by Sue Wilson
She supposed the woman was beautiful, in a cold, austere way, possessed of a regal posture that gave her a look of acquired grace. Her pretense to nobility ended there, however. The fine samite gown, even the gold tasseled earrings, could not hide the coarseness that betrayed her humble origins.
Thea had known women who advanced themselves in carnal ways, women who haunted the taverns, willing to trade their bodies for silver or parlay their affections into a coach trip to London, women who tired of the fields or spinning or milking and sought to gain ease in the manor lord's bed. This one had that look: plump breasts spilling out of a straining bodice; thickening waist; the stale, unwashed smell of a man's body still clinging to her. The look of a wastrel who had come to her current dubious status on the merits of her once work-roughened flesh.
Now, apparently, someone had seen fit to drape her in silks and brocades and sable bedfurs. The woman draped herself in superiority and a disdainful expression.
Thea looked at her own dirtied attire and bare, mud-caked feet, feeling the days' accumulation of grime on her neck and in her uncombed hair. That she should have to endure Nottingham's concubine on this day and in this fashion was more than she could bear.
Aelwynn stepped over the pile of trash at Thea's feet, holding her yellow skirts gingerly in her hands. She glanced around the room, amber eyes skimming over the disrepair in the chamber until they came to rest on the disrepair of its occupant. She said nothing, but stood in cold hauteur as she studied Thea with a glare that missed no detail. Vermilion lips parted in a slash of a smile.
"He sent me," she announced, putting such pompous inflection into her brief explanation that Thea had no need to ask who he was. The only unanswered question was to what end the Sheriff had sent his perfumed bedmate to grace her chamber with such inspection.
Aelwynn was not quick to elaborate. She ran an ornately jeweled hand along the stone ledge of the window and examined her fingertips, clearly expecting to see them blackened with filth. When her fingers came away clean, two narrow brows winged upward, and her painted lips turned down at one corner.
"Well, there is some improvement. He says you're an orderly little thing. Went on at some length about the rows of herbs in your cottage and the precise array of all your flasks and bowls. Said you had a penchant for cleanliness." She paused, looked over Thea's stained attire, and smiled coolly. "I'll have to tell him he was wrong about that."
Thea pressed her lips together. It would accomplish nothing to inform this woman that her paramour showed a similar penchant on at least one night she could still vividly recall.
"Is there something I can help you with, Aelwynn? Some simple you require? As you see, I have no herbs or wares, but I could presume upon the guard to-"
"I require nothing!" she spat. "I am here to inquire as to your needs!"
Thea's eyes widened. Nottingham had sent his leman on an errand she definitely thought beneath her. All the more reason to be wary of the vehemence dripping through Aelwynn's words.
"You may tell the Lord Sheriff that I require nothing of him beyond basic necessities-which have, until recently, been somehow overlooked: occasional food and drink, or permission to visit the kitchen; firewood for warmth in the evening and to chase away the dampness in the air; and of course, if he truly intends to keep me here as a healer, something with which to work besides the leavings of rodents, which haven't the slightest medicinal value, to my knowledge."
"And sharp of tongue, as well." Aelwynn glanced back over her shoulder at Thea, golden eyes hooded with suspicion. "He favors that, you know...if you've a mind to spear him with it."
"I haven't."
Aelwynn swirled toward her, skirts in a buttery stir at her ankles. "No, of course you haven't. You're much too clever for that." She continued walking about the room, giving cursory examination to the rafters, now swept clean of their cobwebs, and the fireplace, emptied of ashes. When she had come full circle, she faced Thea again.
"Food, firewood, and your plants-that is the extent of your needs?"
Thea looked at Aelwynn, aware of the hidden nuance of meaning behind her question. "My freedom," she said calmly, "if he can be cosseted into a humor good enough to entertain the subject."
Aelwynn laughed, a low-throated rumble that conveyed no mirth, only dry, pitying scorn. "You lived with him a week. Did you encounter anything resembling good humor?" The smile melted from her face, and her voice dropped to a honeyed croon. "Not that I'd protest your leaving, you understand." She picked up a loose coil of Thea's hair, appraised the fine texture and rich russet color that was impossible to hide, even under a film of dust, then dropped the tress as if it displeased her. "You are, quite frankly, in the way, dear. You've already interfered in things that are none of your concern."
Thea felt her cheeks grow crimson with the insinuation, anger mixing with a sense of culpability she had not admitted, even to herself. "I've done nothing to-"
"Protest if you'd like. It's quite clear. To me, to the castle gossipmongers, to anyone privy to the sight of you together, to you, if you could strip yourself of that provincial blindness that passes for innocence. He's grown tired of me and is obviously out for fresh game."
"Then I fear the Sheriff will be disappointed. His hunt is but tedious sport to me, and I have no intention of becoming his prey."
"Your intentions are irrelevant, my dear. If Nottingham has appointed you my successor, then it is only a matter of time."
"He has appointed me his surgeon, nothing more."
"And is it a duty you perform gladly for him? Of your own accord?" Aelwynn smiled. "You see, the arrow of truth always finds its mark. And unfortunately, your choices are rather limited. As are mine. I've learned to tolerate some of his coarser habits. After all, he's an abominable creature, wouldn't you agree? Dark-haired demon, son of a Norman whore, hiding behind a facade of civilized behavior with his preference for fine wines and Spanish leather, reeking of Moorish myrrh-"
She stopped suddenly, her eyes glittering with fathomless lights, and smoothed her voice into bored nonchalance.
"Occasionally-more than occasionally-his appetite runs to...extremes, and he will reach down into the depths of the castle and drag forth some scared young thing to strut before, to intimidate. There's something about their fear, I think, that excites him...for a time. In the end, he tires of them. Sometimes after a month, or a fortnight, or the better part of an evening. After all, he's become used to willingness, and a certain level of skill."
Aelwynn's eyes peered over her narrow nose at Thea. "Word has it, however, that you are more than just some scared young thing."
Thea knew she waited for a response. She watched Aelwynn's brows draw together and her whitened face grow dark with rage when none came.
"You haven't even the sense to defend yourself, you little fool! Mark my words, his bed is mine! Yours for a night or two, if he must, but don't be mistaken. You haven't enough charms in your plants or power in your weakling love philters to claim him longer."
"I see," Thea said quietly, her gaze dropping to the floor.
It was useless to argue her innocence and utter distaste for the Sheriff's passable skills at seduction. Aelwynn had pronounced her guilty and was plainly threatened by the presence and presumed intent of the Sheriff's new surgeon. Thea told herself it should not matter, did not matter, that Aelwynn could ride the Sheriff clear to the court in London if that were their mutual ambition.
"Your freedom?" the woman was saying. "Well, let's see if that can be arranged. Is there anything else?"
Thea looked at the concubine, let silence drift about them for a moment, then spoke with utter equanimity. "Your absence from my chamber."
Aelwynn's laughter rang among the rafters. She strode to the door, negligent of the debris that caught in her yellow hem and trailed after her. "Confused about possession again, my dear? Where do you think I first lay with him?" Her eyes scanned the room, heavy-lidded with remembered satiety, then returned to T
hea.
"Do you read the runes, sweeting? No? I thought not. Your plants and gatherings by the full moon-that would be your only concession to the pagan, would it not? Never mind. I've cast for you myself."
The woman's gaze flowed over Thea, from the top of her mussed hair, along the thin, frayed wool kirtle unlaced across her breast, down the length of her legs to her bare feet.
"Enjoy him while you can," she hissed. "Your time is surprisingly short."
~*~
Nottingham heard the door to his chamber open and turned from the narrow window in time to see Gisborne escorting the last of his "evidence" from Thea's cottage. Not that it mattered. He had seen enough.
Gisborne poured himself a goblet of wine, waiting for the Sheriff to speak. He got only silence in return. "I doubt she's of a mind to confess," he said at last. "Still, there's always torture. Unless you have other reasons to prolong this game."
"She's a distraction," Nottingham replied. "Nothing more."
"I've seen distractions fall into and out of your bed in quicker time. And with less anguish on your part."
"I need her for the moment."
Gisborne frowned, stirring his hand through one the boxes. "She's a threat. To your plan, if not to you personally."
"I am not convinced of that."
"And if you are wrong?"
Nottingham turned back to the window and gazed at the dark smear of green that was Sherwood.
~*~
Thea held onto her sanity in the next few days by working hard during the day and falling into an exhausted sleep at night. While she did not abandon hope that the Sheriff might yet have a change of heart-assuming the man possessed such an organ-she was not fool enough to believe he would release he for reason other than his own whim. She prayed that at some future point the Sheriff's moods visited him with a more generous spirit.
Lord Nottingham apparently continued his recovery without incident. At least none of his men or household retinue intruded upon her with dire news of a reversal of health. Although she saw nothing of him and received no messages from his quarters, he nevertheless made his presence known.
At long last, her medicinal items and herbal stores arrived, and she suspected the Sheriff had ordered her personal belongings to be moved from her home to Nottingham Castle. While the Sheriff's soldiers had not been particularly careful in their crating of her things, Thea was overjoyed to have familiar and beloved objects around her again.
No sooner had her wares arrived that workmen, apparently commissioned by the Lord Sheriff, came to paint her stone and mortar walls with a fresh coat of lime, guaranteed to rid her chambers of the multi-legged creatures that had previously enjoyed free run of the rooms. Fresh rushes were delivered and strewn over timber floors swept and scrubbed clean. To the rushes, Thea added the more aromatic broken plants and bruised blossoms of herbs that had not made the transit intact. She scattered pennyroyal and fleabane to ensure the insects and vermin did not return; juniper and meadowsweet added their unique perfume. With the cleaning of the cesspit somewhere in the bowels of the castle, the apartment no longer reeked of foul odors, but smelled pleasantly of fresh hay and the delicate fragrance of herbs and wildflowers.
Oak cupboards and a waist-high table furnished her workroom, a chest and chair joined the bed in her sleeping chamber, and an abundance of beeswax tapers provided more light than had ever graced her humble cottage. With a slow fire burning at the hearth, Thea's suite of rooms acquired a soft, welcoming glow. She spent hours patiently sorting her seeds, arranging her bowls, mortar and pestle, and stringing up herbs along the gracefully arched rafters in her stillroom.
Thea had provided the labor that transformed her chambers, but it was clear that the Sheriff was responsible for the windfall of material goods. She knew no one who would have selected goose down over more plentiful straw with which to plump her new mattress. And who else would bestow upon her such a quantity of bed silks and furs when woolen blankets would have been as serviceable?
This latest arrival most obviously reflected Nottingham's hand. Thea ran her fingers over the pile of gowns-soft woolens in mauve and lavender, filmy silks and fine linens in every imaginable shade of blue, rich velvets in plum and royal purple, and a veritable blizzard of embroidered shifts and chemises. It did not take the worldliest of women to see that, failing to earn her esteem by imprisoning her, Nottingham was now trying to impress her with creature comforts and indulgences of a far too personal nature.
"What am I do with this?" she asked the woman who had brought the latest armful: a kirtle of midnight blue silk, ivory chemise and hose, and soft leather slippers.
"It matches your eyes, lamb," the woman said, a smile lifting her lips. "I suspect he means you to wear it."
"It wouldn't be like the Sheriff-"
"Aye, well, 'tis more than ribbons."
Thea frowned, puzzlement creasing her brows. "You're the woman from the first night, aren't you? The one who brought linens and food and asked after him."
"Aye, 'twas me. The only one brave enough, or simple-minded enough. I am Mildthryth."
"You hardly seem simple-minded, Mildthryth," Thea said with a smile.
The old woman grinned back. "Ah, lamb, 'tis a miracle to hear my name spoken by a Saxon tongue. Now the Sheriff and his friends, you'll never hear such a stew of Norman as comes from them when they're in their cups. I swear, 'tis the devil's own tongue."
Thea nodded, then held up the gown to her own worn, undyed wool tunic. "It's not that his chosen coin of payment is unwelcome," she said, trying to appear grateful, "but that is what it is, isn't it?"
"Lamb?"
"Payment. Of some sort."
"Well-"
"Or am I meant to barter with him. My freedom for a surplus of silks and satins."
The woman squeezed Thea's hand with warm, welcome familiarity. "Between you and me, for all that he is Sheriff, he has a clumsy understanding of things. He sees a thing and wants it, and is all too accustomed to being able to order it done. For all his strength of will, the man lacks something in...." She stopped, searching for the word.
"Finesse?" Thea offered.
"Aye. But he makes up for it in...."
"Intensity."
"If that means stubbornness, aye. You know him well for so brief a time in his company."
Thea fingered the silken kirtle. "I know I am his prisoner, no matter how he gilds the cage."
Mildthryth took the gown from her and began folding it. "Give him time. He's not so evil a man he won't see the wrong he's done in that. Now me, I do not hate him as others do. He took my husband, God rest his soul, into his household when Warrin's lameness made him good for naught else, and gave him easy work. And when poor Warrin died-'twas winter before last-the Sheriff let him rest in the castle's own churchyard, like a prince or a noble. Had the bishop himself say a fine funeral Mass. And kept me on afterwards, though he could just as easily have turned me out into the streets. I'd be beholden to him for that alone."
She gave the gown a deft pat and closed the lid of the chest. "Now my eyesight, 'tis not as sharp as it once was, but I'm not blind to the man's faults. And 'tis the other half of it, lamb, that he has a grievous temper and a spirit so laden with woes, he can do naught but make a tragedy for himself and those around him. His leech used to say 'twas the curse of his sign and a flood of choler that kept him so unbalanced, that there was no medicine known that was strong enough to heal him. Perhaps no magic either. Maybe 'tis true. I'm not a learned woman. But for all that he's made his enemies, his greatest war is with himself."
"It does not make his misdeeds right."
"Nay, lamb. It does not."
"And they are many."
"Aye. Legion, some say. Now what he's done to you, 'tis wrong and you've a right to your anger. I'll not defend him with my first breath. But it does seem he's seen his errors and, in his own way, is paying penance." She nodded in the direction of the full chest of gowns and looked around the now-co
mfortable room. "'Twould be better to give you back your life, but there's stubbornness in the man 'twill only let him bend so far. As I said, bide your time. Why, he's beginning to soften already."
"How?"
"He bade me bring you this message: you'll be dining with him this eve in his chamber."
CHAPTER NINE
"By the saints, I will not!" Thea protested, first to Mildthryth, who didn't hate him, who found something to admire in a man so detestable and spoke of him with unwarranted affection, then to the servant girls who brought her bath and took turns strewing the water with flower petals and giggling into cupped hands. No one seemed willing to argue the Sheriff's dinner plans.
Rage smoldered like hot coals in the pit of Thea's stomach. The man was wretched! He may have convinced his Saxon servant he'd been doing penance, but he'd not left off ordering her about, not just as to the time of her expected arrival at his door, but that she bathe-
Bathe! Damn him! Nottingham was no flowery mead himself!
-And wear a particular gown of sapphire silk.
Thea turned her back on the kirtle Mildthryth held in her arms, claiming she was "not the man's poppet," and vowing to prefer her own soiled and ragged attire to "anything his overbearing lordship had purchased with his ill-gotten fortune." The two girls who'd bathed her looked nervously at each other, and one finally confessed that the Sheriff had ordered her old clothes burned.
Thea wrapped her arms around her nakedness, having little choice, and hating him all the more for giving her none. Still, she would not give in, politely refusing Mildthryth's proffered sapphire for something-anything-else. She bore the drift of virginal white linen being pulled over her head, laces tugged at waist and wrists, and selected a rebellious kirtle of unasked-for mauve. It wasn't until she smoothed the gown into place that she realized her mistake. Not even the Sheriff's selection could have been more immodest, for this gown was cut dangerously low across her breasts, revealing three full fingers' width of the shift's lace edging.
