by Grace Ingram
Candlelight glimmered on matted rushes, shifting legs and tunic hems; bawdy jests and sniggers were about her, and then her captor was mounting unlit spiral stairs. Once he stumbled, and gripped harshly as she writhed. The blood was drumming in her ears and darkening her eyeballs, she could scarcely breathe, and such terror filled her that only Red Adam’s solid bones and gripping arms had reality. She kicked futilely, and he lurched against the wall and then recovered. Six strides took him to an open door, from which a pair of feet skipped nimbly aside, and he thrust through it.
For a moment he stood jerking breath into his lungs; then he grunted and kicked shut the door behind him. Sobbing in desperation as she glimpsed the bed filling most of the space, she fought frantically. He stumbled. Somehow she hooked a foot inside his knee, and they fell sideways across the bed, still locked fast. His hand fumbled at her breast, and she wrenched one arm free of the cloak, gripped a fistful of hair and tore his head back with all the strength she possessed.
He yelped and rolled from her, clutching again at her wrist. “Whash amiss?” he demanded with sottish indignation. “Don’ be ’fraid—shan’t hurt you. Have fun, you’n me. Shan’t be mean, either.” He grinned at her, his teeth gleaming in the dim light, as the crushing hold forced open her fingers and he jerked his head free. “Hushban’ won’ inner—interfere—shan’t be mean with him either.” He heaved up on his elbow, jerked her wrists together to grasp them in one long hand, and reached for the neck-lacing of her gown.
She ducked her head, sank teeth into the fleshy base of his thumb and bit until the tough skin burst and her mouth filled with salty blood. He yelped again, his hold involuntarily slackening, and she writhed free, rolled out of his cloak, off the bed and to her feet in one frantic surge of effort, wild-eyed and claw-fingered.
“Vixen!” he exclaimed reproachfully, and sprang up, still terrifyingly sure of hand and foot. The girl retreated along the bedside, casting about for a weapon. He was between her and the door, and there was no space to dodge him. He started towards her, extending arms that seemed to reach forth like a tree’s branches. She backed round the bed foot, and almost tripped over a stool.
“Don’ you wan’ fun with me?” he asked, incredulously reproachful. “Li’l vic—vix—” He followed close, and she snatched up the stool by one leg and swung it with all her strength.
The impact jarred her arm to the shoulder. He went down sideways against the bed, rolled on to his face and lay unstirring, blood bursting through his hair and puddling black in the rushes. The girl watched narrowly, the heavy stool hanging from her hand, for the space of half a dozen breaths, until his stillness convinced her that he was truly no menace. Then another terror drove her to lay a flinching hand on his back, and jerk it away in relieved loathing as soon as it lifted to a breath. She glanced wildly about her and leaped to the door.
She clawed at it, then suddenly recollected herself and drew it open enough to set an eye to the gap, peering cautiously into dusky space full of flickering shadow. Fires were banked for the night, but the glow upwelling from a few candles and torches outlined the gallery and its rail. A scuffle of movement and a drone of talk below broke to a hoarse guffaw that made her start.
She thrust the door shut on it. She was as fast a prisoner of Red Adam as ever, and she knew well what would befall her if she ventured forth from this room to be seized by the guards below, after she had cracked their lord’s head for him.
She set her back to the door, then gulped resolutely and turned to see if it could be made fast. Luck was with her. This must be a strongroom diverted from its rightful purpose to have a door at all, and a new wooden bar had been fixed, presumably to ensure privacy for Red Adam’s dubious amusements. She slammed it down with a clatter that made her catch a harsh breath, but the sprawled body by the bed had not shifted. A wall pricket above two padlocked chests bore a candle, flaring and smoking in the draft from an ill-fitting shutter.
The girl glanced about her at bed, chests, stool and candle, and then contemplated the man breathing stertorously in the filthy rushes. Her sharp chin lifted, her wide mouth tightened. She twitched the dagger from its sheath and slid it point first up her left sleeve, which marked her as a young woman of uncommon education. Still he did not stir, so next she dragged his belt from under him, passed it round the bedpost, heaved his weight on to its side so that she could bring both wrists to the post at his back, wound the leather over and under and buckled it fast, yanking the prong up to the furthest hole with vindictive fierceness. Then she plumped down on the bed and wept.
She was scrubbing the tears from her face with the skirt of her wet gown when the gallery reverberated under ill-managed feet. They halted at the door. “Hey, Adam!” an aggrieved voice bawled. “My turn—don’ take all night shwive a wench!”
“He’sh ashleep,” suggested another voice, after a hard-breathing pause.
“He’sh greedy shwine. New wench—fair sharesh. Adam! Lemme in! Fair share!” Fists pounded heavily. The bar rattled, but held.
“Ashleep,” pronounced the second voice.
A heavier thud, lower down, was followed by a squall that suggested the oak was harder than the toe assailing it. “Not fair! Greedy—”
“Fin’ ’nother wench,” the other suggested reasonably, and the feet and grumbling reeled away. The girl loosed her breath and thrust back the dagger she had shaken down her sleeve. Her heartbeats steadied. Presently she moved from the door to sit again on the bed, stiffly upright, listening fearfully. The keep settled to quiet. The candle guttered lower. Rain beat against the window shutter. Drafts probed round it, chilling her in her clammy gown so that she huddled Red Adam’s cloak about her, curling up on the embroidery-crusted scarlet bedcover. Once an over-active conscience drove her from it to lift her victim’s head, but the blood had clotted and he was breathing steadily, so she sat down again and considered more urgent matters.
Ivar was hurt. There was no knowing how badly, and she said an earnest prayer for him and another for the alewife who had defended the guest under her roof. Yet if Ivar could crawl to a horse he would be at Chivingham gate within the hour. She flinched as she imagined her uncle’s reaction to his tale and the need to rescue her, a contemplation so dismaying that she forgot she had still to be rescued. Neither sympathy nor consideration had come her way since William de Montrigord had been obliged to receive his orphan niece into his household, an obligation which, as he informed her and all within reach of his voice whenever he set eyes on her, he reckoned an intolerable imposition upon his justly-famed charity. Moreover he had openly given thanks, when Red Adam inherited Brentborough from a distant cousin, that his youngest child Sibylla was unpledged. He had even made the first advances when the young man returned north a fortnight ago. His plans were now disastrously overset, and she knew where the blame would fall, and quailed.
The rushes stirred. The heavy breathing checked. A grunt, another rustle, and a thick voice proclaimed, “Hell’s Teeth! My skull’s split!”
Julitta held her breath, her heart thudding against her ribs. The man moved more purposefully. A half-stifled groan gratified her heart. She leaned to peer at him. He blinked through the mess of hair clotted to his brow, screwed up his eyes in bewilderment, looked about him and back to her.
“How did you come here?”
“Over your shoulder,” she answered tartly. “Have you forgotten?”
He shook his head as though to clear it, winced and desisted. “I must have been soused as a pickled herring,” he commented ruefully.
“You were vilely drunk.”
“Did you crack my skull?”
“Yes.”
“With what?”
“The stool.”
“Why?”
“To save my virtue.”
“Did you really need to be so drastic?”
“Yes.”
He tried to sit up, and could not, pulling briefly against the tether. “And then you trussed me to the bedpost.”
He grinned through the crusted blood. “I concede you the victory, lass. Loose me and I’ll take you home.”
“No.”
“I’m harmless when sober, I assure you—and I’m most uncomfortably sober now.”
She scowled at him and hugged the cloak closer. The guttering candle, at its last inch, turned his streaked face into a devil’s mask, and she flinched from him. He shrugged, and grimaced.
“No woman ever could tie fast,” he declared, and fought the belt so that the bedframe shuddered. Suddenly he desisted and fell slack. “Hell’s Teeth, I’ve met her!” he gasped. Breathing jerkily, he shut his eyes, obviously assailed by the shattering headache he deserved. She hugged her knees and watched him somberly.
His eyes flicked open, staring at her in something like alarm. “You’ve addled my brains with that stool! No peasant speaks such French! Who are you?”
“Julitta de Montrigord.”
“Montrigord—Lord William’s kin? Not his daughter; that’s a rabbit-nosed yellowhead called Sibylla. The niece?”
“Yes.”
“The one the Lady Abbess tossed back to him for lack of a dower?”
“Yes.”
“The most sanctimonious she-weasel north of Humber from all I’ve heard.” He hitched himself up against the bedpost and endeavored to focus his gaze. “I own I’ve no clear recollection of what occurred, but didn’t we find you in the alehouse?”
She flushed painfully. “Yes.”
“What business had a girl of your quality there?”
“Gunhild offered me shelter while my horse was shod.”
“Didn’t some fellow—your groom, that would be—yes, I remember now.” He had the grace to flush. “We mistook you for a peasant wench.”
“And it is a noble lord’s prerogative to ravish peasant maids.”
He grinned. “My dear girl, peasant wenches of your age are never maids. They go at first flowering to some churl’s straw. Nor, when I got one to bed, did I ever find her unwilling.”
“How lavishly you must pay for their accommodation!”
“You’ve a well-filed tongue,” he commented. “But you’re dressed like a peasant. What was your uncle about, permitting you to go abroad so ill-clad and attended?”
“Particularly when he knew you were ravaging the neighborhood,” she completed sourly. “That you had better ask him when the reckoning is made. He sent me.”
With no remnant of levity he looked up into her eyes and said, “I doubt not you would sooner spit in my face than hear my apologies, demoiselle, but I offer them.”
“And account your conscience cleared?” she snapped.
“Whatever amends are possible I will make,” he promised. She scowled at him, knowing his words worthless; nothing he could do would avert her ruin. “And now, girl, do you propose to keep me all night tethered to this post like a billygoat?”
“Why not?”
He smiled wryly at that. “We’d both be more comfortably bestowed apart. Let me go, lass. I yield me captive; you have my knightly oath. Moreover I’m in no state to ravish anyone; my skull’s cleaving apart—”
“That gratifies me!”
“Vixen—And by the turmoil in my inwards I shall soon be vilely sick, which will make me even less agreeable company.”
That argument moved her more powerfully than appeal or oath. She regarded him narrowly, and judged that he spoke truth by the sheen of sweat over his brow and the greenish pallor about his mouth. Abruptly she hopped from the bed, circled warily round his legs, and wrestled with the buckle until it slipped from his wealed wrists. Then she stepped away behind the bed, her hands together at her breast in what appeared an attitude of prayer.
Red Adam sat up and rubbed his wrists. He leaned forward a moment and propped his head in his hands. Then he climbed unsteadily to his feet, with the bedpost’s help. He towered in the candlelight. He wavered to the door, and with his hand on the bar looked back at her. “You won’t need my dagger,” he told her, faintly smiling. “Bar the door and go to bed. I’ll marry you tomorrow.”
2
Julitta jerked up, roused from unexpectedly sound sleep in the most comfortable bed she had ever occupied. Someone was at the door. She twisted over in alarm, and found reassurance at sight of the bar, firm in its sockets. A repeated tapping on the other side of those admirable boards brought her from the bed. Daylight, leaking round the shutter’s edges, showed her Red Adam’s belt still looped about the bedpost. Nightmare was reality. Her garments were spread to dry over the chests. She scrambled into them.
“Lady Julitta!” A woman’s voice, softly solicitous, supplemented the tapping. At its sound all the night’s lonely terror rose from the girl’s breast in a gulping sob. She dropped back on to the bed, tears flooding. “Lady Julitta, there is nothing to fear. Will you open the door?”
She choked back the tears. She dared not trust a Brentborough woman; Red Adam might be standing by her side. Yet he had, once sober, been perversely reasonable. He had given his knightly word. Also, even those planks would not keep him out if he determined to hew them down. That resolved her. Her flesh cringed from another encounter, but she would not cower in a corner while the door was forced and be dragged out shrieking. She withdrew the dagger from under her pillow, sleeved it, clenched her teeth and jerked out the bar.
She stepped back involuntarily from a billowing blue and white embrace, and stared at a very lovely lady. “Ah, poor sweet child! Come, let me comfort you!”
She dodged ungratefully from the reaching arms. “Who are you?”
“I am chatelaine of Brentborough—Constance, the seneschal’s wife. Trust me, my child; I will keep you safe.”
Julitta wondered rather grimly how this lovely lady would fend off Red Adam if he were set on rapine; obviously last night she and all other prudent souls had retired and left their lord to his pleasures.
“You are stunned, poor child,” Lady Constance crooned, regarding her with concern. “A convent-bred innocent, so outraged!” She cast an experienced glance over the bed, whose state seemed to disconcert her. “If only he has not got you with child! You must pray to the Holy Virgin, and drink pennyroyal to promote your courses—”
“I am virgin,” Julitta declared. Lady Constance stared in amused disbelief. “I stunned him with the stool.” The skeptic smile widened. “Do you not believe me?”
“If I did, no other will,” Lady Constance said. “Think of a more likely story, child.”
“You know it’s truth! How else was his head broken?”
“A tourney champion overthrown by a maid with a stool?”
Julitta chilled. This mockery accorded ill with the lady’s protested concern. “He was drunk,” she stated.
“Drunker than ever I have seen him, if it made him clumsy.” She set a hand on Julitta’s shoulder and spoke earnestly. “Poor child, you must reconcile yourself. Naught can mend a broken maidenhead. But Lord Adam is not ungenerous, and has interest at the convent, where you must long to return. Where else but in Holy Church’s arms can your shame be covered?”
“I have no shame to cover.”
“After this outrage, surely you must wish never again to set eyes on a man. You must desire only the peace of—”
“Of the tomb?” Red Adam suggested from the doorway. “And a very fair imitation you provide, Lady Constance; so much gloom one doesn’t miss the bier.”
The lady swung about, her face darkened alarmingly.
“In with you, girl!” He shoved forward a sluttish serving wench, gaping over basin, ewer and towels, and strode to the window. The bandage about his head flashed in a streak of dusty sunlight. He heaved at the shutter. “Half the woodwork in this hold is rotten,” he commented disparagingly as it suddenly yielded, powdering him with worm-frass. Sun and wind leaped in. The rushes fluttered, the one wretched hanging flapped, and every stain on the discolored plaster showed stark.
Julitta took her first daylight look at her abductor, and surprise wide
ned her eyes. He was neither a sodden lout nor a ravening brute, but a boy; a long-shanked lad with fiery hair awry under the bandage and disarming freckles spattered across nose and cheekbones. She was not disarmed. It was less tolerable to owe her ruin to a lad’s frolic than to a scoundrel’s villainy. She scowled, resentful of his critical gaze. She was no beauty, and at this moment must appear at a deal less than her best, but that gave him no right to assess her like a horsecoper surveying a doubtful nag at Smithfield Market.
“My lord,” began Lady Constance, “if you dare jest over the outrage you have done an innocent maid—”
“The only outrage was done to my skull with a stool,” he retorted, “and I’ll amend my fault by marriage.”
“You expect this ravished child to marry such a monster, when the cloister offers her safe haven?”
“You’ll have hard work making a lass of sense refuge herself with the she-weasel. Moreover, I haven’t offered her the choice. Heart up, girl! You’ve hope of a well-dowered widowhood to sustain you, and no convent could offer that.”
“It’s a cruel jest!” Lady Constance exclaimed as he left them. She set her arm about the girl’s rigid body, offering a shoulder for her comforting. “Great lords marry lands and power, not the maids they have ravished. But depend on me to find you safety in the convent, your only shelter.”
“He meant it,” Julitta said bleakly, twisting from the maternal embrace. The ruthless daylight showed the lady was indeed of an age to be her mother; lovely yet, but twenty years past her flowering. The gold was faintly tarnished, clear lines blurring, rich curves sagging. Her solicitude somehow jarred like a misstruck string. Julitta was put in mind of those of her father’s strumpets who had made much of her, after her mother’s elopement with an Angevin knight.
