by Fiona Faris
Sir Patrick and Joan, meanwhile, had their heads together like a pair of childish conspirators, giggling and whispering together. Margaret frowned at Joan’s unseemly familiarity. Joan had even placed her hand on Sir Patrick’s thigh and showed no sign of removing it.
Sir Simon sat in the midst of his domain, a ‘wee bit fou’ and smiling benignly at all he surveyed: his lovely wife, his two beautiful daughters and their handsome suitors, his hall bedecked with rich tapestries and laid with tables groaning with food, the flushed faces of his retainers contorted in grotesques of joy and laughter…
He was the steward of all this, he mused with deep satisfaction; it was to him that Oliver and Neidpath owed its security and protection. He was a canny man, he reminded himself proudly. He would risk none of this on any foolish venture. He would listen to what King Robert had to say through his two envoys, then he would make his calculations. Then, and only then, would he cast his dice.
He only gradually became aware that he was being addressed and that his wife, Lady Maria, was digging him in the ribs with a sharp elbow.
“Sir Simon,” Sir Patrick was crying above the noise that had taken over the hall. “Joan has been telling me that tomorrow is market day in the burgh. I propose that Sir Gilbert and I convoy Joan and Lady Margaret into Peebles to see the sights and perhaps enjoy a little of the sport. What say you, Sir Simon? Do we have your consent?”
Sir Simon could see no objection, and swaying in his seat, waved his hand regally to indicate the fact.
Margaret flushed. Throughout the afternoon and evening, she had been conducting a courtly dance of words with Sir Gilbert, in which she had been able to display her wit and virtue to best effect. She had been enjoying his attention immensely and was warm to the idea of spending another morning in his company.
The diversion agreed, Lady Maria rose and announced that the ladies would withdraw to her boudoir. Following her lead, Sir Simon invited the knights to join him for further discussion of business in his cabinet. Together, they climbed the stairs to the solar.
As they parted at the head of the stairs, Joan turned to Sir Patrick.
“Tell me, sire,” she enquired, in a loud voice and with a mischievous grin, “did your braies eventually fetch up in Berwick?”
Both Sir Patrick’s and Sir Gilbert’s jaws dropped open. But they could find no words in their gaping mouths with which to reply.
Chapter Four
Margaret turned furiously on Joan the moment they were closeted in their mother’s chamber.
“How could you have been so indiscreet, so brazen?”
She was spitting fury. She strode up and down the narrow space, her fists clenched and her face fuming. Joan’s nonchalance only fed fuel to the flames.
“I could tear out your hair, scratch out your eyes…”
Joan laughed.
“I only wanted him to know that I had the advantage of him,” she explained calmly, completely unintimidated by her sister’s threats and unimpressed by her anger. “To disarm him, as in a joust, so that he could see what a worthy match I was for him. To keep him on his mettle, as it were.”
Lady Maria strode up to her and struck her across the cheek with her open hand.
Joan shrugged.
“You are an affront to my household, and I shall not have it.” Lady Maria hissed. “You will comport yourself like a lady towards our guests and not seek to embarrass them or demean yourself. Remember that, unlike your sister, you come with no estates and will have to rely on your other charms. Men do not approve of pertness in a lady, as it reflects badly on their lordship; their peers will think less of them if they cannot be seen to have the rule of their consorts. You will mend your manners and never again behave as you did this evening. Otherwise, you may find yourself with no marriage prospect other than to Christ in a nunnery.”
Joan had picked up a circle of embroidery and feigned interest in it throughout her mother’s tirade. Judging Lady Maria to have finished, she tossed it aside.
“I know that fine, Mother,” she replied, with some bitterness. “I know that I am not, and never shall be, a lady with a fine household to run. My fate lies elsewhere.”
She sighed and lifted a hand to tenderly brush back a stray tress from her mother’s temple.
“But my ‘charm’, as you call it, also lies elsewhere. It lies in my spirit – and, aye, in my sex too – to which Sir Patrick is so evidently attracted. If I win him, I shall have won him by my audacity rather than by any simpering sweetness. I have a feeling that Sir Patrick likes a woman with spunk.”
Lady Maria bit her lip and let out a long breath. She was not entirely unsympathetic to the situation in which her younger daughter found herself, but she still feared that her boldness and lack of grace would impoverish her already slim prospects of making a good marriage. Sir Patrick may indeed find her attractive as a possible bedmate, but still not as his lady. She spoke more fondly to her errant daughter:
“Even if you were to succeed in winning Sir Patrick’s heart, the cat would still not yet be in the bag. Your father would still have to agree to such a match, and that would depend on whether he viewed an affinity with the Flemings of Boghall as advantageous to the Fraser’s fortunes, which in turn will depend on how he assesses the gamble on King Robert. He might yet decide to submit to King Edward, in which case the pair of you will have to look elsewhere for your husbands.”
Margaret stamped her foot and thumped an imaginary table with her fists.
“It is so unfair,” she whined. “Why can’t Father just make up his mind.”
Lady Maria smiled at her sadly.
“It is the times in which we live,” she said. “Pray God that King Robert succeeds in restoring peace to his realm so that we can get on with our lives again. If only King Alexander hadn’t gone off into the storm that night to be with his new bride and fallen from the cliffs, none of these intrigues would ever have happened, and the pair of you would have been married lang syne.”
With that, Lady Maria announced that she would retire for the night and Margaret and Joan repaired to their bedchamber.
As they undressed for bed in the candlelight, Joan asked Margaret what she thought of Sir Gilbert. Margaret paused from combing out her long fair hair and laid her mirror aside to gaze thoughtfully into the middle distance.
“He would be a fine match,” she replied eventually, having pondered the question for a few moments in silence. “A marriage between the Hays and the Frasers would expand both families’ estates, making me the mistress of one of the largest households in the district. And who can tell: Sir Gilbert might be further ennobled by King Robert for his services as a knight and be given further estates forfeited by those less loyal, which would further enhance my standing. I might even be given a place at Court.”
Joan flapped her hand impatiently, waving all such considerations aside as if they were of small significance, a mere bothersome fly that distracted from the real matter of import.
“What do you think of Sir Gilbert as a man,” she persisted.
Margaret smiled at her indulgently.
“Well,” she replied, smoothing her chemise over her long slender thighs, “he is handsome enough. He is whole in his limbs and comely in his looks and still young; it would not be too onerous a duty to serve as his bedmate as well as his tablemate.”
She gave a little start and pressed her hand to her tummy in surprise. That last thought had stirred a peculiar kind of hunger in her that she had never felt before, now that her mind had been returned to the memory of him cavorting in the Boat Pool. She pictured again his well-made form, his broad muscled chest, slim waist, and generous endowment. She found her sex tingling and her tummy leaped.
“Well, if you don’t, I will ride him all the way to Lochorwart and back for you,” Joan declared, jumping beneath the covers of the large curtained four-poster bed that they had shared since childhood.
“Joan!”
But there was only mild rep
roach in Margaret’s voice. She warmed to the subject of Sir Gilbert’s physical qualities, and they were, after all, ensconced in the privacy of their own closet.
“Ah, do not fret!” Joan replied, her head propped on the bolster, wriggling to get comfortable on the feather mattress. “It is Sir Patrick I have my eye on. The thought of him sitting next to me without his braies, his bare bollocks nestling on the wood of his chair like a brace of goose eggs and his long dowp dangling only a few spans from me, gave me the shudders all through dine.”
She drew up her knees, closed her eyes, and shuddered again at the recalling of it.
Margaret chuckled.
“You really are a low tickle-toby,” she declared.
“Oh, I’d tickle his toby alright.” Joan groaned. “Given half a chance. I’d tickle it like you tickle a trout out from under a bank. I’d tickle it until—”
“Enough!” Margaret protested, collapsing in laughter on top of the covers alongside her sister. “Enough tickling for one evening… Are you looking forward to our excursion to Peebles on the morrow?”
Joan folded her arms behind her head and gazed up into the middle distance. The movement raised her small strawberry-tipped breasts into view above the unfastened neckline of her chemise. Her nipples, Margaret noticed, were engorged and erect, pert and brazen like the rest of her.
“I feared for a moment that Mother would forbid me to go.”
Margaret raised her brows and smiled ironically.
“Could you have blamed her, after your performance earlier?”
“I suppose not,” Joan conceded with a wrinkle of her nose. “But I still would have gone anyway, despite her.”
“Sir Patrick would have been honor bound to have spurned your company. He could not be seen to be abetting you in absconding.”
Joan opened one eye.
“Surely not ‘spurned’. ‘Regretfully rebuffed’, perhaps.”
Margaret sighed in exasperation.
“Whatever! He would have been duty bound by his chivalric code to withdraw his offer to convoy you. You would have been on your own, without protection.”
Joan laughed.
“Oh, is that all? It wouldn’t be the first time that I’ve sneaked off into Peebles ‘without protection’. There are plenty of prentices with crooked noses who will vouch for that.”
“Oh, Joan, you are incorrigible!” Margaret cried, playfully slapping her sister’s shoulder.
“Then you shouldn’t ‘incorrige’ me,” Joan shrieked, squirming out from under the covers and grabbing Margaret around the waist before she could make good an escape.
The girls wrestled on the bed like children until they were both flushed and breathless, their long tresses a-tangle, and their chemises ridden up to reveal their long gleaming legs. Exhausted, they lay in one another’s arms while they caught their breaths.
“You besom!” Margaret gasped softly. “Now I shall have to comb out my hair again.”
She slid from the bed and fetched her mirror and comb.
“Here, let me,” Joan said, rolling up onto her knees and taking the comb from her sister’s hand.
Margaret sat on the edge of the bed and Joan began to pull the comb in long slow strokes down the length of her hair.
“It has been a long time since we attended the market though,” Margaret mused aloud, closing her eyes against the bliss of the comb.
“Aye,” Joan confirmed. “For it does not do for the daughters of noble people to expose themselves to the commonality.”
Margaret smiled at Joan’s passable impersonation of their mother.
“In fact, I was doubtful that Father would consent to our going,” Joan went on, “notwithstanding that we would be in the company of two chivalrous knights who would defend our virtue with their lives against the catcalls and wolf whistles of the prentice boys and their doxies.”
Margaret laughed again.
“I suspect that his consent is just part of a larger scheme he is laying,” Joan said. “By permitting Sir Gilbert to pay court to you, he is keeping his options open.”
“Perhaps,” Margaret conceded. “But still; it will be a pleasant diversion, the market, not to mention being under the protection of such fine handsome men.”
Joan snorted.
“‘Protection’ my arse. I’m more than able to look after myself. If I can hold my own against a troop of raw and randie pages in a mêlée on the practice field, I can well tan the backside of any straw-headed Peebles loon. Were any prentice lad to as much as look at me the wrong way, I’d have his balls for baubles.”
“Ouch!” Margaret protested, ducking her head away from Joan’s combing. “Not so rough!”
Joan threw the comb at her in disgust.
“Do it yourself, then!”
She scrambled to the head of the bed and slid beneath the covers. With a sigh, Margaret put her mirror and comb aside, blew out the candles and slipped in beside her.
Margaret fell asleep almost instantly.
Sometime later, she stirred.
Joan was lying on her side with her back to her sister and her knees drawn up. She was whimpering, with little sobs racking her body. Margaret was just about to ask her what the matter was when the whimpers merged into a low throaty moan and Joan’s shoulders shuddered, and her body spasmed and subsided in a flutter of twitches.
“Patrick,” she whispered, as she withdrew her hand from between her legs.
Chapter Five
Early the next morning, once they had completed the household duties that Lady Maria had delegated to them as part of their domestic education, and after which they had broken their fast, Margaret and Joan repaired to the stables in the castle’s courtyard, where the groom had readied two palfreys for them.
Joan eyed her mount with disdain.
“Take this toy horse away and bring me a proper one,” she demanded, “and with a proper saddle.”
She struck the sidesaddle on the pony’s back in contempt with the hazel branch she was in the habit of using as a riding crop.
“But, Joan,” Margaret remonstrated. “You must ride sidesaddle. It is not seemly for a woman to straddle a horse; you should ride as befits a lady, especially since we are to be in the company of men of honor, and more especially since we will be exposed to our inferiors, before whom we must maintain our dignity and station.”
Joan did not even deign to answer her. It was as if Margaret had never spoken. She just ordered the groom to fetch her gray mare.
To compound her offense, she had dressed in her habitual yellow kirtle and a plain amber surcoat. Mounted on her pony, she revealed her bare legs almost to the thigh. She looked like a reiver woman from the lawless Marchlands.
“Oh, Joan, at least go away and change into a gown,” Margaret begged her. “What you wear and how you comport yourself in the privy of the castle environs is all very well, but we must mind our manners in public. You would surely not wish to dishonor our companion knights.”
But Joan would not hear of it; she dismissed the idea with a cursory wave of her hand.
“I cannot ride in a gown,” she said, “not without shearing it from hem to crotch. And that would surely set the tongues of the villeins wagging like lambs’ tails.”
Without another word, she swung into the saddle without recourse to the mounting block, heeled her mount, and rode through the gatehouse and down the path to the meadow by the river.
Margaret took the two steps onto the block, sat sideways on her mount with her feet resting on the saddle’s little footrest, and hurried after her.
The path that ran down around the castle rock to the meadow where they had arranged to meet the two knights was steep and uneven and not easy to negotiate riding sidesaddle. Margaret held tight to the saddle horn while gently urging the small pony forward with clicks of her tongue.
Meanwhile, Joan plunged down the rough slope with practiced ease, leaning back in her saddle and swaying with the movement of her mare as it hopped a
nd skittered and raised a curtain of dust in its wake.
Reaching the meadow, they met Sir Gilbert and Sir Patrick. The pair of them were mounted on their ponies by the bank of the Tweed as it wound a wide berth around the foot of the castle before continuing its leisurely progress towards Peebles. Their mounts munched greedily on the lush meadow grass while the men waited, deep in conversation with one another.
Having safely reached the bottom of the path, Margaret allowed herself to relax her concentration on where her palfrey was placing its hooves and looked up at their escorts. They both cut dashing figures.
