Wonderful (23 page)

It had nothing to do with the fact that he no longer ignored her. That he had saved her life and that his kisses made her want more, and forget about pride and oaths and honor. Surely her agreement to wed him had nothing to do with the fact that Merrick treated her as if she did matter to him.

She turned to look at him.

He stared back at her, wide awake and looking as if he could read her deepest and most private thoughts.

It took all of her will to not look startled. She stared at his eyes, then looked at his mouth. She remembered those kisses.

“If you keeping looking at me like that, woman, you will not be a maiden for long.”

“Get off me, you oaf!” She shoved at his legs, angry because he could read her mind.

He kissed her hard on the mouth and she stilled for a moment. His beard was not scratchy, as it looked, but soft, and it tickled her face as he kissed her more deeply.

He smelled of thyme soap and musky sleep.

She almost slid her arms around his neck, but the fool raised his big head and grinned down at her. “Is that what you wanted?”

She bucked against him. He laughed. She kicked her feet out and heard him grunt. “Let me go! You are all hammy hands and bony knees!”

He still laughed at her, then rolled away and threw back the covers in one graceful motion.

Except Cyclops was there.

The cat screeched like the banshees.

“Christ in heaven!” Merrick reached for his sword. But he was wearing only the breechclout. He looked dazed, then he scowled at the floor. Cyclops was safely under the bed.

He muttered a curse, then strode across the room.

There was something about Merrick in that loincloth that did strange things to her. Things she liked and hated. Her gaze followed him as if her eyes had a mind of their own, and she had to force herself to look away.

It did no good and she found herself watching him again, the taste of him lingering on her lips. The clean soapy smell of him.

In one corner of the room was a studded chest that she could have sworn had not been there before. He opened it and shrugged on a linen work blouse and his leather jack and he then donned and tied a pair of softly sueded brown braies. He sat in a chair and pulled on his boots, then stood beside her.

“Do you plan to lie in that bed all day?”

“I had thought you intended to chain me to your side.”

He gave her a long, hot look. “Perhaps I’ll get back into bed with you and finish what we started.”

She threw back the covers and strolled from the bed. “I have things to do.”

“Such as?”

“I have ale to brew from the Trefriw water.” She paused pointedly. “Bridal ale.”

“Ah, only one night in bed together and you are already rushing toward the wedding with such enthusiasm.”

She spun around. “Would you just leave so I can dress? I would like some privacy. Take your hammy hands, that irritating grin, and those bony knees of yours and leave!”

He made a mocking bow and strode toward the doorway.

She shrugged on a deep emerald robe, muttering, “That is, if your big head will fit through the door.” She wanted the final word.

He said nothing, but opened the chamber doors and walked out near the stairs.

“De Clare!” He bellowed. “De Clare!”

A few minutes later Tobin and Thud came barreling up the stairs.

“Aye, my lord.” Tobin stood before Merrick, and Thud mimicked him, sticking his small chest out, positioning his feet the exact way the squire did, and raising his chin so he looked as arrogant as Tobin de Clare.

Merrick looked around. “Where’s Thump?”

“Who?” Tobin and Thud asked simultaneously.

“The other one.”

“Here I am, my lord. I’m coming. Twenty-one … twenty-two …” Thwack was slowly trudging up the stairs.

With the slow passage of Thwack-time, all three lads eventually were lined up in front of the chamber door.

Merrick turned to look at Clio, then looked back at the boys. “Your duty today is to guard your lady Clio. She is not to leave the castle and you are to protect her and watch over her every move.” He turned back to her and pointedly said, “I want you safe, Clio.
Inside
the walls of Camrose.”

She caught her breath and narrowed her eyes while she looked for something to throw at him.

He had given her keepers!

He started to leave, so she said with utter nonchalance, “I had no plans to leave the castle this day. I will be in my brewery.” She paused, then added, “Where there are no bony knees.”

He just gave her a look that said he knew exactly what she was doing, and he disappeared out the chamber door.

She stood there, feeling everything from relief to anger to something that felt like desire, the desire to clout him a good one.

There was a quick rap at the door.

“Aye!” she called out.

Merrick stuck his big head back inside. “I forgot to tell you something.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her foot impatiently. “What?”

He grinned. “That wasn’t my knee.” Then he closed the door just as her boot hit it.

Chalybeate Ale

Mix malted barley, Trefriw water, and brewers yeast.

Ferment until ripened to pale ale.

Add a flacon of Cowslip flowers,

Three pinches of Sweet Marjoram,

Two stalks of crimson Bell Heather,

A handful each of:

Angelica, Eccony, and Sweet Mint.

Ferment for two more days,

Add Fennel, Juniper, Apples,

Pears, Figs, and Rose Buds to taste.

—Medieval Bride Ale

Chapter 25

It was one of those rare and wonderful days when the air turned clover-sweet and blue as the sky. Snow white doves cooed in the castle eves and geese honked as they flew overhead in flocks shaped like huge black arrows.

The hour had come when the villagers brought their baskets to the castle to barter with their freshly picked crops for tin, iron, tools, and cloth goods—things to which only the marcher lord had access.

The bailey was teeming with women, children skipping at their sides joined hand in hand. The mothers had baskets hitched on their hips and filled with pearly white turnips and sweet leafy collard, dark emerald spinach and crimson crab apples.

There were crude carts with studded wheels that rattled over the moat bridge and were piled with chopped wood and hard coal. Fish and hay wagons rumbled inside with freshly mown hay stacked high as a hut and huge wooden barrels of flounder, monkfish, and herring that made the air smell like the sea.

Local fishermen had their fat round fishing coracles tied to their backs like giant walnut shells, the long ash oars strapped to the boats and sticking out from behind them like the feelers of a water beetle.

Wide and finely tied fishing nets hung like harem veils from the paddles and looped around the men’s floppy broad-brimmed hats. They pushed along squeaky carts filled with willow baskets of slick eels, brown-speckled trout, and stacks of fresh salmon.

With gaming bows slung on their shoulders, the hunters, dressed in the colors of the forest and pointed hats, carried pikes speared with such game as hare and squirrel, or bigger baggage of buck and boar.

Near the laundry hut, a young wash maid was hanging out the clean linen. It flapped and snapped in the light warm breeze. The bake house had fresh rye bread and stone-milled wheat loaves cooling on the window shelves, while wide, hollowed bread trenchers and plump meat pies were lined up in the hundreds and stacked on metal baking trays.

As always there were the incessant sounds of building, the pounding of pegs and nails, the chipping away of stone work for the bridges and the walls, the hammering of iron for sturdy gates and drain piping, for weaponry or heavy locks and hinges, anything strong that would protect Camrose from an enemy siege.

Just before Sext, Clio’s red wagon had lumbered through the gates loaded with the spa waters. So now, Clio sat on a wobbly stool next to the brewery window, where she could see the whole inner bailey. To pass the time, she watched the hubbub, resting her chin in her palm while she waited for the ale pots to begin to boil.

Old Gladdys had lined up her jars and jugs next to Clio’s herbs and lichens. For this batch of ale, the old Welshwoman arranged the ingredients in the order of the stars during the summer solstice, claiming that anyone with half the sense of a barn sparrow would know that the stars and moon held secrets and magic just waiting to be discovered.

Tobin and Thud had finished unloading the water barrels while Thwack stood guard on Clio. ’Twas rather silly, considering she could outrun him. Anything weighing under a hundred stone could outrun him.

The sound of raised voices made her turn away from the window. “What is the matter?”

“We’re arguing over whether ‘time’ rhymes with ‘fine,’ “ Thud said.

“Why?”

“’Tis a game, my lady, between the squires and the pages.” Thud paused, then added quickly. “Throughout the ages.” He grinned proudly. “For all of today we must speak in rhyme.” He paused again, frowning for a long moment

Tobin took a menacing step toward him.

Thud’s face lit up like one of Old Gladdys’ bonfires. “Until tomorrow at Prime.”

“Aye.” Thwack nodded. “Through the day and night. We must keep speaking rhyme, for a small passage of time.”

“Good lad!” Thud patted Thwack on the back. “I’m glad.”

All Clio felt at that moment was faint-headed. “Seems a silly game to me.”

“Nay, my lady.” Tobin de Clare stepped forward and stood before her in his usual proud stance. “’Tis the first thing a page must learn. When Lord Merrick taught me rhyming, ’twas a full fortnight of speaking such. These lads will do so every third day for a month.”

“Why?”

“It might seem foolish to you, my lady, but the exercise teaches how to think quickly. Lord Merrick says a knight must be as quick with his head as he is with his sword. Sir Roger and many of the other knights use the same training.”

Tobin looked from Clio to the table where Old Gladdys was working. He watched her for a long time, then walked over to her. Thud mimicked his strides and was following so close at his heels that he kept stepping on the backs of Tobin’s boots.

Old Gladdys looked up and eyed Tobin, obviously dismissing him, since she did not wink at him or mutter in Welsh. She just looked at him. “You want something, boy?”

“I am ten and six. I am no boy,” he told her with disgust.

Gladdys shook her fuzzy head, then pinned Tobin with those sharp black eyes. “I am three score and nine and after all those years, lad, I know a green boy when I look at one.”

“Where is Sir Roger?” Tobin demanded.

Old Gladdys paused for just the inkling of a moment, then began to wipe her gnarled hands on her black cloak. “I do not know.”

“But the earl sent him with you and he did not return with you.”

Old Gladdys shrugged. “The last time I laid these old eyes on Sir Roger, he was running with some blond bitch.” Dismissing Tobin, she looked at Clio. “Is Brother Dismas in the castle?”

“Aye,” Thud answered eagerly, then realized Tobin was going to clout him, so he quickly added, “I spy. I saw him blessing the fish, for tonight’s dish.” Thud exhaled as if he was relieved, then grinned at Tobin.

“I wonder if that fat little monk has missed me,” Gladdys said with a wicked gleam in her eyes. She gave Clio a glimmer of a smile, one jaunty wave, then she turned and casually strolled from the hut.

Clio spotted her working her way toward the fish wagons and shook her head. She hoped she had as much vinegar as Gladdys did when she was that age. ’Twould be fun, to play so with the men’s brains.

“Something is not right. That does not sound like Sir Roger,” Tobin muttered thoughtfully. “He would never disobey the earl.”

“Perhaps the lady was exceptional,” Clio said, leaving the window and moving toward her worktable.

Tobin just shook his head.

A moment later the ale pots began to boil over.

Clio lay in her bed listening for the Matins bell and the guard horn that signaled a guard change. She had little to cling to but those distant sounds. Because she did not hear what she wanted to hear—the sound of Merrick’s footsteps on the stairs.

He had not been anywhere nearby that day. She hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him since that morning when he left her.

But she had been busy for most of the day, a day where she got much accomplished. ’Twas true. Her bridal ale was half done.

All that ale in only one day! She shook her head in amazement. She had put Thud, Thwack, and Tobin to work, since they had nothing better to do but ogle her while they stood there being her keepers.

They each tried to do a better job than the other. She’d never before gotten so much done in so little time.

The bridal ale was sufficiently brewed. Tomorrow she would add the last of the special herbs and flowers, then fill the oaken casks.

She sighed, punching her pillow a few times, then she lay there. Time moved by about as swiftly as did Thwack.