The Warrior's Wife

by Denise Domning

  “Who do you mean?” Rafe demanded.

  “Why, Lady de Fraisney, of course,” Gerard said between bites, still not lifting his head from his meal.

  Shock rattled Rafe. If Gerard, with his gaze fastened only on his wife or his meal, had noticed his interest in Kate, had anyone else seen? He shot a glance to his left, where Bishop Robert had been sitting only the moment before, then gave thanks that the churchman had excused himself. The departure of his hostess left the prelate free to join his own family near the table’s end.

  Grinning, Gerard shot a sidelong look at his comrade. “Don’t panic. Beyond me I don’t think any of the others have noted that you cannot keep your gaze off your enemy’s daughter.”

  “Are you mad? Interest in a Daubney?” Rafe sputtered in a futile attempt to shield himself. The effort sounded false, even to his own ears. That he should be so obvious about a lie would go far to confirm Gerard’s suspicion.

  Sure enough, his friend straightened, resting his spoon hand, and stared at the day’s champion. The simple amusement gleaming in Gerard’s blue eyes deepened into astonishment. “Lord help me, Rafe, but tell me what I see in your face isn’t true!”

  “There’s nothing to see in my face,” Rafe retorted, barely managing to keep himself from lifting a hand to hide his features from view.

  Gerard’s grin was slow and wide. “Looks like infatuation to me,” he said over Rafe’s useless protest. “God help you, but when the rest of our mates finally catch you agog over a woman, especially a woman not even you can get near enough to seduce, your repute as a swain will be destroyed for all time. Oh, the tweaks and taunts you’ll suffer when they learn you of all men are besotted. Captivated, no less.” Laughter tainted Gerard’s voice.

  “I’m not besotted,” Rafe protested, but even as he spoke, his gaze once more shifted in Kate’s direction.

  Too late. She’d already slipped outside the hall, gone as far from his sight as she was from his reach. A strange ache took root in his heart as he stared at the screens at the door. It was an instant before he recognized it as longing-- hopeless, never to be requited longing. Rafe sighed. Gerard was right; he was besotted.

  A strangled sound escaped Gerard. Rafe looked at him. The bridegroom beamed.

  “Only a heartsick man stares at the place he’s last seen his love standing,” Gerard said. Then his expression sobered.

  “Enough jesting, Rafe. Take no insult from what I next say, but I pray you’ll not follow where your heart would lead. After today’s events there’s trouble enough between your two families. I’d not have my lord father-by-marriage turn a harsh eye on me because the man and family I insisted he invite caused the ruin of his event.”

  Stung by his friend’s plea, Rafe glanced past Gerard to where Lord Haydon sat. The nobleman had his elbows braced on the table. He held his head in his hands and stared out at his divided guests. The morose twist of his mouth suggested he’d gotten far more than he expected out of the day’s joust.

  “Would that it had been Josce in that final round,” Rafe said and meant it, much to his astonishment. Aye, better to still have the chance to at least touch Kate than to know he would never again even speak with her.

  On the Daubney side of the room, someone slammed his hands down on his table. The sound reverberated up into the hall’s exposed rafters and echoed against the plastered walls. It was Lord Bagot. As the whole hall watched Rafe’s enemy’s face blossomed with a grin so wide it was like to split his face.

  “So be it! I shall happily call you son!” Kate’s sire crowed to Sir Gilbert, who stood beside him, smiling like a cat in a dairy.

  “Well, that settles that,” Gerard said, watching Lord Bagot. “Judging from yon happiness, I’d say your heart is doomed to break and Lady de Fraisney won’t be a widow for much longer. All the better for us and these next days, I think,” Gerard went on, a touch of relief in his voice as he looked at Rafe. “What do you want to wager that Lord Bagot leaves Haydon this very night? I doubt he’ll risk the melee on the morrow with all you Godsols hot for his blood. Nay, he’ll hurry home now that he’s got his daughter’s wedding to plan.”

  Gerard shook his head. “Poor Lady de Fraisney. Sir Gilbert’s a pig.” With that, he again picked up his spoon and began to eat.

  Rafe’s spirits oozed out of the heel of his shoe, sank through the floorboards and dripped down onto the stores in the cellar below. Kate was his. The very thought of another man bedding his woman made his stomach knot.

  “Hsst sir,” came a child’s call.

  Turning on his bench, Rafe found his little spy standing near one of the curtained alcoves. Young Watty was the name the boy claimed as his own. Watty gestured for Rafe to join him, the look on his face decidedly frantic.

  Rafe’s brows shot up. What sort of news could the lad have now that Sir Warin had left Haydon? When Rafe hesitated, the boy frowned and stomped his foot. Once more he gestured, this time the movement of his arm imperious.

  Irritation ate up Rafe’s depression. If nothing else the child needed a lesson in manners. He came to his feet.

  “Excuse me, Gerard. I think I’ll join my brother for a while.”

  “Suit yourself,” Gerard said around what was in his mouth, then motioned a waiting servant to fill his trencher with more of the day’s lamb.

  As Rafe made his way to the wall irritation ebbed into the beginnings of hope. Perhaps the boy did know something. After all, Young Watty had turned out to be an apt spy, intent on earning every one of the pence Rafe promised him. Why, without the lad, he wouldn’t have known when to begin the race around Haydon’s walls this morning to disturb Sir Warin’s seduction of Kate.

  The drapery still swung where Watty had ducked into one of the alcoves. Lifting the curtain, Rafe followed him into the window embrasure. Outside the arrow loop clouds gathered, promising a shower tonight. Until then, bright sunlight yet painted itself on the alcove’s plastered walls. A swallow swooped past the cross-shaped opening, making free with the wealth of flying insects that called Haydon home. From the armory in the bailey below came the noise of the smith restoring dented shields and armor in preparation for the morrow’s mock battle. Louder still and rising from the direction of the garden was the melody of a swift dance. Twined into that sound was female laughter. Even as he told himself it was useless, Rafe’s ears strained to pick out Kate’s voice from all the others. When he couldn’t, he bent a stern look upon his temporary servant.

  “What is so important that you must interrupt me at my meat, Watty?” he demanded, speaking in the English tongue.

  “It’s the knight, sir,” Watty hissed, his dark eyes wide with excitement. “He’s plotting to steal your lady, he is.”

  Shock slammed into Rafe like the smith’s hammer against his anvil only to die away just a quickly. If a man planned to kidnap his lord’s daughter, he most surely didn’t tell a serving lad what he intended. He gave a shake of his head. “I doubt that.”

  “Oh, but he is,” the boy insisted, unintimidated by his better’s pessimism. “I stopped outside of the lord’s tent, just to see what the knight did after he returned from the joust. Whilst I was there, the lord came to him, telling him that he must leave for the priory. From the knight there came naught but sweet aye, my lords until the nobleman left him. Then such cursing did I hear. The knight condemned his noble master right to hell and swore vengeance for the honor that the lord had cost him. So evil were his words, sir, that I thought I might drop dead right then and there,” the boy said, his eyes round from the remembered threat to his soul.

  The corner of Rafe’s mouth lifted a little at such a protest from one so crude. Young though Watty was, the very rudeness of the lad’s estate made it likely that there were few curses he hadn’t heard.

  “A man promises himself things in private that he never intends to do,” he told the boy.

  “But you don’t know all yet,” Watty protested. “When the knight finished his cursing, he put his head out
side the tent and, seeing me, called me to him. Just like you, sir, he offered me coins to be his servant.”

  Watty lifted his tunic’s hem. Over the last days the lad had procured a purse, surely someone’s castoff, for it was a well-worn leather sack. Its strings were knotted to the braided lacing that held Watty’s chausses, his waist-high stockings, at his hips. What caught Rafe’s interest was the way the purse drooped, for it suggested more than the few pence Rafe had given him.

  “And what were you to do to earn these coins?” Rafe asked.

  “My last task for the knight will be to run to the priory,” the lad replied, “where I’ll tell the monks he won’t be joining them as they expect. My first task was to tell the stablemaster that both the knight’s horses were to be saddled.” Here, the boy paused to give a scornful snort. “I ask you, what need has one man of two saddles, when he can ride but one horse at a time?” he scoffed, his tone cocky indeed.

  Only Watty’s good service these past days kept Rafe from boxing the child’s ears. “You’re bolder than your station allows, brat. If a man owns two saddles, he takes two, and better to carry them on a horse’s back than any other way,” Rafe replied, yet unconvinced by what Watty deemed a plot. “Now, unless you’ve more proof than that to offer, I’ll call you mistaken and you’ll think it a kindness that I don’t beat you for your impudence.”

  The boy only lifted a insolent brow. “There was a middle task, sir, a message that I’ve just now delivered to your lady.”

  Rafe stared at the boy for an astounded instant before his thoughts skittered back into motion. “Tell me,” he demanded, reaching for his belt and his own new and very pleasantly heavy purse. Opening it, he sifted through the coins it contained. The clink of metal on metal was meant as a promise of payment to Watty, encouraging the lad to divulge every word.

  Young Watty grinned; he understood the message. With his eyes on his better’s fine kidskin pouch, he said, “The knight begged your lady’s forgiveness for all the wrongs he’s done her, then pleaded with her to meet with him”--here, he shot Rafe a look far too knowing for his years--“in the trees that line the stream below our postern.”

  Watty’s smile dimmed into an intense look. “Since you bathed there this morn, sir, you know how thick the willows are along that stretch. If the knight does intend evil, then none of the guards upon our walls will see what takes place below their very noses.”

  With that the bits Watty had given Rafe congealed into a plot, the same plot that Rafe had failed to realize. He snarled. That snake-eating bitch’s son was stealing his woman!

  Rage closed in on him like a red cloud. His purse still clenched in his hand, he turned to dash from the alcove. The lad caught a handful of Rafe’s tunic.

  “If you would, sir,” he said, “I’d have the pence you promised me for today.”

  His words, along with the dirty streaks his touch left on Rafe’s new tunic, punctured Rafe’s anger like a crossbow’s bolt. That left room for sense to rise. Rafe planted his feet to the floorboards beneath his shoes. Not this time. This time he was going to think before he acted.

  Only as he released a slow breath did he realize what Watty had done for him. Had Rafe dashed through the hall, everyone within the room would have known something was amiss. Most would have followed him. Rather than turn Sir Warin’s plot to his own advantage, all he’d have accomplished would have been to save Kate from Sir Warin so she could marry Sir Gilbert.

  Gratitude over this unexpected rescue made Rafe generous. Watty had earned the sum he might have owned, had he spied on Sir Warin until the wedding’s final day. From one hand to the other, he counted out the coins. “Is there anything more the knight told you?” he asked, yet holding the payment in his palm.

  “Would that he had, sir,” the boy said, happy avarice gleaming in his eyes as he realized what his better intended.

  Rafe gave a brisk nod to show that he wasn’t upset by this lack of knowledge then held out his hand. It had been but an idle hope that the boy might have some inkling as to where Sir Warin meant to take Kate. The boy offered an eagerly cupped palm. Rafe dropped the coins into Watty’s filthy hand. Quick as a cat, the child wrenched open his threadbare purse and stowed his riches.

  “Well lad,” Rafe said, “it seems I’ll need your service a little longer. Go you after the lady, taking care that neither she nor the knight see you. If the knight does make her his prisoner, say nothing. Instead, follow them for a quarter-hour or so, long enough to learn in which direction they ride. Once you’re certain, return to Haydon to tell me. I’ll wait for you on the field where we jousted this day.”

  New greed brightened Watty’s gaze as he reknotted his purse strings. “Now sir, you know that if the knight does takes her, I ought to raise the hue and cry, not skulk after them. Should the knight be caught at what he does or I be found out, I might lose my place or if I run, become outlaw.” It was a not so subtle suggestion that what Watty did now was beyond the scope of their original agreement.

  Rafe grinned. “Have no fear, my little spy. No one will ever know what you do for me. When you and I meet again upon the jousting field and you tell me where they’ve gone, vowing to never reveal what you know, I’ll give to you double what the knight’s already put in your purse.”

  Young Watty’s eyes widened until they were round as plums. “But the knight gave me two more pence than I have fingers, he did.” His tone made a mere shilling’s worth of coins sound like great wealth indeed.

  “So be it,” Rafe agreed. “Do as I ask, and you’ll earn twice that from me.” He grabbed the boy’s thin shoulders and thrust him toward the curtain end of the alcove. “Off with you, now.”

  “As you will, sir,” the boy cried out, the curtain dropping behind him almost before he’d finished speaking.

  Rafe waited a moment then slipped back into the hall. It took all his will to keep his stride at an easy pace when what he wanted to do was race like the lad, screaming out his excitement as he went. Down the table’s length he strode to where Will sat with one of Long Chilting’s neighbors, Sir Ivo de Kyme. The disappointed droop of Will’s shoulders said failure sat no better on him than it had on Rafe; his brother knew well enough that the mishap at the joust meant the vengeance he desired for their sire’s death was now out of his reach.

  As Rafe stopped beside the two men, he laid a hand on Will’s shoulder to catch his attention. “My pardon, Sir Ivo,” Rafe said, “but I’ve need of a private moment with my brother. There’s been some distressing news from Long Chilting.”

  All Rafe intended was to lay groundwork for the excuse they’d need to make an unexpected departure from Haydon. His ruse went awry. His brother came roaring off the bench.

  “May God damn those Daubneys,” Will shouted. “They’ve broken the peace of the shire and attacked our home whilst we are here and unable to protect what is ours!”

  Heads turned from every corner of the room as all attention settled on Will. Rafe cringed. Rather than the circumspection he needed, they were now the focus of everyone’s interest.

  “Not that kind of news,” he snapped, grabbing his brother by the front of the tunic and almost dragging him over the bench.

  Too startled to resist, Will let himself be manhandled for a few more steps before he shoved at Rafe. “Let me loose. You’re creasing my tunic and it cost me four pounds.”

  “Forget your tunic and listen,” Rafe whispered, impatience adding bite to his words as he pulled his yet resisting brother closer to the wall.

  Will glowered at him. Rafe grinned. “The time has come to take Lady de Fraisney.”

  After a shocked breath, emotions flew across Will’s face: relief, gratitude and finally exhilaration. “When? How?” he demanded, his words so low they were barely audible.

  “Now,” Rafe replied, then held up a forestalling hand. “As for the how there’s no time to tell you all this moment. Only listen and do as I command. First, we go to Lord Haydon and bid him farewell.”
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  As he spoke a twinge of guilt shot through him. What he planned might well cost him Josce’s and Gerard’s friendship. He shook away the thought. Far worse for Kate to end up wedded to Sir Gilbert when she should belong to him.

  Will’s smile was crooked. “I doubt he’ll shed any tears over our going, not when we take today’s hostility with us as we leave. Let the damned Daubneys crow that they drove us off, for they’ll be eating the same bird later when they find their heiress and her lands are ours. What reason will we give Lord Haydon for our going?” he asked. “If we don’t have one, etiquette allows him no choice but to insist we stay. Forcing our departure after that will insult him.”

  Rafe snorted. His brother was worried about insulting their host over an unexcused departure? Better that he worried over how to keep Lord Haydon and his guests from razing Glevering and killing them all when they were found out.

  “Our excuse will be that there’s been an accident at Long Chilting and our bailiff is laid low,” Rafe told him.

  Worry flashed through Will’s dark eyes. “This is just a ruse, eh? There’s not been such an accident, has there?”

  Frustration twanged inside Rafe. “Of course not,” he snapped, his voice yet held to a whisper. “It’s but a tale. Remember, you must be as a mummer when you say it, pretending worry and distraction. Lord Haydon must believe our need for haste is overweening.”

  Will offered an approving nod in response. “Aye, that I can do. Should I send a man to warn our priest and the troop from Long Chilting that it’s time for them to move on Glevering?”

  A grin teased at Rafe’s mouth. It was strange to find himself in command of his elder, strange but somehow right for soon he’d be master of his own house and men.

  Rafe leaned closer to Will as he continued, “You can warn them that the time is near, but they mustn’t arrive at Glevering before we do. We can give Bagot’s bailiff no opportunity to send word to Haydon of an attack. Is there a place near Glevering where our men might bide in safety and secrecy while they wait for us?”