“Jaufre,” she said, but it was almost more of a growl, and she brought him down again and inside her. He held very still, weight on his elbows, looking at her. She could feel him inside her belly, inside her veins, inside the blood pumping through them. She felt hot all over and cold all over and hot all over again. She wanted more. There was more and she would have it. She raised her legs and wrapped them around his waist, and catching and keeping his eyes, she raised her hips, driving him all the way inside. She pulled back, slowly, agonizingly, and he groaned and closed his eyes. “Johanna. Don’t. Don’t—”
She grabbed his hair in both fists and said, “Look at me. Look at me!” She pulled him inside her again, and now he took up the motion, slowly, steadily, watching her, wallowing in her, rejoicing as she reached for her pleasure.
“Wait,” he said.
“You wait,” she said.
“Not yet,” he said, “no, Johanna, not yet, not yet—”
He thrust forward for what he was afraid would be the last time and felt her clamp down on him and arch beneath him and heard her cry out his name, and for the very brief space of time granted to him before he followed, he thrilled to the knowledge that it was him giving her that much pleasure.
She felt the base of her spine melt in a burning rush and heard him call her name in a half-shout, half-groan, and felt a rush of power that he had wanted her so much and had waited so long and that it was so very good for both of them.
They lay together, a messy, sweaty tangle of repletion, and watched the moon travel a little farther across the night sky, as the sea chuckled and gurgled against the rocks below, as if nothing special had happened here on this little patch of grass. She smiled to herself.
When he got his breath back he raised his head to look at her. Her eyes were closed and there was a smile on her face. “All good?”
Her smile widened and she opened her eyes and looked at him, a goddess in the moonlight. “All great.”
He dropped back with a relieved sigh. “I was afraid I was going to have all the finesse of North Wind at stud.”
“You didn’t,” she said, “but we can work on that.”
The next morning Shasha took one look at them and brewed Johanna a cup of her special tea, the same tea she had served her when Johanna went to Edyk. “It’s not a guarantee, you understand,” she said, “but it works with most women most of the time.” When Johanna only smiled she said anxiously, “You understand that what you’re doing is what makes babies, don’t you, Johanna?”
Johanna burst out laughing.
17
England, Summer, 1326
It was a golden summer. Everywhere they travelled in England, people remarked on it. At every village and town, people paused from their work to stand and bask in the sun, as if they were afraid that it would wink out in the next moment. “Forty years of wet misery had we,” one Devonshire farmer told them. His broad face was creased with an almost personal resentment. “Bad harvests. No harvests. People eating each other they be so hungry. The winter snow bury the county for months, and the summers the rain come down like it be poured out of a pitcher that never emptied.” He closed his eyes and raised his face again to the sunshine. “This be back now. For a while now, maybe. We be enjoying it while we can.”
When they weren’t drinking in the rays of the resurrected sun the English were toiling in their fields, sowing grain and corn, pruning and espaliering fruit trees, working night soil between rows of vegetables and across fallow fields, pitching every spare scrap of food to the pigs and the chickens, frantic to make up for the previous hungry years, and constantly terrified that the sun would leave again and the rain return and all their work go for naught.
The halcyon weather was of far more interest than the royal to-ing and fro-ing across the Channel and the countryside, but one thing was abundantly clear across all levels of society. The English felt they had been taxed beyond endurance, and what was worse, to no purpose. Such careful inquiries as to more profitable markets for wool that Jaufre felt safe enough to make were greeted everywhere with interest, if not outright enthusiasm. Further, many of the people he spoke to lay blame for a generation’s worth of drought, flood and famine squarely on the doorstep of the ruling family, whose fraternal disorder since the reign of Edward Longshanks had clearly roused the wrath of God Himself. God had visited His displeasure upon the English with forty years of drought, flood, blizzards and famine, and defeat after defeat in the continual war with the Scots culminating in the shameful battle of Bannockburn. Everyone, it seemed, had a brother or a son or a nephew killed at Bannockburn, and what had they died for, indeed, when ever since the bloody Scots raided the border at their whim?
The eating away of Plantagenet properties on the continent by the French was also an issue. Everyone knew how vastly inferior the French forces were to the English. There could be no other explanation than God’s personal displeasure. To be taxed for war was duty owed to the king, this was understood. But to be taxed for losing foreign wars on every border and front (and now those thrice bedamned Glendowers were stirring in Wales), to be taxed for wars the English lords were fighting against each other, domestic disputes that led only to more domestic disputes and to the turning of good English fields into abattoirs, this was not so well understood, or so well tolerated. It was in many cases resented enough to create discontent among even the lowest laborers in the fields. It was as yet only a rumble, as examples of rumbling rotted in cages hung from every city gate and castle wall and crossroads post, but it was there if you listened for it. The royal family and the noble families clearly did not bother to listen, and that unconcern caused equal discontent.
But, meanwhile, the sun shone down, and the rain fell in plentiful amounts it seemed only after nightfall, and seemed always to end before dawn. Given this kind of encouragement it was no wonder the land responded. Never had Wu Company seen such a lushly growing countryside, such greenly growing fields, such a profusion of wildflowers. Every ewe had a lamb and often two, every cow a calf, and the amount of chicks in every farm yard was a hazard to navigation. Nor were they alone in marveling at the pastoral scene set before them, because there were English adults living who had seen nothing like it before in their lives, and who could not help but gaze about themselves in wonder.
Jaufre was aware that his own happiness at loving and being loved by the object of his affections colored his perception of everything he looked at, but he tried, he truly tried to look at his surroundings with a merchant trader’s clear, practical eye. Was it his fault that all of England looked as if it had been dusted with gilt?
They made love everywhere they could find a moment to themselves, in a hayloft, behind a barn, one memorable time in a lord’s solar, on the lord’s very bed, while the rest of the troupe entertained the lord and his household in the great hall below. “We could probably be beheaded for this,” Johanna said, flushed and scrambling into her clothes.
“Only if we get caught,” Jaufre said, snatching a kiss.
Tregloyne had been correct in that a troupe of traveling minstrels would be welcome everywhere. No farmer was so anxious over his crops in this extraordinary year that he could not bring his family into the village for an evening’s entertainment. No city burgher was so concerned over the price of pepper that he would allow his neighbors and fellow merchants to attend such an event without him, and possibly from his absence infer that his business was so fragile it required his constant presence. The ladies of the wealthy and the nobility heard their servants speak of the wonderful singing troupe, some members of which had come from as far away as Cathay and Persia, and summoned them for command performances in their halls. Firas with his scimitar, Shasha with her tip-tilted eyes, Hari in his yellow robes, Alma and Hayat with their groomed beauty, Tiphaine with her tumbling curls and juggling fountains, even tall, spare, aloof Alaric, these would all have been oddities had they been traveling on their own, to be regarded with circumspection and treated with ca
ution. In company with Jaufre and Johanna, the young lovers, they were romantic and mysterious but not dangerous.
The one snag was the languages, which seemed to change by the league. Even their facile ears and nimble tongues were put to the test in the battle between Cornish and Devon and Welsh and whatever it was they spoke on the English side of the Welsh border, where even Johanna admitted defeat. Fortunately, almost everyone spoke French in some fashion, from baron to freeman and even a few villeins, and on the rare occasion when they did meet with total incomprehension a translator could always be found.
And, Johanna discovered to her and North Wind’s immense gratification, not only were the English vitally interested in horse racing, there seemed to be a racetrack outside every major town. The stallion took on all challengers with enthusiasm. He hadn’t raced since Milano and he was eager to stretch his legs and show these inferior English nags the speed a horse with his august lineage considered a winning pace. Gentlemen arrived in groups to inspect him, and to arrange more races for him, and to make appointments for their mares. Some of the mighty were so enraptured that they might have been inclined to exercise droit du cheval, had Johanna not been so very obliging about renting him out to stud, and had North Wind not himself held such decided opinions on allowing anyone other than Johanna on his back.
They traveled first to Launceston, where they held their first performance at the livestock fair. From there they went east to Exeter, where they were lucky enough to encounter a fair whose grounds had a stage for rent. From Exeter they went north to Bristol, a seaport with as much bustle as Venice, which boasted a healthy shipbuilding industry and an energetic wool trade, and where the amount and variety of seafood outran their experience even of Venice. “Our competition,” Firas said, from where they stood watching the loading and unloading of ships at very nearly a run, with more ships lined up in the channel waiting for their turn.
Jaufre grinned. “No. Pretty soon we’ll be their competition.”
North of Bristol they detoured around Berkeley, where they had heard the castle was being sacked by one of the Despensers, a king’s favorite. This detour brought them deep into the Cotswolds, a farming shire whose cottages were built of a uniform golden stone cut into perfectly square blocks. When they saw the first one Alaric murmur something to himself and went forward to examine the wall of the cottage.
They dismounted. “What is it, Alaric?” Jaufre said.
“Wilmot’s father did work like this,” the Templar said, running his fingers down the impossibly straight lines and angled corners of the stones. “There is no mortar, do you see? It would take a mangonel to break down this wall.”
A farmwife came to the door, her children peering from behind her skirts, but when she saw the party had women in it she relaxed. She spoke enough French to invite them to water their mounts at the horse trough that was a feature of every farmhouse they passed and asked if they would like a meal of bread and cheese and radishes, with fresh fruit to follow. It was late in the day and soon her husband and her eldest son came in from the fields and they were invited to camp near the house. His name was John and hers was Mary and they were happy to share their dinner pottage, and in gratitude for their hospitality Johanna staged an impromptu performance, signaling Tiphaine to bring out her rag balls. Alma produced her charcoal and a precious piece of her stock of parchment to make a sketch of the entire family which was much admired. Firas and Alaric staged a fierce mock duel and of course then the eldest son had to hold the sword of the victor, which of course required instruction, and then Hayat gave the children a ride on the Arabian she had been riding since they’d stolen him out of Sheik Mohammed’s stables.
They were seen off with thanks the following morning, and they rejoined the road at Tewkesbury, where they tarried for a week at the behest of the local lord, who had taken a fancy to having every mare in his stables who might be even peripherally interested topped by North Wind, and then left for Birmingham, which rivaled Bristol for size and was a city of artisans and craftsmen, boasting products from the hands of the finest wood workers any of them had ever seen. Jaufre was tempted to switch cargoes, but as Shasha pointed out, fleeces could be folded flat and bound together many to a bundle, whereas chairs and chests manifestly could not.
From there they went west, deep into a verdant country of forested hills and rolling farmland, where every second person they met was a grazier, a farmer of sheep. Jaufre’s knowledge about wool grew exponentially, and he bored everyone at dinner on the best breeds to produce the finest fleece to be spun into the best wool fabrics. They avoided Ludlow, Shropshire’s largest town, as it belonged to the Mortimers and Roger Mortimer was reputed to be Queen Isabella’s lover and about to aid her in invading England. The Despenser sacking Berkeley could easily make Ludlow Castle his next stop. The members of Wu Company did wonder if the impending civil upset would interfere in a major way with commerce, but after forty years of internecine warfare the English themselves were inured to the prospect. “They always be fighting,” one grazier said with a dismissive wave of his hand, “but they always be needing clothes to wear and food to eat, too, and I don’t see no fine lady milking her own cow or no fine lord tending his own sheep.”
Thus far they had avoided any encounters with the warring factions, although there was rumor and conjecture on every tongue. Alaric especially was avid for all the news he could get. All knew that Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer, in company with her son, Edward, the Duke of Aquitaine and the heir to the throne had gathered together on the shores of Holland, together with a group of Dutch and German mercenaries, prefatory to invading England and wresting the crown from the king’s head. Another rumor had it that Charles of France was mustering his own invasion force from Normandy, although Alaric let out a mighty snort when he heard that. Throughout the summer one force or the other was held to be landing at, alternatively, Portsmouth, Hastings, and Dover, with a critical minority holding out for London itself.
As to which of the factions should win, no one would commit themselves, high or low, city or country. It was agreed that Edward had been an ineffectual king with a dangerous predilection for all the wrong friends. However, no one thought—or said out loud—that Isabella and Mortimer could manage the kingdom any better. “They be taking the coin out of the land as fast as ever they could, whoever they be,” said a farmer outside of Worcester, “and putting none of it back in again. It make no matter to us which royal ass sits on a throne in London.” There were grave nods from his friends, one of whom went so far as to spit and say, “Most of them know not even which way is west,” which raised a laugh.
There was a faint hope that Edward’s heir, the duke of Aquitaine, might be an improvement over either, but he was only a boy, thirteen or fourteen, wasn’t it? He would be surrounded by those same lords who had bankrupted the nation with their petty jealousies and revenges until his majority, or until he gathered together enough powerful lords of his own to oust the old ones, and then it all started over again.
“These folk hold no illusions about their overlords,” Firas said one evening.
Alaric opened his mouth to say something, and closed it again. Johanna saw, and wondered what he had been about to say, and why he had thought better of it.
They reached Bristol again in mid-September, and were still there when they heard that Isabella and Mortimer’s forces had landed at Orwell in Suffolk. They had intended to move on the next day to Glynnow by way of Plymouth this time, but they waited instead to hear the news. A few days later it came with a group of men under arms, who told them that London and many of the larger cities were in a state of anarchy, everyone in a panic and no one in authority. The king was said to be in flight into the west before the march of Isabella’s army, much enlarged by English nobles defecting to Isabella’s side. He was expected momentarily in Bristol itself, and the troop of men stationed here, led by one Lord Dundry, were king’s men, and were there to meet him.
Shasha bega
n packing immediately, but even all of them working together couldn’t outpace a king in full flight and they were coming up on Bristol’s south gate just as the royal party clattered through. The heavy wooden gates shut behind them and the bars thudded into their brackets with finality.
The royal party was a pitifully small group of men. The king rode at their center, barely visible over the heads and shoulders of the rest of them, but the roar of the crowd said he was there. Jaufre swore beneath his breath. Johanna squeezed his hand. “It’s all right,” she said in a low voice. “We don’t know any of these people, we’ll just—”
“Wilmot!”
It was Alaric, shouting out the name.
A stocky man in full armor, mounted on a destrier, swiveled his head as much as he could. “Alaric? God’s nightgown, Alaric is that you?”
Alaric bounded forward and practically yanked the man from his saddle, and then they were both pounding each other on the back, tears streaming down their cheeks.
“Wilmot,” Alaric said, choking over his and still pounding his friend on the back, although the other man’s armor must have hurt his hand. “I saw Gilbert in Sant’ Alberto. He said you were in Chartres. I looked for you there.”
“I was there,” Wilmot said, disengaging himself and giving a hitch to his cuirass. He looked around and waved at someone in the men surrounding the king. They clattered on without him, and Alaric led the way back to their inn, where Shasha was just in time to reclaim their room.
They commandeered the largest table in the common room and ordered food and drink. “Why did you leave Chartres?” Alaric said. “Gilbert said that you intended to go there and take up your father’s trade.”
“I went there,” Wilmot said, and paused. He was a stocky man with a thick neck and heavily muscled arms that tested the sleeves of his tunic. “I went to the cathedral, and prayed.”
Jaufre was watching Alaric, who was wholly enthralled, intent on Wilmot’s every word. “Yes?”
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