by Fiona Faris
Joan’s features contorted with a final spasm of rage before she shoved her victim to the ground and strode back to her horse. Swinging herself into the saddle, she turned her mare around, and still not uttering a single word, pushed it through the gathering crowd and rode off back down the High Street, scattering townsfolk in her wake.
Sir Gilbert and Sir Patrick belted their swords and remounted their ponies. Margaret was too distressed to act. Sir Gilbert leaned over and gently took the reins of the palfrey from Margaret’s trembling hands.
“Come, Margaret,” he said softly, and he led her slowly away from the Cross and back along the High Street towards the soaring mass of the King’s Castle.
Chapter Six
Joan fled the burgh through the Bridgegate to the north of the castle. Her intention was to reach Neidpath Castle as quickly as she could by the path that ran through the forest along the shoulder of the Castle Braes, instead of by the long winding path by which they had come to Peebles.
She flew along the empty road. Around her, the forest tumbled past her, down the Braes and into the dale through which the Tweed meandered like a glittering thong. Trees cast their shadows over the hard-packed trail, and her gray mare plunged through the flicker of them as Joan urged it on at a relentless gallop.
She reached back and tore away the ribband that gathered her hair into its long loose ponytail, and her tresses streamed out behind her in a silvery pennant. The skirts of her kirtle blew high over her hips, revealing her long, lithe thighs. The wind pressed the cloth of her dress hard into her chest, molding itself over the small firm mounds of her breast and raising her nipples with the chill of its passing.
Sir Patrick had set off in hot pursuit, concerned that she should not ride the road unchaperoned, but also at the fury with which she had taken off from the burgh Cross. He was afraid she would press her mount too hard and meet with an accident.
But little did he know her horsemanship. She leaned along the flank of her mare’s muscular neck and whispered encouragement in its ears. She gave the mare her head, guiding her with only an occasional pressure from a knee or a gentle pull on the reins. The horse gloried in the freedom of its flight, the blood pounding in its veins, in the powerful pull of the muscles in its shoulders and haunches. This was what it had been born to; this was the expression of its true nature.
Joan understood this. She too bridled at the constraints that were placed upon her. She too longed to fly free through the forests of the world, the wind combing the mane of her hair, the blood pulsing freely in her veins; she too longed to take joy in the sheer physicality of her body.
Nevertheless, Sir Patrick was also a fine horseman, and his pony was stronger and faster than Joan’s mare. Soon, he could see the plume of dust that Joan’s flight was kicking up from the road. He pressed his mount even harder and gained on her slowly but steadily.
“Joan! Joan!” he called out, but either she could not hear him or was choosing to ignore his cries.
Soon, he had drawn alongside her. With a skillful lunge, he snatched the reins from Joan’s hands and hauled both horses to a panting halt.
With a wail of frustration, Joan slipped from her saddle and ran into the trees. Tears gathered in her eyes as she pushed through the undergrowth and started down the slope. She sobbed as she ran, with Patrick crashing through the scrub behind her.
After a few yards, he caught her by the arm and spun her around. She lashed out at him with her fists, pummeling his head and shoulders and hammering at his chest. Eventually, he succeeded in capturing both her flailing arms and smothered her to his breast.
“Wheesht, Joan, wheesht,” he crooned into the top of her head as she buried her face against his broad shoulder.
“It is so unfair!” she spat, pulling away from his embrace.
“What is?” he asked softly.
“Margaret, the wee girl, the lassie degrading herself in the stocks… everything!”
“It is just the way of the world,” Patrick explained with the well-worn platitude that, in truth, explained nothing.
“But it shouldn’t be!” Joan protested. “It is a piece of nonsense that infant bairns should starve for want of a ha'penny, that lassies should be made the playthings o’ scabby louts because of their weakness, that… that the best I can hope for is the mercy of a kindhearted husband who won’t beat me, or work me too hard or kill me with too much child-bearing…”
Patrick pulled her back to his breast.
“Wheesht, Joan, wheesht. That need not be your fate. You are a fine-looking woman, with a spirit that many a knight will find beguiling, and for which he will love you on your own terms and not for any lands or advantages you may bring.”
Joan sniffed back her tears.
“Aye, but where am I going to find such a knight, in such times as these, when everyone is so feart and calculating.”
Patrick half-smiled and gazed over her head into the half-distance.
“He may not stand too far away.”
She looked up at him in sudden surprise, her blue eyes searching, an unasked question creasing her brow.
“I intend to ask your father for your hand,” he answered.
She gave him a puzzled look.
“You would marry me?” she asked in amazement.
“I shall marry you,” he corrected her with firm determination. “Just as soon as we have driven King Edward homeward.”
She clasped her arms beneath his shoulders and hugged him warmly. She felt the heat of his body through his surcoat and tunic, the rasp of his shaved chin resting on her forehead. She snuggled close, rubbing her temple against his chest. She raised her face to his and drew him down towards her. Her eyes shone with invitation, her moist lips parted.
He kissed her, and she drank his kiss thirstily. Her tongue flicked against his, and she gave a little mewl as a wave of desire flooded her loins. She drew him back until her back rested against the broad girth of a beech tree. He pinned her to the rough bark with his body, and she wound her long, tapered legs around his hips. She reached down, dragged up his tunic and shirt and pushed his braies aside to release his manhood. Gently she lowered herself onto him, giving a little yelp as he tore her maidenhead.
She moaned as she felt him fill her. With her legs, she pulled him as deep as he could go. She threw back her head, and he put his mouth to the long throat she exposed to him. She began to rise and fall along his length, and he responded with gentle rhythmic thrusts. Faster and faster they moved against each other, with firmer and firmer strikes, his gasps echoed by the little sobs that were wrung from her chest. Suddenly, her world melted out of focus, and her body shuddered with a deep, intense orgasm, through which Patrick continued to thrust until he exploded inside her and flooded her with his seed.
Joan continued to cling to him long after their climax, clung to him as if she would never let him go. Their breath came in deep, steady draughts as if they were both asleep. He grew limp within her and eventually slithered out, a trickle of his semen running down the curve of her buttock and dripping onto the grass at her feet.
He lifted her from the tree and set her down gently. She wobbled, her legs feeling suddenly weak, and she grasped his shoulders to steady herself. The eyes she raised to him were dreamy and content. They kissed again before separating.
“My lady,” Patrick murmured.
“My lord,” Joan responded.
Overhead, the crows cawed indignantly.
Sir Gilbert and Margaret also left by the Bridgegate.
Sir Gilbert led the palfrey, and they trotted along at a good pace, Margaret still sitting sidesaddle and holding tight to the saddle horn. They both rode on in silence.
But Margaret’s silence had changed. No more was it the fragile silence of a frightened maid; now it was a grim silence that held a determined resolution, the resolution of a woman who had reached a decision and was bent on following that decision through, come what may. Sir Gilbert kept stealing glances back at her,
but Margaret’s eyes remained fixed on the trees as they flickered by in the bright afternoon sunlight; it was as if she had forgotten he was even there. But her eyes were also fixed on the future, a future in which he, Sir Gilbert, featured prominently.
Shortly into their journey, the palfrey stumbled and came up lame, bringing Margaret back to the present.
“You must ride ahead,” she told him, as he examined the injury, “and bring me a fresh mount.”
Sir Gilbert let the palfrey’s injured hoof carefully back down onto the ground.
“I cannot leave you alone on the highway in the forest,” he demurred. “What would your father say if any harm were to befall you? How would that reflect on my honor as a knight?”
Margaret scoffed.
“I have played in these woods since I was a little girl. I am perfectly safe.”
“No.” Sir Gilbert raised his hand to fend off any further objections. “You must ride up here with me. We can tether your palfrey to my pony’s tail and walk the horses back to Neidpath.” He chuckled. “It will also save me a journey back with another mount. I am famished for my supper, you know.”
Margaret could not suppress a little laugh.
“Oh, so you are thinking of your belly, Sir Knight? And here I was believing you were acting from gallantry towards a lady in distress.”
“Are you in distress, Margaret?” he said in sudden seriousness. “You have seemed so since yon little urchin bothered you and after the ugly scene at the Cross.”
Tears sprang to Margaret’s eyes. Sir Gilbert reacted with alarm. He stepped towards her and took both her hands in his.
“What ails you, my lady?” he begged, his face an agony of solicitude. “You are most surely out of sorts. Was it those rude brutes back at the pillory? Speak the word, and I will return and flay the skins from their backs.”
Margaret dismissed his speculations with an impatient wave of her hand. She freed herself from his grasp and turned to gaze into the forest.
“No, no, it is nothing,” she said. “Or, rather, it is everything. My father, Joan, the heat and stench of the market, my palfrey going lame… Oh, just ignore me, Sir Gilbert. I’m just being a silly wee lassie.” She sniffed and dabbed at the corners of her eyes with a lace handkerchief. “I shall be myself again presently. I just need to get home and rest awhile.” She laughed. “Perhaps I am sun-struck!”
“Then let us get you home,” Sir Gilbert said.
Margaret let out a little cry of delighted surprise as he scooped her up into his arms and sat her on his pony’s shoulders, just in front of the saddle. He swung himself up behind her and reached around her to pick up the reins, securing her in his arms. Her gowned legs flowed elegantly down the horse’s flank, and she leaned back into the security of his chest, as he urged the pony into an easy walk.
Margaret grew drowsy as they ambled along in the warm dappled sunlight, her palfrey limping along behind them. She fell into a light doze, still aware of the pulse of the horse’s step as she dreamt.
She dreamt she was standing on the battlements of Neidpath, her hand resting on the red sandstone parapet, looking down upon the practice field where Gilbert was instructing their sons in the art of swordsmanship. The three boys were pale and white-blond like herself, tall and slender, with sapphire eyes so piercing that she could see the glint of them from so far away. They swung their swords with an easy grace, parrying effortlessly the cuts and thrusts their father threw at them. Around them curved the Tweed like a silver clasp glittering in the sunlight.
Then, suddenly, a magpie alighted on the corner of the parapet and laughed at her, its head dipping with each cough of its mockery as if it were drawing a curse down upon her from the heavens. She looked away to the west. Dark storm clouds appeared from around the bend of the ravine above the Boat Pool, tumbling between the rocky crags, and seemingly intent on swallowing Gilbert and her boys. She opened her mouth to scream out a warning, but her voice would not come.
Then she was standing on the market cross in Peebles. Beneath her feet, in the jailhouse, she could hear the pleading cries of her children. She looked up to the gallows to see Gilbert bound and struggling in its chains, an iron scold’s tongue fixed to his face and pinning down his voice. His eyes were wide with terror. She tried to cry out again, but again her throat could not free the words.
She felt a tug at the skirt of her gown. She looked down to find the urchin girl gazing up at her with hungry eyes. She was holding out a hand to her.
She took the infant’s hand. It was sticky with honey. The girl led her solemnly, and she let herself be led, down the stone steps of the Cross and over the yard to the pillory, when a group of older boys and girls stood waiting with the stocks raised for her head and hands. Beside them stood a toothless youth who was rubbing his cock vigorously as she approached. His cock was enormous, as thick as a man’s arm, and its head was covered with a growth of rose thorns.
The girl let go of her hand, and she let the older children place her head and hands in the stocks and close them. From where she stood trapped, she could see Gilbert, his eyes wide with madness, spinning slowly and struggling frantically against the chains. She could hear him bellow a long incoherent roar and her children bleating tearfully from behind the windowless walls of the jail.
Then she felt her gown being rent from the hem to her shoulders and a foot kick her legs apart. Her braies were ripped from her loins, and a pair of hands dug their nails into her hips and tugged them back to expose her sex. What felt like the head of a spiked mace scratched down the length of the hollow of her buttocks, and she screamed…
Gilbert wrapped his arms around Margaret’s flailing form and brought his pony to a halt. He slipped from the saddle and slid Margaret down into his embrace. Her eyes flew open, and she looked around herself in terror, her breath coming in rapid shallow gasps. She struggled against Gilbert’s strong arms, but he held her tightly until she gradually came to herself, whispering reassuringly into her hair.
“It’s alright, lass, it’s alright. You had a bad dream, that is all. Look? You’re safe on the road to Neidpath.”
Margaret looked around herself with quick wild eyes, then up into Gilbert’s face. Then she burst into tears and buried her face in Gilbert’s shoulder.
Relief and anxiety vied with each other in her breast. Her heart was beating fit to burst; the intense ache of it was almost too great for her to bear. Her slender shoulders shook with racking sobs, her legs could barely support her, and she felt as if she might fall away at any moment into a faint.
Gilbert helped her to the side of the path and sat her down carefully on a moss-covered log. He knelt before her and took her trembling hands in his.
“I dreamt…” She shuddered at the memory of her dream. “I dreamt that everything I care for had been taken from me,” she went on when she had begun to compose herself. “It was a mixter-maxter of events from the day, but it seemed so real…” She clutched tightly at his hands. “Do you believe that dreams are portents, Gilbert?”
Gilbert squeezed her fingers.
“I believe they are difficult to read,” he replied carefully. “They can be so fantastic…”
“I cannot recount it.” Margaret refused even before Gilbert could ask. “It was too terrible. I must try to banish the memory of it from my mind. It was nonsense, really.”
She looked at the ground between them. Gilbert gazed thoughtfully at her downcast eyes, her fair countenance, her graceful, willowy form. She suddenly seemed to him so vulnerable, so lovely.
“I would have you know that I would never allow anything terrible to happen to you,” he said in a firm voice after a moment’s consideration. “That I pledge. I would that I could enter your dreams and do battle with the fears that plague you; I would slay them like dragons. You shall always have a champion in me; that also I pledge.”
That, and perhaps, something more, Gilbert thought, as he surprised himself by resolving in his own mind to speak to Si
r Simon that very evening.
Chapter Seven
That evening, after dining, Sir Gilbert Hay, Sir Patrick Fleming, and Sir Simon Fraser once again withdrew to Sir Simon’s private cabinet.
It was a modest chamber, with several chairs, a table and a few books bound in wooden covers, the latter a rarity which, Sir Simon confessed, were his greatest treasure – next to his wife and daughters, of course. Ancient faded tapestries hung from the walls and a single barred window let in only a modicum of light. Cruisie lamps had been lit, even though several hours of daylight still remained out of doors. The three men sat around the table with their goblets. A silver wine jug sat between them.
