Wicked

by Jill Barnett

  At that, Edith was quiet.

  Too quiet for Sofia. Edith was her true friend and her sudden silence bothered Sofia in a way she was not comfortable with. A little nagging voice of doubt flickered through her mind. “Edward knows I would do something horrid. Have I not been able to outwit every man Edward has tried to thrust upon me?”

  Edith gave Sofia an odd look and said softly, “I think that someday you will meet a man who is quicker witted than you. Someone who will not run from your schemes and jibes.”

  “Good, then at least I will not be plagued by boredom.” But she did not say what she was feeling, that she knew the truth: that men left you.

  “Perhaps you should have wed Lord Geoffrey,” Edith was saying. “He is very wealthy.”

  “Lord Geoffrey is dull as toast. He is not someone I could ever love, Edith.” Her voice trailed off and she looked at her friend and confessed, “With every suitor, I would try to imagine being in his arms. Being kissed and held. But I could never imagine being with any man without wanting to think of something, anything else.”

  “But you keep claiming that you will make your own destiny. Could you not make it as easily with someone who wants only you, someone like Lord Geoffrey?”

  She shook her head. “If I ever wed—and I am not saying I shall—I want excitement in my marriage.”

  Edith stared at her as if she had grown another head.

  “What is wrong with that? My life is quiet enough now. I could never abide it if my marriage were just as dull. I would rather become a nun.” She paused, then added, more to herself than to her friend, “Except Edward says they will not take me as a novice in any convent in the country.”

  Edith covered her mouth with a hand and tried to stifle a giggle.

  “Just what has you so amused?”

  “What you said.” Edith kept laughing.

  “I do not find it one bit amusing that I should want some excitement in my life.”

  Edith kept laughing.

  Sofia frowned at her, then planted her hands on her hips, tapped her foot and awaited an answer while Edith was in fits of silly laughter.

  “First of all you cannot become a nun,” Edith said, swallowing her laughter. “The Church could not take it. And you must know the King would never let your huge dowry go to the Church. And finally and most importantly, no marriage of yours would ever be dull. Not with you, Sofie. It wouldn’t dare!”

  “You sound like Eleanor,” Sofia said with disgust.

  “Good.” Edith looked delighted. “That is a fine thing. I would love to be exactly like the Queen.”

  Not Sofia. She would never want to be like the Queen, having to be wed to such a monster. “The man I marry willingly will have to be a knight. Brave and true.” She cast her face toward the sky and a face came to mind so swiftly it almost took her breath away. “A man with hair as black as sin and shoulders as broad as the drawbridge. He must be tall. Assured. Strong.” Her chin still high, she looked back at her friend. “I would accept no less than a great warrior.”

  “Men of war have hard hearts. Some of the women say that those men carry their battles into the bedchamber. Many beat their wives.”

  Sofia searched the crowd, still looking for that black hair, those same broad shoulders and assured expression, adding blithely, “If my husband beat me, I’d cut out his heart and feed it to the castle pigs.”

  Edith tapped her on the shoulder, frowning. “Are you certain you are not looking for someone?”

  “Edith.” Sofia stopped. “Tell me this. Who would I be looking for? You are here.” Sofia nodded at her, then plopped her palm on her own chest and shrugged her shoulders. “I am here. There is no one else who interests me.” She waved a hand through the air with more drama than the actor who had played Saint Peter. “Come, now. There is the boom. See?” Sofia pointed toward a palm tree-emblazoned banner that was flying above the heads of the crowd. She grabbed Edith’s hand and pulled her along.

  The seller’s boom was small, merely a tent with poles and a table. But it was richly draped in fine Turkish fabric of scarlet with saffron-gold threads and was hung with silver bells that rang whenever someone walked past and happened to brush against the tent braces.

  Under a swagged green awning that thankfully gave her a moment of shade from the pounding sun, a hawker with dark skin and brows sold honeyed figs and dates along with small casks of savory palm and olive oils brought in by caravan from the East.

  “Milady!” The date seller gave Sofia a quick nod, after his gaze had spied the plump purse hanging from her girdle. With a sweeping bow, he gestured to his goods. “Look before you. See here. Fruits so sweet just the taste of them brings you closer to heaven.”

  Before her were trays of plump, sticky brown fruits. Succulent. Tempting. Her mouth grew damp, as if it couldn’t wait for a taste.

  The date seller was no fool and must have gauged her reaction for he added, “Sheer pleasures for milady’s tongue.”

  “Give the lady half a peck’s worth!”

  A large silver coin flipped past Sofia’s left ear and was snapped from the air by the quick hand of the date seller.

  “All of England knows the tongue of Lady Sofia Howard needs something to sweeten it!” Male laughter echoed from behind her.

  Edith mumbled something Sofia did not hear and stepped back. But Sofia did not need to hear her friend’s words. She knew Richard Warwick’s obnoxious voice. ’Twas like listening to sword blade scraping sword blade.

  He was the son of Baron John Warwick and had been her nemesis ever since they were small, when he used to pinch her during Mass, put frogs from the moat down her back, and steal the shoes she had slipped off during High Mass. There were times when she had to walk from the chapel with her knees bent so Edward or Eleanor would not see that her bare toes were showing. Every time she heard Richard’s voice she could almost feel the sharp pebbles of the bailey cutting into the soles of her feet.

  She had refused a betrothal offer from him two years past, not only because she could never love him, could never, ever imagine herself in his arms, but also because he was still a most annoying person. She would gladly place a wager that it was he who ferreted out her plans to ride in the races and spilt the news to the King.

  Sofia did not turn around. Very sweetly she said, “Give him back his coin, date seller. I need no man to buy my sweets for me.” She pulled one of Edward’s gold bribery pieces from her purse and held it up.

  There was a gasp, for gold was worth ten times Warwick’s puny silver coin and a woman seldom had her own money. It was the man who paid for purchases, who held the coin, and who was thought to retain his manhood and brave spirit by controlling the strings of the household purse.

  Then she turned to face Richard Warwick. He was the same old Dickon; he had that same pale hair that would thin with time. His eyes were dark brown, but they turned almost black whenever he looked at her. She never knew what it meant when he looked at her like that, but she knew she did not like it

  Otherwise, Richard Warwick was impressive, for he had grown tall, his build was strong, and his face was handsome. Sofia always felt that he was like an egg that had been left in the nest for too long: perfectly normal to look at, but completely rotten and stinking when you cracked it open.

  Warwick’s eyes narrowed at her the way they always did, and turned that dark color that unsettled her. She would not let him know his look affected her. She raised her chin and shook her head before she turned her back on him and said to the date seller, “I shall have three of those and five of those.” She pointed at the trays of dates and figs. “What will you have, Edith?”

  Edith sidled closer to Sofia as if she could hide from the hard and annoyed look Warwick was casting at both of them.

  Sofia decided then that he was like most men. If they could not control a woman with their words, their power, or their wit (although in Dickon Warwick’s case the term wit was surely a loosely descriptive one), then they wou
ld try to break her spirit by the strength of their glower.

  Richard Warwick’s face said he did not like the turn of things. He swaggered the few steps over to Sofia’s side, then announced in his big, braying voice, “Pray, tell us, my lady. How did you come by gold coin?” He paused meaningfully, then scanned his audience. “It does make one wonder.”

  There was a soft murmur coming from the people who had stopped and were watching this interesting banter between lord and lady. That murmur drew a satisfied smile from Richard Warwick and sly grins from his companions, a group of young nobles and recently dubbed knights: Sirs Thomas Montgomery and Robert de Lacy, along with Alexander Mortimer and William Pembroke. They all gave Sofia the same knowing male looks.

  She chose to pretend they did not exist

  But a moment later someone pinched her bottom, hard. Very hard.

  Sofia flinched because it hurt and because she could not stop herself, but then she turned and glared up at Warwick, who was looking so nonchalant she would have known it was him even if she did not recognize the cruel pinch of those fingers.

  He was an ass, utterly contemptible, so of course he then said, “Perhaps the lady received her gold by selling something.”

  She gave him a square look. “What are you implying, Dickon?”

  He shrugged as if it were nothing. He cast a quick glance around him at the faces that were watching.

  “Say it!” she demanded.

  He lifted his hands in front of him as if he were surrendering to her and his brow creased in feigned innocence. “Nothing, except that a woman has little to sell,” he paused again, “but her . . . favors.”

  He had just called her a whore in public. She wanted to slap him so badly her palms itched. She willed herself not to react.

  By sheer will and pride, she turned back to the date seller, gave him a smile, and pointed with casual ease to a row of plump honeyed figs displayed on a salver. “Three of those, please.”

  While the man slid the sweets into a dried fig leaf and tied it snugly, she turned slowly, rested her hands on the edge of the display top as she leaned back against it, an easy stance that took almost every drop of willpower she had.

  She looked directly at Warwick. “This lady is not for sale.” Then she averted her eyes, glancing downward as she swiped at some imaginary dust on her silk gown. After a moment of silence she added, “I believe you and Lord John discovered that fact last year.”

  Two more swipes of her hand and she looked up, giving him her brightest smile.

  He said nothing.

  “Did you not make five, no eight . . . ” She tapped a finger against her pursed lips. Then she nodded. “Aye, that is the number. Eight offers?”

  His friends laughed then. At him.

  “That is true, Warwick.” Thomas Montgomery slapped him on the shoulder. “She would not have you any more than she would agree to take any one of us to wed. Even on your knees!”

  Warwick turned bright red. His neck was almost purple. From the corner of her eye she saw his hand slip downward, toward her bottom.

  She swiftly side-stepped in front of Edith and almost stumbled, but she managed to grab onto the tent pole. The bells hanging from it tingled into the warm, dry air as if they were warning of what was to come.

  “Ouch!” Edith jumped almost a foot. Her hand flattened on her backside and she rubbed it as she turned around. For a bewildered moment she frowned up at Warwick. “You pinched me.”

  Warwick stammered something inane.

  “You pinched me!”

  “Wait, Lady Edith—” He held his hands out in front of him.

  “Do not try to deny it. Whatever you are about, Richard Warwick, I suggest you cease. I surely shall tell my brother of this.”

  Edith’s brother, Henry, Lord Peveril, was a burly man of some thirty years, incredibly wealthy and a renowned warrior, and the master of three of the strongest castles in the Midlands, and another one as far north as Newcastle. His vast wealth and reputation gave him men-at-arms that numbered in the hundreds. He was the King’s man through and through, honest but fearsome, and he adored his sweet, meek younger sister. Everyone in the land knew that he would not hesitate to challenge anyone who he thought had offended her.

  “My apologies, Lady Edith.” Richard bowed deeply from his waist, sweeping his hand before him in a grand gesture that was about as insincere as possible. A moment later the group of rowdy young men began to walk silently away, but not before Warwick glanced back over his shoulder and gave Sofia a narrow-eyed look that should have cooked her.

  She grinned and gave him a small wave of her fingers, which made his jaw tighten as he spun back around and continued walking, his back as rigid as a battering ram.

  She turned to her friend.

  Edith eyed her for a moment, then said, “That pinch, the one that still burns my bottom, was meant for you.”

  “Aye.” Sofia tried not to smile. She truly did. She did not like it that her friend was pinched. However, the world was a hard place and one did have to look out for oneself.

  Edith must have read Sofia’s thoughts, or something in her own expression gave her away, because she began to laugh.

  “You are wicked, Sofia. So very wicked. You will even let your dear friend endure your punishments.”

  “That is not so, Edith.” Sofia did grin then. “I just move more swiftly than you.”

  “Aye, you did this time. But next time I shall watch where I stand whenever Richard Warwick is nearby.”

  “Can you imagine being wed to him?” Sofia shivered. “Lud! I swear he must be part lobster.”

  “His face turned as scarlet as a lobster when I said I would tell Henry.” Edith looked at her, bit her lip, and grinned.

  Sofia thought of Dickon’s face.

  A moment later Sofia was laughing too. “I know you. You will not tell your brother.”

  “Aye, tempting as it is, he would skin Warwick alive. But the threat of Henry’s displeasure certainly has its advantages.”

  “Aye. There are times when I wish I had a brother to watch out for me.”

  Edith gave her a wry look. “Another man for you to either drive mad or wrap around your smallest finger?”

  “Me?”

  “Aye . . . you.”

  Sofia laughed again and slipped her arm around Edith’s tiny waist. “Come now, choose your sweets. The whole day is wasting away.”

  Edith turned back to look over the sweetmeats and Sofia stood there, tapping her foot to pass the time and trying to be as patient as she could. Finally, so much time had passed she felt ancient. “Edith. I can feel my skin wrinkling from age. Choose your sweets. Please.”

  “I will. I will.” But Edith still stood there chewing on her lip.

  Sofia could take it no longer. “Here. I will help you decide. Date seller—” She pointed to a fig and started to speak, but Edith stopped her.

  “No, no! I have decided. Truly.”

  Finally!

  “At least I think I have.”

  Sofia mentally groaned. “What is there to decide? Figs or dates. Which will it be?”

  “’Tis not so simple. There are honey-covered ones . . . And here are some that are dusted in Cyprus sugar. See there? These on this tray have cinnamon. These have cardamom and nutmeg. And look. The date seller says there are almonds in the center of these.”

  The man nodded. “Only the best almonds from north of Rome. But these, my lady, are very special for they are soaked in wine and many eastern spices, then rolled in crushed filberts from France.”

  “Take one of each, Edith. Please.”

  “I could not. That would be gluttony and then I would have to spend all morning tomorrow in prayer. I only need another moment. True almonds,” Edith said with a sense of awe. “’Tis almost as if the precious nuts were grown inside of them like a miracle.”

  “The only miracle will be when you finally decide,” Sofia muttered, then shook her head and turned back toward the crowd a
gain, her hand on her hip, and wondered why the rest of the world could not think and act as she did. ’Twould make her life so much simpler.

  She decided then and there that her knight had completely disappeared. It was almost as if he did not truly exist. After a moment or two she began to ask herself if perhaps she imagined him.

  Then a flash of blue came ’round a corner. His dark head showed above the crowd on the opposite side of the green.

  ’Twas him. Lud! Could he not have walked this way?

  She turned back to Edith and tugged on her sleeve. “Edith!”

  “I have chosen. See there. He is wrapping them up for me.

  “Good!” Sofia spun around. “Come along, then.” She snatched Edith’s hand and started to drag her back through the crowd.

  “Wait! Your coins! And my sweets!” Edith snatched her hand from Sofia’s and scampered back to the booth. She grabbed her packages and the coins from the date seller, then rushed back to Sofia, who was determined to find the knight this time. She pulled Edith along with her. She was not going to lose sight of him. She would not.

  Edith squeezed her hand to keep up and Sofia heard her making excuses and begging everyone’s pardon as Sofia half-ran, half-elbowed a path through the crowd.

  “What is your hurry?”

  Sofia looked in both directions. “The races are starting.”

  “But the races are that way!” Edith tried to point toward the lists.

  “Not this race,” Sofia muttered as they reached the spot where she had seen the knight. She stopped, looked this way and that.

  Gone again. The man must be made of smoke.

  Edith had her hand over her chest and she was trying to catch her breath. “There is nothing here. No races. See? I told you we were going the wrong way.”

  “Stay here.” Sofia hopped up on a fieldstone wall as if she were a stable lad instead of a noblewoman. There she stood, wobbling at first, so she stuck out her arms from her sides to keep her balance.

  “What are you about? Get down from there! ’Tis not safe.” Edith walked along with her, peering up with an expression of concern.

  A few stones cracked under Sofia’s feet and she heard Edith take a sharp breath.