Elspeth, twice widowed herself, returned his smile. “My boys say my red hair comes from her, and my temper.”
“You? Temper?” Hugh said, but Elspeth waved aside his flirting with a crisp “Go back to your mead cup: this is your lady’s choice. I have a veil, also, Joanna, if you would wear it. Pink as my roses. You must have a rose for your hair: it would look well against your dark tresses and skin.”
“But but your rose is so unusual: I marked it when we came in. To bloom so early is rare indeed!” Joanna was confused by this generosity, and to her horror, she was prattling on with inanities: now she even felt the prickle of water in her eyes. “Do you not want every bud for yourself?”
Elspeth continued to look at her steadily. “Hugh,” she said, without breaking eye contact, “your wolfhound needs a walk and so does my spaniel.”
At once, Hugh detached himself from the wooden wall paneling and whistled to Beowulf, scooping a shaggy, loose-limbed dog off a stool. “This creature does need something,” he mumbled. “He is all fat and hair.”
“Away!” Elspeth pointed to the door. She waited until Hugh and dogs were out of the chamber and closed it after them, waving to Henri kicking his heels in the great hall before turning back.
“Hugh heeds me because I am the age his mother would be,” she said, “but what can I do for you, my dear?”
“Forgive me for asking,” Joanna said bluntly, throwing caution to the wind, “but why do you want to help? I am a stranger.”
“Ah! You are another one like Hugh, unused to it! Wary of others, too. I saw that at the tourney.”
Joanna put her hands behind her back so Elspeth would not see her shaking fingers. “Where was this? I did not see you.”
Elspeth strolled to a couch beside a piece of weaving and picked up a spindle from the couch. She teased out the spindle wool between finger and thumb, then began to twirl her spindle weight as she spun more thread.
“I took care to stay away from those foolish girls in the wagon,” she said, spinning more thread. “Berengaria and Matilde and their kind are not for me. But to answer you fully, Joanna, I owe Hugh the life of my middle son. Hugh saved Gerald at a mêlée in Picardy and brought him home to me. Since then Hugh knows he is always welcome here; he and any one of his.”
“I am not his, not in the way you believe. Our paths run together for a space, that is all.”
“I see. Still my question remains. What may I do for you?”
Joanna glanced at her fingers. They were stained with potions again. The answer, Make me beautiful for Hugh, hovered in her mind but instead she said, “How did you guess? My grandfather was forced to convert.”
Elspeth sighed and spun more thread. “The teaching of our church is not generous to Jews, any more than it is generous to women.” She wound the thread about her spindle. “What else?”
“Lady Elspeth?”
“What else has happened to you? I see much, I dream truly of the future and I see the shadows in your eyes.”
Thoroughly disconcerted by the older woman’s uncanny directness, Joanna looked away to the window. An earthenware pot of those pink early roses shone on the deep sill and for a foolish instant she had a sense of another time, another woman, carrying a similar jug and posy to stand there.
“What was it? A lifetime of being discovered? Hunted? Moving on under cover of dark?”
Joanna felt herself sway as the memories assailed her. Before she fell, she sat down on the stone floor, making a play of studying the golden robe.
“How much does Hugh know?” Elspeth asked softly.
“The death of my mother.” The gold cloth shimmered before her eyes. “When we reached West Sarum and Bishop Thomas became our patron, my father hoped we were safe.”
She heard the snap as Elspeth placed her spindle on the floor.
“But Thomas is a greedy man who wants more and so he threatens, I presume.”
Joanna said nothing. She felt Elspeth’s hands on her shoulders.
“I will help all I can. I will help you, Joanna. For the sake of Hugh, for my grandmother who was once hunted like you, for my grandfather Thomas, who saved her, and for myself.”
Confused, Joanna raised her head.
“There is a fable that goes with this gown.” Elspeth sat down beside her. “It is said in my family that grandmother Gila put a charm on the silk: that great good fortune should come to the womenfolk in our house if we loaned or gifted the gown to another, a woman who was in greatest need herself.”
She smiled, showing a chipped front tooth. “I have a mind for some good luck, so I will gift the gown to you. I know you have need, for I can see it. Forgive me for being blunt, but I sense, too, that you have little time to waste.”
She rose to her feet and clapped her hands. At once two pages almost fell into the solar in their haste to obey.
“The lady will bathe here. Tell my maids to come in and the menfolk to keep out.”
“Including Hugh?” Joanna asked as the lads hurried off, bright in their tunics of blue and red, like a pair of hungry kingfishers.
“Hugh will wait with the rest, or answer to me.”
The lady Elspeth held open the door for her maids to carry the bathtub out into the great hall, for anyone else to use it if they wished. She nodded to Hugh and Henri, playing dice on the high table. “You may go in now.”
“Find the others and tell them to be ready,” Hugh told Henri. He was tired of loitering about like a courtier at King John’s court. He wanted them to be away to Templecombe, to gird the warrior knights at their own tilting ground.
“Softly, Hugh,” Elspeth warned as he strode toward her. “The lady is as balanced as an angel on a pin, but without an angel’s wings.”
“Hmm.” Sometimes Hugh thought Elspeth spoke the greatest nonsense, but she glowered at him, so he tried. “I will do my best.”
She stood aside and he stalked into the solar.
Joanna has done it. She has turned herself into gold, was his first thought. She shimmered in gold, in a gown that scooped low over her bosom, flared over her hips, nipped about her waist. She held out her hand to him and her arm spilled gold in a rustling whisper. She was the beautiful still point in a river of gold, her face and eyes gleaming.
“My lady.” Never had he meant it more profoundly.
“I am still your alchemist,” said the glittering figure. “See? I wear my belt with tassels. Lady Elspeth found me a replacement tassel.”
Somehow that absurd human detail was enough to make it possible for him to touch her. He kissed her fingertips, bowing low over her hand. “Unstained for once,” he remarked, knowing this would irk her.
“As you say.” She was calm: he wondered for a wild instant if she were laced so tight that she had to keep her cool. He missed the golden net for her hair: he liked the contrast; the bright threads against the dark. But the billowing long veil, pink as sunset, was pretty. He was torn between wishing to set her on a dais and adore her, and tug her into his arms.
“Should we not be going? I heard you ordering Henri.”
“We have time.”
She looked as puzzled as a bewildered angel and he pounced, catching her against him. She felt softer than flower petals and both warm and cool; a trick of the woman and the silk.
“Harem girl,” he whispered, and kissed her, grinning as she lanced her tongue into his mouth, jousting with him for a delicious moment, until it seemed she came to her wits.
“We cannot do this here!” she hissed, squirming to pull back from him.
“We can if we are quick,” he whispered in return, gathering her still more snugly. “Henri has gone for the men, and the lady to her kitchen.”
She stared at him, and then a fierce, determined expression came over her slim face. Next instance, she was dragging him away from the window, whispering as they both tripped on a wolf-skin rug, “Here, then, stand here, by the door. It opens inward, so we shall have warning.” She kicked the rug aside.
He was now blocking the door and she was unbuckling his belt. He seized her silken skirts and billowed them upward, his fingers entering her an instant later and then himself.
“Ooof!” She closed her eyes, her face flushing with fresh pleasure.
“Harem girl, harem girl.” He kissed her as he thrust deep within her, laughing as the door creaked behind them. Grabbing her hips he pounded harder, feeling the pleasure explosion building steeply in his loins.
“Hugo!” In her bliss she bucked in his arms, her feet leaving the stone flags as he rode her, her cries becoming sharper, higher. Driving his tongue into her mouth, he tasted her orgasm as she yielded utterly, her throbbing parts more lush and luxurious than any silk.
“Mine!” His own force rushed through him, speeding into her. The door shuddered and the world rocked about them and he did not care. He was master of all and Joanna was his, his own harem girl, overwhelmed in his arms.
“Are you well?” he asked later, brushing down her skirts.
She gave him a sweet, dreamy smile. “I am, lord. Very.”
She looked better than well: she was a placid, languid angel with crumpled golden wings, and, madly, he found his desire stirring again.
Which was impossible. They were just in time as it was, for as he guided her back from the door, Henri pounded back into the great hall, shouting, “We are ready, sir! All done!”
Chapter 27
Joanna rode with Hugh pillion behind her. She tried to think of the Templars, of their meeting with the order, but was distracted and undone by pure sensation. The silk dress seemed to have stimulated her to more passion. All she could think of was when she and Hugh would join again in love.
Perhaps the gown is bewitched, she thought, her hips and the space between her thighs tingling as the silk slid against her like Hugo’s tongue and the galloping of Lucifer jolted deep inside her.
What if we are making children by this lovemaking? she asked herself, but then all she could think of were youngsters with black hair and blue eyes; strong sons and clever daughters. She would teach them to read. She must teach Hugo to read and reward his progress with kisses.
“Is the sun too hot for you, Joanna? We can stop.”
She could hear the need in his voice and feel it, hard as a saddle pommel, against her buttocks. A daydream of lust flared through her but she managed to croak, “We have no more time. We must reach Templecombe today.”
Hugh kissed the top of her head. “We are already within sight of the combe, as you would know if your eyes were as strong as your heart.”
She jabbed at his rock-hard thigh with her fingers. “Instead of taunting, my knight, why not send your men ahead as messengers?”
Then they would be alone, she was about to add, but Hugh was already shouting orders and the road was suddenly filled with dust and flying stones as the troop galloped away. She felt the ground shuddering and then all became still, a thread of birdsong the only break in the silence.
“There.” Hugh pointed to a small wicker enclosure off the road; a place where herdsmen kept animals in times of winter flooding. Leaning down from his horse, he untied the hurdle gate and urged Lucifer inside. The stallion whickered softly, then bent his head to a mound of windfall crab apples, clearly left in the pen as fodder.
“Eat all those, boy, and you will be ill,” Hugh warned, sliding off the horse’s back and leading him away from the tempting pile. He tethered Lucifer by a hawthorn bush and swiftly gathered the horse a few apples and more grass and hay from the surrounding hedgerow.
Joanna looked about. They were in a hollow of landscape and the spring sun was very warm. Above her the sky was as blue as a sparrow’s egg, threaded through with a latticework of branches from a stand of wild cherries, apples, and black poplars.
The pen, bordered by sturdy wicker hurdles, was filled with packed-down sheep dung, but there was a smooth round oval of stone beneath an old, cracked apple tree whose blossoms were just starting to wilt. Hugh swept his cloak over the boulder.
“We are hidden by the tree,” he said as she alighted from the horse. “You are becoming more nimble at that. Soon you will be riding alone.”
Joanna shook her head. “Truly, have we time? Will the Templar Knights not be looking for us, as soon as your men tell them we are coming?”
Hugh shrugged. “No grief to me. I will say Lucifer cast a shoe.”
“But to lie to men in holy orders!”
His blue eyes flashed black for an instant. “Why not? They do naught for David, though they are but a two-day journey or less from West Sarum! I think to lie is no sin.”
Her previous desire was giving way to scruples and hesitation. “We are on a road.”
“We are off a road and under a tree.” He caught her round the middle and drew her close, unwinding her from her travel cloak. “It is too warm for this when you are not riding, and I wish to see you in your pretty gown by sunlight.”
She knew by the glint in his eye he meant more than looking. “Hugh, someone may come.”
“At this hour, so close to noon? I think not. All folk will be at their board and dining tables.” He let her go, stepped back, and motioned with his fingers. “Do a curtsy for me, sweet. I like the way you rustle as you move.”
“You are wild,” she remonstrated, although in truth it was balm to her, to be admired and yes, to be, lusted over. Thomas had lost interest in her almost as soon as he had plundered her virginity. Hugh seemed to want her still, as urgently as she desired him.
Flattered, she spread her golden skirts and swept as low as if he was King John.
“Hey, hey, you will get dirt on your gown.” Hugh clasped her elbows and drew her up to his lips for a swift, tickling kiss. “A lady never bows so far, ’tis her knight that should be grateful.”
He cupped her bottom in one of his large hands and tongued her ear close to where her veil was pinned. His act pulsed through her like a shower of sparks.
“I am always grateful.”
He traced the length of her thigh with his fingers and the furnace between her thighs glowed hot in answer. She touched him in return, running a hand across his flanks, wishing she could undo his clothes as easily as he always seemed to undo hers.
“My lady.”
He kissed the side of her neck.
“Always my lady.” Abruptly, he moved sideways and she lost her footing as he coiled a muscular arm about her waist. Before he could guess what he was about, he plucked her from the churned-up earth and sheep dung.
“Hugo!” Her arms flailing, she tried to beat his legs, but he ignored her protests, upending her further so her bottom was raised and her head down.
“Such a juicy little rump, tilted at me. I have a mind to enjoy you this way. A lush pleasure for both of us, I warrant.”
His other hand dived under her gown and his fingers kneaded her bottom. Dizzy with sensation, she closed her eyes and now she felt the boulder warm beneath her belly. She was draped over the round stone, her face nestled in Hugh’s cloak. He had put his cloak over the boulder, she realized, as his fingers pleasured her still more intimately, skimming gently through her folds as a bee might rumple through the heart of a flower. He had planned this.
“Ravisher!” she managed to spit at him, but he chuckled, fingering her more until she mewed with pleasure.
“No other lady but you, Joanna. You give my fancy flight. Hell’s teeth, but you are delectable! Such a pink, round—”
He came into her then, fiercely and strongly, and her last scruple, of being seen, was gone. The golden gown seemed to pillow them both and for an instant she had again a sense of a different time: another knight and his lady had joined in this way, blessed by silk and sunshine.
Chapter 28
She was quiet now, his lady alchemist. Going at a slow canter across a low, wide valley filled with scattered trees, meadowlands, and sheep, he suspected that she dozed in his arms and was pleased, feeling very proud of himself.
“I can see smoke,” Joanna announced, checking the pinning of her veil with one hand while the other gripped Lucifer’s black mane with a vengeance. “What can I hear?”
They were riding toward the main road along a track boarded by an blooming apple orchard on one side and a vast plot of vines on the other. The rows of vines on sunlit slope were being tended by two crouching figures in drab homespun. These gardeners made no sound but the ground thundered like a struck drum.
“Knights, practicing gallops and charges,” Hugh explained, his blood stirring at the familiar sounds. This was a male world, a world of charge and thrust, a world he understood.
He almost rumpled Joanna’s hair but thought better of it. “When we pass this hedge and turn onto the road, you will see them.”
“More horses,” said Joanna, in tones of such disgust he almost laughed, but scraped the lees of his memory instead, recalling the dregs of a single visit here, years ago with David.
He must never forget that David was imprisoned, when by rights his brother should be here, riding with his brother knights.
“There is a handsome church,” he added, choking back the useless, black anger that smothered him whenever he thought of David at West Sarum. “And an abbey across the valley and stream.”
Mother of God, I sound like a doting father or husband, pointing out what I know will please her.
He spurred Lucifer and the great horse responded, pricking back his ears and swinging round the corner onto the main road, almost colliding with a great iron-wheeled cart, dragged by mules, that lumbered up the slope toward the middle of the settlement. Smoothly speeding past the cart, Hugh heard the curses of the mule driver as he was struck by a shower of muddy clods from the churned-up road.
He grinned. “One back for the traveler. Those iron carts are a devil.”
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