by Lynn Kurland
“Yee-hah,” he offered.
She laughed. She looked at him and laughed again, then settled back to her work, still chuckling. Richard had no idea what was so damned amusing, but he had the feeling she was laughing at his expense.
He tried to dredge up some foul humor but it wouldn’t come.
He was still reeling from the impact of her smile.
18
Hugh de Galtres stood near the gatehouse, milling about with a handful of his brother’s peasants as they prepared to go about their business inside the bailey. Unfortunately, he didn’t have much strength to mill about properly. He was using most of it to keep himself from falling down on the spot.
He hadn’t expected his unannounced—and clandestine—return home to have affected him so. All he could do was clutch the stone of the wall behind him and gape like a half-witted peasant lad at what he saw.
Or, more to the point, didn’t see.
Everything was gone. He’d heard rumors of the like, of course, but he’d hardly believed them. Now he knew they were true. Richard had torn down everything, including a good deal of the outer walls. Those had been rebuilt, but the inner buildings were still a fond dream. There were stables, aye, and a poorly constructed garrison hall, but nothing of the splendor Hugh had enjoyed in his youth.
At least he told himself it had been splendid.
And he forbade himself yet again to remember how his father had sent him away to live at another keep at such a tender age.
Hugh gave himself a good hard shake and forced himself to look upon his childhood home. The only decent improvement he could see was that the dungeons had been filled in. Hugh had never cared for them. He had suspected that all kinds of creatures dwelt therein, creatures he’d had no desire to come to know better. He’d heard their wails.
Hugh could imagine how the keep would look when it was finished and how fine the outbuildings would be. Richard had been long on the continent and had gold enough to see to luxuries Hugh could only dream of. ’Twould be a fine place indeed.
Hugh could only gape.
Aye, Richard could aid him and never feel the pain of it.
He was tempted to ask it right then, but two things stopped him: the faery was building Richard’s hall, and Richard’s guard was clustered nearby.
Hugh gave the latter his attentions. Never mind that they were bowing and weaving like drunken hens. Hugh had seen the lads a time or two and was well acquainted with their skills. If nothing else, the last one he wanted to encounter was that bastard from Scalebro. Sir Godwin likely still carried about his person an implement or two from his former employment as castle torturer. And the man’s reputation for patience and skill was legendary.
Hugh folded his arms over his chest and leaned back against the wall, trying to still his racing heart with a few calming thoughts. He would seek shelter outside the walls, then decide the best way to approach his brother. Aye, that was the most sensible plan.
Hugh turned and left the inner bailey. He had time. After all, Richard would likely live a very long life, what with the way he never partook of strong drink and seemingly didn’t ease himself with whatever woman passed by him. Hugh shook his head. Sober and free of disease. He couldn’t imagine the like.
Hugh stumbled over an animal at the entrance to the outer-bailey barbican. His first instinct was to boot the beast as far as he could, then he realized it was a feline. For all he knew, it was a witch’s familiar—and the saints only knew where abusing the beast might lead him.
He froze until the cat wandered off, apparently in search of other, more foolish victims. He quickly made a few of his favorite signs to ward off evil, then hurried from the keep. He had seen enough for that day.
Seeing the cat, however, had led him to another conclusion. There wasn’t a faery in the inner bailey, there was a witch. The cat was her familiar. The more Hugh thought on it, the more sense it made to him.
And if there was a witch in the keep, it was very possible that Richard might find himself enspelled. And if he were under some foul spell, he might be less than eager to help Hugh.
And that would be a terrible thing indeed.
Hugh would have to see to the witch.
Richard would live to thank him for it.
19
Jessica closed up shop at dusk and sent her weary hired hands home. After making sure Richard was going to be in the gathering hall for a bit, she took a quick bath and relaxed. Things were going well. It had been a week since she’d begun work on the hall. With any luck, the stone for the floor would be cut and laid within the next week. After that, the walls could go up while the timber for the roof was being prepared. She didn’t consider herself much of a general contractor but she’d had the good fortune of finding a man on her crew who was a master organizer and didn’t seem to have a problem working with a woman. He’d taken one look at her plans and his eyes had lit up. They’d spent much of the afternoon discussing strategy. Jessica was immensely grateful for his help.
Someone had unearthed a set of iron manacles and something that looked remarkably like a branding iron. Richard had wandered by as the discovery had been shown to her. She’d almost asked him if his father had ever branded his horses, but she’d stopped short at the look on his face. The absolute terror in his eyes had made her hastily step in front of the man and give Richard a fake smile. She’d bid him a good evening, then waited until he’d stumbled away before she’d turned on the man and told him to come with her to the blacksmith’s shop.
The blacksmith had been ready to take his supper but Jessica had convinced him, perhaps a bit ungently, that what he really wanted to do was melt that metal down immediately. His remark that those were the second pair of irons he’d seen in a month had stuck with her. She didn’t want to jump to unfounded conclusions, but wondered if Richard had seen the first pair, too. Farfetched though it might have been, she suspected it might have been the day he’d gotten drunk.
But why would the sight of that bother him so? She had no doubts his father had beaten him, but had he done more than that? John had reluctantly revealed that the first thing Richard had done was to fill in the dungeons. A new cellar for wine and food had been dug, but no dungeon. Had he seen prisoners chained there?
Had he been chained there?
She pushed that thought away as she sat before the fire and dried her hair. It was too awful to contemplate. She was certain Richard had been a sweet, beautiful, loving child. No parent could have been that sick. But it was also true that something dreadful must have happened to him to have made him become so hard. People didn’t turn inward without a reason.
She smiled at Richard as he came into the room, hoping her thoughts weren’t reflected in her eyes. Richard looked tired.
“How was your day, honey?” she asked.
“Do not tell me ‘honey’ is another of your teasing words,” he said, casting himself down into his chair.
“It’s much nicer.” She flipped her head over to the side to let the fire dry the strands underneath. “Good day in the lists?”
He shrugged. “Horse is finally putting weight on his foreleg. At least there is hope he may heal.”
“Oh, Richard,” she said, relieved, “that’s wonderful.”
“I was a fool to use him ill.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
Richard rose abruptly and walked to the window. Jessica listened to him throw open the shutters and mentally bit her tongue. So, conversation wasn’t going to work very well. Maybe discussing the hall would go better.
She waited until he’d gotten enough sea air and come to sit again before she pulled her sketch of the hall off the chair behind her.
“Are you sure about the windows?” she asked. “They aren’t too big?”
He shrugged, as if he couldn’t care less.
“They’ll warm the hall in the summer, when the sun shines, but probably make things pretty chilly in the winter. I was thinking of maybe hanging tapestries over them then.”
She looked up at him. “What do you think?”
“Do as you see fit.”
Jessica sighed and fingered her drawing. “I wish I had something to color them with. Just to see how they’d look.”
Richard was up again, more slowly this time, but still up. Jessica gave up and put the drawing on her chair. She turned to the fire and flipped her hair over her head. Maybe he was getting tired of listening to her babble all the time.
She heard the scrape of the table being dragged over, then heard Richard setting something on it. She flipped her hair back over, then looked up. When she saw something that could have been mistaken for a paintbrush, she jumped up so fast, her head swam. She looked at Richard in disbelief.
“You paint?”
“Too lofty a term for it,” he said. He sat down, looking decidedly uncomfortable. “Well, there are your colors. That is the extent of my chivalry today.”
“You don’t need any more,” she said, reaching out and touching the brushes reverently. “And it’s too bad I couldn’t paint my way out of a paper bag. Guess we’ll never know how the windows could have looked.”
Richard was squirming. Jessica tried to look casual.
“Don’t suppose you’d want to do it,” she said, hoping she sounded as casual as she looked.
Richard reached out and toyed with a quill. He even went so far as to stretch out a piece of blank parchment and anchor it down with four chess pieces.
Jessica didn’t need to hear a request. She simply unrolled her drawing and anchored it with a queen and three knights. Richard continued to stall.
“You know,” she said, yawning suddenly, “I’m so tired. Would you be offended if I just curled up here in front of the fire and took a nap? You build such a great fire, Richard. Seems a shame not to enjoy it.”
He waved her away benevolently with his quill. Jessica stretched out on the tapestry she had appropriated for a rug, having found that fur tended to get stuck in her hair, and pulled a blanket over her. She breathed normally for a bit, yawned, then did her best to pretend she was asleep. After a few minutes she heard the soft scratching of the quill.
The next thing she knew, she was waking because of a crick in her neck. The scratching was still going on. Jessica rose, then walked around the back of Richard’s chair. She gasped when she saw what he’d done.
Painting was no term at all for his artistry. The world had indeed lost a marvelous craftsman when Fate had decreed that he be a warlord.
“Richard, it’s beautiful,” she exclaimed softly. She put her hands on his shoulders. “I can’t believe I let you see mine!”
“’Tis nothing.” His shoulders were stiff under her hands.
“But, of course it is. You’ve created something very beautiful and delicate.”
He barked out a laugh. “Beautiful? Nay, lady, that would be impossible.” He pulled away from her and stood, facing the fire. She watched him rub his wrists. “Nothing beautiful could ever come from me. It was leeched out of me long ago.”
“But . . .” she protested.
He swiped up the sheaf and shook it at her. “This? This is foolishness. There is no beauty in my soul, no purity, no joy.” He crumpled up the finished line drawing and threw it into the fire. “That,” he said bitterly, pointing to the fire, “is the destiny of not only myself, but everything I create.”
“Richard, how could you!” she gasped, aghast. “It was so wonderful, so lovely.”
He wore the same look he’d worn in the bailey when he’d seen the fetters, only the horror in his eyes was dimmed by the hardness.
“Take it as a warning,” he said flatly. He pushed past her and banged out of the room.
Jessica walked over to the shutters, threw them open, and burst into tears. It would have been nice to blame it on her period, but she’d had that the week before. No, this had everything to do with what she considered to be a pointed rejection and with the fact that a beautiful young man had been ruined by forces outside of his control.
And if that wasn’t enough to make a woman weep, she didn’t know what was.
• • •
Jessica woke, chilled. She realized that Richard wasn’t in bed. Usually by the middle of the night he had at least warmed up his side of the bed enough that the warmth was seeping over to hers. Not so tonight.
There was silence in the chamber. She rose quietly and pulled a blanket around her shoulders. Then she pulled up short. The bed curtains had certainly blocked out this view.
Richard was sitting in his chair, sound asleep. A paintbrush was still in his hand. Jessica crept close and stared down at the work he’d done.
It was, if possible, more beautiful than the first. Four windows had been carefully sketched in black ink with the stained-glass outlines drawn inside. Winter, spring, summer, fall. Idyllic landscapes with seasonally appropriate creatures. Winter had been completed. It was exquisitely pristine, the earth not dead, merely sleeping. Spring had been just started but already the colors he had chosen for the flowers were breathtaking. Jessica left the paintbrush in his hand, stopped up all the pots, and eased the table away from him. Then she knelt down by his side and looked up at him.
The firelight flickered over his features, softening them even more than sleep had. He looked innocent and relaxed. Well, perhaps innocent was pushing it. He’d seen too much for that. But he did look at peace. She almost hated to wake him, but she knew he’d be in a very bad mood if he woke up with a stiff neck. She pulled the brush from his unresisting fingers and set it on the table.
“Thank you,” he murmured.
She paused. “How long have you been awake?”
“Long enough that you moving the table sounded like an entire garrison thundering over a drawbridge. Damn me, Jess, you need lessons in stealth.”
He pulled himself back up straight into his chair. Then, before she had any idea what he’d planned, he pulled her down into his lap. She fell, surprised. His embrace was passionless; more comforting than anything. She didn’t mind. It was too late at night for anything else. Richard yawned as he snuggled her close and rested his cheek against the top of her head.
“I’m not good at apologizing,” he said with another yawn.
She pulled back and put her hand over his mouth.
“Yes, you are. Apology accepted. But destroy this one and I’ll never forgive you.”
He caught her hand and pulled it away. “It pleases you.” He looked over her head.
“Very much.”
She felt him shift in the chair. “I was thinking about perhaps doing the walls one day. Bringing the sea inside, so to speak.”
“Oh, Richard.”
“Perhaps the hall, too, once you’ve finished it. I need my claim to fame, too.”
She leaned close and pressed her lips against his cheek. “Thank you,” she murmured. “That would make me very happy.”
“I’m not doing it for you,” he said gruffly. “Cook will complain if he must serve in an unpainted hall.”
“Of course. Now, Cook is that man who can’t tell red from green, isn’t he? We call that color-blind in my day.”
He snorted. “You should be abed. You have much work to do on my hall and you’ll need to rise early.”
She stopped him before he pushed her off his lap. “Richard?”
“Aye.”
“I ignored your warning.”
He stiffened, but didn’t pull away.
“I don’t warn well,” she added.
“Somehow,” he said with a sigh, “that doesn’t surprise me in the least.”
She smiled. “You’re very sweet.”
“Now you go too far—”
She shoved her hand under his nose. “This is your ring you see, my lord, and that gives me the right to tell you to be quiet. So, be quiet. I’ll probably be back to thinking you’re a jerk tomorrow, so live with the compliment while it’s still in force. Got it?”
He grumbled something she didn’t catch.
But then, to her utter surprise, he brought her hand to his lips and kissed it in a rough, Richardy kind of way.
Then he dropped it as if it had been a hot potato, set her on her feet, then leaned his head back against the chair and pretended to snore.
Jessica went to bed with a smile on her face.
20
Richard stood in the lists, where he was supposed to be watching his brother and his squire work. In truth, he was completely lost in thought. The events of the day before had left him reeling and he wasn’t sure he would ever find his footing again.
Last eve, after his abrupt and less-than-polite departure, he had crept back into his chamber like a thief. Jessica had been asleep, blessedly. The fire had still burned in the hearth, but much lower. His pots of paint and brushes were still on the table along with his quill and ink. Jessica hadn’t moved a thing.
It had been the fetters and the branding iron to cause him to behave so poorly. Not that he’d ever felt the bite of the last. Nay, the threat of it had been enough to keep him in tears when it suited his father to brandish it. And somehow, those memories had become tangled up with the embarrassment of Jessica’s praise and had left him out of his head with an emotion so intense he’d reacted without reason.
He hadn’t wanted her to learn the truth and leave him.
That he even cared whether or not she stayed had been enough to send him into a panic. The thought of her looking on him with disgust had made his breath come hard and fast. Jessica was purity and joy embodied. How could he sully that with the touch of his impure hands?
He had walked back over and sat down in his chair. Without allowing himself more thought, he had leaned over and carefully laid more wood on the fire, then pulled out a fresh sheaf of parchment. If Jessica had been pleased with his work, that was enough. He had bent to his work and poured his entire soul, black as it might have been, into fashioning something beautiful for his lady.
His lady.
He could no longer think of her as anything else.
And that was the thought that left him standing in the lists, useless and fair blinded by the thought of his poor heart being so exposed.
