Wonderful (7 page)

He made certain that he did not sound angry, or sorry. He wanted it plain from his tone he was not apologizing or trying to make her understand.

He was not placating her. He spoke to her the same way he spoke to his men and to the servants—a matter-of-fact way that allowed for no argument, but said that this was the way things were.

She seemed to accept his words, because she nodded, but within a moment she had lapsed back into that same awkward silence.

He stared down at the top of her head with that ugly headdress. “I do have news I believe you will find welcome. Edward has given me license to crenellate Camrose.”

She stopped and looked up at him and frowned in puzzlement.

“It means I am to refurbish the castle. Along with the license comes a rich allotment to pay for the changes.”

“You mean the king gave you money to restore and rebuild Camrose?”

“Aye.”

Her manner changed so quickly he had to look twice. She no longer trudged toward the wooden bridge as if she were carrying the sins of the world. Her step was light and she stood a little straighter as she walked beside him.

But it was her face that made him almost have to look away. Joy and relief and something he could not name shone from her.

He’d never seen the like, and it struck him odd that things could change so quickly between them. He continued to watch her, stunned. And leery because he could barely believe his eyes.

To think he’d thought her plain in the daylight.

Her smile was the daylight.

Amid his confusion something touched him deeply, the idea that he could make her smile like that, a smile he found he was not immune to.

She became pensive a moment later, this changeling of a woman. His first thought after he’d watched her expression of wonder fade was that he would like to see her smile at him again.

They crossed the wooden bridge and he stopped and inspected the wooden planks. “Here is something that must be replaced. See there?” He pointed to the places where the wood was cracked and split. “The bridge needs to be stronger. I will replace it with strong stone blocks cemented with lime or perhaps build a wooden drawbridge and reinforce it with iron.”

“Aye.” She nodded, agreeing with him.

A miracle.

“I can see it.” She stood back and eyed the entrance.

The drawbridge would be the best for defense, he decided to himself. The bridge could be pulled up to thwart an attack.

“The stone would be lovely.”

She was right, he thought absently. A stone bridge had its merits, since it would not burn.

She leaned over the old wooden railing and made a face at the water. “The moat is filthy. It should be drained and refilled.”

“Aye. We’ll have it drained.” She was a practical maid and he was pleased with her and with himself for choosing her six years ago. “The moat should be enlarged, two to three times the size.”

He paused in thought, imagining the size in his mind’s eye. It would be wide and deep, too deep to fill and difficult to tunnel under. No siege tower would be able to scale the outer wall of this castle.

With a wider moat, burning the bridge would be more difficult. He could have the drawbridge, which still appealed to him. He liked the idea of having the power to control the entrance.

“Then we can have swans,” she said with enthusiasm.

Swans?

She was already walking ahead of him.

He followed her, frowning as he watched her enter the gate ahead of him with a bounce in her step. There would be no swans atop his moat. Unless she could find swans that spat poison or devoured their enemies.

She had stopped underneath the barbican and was frowning upward by the time he joined her.

“That’s disgusting,” she said, her hands planted on her hips.

He looked up.

“Those are murder holes, aren’t they?” she asked.

“Aye.” Even he couldn’t believe it. It was disgusting. There were only two murder holes chiseled into the roof and those were small and thin and looked useless. He shook his head in disbelief. On a castle in the borderlands where the Welsh came raiding regularly. Two puny holes. “I agree. ’Tis stupid.”

He would build a stronger higher gate tower and pepper it with plenty of holes from which to drop missiles and rain arrows on their enemies. No man would slip past his gate.

For the next hour they moved through the castle. She insisted on showing him where every tapestry had hung, where carpets had been, and telling him how the windows’ panes had been polished bone. He tolerated it, knowing it was difficult for her to return to the castle that had been her home and see it in such shambles.

Also she was a woman. He supposed she had different priorities and saw most things differently than he did.

So when he talked of the arrow slits and she wanted glass windows, he said nothing. When he mentioned adding more chimneys and she talked of the queen’s decorated fireplaces, he just moved on. His lady had not been trained in war. So he tolerated her interest in furnishings and glass windows and decorated fireplaces.

Most of the time Merrick had expansion on his mind. He had decided to double the size of the keep and replace the roof with iron tiles. She thought it a splendid idea until he informed her that the iron tiles the castle blacksmith would forge were to protect them from fire arrows,
not
to allow them to hear the patter of the rain in the solar.

By the time they sat at the high table in the hall and were quenching their thirst with wine, his patience was thinning. She refused to eat the bread and kept shoving the platter out of his reach, while she prattled on about things that were unimportant.

“I can just imagine the moat, Merrick. Black swans and lily pads, perhaps some marsh marigolds along the borders and a small boat.”

“A what?”

“A boat.”

“Would you have the Welsh raiders float across our moat to the honking of swans and the scent of flowers? Why not give a feast for them and lower our drawbridge to the sound of trumpets?”

She scowled up at him, not looking the least meek and submissive. “You needn’t make me feel foolish. I was thinking about the beauty of the place, not about the Welsh.”

“A castle is for defense. A place made to keep those inside safe.”

“I was only daydreaming aloud,” she snapped, watching him.

He leaned across the table and snatched up a chunk of bread before she could move it from his reach again.

“I understand you clearly, my lord.”

“Daydreaming.” He snorted. “A foolish and female pastime.” He ripped off a hunk of bread with his teeth and chewed the bloody hell out of it.

She watched him swallow the bread and her expression lit with something akin to victory. She lifted the platter with a suddenly sweet expression. “More bread, my lord?”

“No,” he barked, not liking her sudden sweetness or her clear use of his title instead of his name. A moment before he had been “Merrick.”

She waited a moment, as if she were savoring something tasty, then set down the bread platter. “So you contend that men do not daydream.”

“Aye. We have better things to do.”

“Oh? And what about you, my lord?”

He looked up. “What about me?”

“You claim daydreaming to be foolish and female.”

“Aye.” He almost laughed. “Men do not have such a weakness.”

“Ha!”

“What are you implying with your ‘ha!’?”

“Only that you aren’t female and your mind can surely wander as well as mine.”

He could no longer hold back and gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Me? Daydream? What foolishness. A warrior whose mind wanders is a dead warrior.”

She placed her palms on the table and leaned toward him. “I think I must be speaking to a ghost.”

“Explain yourself.”

“Shall we lower our drawbridge and invite the Welsh in for a feast?” she repeated in the same impatient tone he had used, which annoyed him more.

He stood up then, not liking her boldness or her argument. She was a woman. She should defer to him in all things. He planted his hands on the table, too, and leaned over, glowering down at her.

“You must have been daydreaming,
my lord. “

“I don’t think so,
my lady
.”

“Oh? Ha!”

He was learning to hate that word.

“We don’t have a drawbridge,” she announced, then spun around with her nose so high in the air she would have drowned if it rained.

A moment later she was gone, her angry footsteps tapping up the stone stairs. He stood there with his hands still planted on the tabletop and he felt as if he were struck dumb. A moment later he asked himself, what in the bloody hell had happened?

He straightened and stood there feeling as if he were waist-high in the midst of a marsh, sinking. He shook his head, then downed another glass of weak watered-down wine.

It did not help.

He reached up and massaged the tenseness in the back of his neck, wincing when he squeezed too hard. ’Twas not his own neck he wanted to choke.

It dawned on him then that any thoughts of that ideal and peaceful life he’d sought for so long had just gone straight to hell.

Before him was his future, a future with one small woman. Lady Clio of Camrose. And at that moment he knew with surety that she would be more trouble than every rebel Welshman in all of Wales.

Bragawd Ale

Soak barley and allow to sweeten,

Dry until malted.

Mash with yeast and water for fyne wort.

Mix fyne wort with:

Honey, cinnamon, ginger,

Cloves, pepper, heath flowers and galingale.

—Medieval Welsh Ale Recipe

Chapter 7

The castle brewery had been a mess. Dirt and mud on the floors and rats in the rushes. The vats were old, rusted, and filled with stale ale and mold, and the iron pipes that fed water to the cistern in the corner were not siphoning from the castle well, but instead came from the filthy moat.

It took a few days to clean up and that was with Clio, Thud, Thwack, and Old Gladdys all working hard. But by midday on the third day, the spicy scent of herbs and dried flowers was all you could smell if you happened to pass by the open shutters.

Inside, Lady Clio was perched on a wobbly wooden stool before an oaken table with two legs that were shorter than the others. Pitt, the goshawk, had the end of her long blond braid in his beak. His wings were spread out as if he were in flight, and whenever the stool would wobble, he would swing back and forth, back and forth, like a cradle, while Cyclops watched from his one eye, his paw batting at him every so often.

The hard dirt floor had been swept clean with a long and thick willow broom that Brother Dismas handed Old Gladdys as a means of transport when she threatened to leave Camrose to the Fates.

But a dirt floor in a brewery was not a good idea. The first small testing of ale she’d brewed had been gritty with dirt and sand, and she would have to lay down cloth to protect the malt.

So, early yesterday morn, Clio and her helpers had pilfered flat slate stones for the floors from the freemasons who were working for the earl. In the last week, the road to Camrose had been busy with the arrival of masons, smithies, sawyers, and other building craftsmen.

There were so many piles of floor stones that the stacks were taller than the Earl of Bluster himself. Clio decided the few tiles they needed to floor the brewery would not be missed.

Like most of the thatched huts in the two baileys, this one in the upper bailey was long and narrow, and the walls were of wattle and daub that was cracked and needed patching. But the inside was usable now. The dried herbs and small bags of spices she’d brought from the convent were scattered haphazardly in a corner near the window.

Bundles of sorrel and rue, toadflax and hyssop, sat atop cloth bags containing willow bark and rowan leaves, acorns and walnuts. Foxglove, marsh reeds, and cattails poked out of the wide mouths of earthenware jars, and a row of small hemp pouches with unraveled drawstrings held fat nutmegs and brittle cinnamon sticks, black cloves, and saffron-colored cumin seeds.

Mortars and pestles made of brindled stone, hardwood, and glazed pottery were stacked in every size from those small enough to cup in your hand to large ones that you could only hold if they sat in the crook of your arm. There were three pepper horns and two brass coffers with small locks that each held precious pale sugar and fine granules of pure white salt.

Clio glanced down at the parchment on which Sister Amice had scribbled her list of herbs. “
Hmmmm
. What is next?” she muttered and dragged a finger down the list. “Milkwort? No … I did that one. Fennel powder. No, I added that one. Ah-ha! Here it is. I need three gills of salix.”

She crumbled willow bark and leaves into a stone mortar and vigorously mashed them into a fine powder of salix.

Old Gladdys had quietly spent the last hour or so moving about the room and arranging the herbs, oils, and tinctures into positions corresponding to those of the moon and stars during the spring equinox.

Brother Dismas had come inside only once, hiding behind his crucifix, which he’d wrapped in dried holly. It seemed God had warned him to do this, since the Lord knew that witches were afraid of holly and there would be no way for the old Druid to give Brother Dismas the evil eye.

Old Gladdys looked perfectly capable of giving anyone the evil eye. She had frizzy white hair that stuck out from her head like carded lamb’s wool. Her nose was so hooked that Thomas the Plowman had once claimed if he ever misplaced his scythe, he could use Old Gladdys to cut grain. Her eyes were sharp and ageless, but they were dark, almost black, and they looked even darker because the only color she would wear was black.

So as Brother Dismas faced her, peering uneasily around his raised cross, Old Gladdys had turned around, stuck out her bony jaw, and closed one devilish eye. Suddenly she began to wildly wave her scrawny arms in the air, then pointed at the monk while she chanted: