“If you must know,” Jouglet said in a grudging tone, “among other things, it’s a concoction of nettle seeds and staghorn to keep my monthly flux as brief and light as possible, and also white pepper ampules from Jeannette, to assure there will be no little Jouglets running around— “
“Oh,” Willem said hurriedly and handed it to her. She tied it on, and this time when she took a step toward him, he didn’t back away. She reached out tentatively to touch his face. He took a hard, quick breath when he felt those familiar fingers touch his skin.
The gesture whipped something to life in him— he grabbed Jouglet’s wrist and twisted it harshly to the side, so that the minstrel had to leap around beside him to keep it from snapping. “Willem!”
“You are a deceitful wretch,” he hissed.
“My wrist— for God’s sake, Willem!” Jouglet gasped.
“Apologize for deceiving me,” the knight demanded, glaring.
“I didn’t do it to deceive you, I’d— ah!” she cried as he twisted it more. “Stop, stop, Willem, you’re a knight and you’re hurting a woman— “
“I’m hurting a liar,” he corrected angrily but let her go. She snatched her hurt wrist against her body and cradled it with her other arm, scampering several paces back from him and the fire, feeling trapped in the far corner of the small room. He turned away from her and looked into the flames. “Get out of here,” he said in disgust and sat down again with a sigh born of too many bruises.
“You don’t mean that,” Jouglet said.
“Of course I mean it!” Willem thundered, turning again to glare into the darkness. “I am sincere— I never say or do anything untrue.”
“Neither do I,” she said quietly.
“You are the very embodiment of deception! I have no stomach for it, you’ve robbed me of my dearest friend.”
“I am your dearest friend,” Jouglet protested.
Willem shook his head adamantly. “No. My friend is not some lying woman.”
“That’s right, she’s not— I have never actually uttered a lie to you about my— “
“My friend is not a woman at all!” Willem clarified furiously, barely remembering to keep from yelling.
“Yes he is,” the minstrel said with quiet anger. “Your choices are now to maintain the friendship or forswear it.”
“I’ll make that choice once you admit that you were deliberately disingenuous,” Willem snapped impatiently. “A lie by omission is still a lie, Jouglet. It offends me you would hide something like that from me. It is a crime against friendship.”
“And when should I have told you?” Jouglet asked in a reasonable tone, and took a step out of the corner.
Willem looked confused. “The first moment you had impure thoughts about me,” he said awkwardly.
The minstrel laughed. “That was precisely the moment that I needed most to hide it from you,” she pointed out. “I am a woman of prodigious appetites, Willem, I— “
“Don’t tell me that!” he said desperately, shaking his head as if he could toss the words out of his memory. He stood up and crossed to the outer door. “I want you to leave now. You are not welcome in my presence.”
Sudden fear made her blanch. “I’ve endangered myself revealing this to you. If Konrad or any other— “
“Your wretched secret is safe with me,” he said brusquely, looking at the floor near her feet. “What do you take me for? But leave now, for God’s sake, until I’ve recovered from this shock.”
“Are we friends?”
“Ask me tomorrow,” Willem said impatiently, still staring at the floor near her feet. He couldn’t bring his eyes to look any closer at her, even now that she was dressed again; he did not want to look at Jouglet and see a woman’s face. “Go.”
* * *
A little while later he was still pacing frantically through the rest of Konrad’s suite, as the dogs eyed him suspiciously and Charity, the hooded falcon, squawked in concern from her pedestal. Willem heard the minstrel’s musical warble waft up from the courtyard, in defiance of the croonings from the great hall. Of course it was a woman’s voice, he could hear it now— a low, husky alto, not a delicate soprano like Lienor’s, but lacking any real bass. Erec’s drunken slur joined in, a little flat, and some other voices that Willem did not recognize. There was laughter, and then eventually the only sound was mournful overwrought harp music coming from the hall windows.
He went back into his assigned room, feeling as if he might go mad. Finally, mastering his impulse to scale down the curtain wall and flee, he exited the same door from which he had ejected Jouglet and stepped onto the grand stairs that led down to the courtyard. The moon was just past half full, and the courtyard, still torchlit, smelled of spilled ale and wine, cold stone, and perhaps a little vomit.
Erec sat with a woman on his lap near the bottom of the stairway. He looked over his shoulder and smiled up at Willem. “Cousin!” he called up in a loud whisper, pleasantly and drunk. “Come down and have a drink with me! His Majesty summoned this little lady for the tournament hero to play with, but you’ve been sequestered, so I had a round with her myself. She’s got plenty of staying power if you’re up to it— there’s a convenient little place behind the kitchen cistern there.” The female figure giggled, a low giggle that was almost a purr.
“Oh,” said Willem quietly in disgust. “No, but I will join you for a drink. I’m amazed they’re still serving us, it must be after midnight.”
“For the champion? They never sleep!” Erec announced grandly and gestured toward the kitchen, where indeed a light still burned.
Willem descended the stairs and settled beside Erec and his purring burden— and then he recognized the burden. “You’re Jouglet’s friend,” he said in an accusatory voice.
Jeannette smiled suggestively. “I am everybody’s friend.”
“She’s certainly been my friend,” Erec slurred happily, with a sudden, huge yawn. “Done wonders for my French vocabulary.”
“Where’s Jouglet?” Willem demanded.
“Did you quarrel?” Erec asked, sounding as if he were falling asleep as he spoke. “He was pissy when he came from speaking with you.”
“Where is Jouglet?” Willem repeated, directing the question at Jeannette.
She shrugged. “I imagine he took himself back up to the hall.”
Willem was irrationally furious and had to take a breath before he could trust himself to speak. He glanced around the courtyard to make sure he would not be overheard, and then whispered irritably, “Oh, he took himself, did he?”
Erec was entirely uninterested in this discussion, but Jeannette sat up a little straighter on his lap, her eyes widening. “Oh,” she said softly. “Perhaps I know what you quarreled about.”
“We did not quarrel. We had a…gentlemen’s disagreement,” Willem said angrily.
Jeannette considered him, looking disappointed. She seemed about to speak to him but turned her attention very deliberately to Erec instead. “Milord,” she chirped, running fingers over his little point of wispy beard to get his wandering, sleepy attention back to her. “If a female in distress places her trust in a knight, and he casts her away from him for any reason, is that not accounted unchivalrous?”
Erec began to ponder the question, and her nearer breast, with grave concentration in the torchlight. Willem said in a quiet, wooden voice, “What if she is not in distress, what if she is simply lying?”
Her face still turned toward Erec, Jeannette answered in a low voice, “What if she is lying because she’s in distress?”
“She’s not in distress,” Willem snapped. “She has frightening control over her destiny— over many people’s destinies.”
“And that has damaged you, has it?” Jeannette asked, looking toward him, suddenly harsh. “Her machinations have ruined you, is that right? When you chastise her for duplicity, don’t forget to chastise her for bringing you here and making certain you became a hero overnight.”
I
t shocked Willem to be spoken to this way by an inferior, and for a moment he just stared at her. Erec, drunk to obliviousness, had rested his cheek on her breast and was dozing off.
“If I were like other men I would make you pay for speaking to me in that tone,” Willem informed her with quiet anger.
“If you were like other men you would be terrified of a woman’s strength,” Jeannette answered evenly. “You would cast out the most deserving one because she dared to defy your expectations of her. How admirable that you are not like other men.” She gently removed Erec’s head from her chest and gingerly got off his lap. She tried to help his inert form to a supine position on the steps. He snorted a little and made sounds that his groggy mind probably thought were intelligible words, and then he was still again.
She began to step away from the staircase, but Willem’s huge hand reached out and grabbed her wrist. She started and looked down at his hand, then back up at him.
“Why is she distressed?” he asked.
Jeannette tossed her head with contempt. “If you don’t know that, you don’t deserve to know,” she said, and broke free from his grasp. “Especially since it is right in front of your face.”
She excused herself and left. The harp had stopped. Konrad was in his room at last; the castle would soon be asleep. Willem stared up beyond the towering walls of Koenigsbourg, into the slate-grey sky, pondering Jeannette’s words and listening to the sound of his own heartbeat pounding in his throat.
* * *
Under the swollen moon, finally heading south too late to stop disaster, Marcus urged his horse into a gallop, too desperate to care that he was risking both their necks.
BOOK TWO
10
Romance
[a narrative about courtly life and forbidden, secret love]
11 July, late night
Marcus rode hard into a late-night summer thunderstorm, almost killing his horse under him, but he knew the messenger was still ahead. He did not even know why he rode— he could not keep the messenger from giving Imogen her father’s edict; his presence would not make it disappear. He had a panicked impulse to do something, and to be near her— it was irrational, and no rational thought justified it. We could elope, he thought, shuddering at the thought of the spectacularly public upheaval that would cause.
He should have stayed at court. He should have tried to poison Willem. Good God, no, not that, he was not capable of that…although he could almost entertain thoughts of poisoning the Count of Burgundy. But even that would not undo the message being sent. Perhaps find a way to have Willem castrated? Marcus laughed at himself in shock as he galloped, then found the laughter was actually sobbing. Willem was untouchable now— and anyhow, Marcus had no stomach for such things. His bad leg pained him terribly, until it finally went numb from the knee down. He had hardly stopped to sleep; sometimes he felt he slept as he rode, his balance perfect in the high-backed saddle— the former nonpareil of horsemanship from his days of active knighthood. Sometimes he dreamt that the wind-driven raindrops on his chest and face were Imogen’s sweet little hands teasing him with caresses. The only moments of relief he felt were when, in a twilight of consciousness, he half-convinced himself that possibly he had misjudged the count, that the message heading southward was benign.
* * *
12 July
Although Erec was hungover, he had an easier time facing the morning than his cousin. They both slept through mass, and Konrad told the pages to let Willem sleep through breakfast too. When the knight surfaced groggily to consciousness, he was alone in a warm, shuttered room. His mind felt as battered as his body was; he lay there a long while, thinking about the day, and the evening, before.
Toward midday, Erec entered, cheerfully shaking off raindrops, and helped his bruised cousin pull his clothes back on. They crossed through Konrad’s suite and down the spiral stairs, past the guards and into the great hall. Konrad stood to greet Willem with open arms, the smirking but ignored Paul to his left.
The hall looked subdued, with all the shutters closed against the rain, but something else was different too, some subtle alteration of the mood. It took Willem a moment to realize what it was: the entire upper half of the room was filled with mostly older men, who had beside them at the trestle tables blandly attractive younger women. As each man rose to acknowledge Willem’s entrance, he took his companion’s hand with an intimate formality.
Konrad had filled his hall with married ladies and their wealthy, aging husbands.
The collected couples, recognizing Willem as soon as he walked through the door, began to applaud and huzzah him. Willem stared in confusion.
He crossed the length of the hall, horribly self-conscious, and once before the throne, he bowed. “Your Majesty,” he said, uncomfortably aware of many ladies’ appraising eyes on his backside. “As ever I am grateful that you have invited me to join you at board.”
Konrad beamed. “I am the one who is grateful, Willem, to have a man of such character in my court. If your loyalty is half as strong as your arm, I could not ask for a better retainer. We are initiating the office of Imperial Knight, and you will be anointed the first, within the month, if you pledge yourself willingly.”
The room fell silent, and Willem’s voice caught in his throat. “I am your man, milord,” he said huskily, bowing again. “You offer me the greatest honor of my life.”
“Excellent,” Konrad said easily and slapped his hands together. “Let us say after the Assembly that convenes August first. The honorable cardinal my brother shall bless the ceremony.” He said this as if Paul were in another room. “And now dinner!”
In the confusion during the hand washing, Willem saw Jouglet eyeing him carefully from the darkness between the hearth and the exit down to the kitchen— literally hiding in the shadows. He sighed uncomfortably, then gestured once with a jerk of his head.
The minstrel delayed a moment before slipping through the overdressed and perfumed congregation. By wordless agreement they stood in line for hand washing, just behind a lady whom poets might have described as homely were she not the daughter of a duke. Willem was behind Jouglet, both looking straight ahead toward the shuttered window where a boy held a washbasin.
“I owe you an apology,” Willem said under his breath. “I deserve a better explanation from you, but my behavior last night was not gracious.”
“I took you by surprise,” Jouglet said in a clipped voice over her shoulder. “I had no right to expect any other response. Is that all? May I go?”
Willem leaned over to whisper against the dense mop of the minstrel’s hair. “Much of what is good in my life I owe to you. Not to your sex, just to you. I’m ashamed at myself for forgetting that for even half an instant.” Fumbling, he reached out very subtly between them and clasped one of Jouglet’s long-fingered hands in one of his own. “You are the truest friend I have.”
He felt Jouglet in front of him give a shudder of relief. “Even though I deceived you?” It was asked with a hint of sarcasm.
“You were not deceiving me,” Willem murmured. He released the hand, aware that half the hall was craning for a look at the great champion. “You were deceiving everyone, but that is between you and God, it is nothing particular between the two of us.” He could not see Jouglet’s face directly, but by studying a spot near her left ear, thought she might be smirking. “I must say,” he went on quietly, “that although I never would have married my sister to a jongleur, it saddens me that your flirtation was nothing but an affectation. It would hurt her pride to hear it told.”
“Then don’t tell it,” Jouglet whispered back, tensing again. “Not to her, nor to anyone.”
“I won’t.”
“Will you swear to that?” Jouglet demanded, still looking forward.
Willem frowned. “Is it so dreadful if you’re discovered?”
Jouglet made an impatient, agitated sound and began to pull out of the hand-washing line. “So you will not swear it.”
> “I swear on my sister’s chastity,” Willem whispered quickly, which stopped her. “And I swear on my own life that our friendship will be unaffected by what I know.”
“That’s impossible, but I appreciate your intention,” Jouglet said, almost too quietly for him to hear. The bony-buttocked young lady before them finished with the basin and stepped away. Jouglet moved to one side so that Willem could wash his hands beside her. Finally she looked at him, grinning a smooth Jouglet grin, instantly transformed into the cheery court entertainer who was, if not especially masculine, still wholly male in demeanor. “Let’s get you to your seat so the grand game can begin.”
“What game?”
The minstrel winked. “Come now, you haven’t figured it out? He knows you want a lady, so he’s given you a herd to choose from. To carry in your heart, to be made pure and ennobled by chaste love of. To lose your appetite over and be tormented by jealousy about. Like the poor idiot knights I sing about. Pick a rich one.”
Willem looked appalled. “This is not a seemly way to find one’s lady.”
Jouglet, tickled, reached for the rosemary-scented linen towel a girl held out. “Come now, Willem, it’s your fantasy he’s indulging here, don’t be ungracious about piddling details.”
“My fantasy?” Willem countered as he took the towel. “You’ve been on about it more than I have; I would simply like a wife.”
Jouglet made an amused gesture of dismissal. “Yes, yes, of course, in time— but first every knight needs an unattainable lady. So that when his friend the musician writes songs about him, to immortalize him, he seems properly poignant and romantic. Here is your chance to find the lady.” Ignoring the appalled expression on Willem’s face, she slipped away to the lower end of the room, chuckling with anticipation.
* * *
That meal, and that day, were among the most peculiar of Willem’s life. He saw two people when he looked across the hall at Jouglet. Sometimes he could not believe there was a woman there, but just as often he could not believe others did not see through the disguise, especially when the fiddler took to flirting with the ladies or acting cocky with the men.
Revenge of the Rose Page 19
