Even as she finished that task, she spied the pail of water that had been placed there for her, between twin oil lamps. It was one luxury she did not forego, needing the light when there were wounds to be tended. The sight of the water instantly made her aware of the sweat in her hair, on her face. She had not washed just now, before placing her veil. Everything backward – she seemed unable to do anything in the proper order, lost as she was between irritation at her own rashness and the glory of having defeated him. For even now, her anger at herself was fading into wonder.
I bested him, she thought exultantly as her hands dropped into the cool water. Then as she pulled the headscarf free again, And any other day, he may well have bested me.
But – Morency. To best Ranulf of Morency. It was impossible to hold back the smile.
She cleaned off the sweat and turned, drying herself and composing her face as they brought him in. Without looking at them, she gestured at Richard to sit him on the fallen log that lay at the foot of another tree, close to where her squire had built the modest fire. It was the most stable and comfortable place for such work, and he would need to brace his back. All this she knew without looking, and that she would find him white-lipped against the pain.
The leather strap from her purse would serve. “Go,” she said to her cousin as she reached for it.
“I think it unwise to leave you here alone with him, Pennaeth Du,” said Madog softly, in Welsh. “You’ve hurt his pride more than his bones. He’ll do you injury if he can.”
She looked to Morency, who sat staring at her with disgust clear in his face.
“He’ll do me no injury,” she answered, certain. “Nor can he, as I’ve proven this night. Go now, and he is spared an audience.”
She had already decided, almost as soon as she had lifted her sword from his throat and seen the hurt to his shoulder, to spare him the indignity of that. It would be more difficult to do this work alone, but prudent. Fine enough for her mother to heap insults upon him from the safety of her bower. It was something else when he traveled with them, when he could upset the delicate balance she had created within her guard. It was not her mother’s realm at all, this world that Gwenllian ruled in the wilds. There were no stone walls or high towers to put between her and the lord of Morency.
When her men had gone, she approached him. He stayed silent and wary, as though she were some foul and magical beast come to bedevil him and cheat him of his soul, or worse. Here in close quarters, as it had been when he lay ill, he did not look like the monster that rumor had made of him. He was only a man lit by firelight. Still she found her hand was damp and cold, wrapped around the leather strap, and she stared. It was her veil, simple and white, abandoned and draped across a nearby branch, that drew her eye and called her back to her senses.
“Tis dislocate, the bone,” she told him as she moved to wind the veil again around her head. It was best to do physician’s work in a veil, though why she had always believed so defied her own powers of explanation. “Is best to set it to right when the blood is still hot, else your flesh cool and it be frozen out of joint.”
She had slid bones back into place only twice before, and she would count herself lucky if he did not bellow to wake the dead when it came to it, even did she manage it perfectly. The trembling in her hands steadied as she finished arranging her headpiece and looked at him. Perhaps it was only superstition, as Master Edmund chided her, but she felt more capable now the veil was in place, and safer, and more ready. The same as she felt with steel in her hand. Capable and sure, until she looked at him.
Gone was the contempt of but a moment before. His eyes were roaming across her face and her veil, softening almost to humanity in the moment that she stood motionless before him. It frightened her, that look. No man had ever gazed at her so. In defeating every worthy fighting man of Ruardean, she was always met with sullenness or else a forced cheer. No man ever looked her in the face when she had beaten him, not for days. But he watched her as though she were a mystery to be solved. As though she held some secret that fascinated him. As though she were more than just the weapon that had defeated him.
She could not say what broke his look, but in a blink it was gone, replaced by a brief flash of revulsion. For an instant, she thought the pain had brought him to illness, and she took a reflexive step forward. But no – he was not ill. She knew that look. The tiny curled misery that lived hidden in her belly recognized it. It was only herself, her own face that elicited his disgust. His expression was fleeting, there and gone again like the bite of his blade, to be replaced by an indifference that did not fool her.
“Fix this twixt your teeth,” she instructed him, holding forth the worn leather strap that she had used a thousand times for similar purpose.
He eyed it, obviously no stranger to the practice, but did not take it as she bade. He leaned his head back against the tree and watched her from that angle, the corner of his mouth rising in a familiar mockery as shadows played across his face.
“You have not met my daughter, she said to me.” His voice was a rasp above the faint crackle of the fire, his gaze roaming across her as she felt herself turn warm. She could feel the flush creeping up to her temples, imagined how much more uncomely it made her to his eyes. He only smiled with a blandness that was somehow threatening. “Oh, but she lied, did she not? Of course she would lie.”
Words climbed up her throat. This was why she had objected to her mother’s bidding that she escort him to Windsor. To be a nameless woman was safe enough; to be the daughter of Ruardean would bring nothing but shame and condemnation, did he see her wield a weapon and command men. A secret kept close in a corner of her family’s stronghold would turn foul and rotten, if known to the wider world of men. All her days of walking at his back, of staying in the shadows and keeping her silence. All wasted in her own childish pride.
He stared at her, his eyes not moving, the blue of them turned to black in the smoke-tinged night as he watched her.
Slowly, so slowly, like a new lesson to be recited, he said, “But I had not met you until I met your blade, she meant.” He gave a hoarse bark of a laugh, incredulous. His eyes met hers, an intensity she had only seen once before in her life – when he’d held her knife to his own breast in a dark and dirty hut. That same urgency, his voice a thin and papery sound. “What are you?”
She knew not how to answer, nor even what he meant by it. She only wanted to dispel this mood. She pushed aside her puzzlement that her mother had said such a thing to him. It conjured up a vague hurt, a resentment she didn’t want to think about now. “Sit you still and the arm shall be set,” she said roughly, wanting to be free of the trap he set with his look, his words.
He took the thick leather and held it, watching with amused expectation as she felt his shoulder through the thick vest. Better to have it off, but she did not wish to see him unarmored and vulnerable again, as he had been in his fever.
The scar above his eye was a fine twisting of flesh highlighted by the flickering shadow of the fire, more pitiful when seen up close. He smelled of peat smoke and the sweat of exertion, of leather and mud and more. She raised her leg and placed her knee against his chest, pressing him against the tree at his back and moderating her own uneven breath. She had done a shoulder before, at least. She thought she could do it again. The bones felt uncomplicated enough. Best to have it done quickly.
“It will hurt,” she told him, though he deserved no such warning. It was that scar on his brow, and the hidden azure of his eyes appearing from the dark depths of his lashes, that made her wish briefly that she could spare him this.
“More of your woman’s comfort?” he asked.
At this reminder of his insults, an anger flashed through her. Even the curl of his lip was designed for striking with a heavy fist, nearly as much as his eyes begged to be spat in. But she reminded herself that she was healer now, not soldier, as she gentled her hands on his arm and pressed her knee firmly on his chest. Then he spoke.
“I confess I did not think you to mount me so soon, and with–”
His words cut off when she slid the bone swiftly and firmly, out and down and up again, without warning. Her own belly quivered as the bone moved, the pain in her injured thigh throbbing as her muscles tightened to hold him fast against the tree. She watched anxiously as Morency’s eyes rolled back in his head and he let out a loud grunt instead of the shout she had expected. He was no stranger to pain. The sweat had barely formed on his brow when she was done. A quick, neat job. Luck again, she thought.
She waited, knee still to his chest, to see if he would slump in a faint or recover quickly. Even as she thought it, his eyes opened again and the grimace of pain evaporated from his face. He was plainly relieved, as well he should be – more often men had bones broken by comrades and healers alike.
“The old man taught you well.”
She blinked, surprised. “Aye. Master Edmund is a fine physician.”
“Was he that taught you swordplay?”
Something in the way he looked at her as he said it caused her for the first time in her life to be truly embarrassed of it. His disdainful tone implied that her teacher should be ashamed, and that she should be yet more ashamed. And there was something else in the eyes that mocked her. It was as though he saw exactly what she was, and found nothing there to admire. Ranulf Ombrier, the infamous lord of Morency and champion of a hundred tourneys. He who had been bested by her thought her a sham.
She pulled away, agitated and out of sorts, feeling ungainly and awkward of a sudden. It was easy to forget, among her men who accepted what she was, that it was unnatural. That outside her small company, it was only sin and shame. A woman like her. Not like a woman at all, yet not a man.
“Your arm,” she said, feeling again the throb of her own untended wound. “Test your reach.” If no muscle was torn, she would not waste the scanty store of herbs to ease his pain further. If it was sound, he could leave and her work be done.
“The king and all his court will burst with laughter to hear of you.” There was no mistaking the cruel delight in his words now. “What fine and virtuous maidens Ruardean nurtures. The clerics will love it best, I think, a woman who commands and carries a sword.”
How like a murderer, to cut straight to the heart of fear. Try as she might, her breathing would not slow; the flush would not abate. If the Church knew, it would be nothing but censure and vilification. The suit for her marriage lands would be lost, but that would be the least of it. She had no illusions how she would be seen by the noble lords and ladies of England: a grotesque curiosity, to be pitied and reviled. To be revealed as such when her mother’s loyalty to Edward was in question was to further weaken Ruardean’s political position. It could bring nothing but dishonor to her family now, and ruination to her mother’s tentative hold on power. Likely they would try us both for some kind of heresy, she thought. With luck, they would be thrown into a nunnery for the rest of their days so that they may learn womanly obedience and piety. Without luck, there could be no end to the mischief that an enemy might make.
“I think you will not welcome the laughter, do you tell them how you came to know of it through defeat.” It was what she told all her men, when they became hers, albeit with more gentleness than that. How else to keep the secret safe within the walls of her home?
It checked him instantly, the so-satisfied smile vanished from his face. She nodded at his arm again, no calmer for having trumped his threat. “Do you move it, and we see what damage lingers.” She felt a resurgence of her pride amid the riot of doubts in her mind. She had bested him, and it was no mean feat. The evidence of her victory was clear in the charged silence that answered her.
He stood, but his arm did not move. He was only a pace away – she could reach out easily and pull his wrist forward. But she did not dare to. She could not even meet his eyes, growing more nervous as he stood and stared at her.
“Is only your mouth that betrays you,” he said thoughtfully. “And your lashes. Such could only belong to a woman.”
What manner of man was he, to overcome her only by standing? It was absurd, to want to apologize for defeating him. To feel weak, as she had not when facing his blade.
“Reach out,” she repeated, putting every bit of command she owned into it, desperate for him to go and leave her in peace.
He did, his hand raising to her head and pulling free the knot that bound her veil, exposing her damp hair to the chill night. It put her off-balance, to have the distance closed with so small a move, to see the light of curiosity in his gaze, his air of cunning contemplation. It was calculating, not the look of a defeated foe.
Before she thought to step away or raise her hands, his mouth was on hers. She could not think of how to protest it, all her arts of defense defined by years of hard practice in fighting. Avoiding the cutting edge of a sword she knew well, and the quick thrust to surprise the foe, the quiet centered place inside her that demanded balance at every turn of the match. But he took her balance as easily as he had taken her veil, and the brush of his fingers on her cheek trapped her heart in a fluttering heat. More than his mouth on hers, the touch sent her breath to racing. The gentleness of it woke a desperate hunger that she could not, could not bear.
In her anger and confusion and panic, she pressed her mouth into his, hard. Another foolish and unthinking action, as though it were a straightforward attack and she could disarm him by attacking in kind. It was all lips and teeth and tongue, so clumsy and angry and starved. She had no skill in this type of battle, but still it made her blood sing. In only moments – two breaths, three? – he was already winning, so quickly did he find her hunger and turn it against her. And then her mouth was open to his, soft and spread and willing, ceding all control. Even as his lips pressed harder, even as his hands tightened and the kiss became a command that she could only obey, even as she knew that all of it, from the first moment, was only designed to impose his dominance over her – even then, she did not protest it.
In the same moment that she remembered herself and raised her hands to push him away, he ended it. He paused there, calm and still, as she trembled and swallowed and blinked like a great gaping fool.
“You have the taste of a woman, if nothing else.”
She caught only a glimpse of the laughter in his eyes before he turned away and left. She stared after him, forgetting her veil, forgetting her armor and even her leg where he had cut her. He walked away, leaving her with shame and defeat, stealing her victory over him with a kiss.
CHAPTER 6
It had been her intention to skirt the towns, to avoid any habitation as a prevention to Morency’s escape. But now they were no more than four days ride to Windsor, where the king held court. Were the skies and land dry and were they able to ride, they would have been there a week hence, even avoiding the main thoroughfares. Instead they faced this river, near impossible to cross, though not for want of trying.
The rains this season had swelled it to twice its normal size and set the water to rushing. It flooded the banks, water churning over great fallen logs. And as though it were not enough, another storm brooded in the sky above the party as they stared at the obstacle in their path.
Gwenllian watched her men negotiate the banks, looking up and down the river for a place to ford. It was useless, she knew. This trip had been accursed from the outset, as anything must that included Ranulf Ombrier. Cursed, and she was impatient to have the journey ended.
Resigned to the delay, she ordered Madog to have the men find a place where the waters were not so treacherous and construct a bridge. She conferred with him briefly on the matter of their second cousin Gwyn, who had always had a talent for such projects but had never yet been given charge of the men even in this minor way. It was best to show faith in his skill now, and see if he could make as quick a job of it as she hoped. She told the men to look to Gwyn for their instruction. They were all accustomed to the work, and she watched with satisfaction as Gwyn immedi
ately began a consultation with Vincent, an inventory of the trees surrounding them and the rope in their packs. With luck, a sturdy bridge would be planned and in place well before the sun went down. It would be temporary, but it would hold well enough to let them cross in the morning.
A likely place was found, a bend in the river where great boulders heaped on the shores and the waters ran more slowly, and the men began their work. Thomas and Tegwarad, strong as oxen, levered the huge rocks into the river bed as Gwyn instructed others in the setting of the supports. The first log was set, the point of it buried in the riverbed between the rocks. All around her was bustling activity.
It pleased her, gave her the satisfaction of action and forward motion after days spent in dragging through the mud and a morning spent staring at the obstacle. More than that, she worked with her men to fell the trees and each order she issued was obeyed, every hand turned to the task as she set it. All they saw, all they spoke of was that she had bested him. They did not see, had not guessed at the change wrought in her by a man’s kiss.
In the five days since she had set his arm aright, he had not looked at her. Her men seemed to have extended him a welcome, which she both feared to forbid and feared to let grow into a real camaraderie. His arrogance knew no bounds, but he no longer sought to stir up strife within her company. At last, it seemed, he had accepted his position, temporary though it might be. Even now, he helped them in their labor, as Gwenllian did. She looked to where he stood with her squire Davydd, and saw there was something wrong. She could not hear from so far away, but it was plain there was some disagreement between them, so she made her way toward them.
It was strange to see him at odds with Davydd, for she had noticed the two got on well. The boy looked at Morency with awe plain in his eyes, which no doubt pleased Morency’s arrogance immensely. But it was more than that. She thought of the conversation around the fire two nights ago, when the men had ruthlessly teased Davydd over his shyness around the village girl back at Ruardean whom Davydd clearly fancied. The girl had copper hair and came inside the curtain wall each week to bring honey to the manor kitchens. Each time she did, Davydd contrived to put himself in her path, and the men had noticed. They were laughing at his blushing around the girl, and it was Morency who had taken pity on the boy squirming with embarrassment. He had clapped a hand on Davydd’s slender shoulder and said a boy was required to be foolish in love a great many times before he can be called a man. He had turned the talk after that to the other men, and in no time the men were laughing instead at their own first fumblings at courtship. No doubt Davydd took heart to learn that though he was painfully awkward, at least he had never, unlike Thomas, tried to win over a girl with a fistful of wildflowers that caused her hands to burn and itch for days.
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