The Knight And The Rose

by Isolde Martyn

  He was sitting up now, speaking to Sir Geoffrey, the wind playing with his fair hair. “My lady and I will find our way down from here. Meet us as we arranged.”

  Sir Geoffrey raised his hand in kindly salute, his expression indulgent but with an edge of wariness. There had been more instructions, Johanna suspected, as the men scrambled to their feet and grabbed their horses’ bridles.

  “Come.” Gervase’s shadow fell across her face but it was Sir Geoffrey who drew her to her feet and, like a father sensing matters to be spoken, left her alone with him. The company dispersed tactfully out of sight.

  Johanna, exasperated, manipulated, her wishes not consulted, wondered if an apology was forthcoming and resolved to make him suffer a little. He held out his fingers to take her gloved hand in his but she refused and began walking. What was he at now? He must know that for several reasons she was no longer comfortable in his presence. Did he believe the haunting loveliness of the hills would cleanse away the humiliation of his refusal and so bring about a mutual absolution? Was this the beginning of his leaving?

  He was not following, but gathering up the horses’ reins. It halted her momentum and she waited, biting her lip, for him to join her. Taking the palfrey’s reins from him, she asked, “Is this a sop dipped in honey to sweeten your imminent departure?”

  He smiled and held his free hand up, away from his sword in surrender. “No, we are looking for curlews and every time you hear one, I shall kiss you.”

  She wished she had managed to kick him at midnight. “Perhaps rabbits might be a safer choice. I have gone quite deaf with the altitude.”

  The mournful cry reached them and a black and white bird floppily took off from the breast of the hill. “That was a peewit,” declared Johanna firmly.

  With a shrug, Gervase strode ahead so she was forced to grab a fistful of her skirt and hasten after him along the rich dark brown of the narrow sheep track.

  He waited amused, knuckles at his belt, legs apart, the wind gently playing with his cloak. “I could challenge you to a rolling race down the hillside but it might shock our escort and confuse the horses,” he called, and paced on again as if he knew that, like Eurydice, she would follow to a different world.

  A tiny harem of ewes fled from them, save for a curious lamb that knew no fear. The silly creature bleated up incongruously at the man’s great height and ambled off most tardily.

  Despite her pretence of contrariness, Johanna was truly enjoying the rarity of the excursion, inwardly marvelling at everything. Even a dead lone tree, its roots cluttered with scree, was striking in its gaunt beauty. A weathered rabbit skull saddened her and she looked away, all her senses, all her joy centering on the man who stood beside her.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To gaze out over your demesne so that when you leave Conisthorpe you can tuck the memory in with your veils and kirtles like a sprig of rosemary.”

  He led her up a cleavage in the curving hills to where the land fell away so she might watch the clouds throwing their shadows across the moors. The dappled beauty of the dale was set before her like a feast for her pleasure. She felt his hands upon her sleeves as he stood behind her and wished that every day might be like this. The man’s fingers lifted her veiling, set her braids aside and kissed her shoulder. Below in the valley, the river hurried, but time paused and waited on their pleasure.

  “I have never told you how beautiful you are.”

  The unsought compliment startled her. She suspected calculation on his part and glanced sideways at him for affirmation. There was charm in the tilt of his mouth, but it might have been the sky he was addressing.

  “No, nor should you have. It would have been mere flattery.”

  “You underrate yourself.”

  Like a goshawk, his gaze soared over her lips and slowly down to hover where her cloak had fallen back above the rise of her breasts.

  The mournful cry came.

  “That was a curlew,” he laughed and turning her, caught her to him by the waist. As if he sensed her antipathy still, his lips pressed briefly upon hers with the lightness of friendship. Then, taking her hand, he led her around the contour of the hill, the churlish wind testing the strength of their apparel, tugging at his beaked hat, prying beneath her skirts, billowing their cloaks into flapping boat sails.

  She was glad when they turned inward again to the calm shelter of the upper valley. Here she could feel the sun’s warmth. He let drop his stallion’s rein and unslung his baldrick, but kept the scabbard close to hand as he sat down upon the moss.

  Yet last night lay unresolved between them. At a loss, she glanced around her undecided. Did Eve feel so when Adam had tasted the apple and gazed upon her with a new understanding in his eyes? The air was quiet, the sounds about them God-made; they could have been the only people on Earth.

  Ignoring her diffidence, Gervase smiled, lay back, clasped hands behind his head and closed his eyes. “It is too pleasant here to hasten back,” he observed, leaving her with no choice but to spread her cloak beside him. She sat for a while in her own silence, listening to the thin song of a soaring skylark. Her companion might have been asleep so she eventually settled onto her front, letting her fingers pluck idly at the grasses, but her glance caressed his face.

  “Gervase?”

  An eyebrow twitched. “Hmm?”

  “The judge is very angry with us. He must have heard from my lord Despenser.”

  “I know, poor fellow.” Her companion rolled onto his belly and rested his chin pensively upon his crossed wrists. “However, let us admit, he still has the power to send you back to Enderby—that is, if he has the courage to thwart a certain high personage and risk demotion.”

  “Do not be sorry for him.” Johanna sat up. “William de Bedford has his price.”

  “What do you mean?” He eased himself onto his uninjured side, propping his head upon his elbow to study her, his fingers playfully stroking the edge of her cloak.

  “Mother—well, she finally admitted to me last night that all along she was expecting the verdict to be eventually in our favour.”

  That made him abandon his loverlike manner and sit up with a frown that was more than skin-deep. “How so?” he asked abruptly.

  “Believe me, I never guessed. Apparently she made a point of informing him on the second day of the hearing that she is the god-daughter of my lord of Canterbury and would be writing to his grace shortly.” Johanna had expected merely surprise and relief, not a string of Anglo-Saxon expletives.

  “Why in God’s Name could she not have told me before we were bidden to Richmond? Did Stephen de Norwood know of this?”

  “But if Judge William is not venal, it will make no difference,” she added swiftly to appease him. “The verdict could still go against us.” She watched the knuckles of his fist continually waste themselves against his palm but his face gradually lost its ill-humoured expression.

  “No, the Despensers always prevail. They have a way of knowing the way beneath a man’s armour no matter how much he buckles on to guard himself,” he answered. “But it is all one so long as your marriage is annulled and all of this has been to some avail.”

  The cry of another curlew bruised the silence between them.

  Gervase observed the bird’s flight, but his words were for her. “What are we to do about us, Johanna?”

  “Us?” She could scarce keep the tremor from her voice.

  “It has gone beyond friendship, has it not?”

  “H-has it?”

  “Yes, you cannot hide it.” His fingers gently turned her face towards him. “My poor confused darling. Is it just a babe you want from me or more than that?”

  Tears sparkled upon her lashes. “Am I so transparent?” she whispered ruefully, staring disconsolately at the sky above his shoulder, not daring to read what must be rejection.

  “Oh, Johanna, I do not want to betray you. I have too much respect for you.” He smudged away the droplets from her cheek. �
��How can I promise more than I can give?”

  “I have been hurt already. Your kindness cannot harm me.”

  His mouth twisted, and he let go of her. “I have heard both the act and feeling called many things, but never kindness. Love is selfish, my lady.”

  “Then in God’s name, let us be selfish!” she exclaimed, rising to her feet. “If you so wish!” Her hands were curled into exasperated fists as she turned and faced him. “What do you want, Gervase? The interest that you mentioned the day you came to Conisthorpe?”

  He ran his hand ashamedly across his chin. “I cannot believe how loutishly I behaved. Is it too late to apologise?” At the shake of her head and the laughter springing in her eyes, his expression grew roguish. “Would you like me to kiss your shoe beaks in all humility?” He was shuffling towards her on his knees, but she realised as he halted within grasp of her skirts that his eyes were far from recalcitrant. “And I thought hitherto that women were frail, sheepish creatures. Say you want me, Johanna.” The words were uttered in a different voice. The blue gaze drew her, deep water to drown all inhibition.

  A man, this man, on his knees to her. Shaken at his mercurial capacity to surprise her still, Johanna gazed down bereft of words. But the decision had been already made on yesterday’s eve, the bow drawn; it was the true reason behind it that had been omitted.

  What he was asking, she could not answer. Not yet.

  “It is not too late to apologise,” she whispered, hazarding fingers to touch the golden hair, and then with a sob his face was against her body, his arms encompassing her kirtle skirt.

  As if she stood on quicksand, Johanna’s limbs melted and she sank to her knees within the safe keep of his embrace and wrapped her arms about his neck. His kisses were on her hair, her brow, her cheek, her throat, her parted lips.

  “I swear, lady,” he told her, drawing breath, his brow stern, “that you are liking this more than a virtuous woman should.”

  It was because she loved him. The revelation hit her as if God had suddenly unveiled the writing in the sky. There was no revulsion, no recoiling from this man’s touch.

  Geraint watched the deep green eyes go light with surprise like a startled wood creature’s.

  “You called me a whore once,” she protested with exquisite coyness.

  He gathered her to him, laughing. “Oh, your pardon, so I did. But, lady, if I hold you a moment longer . . .” He watched her lips tremble with a virginal modesty. “Bid me let you go or, believe me, I shall consummate this adulterous match of ours.” His hands were upon her back, gentle clamps to prevent her sudden bolting.

  “Here?” she asked nervously, not meeting his gaze, her breathing becoming unsteady. “We have already tarried too long.” She blinked at the horses as if they might interfere but they were delicately feeding.

  “There is no one to see. Our people will stay for us.” Already his hand was easing up her skirt to garter height. “Would you like the magic again—Joanna!” Her hands were guiding him to the lacing behind her and her eyes were dark with mischief. “Why, you witch,” he murmured, his words drowning against her lips as he loosened the bodice of her gown.

  He pulled her slackened kirtle down, immobilising her forearms and freed one of her breasts, stroking his forefinger round the dark surround of her nipple until he knew, watching her face, that she yearned for him to touch the nub, but it was his mouth that took possession.

  “W-why now, Gervase? When you refused last night.”

  He lifted his head. His lady was thinking still, not yet subordinate to her body’s craving; her mind’s needs must be sated first. “I am a free spirit, my darling, not a stallion to be led by the bridle in to breed.” His face grew taut and he looked at her with an emotion as old as Paradise, sliding his hand beneath her innermost skirt. Tenderly he parted her with the skill of a loving journeyman as he sought out the sensitive answering that he had found before.

  “Ohh.”

  He watched with satisfaction her exquisite breasts rise and fall as her breathing quickened. With a prayer of thanks, he knew he had won her. The gate that must let him in was opening and the dew that the troubadours sang of with knowing smiles was moistening his fingers.

  Johanna was truly his, her breathing ragged, her body arching. She was tangling her fingers tightly in his hair and drawing his face down to her willing lips. At last he had her past thinking, past caring and his enchantment of her was seeping along her body to her fingertips, up her spine. He loosened his own clothing. Soon his lady would feel the waves coming closer but . . .

  Johanna gasped. “Why have you stopped?” The spellbinder had left her deliberately unsated, on fire.

  “I wish to pleasure you, my dearest lady, but my own pain needs answering too. Would you have me enter you? If not, then we must cease at once . . . for I desire you beyond all reason. I cannot in all honour—”

  “Give quarter, I beg you,” she whispered. “Set me free!”

  Gervase understood, his hand came back to her, teasing and caressing, until she was again at the mercy of the pleasure he aroused in her. He entered her so easily, as if he knew the door and owned the key. And her body never clenched in rejection as it had against Fulk’s battering. She banished comparisons. This was different from anything else. He moved inside her, filling her comfortably as his finger stroked her further. The double sensation was almost unbearable. The sorcery struck her again, as if everything had drawn into a tight fist and let go with a great shuddering toss. She cried out, her body needing him and with a triumphant gasp he found release, filling her with his seed.

  Johanna opened her eyes and saw him smiling down at her.

  “Now you know why it is sinful, why lust drives men to Hell.”

  “Was I lustful?”

  “Lustful! Venus would not compare.” Geraint kissed her nose.

  It had been a compromise of course. Not merely his skill as a lover that had ensured her surrender, but her desire to give, to please, to thank him for making her smile again, for valuing her.

  “I wish . . .” she murmured, rearranging the tumbling golden hair back from his forehead, but said no more. Wishing would fragment the enchantment.

  “All things must end,” he told her solemnly, tugging her to her feet. He slung his swordbelt on and with his arm about her waist, he whistled the horses to follow and steered her back towards the open pasture. Maybe, she thought, it was also a beginning.

  “How long will you remain after the verdict—if it is not against us?”

  “As long as is seemly. A week perhaps. Before the ‘miserable Mallet’ comes knocking on Conisthorpe’s gate like a bad-tempered bailiff.”

  A week, only a week!

  Johanna wanted to tell him that she had fallen in love with him and that if he left her she would wither and die. But he was not hers; he never had been. God had sent him to her for a little space. The man had been honest, never making a secret of his intent to leave as soon as he could and if he now loved her, surely he would not show such eagerness to depart. No, she must make the best of this very moment.

  Sensing how much she was drawing on her inner strength to steel herself against his leaving, Geraint carried her palm to his lips.

  “You are whole again, my lady, and shall be free of both your tiresome husbands. I will at some future day send you word that Gervase de Laval is no more. Perhaps the Scots will have stuck a dirk in him or he will have died ignobly from dysentery.”

  “Please, do not talk so.” Not after what we have just shared.

  “You will fall in love with some local lord.”

  “With your babe within me.”

  “I doubt it, lady. One coupling does not make a child.”

  And yet today he had deliberately exposed her to that possibility. Last night he had been angry, today compliant. Was it merely a question of who made the decision, that as a man he could not let it be to her ordering?

  “If . . . if you have impregnated me, could I deign to as
k the name of the child’s father?”

  “Why, Gervase de Laval.” It was a prompt answer.

  Geraint was going to kill Gervase to free her. Some miserable, much-travelled letter would arrive, deliberately sent to some foreign port and commissioned to return, so that no one would be able to doubt the veracity. His motives had to be selfish, fragrant in sweet-smelling altruism; he had to free her in order to stay free himself.

  “Shall I carry you? I did not think the way would be so rough.”

  The upper valley had funnelled and the path was tumbled with fallen boulders, unblessed by sheep turds. A veritable river of stones, it became hard walking for Johanna’s thin shoes, a matter of wobbling and avoiding a turned ankle, and she could almost touch each side of the chasm with her fingertips.

  “It is limestone,” he told her as she ran her fingers over the surface. “See where the tree roots are splitting and loosening the . . . slabs.” His whole manner changed and he froze, holding up his fingers almost in a blessing for her silence.

  She thought it was some wild creature, and then he stealthfully drew his sword and slowly unlooping the narrower baldrick from his shoulder dangled the horn for her.

  Holding her breath, Johanna took it. He signalled her to raise it to her lips and mount the horse on his signal. Letting fall his hand, he flung himself round the blind angle of the chasm.

  Johanna blew as hard as she might and screamed as a soldier flung himself down the bank, cutting her off from the horses. Running to Gervase, she found him beset on the perilous rubbled ground by three swordsmen. One he had already dispatched, and he had a jagged wet wall of limestone at his back.

  Johanna put the horn to her lips again, but the fourth man dashed it away and grabbed her by her braids. She went heavy in his arms, flopping forward like a cloth-stuffed doll, nigh over-setting him by her weight. Before he could right her, she grabbed a rock and whammed it into his face. He shrieked, reeling back with blood like rivulets plunging forth between his steel mittens.