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Authors: Lindsay Townsend

BOOK: To Touch The Knight
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Chapter 14
Edith had not been allowed to return to her camp. She had retired with Lady Blanche and her ladies, to bed down in the solar of the castle, although she did not sleep a jot. At dawn she heard a creaking of wagons and the steady march of men and peeped through a shutter to see the captain of Sir Tancred's guard already on his way, riding steadily by Castle Fitneyclare on the road to London. She recognized his banner, and then spotted the wagon Teodwin had brought from the miller's house at Warren Hemlet.
She put her fist in her mouth and bit down hard on her knuckles, so as not to cry out. Her people were going. It was good sense that they left, safer for them, but, selfishly perhaps, she had hoped they would stay. Now she was alone, without friends, and she would never be able to relax and be herself, never put aside her veil.
Perhaps this is how a true princess feels?
Gregory's barbed irony made her want to snort with laughter, except she could not—that would be unladylike
.
Instead she watched the slow column creep past until the rising dust of their travel obscured them, wishing she could slip like a sparrow through the narrow casement to join them. When she was sure they were gone, she knelt in a corner in a pose of prayer, so as not to be disturbed, and tried very hard not to cry. She had thinking to do.
 
 
Later, Edith waited until Lady Blanche and her women were in the midst of dressing and maids and heralds were darting in and out of the solar, carrying gloves or messages, and then mentioned she was going to the garde-robe. She left the room and when she was certain she was unnoticed, she set off for the bathhouse instead. There, for her own veil and cloak, she bartered a drab tunic from a weary midwife who had been up all night at a birth and, with a thought and good wish for Maria, also close to her time, she put on the tunic. Flinching at the coarse cloth and fleas, she set off for the postern gate of the bailey, planning to be far away before she was missed.
“Princess.”
Ranulf fell into step beside her and dangled a long scarlet sleeve before her face—
one of his own?
She could not tell, since his own huge cloak covered his large frame.
“I will not look,” was all he said. Indeed, he stared resolutely ahead at the grooms walking the palfreys in the bailey yard while Edith tied the sleeve about her head and face, “veiling” herself afresh.
“I had meant to give you a sleeve later,” he went on, before she could protest. “I suppose now is as good a time as any.”
Edith ran forward so she could stop smack in front of him. “You followed me! You must have done so!”
“I watched out for you, Princess, as a knight should for his lady, and recognized you by your height and shape and way of walking.” Now he made a great play of staring, head tilted on one side, like a man buying at a fair. “I like your silks better.”
“You are not to judge.” Said more harshly than she intended.
“No.” He smiled and offered his arm. “May I escort you to your tent?”
She remained unmoved. “I will not be any man's prize.” She had not broken the shackles of her serfdom for that.
“Not even your lover's?”
 
 
Ranulf expected her to protest, or deny his question. Instead she confounded him afresh by replying, “Perhaps,” an exasperating answer that made him wish he had looked at her properly while she was unveiled.
“Who is he?” Even as he knew he was being stupid, driven by jealousy, Ranulf touched the rough knot where she had tied the sleeve, as if he would strip her face then and there. “Who sees you, Princess?”
If it was Giles, he would maul him, best him, beat him.
Without waiting for her answer, he dragged her into his arms.
“I am in mourning!” She closed her eyes, refusing to look at him. She was fragile in his grip but unyielding, like a killing knife. “And I am not your wife!”
A scald of rage broke through him like a bursting blister, followed by horror. He shook with the force of both emotions where he wanted to compel her.
“Master yourself.” Her scorn ripped down his back like a flail.
“You ask much, madam,” he said, and her eyes opened, giving him a fleeting glimpse of regret, but not fear. “If you were my maid, I would take you back into the bathhouse and dunk you in a tub.”
“Good, for it would rid me of these wretched fleas!”
In her answer, he saw maid and princess and he laughed, lifted out of his temper in the knowledge he had at last her full attention and he was facing all of her. “You are such a little liar. One day, I may put you over my lap and smack your bottom very soundly for all those lies.”
Taking advantage of her rare silence, he lifted her off her feet, warning, “We go this way, Princess, back to your tent, and you can travel in comfort, in my arms or over my shoulder.” Part of him, the base part, wished she would struggle, so he could carry out his threat.
“Being in mourning does not mean I have forgotten how to walk.”
“The ground is dusty and your feet are bare—had you forgotten that?”
She smiled. He did not know how he knew that, with the red sleeve wound about the lower half of her face, but he felt her rest her head more comfortably into the crook of his arm.
Ignoring the leering guard, he walked very slowly with her through the postern gate.
 
 
As Edith had expected, the great tent was empty. She could tell at once by the silence about the place; a feeling of neglect she had encountered before, in pestilence-stricken hamlets. “My lord—” She squirmed in his arms, alarmed that Ranulf would carry her inside and see for himself the lack of pallets, benches, cups, plates, and clothes.
Instead, he let her down immediately outside the entrance, remarking, “I will come for you later, to witness the contest.”
His certainty irked her. “I may not be here.”
Unerringly, although she was veiled, he took her chin in his hand and made her look at him. “You cannot go on as you are,” he said, very gently but also very sure of himself. “Do you want to settle this now? Go to Sir Giles, or whoever your lover is? If the fellow will have you.”
The idea that any would refuse her made Edith incandescent. “You are insolent!” She tried to jerk her face away but, humiliatingly, could not move. “Unhand me, sir!”
“In a moment, Princess. When you have considered this. You are a woman alone, in a man's camp.”
He brushed her cheek with his large hand, clearly enjoying tracing the outline of her features, as he had before, when he had kissed her. She longed to kiss him afresh, or knee him in the balls, but after she had escaped him, what then? How far would she get in this camp of men? And he was still absently caressing her face, a distracting movement that should have made her angry but instead made her feel as if that whole side of her body was prickling and tingling—pleasingly so.
“Are your folk sick in that tent, is that why none have come out to greet you?”
Edith swallowed, returning in a jolting rush to her present danger. He was too quick and saw too much. “My maid is close to giving birth.”
“Not your little maid in brown, then.”
“No.” Conscious of her smallness beside him, the aptness of all he had said, Edith felt herself grow hotter still. She wished he would leave, give her some respite and peace before the rest of today. “Are you going to let me go?”
He finally released her and took a step back. “This is your last chance, Princess. Will you go to Giles now?”
Why should he persist in thinking that such a brute was her lover? Choking on the idea, Edith shook her head, unable to speak as memories of Sir Giles's cruelty overwhelmed her.
“No? You will submit to me, then, as my prize?”
“You have not won yet,” she shot back.
“But we both know I will, Princess. Will you watch me fight?”
She would not pander to his vanity. “I am in mourning.”
“Of course. And I will fight well today, to honor your dead lord.”
He bowed to her and turned to stride down the field, calling back, “I will send men to guard you in your tent today, Princess, and call on you this evening.”
When she was very sure he was out of hearing, Edith sat down in the middle of her bare tent, tore off her makeshift veil, and began to cry.
 
 
Later, she tried to take stock. Her people had taken their things but left her outlandish clothes hanging off the guide ropes of the tent. They had left her a small bed, too, and all the gifts of coins and jewels from the knights. Someone, and she suspected Maria's hand in this, had even left her a small brazier and a pot full of some rich stew, ready for her to reheat. Touched by this, Edith found she was sniffling again, wishing she was not alone.
There was a scratching outside on the flaps and she froze, dreading another visit from Giles. “A moment, please!” she called out, hastily wiping her eyes, hurrying to retrieve the discarded long sleeve.
But the tent flap opened and Teodwin ducked back inside, followed closely by Maria. Amazed, Edith sat back on her heels as most of her people tramped back into the tent, all carrying and then depositing their things.
“We had a meeting on the road,” Maria said, rubbing her swollen belly and settling down awkwardly on the nearest stool.
“Everyone had a say, even the youngsters,” Teodwin admitted. Busy checking the guide ropes, he produced a hammer from his pack to secure one that was sagging. “A few—Henry, David, Solomon, Bella, those with children—found a place with good land,” he went on, between hammer blows. “The lord there is keen to have them and will pay good wages.”
“So they stayed.” Edith understood. It had happened before on their travels. Villagers found other hamlets where the pestilence had swept in and taken laborers and the survivors were eager for them to stay. “We should visit them in a year or so, see how they fare.”
“That was the arrangement,” Teodwin agreed. “The rest of us—” He shrugged and nodded to the tent. “We like this world. And we missed you, Edee.”
The nickname, given her by the children of Warren Hemlet, made her eyes fill again. Teodwin opened his arms and she staggered into them, crying harder than ever as he patted her head and said, “Now then! Now then!” in a way that her old husband would have done. She sobbed with mingled relief and fear and found herself crying, “He means to take me and now you, too, as his prize!”
“What?” Teodwin yanked on her hair plait to make her look at him. “What is this?”
“Not our old master, at least,” Maria dropped in slyly, “Or she would be fleeing, not crying.”
“The black knight?” Teodwin demanded, giving her hair another tug. “Is it Sir Ranulf? Are those his men outside?”
Edith nodded, easing her plait away from his shovel-like hands. His less-than-gentle treatment was a contrast to Ranulf, she realized, who had always treated her as if she was as fragile as a lily. Suddenly she missed Ranulf's warm, rough-yet-tender hands, and even more, his kisses.
When he comes this evening, I will remind him that he owes me kisses.
“Good,” said Teodwin, turning away to help Walter carry in a pallet. “That should see us settled.”
“And safe,” Maria added as she pointed to the brazier and stew pot. “I am hungry. When can we eat?”
“As soon as I have made a fire.” Her spirits lifting more and more, Edith hurried to do just that.
Ranulf comes this evening, and he will come by way of the stream. I will wait for him there, in another guise.
 
 
At sunset, Ranulf rode Hector through the camp, acknowledging the cheers of victory by fisted salutes. Giles had yelled something as he had gone down, but he had yielded, so that was no matter.
He had won, Sir Tancred's warhorse was still fresh, and he and Hector were eager for more.
“A dip in the stream, eh, lad?” That would irk the princess, too. He could flick water over her bare middle. The thought was sweetly tormenting.
He passed the little beech tree and looked there, as he always did, and now his heart stampeded in his chest. She was there, the maid in brown, peeping out from the branches but plainly watching for him, for she instantly turned her back.
Chuckling, Ranulf allowed Hector to canter at his own pace to the tree, swung out of the saddle, and tethered him to another sapling.
“I would have brought feed for him, too, sir, had I known.”
Her voice was lower, less singsong, and her manner altogether more quiet. He could not see her clearly, half hidden as she was by the low branches of the tree.

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