Patricia Ryan - [Fairfax Family 01] (5 page)

They rode in silence until the late afternoon sun formed a low orange ball in a sky of unearthly blue. Martine couldn’t remember ever having seen a sky quite that extraordinarily blue in France. If there were skies such as this in England, perhaps she could be happy here, after all. The setting sun gilded the ripening grain with its fire and sliced long shadows into it. A warm breeze scented with hay drifted over the fields, which the villeins were beginning to abandon for home and supper.

Presently the sun winked out on the horizon, staining the sky the color of peaches—a beautiful color, but Martine missed that special, English blue. The breeze that had been warm before sundown now chilled her, and she decided to put her mantle back on. She slowed Solomon to a walk and shook out the long cape. But as she did so, the breeze caught it and sent it sailing ahead of her. Martine cursed inwardly and braced herself for the possibility that the stallion would shy.

Indeed, as the mantle sailed past his eyes, Solomon’s head flew up, his eyes rolling white. Martine instinctively wanted to grab both reins and hold on tight, but instead she seized the inside rein and pulled the startled animal in the same direction he had shied, forcing him to dance in a frenzied circle. She caught a glimpse of Thorne’s restraining arm before his squire. Sensible of him; Albin would only have gotten in the way.

Solomon executed one last complete circle, snorting in frustration, before she could rein him in. Sighing in relief, she leaned over and patted his neck. Thorne nodded respectfully in her direction. Albin looked sheepish.

Her mantle had landed in a heap on the road. She began to dismount, but settled back into the saddle when she saw Albin jump down from his humble mount. He picked up the mantle, handling it as if it were the shroud of Christ. After gingerly dusting off a few spots, he carried it toward Martine, only to have it snatched from his hands by Sir Thorne as he rode past.

“Thank you, Albin,” said Thorne.

The squire replied with a resigned “Sir” and remounted his packhorse. Thorne gave the garment a few good shakes, then brought his steed close to Martine’s. Ignoring her outstretched hand, he draped the mantle carefully over her head and shoulders, smoothing down and adjusting the cloth as he did so. His movements were economical, his touch firm but gentle. Martine, nonplussed, looked down at her hands on the reins. She rarely blushed, but this Saxon had made her blush twice in one day!

Men rarely touched her. The code of chivalry frowned upon physical contact with a lady. Although Sir Thorne disregarded the code, he did so without apparent disrespect to her. It surprised her that he would want to make this thoughtful gesture after their testy exchange in Weald Forest. He had a bit of trouble securing the mantle with the brooch, his long fingers fumbling a bit as he patiently worked the pin through the black wool. His hand as it brushed her throat was warm, his scent earthy but clean, like the forest after a rainfall.

When he had finished, she knew she should thank him, but feared that her voice would catch in her throat. At any rate, he didn’t seem to expect it of her. He merely nudged his horse and continued ahead of her down the road.

Not long afterward, as the sky deepened from peach to violet, she spotted Harford Castle in the distance, crowning the top of the only hill for miles around. Its size impressed her, dwarfing the humble structures on its south side. She could make out about a dozen cottages and the steeple of a church, which Thorne identified as the barony chapel.

As they neared it, however, she felt a pang of disappointment at the simplicity of its construction. Even in silhouette against the evening sky, she could see that the keep was but an enormous stone box with a rectangular turret at each corner, surrounded by massive curtain walls. There were no fancy towers, no ornamentation, no interesting bits of architectural detail at all.

The road led them past the cottages and church, curving west around the hill on which the castle stood, a river curving to the east. The party followed Thorne along a side path up the hill, past a palisade of sharpened poles, and over the drawbridge leading to the gateway. A small door in one of the metal-faced oaken gates, just big enough for one person on horseback, stood open, and they rode through it into the outer bailey.

It was too dark now to make out more than an expanse of flat lawn and the shadows of structures built up against the insides of the curtain walls, some of which were dimly lit from within. People milled about; she could hear their voices and sense their watchful eyes. The air smelled of cooking, but also of the farmyard; animals, manure, and hay.

Martine regretted not being able to see everything right away. She had an enormous curiosity about castles, having read about them in books and heard about them in the tales of jongleurs. If she were to tell Sir Thorne that she had never set foot in one before, he would find it hard to believe. He must assume that she had been brought up amid such luxury. Well, she would have almost two months within it, for she and Rainulf were to remain at Harford Castle as guests until the wedding on the first of October.

They crossed a second drawbridge to the inner bailey. Aside from the keep, the only building Martine could see appeared to be a thatched stone shed set against the south wall, from which she heard strangled screams.

“What on earth?”

The knight named Peter said, “Surely you know the scream of a falcon, my lady.” Peter had a Nordic look to him, even more so than Rainulf. He was clean-shaven, and his eyebrows and eyelashes were the same pale color as his long, kinky hair—the longest hair she had ever seen on a man, falling halfway to his waist.

Falcons
. “Oh, of course.”

“‘Tis Sir Thorne’s hawk house.”

Thorne corrected him. “Lord Godfrey’s hawk house.”

“Aye,” Peter conceded. “and Sir Thorne’s birds—that is, my lord’s birds—have missed their master, and sense his return.”

The group dismounted on the flagstone court in front of the keep, handing their reins to the waiting stable hands. A young red-haired man emerged from the hawk house and ran to Thorne.

“Sir! Azura’s broken a tail feather, the new merlin is sneezing, and Madness won’t eat!”

Thorne said, “These problems can wait until morning, Kipp. There’s a young gyrfalcon in that basket over there. Take her into the hawk house and see that she’s made comfortable. She needs complete darkness. Light no candles or lanterns and speak gently to her. Wrap the perch with linen.”

“Shall I fit her with jesses and bells?”

“Nay. Handle her as little as possible. I’ll be waking her tonight, and I’ll take care of that myself.”

“Yes, sir.”

Thorne turned to his squire. “Albin, go up and tell Lord Godfrey and Edmond that our guests are here.”

“Yes, sir!” Albin ran up the front steps of the keep, disappearing in the dark, looming stone box.

Martine’s stomach felt tight, her mouth dry. What would Edmond be like? Was he anything like Sir Thorne? Where was Loki? Loki would be afraid in this new place. Loki would need her.

A hand closed over her shoulder. When she turned around, Rainulf gently placed the cat in her arms. “I thought he looked a bit nervous,” he said, and smiled.

“He is,” Martine agreed. “A bit.”

A wavering light appeared in the entrance to the keep. Albin stood there, holding a torch in one hand while his other arm supported a heavy, unsteady old man carrying a tankard. Martine heard Thorne hiss some angry English words under his breath. Albin caught his eye and shrugged helplessly.

The man looked old, indeed, at least sixty. Martine knew immediately from the fur trim on his green overtunic that he must be a man of noble blood, obviously Lord Godfrey. He was a large man, thickly built, but with a belly that swelled beneath his tunic out of proportion to the rest of his frame. His chin-length hair and forked beard shone like polished silver in the light of Albin’s torch, and a network of broken veins reddened his nose and cheeks. He clutched at Albin and howled with glee when he saw Rainulf.

“My little friend is a priest!” he bellowed as he lumbered down the stairs, assisted by Albin. His voice was slurred from drink. “When I saw you in Paris, you were but... twenty?”

“Seventeen, my lord,” Rainulf corrected.

“Well, you looked older. Acted older. Come here!” Rainulf and Godfrey embraced, exchanging kisses on both cheeks.

Rainulf led the older man to Martine and made introductions. The baron swayed slightly despite Rainulf’s and Albin’s efforts to hold him upright, and his eyes seemed to have trouble focusing. He squinted at Loki, bringing his face precariously close to the tense animal in order to get a better look.

“A
cat
? Is it yours?” he asked Martine.

“Aye, my lord.”

“Hunh. Well... perhaps it’ll provide some sport for the dogs.” Now he peered as closely at Martine as he had at Loki. He had a stale, beery smell, as if he had been sweating some dank brew for years. “So this is the Lady Martine. You look just like the Mother of God herself.”

Sir Thorne met Martine’s eyes briefly. She sensed rueful amusement, and something else, harder to define. To the baron he said, “Where is Edmond this evening, sire?”

“Hunting with Bernard and his men.” Martine knew that Bernard was Edmond’s older brother.

“
Still?
”

Godfrey shrugged. “They often go for a week at a time. You know them.”

“The betrothal will be formalized the day after tomorrow,” Thorne said.

“I’m sure they’ll be back by then. In the meantime, I’m still master of Harford, and I know how to treat my guests. You must be hungry.”

With some help from Albin and Rainulf, he turned and led his guests and knights into the keep and up the circular stairs within a corner turret. The stairwell was a narrow, winding passage of carefully worked masonry, lit by torches that filled the spiraling passage with their resinous fumes. Godfrey exited on the second level, and Martine and the rest followed.

She heard it even before she stepped out of the stairwell: low, menacing growls that caused Loki to hiss and unsheathe his claws. Martine tightened her grip on the cat and backed up, taking in the great hall and its inhabitants, human and canine.

It was a cavernous room, larger even than Rainulf’s lecture hall at the university, but with less majesty, an enormous stone box, tall and long and wide. The few windows were small, barrel-vaulted openings in walls as thick as the height of three men, and the only furniture consisted of rows of long tables littered with the remains of a just-eaten supper, which a crew of servants busily cleared away.

At the opposite end of the room a low fire crackled in a pit against the wall. There was a hood over the pit, but most of the smoke escaped it, rising to linger below the soot-blackened ceiling as an acrid cloud of haze. On the wall over the fire pit hung an enormous battle-ax flanked by boar tusks, and at intervals along the walls were torches and the stuffed heads of stags with racks as big as trees.

A gallery—the castle’s third level—ran all around the room about halfway between ceiling and floor. In one of its arched openings stood a woman looking down at Martine as if she were examining a small and peculiar animal. She looked quite peculiar herself, Martine thought, a spectacular little bird of bright plumage trapped in a henhouse.

She appeared about thirty, very thin and quite pretty, but in a strained way. Her skin seemed too pale, her coloring a bit too vivid, probably from face paint. She was heavily bejeweled and wore a tunic of purple silk, very snug through the bodice and hips. Martine knew that it must be laced tightly up the back in the new style just catching on in Paris. She was probably married, since her hair was covered. In apparent imitation of Eleanor of Aquitaine, she wore with her fillet and veil one of those chin straps that they called a barbette. A plain-faced young woman stood behind her, similarly attired, but in pink, and without the veil.

The growling came from near the fire pit. A thin, balding priest stood at one of the tables cutting fist-sized chunks off a half-eaten haunch of venison and tossing them to a pack of dogs at his heels. They were hunting dogs—wolfhounds, spaniels, and a mastiff—and although the mastiff still greedily snapped meat out of the air, the dogs had obviously caught Loki’s scent. They stood staring at the cat with hackles raised, quivering.

Lord Godfrey grinned and said, “Here it comes.” As if at his command, all the dogs, the mastiff included, came bounding with fierce howls across the enormous room, leaping benches and tables. They knocked one tabletop clean off its trestle, dumping a tureen of soup into the rushes covering the floor. The servants tackled three or four before they had gone very far, but one—a huge wolfhound—eluded capture and raced toward Martine fangs bared.

Thorne immediately grabbed Martine and shoved her back against the wall, shielding her with his body. The wolfhound leaped onto him, but he sent it flying with a well-placed kick. He looked back over his shoulder as the rest of dogs were subdued, but didn’t back away from Martine or loosen his iron grip on her arms.

Being as tall as most men, Martine didn’t often feel physically dominated by one, but Sir Thorne’s sheer size overwhelmed her. He was long of limb and powerfully built, his shoulders massive, his chest hard as rock beneath his tunics. As he pressed her to the wall, she could feel the solid muscles of his thighs flex against hers, causing a peculiar, shivery warmth to course through her. She had the most disconcerting instinct to put her arms around him, and she knew with appalling certainty that were she not holding Loki against her chest, she might have done just that.