Earth Song (15 page)

“Alain worked not by himself, so thinks the master,” Northbert said, then wiped his bread in the thick beef gravy on his trencher.

“ ‘Tis a varmint named de Grasse the cistern keeper has run to,” Crooky announced, his mouth bulging with boiled capon.

Philippa grew instantly still. “Walter de Grasse?” she asked slowly. Her heart was pounding, her hand squeezing a honey-and-almond tart.

Dienwald heard her and turned, saying, “What know you of de Grasse?”

“Why, he's my cousin,” she said without thinking.

Dienwald's face was pale, his eyes dark and wild. “Your
cousin
? Lord Henry's
nephew
?”

He didn't sound angry, merely incredulous, and Philippa felt emboldened to add freely, “Nay, Walter is my mother's nephew. My father doesn't like him, but I do.” She raised her chin, knowing that Dienwald wouldn't be able to keep his opinion to himself, and that it would be contrary to hers.

“I don't believe this,” was all he said. He rose, slamming his chair back, and left the great hall.

Crooky looked at Philippa and shook his head.

“He is always slamming out of here like a sulking child!”

“Nay,” Gorkel said. “He leaves because he is angry and he doesn't wish to strike you.”

“Strike me? I have done nothing. What is
wrong with him this time? I cannot help that Sir Walter is my kin.”

“It matters not,” Crooky said. “You, mistress, you say that you like this serpent, this vicious brute . . . well, what do you expect the master to do?”

“But—”

Crooky cleared his throat, and Philippa closed her eyes against the discordant sounds that emerged loud and clear from the fool's mouth:

A villain, a coward,
A knave without shame.
De Grasse maims and he destroys
And takes no blame.
He lies and he steals
And he slithers out to kill.
My sweet master will slay him,
Come what will.

“Why do you keep calling him ‘sweet master'?” Philippa asked, irritated and frightened and wondering all the while what her cousin had done to earn such enmity.

Crooky gave her a small salute with a dirty hand and said with a wink, “Think you not that he is a sweet master? The females hereabouts think him more than sweet. They like him to bed them, to push apart their thighs and—”

“Hush!”

“Forgive me, mistress. I forget you are yet a maid and unknowing of the ways of men and women.”

Edmund, hearing this outpouring from Crooky, frowned at Philippa and said, “Are you truly a maid? Still? I know you were before, but . . . You
still aren't my father's mistress, even after all the times he's carried you off to his chamber? You said that—”

“I'm not his mistress. I'm naught but his drudge, his captive . . .” Philippa ground to a halt. She was also St. Erth's steward. “Why aren't you wearing your new tunic? You don't like it? I know that it fits. Margot told me it did. ‘Tis well made, and the color suits you. And the hose and shoes. Why don't—”

“I don't like them. Besides, my father doesn't wear anything new. Until he makes me, then I'll stay the way I am.”

“You are such a stubborn little irkle.”

“ ‘Tis better than being a maypole.”

“Edmund, if you do not wear your new tunic on the morrow, I will come to your chamber, hold you down, and put it on you. Do you understand me?”

“You won't!”

She gave him a look to shrivel any male. He ducked his head, and she saw that he was quite dirty, his fingers and fingernails coated with grime. He looked like a villein's child; he looked like he'd been wallowing in mud with Tupper. She had to speak to Dienwald about this. He forced his son to learn to read and write and cipher but allowed him to look like a ragged little beggar.

“Yes,” she said, “yes, I will. And you will bathe, Master Edmund. When was the last time your hands were in soap and water?”

“There ban't be any soap, mistress,” Old Agnes shouted to Philippa. The old woman had amazing hearing when it suited her. “No one thought to
make it,” she added, quick to defend herself should the need arise. “The master said aught.”

Philippa called back, “But that is absurd. I have used soap in the master's chamber.”

“Aye, thass the last of it. The master likely didn't realize it was the last of it.”

“We will make soap on the morrow,” Philippa said. “And you, you pigsty of a boy, will be the first to use it.”

“Nay, I won't!”

“We'll see.”

Philippa had much to consider that night when she closed the door to her small chamber. She'd just pulled the frayed tunic over her head and laid it carefully over the back of the single chair when she heard his voice say softly, “Put it back on. I don't wish to enjoy you here. I want you in my bed, where you can warm me when it grows cold near dawn.”

“I'm not your mistress! Go away, Dienwald!”

“I've already enjoyed a woman this night. I have no pressing need for another, be she even as soft and big and, in truth, as eager as you. Come along, now.”

Her eyes had adjusted to the dimness of the chamber and she saw him now, holding her discarded gown, his hand stretched out to her. She was standing there quite naked, just staring at him. Philippa grabbed the gown and pulled it over her head. In the next moment he had her hand and was pulling her after him, out of the steward's chamber.

There were still a dozen or so people milling about the great hall, and two score more sleeping on pallets lining the walls. “Hush,” he said, and pulled her after him. Everyone saw. No one said
a thing. Not a single man yelled advice. Philippa wanted to kick him, kick
all
of them, hard.

She tugged and pulled and jerked, but it was no use. He turned on her then, frowning, and said, “No more carrying you. You come willingly or I will drag you by the hair.”

“You will pay for this, Dienwald, you surely will.” She gave him an evil smile. “I will send word to my dear cousin Sir Walter—aye, and I'll tell him what a cruel savage you are, a barbarian, a—”

“I'm already paying, wench. But I beg of you not to tell your precious cousin that I'm a ravisher of innocent maids. Nay, do not, even though it would please you mightily were I to take you.” It was at that instant she realized he'd drunk more ale than usual. He didn't slur his words like Lord Henry did, nor was his nose flaming red. He walked very carefully, like a man who knows he's drunk but doesn't want anyone else to know. She wasn't at all afraid of him, drunk or sober. She found that she was rather anticipating what he would do.

Once inside his bedchamber, Dienwald went through the now-familiar routine of pushing her onto the bed. “Now,” he said, looking down at her, “now you can remove the gown. It is ugly and offends me. Haven't you yet finished something for yourself?”

She lay there staring up at him, not moving, marshaling her strength. “I made you a tunic. ‘Tis down in my chamber.”

He paused. “Did you really finish it? It disappeared, and I believed you'd destroyed it in your ire at me.”

“I should have.” She began inching away to
the far side of the bed. “You have drunk too much ale.”

“Philippa,” he said quietly, “there are no more gowns, not another stitch of anything for you to wear. Take care of the only one you have, else you will be naked. Aye, I have drunk more than I usually do, but ‘tis done. Take off the gown now.”

“Blow out the candle first.”

“All right.” He snuffed the candle, throwing the chamber into gloom. Moonlight came through the one window, slivering clear light directly across the bed. There was nothing she could do about it. Still, she wasn't at all afraid of him or of what he could do to her if he so chose. Philippa eased out of the gown and laid it at the foot of the bed. Then she slid beneath the single blanket.

“It's deep spring now,” Dienwald said, and she knew he was taking off his clothes as he spoke, even though she wasn't looking at him. His voice deepened, grew absent and thoughtful. He didn't sound at all drunk. “That's what we call it here. Deep spring. Very late April and early May. My grandmother told me of deep spring when I was but a boy, told me this was what men called it a very long time ago when priests ruled the land and everyone worshiped the endless force of spring, the timeless renewal of spring. She said they saw the wheat shoving upward, ever upward toward the blazing gold of the sun, all the while deepening its roots into the soil, into the darkness. Opposites, this light and darkness, yet bound together, eternal and endless.

“She called it by the old Celtic words, but I cannot remember them. Whenever I say ‘deep spring' now, I think about how a woman takes in
a man and holds him, then empties him and yet renews him and herself with his nourishment, just as spring is infinite yet predictable in its sameness, just as spring always renews the earth, and the light and the dark exist together and complement each other.” He turned to face her now. “I like thinking about you in that way—how you would empty me and renew me and yourself with my seed.

“But you are Walter de Grasse's cousin, and that makes you my enemy, not just my slave or my captive or my mistress. Nay, my enemy. I loathe the very thought of the man. I wonder, wench, should I punish you for his evil? For his wickedness? Does the foulness of his blood run in you? In your soul?”

Philippa was shaken. He'd shown her another side of himself that drew her and made her want to weep, but it had also called forth his hatred, his bitterness. Was he speaking so freely only because he'd drunk too much to keep his thoughts to himself?

“What did he do to you that you hate him so?”

“I lost much with the burning of my crops. And not just the crops, but all the people who worked them,
my
people. All of them butchered, the women ravished, the children piked on swords, the huts destroyed, burned to the raw earth. And it was your cousin who ordered it done.”

“But you are not certain? You could catch no one to tell you?”

“Sir Walter de Grasse was once a landless knight. He still is, though Lord Graelam de Moreton made him castellan of Crandall, one of his keeps to the southwest of St. Erth. It is not enough for Sir Walter; he believes it his right to
have more. The man hated me before I even knew of his existence. My father won St. Erth from his father in a tourney in Normandy when I was a small boy. Walter screams of dishonor and trickery. He demands back his supposed birthright. King Edward wouldn't give him heed, yet he still seeks my death and my ruin. He nearly succeeded once, not long ago, but I was saved by a beautiful artless lady who holds my loyalty and my heart, aye, even my soul. So there it is, wench. Sir Walter will do anything to destroy me, and you are his kin.”

Philippa felt a lance of pain go through her. She swallowed, and licked her dry lips. “Who is this lady? How did she save you?”

Dienwald strode toward the bed then and laughed, a drunken laugh, one that was sharp yet empty, raw yet thick. She saw his body in the shaft of clear moonlight and she thought him beautiful—a strange word surely to describe a being who was sharply planed and angled and shadowed and hard, but it was so. He stood straight and tall and lean, and still he laughed, and it hurt her to listen.

Yet she wanted to hear his story, and he, free-speaking from the ale, said, “You wish her name? She is a lady, a sweet, loving, guileless lady, and her name is Kassia. She hails from Brittany. I cannot have her, though I tried.”

“Why can't you?”

“She is wedded to a powerful man who is also my friend and a mighty warrior—the same overlord of your precious Walter, Lord Graelam de Moreton.”

“You . . . you love her, then?”

Dienwald eased down onto the bed, lifting the
blanket. She could feel the heat from his body, hear the steady rhythm of his breathing. She didn't move. He was silent for a very long time, and she believed him asleep, finally insensate from the ale he'd drunk.

“I know not of love,” he said, his voice low and slurred now. “I just know of feelings and passions, and she took mine unto herself and holds them. Aye, she holds them gently and tenderly because she could do aught else. She is like that, you see. You are very different from her. She is small and delicate and fragile, yet her spirit is fierce and pure. Her smile is so sweet it makes you want to weep and protect her with your life. Aye, she came to womanhood, but she went to him—her body and her heart both went to Graelam. Go to sleep, wench. I grow weary of all this talk.”

“ ‘Tis you who have done all the talking!”

“Go to sleep.”

“I am not your enemy. I am merely your captive.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. I will think about it. God knows, I think of little else. You are a problem that irritates like an itch that can't be reached. Perhaps I will send word to Lord Henry that I have you and will return you if I am given Sir Walter in your place. Perhaps I will demand his head upon a silver platter, like that of St. John, though Walter is about as righteous as a dung beetle. What think you? Would your esteemed father send me Sir Walter's head to have you returned?”

“My esteemed father won't even dower me. My esteemed father seeks to wed me with de Bridgport. My esteemed father probably doesn't even
care that I am gone. I have told you this before. I didn't lie.”

“It seems the answer is no, then. I am to be cursed with the eternal itch. What am I to do with you?”

“I am your steward.”