Lords of the White Castle (36 page)

'Oh yes, we'll hunt,' Ivo said. The way he looked at Richard made Maude decide not to ask the kind of prey they had in mind, although she suspected that any royal manors within the vicinity might soon find themselves receiving a visit. So she merely nodded and changed the subject.

'He needs peace and quiet to sleep and recover,' she murmured. 'One of you can sit with him and make sure he needs for nothing. I will speak to your aunt—reassure her that all is well.' She grimaced at the dried blood caking her fingers. 'Although I had best wash my hands first, or she will never believe me!'

That raised half-smiles from Fulke's brothers. She took the costrel bottle and swigged down the dregs. The fire of the brew hit the back of her throat and shot in a line of liquid flame to her belly. She gasped, first with shock, then with relief. Fulke half opened his eyes and looked at her mazily. 'I don't know whether to kiss or kill you,' he slurred.

He was out of his wits with drink and pain, but his words still sent a jolt through her that almost rivalled the uisge beatha for effect. 'Perhaps you should just thank me,' she said, and left the bedside before he could say anything else.

Three days later, Maude was able to pronounce that Fulke's wound was healing cleanly, without signs of the dreaded wound fever. At first she had not been sure and had had to wait out the raging headache, the thirst and sickness caused by the after-effects of his drinking such a large quantity of uisge beatha. Now, however, she was certain. Already he was proving to be a restless, irritable patient, refusing to stay abed and swallow his nostrums as instructed.

'I'm not a puling infant,' he snarled at the sight of Maude armed with a bowl of oxtail broth. 'It's my thigh that's injured, not my stomach.'

He was fully dressed and sitting in the window embrasure, his leg stretched out in front of him. His tangled hair and a four-day growth of beard made him look like the outlaw he was rather than a polished knight.

Maude narrowed her eyes. He had already sent one of the maids out in tears that morning, and had been thoroughly insufferable ever since William had taken the men out on a 'hunt' after the breaking of fast. She knew that he saw it as his responsibility to lead them, and was not happy at being forced to delegate, but that did not mean he should take his ire out on those around him.

'It's the state of your manners that concerns me the most,' she answered tartly as she set the bowl down in front of him together with a small loaf. 'Since everyone else is dining on oxtail broth, I do not see that you should object. You cannot bring fifty fighting men into a small manor like this and
expect
to dine like a king every day.'

He gave her an angry scowl and drew himself up. 'I will pay my way. The men have gone out foraging, as you well know.'

'Stealing from John, you mean.'

'Much less than he steals from me.' Grudgingly he tore a piece off the bread and dipped it in the broth. 'Why bring it to my chamber?' he demanded. 'I am quite capable of sitting in the hall with my aunt and whoever else remains.'

'Partly because I hoped you might still be abed,' Maude snapped, 'and partly because no one wants to sit at table with a boor.' She had intended staying with him to make sure he ate his broth. Since he seemed to have every intention of doing so and she found his behaviour objectionable, she abandoned her plan and stalked out. She would examine his leg later, and if she hurt him, she would not be contrite.

Too angry and exasperated to sit at table in the hall and make conversation with Emmeline, Maude fetched her bow and quiver from her chamber and went to practise her archery at the butts.

Fulke drank the broth, which was excellent and full flavoured. He ate the bread and knew with annoyance at Maude and irritation at himself that she was right. He was being petulant, but only because he was bored, shut away in this chamber and treated as if his wits had bled out of the hole in his leg. He was a proud, active man, healthy and vigorous, and not within his living memory had he been confined to bed for more than a day. The thought of William out foraging at the head of the troop was enough to make him bite his nails ragged. It was true that his brother had learned a little more prudence along the tourney road, but not so much that Fulke trusted him without qualm.

Still, he should not have taken his frustration out on Maude. He owed her more than he could repay. Perhaps that was part of the reason that he had lashed out. He made an impatient sound at the thought, and decided on the instant to do something to amend both his behaviour and the situation.

Pulling himself up by the angle of the embrasure wall, he limped slowly and painfully to the entrance curtain. His lance was propped against a coffer nearby and he grasped it to use as a prop. His chamber was part of a large room divided by the curtain, the other section containing his aunt's solar. A maid was busy weaving braid on a small loom, but his aunt was nowhere to be seen. Likely she was in the hall dining on her own broth and being regaled by Maude with the tale of his execrable behaviour.

It was that thought rather than the pain in his leg that made him grimace as he limped to the embrasure. The maid had opened the lower shutters to allow daylight into the chamber. Fulke gazed out on herb-beds and a green area beyond, which the manor's retainers used for battle training and archery practice.

A single bowman faced the straw butts, drawing and releasing with fluid ease. He narrowed his eyes, the better to focus on the distant figure. A
bow woman
, he amended with surprise and admiration. Even from where he stood, he could see that Maude Walter was good.

Not without a little difficulty, Fulke negotiated the wooden external stairs at the end of the solar and descended to the courtyard below. There was a slight breeze, enough to ruffle his hair, but not sufficient to blow the arrows off their course as Maude sent them winging into the butt. He watched the sharp angle of her arm, the tilt of her head, the way her lips pursed on the draw and then released in an expression that was almost a kiss as she loosed all the pent-up tension and let the arrow fly. Beauty controlling power. He felt the hair lift on the nape of his neck.

He limped between the herb-beds until he reached the edge of the sward, then paused to gain his breath and recover from the pain.

She must have seen him from the corner of her eye, for she turned. Angry colour burned her cheeks and she lowered the bow, her next arrow un-nocked.

'I am glad that it was not you shooting at me from the walls of Whittington,' he said, 'for I know I would be dead. You have a better eye than Alain, and he's by far the keenest marksman among us.'

She shrugged. 'I shoot finest when I'm angry.'

Fulke stirred his toe in the soft, thick pile of the grass. A beetle was toiling amongst the short blades, its body as glossy as polished dark leather. 'As you have every right to be. 'A glance at Maude from beneath his brows revealed that she was eyeing him warily, anger still apparent in the set of her lips and the slight narrowing of her lids. Christ, she was lovely. It was all too easy to imagine her long-limbed and wild in his bed. He cleared his throat and quashed the thought. 'Even since being bound in swaddling bands as an infant I have chafed at confinement. I am sorry if I railed at you for what is none of your fault. Indeed, I owe you and my aunt a debt beyond all paying. I would not have you think me ungrateful.'

Her look told him that while she was a little mollified, she was not yet prepared to let him off the hook. 'I don't.' She walked up to the butt and tugged her arrows out. He looked at her straight back, the ripple of her linen veil at each jerk of effort. 'But you're still a mannerless boor,' she said on her return.

'If you gave me another chance, I could prove otherwise.'

Her lips curved. 'How many chances do you want?' she asked sweetly.

Fulke gave her a questioning frown.

'On my wedding morn,' she said, 'you took a whore beneath my bridal roof.'

'What?'

'Hanild. Was that her name?' She nocked an arrow and let fly into the heart of the target. Thud. As if it were her enemy's heart.

He stared in astonishment. 'And that has rankled with you all this time?'

'Should it not? I was a new bride, and you humiliated me!'

'I didn't do it to humiliate you,' Fulke said on a rising note, 'I did it because I—' He dug his fingers through his hair and bit back the rest of the sentence.

'Because what?'

He shook his head.

'No, tell me, I want to know. 'A new arrow sat between the leather guards on her fingers.

Fulke swallowed. 'Because, as you say, you were a new bride -Theobald's wife. And, God help me, I wanted you.'

She lowered her eyes and studied the goose-feather fletching as if it were of vast importance.

'Every man present was imagining himself in Theobald's place—claiming your virginity, creating that bloody sheet, and I was no different.' He smiled, although the gesture did not reach his eyes, i had no intention of insulting you when I took Hanild to my bed. She was there; I was in need; and at the time it seemed like a reasonable idea to a man who had almost lost his reason.'

It was her turn to swallow. He saw the ripple of her throat, the way she drew a sharp, small breath, and he realised that the incident must have meant far more to her than a brief moment of chagrin. Why else would she remember so small a detail as Harold's name? Why else hold it against him for so long? Perhaps the attraction was mutual. Perhaps that was why she was so hostile.

'The wanting has not gone away,' he said softly. 'If anything, it is worse now than it was before because it has grown as we have done. But whatever you think of my manners, I honour you and I honour Theobald.' He drew a line of darker green in the moist grass with the haft
of
the lance, bisecting the yard
of
ground between him and Maude. 'I will not step beyond the line, and neither will you,' he said. 'But we both know it exists… don't we?'

Trembling, she lifted her chin, her eyes as clear and hard as green glass. He saw the denial, the preparation of an angry rebuff.

'Or am I more honest than you?' he asked.

She put the arrow to the string and raised the bow. 'I love Theobald dearly, and my loyalty to him is firm as a rock,' she said in a quivering voice. 'How dare you!'

'Because you wanted to know.' He spread his hands. 'I love Theobald too, and I would not do anything to betray his trust in me.'

'Is lusting after his wife not a betrayal of his trust?'

'Not while neither of us crosses this line.' He smiled again, still without humour. 'Call it courtly love. The giving of a token for the breaking of a tourney lance in the season. If you are going to shoot me, do it now. Pierce my heart a second time.'

'Go away!' Maude hissed, tears glittering in her eyes.

Fulke regarded her sombrely. 'I came to make my peace,' he said. 'I did not intend this to happen, I swear it.'

'Please…just go!'

He did as she asked, but slowly. His leg was throbbing with the strain of standing for so long, and although the burden of confession had been taken off his mind, the weight of its consequence had just been added. Behind him, blind of all but .instinct, Maude sent fletch after fletch into the heart of the straw butt.

Later that evening she
came to
his chamber. This time there was no bowl of broth in her hand for he had taken his evening meal of salt fish in the hall with his aunt, amid the constraints of propriety. It was Maude who had eaten in her own tiny chamber, pleading a headache.

He was briefly surprised to see her now, but then realised that he should have known. Running away was not in her nature. Right or wrong, she would rather stand and fight. She approached the bench in the embrasure where he was sitting, and he saw that she was carrying a clay ointment pot and fresh swaddling bands.

'Is your headache improved, my lady?' he enquired politely, casting a glance to the curtain, which she had left open for propriety's sake, nipping in the bud any gossip that might arise from her being alone with him.

'A little. Your leg needs tending, and my head will bear up to the task better than your aunt's stomach.'

She hooked up a footstool with her ankle and, sitting down beside him, unfastened the pin securing his bandage. Obviously she was not going to ask him to he down on the bed. Too dangerous, he thought with a bleak and private smile. Who was to say she was not right?

With brisk competence, she tended the wound, remarking that it was healing well. Fulke had cautioned himself against reacting to her touch but there was no need. Her cold tone and practicality were so powerful a barrier that there was not the slightest reaction from his groin, lest it be a slight tightening and shrinking away. God knew what she might do with those sewing shears at her belt.

She refastened the bandage and sat back, folding her hands in her lap like a staid matron. Then she drew a deep breath and looked at him, her expression a heart-rending mingling of fear and courage.

'I have come to make my peace with you,' she announced. 'And to be as truthful with you as you have been with me.'

He wondered how long she had sat alone with her 'headache', wrestling with what she was going to do and say. Suddenly he was almost afraid to hear it, but he had to listen, had to know.

'I do love Theo,' she said. 'He is kind and generous and honourable, and I never think of the years between us, except to hope that he remains in good health.' Her tone grew vehement. 'He is my friend, my companion, and I would give my life for him. I would not hurt or harm him in any way.'

'Neither would I.' But he could scarcely imagine Theobald being delighted at this conversation, or the one that had taken place at the archery butts. It was dangerous ground, thin, thin ice, offering no retreat.

'You are right about the line, though,' she said, her voice now scarcely above a whisper. 'And I am so afraid that one of us will step across and destroy everything. Theobald knows that something is wrong between you and me. He cannot understand why we avoid each other's company, but one day I fear that he will see and know.' She folded her arms tightly across her breasts, protecting her body. 'Is it love or lust? I do not know, because I do not know you. Perhaps it is no more than wishing after what you cannot have.'