The Knight And The Rose

by Isolde Martyn

  The priest would not be distracted. “Meditate upon my warning. This life is fleeting and worldly delights will carry you to the Devil. I think you are walking in great moral danger and I will pray for you.”

  OUTSIDE THE HALL she came to Geraint’s arm like a falcon dangled its bait. He wagered she would have skipped at his side had she not been a lady or sorely chafed.

  “If you do not explain this instant . . .” she warned him, quickening her steps to his stride. He noted she was not afraid to follow him into his chamber; her mind, it seemed, was soaring larklike with all manner of possibilities.

  “It might come with a price, Johanna.” Would she be able to comprehend how much it would demand of them both?

  That quelled her optimism. “I-I see,” she stiffened, her little chin rising coldly. Now what hazardous ground was her agile mind springing onto? To let him enjoy her? He thought as much. So the chaplain had been reminding her of the sins of the flesh.

  “Oh, not that, you goose. Dear God, Johanna, must you think every man is out to lay you on your back? Even if it is a worthwhile thought.” He sent her a heated glance that had her panicking again. By all the Saints, he could play her like the viol. Did she not realise how predictable she was?

  “I suppose you are going to explain eventually.” She twitched her skirts, a sure sign of her skittishness.

  He leaned against the wall and sternly folded his arms. “Are you prepared to trust me with your life?”

  “My life!” The delicate head jerked up, eyes wide. She was beautiful, did she know that? “My life,” she echoed bleakly. “As I told you on our first meeting, my life is not worth a bruised flowerpetal. What are you proposing?”

  “You are being evasive with your answer, lady.” He unfolded his arms and came across to stare down at her. “Do you think you could stable your rebellious soul and grant me an hour of your total obedience?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Hurt you.” He reached out and without touching her framed her throat within his large hands. “Have you the courage to trust and obey me to the letter? I cannot help you otherwise.”

  “It sounds as though we are being made handfast. Yes, I trust you, whoever you are.” He felt her condemnation that he demanded her trust and yet would not vouchsafe his. But this was his bargain, not hers.

  “Be certain! I do not make this offer lightly. It will be as hard for me, harder perhaps.”

  She scowled. “You are demanding my trust without explaining what you intend.”

  “Yes. I could draw blasphemous comparisons. I have always sympathised with Doubting Thomas but sometimes you have to make a decision.”

  Why was he expecting so much, he wondered. Why was it suddenly important that he test her so, that she demonstrate her faith in him? Because he could kill her? But . . .

  “Very well,” she was saying, interrupting his pensiveness. “Do what is needful.”

  “Excellent.” He gave her forearms a brotherly squeeze of congratulation. “Such good sense. You should have been born a camel.” And let go of her, his grin turning roguish. “Of course, if it only takes a thrice, you will have sworn to be obedient to me for the rest of the hour.” He pulled at Johanna’s sensitive tail, teasing her again. This time she did not change colour.

  “I-I have said I trust you,” Johanna declared bravely, gravely ignoring his lightheartedness. “Now will you tell me, please.”

  “Tomorrow, lady.” If he told her now, she might well swoon.

  * * *

  LATER, HE LAY awake into the early hours, fretful about what he must attempt, cursing that he could smell the scent of Johanna in his bedchamber. It was too long since he had had a woman and the only one his body had began to lust for could not bear his hand upon her.

  If he succeeded in freeing her from the Florentine girdle, what then? Would he be able to stay in this bedchamber, knowing she lay above? Could he in all conscience take advantage of her, telling her it was for her own good when it was because he wanted her? He wanted to tangle his fingers in her hair and tease her body until she writhed and arched beneath him, begging him to enter. What had Stephen de Norwood called her? A house. This pretty dwelling was waiting for a caring hand and he would take possession.

  He turned over with a groan, hating himself that his lusty desire should so dilute his honour, and if he prayed that God smite him a smashing blow on the skull and send him into oblivion, Heaven was not answering.

  GERVASE EXPLAINED HIS plan carefully to his noble lady next morning. Short of invading Enderby and getting himself and others killed, there was no other solution.

  Johanna, rebinding his shoulder, faltered and the bandage leapt from her fingers and unravelled half of its length across his bed. She had not expected the truth to be so hard.

  “Dear Jesu,” she whispered. “You would attempt this for me? I care not for myself, but if aught goes wrong they will hang you for murder.”

  “It is your choice, my lady. We are damned if we do, and damned if we lack the courage, but if we are agreed, it must be attempted this very day. Who knows when Fulk will demand the court examine you.”

  She grimaced and walked across to the window. He finished the binding awkwardly himself, allowing her time to think.

  “Then let us do it,” she declared, bringing the palms of her hands together. “I will make sure Agnes and my mother fulfil their parts.”

  “And bid them do no more than that, Johanna. This is like a bridal bed, I want no audience for my performance, especially not your mother. Now,” his voice was brisk with an edge of sadness, “I will set all in motion and meet you in the chapel. We must both be in a state of grace, you understand?”

  She nodded and gave him a curtsey before she quit his presence as if he were her true lord.

  “Pray hard,” he commanded her grimly, when he joined her later in the chapel. “We need all the help God can offer.”

  Kneeling beside her, like a bridegroom at the church door, he watched the lozenges of sunlight delivered by the expensive windows quivering upon her face—a tough little lioness for all her fragility—before he looked beseechingly at Christ hanging in agony upon the Rood. Help me, my most just Lord. This would not be Boroughbridge, but it would test his mental reserves to the uttermost. It would need a steady hand. He felt he could supply that, providing Johanna had the courage to play her part. Dear God, the thought of the ordeal made him sweat already, for if he killed Johanna, Hell would not be hereafter, it would be every instant of the rest of his brief life.

  THEY WALKED INTO the forge, hand in hand—like children entering the darkness of a wood from which there might be no return. For Geraint, any smithy was familiar. He had spent too many hours over the last years waiting for horses to be shod not to know the implements which littered Bart’s demesne—the swageblock, the mandrels used for shaping hoops and rings, the fullers and flatters of various sizes, the cold sett hammer and others of its ilk, the various tongs, the iron lazy stand for trimming the hooves, the chains, and the huge bellows. But for the lady at his side it was another matter. He sensed her panic and squeezed her hand to give her comfort.

  In truth Johanna was a little unsteady on her feet. On Gervase’s bidding, she had drunk sufficient wine to put her at ease but now the regular clanging of the hammer upon iron set her quaking. She would have clapped her hands to her ears and fled had she not been so desperate.

  As a child, she had loathed the smithy, sensitive to the possible pain of the coursers as the iron was hammered onto their hooves, detesting the noise, the furnace, and the heavy stink of horse odour, sweltering skin and scorching metal.

  The smokiness resurrected another unwelcome memory. Of the day Fulk and his physician had compelled her to kneel naked in a small chamber, her thighs straddling a trivet of smoking herbs. It was to tether her restless womb, the physician said, and cure her barrenness. They kept her there shamefully and immodestly for nigh on two hours, her elbows propped on joiners’ stall
s, the doctor replenishing the burning leaves so vigorously that the stench nearly suffocated her. Beyond a curtain, innocent of her suffering, the Enderby chaplain had read to her from the scriptures how Abraham’s wife, Sarah, had eventually conceived. When Fulk had finally permitted the physician to release her, she had been feeble from exhaustion and witless from the vapours. Suffumigation, they had called it.

  She must have reeled a little at the hideousness of the recall, for Gervase patted her arm, drawn through his, reassuringly. Dear God, what was she putting him through? Swiftly she set aside self-pity and saw in dismay the strain in his expression. Droplets already shone upon his brow and, with a tight smile, he let go of her and ran a finger along the inside of his shirt collar.

  It was going to plan so far. Bart the smith was working alone. Gervase had already sent Jankyn to lure the man’s apprentice away.

  Bestowing upon the pair of them the disdainful glance of a menial who knows his professional value, the blacksmith set the hammer down and grabbed a rag from a hook on the wall. He mopped his face and naked breast before he was ready to inspect the broken bracelet that Johanna produced from the purse on her girdle.

  As Gervase apprised the man of their trivial errand, Johanna watched the drops of sweat trickling down the blacksmith’s brawny back into the fabric of the clout about his waist to save his hose and shuddered at the horror of labouring for hours on end at the mercy of the glowing furnace. After just a few hideous moments in this smoky heat, perspiration had sapped into the pads beneath her arms and was oozing down the small of her back. The moisture of her palm was replenished by the equal wetness of Gervase’s but he still held her like a loving husband.

  The hour bell sounded and Agnes appeared, wrinkling her nose as she set foot in the smoky interior. “My lady wants you this instant, Bart.”

  The smith looked fit to curse heartily at this second invasion of his time. Then he was caught in a servant’s dilemma; if he hastened to Lady Constance, he might offend her son-in-law.

  Gervase nonchalantly gave him leave. “Make speed to my lady. Ours is a trivial matter. Go, I will watch your fire.”

  “You can put horseshoes on my feet, sir,” Johanna flounced her skirts coquettishly at her knight. Inside she was almost molten with fear.

  “That is mighty kind, my lord.” Bart pulled his forelock to him and thrust his massive arms swiftly into his worn leather jupon. They waited, as if counting to ten after the man left, before Jankyn stuck his head around the door. “Now?”

  “Now!”

  Agnes fastened the shutters and Jankyn disappeared to perform sentry duty.

  “Out with you, Agnes. Stay within call.” Gervase swiftly barred the door behind her, took an ugly spiked bolt from his purse and thrust it into the embers.

  “I hope this holds,” he muttered, turning to test the strength of the long poles bearing the smith’s straw-stuffed mattress. With a wry face, he unclipped the leather flask upon his belt. Johanna took a deep draught from it as they had agreed. “Lie down.” He gave the glowing wood a blast with the bellows to intensify the heat.

  She obeyed him. To be submissively horizontal, belly up like a cowardly dog, was against her nature. It brought back the dread of watching Fulk descend upon her naked.

  “I know it is not comfortable but I will be as swift as I can. And I have been thinking it would be sensible to tie your feet. If you flinch at the wrong moment . . .”

  “I suppose so.” He swiftly tied her ankles together and bound the leather thong securely around the poles.

  “God ha’ mercy!”

  “I am going to tether your wrists beneath the bedframe.”

  Her alarm was a reflex she tried hard to fight. “I can hold on to the bedframe.”

  “It is safer this way,” he answered tersely, taking her wrists. “You promised to trust me.”

  Her breathing grew short. “I-I cannot bear it—b-being tied.”

  “Johanna, have faith. There is not time for argument. Now, you will need to bite on something.” He had a piece of thick leather ready. “Are you going to hinder me, lady?” he asked.

  Unthinking, she parted her lips, “N—ohh!.”

  Gervase pushed the leather into her mouth. She railed curses against him in her head while her common sense fought to calm her. This is not Fulk. He is not going to rape me. A lesser man might have exulted at her helplessness, at the tears of fear and fury running down her face, but Gervase had other business. She watched him moving around methodically, heard the clink of the heating iron as he checked its colour and the blast of the bellows encouraging the fire before he came back to her again.

  “You have the sheepskin in place?” The woollen pad was already tucked beneath the waistband of the chastity belt to protect her skin from the vicious heat. She nodded with a furious groan and he began to ease up her skirts. Sweet heaven, it was bad enough being unexpectedly tethered like a goat for dragon fodder, but it was the incongruous intimacy which now mortified her even though she knew that he must peel back her clothing.

  With the estimation of a journeyman, Geraint wriggled his fingers beneath the belt’s lock, testing the space between the metal band and the sheepskin that lay fleece side down over his lady’s belly. Then he drew out a thin piece of wood a span wide and two spans long from the breast of his cote and inserted it beneath the steel. The fit was extremely tight, but it was needful to protect her belly and lowermost ribs.

  “Not long,” he whispered, stroking her face with his knuckles. “Perhaps I should have given you more fortified liquor, my darling dear.”

  Joanna groaned again as he leaned the frightening hammer against the palliasse’s wooden supports, and shifted uncomfortably on the straw. “Remember, you will have to lie still when the time comes,” he warned. “If you flinch, I could kill you.” He glanced at the embers. “Almost there.” Then he crouched down beside her. “I think it best that I blindfold you. If you move, you understand . . .”

  She shook her head frantically but he already had a black cloth in his hand. With a calm smile that belied the urgency of his fingers, he tied it about her face.

  Johanna heard him mutter a swift prayer to St. Eligius, the patron saint of locksmiths, and then the sound of pincers as he seized the spike—it must be white-hot now—and plunged it into the barrel of water. She heard the scream of the water and the hiss of steam.

  “Brace yourself, Johanna. Breathe deeply.”

  Geraint positioned himself, his face straining with concentration to stop his left hand shaking as he pointed the burning red spike down into the hole of the lock.

  “Hold your breath when I say ‘now!’ NOW!”

  He brought the hammer down.

  “SWEET CHRIST!” EXCLAIMED Geraint, shaking from head to toe as he cast the hammer aside and flung the bolt and pincers into the water. The lock had given. But had he killed her?

  “Johanna!” He hurriedly tugged out the gag. Searching for a pulse of life in her neck with one hand, he pulled the charred wood and burnt wool away to estimate her injury. The fleece had saved her skin from burning.

  Shaking her by the shoulder, he ran his right hand probingly across her belly, searching for protrusions beneath the flesh. Mercifully there seemed to be nothing unusual. With a prayer of relief, he hastily flung her skirts across the shattered mess of metal and rushing to the door, unbarred it.

  “She’s in a faint,” he exclaimed, dragging Agnes swiftly to the bed. “Do something!” As Agnes slapped frantically at her lady’s cheeks, he cut the bonds which held her and removed the blindfold.

  “Try blowing into her mouth,” suggested Jankyn from the door.

  Gervase thrust Agnes aside and set his lips to Johanna’s. He tasted the dryness of the leather upon her parched mouth as he took a deep breath and blew.

  “Put the cloth over her nose or the breath will come out again,” urged Jankyn, now at his elbow. “That’s it. Keep going.”

  “I can feel her heart,” cried Agnes, w
ithdrawing her hand from beneath Johanna’s kirtle.

  Geraint stood up and put a hand to the wall to steady himself.

  Relief seemed to leech all power from him. Did women feel so after childbirth?

  Jankyn, severing the remains of the leather trusses from the mattress and tossing them into the fire, eyed him with concern. “Master!” He pointed to the drawstring bag still tucked beneath Geraint’s belt. There were voices across the courtyard and the jester hastened to the door.

  Geraint rallied. He grabbed at the bag and threw it to Agnes. “Hold this open!” Then he put his hands up Johanna’s skirts, dragging the splintered metal girdle swiftly over her hips and down her legs. Agnes held out the bag to receive it and drew the string tight.

  Johanna stirred and he gathered her up into his arms triumphantly.

  “Easy, brave heart. Your mother is come.”

  Lady Constance paused on the threshold, blinking at the sudden darkness. Agnes thrust the shutters open.

  “My lady swooned with the heat,” she explained, bobbing a curtsey.

  Johanna’s mother stepped forward. “Gervase?” Her voice was uneven, serrated by her fear.

  “All is well, I think,” he answered calmly. He must be smiling foolishly but there was a simple joy in him that spread from the knowing in his head down his entire being to touch the inside of his soles. If he died tomorrow, God’s judgment roll would have one entry on the right side of his ledger.

  Twenty-two

  SLIDING HER ARMS around the broad shoulders, Johanna snuggled into Gervase’s chest. Inebriated by the relief and the strong wine, she did not know whether to laugh or weep, but she had never felt so safe in all her life and she wanted to hug that sensation close for all eternity. The shackle that Fulk had placed upon her was shattered and it was as if his evil sorcery was broken. Did the princess feel so after St. George had saved her from the dragon? Or did the devastating hero ride away to rescue more virgins and beat all other unsuspecting dragons into scaly pulp? She gave a gurgle of laughter and burrowed her face further into Gervase’s clothing. For an instant she sensed him falter in his stride and then he readjusted his grip and hoisted her higher.