Victor chuckled. He looked impressed. “Excellent hypothesis, Magister.”
One of the men holding Victor asked him, “Is that what happened? Take us to this woman. Prove it!”
“The idea,” Victor explained slowly, “is that I can’t take you to her without violating her confidence. Which I’m far too much of a gentleman to do.” He grinned. “Have I got it right, Master Fairfax?”
Rainulf, clearly unamused, said, “That’s one possible scenario. And it seems a much more likely one—given the braies around Burnell’s ankles—than Victor’s having committed coldblooded murder. The truth is, you don’t know what happened. I say let Victor go, and let the sheriff do his job.”
He reached for the rope, but Pyt held it out of his reach. “Nay! You talk real smooth, Magister, and maybe you can dupe some of these sorry curs, but you can’t dupe me. I’m on to you. You’ll say anything to protect one of your little pets.”
Victor laughed. “Is that what I am now, Magister? How touching.”
Pyt backhanded Victor across the face and began dragging him by the rope. “No more talk! It’s time for a hanging.”
Rainulf stepped forward as several men closed in on Pyt, knocking him aside and whipping the noose from around Victor’s neck.
“Give it up, Pyt,” one of them said.
“Fairfax is right,” said another as he shoved Victor toward Rainulf, who grabbed him and held him up. “We don’t know what happened. We could be hanging an innocent man.”
“Innocent?” Pyt screamed as his friends led him away to the raucous cheering of the scholars. “Victor of Aeskirche was born guilty!”
“Good point,” muttered Victor as he fainted dead away.
Chapter 17
“I thought about you all through tonight’s disputatio,” Rainulf said, tossing a coin to a scholar with his cap out at the corner of Grope and St. John. Lowering his voice, he added, “About what I want to do to you when we get home.”
Heat suffused Corliss. She smiled. “I thought you seemed a little distracted.”
“Distracted?” He chuckled. “I was hard as a rock beneath my cappa the whole time. We definitely aren’t having enough sex.”
Corliss laughed, knowing this for the jest it was. Since the night before last, when they’d first shared a bed, they’d tupped like a pair of rabbits. Not a private moment went by that they didn’t seize the opportunity, coupling with the fatalistic intensity of lovers who know they have but a limited time together.
When they weren’t making love, they were doing what they could to ease the rapidly growing friction between the scholars and the townspeople. Victor’s beating and near hanging had incensed his fellow students, even those moderates who had formerly eschewed his militant ways. They were up in arms now, vowing revenge. Several shops on High Street and Brewers Lane had been vandalized, and a handful of locals—including Burnell’s brother, Pyt—had been beaten, though not severely.
Ironically, the man who had been instrumental in stoking these tensions—Victor of Aeskirche—seemed to be the only scholar in Oxford not espousing retribution. Although he hadn’t left his rooms since his own beating, he’d issued two open letters to the academic community, pleading for tolerance and conciliation. He argued that the matter had gone too far, endangering innocent people—Corliss knew he meant her, not him—and publicly apologized for his part in bringing these troubles about.
Corliss used her influence with Victor’s followers to try to persuade them to back off, but with limited success. Meanwhile, Rainulf played the role of mediator, meeting with groups on both sides to argue the points of the opposing faction, since no one would agree to convene face-to-face.
Throughout all of this, Corliss was never without an escort, usually Rainulf. As he reminded her regularly, Pigot was still presumably looking for her; she mustn’t be alone for a moment. In truth, she didn’t mind the protection, since it meant she had Rainulf’s company on a nearly constant basis. Every moment she was with him, she felt an intoxicating buzz of sensual awareness. The way he looked at her, all hunger and heat... his whispered words of love and yearning... his stolen caresses in dark corners... These things conspired to keep her ever in a state of breathless wanting. God, how she wanted him.
“It’s late,” Rainulf said. Then he added suggestively, “Luella will be gone when we get home.”
“Oh?” Corliss said coyly. “‘Twill be quiet, then. Perhaps I can get started on this.” She patted her satchel, which contained the last signature of the Becket Bible. But for these final pages, the illumination was complete. It merely remained for Mistress Clark to put the signatures in order and send them to the bookbinder.
“I’ll give you something else to get started on,” Rainulf said. “And we’ll see if we can both finish at the same time.”
Corliss yawned elaborately, hiding her grin behind her hand. “Mistress Clark nailed a ‘For Sale’ sign on the door of her shop this morning.”
“Vixen!” His laugh was more of a growl. He greeted some passing scholars. “Aye, I saw the sign. I seem to recall she wants to raise sheep or some such.”
“Goats and chickens,” Corliss corrected. “Now she’ll be able to. I don’t know how much she’s asking for the shop, but I’m sure it’s a small fortune—it’s the biggest one on Catte Street. And, of course, Chancellor Becket’s paying her forty pounds for that Bible.” She shook her head wistfully. “Forty pounds.”
“There’s a lot of money to be made in books. Especially in this city.”
“Don’t I know it,” Corliss said. “A person could make a fortune, if they went about it the right way.”
“Are you saying people like Enid Clark go about it the wrong way? She seems to have done well enough.”
“She could do better. That shop of hers is enormous, and she only uses a small part of it. She’s got two empty rooms downstairs, and I don’t think she uses her cellar at all. If I had a shop that size, I wouldn’t limit myself to just copying manuscripts and hiring out the rest. I’d do everything all in the one shop, from start to finish. I’d hire writers, parchmenters, scribes, illuminators, and bookbinders, and have them work together. ‘Twould be much more efficient. One could make dozens of books in the time it takes to make three or four by this piecemeal method. Oh! And I wouldn’t just take commissions. I’d turn part of it into a used-book shop, the best in Oxford. I’d live above the shop.”
“An ambitious plan. There’s no shop of its kind in Oxford—nor in Paris, that I know of.”
She grinned, fully warmed to her topic. “I’d have a sign over the shop: Corliss of Oxford, Venditrix Librorum.”
“What would you do, exactly?”
“Well, I’d run things. And I’d illuminate books, of course. I’d save the fanciest illustrations for myself.”
“Of course.”
She glanced at him, suddenly self-conscious. “You’re smiling at me. You think I’m a daydreaming idiot.”
“I think you’re delightful. So full of enthusiasm. I also think you’re very perversely skilled at changing the subject, when all I really want is to seduce you. Does it amuse you to torment me?”
She shrugged. “It passes the time.”
His smile became a grin—a decidedly wolfish grin. Pausing, he closed a hand around the back of her head and whispered in her ear, “I’ve got a better way to pass the time. When we get home, I’m going to strip those chausses off you and give you this.” He stood close enough that she could feel, against her hip, the solid ridge beneath his layers of clothes. Her body reacted instantly, flooding with liquid heat.
She grinned. “I’ve got just the place to put it.”
“I’ll bet you do.”
“It may be a little too tight.”
“I’ll manage.”
“And wet.”
He groaned. “Come on. Let’s go home.”
“Wouldn’t you rather stop for a pint...?” she asked ingenuously.
“Nay!” Looking around
quickly—St. John Street had grown dark and empty—he grabbed her hand and pulled. “Let’s go home.”
She giggled. “What’s your hurry?”
Another furtive glance, and then he drew her hand through the front opening of his cappa, pressing it between his legs. He was enormous; even through his woolen tunic, she felt him throb. “Does this answer your question?”
“Oh, my.” She stroked him firmly, and he caught his breath. “That’s quite impressive, but I really do need to work on this book for Mistress Clark. A pity.”
She turned and continued walking up the street. “I imagine you’ll be terribly frustrated.”
He fell into step next to her. “I imagine I’ll throw you on the floor as soon as we get home, and—”
“Not if I get there first and lock you out!” Laughing, she sprinted ahead, running as fast as she could toward the big stone house. He called her name, but she didn’t slow her pace. As she neared the front door, she heard him behind her, racing to catch up, and felt an exhilarating little thrill of panic. She wrested the door open, darted inside, and slammed it, panting and giggling in the vestibule at the bottom of the stairwell, dark except for a faint wash of light from above.
She wondered about that light for a moment, trying to remember having lit any lamps before they left. But then the door shook; the handle jiggled. “Corliss!”
Breathless, she dropped her satchel and leaned with all her weight against the quaking door as she groped for the bolt, grinning to think of the look on his face if she did lock him out. Just as she thought she’d be able to slide the bolt home, the door jerked open.
Muscling his way inside, he seized her shoulders and shoved her back against the door, kicking it shut. She made as if to push him away, but he grabbed her wrists, pinning them over her head as he crushed her against the slab of oak. His kissed her hard and rubbed against her, groaning into her mouth.
She trembled with anticipation. When he released her wrists, her legs gave out. Rainulf caught her around the waist as she slid to the wooden floor. With strong, determined hands, he turned her around, guiding her onto her hands and knees. He knelt behind her, his cappa enclosing both of them, and gripped her hips, thrusting against her.
She’d never been so wet, so ready. “Now,” she moaned, pulling at the drawstring around her waist. “Oh, God, now!”
He chuckled deep in his throat. “Are you sure? What about your work?”
Corliss grabbed his hand and brought it beneath her loosened chausses, to the slippery heat between her legs. They both gasped. He tugged the woolen hose down over her hips. She felt his fingers graze her bare flesh as he hurriedly untied his own chausses. She felt the hot, satin length of him brush her lightly as he positioned himself...
A floorboard groaned overhead. Startled, they both looked up the stairs, their breath coming in harsh gasps.
Rainulf lowered his mouth to her ear. “Did you light those—”
“Nay.”
There came another footstep from above, and another, and then the intruder began descending the stairs. Fear gripped Corliss with a paralyzing fist. Her heart thudded in her chest.
“Rainulf?” called a familiar voice. “Corliss?”
“Peter?” she whispered. Relief came and went in the space of a heartbeat. “Oh, my God!” She yanked her chausses up, fumbling with the waist-cord.
“Jesus!” Rainulf hissed as he pulled up his own chausses.
“I thought I heard you come in,” Peter said as he came within view, “but you didn’t come upstairs, so I wasn’t...” His voice trailed off as his gaze took in the two of them, on the floor of the semidark vestibule, frantically righting their clothes. His smile faded. He looked at Corliss; she looked away. He looked at Rainulf. “You son of a bitch,” he said quietly.
Rainulf rose to his feet. “Peter...”
“What kind of a man are you?” Peter’s hands curled into fists at his side.
Corliss stood. “Peter, listen to me. I know how this looks. I know you must hate both of us right now, but—”
“Not you,” he said in a low, strained voice. “I could never hate you. You’re not to blame.” He regarded Rainulf with a venomous glare, his fists quivering. “He is.”
Rainulf held his palms up appealingly. “Peter, let’s talk about this.”
Peter laughed harshly. “You’re very good at talking, Rainulf. Very... skillful, very persuasive.” He glanced wretchedly at Corliss, smoothing down her tunic and finger combing her hair. “You used that skill to take advantage of Corliss. You violated the woman I’m going to marry.”
“Peter, please,” Corliss said, “I can’t marry you.”
“I still want you,” he said. “This was his fault, not yours. I still love you.”
“Peter, for God’s sake,” Rainulf said, “listen to her. She doesn’t want to marry you.”
Peter took a step toward him, brandishing the fists whose destructive power had become famous throughout England. “Shut up.”
Rainulf stood his ground. “She tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t—”
“Shut up!” The young knight leaped across the vestibule, grabbed Rainulf by the tunic, and hurled him against the wall. Hauling back, he drove his fist into Rainulf’s stomach with the force of a battering ram.
“Peter, stop it!” Corliss begged.
“I don’t want to fight you, Peter,” Rainulf rasped as he struggled upright.
“I’m sure you don’t.”
Rainulf shook his head. “Not because you’ll win. Because you’re my friend.”
“Our friendship is over.” Peter aimed a punch at Rainulf’s head. Rainulf dodged it. Howling as his fist hit the stone wall, Peter balled up his other hand and whipped it across Rainulf’s face.
“Stop it!” Corliss screamed.
Rainulf’s head wobbled; blood trickled from his nose and stained his lips. “Damn it, Peter.” He shook his head wearily, but didn’t move from where he stood, there being no room for maneuvering in the tiny vestibule. “Don’t do this.” He took another powerful blow to the stomach, but blocked one intended for his ribs.
Corliss grabbed Peter’s right arm as he swung it again. “It’s not his fault, Peter! Stop this!”
Rainulf shook his head, saying hoarsely, “Go upstairs, Corliss.”
“Nay!”
Peter wrested his arm free and swung again, connecting with the side of Rainulf’s face. Grimacing, Rainulf swore under his breath as he massaged his jaw.
“Damn you!” Peter screamed. “What’s the matter with you? Fight back!”
Rainulf shook his head slowly. “Nay. I won’t fight you.”
“Fight me!” Peter’s face was a mask of anguish; his voice quavered. “Goddamn you, Rainulf, I know you can fight! What are you going to do? Just stand there and let me beat you to death?”
“You wouldn’t do that,” Rainulf said quietly.
“Don’t be so sure.” Peter’s voice broke; his eyes shone in the dim half-light. “You’ve compromised my betrothed. I love her, and you—”
“You loved Magdalen.”
Peter shoved Rainulf roughly. “Don’t speak of Magdalen!”
“You loved Magdalen,” Rainulf repeated calmly as he wiped his bloody mouth and chin with the back of his hand, “and she died.”
“Shut up!”
“I’m sorry, Peter. Truly I am. But—”
“Shut up,” Peter choked out.
“If you want me to shut up,” Rainulf said, “you will have to beat me to death. There are things you need to face, things you need to accept. Corliss isn’t Magdalen. You don’t know what to do with your love for Magdalen, so you’re trying to give it to Corliss, but it’s not fair to either of you.” He examined the blood on his hand and added wryly, “Or me.”
“You’re wrong,” Peter insisted. “It’s Corliss I love.”
“Why? What do you love about her?”
The young knight looked slightly taken aback. “Her... her beauty
, her learning. Her—”
“Do you love the way she bites her lower lip when she’s nervous about something?” Before Peter could formulate an answer, he went on: “Do you love the way you can see right through her skin, like it was the thinnest, softest parchment? Do you love the way she can’t stop asking questions? The way she finds the damnedest things funny? The way she turns everything inside out and shows you the way things really are, not the way you think you want them to be, not the way you always thought they were, but the way they really are?”
Now it was Rainulf who appeared to struggle for composure. Corliss could barely hear him when he said, in an unsteady whisper, “She turned me inside out, Peter. She showed me” —he cupped his hands, as if cradling an invisible, fluttering bird— “my own heart, my own soul. I’d never seen it before.” He looked up, his expression one of helpless awe. “I love her, Peter. I love her with my entire being.” Through a wavering film of tears, Corliss saw him meet her gaze. “I’ll always love her. She’s a part of me.”
Peter turned and looked at her. Her chin trembled and her throat felt as if it were swollen closed, but she managed to say, “I’m sorry, Peter.”
He closed his eyes, as if in great pain. “Nay, I’m sorry. I...” He looked toward Rainulf and shook his head. “Look what I did to you.”
Rainulf shrugged magnanimously. “There was a demon inside you. It needed to come out, and I happened to be in its way.” He smiled and clapped his friend on the back, as if he’d just met him on the street and not been soundly beaten by him. “And now you need a brandy. You, too, Corliss.” Guiding them up the stairs, he muttered, “I think I need two.”
* * *
“Did you have many mistresses before taking your vows?”
Rainulf rose up on an elbow to look at Corliss lying on her stomach in the middle of the big, tousled bed, plucking grapes and popping them into her mouth. The grapes shared a platter with a wheel of cheese, a half-eaten squire’s loaf, some sweet wafers, and a pot of honey—a late supper of sorts, shared by two naked and sated lovers. Her inquiry about mistresses represented a shift in the conversation, for they’d been talking about Peter’s visit earlier that evening.
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