Claudia Dain (4 page)

Could she topple him?

Of course she could. Any man might be toppled. In fact, she had yet to meet a man who was not the better for it.

"Ulrich!" Christine said on a huff. "He has not come alone, either. Two knights are with him, and his small squire."

"Will you manage them all, Juliane?" Avice asked. "Four is a mighty number of men, even for you."

"I will leave the squire to you, Avice," Juliane retorted with a grin as she set down her sewing. It was a new pelisse of soft green; it would look well on her, if she could but finish it.

"Nay, I will take the squire," Lunete said. "He is of my size."

"And weight," Christine said. "You could best him, pound for pound."

"What talk is this?" Maud said, coming into the room behind Lunete. "Ladies do not speak of such."

"And not within the hearing of men," Avice said softly to her sister.

"We have guests and must greet them," Maud said, casting a suspicious eye upon Avice. "Philip will expect no less of his daughters."

"Which is to the good as he will get little more," Juliane whispered back to Avice with a wicked grin.

"Come, come," Maud said, clapping her hands and shooing the girls in front of her. "Fresh faces, clean gowns, smiles, and soft greetings; come now. We go to welcome guests to Stanora. 'Tis your function and your place."

"'Tis not my function," Juliane said with a half smile. "And I will not be found by Ulrich in any place he thinks to find me. Even the finding of me will not come easily to him. And so the game begins," she said to Avice.

"And so the game is won," Avice said as Juliane ignored their aunt's direction, not joining them as they made their fluttering way down the stairs from the hall to the tower gate and the mighty door that protected them. Ulrich would see the ladies of Stanora, yet he would not see the one lady he most desired to see.

Avice had seen this game played time upon time and each time Juliane the victor. What would it be like if Juliane should lose? Would she then be given in marriage, the spell of her frost broken? If any man were made for the breaking of a woman's heart, that man was Ulrich of Caen. If tales spoke true.

Did tales not ever and always speak true?

If Juliane were the measure, then, aye, they did.

And so Ulrich was a man worth watching.

"Come, come, let us be about our calling," Maud said from the front of their skirted troop.

"I am come," Avice said. In truth, she was all eagerness to lay eyes upon Ulrich. Let the tales of him be tested against the Frost of Stanora. 'Twould be worthy play, if naught else.

* * *

Maud allowed Juliane to disappear into the mural gallery on the upper floor of the tower. Juliane had known that she would. It was not in the game for Juliane to be so easily found. Let Ulrich and his cohorts work for their first glimpse of her; it only made the first sighting sweeter when frustration melted into frantic desperation and starving impatience.

Juliane smiled as she trailed a hand along the uppermost wooden rail that protected against a fall onto the wooden roof of the tower below. She could hear the ladies of Stanora chattering and laughing at the prospect of facing Ulrich of Caen for the first time. He was a man, it was said, to make a lady blush with pleasure. It might even be true. Yet not so with her. No man had the heat to make her blush, not even Ulrich.

Though...

The tales of him were strong and sweet, of winged words, of sparkling adoration, of eyes of deepest blue that shone with humor and wit, of hands that stroked a lady's vanity as well as moving gently upon her skin. Within all tales, all tunes, and all times he was spoken of most well. And so had been since she was a girl. He had been out in the world, finding his way, making his name, and leaving his mark upon damsel and battlefield.

Yet when was any damsel not a battlefield? Aye, they were the same. A man must leave his mark upon the earth, and he did it in what ways he could. Damsels did not fall to words, not easily, not softly. Nay, they fell from breathy battering and whispered entreaty when they fell at all.

By the tales, Ulrich knew how to make a lady fall into the spell of him.

And by the tales, Juliane robbed men of breath and will and heat so that they lay spent and cold, all thoughts of winning beaten from them by her very look.

Would it be so with Ulrich?

A breeze snaked down from the battlements above her to slide across the rooftop, stroking a gentle hand against her face, moving fragile fingers across her unbound hair—an invisible caress of air, warm and summer sweet and full of birdsong from the fields surrounding Stanora. The wind was her companion when all the others had flown off to giggle and twitch before the men eyeing them.

Had it always been so? Had Eve paraded her beauty and her charm to Adam in the garden? Had she enticed him when it was just the two of them on the whole great Earth? And had Adam spoken words of love to his woman amidst the golden sphere of earthly perfection, or had he spoken words of power?

Was there a woman in Henry's kingdom who would lay a wager on the question?

Juliane chuckled under her breath and ran a hand over her cheek, brushing the wind from her skin, standing alone, untouched. Nay, there was no woman who would take that wager. Men lived to wield their power, in whatever ways they could, against whomever they could.

And so she lived to stand against that sword of power, wielding a power of her own.

It was with thoughts of power in her mind that Juliane decided where she would allow Ulrich to find her.

* * *

Ulrich and his band rode into the wide bailey of Stanora wearing smiles of greeting and goodwill. As he smiled, he looked about him. The tower of Stanora was large and low, wider than tall, two stories above the undercroft, crowned with a thick ridge of battlements. A most unusual tower, of recent construction and in a fashion he had but heard of before now; 'twas a tower that strove to be a dwelling. A tower that was more than defense, it was an embrace to all who dwelt within.

A tower difficult to defend?

Ulrich looked again, his smile constant and his gaze mild. A thick curtain wall with an earthen rampart, a wide and clean-swept bailey with outbuildings of stone, a battlement like a crown against the sky; nay, Stanora would not fall easily, though she wore the look of welcome.

Would the same be said of Juliane? It was most like.

In all his years of wandering, he had yet to meet a maid, damsel, or queen who did not have a smile for him. Juliane had built her name upon other hearts than his, and it was upon his name that she would fall. A gentle falling with no ill intent, that was sure, but a falling all the same. Did she know yet that he had even now breached the outer defenses of Stanora? Did she know that he had come to take the chill from her name and bring to her the heat of love?

Aye, she knew. By the look of the ladies just now descending the outer stair, she knew and was come to face the man whose name carried the weight of a legend that was older and more secure than hers. Yet which of these ladies was the woman of frost?

"She comes to you at a run, brother," Roger said on a chuckle of delight "My wager is lost before it has begun."

"Wager?" Edward asked, "What wager and what stakes? I have a skill for winning, as you will attest."

"Tighten your lips over your tongue," Ulrich said with a stiff-lipped growl. "We are newly entered here. Hold all until we are well within the gates. It is by such talk that wagers are blown to mist. I would not have her forewarned."

"Ah," said Edward, "of course. A wager of women against your wiles."

"Aye," Roger said, grinning. "A wager Ulrich fears to lose, as it is against the lady of this place, one Juliane le Gel."

"By Saint Ambrose, can you not keep still?" Ulrich said in an undertone. "My lord?" he said more loudly as the lord of Stanora came across the bailey from the stone stairway to the battlements, his priest at his back. "Your hospitality is most generous."

"To those who travel in the name of the king, any man would be generous," Lord Philip replied softly.

"Then shall both the king of England and the lord of Stanora be thanked," Ulrich said with a smile.

"All are well thanked, then," Edward said. "My lord, we met at Winchester a summer past, and you offered me the warmth of your hearth if ever I was in the region. I thank you individually for a place by your fire."

"Yea, I remember you," Philip said. "My fire is still lit, and you shall have your place by it, but what brings you all to Stanora, or are you on some other mission which calls you elsewhere and only seek a night's repose upon my hearth?"

"For myself," Edward said, dismounting and handing the reins to a groom, who waited expectantly for the other knights to dismount, "I am come at the bidding of the archbishop of York, a mere messenger of God and His servant, the bishop. Yet it is not to you, my lord, that this message is writ, but to your priest, Father Matthew."

"A rare message that it could not be carried by a less exalted messenger than a helmed knight," Philip said easily.

"Be it otherwise said," Father Matthew said pleasantly, "that the archbishop, as the exalted servant of God, is a careful man and chooses his messengers with a rare hand."

"A flurry of words most courteous for so simple a thing as a message writ on vellum," Philip said. "I would talk of other things than bishops. Tell me, Ulrich, for I have heard of you, what brings you to the gates of Stanora?"

There were many answers he could have given, many things he could have said. Ulrich chose the path of cordiality and humor, leaving darker paths untrod, hoping that the lord of Stanora and, aye, even his brother knights, would look no deeper for his true purpose in riding hard for the gates of Stanora.

"You need only look behind you, my lord, to see my purpose," Ulrich said with a grin. "The ladies of Stanora are well spoke of, my lord. Your daughter Juliane is the subject of much verse. Could any man resist the temptation of Juliane le Gel?"

Philip smiled and shook his head slightly. As his hair flowed in that gentle breeze, Ulrich saw that the lord of Stanora was minus an ear. A war wound, by the look, and his left ear. A strong right-hand stroke had made clean work of it. The wound was old and white and seemed to trouble Philip little. Ulrich had seen worse in his day.

"There is hardly an answer I could give which would serve my Juliane well," Philip said with a slight smile. "Would any father admit that his daughter tempts a man? Would any man admit that his daughter has indeed doused temptation in most men?"

"Most men?" Ulrich asked with a grin. That was not the tale as it was being told, and both men knew it.

Philip shrugged and said nothing.

"Will you welcome me into your holding, my lord?" Ulrich asked. "I come to test myself against the tale of Juliane, yet I would not dishonor her on any point. Her virtue is safe, it is only her legend I come to best."

"You are not the first," Philip said. "Yet," he said on a rising laugh, "I can see in your eyes that you mean to be the last. Well enough. Try your hand with her, and welcome. But is it only the one who will throw himself against the chill of my elder daughter? Will none of the rest of you try your hand at wooing?"

"My lord," said Roger with a slight bow, "in the field of courtly love, Ulrich has no equal. We stand as witnesses only to see the beginning of a new legend, the legend of the fall of Juliane, if it is in your will."

"It is in my will for you to try," Philip said. "Who shall be the winner in this contest will make good wagering."

"If we could meet the lady?" Edward said with a wry grin. "I would not wager blind, even knowing Ulrich."

Philip glanced behind him at the ladies curved around the base of the tower stair. "I have a daughter there, but not the one you seek. Juliane has flown, guessing your purpose here, if I know her. You must needs seek her out, Ulrich of Caen. She will be found when it suits her to be found."

If the ladies fluttered to be so dismissed by the lord of Stanora, none of the men appeared to make mark of it. Yet flutter they did, and Avice most especially.

* * *

The sound of fluttering marked Juliane's quiet entrance into the falcon mews. The air was dark and still and soft with the sound of feathers and the feel of bright, unblinking eyes upon her face. The ground was thick with feathers and down and casting, and her leather shoes sank deep. The grooms had been slack.

Juliane's eyes adjusted quickly to the dark, and she went directly to her falcon, a dainty merlin with brilliant eyes of deepest brown.

"Come, Morgause, let us away from these walls and find our quarry," Juliane said, moving the varvels, those small rings of silver that adorned her bird, to clear the leather jesses from beneath the talons. "Though I would not doubt that Ulrich of the Sweet Mouth would name me
his
quarry. We shall instruct him better, shall we not?"

"Lady?" came a soft voice from without the sheltered quiet of the mews.

"Aye, Baldric," Juliane answered softly.

"You take her out today?"

"Aye. Have a horse saddled and brought round for me. I hunt today," she said with a smile, laying gentle fingers over the breast of her bird of prey.