“Pleased, happy, and proud.” He grinned, the sun glinting on his dyed hair. “Now you will have to marry me. It would be sin, else.”
“Since when were you so concerned with sin?” She caught a lock of his hair and tugged at it. “I cannot marry you—”
With your hair that shade of red, she meant to say but was forestalled. Hugh stepped in front of her. “Horseman, over there, breaking cover from the woods. A Templar.”
Joanna’s mouth went dry with fear. “David sent out two messages?”
“Or someone has asked some clever questions in West Sarum and has tracked us.”
Joanna tried to start down the hillside but found herself blocked by Hugh. His arm was as strong and unyielding as his sword.
“He has seen us. I will speak.” He checked his dagger, testing its edge with his thumb. “That will serve. Remember, you say nothing.”
If nothing else, his unconscious arrogance irked her so much she felt too aggrieved to be afraid of the closing knight.
“You do not prefer me to snivel behind that hawthorn, my lord?” she asked. “Or perhaps await his coming and let you use me as a footstool?”
Hugh laughed. “I think I preferred you weeping.”
“You will not kill him?” she persisted, no longer fearful but still worried at this uncertain meeting, worried that Hugh had misunderstood her, and most worried at this moment for the stranger himself.
“Have no fear, mistress sour. I would not bring that trouble to Elspeth. Listen now, he is shouting something.” He held up a hand and frowned. “No, the wind takes it.” He glanced at her. “Still stubborn to be free, eh?” He lowered his arm and ran his fingers across her flank, a half-smile playing on his lips as she leaned into his caress. “We shall see.”
Somehow, with that swiftness of movement, he had come alongside her and continued to touch her even as he waved to the closing horseman. The Templar would see nothing; he would merely think them standing close, side by side. He would not see Hugh’s large hand skimming the small of her back and then dipping lower.
“Hugo! The knight!”
He cupped one cheek of her bottom, lifting her slightly so she was almost on the tips of her toes, and she had to widen her stance to keep her balance.
“We are hostage to each other,” he said, still waving.
His other hand slipped between her thighs. Even with her long skirts between her and his smoothing, questing fingers, Joanna found her sight becoming hazy, clouded by a sweet mesh of desire.
“Stop it!” she hissed, but she did not move away. Her heart leapt and hammered and the ache in her breasts was replaced by a delicious tingling. “I cannot reason!” she protested, as he lowered his waving arm and “accidentally” brushed her flank. At once her whole side flamed. “Don’t!”
This time she broke away, stumbling forward, promising herself to pay Hugh back in kind when they were alone.
“Stay back!” Hugh hollered, and for an instant she thought he meant her. Careless of the courtesies, she sank onto the hillside, putting her backside out of reach of his devious honey and bee-sting hands.
“I will attend to you later, madam,” he remarked, but she knew that he was not as calm as he sounded. She flicked a speedwell at him and made herself pay attention to the approaching stranger.
She stiffened but Hugh remained relaxed, save for the jutting front of his tunic. “Yes, he brings dogs. Did you not hear them earlier, or spot them? Or were you busy?”
Refusing to add to his conceit by replying, Joanna pushed down on the turf with her fists.
“Stay down. I swear they will not touch you.” To emphasize this point, Hugh strode forward. “To me, lads!”
He whistled and the three pounding wolfhounds yipped and flew to him, gray whirling arrows, their tails a blur of wagging. They danced about him in a tight spiral, reminding Joanna of the honeybees. She smiled at the memory, her face warming, and not only with the bright morning sun.
“Manhill!” The Templar charged, his bay horse galloping up the rolling curve of the hill like a kite tugged on a string. Whatever curse he was chanting was lost in the breeze and the harsh, high cry of a buzzard.
Joanna grabbed a fistful of flints and scrambled to her feet, but the duel was already over. Hugh ignored the dogs, ducked under the Templar’s flailing sword, and punched the horse’s head. It screamed, rearing and plunging, and Hugh yanked the man off its back. In a welter of dust he smacked the stranger to the turf and stones, stamping on his sword arm and dropping on him. As Joanna ran closer she realized he had his dagger to the man’s throat.
“And now I would know your name, sir.”
“Let me up, damn you!”
Hugh rammed a knee onto the man’s belly, leaving him to writhe and choke. “Joanna, is the horse standing?”
She did not know what to make of the question but answered at once. “It is.”
Hugh nodded and spoke to the stricken Templar. “Yours is a good bay, a fine palfrey, but no destrier. You do not wage war on a untrained horse, and you do the beast no service by using it so. Do you yield?”
“Yes, damn—”
Hugh put more of his weight onto the knight. “Do you yield, man?”
“Yes, yes!” The Templar wheezed and clutched at his chest, going very red, then pale. “Truly, your brother was right, you are the very devil in arms.”
Joanna felt no sympathy for the man. He had come and tried to attack Hugh: he deserved what he had. She peered about the grassy hill and lush water meadow below but could see no more movement. Above, only the buzzard flew and cried again, its shrill note piercing against the stranger’s gasping breaths.
“Why are you here alone?” she said. “Where are the rest of your order from Templecombe?”
The man gargled, and she said quickly to Hugh, “I pray you, my lord, to let him up, if he gives his word to be still.”
The Templar nodded, turning red in the face again. Hugh released him and stepped back, glancing into Joanna’s face and mouthing, All well?
Yes, she whispered back, and they turned as one to the stranger, who had rolled onto his side and was touching his jaw and then his shoulders and arms.
“I broke no bones of yours, man,” Hugh said, sitting cross-legged on the turf. He tilted his head to Joanna, smiling at her with his eyes while his mouth remained still. She was glad of his notice and concern, and more glad that he did not pull her down with him. She wanted no distractions now.
Sprawled on the turf as if it were a bed, the stranger broke the silence between them. “How did you know I am of Templecombe?”
“I did not,” answered Hugh, seemingly as blithe as a soaring lark, though Joanna saw the lines of tension in his neck and shoulders. “You must direct yourself to my lady.”
The knight was in no position to protest, but made his displeasure known by refusing to look at her. Addressing her with his eyes tightly closed, like a child about to count down a game of hide-and-seek, he repeated his question.
“My lord understands horses and weapons and men,” Joanna replied, wondering if she should be as peevish as this middle-aged, florid knight and lean in to give him a pinch. “He saw you riding without warhorse, helm, or armor, and he made what he would of such matters. I see writing and symbols. Your cloak is embroidered with a cross standing in a dark, low valley. The combe or valley where your order has its preceptory. Why did you attack my lord?”
That made him open his eyes. Beside her Hugh chuckled. “She is ever to the core of the matter, and you must accustom yourself.” He flipped his dagger and caught it, stroking a hound under its gray throat. “Your reason interests me, too, and your name.”
The knight looked from one to the other of them and sagged, shaking his head. When Joanna spotted his lips moving in prayer, she thought she understood.
“Did David send you a message saying his brother was bewitched?” she asked, smiling as the knight stared at her. “Nothing else would account for your folly.”
“And how do you know me?” Hugh put in. “We have never met.”
“David spoke of your skill with animals,” the knight replied, in a heavy, despairing way. “I recognized you from that.”
He said nothing more and did not give his name. Understanding him and his fear more than these latest actions of Hugh’s brother, Joanna now leaned in and touched the cross on his cloak. Gently she recited the creed, and when the knight began to echo her, she knew he had accepted her.
“I am no witch,” she said then.
“No, you are not,” said the knight. “But when I saw you at our preceptory, and later, received David’s message, I was in dread.” He sat up and extended his hand to Hugh. “I charged to draw you away, as I thought, though in truth I was not thinking clear at all. Your brother also spoke of your battle prowess. I am Sir Brian of Templecombe and Outremer. I knew David in the Holy Land.”
He and Hugh shook hands and Sir Brian went on, “A lad came to Templecombe this morning and sought me out. He did not know the message he carried: David had put it in writing on a scrap of old parchment.”
“I thought he had taken that to use in the privy.” Hugh kicked his heels into the hillside and muttered a curse Joanna had not heard from him before.
“There is more,” she said quickly. “Why did you come alone, Sir Brian? Was the message strange?”
Sir Brian nodded. He rolled his heavy head and stretched his arms above his head, seemingly glad to relax, to talk.
“I knew David in Outremer. A quiet, steady man, courteous and learned, even-tempered. I recognized the writing as his but not what was written.” He sighed. “Demons and witches. Hostages to a demon. Ancient evil clad in a loving shape. I do not recall the rest. I burned the note. But I knew I must do something, so I came to see for myself.”
“David has excelled himself this time,” Hugh muttered.
Joanna said nothing. She too had known David as learned and polite, even a little jesting in a good-natured way. When had he changed? When had imprisonment changed him? After he had been in the pit, or earlier? When had she become his enemy?
It hurt, to think of Hugh’s brother so distrustful. Had she not talked to him in the donjon, brought him news, tried to lift his spirits? Had she not given him books to read? It seemed David had forgotten all this.
Like Mercury, he is a man out only for himself. She had not thought David was like that, although she knew Mercury was. And it had been a long time since she had considered the mystery Frenchman. Was he still at Sir Yves’s castle? Did he still claim to have no memory?
“As long as he is being well fed and entertained, why not?” she muttered.
“What now?” Hugh was asking. “Do you wish to see David? You can for me—and take him back with you.” For all I care, ran the unspoken but obvious conclusion. If she had been surprised and aggrieved by David’s seeming change of heart, how much worse for Hugh, who had striven so mightily for his brother.
But Sir Brian was stretching again and slapping his legs, possibly to stir the blood, and missing all of Hugh’s bewildered hurt.
“I would see him, Sir Hugh,” he said. “He wrote word to me; he remembers me, and kindly, I hope. We could talk of our time in Outremer.”
“I think David would like that,” Joanna observed, recalling the comfort she and her father had from speaking of old times, of times when her mother was alive.
“I want to tell him, too, that not all Templars think only of gold, or of relics.” Sir Brian’s cheeks became more red: he looked as bright as a red kite. “There is also good fellowship, true companionship in arms.”
“He is fortunate to have you as his friend,” Joanna said, feeling that needed to be voiced, while Hugh jumped to his feet and whistled to the hounds as if they were his own.
“Elspeth will be surprised.” He winked at her in passing and strode off down the hill to catch the horse, leaving nothing settled between them.
Chapter 41
So he was returning to his father’s castle, with his brother. That thought, which should have been a victory, brought Hugh no pleasure. He was estranged from David, who was as remote and unfathomable as the moon these days. His father would give them no welcome, and he mistrusted Sir Brian, too. The fellow seemed honest enough, but when was that a guide? Before David turned against him and Joanna, Hugh would have said that his brother was as true as steel.
Most of all, he disliked this traveling out on the open road. Elspeth had heard nothing from West Sarum. His own men, also, had no news, but that meant nothing. It could be that the bishop was playing a new and more subtle game, one that involved the Templars. What if Bishop Thomas and that smooth bastard Sir Gaston de Marcey of Templecombe had joined forces? His own men, though seasoned, were a small, tight force. If the Templars and the bishop’s men came at them on the road, it might go hard.
Worse, Joanna was with them. He had left the other maids at Elspeth’s, and Solomon, ever sanguine, had taken over the painting of her hall, but Joanna would come. She had wished to come and in truth he wanted her with him. He wanted this nonsense of her being his mistress resolved. He wanted to kiss the top of her head as she rode before him, in her now accustomed place, but David was watching.
No grief to me, Hugh thought defiantly, and kissed her, squeezing her lightly with his legs. She briefly released her iron grip on Lucifer’s name to pat his hand and he smiled at her forced daring. She was a brave little wench: they would have doughty youngsters.
Soon, soon, I will get you alone and then I will know the truth. I have seen enough mares in foal, I will know. Once I have you stripped, I will know.
He could think no more of plots or counterplots. Daydreaming of Joanna, he let the miles slip by.
Arriving unannounced with Hugh at Castle Manhill just after midday, Joanna found SirYves at his dining table. Sitting beside him, in the place of honor, was a slim, handsome, dark-haired man she knew well, even though neither she, nor any other, could put a true name to him.
She tugged on Hugh’s sleeve but he had already leaned down to whisper, “Look who it is: Master Mercury. Looks well, does he not, for a man with no memory?”
He did indeed, Joanna agreed. Sprawling on his chair with a pale hand draped languidly about a pretty serving maid, he sported new clothes and a broad new smile: a possessive, contented smile, all dimples and teeth. He looked cared for and in control. He ordered the servers as if they were his and not Sir Yves’s.
With a pang and a certain exasperation, Joanna saw that Mercury’s fine black hair shone and waved, as Hugh’s had once done, before he daubed it with red dye.
“What is this?” demanded Sir Brian, who had entered the great hall and taken up a space beside her. On her other side was Hugh, waiting for his father to notice him. David, meanwhile, detached himself from them and sank to his knees in the herbs strewn on the floor. Snatching up a handful of rushes and meadowsweet, he buried his face amidst the heady white blossoms.
“David, attend me here,” Hugh commanded in a low growl, but Joanna doubted if his brother had even heard. She sensed that for the first time since returning from Outremer, David felt to be truly at home.
Which was a pity when his own father did not seem to recognize him. SirYves was peering at Joanna through the steam from a dish of stewed fruit of some kind, and seemed puzzled by her sudden appearance. She watched his eyes pass over her, then Hugh, then look very quickly away from David. He clicked his fingers at a page and the lad approached, clearly about to ask them who they were.
“He has very bad sight at long distance,” Hugh said, “and with my hair changed, he will doubtless not know me. And he has not seen David for two years or more.”
“Yes,” said Joanna. She understood Hugh’s need to make excuses and truly she could think of nothing else to say. “Yes, Hugh, I understand.”
“Well, I do not.” Sir Brian rocked on his feet as if he wished to hurl himself at the seated diners. “That is David’s father? Hugh’s,
too?”
Joanna felt a rush of indulgence for the older knight. His clear indignation at Sir Yves’s casual treatment made her want to laugh—it was that, or weep. “Hugh’s also,” she said softly, to make him turn to her. The page had not yet reached them through the milling servers and she thought it would be more seemly for all if the lad could whisper to the lord here that two of his sons were before him. Perhaps then Sir Yves would make a semblance of welcome.
“But I know him.” Sir Brian flicked his eyes at Mercury: for him a most discreet gesture. He looked at David, still kneeling in the rushes, and obviously decided it was better to whisper urgently to Hugh. “My lord, why did you not say that you are connected to the king?”
“King John? What mean you?” hissed Hugh.
But Joanna hushed them both. Mercury was rising from the table. He had deigned to glance at the latest supplicants to SirYves’s justice and charity and now his pale face was a little less smooth.
“Sir Brian!” he called out, strong and clear. “God’s bones, this is a blessed day! You restore me to myself! You are Sir Brian de Falaise, late of Outremer. In recognizing you, I know myself!”
“Truly, Mercury?” Sir Yves had finally risen. Clasping Mercury’s outstretched arm, he regarded him as fondly as any father might a favored son. “Your memory has at last returned?”
“It has indeed,” said Joanna and Mercury together. Joanna could almost predict his every word and gesture: the surprise, wonder, and delight. As a performance, she thought it as good as any dance.
“Finally, we come to it,” remarked Hugh, grimly. “Will he remember you and David, I wonder?”
Joanna shrugged: she thought it unlikely that Mercury would trouble to recall her, but she was mistaken. He leaped right over the dining table, almost knocking a basin of washing water flying, and ran straight to her.
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