A Knight to Remember: Good Knights #2

by Christina Dodd

  “It’s their own link to their former lives. Their one contiguous link to their babyhood. It gives them security.”

  “They’re too old for things like that.”

  She turned her head and looked at him with a comprehension that made him shudder. “You’re too old to suckle, tool but when you were ill, you certainly seemed to enjoy it.”

  She walked away before he subdued his chagrin enough to shout, “It’s not the same thing at all.”

  She just waved a mocking hand, and he knew he’d lost. The boys would keep their blankies.

  “I ain’t takin’ ye across tonight.” The ragged peasant faced Hugh’s whole troop with exasperation. “Are ye mad? ’Tis time fer sleep, not fer travel.”

  Edlyn agreed with him wholeheartedly, but she could see Hugh took his criticism personally and ill. For some reason, Hugh wanted to get as far away as possible from the abbey, and he wanted to do it quickly. But faced with the River Avon swollen with spring floods, he had no choice but to use the ferry to move men and horses. The ferryman wasn’t having any of it, and she followed the conversation in this rough English as closely as she could.

  “Th’ master wishes t’ go across now.” Wharton clearly expected that the ferryman would see the good sense in getting this knight and his retinue faraway from his pitiful house of mud and twigs.

  The scrawny, cantankerous ferryman didn’t seem concerned with the knight, or his men, or how they could render their malice on his belongings. Mimicking Wharton, he said, “Th’ master’ll have t’ wait.”

  “There’s time before the light fades entirely to get us across, and it would be in your good interest to do it.” Hugh sat tall in the saddle and used his deepest, most commanding voice, but it was still a threat.

  The boil on the ferryman’s cheek darkened to crimson. “Aye, ye’ll get across in th’ light, an’ I’ll have t’ come back in th’ day. I’d not do it fer th’ prince if he came abeggin’.”

  Part of the problem, as Edlyn saw it, was that Hugh didn’t like having a common old peasant challenge him in front of his new wife and his men. Challenges were for knights and noblemen. Peasants did as they were told—except for this one. Unused to riding, Edlyn had dismounted to ease the cramps in her legs. Now, as she removed her riding gloves, she sidled closer. She didn’t like the nature of this confrontation.

  Wharton eased a coin out of the hem of his surcoat. “There’s an extra shilling in it fer ye’t do it now.”

  “Nay!” The ferryman hobbled toward his hut. “Just settle yerselves down an’ I’ll take ye in th’ morning.”

  Edlyn saw the exact moment Hugh lost his temper. He dismounted with swirl of his cloak, marched up to the ferryman, swung him around by his arm, and glared, a warrior at his most ferocious. “You’ll take us now.”

  The ferryman thrust his face right back at Hugh. “I’ll take ye in th’ mornin’…if I’m feelin’ charitable.”

  Hugh fumbled for his knife, and Edlyn ran. Grabbing Hugh’s arm, she murmured in Norman French, “Would you kill an old man for this?”

  Hugh answered her in the same language. “Nay, but I’d sure frighten him a bit.”

  The old man showed his canniness when he answered Hugh in his rough English, “Ye can’t frighten me. I’ve fended off greater men than ye.”

  “I’m sure you have.” Edlyn interposed herself between the stubborn dolts.

  Hugh tried to shove her aside. “Woman, mind your needle and let me manage this.”

  She used his impetus and her weight to bring Hugh around to face her. “How? By hurting him? He’s not going to yield, and in the morning we’ll have a ferry, all the light we want, and no ferryman to take us across. By the saints, Hugh, some things can be handled without violence!”

  If his most docile bitch had nipped at him, Hugh couldn’t have looked more astonished. Edlyn turned her back on him and threaded her arm through the old man’s. Speaking slowly, wrapping her tongue around the unfamiliar English words, she said, “Come. I’m chilled with the onset of night, and you’ve got a fire. Would you object if a mere woman warmed herself there?”

  “Not at all.” The ferryman, who smelled like dung and reached no taller than her shoulder, patted her hand and shot a smug glance over his shoulder at the astonished and horrified men of the troop. “It has been many a night since I’ve had such a pretty lady sittin’ at me fire.”

  “I can hardly believe that.” She smiled into his face and ignored the rank breath that bathed her. “A handsome man like you.”

  He responded well to that kind of teasing, if only to annoy Hugh.

  “What’s Mama doing?” she heard Allyn ask from the cart where he rode.

  “Making a nuisance of herself,” Hugh snapped.

  That made her smile at the ferryman all the more.

  “Aye, I was handsome in me day, but since I lost me last wife, women heave come only t’ board th’ ferry.”

  “Aye, to board the ferry.” Edlyn winked at him as she gave the phrase a salacious intonation, and the old man almost collapsed from pleasure. “What’s your name, if I may ask?”

  “I’m Almund, m’ lady.” He reached up to pull his forelock and had to settle for touching his bald head. “At yer service.”

  With a flourish, he showed her his place on the log. He’d worn the bark away, he’d been there so long, and she seated herself, ignoring the men, the horses, the carts, her sons, and her new husband, all lined up on the road and waiting for attention. She had none to give them right now. She needed it all for Almund. Stretching out her hands to the feeble fire, she said, “I noticed, Almund, you have a boil on your cheek.”

  He touched it gingerly. “Aye.”

  “It looks painful.”

  “I’ve tried everything. Killed a toad by th’ new moon an’ slept all night wi’ it on th’ damn boil, an’ all that toad did was make it worse.”

  Edlyn touched the pouch that hung at her waist. “I’m an herbalist of some renown. If you would permit me, I would be glad to try one of my poultices to draw out the poison.”

  “If th’ toad doesn’t work, why would yer poultice?” Almund asked.

  “No harm in trying.”

  Almund would have refused, but Hugh took that moment to appear next to the fire. “Woman, go back to your palfrey.”

  “She can’t,” Almund snapped. “She’s goin’ t’ fix me a poultice.”

  Hugh groaned and spread his arms wide to the skies where the evening star shown above the horizon. “God grant me patience.”

  The old man cackled wickedly, and Edlyn said tartly, “I prayed for release, and God granted me you, Hugh of Roxford, so be careful what you pray for.” Standing, she asked, “Are we carrying mead?”

  “Are you going to drink with him, too?” Hugh asked.

  “Temper,” she chided. “The mead makes a good base for the poultice, and the rest of my herbs are in the cart with the lads. If you kind men would excuse me?”

  She moved away, and Hugh glared at her back.

  Almund squatted down and pocked the fire. “Women. Can’t live wi’ ’em, can’t make ’em do a damned thing worth sense.”

  It was the first thing Hugh had heard from he ferryman he knew to be the truth. “We just got married,” he found himself blurting.

  “Guessed that. Ye look at her as if she is a foreign country ye need t’ conquer.”

  “Oh, I’ve conquered her.” Hugh remembered how she looked as she slept after he’d swived her into oblivion. “How many times do I have to conquer her before she stays that way?”

  “Why would ye want that? She’s got that beauty that goes bone deep. I mean, look at her. She wants t’ make sure I stay alive, so she steps in front o’t yer knife. An’ she wants t’ make sure ye get what ye want, so she offers t’ cure me boil.” He nodded wisely. “Me guess is I’ll be takin’ ye across at moonrise.”

  All of Hugh’s masculine pride rose in indignation at the old man’s words. “You know she’s manipulation
you and don’t object?”

  “Why should I? I get me boil cured, ye get yer way, an’ she gets t’ think she created peace from strife. Which she did, God her soul bless.”

  Hugh stared at the old man in silent admiration. Almund saw more than Hugh himself, and despite Edlyn’s opinion, Hugh considered himself insightful.

  “Sit down, ye’re givin’ me a kink in me neck.”

  Hunkering down, Hugh experienced a pang of discomfort. He grunted and stomped one foot until grains of wheat showered out of his garter and planted themselves on the ground around him. “She lived at the abbey, and they gave us a proper send-off as we left late this afternoon. They rang the bells and banged pans and threw wheat.”

  The old man didn’t look nearly as surprised as Hugh felt. “’Tis a proper thing t’ do after a weddin’.”

  “The wedding was yesterday. That was the proper time to do it, but I let her go off and get captured and…” Why was he confessing his failure to this old man? “Rather than throwing the wheat yesterday, they did it today when we left the abbey. I think they did it because they liked her.” Grimly, Hugh remembered the circle of leering people who had tried her for promiscuity as the result of his deception. “They hadn’t treated her well before the wedding.”

  “Yer fault, I wager.”

  How did the old knave know that? And why did Hugh feel this pang of guilt for his actions? He had one the right thing, he knew it. Edlyn needed a husband, a and no one owed her reparation as much as Hugh himself. She had refused to accept his help, so he had coerced her. That was as it should be. A man made the decisions. A woman respected them.

  If only she hadn’t told him she would never give herself completely into his keeping. He never refused a challenge, and he allowed himself no doubt, but…he’d never faced a woman unwilling to give him her body and her soul. Worse, he never imagined he would care.

  He rubbed the tight muscles in his chest. It was that challenge, that was all. He cared only about the challenge.

  “If th’ wheat slides into yer curlies, it means yer plow’s goin’ t’ plant early an’ often.”

  Startled, Hugh stared at the old man and fought the desire to lift his own surcoat and check for kernels.

  “If ’tis in her curlies, she’s quickening already.” The ferryman considered, then shook his head, and a few wild hairs waved on the top of his bald head. “Nay, but she’s not got th’ glow about her.”

  “Doesn’t she?”

  “That one’ll not conceive until she’s taken ye fer husband in her heart.”

  Hugh settled carefully on his rump, pulled off his boots, and peeled down his hose, trying not to give the old man’s statement too much importance. “How do you know that?”

  “When ye get a little smarter, ye’ll know some things, too.”

  Hugh could scarcely argue with that. He’d only in the last day begun to realize how much he didn’t know.

  “Where are ye off t’ in such a hurry?” the ferryman asked.

  The cramped sensation in Hugh’s chest eased at once, and he answered proudly, “To our new home. To Roxford Castle.”

  “Just got yer lands, did ye?” The old man wiped his nose on the long sleeved of his shift. “Worked hard fer ’em, too, I trow.”

  No one knew how hard, except perhaps Wharton, and maybe Sir Lyndon, but not even they could comprehend the desire that gnawed at Hugh’s insides at the thought of a castle, his castle, and a demesne, his demesne.

  “Here we are.” Edlyn’s light, musical voice broke into his reverie, and Hugh looked up at her.

  A wife. His wife.

  He wanted her there, in his home, a symbol of all he had achieved. He didn’t need that affection she withheld from him, as long as he had her physical body to maintain his castle and his lands.

  Then unbidden, the thought of her naked body in a tall bed slipped into his mind, and he knew he needed her physical body for more than just its abilities to work. He wanted it for pleasure—his pleasure, and hers.

  The ferryman started cursing as soon as she applied the steaming poultice to his face, and he kept up a steady stream of blunt English words that should have made a woman who’d lived in an abbey blush. They didn’t seem to faze Edlyn, but mayhap she didn’t understand them. Hugh dumped wheat from his hose and wiped it off his feet as he listened, and he grinned. Regardless of the conversation they’d just shared, he still wished for the old man’s discomfort. After all, he had defied Hugh in front of his won men.

  He had the satisfaction of hearing the ferryman howl in pain as she lanced the boil and seeing him shuffle his feet as she gave him ointments and lectured him on their use. Finally, she patted the old man on his bald head and promised him the boil would be completely drained and feel better in the morning so all his secret admirers could lavish him with their love.

  “Ain’t got no secret admirers but ye, m’ lady, an’ that’s enough fer me.” The old man touched the bandage on his check. “But it throbs so much I couldn’t sleep tonight anyway, an’ th’ moon’s arisin’. Could be I would ferry ye across now.”

  Edlyn shot Hugh a triumphant glance, then said to the old man, “You are generous indeed.”

  Disgusted, Hugh pulled on his hose and boots and shouted for his men. It took three trips to get everything across. Most of his knights went first, and with them Edlyn’s sons, still awake and so rambunctious it was decided they could frolic on the far side while the ferry made its remaining trips. Wynkyn was put in charge of the lads, and Hugh felt sorry for his page. Parkin and Allyn, he thought, could use a man’s discipline, and when they were settled at Roxford Castle, he would see to it.

  About half of their possessions went second, guarded by Wharton and the squires, who moved from place to place under Almund’s direction to keep the ferry in balance.

  Last came Edlyn, Hugh, the remaining knights and the rest of their gear. As they bobbed along, the moon shining on the river, Almund pulled Hugh aside. “Part o’ th’ reason I would bring m’ lady across in th’ night is because o’ that knave.”

  Hugh’s mind leaped to the claiming of his castle. “Edmund Pembridge?”

  Who’s Edmund Pembridge?”

  “The former earl of Roxford,” Hugh answered.

  “Ah, him. Nay, not him, although I hear he’s a right wretched knave, too. Nay, I’m talkin’ about him what took Castle Juxon.”

  “Hugh’s pulse quickened. “Richard of Wiltshire took it?”

  “Aye, an’ from all accounts, a more feckless brig and never lived.”

  “I’ll not quarrel with that,” Hugh said. “He’s lacking in honor.”

  “Honor?” The old man laughed until a cough racked him. Grasping the paddle, he leaned over it until he got his breath, then said, “He’s nothin’ but a thief who speaks wi’ yer fancy tongue an’ entertains travelers while pluckin’ them clean o’ every bauble an’ coin.”

  Hugh scowled. “He’s a knight, a younger son thrown out into the world to seek his fortune. Not a pleasant prospect, of course, but common. Most men don’t immediately turn to robbery.”

  “He’s good at it.”

  “Aye, he had plenty of practice.” Hugh had met Richard of Wiltshire and despised him with all his heart, and that had done nothing more than amuse Richard.

  Richard’s reputation as a merry master had attracted a troop of disaffected knights, and they hired themselves out as mercenaries. They fought for whoever paid them. They had nothing to lose and everything to gain, and now they’d gained a castle. When the rebellion was over, the king would reorganize and recover those lost lands, but until then Richard and his men would laugh and swive and drink the castle cellars dry.

  “There’s been a few he let go wi’ out their fancy clothes of their gold, o’ course, an’ they’ve come through here. I wouldn’t like t’ think o’ m’ lady—or any lady—in his hands, if ye know what I mean.”

  The old man cast a meaningful glance at Edlyn, and Hugh vowed, “I will keep her safe f
rom him.”

  12

  The tug of the current on the ferry felt like the hand of God to Hugh. Almund grabbed for the paddle, but the handle twisted right out of his hands. The Ferry lurched, then slowly, inexorably, it tilted up on its side. Hugh fought to grab the rail, but the rotten wood broke when he leaned on it and he went over the side with a shout.

  “Hugh!”

  He heard Edlyn cry before the water closed over his head.

  He fought for the surface, but something floating knocked him back down. The second time, he came up and stayed up, and he saw the ferry breaking up in the water. “Edlyn,” he roared, treading water and looking frantically around him.”

  “Hugh.”

  Her voice sounded from the side. she was climbing up on the bank, assisted by his knights.

  “Hugh!”

  She pointed at something off to his left, and he saw a jumble of their belongings floating by.

  Did she expect him to save them? With this current, he’d lucky to save himself. The river took him in a swirl, and he saw a thin shape floating not far away.

  “Hugh, ’tis Almund.”

  He heard Edlyn at the same moment as he recognized the limp figure of the old man and started swimming toward him.

  “You’ve got to save him,” she called.

  Of course he would save him, Hugh thought with irritation. Did she think him incapable of a compassionate intention without her teaching? Reaching Almund, he wrapped his arms around him and towed him to shore. The treacherous currents spun them in circles several times, and once a trunk floated up behind Hugh and gave him such a blow on the head he almost lost consciousness.

  One thing kept him going, though—anticipation of Edlyn’s gratitude. When he towed the old man to shore, she’d see him for the hero he was, and that would be the first step to capturing her affection. Her true affection.

  Hands stretched out to him as he neared shore, but he shook them off and reached with his feet for the bank below him. Gasping, he dragged Almund behind him, then picked him up, placed him on his shoulders and carried him to a soft place in the grass. Carefully he lowered him, then straightened, waiting for his reward.