Mary Gillgannon

by The Leopard

Soft hands lifted him, and he had a moment of confusion. There were no angels in hell, and yet this was surely one. Astra?

  It was not Astra. The woman’s eyes were light brown, not blue, and her face was unfamiliar. Yet she held him tenderly and let him drink as much of the blessed water as he wanted. He could not make out anything else before he floated down in the darkness again.

  The second time he awoke, he knew he was alive. Smells came to him—cooking meat, the dry, acrid scent of smoke. He was near a fire. Perhaps that accounted for the heat of his body, the fever that seemed to rage inside him. He tried to lift his head to look around the dwelling. He could make out shadows at the edges of his vision. They moved and talked, but he could not understand them.

  * * *

  He opened his eyes, and the world jerked into focus as if he had never left it. Nicholas was kneeling beside him, smiling his gap-toothed smile.

  “You’re going to live, Sir Richard. Paulina says that if you have survived this long you must be too stubborn and rotten to die.”

  Richard turned his head and saw the woman who must be Paulina. It was the angel of mercy who had given him water. She was every bit as fair as he remembered, and she was smiling so brightly there were tears in her eyes.

  “I... I was wounded?”

  Nicholas nodded. “You took a sword thrust clean through your mail, but not before you killed four men yourself. Oh, it was a thing to see, it was.”

  Vaguely, Richard recalled the battle. He could remember the first two men falling and then charging the remaining three. Three? “What happened to the fifth man?”

  Nicholas shrugged, looking almost sheepish. “I got him in the back with my knife. It’s a trick I learned from the knife throwers who performed at the palace. I’ve been practicing.”

  “You saved my life.”

  Nicholas’s smile grew even brighter. “Killing the last attacker wasn’t the half of it. Then I had to get you on the horse and transport you here. God’s wounds, but you’re heavy, sire.”

  “Where is here?” He tried again to lift his head and look around.

  “The farmhouse of William and Margary de Say. This is their daughter, Paulina. She is the one you should truly thank. She stitched you up and tended to you. Without her aid, you would have bled to death. The wound nicked your lung. It should have killed you!”

  Richard leaned back and closed his eyes. He should be dead, but he was not. It was hardly the first time he had narrowly escaped death, but somehow it was different. He realized suddenly what a gift life was. He hadn’t died, unknown, unmourned, in some muddy field in France. He had another chance.

  “He needs to rest.” The woman had a subtle accent, quite different from the Norman French of the English court.

  Richard raised his head. “No, don’t leave me. I want to thank you.” He searched for the woman’s face among the shadows. She leaned toward him. “I want to repay you for what you’ve done. Have Nicholas get my saddlebags. I have jewelry, weapons, other valuables. I’ll see that your family is generously rewarded.”

  “You see?” Nicholas broke in. “Did I not tell you that he was a rich knight, that he would more than make up for your trouble?”

  The woman shook her head. “You do not need to pay me. Healing is a gift. I do it because it is blessed to help others.”

  “Is Paulina not wonderful?” Nicholas murmured proudly. “She knew exactly what to do. She stitched you up, then gave you medicine to help you mend and to ease your fever. I wager you would not have had better care if I had taken you to the court of Louis himself.”

  Richard closed his eyes again. What were the odds that he would be near mortally wounded within walking distance of a skilled healer? He was not a pious man, but even he could not ignore such a blatant sign from God.

  He had been saved for some reason. For some reason his time had not come yet.

  “Truly, Nicky, he needs to rest.”

  He felt a familiar, soothing touch. Richard opened his eyes to glimpse the woman leaning over him. No wonder he had thought she was an angel. Paulina was a rare beauty—serene golden-brown eyes, perfect skin, lush coral lips. Richard glanced quickly at Nicholas. He was gazing at Paulina with a look of complete adoration.

  “I will rest now,” Richard told them, smiling slightly. For a brief moment before he fell asleep, he wondered how he was ever going to be able to convince Nicholas to leave.

  * * *

  Riversmere was everything she had expected and more. Located on a quiet grassy knoll above the river, the manor reminded her of a place time had forgotten. Ivy curled up the walls of the ancient manor house and the crooked stone wall around the garden looked as if it had been there since the days of King Arthur. But for all that the manor was old and unelaborate, everything was in good repair. The steward, Hereward, was indeed an honest and responsible man. The granary and cellars were filled with wheat, rye, salted meat, cabbages, apples and leeks. More than enough food to sustain them through the winter. The stew pond was stocked with fish, the manor house furnished with whitewashed walls and fresh rushes on the floors.

  Hereward and his wife, Lettia, had greeted Astra warmly, and told her that Lord Fitz Hugh had sent word to expect her arrival. They had already moved to a small cottage near the river and left the manor for her and “Lord Reivers.” Indeed, that was their only question—when was her husband, their master, due to arrive?

  Astra had answered vaguely, telling them her husband was on business for the King in France, and she hoped he would be back soon. They nodded eagerly, obviously delighted to be serving such an important man. Astra wondered what they would think if Richard never returned.

  The manor was a large but simple two-story building, with a hall suitable for dining and entertaining on the first floor. The second floor was made up of two large rooms that Astra immediately envisioned as the master bedchamber and a nursery. She set about furnishing them as best she could. There was little furniture, and she had no idea about how to see to having some made, but Marguerite had sent bolts of fabric as a wedding gift and she immediately began sewing wall coverings to brighten the bare white walls.

  She hung the leopard banner in the center of the hall ceiling and surrounded it with alternating blocks of crimson and gold samite. Upstairs, she used deep green fabric to drape the walls and add warmth to the room. She fashioned a bedcover of crimson for the one narrow bed in the dwelling, and began embroidering it with a swirling pattern of flowers, vines and leaves around one regal leopard.

  It was almost winter, and there was very little she could do with the garden. The part where vegetables and herbs were grown had been recently cultivated, but it looked as if what flowers there were had been allowed to go wild, spreading and climbing up the stone wall. Everything was brown and dead now, and it was difficult for Astra to identify plants, but she could see there were roses, chervil, rosemary and gillieflowers.

  Her other chief frustration was that she had so little to furnish the place with. There was one big trestle table in the hall, and a number of benches and stools, but otherwise the big room was almost bare. Astra thought with longing of the beautiful things she had seen at the Cheap-side market. The chests and ambries for storing things, the candlesticks and candelabras, the pewter cups and linen tablecloths. If she had known, she would have used the treasure Richard had left her to buy some things before she left London. Now it was too late. She would have to wait for spring to travel to Wallingford, or perhaps even Oxford, to find what she needed.

  She wished now she had worried about such things instead of fussing with gowns and slippers and veils while at court. How foolish and frivolous she had been in London. She had been concerned with looking alluring and being entertained. It was a vain, empty existence that had little to do with her life now. Her beautiful gowns were stored away in a chest. She had nowhere to wear them, no one to see them.

  Perhaps that was hardest of all. She was lonely, dreadfully so. Lettia had found her a girl in the villag
e to serve as her maid, but the round-eyed, rosy-cheeked woman was not the kind of company Marguerite had been. Besides, it was not the days that were hard, but the nights. Astra wondered how she would survive the long, cold winter nights in the narrow bed with heated rocks to warm her feet, but no Richard to warm her heart.

  She thought of him constantly, and her memories of him were so intense, so magical, sometimes she wondered if they could be real. Had he actually been that big, that handsome, that dazzlingly male? Had he truly touched her the way she remembered—his hands and mouth and body sending violent pleasure throughout every fiber of her being? It hardly seemed possible she had known such wonder. She had no proof of it, no reassurance it was not merely a dream. She had his name and the jewels and valuables he had left her, but little else except memories. She had hoped for a time that she might be with child, but then her courses had come with their usual regularity.

  It did not seem fair. Marguerite had conceived near the first time she had known a man, or so she said, while even the dozens of times Richard had loved her had not started a babe growing inside her. She dearly longed for a child, a living, breathing remembrance of her and Richard’s love.

  Sometimes the loneliness and longing were so great Astra could not help weeping. Alone at night, she would clutch the one ragged tunic Richard had left behind, inhaling the tantalizing scent of him that clung to the wool and wondering if she could have done something differently, found some way to keep him from leaving her. Had he left her because of her treachery, her selfishness? Or was there some other wrong that haunted him? She thought of his mother, and the grief he must have borne because of who she was, and she wondered if Richard was afraid to love, afraid to be hurt again.

  At times like that she knew despair, and she considered going back to Stafford and seeing if the nuns would still have her. If Richard did not return, it seemed her only recourse. She could not live here, alone, at Riversmere forever, and she had no heart for returning to court.

  But somehow her despair always passed. The sun rose in the morning, banishing the gloom and loneliness of night. She found ways to keep busy. There was always cleaning to be done, meals to be prepared. She met weekly with Hereward to go over the accounts. He had been pleased and rather awed by her ability to read and write and do sums, and Astra was grateful she had learned such skills at Stafford.

  There was a pleasure in helping things run smoothly at Riversmere. It gave purpose to her life and helped ease the sting of her unhappiness. At night, she sat before the fire and embroidered the coverlet, pouring all her love into the tiny stitches that formed the elaborate pattern. It would be a masterpiece, and when she slept beneath it, she would remember that she was the wife of the Black Leopard, and that he had once loved her with a passion and fury she would never forget.

  Winter arrived. Astra reminded herself that storms across the channel were common, and that even if Richard decided to return to England, days and even weeks might pass before he was able to make the voyage. Then he would have to find her, for although she had left word of her whereabouts with people in London, Riversmere was a journey of several days.

  She counted the days until Christmas and then the days afterwards. And still, he did not come.

  * * *

  “It is not forever, Paulina. I will be back.”

  Richard smiled as Nicholas said his goodbyes to the lovely French girl. He did not envy his squire, for he well knew what it was to ride off and leave your heart behind.

  Richard himself took time to clasp Paulina’s small brown hands in his, to kiss her sweetly on the cheek. He owed her his life, and even the jewelry and plate and other costly items he had insisted on leaving with her family could not begin to pay for what she had done. Her parents, a brown, drab couple who scarce spoke in Richard’s presence, stood behind Paulina, politely nodding their farewells.

  They rode north, away from Paris. The land was still bare and brown, but here and there they could see peasants spreading dung upon the fields, preparing them for the spring planting. Richard felt a vague homesickness for England, for the rolling hills and thick forests he had grown up with and always taken for granted. It seemed to him that he had never appreciated many things before—the comforting odor of cooking food, the sound of birds welcoming the day, the music of the wind in the trees and grasses, the scent of rain and earth. Although the wound in his back ached and his wasted legs were stiff and awkward on his horse, he had never felt so wondrously, gloriously alive. He wanted to shout with the mad exhilaration he felt, to urge the mare into a wild canter over the open fields. He felt reborn.

  How many men, he wondered, were ever given this, a second chance at life? Most men died without really living, without ever pausing to appreciate the beauty that was everywhere. They fought and loved and lusted. They raged and coveted and hated, never stopping to think how blessed they were. But he knew. He was a walking, breathing miracle. He was young and healthy and his strength returned a little more with each passing day. And this time, he meant to use it differently. He would not waste his energy on seeking wealth or land. He would not squander his gifts in the pursuit of glory and adulation.

  Richard shook his head, marveling at the change he felt in himself. The bitterness that had weighted him down for so long had vanished, and a fierce energy throbbed in his veins, making his heart sing with gratitude. All his doubts about committing himself to a woman had disappeared.

  He no longer doubted that he had anything to offer Astra. She had told him that she would marry him even if he was a beggar, and he understood now what she had meant. The love they felt for each other was wealth enough to last a lifetime.

  He glanced backwards to see his squire bouncing on the broad back of the black warhorse. He smiled. He had not told Nicholas yet, but he had made up his mind. He was going home, home to Astra. He meant to offer her the only thing she had ever asked of him—his undying love.

  * * *

  The boredom and gloom of winter had hung heavy on everyone’s spirits at Riversmere. As the weather suddenly turned sunny and mild, the manor residents grew almost giddy with the reprieve. One morning two horses were spotted in the distance, riding slowly toward Riversmere, and the excitement built even more. Astra tried not to let herself hope. Travelers arriving from the direction of London meant nothing, she told herself sternly. Even if Richard had come home, he likely would have sent a message to her so she could expect him. The nearing riders could be anyone.

  Still, the disappointment struck her like a blow to her chest when she stood at the wooden palisade and saw that they were about to welcome only a traveling peddler. She glanced behind him and saw that the second “rider” was no more than a stack of merchandise piled high on the back of a mule.

  The peddler was covered from head to foot with a long cloak, and he seemed to have some sort of deformity that made him hunch over awkwardly. Astra sighed and went to greet him. For all that she was disappointed by the peddler, the rest of the manor was elated. A traveling vendor brought a wealth of much needed goods to the manor, as well as something even more precious—news. They crowded around the man, asking a dozen questions at once. “Do you have salt, man? What of needles? Knives? Any spices?”

  The peddler started to answer them in a strange muffled voice. Astra stepped forward and interrupted.

  “For shame, Lettia, Croth, Ian. It’s not fitting that we make the poor man stand in the courtyard and do his business when he is certain to be tired and hungry. Bring him in.”

  The peddler turned to her as she spoke. Astra could not see his face clearly beneath the cloak, but a strange chill ran through her. There was something odd about him. He was surprisingly tall, and despite his ungainly posture, he seemed to be a very substantial man. She could not recall any of the peddlers who had come to Stafford being anywhere near so big.

  No matter, she told herself as she turned to go into the hall. If he had good merchandise and fair prices, she would be content. She must remember
to ask him about candles. The tallow ones they made at Riversmere reeked terribly as they burned. She would so like to have a few beeswax ones to burn in her bedchamber at night.

  There were a dozen things to think of in the next few minutes. They could serve the man some of the leftover pottage, but he must also have fresh bread and some of the good ale. She also needed to find her list of supplies and see Hereward about money. Before winter had set in for good, the steward had traveled to Oxford and sold some of Richard’s loot for silver. A cache of pennies was hidden away in one of the storerooms, and she would need Hereward’s help to dig it up.

  “All this fuss for a peddler,” Hereward grumbled as they pulled the wooden box from the dirt.

  “It’s good fortune to show a traveler hospitality,” Astra pointed out. “Besides, there are many things we need, and it would be nice not to have to wait until I can travel to Wallingford and get them myself.”

  “What of your husband, Lady Astra? Will he not be coming soon with supplies?”

  Astra blushed and ducked her head, avoiding the look in Hereward’s eyes. She feared the steward had begun to doubt that “Sir Richard” even existed. How much longer could she put him off with stories of her husband’s business in France?

  By the time they reached the hall, the peddler was seated at the trestle table surrounded by food. He still wore the hood of his cloak around his face, and Astra could see little more of him than she had before. She watched his brown scarred fingers as they reached again and again for the bread and ale. God in heaven! He certainly was eating enough!

  Astra waited impatiently with the rest of the manor inhabitants, wondering if she could bargain for better prices since the man had already consumed half her larder. At last, he pushed the food away and rose. He went to his bundles—which had been unloaded off the mule and nag and piled on the manor floor—and grabbed the top one. He opened it, and spread the contents out on the table. There was a gasp of excitement from the waiting customers.

  The people of the manor crowded around the table, talking eagerly. They had little coin, but they bargained fiercely for the few trifles they could afford. Astra stood back, waiting for the others to finish their business. In her mind she went over the things they needed, things she’d rather not do without another month. She hardly heard the man when he called to her.