To Touch The Knight (23 page)

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Authors: Lindsay Townsend

BOOK: To Touch The Knight
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Chapter 30
Mark rode straight into the church at Warren Hemlet. He could do so because his horse was small and the church door hung open.
Inside, frowning at the stench of damp and fox droppings, he found no one. Giles's men had stripped the place of ornament and plate, he recalled, but now there was nothing else: the church was as deserted as the village. If any had died here, they had been taken out and buried elsewhere.
So where were the villagers who had been thrust into this church? Had they broken out and died in their homes?
Mark turned his horse and rode carefully through the narrow door and out into the village. He called out several times, offering food, but only a single pigeon fluttered out from a thatched roof. The roof timbers of many houses were missing and the village paths were greened over with high, standing grass. His horse cropped it contentedly as he dismounted.
Again he shouted, but there was no response.
“No one but me has come back here to look,” he said aloud. He was amazed at Sir Giles's carelessness, but then the surrounding lands had been turned over to sheep and a single shepherd lad would not dare to venture into this lonely place. Unlike Giles, he knew what peasants whispered, and to them, Warren Hemlet was an accursed name.
A rat burst from a hovel and scampered into the overgrown wheat field, followed by more squeaking vermin. Mark crossed himself and scrambled onto his horse.
The sun shone on the empty pens and the empty houses and the empty church, but the flesh on the back of his neck felt to be creeping down his spine. He yanked on his small bay's reins and trotted off, afraid his horse's hoofbeats would disturb something in those hovels, where every door was open and black, hard shadows crept out. . . .
He rode hard, low over his horse's neck, galloping out of the valley, and he did not stop until he reached a wayside shrine, where he could drink the holy water and quench his parched mouth. Waiting for his heart to stop jumping in his chest and for his breathing to slow down, Mark wiped the last drops of water from his sparse beard and considered. Now that he felt safer again, no longer watched, his wits began to ask questions.
“My lord Giles does not know that the priest and his flock have flown their church coop. Does that matter? Should I tell him? I do not think he will pay to know this. He does not like bad news.”
That was the real question: Should he tell?
Chapter 31
Ranulf stalked through the thronging camp, busy with women grinding bits of wheat on low querns, youngsters darting and chasing each other with half-filled pails of water, and men doing hasty repairs on wheel spokes and carts. Hardly any of these folk seemed to have heard the call of the preacher, way below in the churchyard, for which he was glad, but for the rest he was furious. A rooting pig heard his approach and burst through a pile of refuse, squealing as it fled.
Had he been five years younger he would have chucked a stone after the beast; now he merely clenched his fists and scowled.
Edith had sent him a message by way of one of those slim, dark-haired youngsters with garlands round her youthful neck and wrists: a swift-by-your-leave and then the rest.
She was not coming to find him. Maria and Lucy were anxious over their infants' navel strings and she must see to those. Maids' foolish notions, ahead of him!
“You grumble like Giles, man,” Ranulf whispered through clenched teeth, aware he was being unfair. But Edmund's news was grim.
Why tell her, then? Why involve her?
He knew why, of course. His annoying, silver-tongued maid-princess would not panic. She would not look for demons or portents but stay back, question, probe, and use her wretched good sense. She had seen the pestilence more than him, she knew its dangerous workings.
“And she was going to find me, in my camp. She promised she would.”
He saw her, veiled and jeweled again, standing by her main tent with a tiny bundle in her arms and the adopted maid Lucy sitting on a low stool, tilting her face into the sun. Lucy was very slender still but pretty, he realized with a jolt, with young, firm flesh, a mass of fair hair, and a tip-tilted nose. For the first time since encountering her, he could see how she might have been “Many” to hungry men.
Hovering close, with a cup of something, and glancing at Lucy with a look of proud satisfaction was the steward Teodwin. He was wearing his purple tunic the right way round and had combed his hair and beard.
More than I have done
, thought Ranulf, longing to trip the fellow into a pile of dung.
How well his Edith looked with a babe in her arms was his next thought. The grimness of the day lightened a little, the more so when she saw him and waved. At once he had not the heart to scold—she was at a woman's business, after all, and her promise had been only a small one.
Do not judge
, warned Olwen in his head. He determined he would not, until he saw her smile at Teodwin—he knew she did because of the way her eyes crinkled.
“You swore to come to me.”
There, it was out, the one thing he knew would hurt.
He heard her breath stop, but otherwise she gave no sign of being heart-scorched, merely lifting the child in her arms and offering the baby to him. “Is it not better, my lord, that you come to me and my godson? His name is Rano, after you.”
After me?
All thought of how they had managed a christening was gone.
After me?
“Should he not be swaddled?” He took the gurgling infant, terrified of the babe's smallness. A pair of wide blue eyes drifted a gaze across him.
“It is too pretty a day for him to be bundled.” Edith came fearlessly beside him, where she dropped a kiss on the baby's downy head. Smelling the babe's freshness and the scent of her lilies, Ranulf found that the anger that had been boiling in his gut dissolved into white clouds.
A tiny white hand clasped his finger and he stared. “Strong grip, little one.”
“Rano is a good, lusty babe,” said Edith. “Maria would tell you that hers is too, if she and hers were not sleeping inside.”
“Good.” That seemed a safe enough thing to say.
“New life and hope,” murmured Edith. “Is it not a wonder at this time?”
He had to tell her, then. He did not want to pierce this white-cloud moment, this simple joy, but he must.
With infinite care, he cradled Rano back to his mother and turned to Edith again. “I have something I have to show you. Something bad, I fear.”
Understanding at once, she closed her eyes a moment, then nodded. “We should go quickly, then,” she answered, very softly.
She was quick, he thought, but, of course, these days what else could the threat be except the black sickness? “I would it were not so, Princess, but yes.”
Ranulf wore the expression Adam had worn when Edith was doing something he considered amiss in the forge. Edith told herself to ignore it for the moment and instead listened very closely to a tale of hunting interrupted. Edmund, her lord's squire, had gone hunting with a brace of men. One had thrown up while riding, and Edmund, keen to begin the chase in a once-royal parkland that was now free of royal foresters due to the pestilence, had told the man to return to camp. Perhaps the sick man had tried to do so, but he had not made it. He was now, according to Edmund, stricken with some kind of fever and shivering in a charcoal maker's hovel. Edmund had told Ranulf that it had taken the rest of the hunters most of the day since noon to track the man. And the hunting itself had been poor: a rabbit and an ancient pig that should have been left to fatten for the winter.
“They fear to approach him,” Ranulf said, and he shook his head. “My own men . . . cowards.”
“If he has the worst sickness, they were wise,” Edith remarked, knowing her words probably condemned her to him but keen to speak her heart. She had rarely spoken out with Adam or Peter and they had still scolded; better she find out what kind of husband Ranulf would be and prepare herself.
“This is the track, by the lime,” was all he said, bending a branch back for her.
As she stepped by, a new, strange thought came to Edith, as the idea of being an Eastern Princess had sprung into her, years ago. She was free to refuse him, and his hand.
And what if he takes revenge against your people?
Gregory warned in her head.
If he does, brother, then he is a man I want none of, for he is a man like Giles. I know Ranulf is nothing like Giles.
That certainty comforted her and her spirits soared as Ranulf took her hand and kissed it, growling, “I know you talk good sense, clever wench, but for a soldier, any warrior, to leave a man behind, to desert him, is the worst.”
“We are going to him,” Edith reminded him. “Do you know his name?”
Ranulf turned on the track and barked the question at Edmund, who, with five other shamefaced men clad in hunting browns and greens, toiled warily a few steps behind. Edmund would not look at her—was that due to shame or had he heard rumors about her? Had he shared those with Ranulf?
Stop it! Stop looking for shadows at noon, for is there not trouble enough already? You do not want to leave Rannie, so stay with him and win your place, as you always have.
It was the lovemaking, Edith decided, as she acknowledged that the sick man was called Nigel and she gave her lover's hand a reassuring squeeze. In bed, Ranulf made her feel soft, cherished, vulnerable, and alive in ways she never knew she was. Even now, going to who-knew-what, she was distracted by the tiny hairs on the back of Ranulf's hand and the tingling comfort of his palm around hers—a kind of tingling promise to come. She half jogged along, because they were hurrying, in a kind of giddy whirl, and she almost felt like a girl at a dance. The day of sun and birdsong did not help; about her in the trees, squirrels and finches darted like living jewels.
The dance became darker when they reached the charcoal burner's hut. In a clearing of cut, stacked logs, black heaps of charcoal, and piles of ash, the hut was hunched in a corner beside a stand of gnarled hawthorn. An air of desolation clung about the place, exaggerated when a distant wail and slow, indistinct chanting began from the churchyard in the valley below the woods.
“They are getting busy again,” said Ranulf. He must have thought her anxious, for he winked and added, “As long as they do not ring the bell, though, I think we are safe.” He picked up a long branch and prodded at the half-closed door of the hut, calling, “Nigel? Are you there, man?”
A low gargle and cough was the answer. Ranulf started forward, and alarmed at his haste, Edith grabbed at his belt. “Tell him to crawl out!” she hissed.
“The man needs our help!” Ranulf's eyes glittered and he loosened her wildly grasping fingers off his belt as if she had no more strength than a blundering moth.
“I agree! And he must have it, but first let him show himself. We must
know
.” If he could be saved, she meant, but did not want to say it, not in the poor man's hearing.
Abruptly, Ranulf caught her by the shoulder and dragged her close. “Why must you be right, damn you? Your cool head remembers where mine forgets.” He gave her a rough kiss, through her veil, slapped her rump, and set her down again, shouting, “Come out here, man, and take some ale, then we shall get you back.”
“Sir, take care.” Edmund's croaked warning became a whisper as Ranulf turned a glare on him, sharp as a lance.
“You, you, and you, cut branches and lash them together to make a board to lie him on. Well, lad, will you gawk forever? Snap to it!”
The squire and two others pelted into the greenwood to obey as Ranulf crouched in the ash and leaf-litter of the charcoal camp, oblivious to the grime, as Teodwin would never be, and coaxed anew.
“You must be thirsty in there, Nigel. Come out and take a drink with me. I have a good flask here, full to the top.”
Edith found a flat rock to stand on, out of the ash, and waited, forcing herself not to ram her fingers into her mouth. The men clumping through these woods were already at a stretch of nerves—she saw it in their faces and smelled it on their sweating bodies. As so often in these last years, she must be outwardly calm.
Ranulf saw what she did and nodded once, a terse acknowledgment, and she was happy with his approval. It was important to her that he approved: she longed for his goodwill.
Showing your true base nature?
whispered Gregory slyly in her mind.
But she had no time to rebut her dead brother. A fluttering heap of limbs lurched from the darkness of the hut and crawled, gargling, across the threshold.
Behind her Edith heard the wild chopping and breaking of branches stop, then resume with renewed ferocity as Ranulf swung round. She did not stir—if she moved forward, Ranulf would be sure to go with her, and she did not want him put in danger.
She snatched the flask from him and rolled it to the quivering figure.
“What in God's name—?” Ranulf clapped his hand after the tumbling flask, but she had been too quick; his reaching fingers knotted on air. To stop him reacting further she tugged down her veil, careless of any of the other men seeing her face.
“Please, wait, I beg.” She dropped onto her knees on the hard stone.
His russet-and-fair eyebrows jutted like jetties over his darkening eyes, but he did not move. Edith was glad of it—her knees were flaming in pain.
“I am not a fool,” he said quietly.
Edith felt the blush surge into her face. She could not look at him anymore; she was too ashamed.
He touched her head and pointed.
The sickly wretch was draining the flask, drinking in a desperate, greedy way that filled the whole charcoal clearing with the sounds of choking and swallowing.
Ranulf crouched so his head was almost level with hers. He clasped her chilled hand and rose to his feet, drawing her with him. “Never fret,” he said softly. “Tell me again the signs of the worst sickness.”
Her sticky feel of gratitude appalled her—she had never been this way before with any man. Fighting to keep her unruly emotions within bounds, she told him, adding, “If he has lasted this long, I do not think he has the worst. And though he coughs, he has not spewed blood.”
They both looked closely at the man, Edith seeing with pity and relief that though he had voided himself he was not trailing blood. Beneath his filthy stubble he looked gray-skinned but not boil-ridden. There were no buboes clustered under his chin and, brutally, he did not crawl like those who had gross swellings in their groins.

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