The Lord and Eleanor

by Lindsay Townsend

  He dared not sneer at her but his round face took on a shuttered look. “A foolish notion, a peasant belief.”

  “So you will take the spray?” Eleanor held it out.

  He brushed past her, head down, his hands tucked deep into his tunic, and the hyssop fell on the turf between them.

  * * * *

  Richard stretched in the hot, steaming barrel of water in the manor bathhouse, raising his arms above his head and cracking his finger joints one by one. It had been a good day. Eleanor had two new gowns, Freya a true doll, Alice a soft ball, Nigel a spinning top. Stephen had a wrist guard for his bow, and Isabella both red and blue ribbons.

  The traders had brought food this time also; sweet orange and lemon peel, pepper, cinnamon, and ginger. They had all eaten a little of the peel at supper and there had been no alarms over the pottage.

  Perhaps there is no threat of poison.

  Clement had even praised Eleanor’s green gown.

  “I like her new red gown best,” Richard said aloud, smacking the hot water surrounding him in sheer good humor. It is no matter, for tonight I will help her remove it.

  He broke into a lusty carol, splashing cheerfully then a shifting shadow by the threshold had him reach for his dagger and the lantern. “Hello?”

  “Richard? I was told you needed me.”

  It was Eleanor, her new shoes slipping on the beaten earth floor of the bathhouse as she hastened to close the door and walk across to him. She brought no additional lights but she did not need any. Even in this windowless chamber and by lantern light alone, she glowed.

  She wore a soft glow, true, in the lantern light, but already he could see how the good food of his manor was making her yet more lively. Her gray eyes, often dreamy like Freya’s, were now unclouded and her thin face filling out and less strained. In her green dress and gold belt and short gold veil, with her silver hair brushed and combed, rippling in waves down her narrow back, she looked like a new flower, bright as a lily.

  I want to comb her hair and have it tickle me.

  “You look well,” he said aloud. “And happy, I hope?”

  She nodded then stopped a moment, still shy of him. “Do you need me? Am I intruding?”

  He clicked his tongue and held out a hand. “Need? No, I always bathe alone but I am mightily glad to see you.” He almost asked who had sent her—helping any man bathe was servants’ work—but then he saw her rising blush and dismissed such questions. “Will you join me, El?” he teased.

  “I bathed earlier, while you were with your steward.” She brushed her new gown, smiling at it as if it were her firstborn. “Thank you for the gowns.”

  “My pleasure.”

  She spun about like an excited child, suddenly freezing into a stop. A look almost of calculation slid across her pretty face. “Would you like me to wash your back?” Her blush deepened and she bit her lower lip.

  A nervous maiden but an intrigued one. We make progress.

  “Please.” He settled more comfortably on the stool within the bathtub and leaned forward. The warrior part of him marveled at how much he trusted her but he knew he could. She was Eleanor, named for two queens and her grandmother.

  He closed his eyes as her hands flowed over his shoulders, smoothing water into the knots of muscles.

  “I watched my mother do this for my father,” she admitted.

  * * * *

  “What were Martin and Agnes like?” Richard asked, surprising Eleanor by using their given names. When she paused a moment in her massage, he opened his eyes and turned his head. “I am truly interested,” he said softly, his face as warm as the lantern flame. “As I am also about Nigel, Freya, and Alice. They are your family.” He leaned back against her stroking fingers and closed his eyes again. “Please. Tell me about a Christmas with them, or a jest, or a custom of your parents,” he prompted.

  “Father had a habit of clicking his tongue as he weeded,” Eleanor replied, finding it easy and comforting to share memories once she had started. “It would drive our mother to distraction when they worked together. One May-time she threw her shoes at him.”

  Richard gave a bark of laughter and grinned. “She sounds just like Katherine, my older sister! Once, before she married, I tied little strings of tiny bells onto her hair while she slept. She could not unpin them and our mother had to cut them out. Kate hid in the minstrels’ gallery above the great hall and emptied a slop bucket onto the top of my head in revenge, so then I later tipped frogspawn in her bed.” He shrugged, his body shifting under Eleanor’s hands. “Father beat me. I daresay I deserved it.”

  “No doubt, you horrible boy,” scolded Eleanor, admiring the lean sinews of his back afresh as her fingers kneaded his body.

  “I was a terror,” Richard agreed. “But I missed Kate badly when she married and moved north. I still do,” he added. “We write and send messages, but it is not the same.”

  “I cannot imagine being without my little ones,” Eleanor said, asking quickly to lighten their conversation, “Was your father a Richard?”

  “No, an Edward.”

  “After Longshanks?” Eleanor felt her throat burn and guessed she was blushing, for when she mentioned the former King of England, Edward the tall “Longshanks,” she thought it was also a good nickname for Richard.

  “No, after the old Saxon lord, holy Edward,” answered her companion. “My father was much like Stephen and your Nigel, a gentle man and a lover of animals. Matilda, my mother, would despair of finding the great hall in winter filled with sickly lambs, kittens, broken-winged sparrows and more.”

  “You loved him,” said Eleanor.

  Richard turned in the tub and smiled at her. “How could I not?”

  He looked so handsome, so open, that Eleanor longed to kiss him. Not brave enough—yet—to attempt so bold a move, she could not resist a tease.

  “Turn about, I have not quite finished.” She flicked water at him, her breath halting when the drops landed on his chest and trickled down to his flat stomach. If her fingers dare only follow that sparkling trail.

  “You drive as hard as a reeve,” Richard mock-grumbled, but he did as she asked and Eleanor could breathe again. “Should I call you Dickon sometimes, as you call me El?” she asked quietly, after another few moments.

  “Only if you want to be dunked in the tub. I had enough Dickons when I was a lad.”

  He twisted about, making a snatch for her wrists, but she danced away from him, out of range—or so she thought. Richard stood and lunged for her, hooking her slender waist, lifting her out of her shoes and off her feet and into his arms.

  “Ah, my gown.”

  “It will dry.” He lowered her, as if to drop her into the water.

  * * * *

  “The children! I promised them a story,” she gasped, sounding not close to tears but laughter. “You cannot soak me for that.”

  Richard wanted to dip her for quite a different reason, one connected to the way the warm water would reveal and flatter her lithe figure, but he was too gentlemanly to do so. He also did not want shoes thrown at him. “May I listen with them?” he asked.

  “But it is only a foolish thing of my own, about a curly-headed giant with dark brown hair who thinks no one loves him.” She was looking away from him as she spoke and he sensed from her description, with a candle burst of delight, that he was the inspiration for the giant.

  “Does this giant kiss?” he murmured, nipping her ear lightly between his teeth. “Or gobble?”

  “Gobble,” she murmured then tugged lightly on his chest hair. “You are also vulnerable.” To prove her point, she leaned half out of his clasp and flicked water into his face.

  She grows far bolder, my maiden. “I think you should be punished for that,” he growled against her ear and ran his wet hands up and down her back, stopping provocatively with one palm across her lower back.

  She hissed, stiffening in his arms, then said, “A giant should be able to do more.”

 
“Agreed,” he said, his body a huge ache of need and desire as he caressed her pert, round bottom and kissed her, his tongue exploring every crease and tuck of her mouth.

  She pressed herself against him, stretching her arms across his back, trying to stroke his flanks and backside.

  “I do not think you have been punished enough,” he whispered into her mouth, wishing he had three hands to circle her bottom, back and breasts. “You are so sweet.”

  “I have won then since you find me so,” she murmured, triumphant.

  Her eyes were closed, her hair trailing in the water, her hands fluttering like moths against his long, hard body as he touched her and he knew she was lost in sensation. Soon he must carry her away from the bath and lie with her on the damp floor or tip her over the side and plunge into her, but he governed himself, stood still and urged his rampant body to wait.

  She deserves more.

  He smiled and kissed her again. “For now, perhaps, but later, wench, we shall have a proper reckoning.”

  “Fire!”

  The cry was not his or hers but rather a new shout from outside the bathhouse, a warning from a man close to the edge of panic.

  “Fire!” The man yelled more, which Richard, dazed, did not catch.

  “What?” Desire still clutched him in an iron fist.

  “Richard!”

  Eleanor’s cry returned him a little to himself. He loosened his clasp and she squirmed from his arms, tumbled to the floor and snatched up two pails. He sank both into the bathwater, returned them to her and stepped clumsily from the tub. Donning his loincloth with fingers that did not feel belong to him, he marched uncomfortably to the door.

  “Where?” he yelled at a passing page armed with a sack to damp down the flames. “Where?” he bawled again.

  The page merely gawped past him at Eleanor, wide-eyed, red-cheeked with her hair half-plastered to her and her dress clinging and damp. She looked what she was, utterly desirable, and he cursed the interruption.

  “Stable!” Eleanor was running past him with the buckets, barefoot again and slopping as much water as she carried. “The stable is on fire and our lads are there. Stephen wanted to show Nigel his pony.”

  My son. Richard heard the wicked crackle of flames and sprinted for the block.

  * * * *

  By twilight the fire in the stable was finally out. Eleanor, her new dress singed and filthy with soot, dropped the buckets onto the cobbles and hugged Nigel and then Stephen, hugged them hard. “You did well to open the doors and let the horses out,” she told them, stopping as Richard strode toward her, his face grim.

  It was impossible not to stare. Dirty with smoke as he was, he was still magnificent, a giant bare-chested brute of a warrior, dressed in a loincloth and smeared with soot. He carried Isabella in the crook of one arm, Freya in the other and Alice rode on his shoulders. All three girls looked excited, as did the boys, Eleanor noted with relief.

  “What started it?” she asked him.

  “I mean to find out,” he answered, still grim. Then he gave her a swift smile. “You did well.”

  His praise made her feel worthy but she said quickly, “No more than others, I am sure.”

  Still he gazed down at her as if on the verge of saying more. His tangled hair needed combing and he had a fire-smudge on the right side of his face, close to his sword-cut scar. His eyes blazed as hard as the fire itself. For the rest of him—and Eleanor checked anxiously, praying he was not burned or injured—his long, powerful legs were streaked with sweat and water and the hairs of his chest were singed.

  When she saw the marks of flame on his body, she gave a small cry and touched him, putting her hand over his heart. “I could have lost you.”

  He shook his head, hunching his broad shoulders. “Never.”

  Still he looked at her as if he could not get enough of her. She could feel his steady heartbeat beneath her trembling fingers and wished she dared to say more.

  What? That I fear I am falling in love with you? That you are my lord and the lord of my heart?

  But you must marry again at some time and can I bear to be your mistress then, when you have a wife?

  “Carry me,” demanded Alice, snapping the tension between them as she held out her thin arms to Eleanor to be lifted down from Richard’s back.

  “Should I take the youngsters to the solar?” she asked him, swinging Alice onto her hip.

  He nodded and turned abruptly away, shouting more orders.

  * * * *

  Richard questioned and probed but found no satisfactory answers. It seemed to be an accident, a chance spark, but as with the foxglove water, he knew it was more.

  And my son could have been harmed. The thought both chilled and enraged him.

  Men and women sat in the yard, buckets by their ankles. All were weary, all had worked hard and he should say a few words of thanks and praise to them. He spotted the squire Clement, a little apart from the other squires. The young man had worked as hard as any tonight. He raised a hand to him, a salute.

  Moments later, praising his people, promising them ale from the buttery, he thought he saw Clement slipping away toward the midden but he was not sure.

  * * * *

  In the solar, Eleanor had told the story of the giant twice and was now regaled with pleas for some bread and cheese and possibly some milk.

  Backing away, grinning, her hands raised as if in self-defense, she promised them all a second supper and sped out into the great hall, sighing once at her grubby green gown and then laughing, for they were alive, including Richard. Already she could not imagine herself and the little ones without him.

  He will be here soon, as quick as he can manage. She hugged the knowledge to herself as she ran barefoot to the kitchen block. Passing a shadow by the hall doorway, she wondered why she had caught a whiff of fire smoke. She turned to check.

  And fell without a sound as Clement clubbed her from behind and hauled her away.

  Chapter Five

  Richard ran through the great hall to the solar at the back of the vast chamber. He was still dressed only in a loincloth, which he knew would scandalize Eleanor and possibly her sister Freya, though not little Alice or their brother Nigel. His own youngsters would doubtless follow the lead of the others and he was looking forward to being pleasantly tugged about and scolded. So he was startled to find all the children sitting quietly on the largest bed, their suppers untouched. Ten anxious eyes turned to him for answers.

  “Hello there. Not hungry, then, or is your sister bringing more?”

  Nigel slid from the bed and stood straight, like a sentry giving a report. “Eleanor did not bring our suppers, sir, although she had said she would. She always keeps her promises.” His large gray eyes, so like Eleanor’s, were over-bright and strained with worry. “I thought—I hoped—she was with you, sir.”

  “No.” Richard opened the door and called for his clothes, his squires and his steward. “I shall find her and bring her here.”

  Stephen was sliding off the bed now, glancing at the slimmer, taller Nigel. “Can we come, father? We like her, too.”

  Richard forced a smile. “Better for you to all pile into bed. Then you will be ready for her story, yes?”

  “But she done that already—and she has been gone an age.”

  She would never leave them so long, not willingly. Dark suspicions roosted in Richard’s mind like ill-omened crows but he smiled at Stephen, rumpled the fair locks of Nigel’s head and nodded to the girls. “Go to bed,” he repeated, his voice a thousand times more steady than he felt. “She will be with you when you wake, I promise.”

  Anxious, his heart heavy, Richard called for two of the older, more motherly maids. “Do not leave any of the children under any circumstances, for any reason,” he ordered the pair, hurrying them into the solar to stay with his youngsters. “Will someone fetch me some clothes?” he called to a lingering servant, then drew his steward out into the great hall with him. “Have you seen
Eleanor?” he asked Matthew, tugging over his head the first tunic that the servant brought to him.

  “No, sir, I thought she was with you.” Matthew coughed and gestured downward, which made Richard aware he was attempting to tie his boots onto the wrong feet.

  How long is it since any have seen her? Richard stamped his feet into the correct boots and started down the great hall, ignoring the questions from his gathering folk as he stalked for the entrance, where a squire hovered.

  “Saddle my freshest horse,” he called. “You and you, you’re the best horsemen. Come with me. Where is Clement?”

  His heart pounded harder than ever as he registered the blank faces and shaken heads.

  “I thought he was with you, my lord,” said several.

  God’s bones! Richard clapped Matthew on the shoulder. “Stay with the children,” he said. Ignoring the maid who held his cloak, he sprinted from the building.

  * * * *

  Her head throbbed and the lights behind her eyes were back. Had she overindulged in her mother’s new, strong ale?

  No, my mother is dead. Fresh grief washed over her again then a prickling sense of wrongness. I do not know where I am or how I came here.

  She almost opened her eyes but listened instead, recalling how Richard had listened in the smith’s hut for threats. She heard them, then, taut, spluttering breaths like a crock of water boiling over. Someone was watching her and trying to be quiet about it.

  A spy? No, someone with the nature of a spy.

  Sometimes, Mother, the obvious is the true.

  She clenched her suddenly clammy limbs to prevent herself from shuddering and smothered the rising cry in her throat. She knew only too well who had taken her.

  Should I pretend to be unconscious still? No, I am Eleanor, named for two queens and my grandmother. Richard would fight and strive and so must I.

  Ignoring a wave of nausea that rippled through her as she lifted her head and sat upright, she opened her eyes. “Good evening, Clement.”

  He sneered at her and did not answer.

  “Where are we?” It was dark but her spirits lifted a little as she knew the place—her own long, low-roofed home. She could hear the wind rustling in the trees, a sound familiar to her from childhood, and she recognized the cry of the blackbird that Nigel fed last winter. To her left she could just make out the dip in the earth floor where the barrels of beans had stood and to her right an old scorch mark on the wall where a lantern had exploded. Above her the roof timbers were carved with the old protective runes her father had known. She could smell the scent of the rare cinnamon her mother used at Christmas and had kept hidden in the roof thatch, away from thieves. I left it behind in case Richard sent us back here. Now I know that he never will. He cares for us more than that.