earth flew up in great clods beneath powerful hooves as the destriers,
carried by their own momentum, pounded past each other. Guy frowned. It was an ill-run course, and the crowd were making clear their disappointment. It was ill-run because these two were battling for something other than the thrill of the tournament, and it added misjudged ferocity to something that should rather have the elegance of a deed of arms, perfect in technique.

His gaze drifted to the intent figure of Edmund de Bresse’s wife. She was staring at the scene with a fixity that seemed to indicate she was aware of some underlying cause to this display of clumsy ferocity. In the years since her wedding, she had grown upward like a watered sapling and now displayed a tall figure, slender but well-shaped. Her gown of rose damask was cut low at the neck, revealing the soft cleft of her breasts; her neck rose long and sinuous; her rich brown hair was confined beneath silver cauls and a pearl-encrusted headband. Her beringed fingers played restlessly with the ruby buckle of her girdle, underscoring her perturbation. But she could not know the cause of her husband’s suddenly erupted quarrel with the Sieur Gilles de Lambert. If it was as her father and Guy de Gervais suspected, it would do her little good to know it.

Magdalen felt Guy’s eyes upon her. She was always vibrantly aware of him whenever he was in her ken. She turned her head to look at him and smiled in both appeal and invitation.

It was her father’s mouth, full and passionate, Guy thought, not for the first time, as he debated whether to answer the appeal and move to sit beside her. She wanted to know what was going on, and he could hardly blame her, but he would have to fabricate both for her ears and for those around, and he was not sure he had the mental agility to do so at the moment. He shook his head, and disappointment crossed her face, followed rapidly by annoyance. He should have expected such a response, he supposed. The willfulness of
the child had now hardened into Plantagenet arrogance and determination, and they were certainly more difficult characteristics to withstand.

She rose and turned her back on the joust, making her way past the rows of knees crammed tightly along the bench. Surprise and disapproval rustled at her passing. It was hardly seemly for a wife to refuse to watch her husband in the lists, particularly when he wore her colors.

“What’s this?” demanded the duke when she reached his chair. “You turn your back on your husband in combat, madame?”

She curtsied low. “I wished to talk with Lord de Gervais, my lord duke. I believe he has some knowledge of why my lord would wish to change the rules of combat.”

“I suggest you ask your husband, madame,” the duke rasped. “He will tell you if he considers it meet.”

The crowd roared behind her, and she turned slowly. The Sieur de Lambert had been unhorsed and lay heaving in the dust in his effort to right himself. His squires came running to offer assistance. It should have signaled the end of the trial, but Edmund dismounted, drawing his sword when his opponent had struggled to his feet.

“God’s nails,” muttered the duke. “He must needs pursue this. I’ve a mind to call a halt and banish de Bresse from my court for a month.”

The other combatant had now drawn his own sword, and the two stood facing each other amid the roaring crowd, a crowd now acknowledging the antipathy between these two and eager to see what was to come of it.

“Let them have it out, my lord.” Guy offered the low-voiced suggestion at the duke’s ear so Magdalen could hear only a word here and there. “It will not do to seem to make more of it than the unruly impulse of a
pair of hotheads. Punish Edmund for it afterward on the grounds that such choler is dangerous on the field and he does himself no service by it.”

“Lady, I suggest you return to your place,” the duke said testily to Magdalen, who still stood in frowning puzzlement. “You serve no useful purpose standing there, and you interrupt my view.”

“Your pardon, sir.” The man whom, in her soul, Magdalen still refused to acknowledge as her father had never a kind word for her, and she had learned to expect no more than a measure of courtesy. It did not trouble her since she disliked him at least as much as he disliked her, and she had given up wondering about the cause of his antipathy. Now, thwarted, she looked at Guy, but he studiously avoided catching her eye so she was obliged to return unsatisfied to her seat.

The two in the arena fought with all the vigor of youth and the skill garnered in the years of boyhood training. They used only the flat of the sword, but the blows crashed through the lists as the weapons came down on helmet and hauberk with a viciousness that was obvious to all.

Magdalen watched Edmund as he forced his opponent inexorably toward the side of the lists. The Sieur de Lambert would be
hors de combat
if he touched the stockade, and such an outcome began to seem inevitable. Edmund had perhaps the edge of strength and he was using both hands on his sword, his incomprehensible fury somehow enabling him to receive and ignore the blows that fell upon him so that they did not deter his attack in the least. He pressed closer to his opponent, his sword thwacking across his shoulder, and then the Sieur de Lambert stumbled over a stone and went to the wall.

The crowd bellowed as, with hands upraised in submission, de Lambert acknowledged his defeat.

Only then did Magdalen realize how tensely she had
been holding herself. The palm of one hand was imprinted with the rings of the other, so tightly had she been clenching them, and her shoulders ached. She sat back as the ceremonies of the marshals and heralds commenced. Edmund raised his visor and came on foot to the duke’s loge to receive what should have been his lord’s congratulation on a bout well fought.

Instead, his reverence was accorded a frozen silence. The hectic flush on his cheeks faded to a dull pallor. His eyes still retained some of the fury that had driven him during the joust, and now that simmering glow flared again at this public humiliation.

Guy de Gervais saw the danger at the same moment Magdalen did. The young man was still so locked in his own world of private frenzy, the battering he had taken surely still pounding in his blood, that he had forgotten in whose presence he stood.

“My lord . . . my lord.” Magdalen’s voice rose clear and sweet, breaking the dreadful, anticipatory hush. Edmund dragged his livid gaze from the duke and turned toward his wife.

She stood up, plucking a rose from a vase at her side. “You have worn my colors well, my lord.” Smiling, she leaned over the balcony and tossed him the flower. “I claim a gift in exchange.”

Edmund caught the flower without conscious thought as her words penetrated his fog, and he realized with a shock how close he had come to disaster. “Indeed, my lady, what would you have of me?” He bowed his head in acknowledgment.

“Why, a kiss, sir,” she returned. Delighted laughter rose around them at this elegant courtly play that bid fair to banish any unfavorable impressions of the joust.

Edmund stepped up to the loge. “Why, lady, it is a gift gladly given.” Reaching up as she leaned over, he put his hands on her arms and then, to the surprise of all, lifted her bodily over the rail to the ground beside
him. He kissed her on the mouth with a lusty vigor that brought applause from the spectators and a blush to Magdalen’s cheek.

“Fie, my lord,” she said. “How am I to return to my place?”

Guy de Gervais, smiling, leaned over the rail. “Lift the lady to me, Edmund, and I will take her.”

The exchange was effected without difficulty, and as he set her on her feet, Guy said in soft approval, “That was prettily done, Magdalen.” Her eyes glowed at the praise from the only person whose opinion mattered to her in the least.

“Does it not deserve a kiss, also, my lord?” The whispered question seemed to speak itself.

The smile vanished. “Indeed, it does, my lady,” he responded without expression, lifting her hand to his lips in a formal salute. He turned from her, excused himself to the duke, and left the loge.

He made his way to the tents beyond the lists, intending to have a serious word with his erstwhile ward, but Magdalen’s whispered question, the soft glow of her eyes, would not be banished from his mind. He had not forgotten the passionate declaration of the child before she became a woman, but he had believed himself untroubled by it. It had been simply the intensity of a grieving, overexcited child. Now, unease stirred. The demand she had just made had not been of the order of a small girl begging for a sweetmeat or a silver penny. There had been undeniable sensuality in her voice and eyes. Her body was no longer a child’s body, her speech and conduct no longer that of a child, and he knew because he had been there exactly when Edmund had made a woman of the child.

Magdalen returned to her place, a fixed smile hiding her discomfiture. Fortunately, only she was aware of that discomfiture and the reasons for it. What had passed between herself and the Lord de Gervais would draw no remark from other eyes. But she was deeply
mortified. Yet she knew she had no right to be. She was the truly bedded, wedded wife of the Sieur Edmund de Bresse . . .

T
HEY HAD ARRIVED
at Bellair Castle the previous January, a messenger sent on ahead to warn of their coming. Magdalen had stood on the battlements, huddled into her fur-lined, hooded mantle, watching for them. The long and wearisome years of seclusion stretched behind her, years when the existence of the Duke of Lancaster’s daughter, wife of Edmund de Bresse, seemed to have been forgotten by all. When Edmund and de Gervais had prevailed in Picardy and Edmund was in possession of his castle, the duke had sent a formal note of congratulation to his daughter, informing her of her husband’s safety and prowess in the field. The message had not mentioned Guy de Gervais, and she had received no word of him in all those years until the day before, when the heralding messenger had told her that Lord de Gervais accompanied her husband on this journey to the border lands, when Edmund de Bresse in victory was come to claim his wife.

Standing on the battlements, she had stared out across the plain until spots began to dance in front of her eyes. The sentinels in the watchtowers would see them coming before she did, and the subsequent bell ringing would reach her wherever she might be in the castle. But she still stood, exposed to the bitter snow-tipped wind, straining her eyes into the distance.