“Forgive me,” he murmured, setting the silver bowl on the railing, “for not having fought harder for you. If I’d known how deeply enamored of you I would remain all these years later, I would never have let you go.”
He took Phillipa’s face between his hands, lowering his head. She stared at him unblinkingly as he prepared to kiss her, the wine glass quivering in her white-knuckled grip.
“Here you are!” Sweeping the leather curtain aside, Hugh strode into the salle.
There came a burst of shattering glass as Aldous and Phillipa abruptly parted.
“Oh.” Phillipa, parchment-pale save for two bright spots on her cheeks, looked from Hugh to the shards of blue glass at her feet. The balcony’s stone floor and the skirt of her ivory tunic were spattered with crimson. “Oh, Aldous, your goblet! ‘Twas Venetian glass—it must have been very dear.”
“I care naught for the goblet,” Aldous said. “That exquisite gown is ruined now.”
“Not if I can get some salt on it right away.”
“I’ll get someone to help you.” Crossing the salle without so much as looking in Hugh’s direction, Aldous plucked a little bronze bell off a corner cabinet filled with reliquaries and rang it.
Phillipa, stepping into the salle from the balcony, looked toward Hugh with bleak discomfiture, as if she were ashamed at having been caught in mid-seduction, but there was something else in her eyes that he recognized as puzzlement. She was wondering why Hugh had interrupted the cozy little tryst, inasmuch as she was under a mandate to become Aldous Ewing’s leman.
Hugh was wondering the same thing.
A trio of maids—young and comely, like all of Aldous’s female servants—flurried into the room to do his bidding. Blythe, tsking over Phillipa’s gown, led her away to clean it. Claennis set about tidying up the mess on the balcony. Hugh halted Elthia as she was leaving the salle, the silver bowl in one hand and Aldous’s goblet in the other, and chose a strawberry from the bowl.
Unsheathing his jambiya, he severed the berry from its stem, catching it on the tip of the lethally sharp blade and popping it in his mouth. He tossed the stem back in the bowl and sent the wench on her way, then wiped the juice-stained blade on his grimy riding chausses. The fruit was perfectly ripe and sweet as honey.
“I’ve never seen a dagger quite like that,” said Aldous, standing some distance away with a pensive scowl. “Where did it come from?”
“I took it off a dead Turk nine years ago in a place called Tripoli,” Hugh said, twirling the blade slowly to savor the silvery ripple of watered steel adorned with elaborate gold-inlayed infidel inscriptions. “He’d probably taken it off some other poor dead son of a bitch from God knows where, who’d taken it off someone else, and so on. This particular jambiya is very old. No telling where it originally came from. It could have been anywhere in Byzantium, or perhaps Anatolia, or Syria, or even Egypt.”
“Very impressive.”
Hugh slid the knife into its sheath. “You think I carry it as an affectation.”
“Nay, I—”
Aldous sucked in his breath as Hugh unsheathed the jambiya with blinding speed. “This—” he said, whipping the blade through the air so fast it whistled “—is why the jambiya has become my weapon of choice.”
“Because...you can wield it so well?” Aldous ventured.
“Because I can wield it at all.” Hugh held up the weapon with his mutilated right hand to show how well he could grip its odd, anvil-shaped hilt of walrus ivory with just four fingers. “A man needs a thumb to handle a sword, but with this, I can still disembowel a fellow pretty cleanly.” Crossing to Aldous in two strides, he simulated an upward thrust to the belly that left the deacon stumbling backward. “Or open his throat, or puncture his heart...” He shrugged negligently. “It’s come in handy on a number of occasions.”
Aldous stood against the wall, regarding him grimly.
“Do you suppose there’s anything left over from supper?” Hugh asked as he casually resheathed the jambiya. “I haven’t eaten for hours.”
“If you go out back to the kitchen,” Aldous said woodenly, “I’m sure the cook can find something for you.”
Hugh nodded his thanks and left, thinking, You idiot! You fool! To have barged in just as Aldous was making his move was foolish enough, but then to have staged that menacing little demonstration... What had he been thinking of?
He hadn’t been thinking. He’d been reacting on instinct—taking a stand as any male animal did when another male encroached on what was his. Which would have been fine, except that not only was Phillipa far from “his,” but his role in this little mystery play was to turn a blind eye to his wife’s indiscretions, not thwart them with implicit threats of disembowelment.
He really was a soldier at heart, with a soldier’s predisposition for forthright confrontation. The subtleties of spying—the playacting and prevarications—were so utterly foreign to his nature that it was a wonder he managed it at all. Phillipa, with her innate cleverness, her composure and her knack for acting her part, was really much more adept at this sort of work than he was.
Perhaps Lord Richard should have let her conduct this mission on her own. All Hugh seemed to be good at was mucking things up.
* * *
Lying in bed that night, Phillipa heard the distant pealing of church bells and knew it was matins. She lay perfectly still, feigning sleep, until she heard the bed ropes creak and the curtains being parted, accompanied by Hugh’s weight shifting on the feather mattress; then she opened her eyes.
By the watery moonlight that illuminated their sizeable chamber, she saw him sitting on the edge of the bed with his back to her, framed by the open bed curtains, his head bowed, his elbows resting on his knees. His shirt, damp with sweat, clung to the shifting muscles of his shoulders and arms as he dragged his hands through his hair.
He always strove to be quiet when he arose during the night, apparently unaware that she, too, was lying awake in the dark, struggling for a few meager hours of sleep. That first night, she’d ascribed her wakefulness to being unused to sharing a bed, but as the long, restive nights wore on, she had to admit that it was Hugh himself keeping her awake—his nearness, his heat, the memory of what had transpired in the orchard and the knowledge that she had but to reach for him, and he would eagerly take now what she had denied him then.
Sighing raggedly, Hugh reached for something on the floor—one of the pair of brown chausses he’d peeled off at bedtime. Gathering up the woolen stocking, he leaned over to tug it over a foot and up his leg, lifting his long shirt to fasten it by means of an attached leather strip to his linen underdrawers. How, precisely, the strip connected to the drawers was a mystery to Phillipa, inasmuch as he kept his back to her every night when he was readying himself for one of these mysterious nocturnal jaunts.
Until she’d begun sharing this room with Hugh a week ago, Phillipa had never even seen a man in his underclothes, much less slept next to one. When he had set about undressing for bed that first night, she’d wondered how much he would take off, since she’d been given to understand that most men slept without a stitch on, especially in warm weather. She’d been relieved when he’d left on his shirt and drawers, but part of her had also been just the tiniest bit disappointed.
The closest she’d ever come to viewing an unclothed man was the occasional water carrier or dockworker who, on an especially sweltering day, would toil in naught but a loincloth or short breeches. Her impression of what a man might look like wearing nothing at all had been formed as a child when she and Ada had jimmied open a locked cabinet in Uncle Lotulf’s study and found a book that featured an illustration of Adam and Eve before the Fall. The picture was notable for the couple’s utter nakedness, which had both scandalized and fascinated the little girls. It was Adam, of course, who had most intrigued them. His body was as smooth and hairless as Eve’s, only he had no breasts, his stomach was flatter, and between his legs there sprouted a curious wormlike appenda
ge no larger than a man’s little finger.
Ada and Phillipa had ruminated at length over that appendage, speculating on its possible functions. Over time, from analyzing overheard ribald jests and songs, they surmised that it came into play during lewd goings-on with women of base character. It was through the writings of Trotula of Salerno and two or three other Italian women physicians that the sisters, by then nearly grown, came to understand, if only nominally, what was involved in the coital act and that its purpose was procreation.
Trotula and her colleagues also enumerated various techniques for preventing conception, to Phillipa’s bewilderment. Much as she championed free sexual expression, it had always secretly confounded her why any woman would engage in such an act unless the point was to get pregnant—for, although she would never admit it openly, the idea of letting a man shove that little worm between her legs and discharge his seed in her had always struck her as not only undignified, but downright repulsive.
Until now.
Thinking back to the orchard, she recalled her shock when Hugh had pulled her toward him, letting her feel his vital part, which had been many times larger than that of the man in the picture. She’d realized that the organ must stiffen somewhat to allow for entrance into the womanly chamber, but for it to distend to such proportions! She’d been astounded.
Wouldn’t it hurt terribly to have one’s body invaded by something so thick and hard? From things she’d heard, she was fairly certain that losing one’s maidenhood was, indeed, a painful ordeal. But afterward? Upon reflection, Phillipa concluded that the sensation of being penetrated so fully, once one was used to it, might afford a certain measure of primal satisfaction that could be interpreted as pleasurable.
In fact, it had been Ada’s hypothesis that women were capable of a physical release similar to a man’s ejaculation. This Phillipa doubted, although she had come to accept that women could experience a certain degree of carnal arousal. She’d felt it herself this past week as she’d lain in bed next to Hugh with her imagination running riot. The contemplation of fleshly matters, she had found, produced a strange lassitude of the senses, as well as a certain excruciating emptiness in her womanly parts that felt akin to both pleasure and pain. It was as if she had an exceptionally maddening itch and no way to scratch it.
Hugh donned the other legging and his riding boots. Standing, he plucked his belt off its hook and buckled it—along with the attached purse and heathen dagger—over his shirt.
Phillipa closed her eyes again in case Hugh looked in her direction as he stole silently from their chamber, then rose from bed and crossed to the window, which overlooked the stableyard. Hidden behind the half-open shutter, she watched him leave the house by the back door and enter the stable, as he did every night. Soon came a faint glimmer of light as he lit the horn lantern hanging from the rafters above Odin’s stall; in a few minutes, he would emerge on the back of his huge dun stallion and tear off down Tooley Street.
Normally she watched at the window until he rode away, then returned to bed and drifted into a fitful slumber, from which she would awaken later in the night as Hugh slipped back under the covers. Within minutes she would hear his breathing take on the deep, steady cadence of sleep. After that, she generally lay awake for some time, wondering where he’d gone, and what he’d done, that he should return so depleted. Throwing the dice in some ale-house, perhaps? Or, more likely, disporting himself in some wench’s bed. Perhaps he had a leman nearby; it stood to reason that a man like Hugh of Wexford would keep a woman handy to see to his needs.
Try as she might, Phillipa couldn’t erase from her mind the image of Hugh lying between this faceless woman’s legs, pushing himself into her, filling her with his seed. There was something unaccountably distressing about the notion of him easing himself with someone else.
Someone else? What a fool she was, to feel jealous over some anonymous mistress of Hugh’s, when she herself had made it clear enough to him that his advances were unwelcome.
What if she hadn’t? What if she’d let him spread his shirt on the ground that evening in the orchard and lain down on it and opened her arms to him? What if she’d let him take his pleasure with her in the cool, dreamy twilight? The gratification would have been mutual, I assure you... What if she’d cast aside her fears and misgivings and let herself be in the world, and of it, for one brief, enchanted interlude?
He would merely have been using her, of course, as he had used a hundred women before her. Sex was no more meaningful to him than any other bodily function, if a bit more diverting. During that encounter in the orchard, when he’d disarmed her with his kisses only to take such astounding liberties with her, she’d been repulsed to think of giving herself to a man whose only interest in her was as a recipient of his lust. Since then, however, as she’d lain next to him night after night, her body thrumming with desire, she’d had occasion to rethink the matter.
Hèloïse had been but eighteen when she’d lost her innocence, and according to Abelard in his widely-circulated account of their doomed affair, she’d relished their lovemaking as much as he. It hadn’t been physical passion that had destroyed Hèloïse, but the passion that burned in her heart. As fascinating as Phillipa found the concept of romantic love, she was not at risk of falling prey to it; not only was she far too cerebral to let herself get carried away like that, but Hèloïse’s unhappy destiny was a powerful deterrent to such folly.
Phillipa had always known that she must avoid infatuation at all cost. At one time she’d been content as well to shun the pleasures of the flesh, thinking it no great loss. But of late...
Of late it had come seem a very great loss indeed.
Caterpillars do turn into butterflies, but first they have to want to. They have to break free of that nice, familiar little cocoon...
Snatching her new black, sable-lined mantle off its peg, Phillipa pinned it over her night shift and made her way on silent, bare feet down the service stairwell and outside to the stableyard.
Chapter 9
Phillipa hesitated in the doorway of the stable, an immense ragstone-and-timber structure capable of accommodating many times more horses than Aldous would ever house in it. Her resolve faltered when she saw the yellowish lamplight spilling out of Odin’s stall at the far end of the long central aisle and heard the snap of leather as Hugh buckled the beast into his saddle.
Steeling herself, she tidied the loose hair that hung in disorderly tendrils to her hips and walked slowly down the aisle, straw crackling underfoot. The sounds from within the stall ceased.
She stilled, holding her breath.
Hugh stepped out into the aisle, a bridle dangling from his hand as he regarded her with quiet surprise.
She licked her dry lips; his gaze lit on her mouth, then her eyes.
He said her name, very softly, and then, “What are you doing here?”
Phillipa took a deep breath, but it did little to calm her. “Every night, when you leave to share some other woman’s bed, I lie there thinking...” She looked down, her heart hammering, her voice so soft and tremulous she could barely hear it herself. “Wishing...you would stay in my bed.”
She swallowed hard, thinking, There—I’ve said it, and then, in the roaring silence that ensued, Oh, God, what have I said?
“This was a mistake.” Clutching her mantle around herself, she turned to leave.
He dropped the bridle. “Phillipa!”
But she was running back down the aisle now, on quaking legs, blood rushing in a wave of mortification to her face.
Footsteps crunched in the straw behind her as she neared the doorway. He seized her by the shoulders, spun her around.
“Please...” She tried to wrest herself from his grip, but he backed her against a massive oak support beam and held her there.
“‘Twas no mistake,” he said hoarsely, framing her face with unsteady hands. He kissed her roughly, desperately, shoving his fingers through her hair to tilt her head up, the fine stubbl
e on his jaw chafing her face.
Reeling, she returned the kiss, her arms encircling his back, taut with muscle. His mouth plundered hers almost painfully, but she welcomed the assault. Take me, she thought. Free me...
Hugh kissed her jaw, her cheek, her forehead, his chest heaving. “There is no other woman,” he murmured breathlessly against her hair. “There’s only you.”
Pushing aside her fur-lined mantle, he closed both hands over her breasts, capturing her startled cry in his mouth. He kneaded the tender flesh with impassioned urgency, his callused fingers scraping her nipples through her night shift. It should have hurt, but instead it made her moan in shameless pleasure.
He deepened the kiss, forsaking her breasts to caress her restlessly wherever he could reach—her arms, the curve of her waist, the flare of her hips, even—
She drew in a breath, her fingers digging into his shoulders, as he molded a hand to the aching flesh between her thighs, stroking her so purposefully through her shift that she knew he could feel her heat, her need...
“I’ve been going mad from wanting you,” Hugh rasped as he unbuckled his belt and flung it aside. He whipped up the skirt of her shift and lifted her against the post, wrapping her legs around his waist. Claiming her mouth again, he ground his hips against her where she was most inflamed, his own desire evident as a rock-hard column beneath his shirt and drawers.
He tugged his shirt up, yanking at the cord that secured his drawers. In her mind’s eye, Phillipa saw the red-haired whore who tupped her customers against the wall in that alley off Kibald Street in Oxford. Wrenching her head to the side, she broke the kiss. “Not here,” she said. “Not like this.”
Hugh set her on the ground, but if she’d thought he was going to take her back to their chamber and that nice, soft feather bed, she was sorely mistaken. He pulled her into the adjacent stall, lowering her into a pile of fresh straw.
She started to sit up, opening her mouth to say that this wasn’t what she’d had in mind either, but he was on her in a heartbeat, pressing her into fur and straw with the weight of his body as he silenced her protestations with another searing kiss.
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