Wicked (11 page)

Her hands clasped onto the handles of the iron shutters to better see what was going on below, and she rose up on her bare toes. She could almost make out the first of the horsemen. Almost. His mount was side-stepping in and out of a darkly shadowed archway.

The door to her chamber opened suddenly and Edith rushed in all excited, her voice almost a shriek. “Sofie! You must get up! Quickly!” She spotted her standing at the arch and paused. “Oh. You are up.”

Sofia turned back to the window, staying where she was and trying to see who was below. “Aye,” she said distractedly. “I am up.”

“Hurry. The Queen asked for you. I told her you were still in bed.”

Sofia spun around, horrified. “You didn’t. I shall get fifty penance prayers for Sloth and have to sew with the Queen’s women every morn for a fortnight!”

“Nay. I mean, aye, I did, but you will not be punished because then I lied. God help my poor wretched soul.” She made the sign of the cross. “I told her you had a great ache in your head.” She crossed herself again and muttered something about lying for friends that Sofia could not make out. “Eleanor said she would send Lady Mavis and Lady Jehane to help with your headache and to help you dress.”

Sofia groaned. “Now I do have a great headache. Mavis and Jehane? Lud . . . ” She sagged back against the stone wall. The Ladies Mavis and Jehane were fiercely loyal and hell-bent to serve their Queen. The younger women of the court called them the Poleaxes behind their backs, because the two women were rigid as a mace shaft and they could slaughter you with their sharp tongues. Worse yet, they were Eleanor’s private friends as well as ladies-in-waiting, the Queen’s most trusted. Even the King’s men obeyed if either of them gave a command.

Sofia sagged back against the stone wall. “Edith, tell me how can such a great morning turn into such a bad day?”

“I do not think it is bad, Sofie. There will be a feast in less than an hour. You should see the panic belowstairs. The servants and the cook are having fits trying to prepare everything. The Queen herself has been seeing to everything. She says that this day is—” Edith cut off whatever else she was going to say and she looked suddenly ill.

Sofia frowned for a moment, then turned to Edith and asked, “What makes this day special?”

Edith shrugged and wouldn’t look Sofia in the eye.

“Why would the Poleaxes need to help me dress? Who has come here?”

“I do not know.” Edith turned away swiftly, her hand on the iron door handle as if she were trying to escape.

“Edith! What is going on? What did you start to tell me. The Queen has been what?”

“Nothing,” Edith mumbled to the door.

“You are lying to me, your most true and loyal friend in the whole wide world. Turn around.”

Edith turned slowly. Her face was bright pink, which meant she was either fevered or lying.

Sofia spun around quickly, hung half out of the arch again and tried desperately to see who was below. The entrance to the Great Hall was to the east, a short distance from the Gloriette, so she had to shield her eyes from the late morning sunlight. But all she could see of the troop of men was one last dusty pair of boots. The men and their colors were hidden from her view by a wooden scaffold built for the varlet who had been lime-washing the castle stone.

The chamber door closed with a telling creak and Sofia spun to face an empty chamber. “Edith!” She ran for the door. “Edith! Come back in here!”

She almost had her hand on the door when it opened and the Poleaxes marched in the way King Edward marched on Wales. Lady Mavis, a tall, gaunt woman with brown hair and a voice as commanding as the Queen herself, clapped her hands. “Inside with you! All of you!”

All of you?

A stream of servants came inside carrying a tub, bucket after bucket of hot water, soaps and perfumes, towels and a huge bucket of chipped ice, which must have come from the King’s icehouse in the lower cells of the donjon. Sofia stepped back against the wall, eyeing them unhappily. When she looked at Lady Mavis she was sorely tempted to mimic Edith and make the sign of the cross, or better yet, hold one up in front of her.

But she could do nothing. She was cornered.

Lady Jehane came through the doorway, bringing up the rear, her arms crossed with determination and her look as unyielding as a stone wall. She stopped, scanned
the
room, then her gaze landed on Sofia. “Her Majesty claims you have a great ache in your head.”

Sofia slumped slightly, sliding partially down the wall. She raised one limp hand to her brow. “Aye,” she said in a weak, breathy, and withered-sounding voice. Then she wobbled a little so it would look as if she were ready to faint.

Through a small crack she had made in her fingers, Sofia saw Jehane’s eyes narrow slightly before she spun on her heel like the captain of the King’s guard and marched to the doorway. Jehane cupped her hands over her big mouth and bellowed, “Hear ye all! Hasten! Bring the King’s barber and his largest pail of leeches to bleed the poor, suffering Lady Sofia.”

Leeches
? Sofia’s belly tightened. She shuffled sideways to her bed, then collapsed on it, groaning. “I am too, too weak. Ah. Too weak with . . . with pain to be bled. ’Twill, oh my . . . ” She took a deep breath. “Just . . . just make me weaker.” Then she let her voice trail off with a sorrowful hissing sound. Just for good measure, she whimpered. Twice.

Then Lady Mavis was towering over her, so Sofia moaned again. And again. Mavis left for a moment and Sofia took advantage and shifted a bit, then turned her head just enough to see out of the corner of her eye. Mavis picked up something, shifted it back and forth in her hands for a moment, then she turned and came back toward her.

Sofia closed her eyes quickly. She could feel Mavis standing over her, pausing, looking down at her. The urge to open her eyes was great, but she did not do so.

The next thing she felt was a heavy and lumpy towel landing on her face. It was freezing!

“The ice inside this towel will kill the pain in your head,” Mavis said in a matter-of-fact tone, then she put another towel full of ice on top of the first one, until Sofia could hardly breathe and her teeth began to chatter. Mavis pressed them down with her hands and Sofia could feel the ice freezing into the hollows on her face: her nostrils, the sockets of eyes, her lips, her temples. It was so cold that it burned her skin and hurt like the very Devil!

“I know all about head pain,” Mavis was saying. “Do I not, Jehane?”

“Aye, Mavis. You always said that ice is better than leeches.” Jehane paused, then added in a thoughtful tone, “Perhaps, if poor Sofia’s pain is truly so very severe, for her we could do both cures.”

Both?

“Leeches and ice?”

“Aye. Freeze her and bleed her at the same time.”

Aye, and then the two old heartless cats can draw and quarter me.

“Hmmmm.” Mavis was thinking.

This is not good.

“I shall fetch the barber immediately,” Jehane said. “We wouldn’t want the poor child to suffer any longer than necessary.”

Sofia could hear Jehane’s clipped footsteps heading for the doorway. She shot upright. The towels and ice scattered everywhere. “ ’Tis a miracle!” Sofia shouted before Jehane could get very far. “You are truly the best, Lady Mavis. My headache is gone.”

Jehane poked her head around the corner of the open door, then exchanged a triumphant look with Mavis that annoyed Sofia, but even she would not have leeches put all over her skin just to continue such a charade. She hated leeches, hated them more than worrying about what was going to happen to her or what these two sly and demanding women would do to her. She also knew that Jehane was not making an idle threat. The stern and dire Lady Jehane would not hesitate to use leeches all over her.

Jehane’s shoulders went back and her stance grew so rigid it looked as if she had a lance for a spine. “Well, then, girl! Do not just sit there! We have work to do!” She grabbed Sofia’s arm in a steely grip and dragged her across the room.

“But wait—”

“No waiting. There is no time. Lift your arms. Higher!” Jehane grabbed Sofia’s icy hands, lifted them out to her sides, then in less time than it took to blink, had stripped her to her bare skin.

She had no chance for protest, just a gasp here and there and a few whines. She was shoved into a steaming tub that was far too hot and made her yelp, particularly after the icing her skin had taken. She was washed, scrubbed, dunked and dried, perfumed and oiled. Her lips and cheeks were pinched so much that at one point she asked Mavis if she were related to Dickon Warwick.

She was dressed, tied, laced, turned, braided and decorated, then shoved out the door and down the steps toward the Great Hall in spite of her protests, questions, and muttered curses.

With both the Poleaxes on either side of her, she was all but hauled through the halls and archways. She did try to slip her arms free repeatedly but those two women were so strong a dancing bear would not be able to move if they had him in their clutches.

Before Sofia knew it, she was pulled through a small side door and she found herself standing in the front portion of the Great Hall, near the high table, where Edward was already seated.

Eleanor suddenly appeared at her side. “Come, child.” She took Sofia’s arm. “This is your betrothal feast.”

“Betrothal?” Sofia looked at the Queen, who said nothing but guided her through the crowd.

Chatter from the tables and music filled the room, where a high and blazing fire was burning in the huge fireplace at the north end. Musicians nearby played the lute and pipes while a jongleur sang a lyrical song about love and favors and greensleeves.

Alas my love you do me wrong,

To cast me off discourteously.

For I have loved you well and long,

Delighting in your company.

Greensleeves was all my joy,

Greensleeves was my delight

Greensleeves was my heart of gold,

And who but my Lady Greensleeves?

The Queen would not speak, so Sofia walked to those lyrics, feeling like nothing but a ghostly thing in the crowded room. The King was talking quietly to one of his men, then he waved him away, and his gaze lit on her as they wove through the throng.

Sofia cast him a look of complete indifference, and she gave him her most honeyed smile. She would not let him see she was worried and she would not look away from him defeated.

He rubbed one finger pensively over his lip as he returned her stare, then waved an arm in the air. “Here she is!” He looked to Eleanor and said, “Thank you, my dear.”

The room grew suddenly quieter at the sound of the King’s words. Edward had one of those rich, deep voices that always captured the attention of whomever he was around, and this time was no different. Sofia felt all too many eyes upon her. She did not look at the crowds and at the tables. She was a coward. She did not want to see what was on their faces. She did not want to see an ocean of people from court avidly waiting to watch the willful and infamous Lady Sofia brought to her knees.

The King turned toward a man who sat near and said something.

Sofia’s belly sank with dread. She pulled her gaze away from her cousin and looked at the man. He was a tall man, broad in shoulder, but his face was lean, and somewhat familiar. She could not place it exactly. He had a dark beard and hair, which was graying at the hairline. He was dressed almost as richly as Edward himself, but not quite, for no one was foolish enough to outdress the King of England. The stranger was a handsome man, but too old to wed, surely. He was old enough to be her father.

His gaze flicked to hers. His eyes were intense and oddly familiar. She was certain she knew him from somewhere, but she could not place him. She chewed on her lip for a second, thinking frantically. Who was he?

He stood slowly, his gaze fixed on her, acknowledging her in a quiet and gracious manner. From that she decided he would probably not beat her, which she supposed was a plus. Instinct said he was not putting on an air or a mask to hide his deviance. He was certainly no Lord Alfred.

He said nothing, just watched her. He was so very tall, as tall as Edward. Sofia had always thought that was one of the things that made her cousin such an autocratic and arrogant tyrant. He towered over everyone, like God, and therefore assumed he was.

The stranger made a slight bow, then to her surprise, gave her sly and wicked wink before he sat down again with no inkling of a smile anywhere on his features.

Sofia frowned then, for that was a strange thing and she did not know what to think.

Her belly flipped at that thought. Husband, the word echoed in her head.
Husband. Husband. Husband
, like the pounding of the smithy’s hammer.

Eleanor grasped her icy hand more tightly and led her away toward the opposite end of the table, where there were steps that led up to the dais and where she would have to take her seat.

They walked slowly and she could feel many eyes on her. Her skin burned from those looks. She stared straight ahead. She was being paraded in front of the whole court. A pig going to slaughter. A slave on the auction block. A woman being given to a man and having nothing to say about it. She had never felt so absolutely helpless in her whole life.

They crossed directly in front of Edward. Sofia turned and looked at him. His expression was far too pleased and satisfied. Sofia knew gloat when she saw it. You don’t revel in something as often as she did and then not recognize it when it is right before your very eyes.

She wanted to run.

Eleanor leaned down. “Do not dare. Edward will have your head, child.”

“Am I to have nothing to say about this?”

“Be quiet, dear. Edward has made his decision.” She patted Sofia’s hand. “All will be well. I promise.”

Sofia tried again. “I think that you would be better served to lead me toward my execution, not my betrothal, for I find both events to have a similar appeal.”

Eleanor laughed under her breath. “Sofie. You will fight this to the very end, but you cannot change it.”