Wonderful

by Jill Barnett

  When he faced his betrothed, she had that stubborn stance he was beginning to find all too familiar and all too irritating.

  She swiped a strand of stray blond hair from her face and said, “There was plenty of water in that well.” The challenge in her voice did nothing to cool his anger.

  “There was water. Until the walls of the well collapsed. Now there is nothing but a mud hole.”

  She blanched slightly.

  He took a step toward her. “There are hundreds of men at Camrose. The castle workers, builders and masons and craftsmen, and my own troops. All those men are here and the castle has no working well.”

  She looked from him back to her steaming vats. “The men can drink ale until a new well is dug. I’ve made plenty.” She waved her hand at the pots. “See?”

  “And shall I order the horses and oxen, the chickens and pigs, to pull out their ale tankards? Shall the cows give milk tainted with malt?”

  From her face he could see she hadn’t thought of the animals.

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “What? No quick answers, Clio? And how do you propose the stonemasons mix the lime and sand to cement the new walls? Should they use your ale? How do the sawyers cool their saws? The rough masons their stones, and the blacksmiths their iron?”

  She was quiet, chewing her lip for a long time while she twisted a ring on her finger. Then her face lit up so suddenly it looked as if she had stepped before a bonfire. “They can use the foul water from the moat,” she said, then gave him a smug look.

  “The moat was drained into the fields this morning.”

  “Oh.” She bowed her head.

  ’Twas the first sign of feminine meekness he’d seen from her. He looked at the floor, too, where he saw the flat, thin flagstones the master mason had reported were missing. There had been a fight that morning between the stonemasons and the rough-masons over the missing tiles.

  Someone cleared his throat behind him, and he turned around. One of those inept lads that followed his betrothed like guard dogs was standing a few feet away from him, rocking from one bare, dusty foot to the other. He looked as if he needed to either speak or visit the privy.

  Watching the boy was enough to make him dizzy. “Have your say, lad, or stand still.”

  “I have a question to ask you, my lord.”

  Merrick gave him a nod.

  “Did you take a table from here?”

  He heard Clio utter something and frowned at her. She was shaking her head and waving her hands at the boy.

  “I have no idea what you are talking about. What table is missing?”

  “Not a ‘what’ table, but a ‘that’ table.” The boy paused, frowning, then muttered, “Or was it the ‘other’ table?”

  Clio was suddenly at the boy’s side, guiding him toward the doorway. “Never mind the tables, Thwack. You go along to the cooper’s and see if you can help Thud.”

  A flash of brown sped through the doorway a second later, and Merrick spun toward it, his hand on his dagger.

  The other boy scrambled to a clumsy stop in front of his mistress, who grabbed his shoulders to keep from being plowed over.

  “My lady! My lady! We have trouble! You must hide from the Red Lion, for they say his anger is fierce. Those siphoning pipes you put in the castle well have—” The boy suddenly noticed Merrick and cut off his words so quickly there was almost an echo.

  Merrick did not say a word. He just looked from one pale face to another and another, then turned and stared out the window, searching for something. Patience. Wisdom. Divine intervention.

  What he got was the sight of a head covered with fuzzy white hair; it slowly rose up over the rim of the window-sill like a giant dandelion. A pair of wizened black eyes peered right at him. ’Twas the crazed old hag who kept burning bonfires on the nearby hillsides. The sky above that hill was beginning look like that of London, where the burning coal fires ate the freshness from air and turned it gray.

  As Merrick stood there, a rare sense of defeat swept over him; it was something he was not used to feeling. He crossed the room to one of the brewing pots, took down an ale horn, and filled it.

  Without another word he left the brewery. As he walked out, he could feel the surprised looks of Clio and those lads. He had no idea what they expected. Perhaps they thought he truly would flay the skin from her.

  What he truly wanted to do was start this day all over. Or perhaps start his life all over. No. He was lying to himself. What he wanted was to see Clio smile up at him again as if he had just given her the world.

  He drove a hand impatiently through his hair as he moved across the castle yard, going somewhere, anywhere. Confusion seemed to fill his head, and he crossed the bailey without stopping or speaking.

  When he reached a newly built section of the inner wall, he halted in the shade, moving aside as a caravan of lumber wagons passed by him. Still feeling confused and powerless, he lifted the ale horn to his lips and drank deeply, then wiped his mouth with the back of one hand.

  The ale was good, which surprised him. He stared at the horn, then took another swig. It had a flavor he’d never before tasted, even after being in the East, where drinks were spiked with spices and flavors that were exotic and rich and unlike any other.

  He rested his back against the wall and drank again, until the ale horn was empty and his thirst quenched. And as he stood in the shade, the cool air grew heavy and heated, as if the sun had come to find him.

  Merrick took in deep breaths of air that was dusty from the traffic in the castle yard. He was not feeling himself. Perhaps it was a fever that had entered his blood.

  A second later, he had the strangest sensation. As if birds were inside his stomach, a whole flock of them.

  He shook his head a few times to shake off an odd and uncharacteristic sense of light-headedness that had swiftly overwhelmed him.

  Not much time had passed, and he thankfully felt somewhat more like himself, so he moved over to where a group of his men were digging a new well. He stood there, watching, then opened his mouth to say something to one of his men.

  ’Twas then that the oddest thing happened.

  Merrick de Beaucourt, the Earl of Glamorgan and the famed warrior known as the Red Lion, did something he had never done in his battle-filled life.

  He giggled.

  Chapter 9

  Mornings at the convent had begun with the pleasant chiming of a prayer bell at Prime. Each day dawned for the villeins and townspeople with the predictable crowing of a cock. But at Camrose, the new day started with the incessant pounding of a blacksmith’s hammer, the cracking split of a stonemason’s chisel, and the recent occurrence of giggles from Earl Merrick’s men-at-arms.

  Clio sat up in her straw bed and stretched, reaching her arms high in the air and yawning. Cyclops was wedged against her hip, sound asleep and wheezing the congested sound that was his usual snore. Pitt stood perched on the iron rung of a bedside candlelamp, one yellow foot bent up like a child getting ready to hop and his speckled head tucked safely under the down of his left wing.

  When she moved, the cat snorted a couple of times, then rolled over on his back, paws curled into the air. She scratched his plump and furry belly and chest. He began to purr so loudly he sounded like a bumble bee.

  After a few minutes she pulled her hand back. His eye shot open and stared directly at her with the annoyed look of someone used to having his way. Rather like her betrothed.

  The racket from the courtyard below echoed up the keep like summer thunder bellowing in the sky. She glanced at the arched window slit, where a pair of white doves sat on the stone ledge as if they were eavesdropping.

  She threw back the woolen covers and got up, then padded across the cool flagstones to the window and sat down on a rough wooden stool. The doves cooed and whirred at her like pets, then suddenly took flight, skimming into the morning sky like two plump white arrows.

  The birds were perfectly matched, like the lovebirds she h
ad seen in a cage made of gold at Queen Eleanor’s court. They had been a gift from some foreign diplomat. Although Clio’s court experience had been brief and unpleasant, she had not forgotten those birds. She recalled how she had imagined her marriage would be like the life of those birds, days of cooing and cuddling and sweet song.

  Clio leaned into the window, placing her arms on the ledge. She rested her chin atop them and drifted back to those girlish dreams she had thought abandoned, those times she had sweet-talked herself into believing dreams could come true.

  Nothing had been said about a wedding. Merrick never mentioned it. He did not occupy the castle. He camped outside the wall and was busy supervising the rebuilding of Camrose. In the order of things, she assumed the castle was more valuable to him than a wedding. And it hurt her deeply, though she wished she could feel nothing.

  Her pride refused to allow her to ask about the marriage herself. She decided to act as if it did not matter to her.

  But it did.

  She still ached with an intense human need. An emptiness, because she wanted to be cherished and loved. She wanted a husband who was kind to her and who would be her friend. She wanted someone to whom she could tell her darkest secrets and dreams without worrying about being thought frivolous or foolish. She still wanted a family, longed for that kind of life bond. The deaths of her mother, father, and grandparents made the lonely ache in her worse.

  Even her old nurse had died, a few years after Clio had gone to the convent, leaving her feeling sucked dry. Like a lone flower in a field. Thud and Thwack were devoted to her, and she cherished that devotion, but it wasn’t the same. She needed a stronger bond of love, the kind of love a woman needed to give and receive.

  What she wanted deep inside her romantic heart was a knight who would wear daisies for her favor. For when a knight wore an emblem of two daisy blooms on one stem, he was declaring to all the world that he loved a lady and she loved him back.

  She sighed with a wasted bit of longing, then turned her attention toward the castle below. The bailey was already bustling. Yet the sun was just creeping over the east hills, where the trees looked like the black teeth of a saw and where curls of smoke still lingered in the treetops from one of Old Gladdys’ bonfires.

  She caught sight of Thud and Thwack moving toward the stable. Thud raced to the entrance, tripping only once, and swung open the wooden gate, twitching with restlessness as he waited.

  Thwack moved at his own pace. Behind him was a trail of pigs with their snouts poking at the ground. She smiled. They trotted along behind the lad like favorite dogs.

  A small scratching sounded from the heavy chamber doors, and Clio turned just as a young maidservant entered carrying fresh water to the ewer that sat on a small table in the corner. The girl said nothing but crossed the room and opened the door to leave.

  “Dulcie?”

  The maid turned.

  “Has Lord Merrick asked for me?”

  “No, my lady.”

  Clio frowned. Now, that was odd. Every morning he had sent someone to fetch her. She used that demand as a daily beginning for her Fabian plan. It was the marker by which she would calculate her lateness. She glanced up and saw that Dulcie was still waiting at the door.

  “He has not been to the keep yet this morning.”

  “Oh.”

  “Shall I send someone to find him?”

  “No!” Clio snapped. “I mean, no, I do not need anything else. You may go now.”

  Dulcie closed the door.

  Clio washed quickly and dressed in a gray gown that made her skin tone look the same color. She braided her hair and wound it up in those giant coils, then topped it with an ugly pea-green veil with a fillet of bright blood-red and silver ribbons. She looked wonderfully dull and awful, so then raced down the stairs.

  As she moved through the great hall, she heard laughter and stopped. A group of Lord Merrick’s knights sat at a table near her, breaking their fast and giggling like silly goose girls. She had come to the conclusion that Merrick’s men-at-arms drank too much. They seemed to become laughing drunkards rather easily.

  Ignoring them, she moved into the yard and hurried toward the nearby kitchen, where the transom above the doors was the one she remembered from her past. Her grandmother had had craftsmen carve roses over the doors for good luck.

  There was so little left of the Camrose Clio had known. Her life seemed displaced and out of step. She did not feel she was truly home, until she saw these intricately carved roses.

  Her step and mood were lighter when she left the building that housed the kitchens, and she carried a cabbage leaf filled with plump wild strawberries, the juicy deep-red kind that always stained her mouth.

  Geese fluttered about the hem of her gown as she moved through the yard, sucking on the tangy, sweet berries. A tinker’s cart rattled past on its way toward the kitchens, where the cooks would haggle and bargain until the poor man took less for his shiny pans and cast iron pots then he could get from selling a dull knife at the local fair.

  As she stepped into the cart tracks, she heard a squeal and spun around. Two of the castle pigs were inside willow cages in the back of the tinker’s cart.

  Something was wrong. She could not imagine Thud or Thwack giving up two of those piglets.

  She headed straight to the stables. She entered the gates and went past where some of the cattle lowed in the cow shippen. Merrick’s horses had been stabled inside and were munching on hay and oats from wooden troughs that had been nailed up inside each stall.

  From the other side of the building near the equerry that had become the gathering place of the squires came the sound of loud voices and the banging clank of swordplay.

  She marched past the beasts and rounded the corner.

  There inside a circle of older boys was Thud. He had a tin pot atop his head like a helm, except the handle stuck out over his left ear, and whenever he moved, the pot slid down into his eyes. Strapped to his chest like armor shields were metal pastry sheets, and in his hand he clutched a long roasting rod, which he was using to fend off the polished sword of a squire who was twice his size.

  The squire brought his sword down hard on the roasting rod, and metal clanged so loudly she flinched and had to shake her head to clear it.

  She wasn’t the only one. Thwack was on the ground with leather straps and baking sheets around him. He was pounding the heel of his hand against his ear while he blinked. Next to him on the ground was a tin pot like Thud’s, only the whole left side was dented.

  The squires jeered and hooted and harassed the poor boys so loudly no one heard her cry of protest. She shoved her way into the circle, grabbed the dented pot, and flung it right at the bully who was fighting with Thud.

  The squire glanced up and ducked.

  The pot sailed past him.

  ’Twas unfortunate timing indeed, for at that very moment the earl rounded the corner.

  The pot bashed him right in the center of his forehead.

  Chapter 10

  Someone was calling his name.

  “Merrick?”

  Ah, ’twas his betrothed. She sounded far away. Had he indeed locked her in a tower?

  “My lord?”

  His squire, Tobin.

  “Dominus vobiscum.”

  Who was this speaking? A priest. Latin. Last Rites? Who had died?

  Merrick opened his eyes.

  ’Twas raining.

  He blinked and his vision cleared.

  Brother Dismas was sprinkling holy water over him and praying for his wretched soul.

  “God’s feet!” Merrick bellowed. “I’m not dead, you fool!” He tried to sit up, but a thousand wee candle flames flickered before his eyes, and his head felt as if someone had tried to cleave it in two.

  He lay back down with a pithy string of curses. His head throbbed now, so he winced, then gave a low moan.

  Water dribbled on his face.

  He opened one eye. “If you shake that water i
n my face one more time …”

  “My Lord God says that his holy water ’twill make you pure of heart and protect your vile human soul.”

  A growl escaped from Merrick’s mouth and he reached for the monk with his huge hands, but someone pulled the thick-headed man safely out of his line of vision.

  The next thing he saw was Clio’s face staring down at him. Her skin looked almost too pale.

  He dropped his arms to his sides and felt the dry dirt beneath him. He was lying on the hard ground.

  “What happened?” he asked her.

  “I hit you in the head with a pot.”

  He was not surprised. He heard the worried whispers of his men. The squires and many of his men-at-arms formed a ring around them.

  Lady Clio was still searching his face for something while she chewed on her lower lip.

  His gaze locked with hers. “Was I good?”

  She frowned, clearly startled. “Good at what?”

  “Whatever it was that made you fling a pot at me.”

  He heard his men laugh. Yet she did not. She looked angry. She had hit him with a pot and there was no contrition in her expression, nor in her manner.

  There was no fear. No apology. Instead she grew haughty again, that chin came up and her mouth thinned into a familiar stubborn line.

  He stared long and hard at her lips, for they were the only color on her face. They were stained red and looked sweet and inviting and as if she had reddened them to torture him.

  ’Twas time.

  His hand shot up and pulled her head down to his so swiftly she fell across his chest. His mouth closed over hers, hard and open, and his arms clamped around her, holding her where he wanted her.

  She struggled against him, squirmed and made muffled sounds against his mouth, so he rolled over, pinning her under him in the dirt.

  The air erupted with the whoops and whistles of his men. She opened her mouth and tried to cry out, so he plunged his tongue inside.

  Her struggles ceased and she grew still as stone. He opened his eyes as he kissed her, as he stroked her mouth with his full tongue.