My Beloved

by Karen Ranney

  “Anything can harm if taken to extremes. Even fear.”

  “You would have had me become foolishly courageous.” She pulled her legs up beneath her surcoat, leaned her arms on them.

  “You’re too intelligent to be foolish. Your sense would have cautioned you, not the hysterical words of others.” Her face warmed at his words.

  “Or, it could be that I truly am afraid of heights, Sebastian.”

  “You asked if some people could not simply be born with fears. I believe so. But to acquire them where none previously existed indicates to me that there is training more than natural-born fear.”

  “It is an interesting point to ponder.” She leaned her chin on her folded arms.

  “I would have applauded your courage, and congratulated you on the effort.”

  “My stay at the convent might well have been marked with punishment, then,” she said, smiling up at him.

  “Instead of loneliness.”

  How did he know? “Yes.”

  “Did the abbess punish those responsible?”

  “There were always girls leaving and arriving at the convent. I’m sure they did not stay long after that. In truth, I was there longer than most.”

  He said nothing to that, only studied her as if he made certain the placement of her features was the same as it had been the day before, that her hair was arranged the same. He looked away, just as she was beginning to warm under his regard.

  “I did not mean to pry when I came into the chapel,” she said, the words prodded by conscience. He had not questioned her presence there, but she still wished to explain.

  He smiled, his gaze returning to her. Surely she was not the first woman to have sighed inwardly at the effect of both that look and that effortless smile. They did not make him appear younger. Instead, they added an aura of wickedness to his strong face.

  “I did not summon you here in punishment, Juliana. Did Jerard indicate as much?”

  “He did not. I doubt he would ever speak ill of you.” In fact, Jerard simply smiled whenever she asked a question he did not choose to answer, not unlike the Lord of Langlinais.

  He looked away, to where an early star appeared on the horizon. It winked, like a mischievous cat. “He is,” he said, “the most loyal man I’ve known.”

  “He is not from Langlinais, though.” He had said as much to her one day.

  “No,” Sebastian said. “I met Jerard on one of my many rounds of tourneys.”

  “Is it true that King Henry excommunicates those who participate?”

  “Perhaps in England, but in France they are still popular. They are, after all, designed to train a man in war, although some are not necessarily mock warfare.” A small smile tilted his lips. It was not one of amusement, but rather of recollection. A fond but bittersweet memory touched upon, then as quickly gone. “A knight marks the beginning and end of each tourney with Mass, because there is every possibility that a man might not survive it. Two sets of knights face each other across a level meadow. Then, at the signal, the two armies charge each other. Those who are defeated are held for ransom. That’s how a victorious knight wins horses and armor.”

  “But you were never defeated.” She knew that much.

  The look he sent her was wry. “I was victorious from my very first tourney, but arrogant. Once, I ransomed the horses I’d won and didn’t keep one for my own use. Consequently, I’d not even a decent horse to ride, since my own had gone lame. I was leading him, limping, to the next tourney when I met Jerard. He was working in the stables of his liege lord. He treated my horse so well I was able to fight and win again.” He paused, then continued. “I purchased his freedom with my winnings and made him my squire.”

  “He was a serf?”

  He nodded.

  “Now he is your steward.”

  “And has proven himself well in that capacity also,” he said.

  “I cannot believe it is strictly your horse that claimed you all those prizes.”

  Her words seemed to embarrass him. He raised his head and watched the sky.

  “They were not all prizes,” he said, turning once more to her. Evidently, he did not wish to speak of skill with sword or lance. “I was once awarded a fish. A very large pike. And another time, a grove of trees. And in another tourney I won the hand of a very nice lady with a very large nose. I was at great pains to inform her father that I had been married for a goodly number of years to a girl I’d not seen since I was twelve.”

  “While I learned my letters at Sisters of Charity, unknowing that another wished my husband.”

  “Oh, I do not think she wished me. She was intent upon another, a German knight with a huge head and nearly as large a nose.”

  They smiled at each other, content for the moment, both cognizant of the danger they’d skirted in speaking of oaths and childhoods and honor. It was a moment as sweet as the one in which he’d congratulated her on her courage.

  Because of that, she asked another question. “Why do you never go outside? Unless it is dark, or dawn and there is no one about?”

  “Do you make your own scent?” There were some topics he would not address despite their sudden ease with each other.

  “No,” she said, bemused by the degree of hurt she felt. At the suddenness of it. It was as if she were a child and someone had offered her a treat, then taken it back just as she reached for it. No, Juliana, you cannot have it. You do not deserve it.

  Do not ruin this moment, Juliana, by wishing for something you cannot have. Accept what you do have and make it enough. By such logic had she sustained herself during her whole childhood, during those long years in which her father had not come. Only to learn later that he had died two years earlier and no one had thought to inform her.

  “I have a large supply of it in my trunks. The abbess sent it with me as a bride gift.”

  The sight of his half smile made something ache in her chest, some heretofore unknown emotion, comprised of hurt and a sense of her own frailty. She felt almost parchment-thin at that moment, capable of being tossed by the gentle breeze that lifted the corner of the cloth. All because of a smile.

  “Is it me?” She tilted her chin up, watched him carefully. Hoping that the answer, when it came, would be kind. “Am I the reason you do not wish a proper marriage?”

  He looked surprised for a moment, before his features settled into stern lines.

  “I have heard much stupidity in my life, especially during my auctores as a student. But I expected more from you.” She heard the harshness of his tone, saw him shake his head as if to negate the question.

  “Why did you expect more from me?” She looked up at him, genuine curiosity on her face. “You do not know me. Until this afternoon, we’d barely spoken. You had no way to gauge the way I think. Why would I not believe what I have?”

  “Because you are an intelligent woman. Because I’ve watched you trace your fingers over words as if they were gold. Because you respect the traditions of the scriptorium, honor the learning your skill will promote.”

  She shifted, pulling in her legs as if to wrap herself into a tight ball. “Yet, you’ve done nothing to alter my perception. Simply announced it as wrong.”

  “No, then.” The words were soft and tender. “Does that reassure you? No, Juliana, my actions have nothing to do with you.”

  Again, she experienced the feeling that she was being lured into enchantment. It was not his appearance, or the mystery that surrounded him that enticed her. It was the whole of him. Sebastian of Langlinais.

  The child she had been, who had been brave and daring and dauntless, smiled and laughed behind her hand.

  Chapter 12

  Juliana laid her reed quill down. Today she was coloring in a large area of the initial capital letter, and the work did not necessitate the delicacy of one of her precious duck quills. In truth, the work was going slowly, because she was not able to concentrate. Too often, her gaze was captured by the silver box in the corner of her work spac
e.

  She’d stared at a page until she realized she’d allowed a droplet of ink to mar the surface. At least the parchment had been blank. The remainder of the morning had been spent applying pumice to the area and rubbing until it was finally clean.

  Normally, hours could pass and she would be barely aware of time. Yet now, time seemed to slow to a pace she’d never felt before, as if every motion took twice as long to complete.

  Yesterday loomed in her mind just as it had ever since she’d left the tower. They’d spent hours talking about things that skirted the edges of their odd union. But she had not asked any more of the questions that had been at the forefront of her mind, knowing that he would not answer them.

  Below her, the servants worked at their chores, supervised not by her but under Jerard’s watchful eye. The laundress was rinsing the tablecloths and sheets, the cook was cooking meat over the cauldron in the bailey, the smith worked at the huge forge. Chamber pots were emptied, rushes were replaced, horses were fed, and floors were swept. All such necessary things.

  Juliana found herself listening to the sounds of the castle, becoming so adept at discerning them that she could hear the squeak of a hinge and know it was the door to the mews being opened. She could hear one of her attendants brushing back her sheets in her bedchamber, could hear the soft laughter between cook and helper.

  But where was Sebastian? What occupation intrigued him, kept him so silent during the day? If he was no ascetic bound on mortification of the flesh, then why garb himself in a monk’s habit and hide himself from the world? She had never seen him in the courtyard, nor had he used the quintain or the tilting field, nor did he ever ride one of the horses she’d seen grazing in the far fields. Or did he sleep when the sun rose and lie awake all night? What was the great secret that held Sebastian almost a prisoner within his castle, and trapped Langlinais in thrall?

  Her curiosity was foolish. Whom would she ask? Not the Lord of Langlinais himself. It was as if he were a moated island, separate and apart from every other person with whom he came in contact. She doubted he would divulge the reasons for his reticence and his isolation. Jerard? He would only smile at her and not answer her questions. Grazide? No. She was supposed to be happily wed.

  She reached out and picked up the silver coffer, holding it cradled in her hand. Even now, it still felt warm.

  Resolutely, she put the coffer down and picked up the reed again, the habits of a lifetime of service hard to dismiss. She examined the reed for wear and trimmed the edge of it with the small dagger she carried at her waist. It was designed neither for protection nor for eating, but solely for the purpose of trimming her quills and cutting the parchment to size. The abbess had gifted her with it the day word had come that her husband had gone on crusade. At the time, she’d thought nothing of the delay. Now, she wondered what would have happened had Sebastian summoned her before he’d left for the Holy Land. Would he have been different from the man he was now? Would he have worn a black robe and prayed so eloquently?

  Her speculations did not matter. He had not summoned her, and wishing would not change the past. Still, she could not help but try to arrange all the separate oddities of the last few weeks into order. She desperately wished for answers, and there were none forthcoming.

  “Juliana, you will never succeed if you do not begin,” she told herself.

  “A worthy admonition.”

  She turned and he was there. She neither started nor flinched from his sudden appearance. It was as if somehow she’d known he would come, like the tree anticipates a bird’s perch upon its branches, or the earth a burrowing rabbit. A small smile tipped her lips at such nonsensical notions. Sebastian, Earl of Langlinais, was neither bird nor rabbit. More a shadow, perhaps, one that fell where it would, as it would, despite placement of sun or cloud.

  He entered the small oriel, made even more intimate by his presence.

  But she said nothing, nor did she move aside when he stood closer, compelled to by the small size of the room. Her fingers shook as he stood behind her, watching, but saying nothing. They trembled when she opened the small horn that contained her prepared ink, poured a little into a shallow bowl.

  “Why is the ink clear?” His voice whispered beside her ear, and by dint of a will she did not know she possessed she did not shudder at the sound of it. Not that it frightened her; it did not. It was no more substantial than a gentle breeze, a hint of sound with just a rasp of emotion.

  “It will darken the longer it is exposed to the air,” she said, focusing her mind on those necessary things that she must do next. “Or, I can change the color by adding a few flakes of rust.”

  She turned and looked up at him. “I’ve never thanked you for my present, Sebastian.”

  “A small thing.”

  His smile and hers seemed oddly paired.

  He spoke again, the moment gone. “Is it usual to be entrusted with the task of ink maker as well as scribe?”

  “The abbess was fond of saying that a good workman knows his tools. I think, myself, that it was a way of making us learn what we needed to know. We did more than copying text. We learned how to do initial letters and other flourishes mostly added by miniators or rubricators. Very rarely does one person do all three tasks.”

  “But you do all that, make ink, and prepare your parchment as well?”

  “I was one of two lay people the abbess allowed into the scriptorium. I was willing to do it all in order to prove I was worthy.”

  “It requires patience, the work you do.”

  “And a great deal of good fortune,” she said, looking down at her hands. Her fingers were poised at the edge of the work space. She should pick up one of her quills and begin her work. The encyclopedia was not going to be finished if she did not begin.

  “Good fortune?”

  “Yes,” she said softly, her voice almost as gentle as his. There was no need, after all, to shout at each other. They were barely a foot apart. The size of the oriel did not allow for much more separation.

  Her fingers trembled and she tightened her grip upon the work surface. The wood, planed and rubbed with oil, felt solid, aged.

  She spoke, easing the words past the constriction in her throat. “A drop of ink, too hard a touch upon the quill, a hand that cramps. All these things can ruin a work of months.”

  He pressed too near, close enough that his robe brushed by her elbow. They were both aware of the touch at the same time. Her indrawn breath heralded his quick movement. A step away and he was no longer so close.

  “And has such a thing happened to you?”

  “I’ve my share of experience in rubbing a page clean,” she said, smiling down at her hands. “It is impatience that is my greatest sin, I’m afraid.”

  She looked down at her manuscript. The page was as pristine as if ink had never spilled upon it. She had learned, over the years, how to mask the effects of her own errors so well that the other scribes had come to her when they needed something erased. She had once complained to the abbess that it did not seem fair to be so proficient at mistakes, at which the abbess had simply smiled and decreed that each one of us recognizes her own errors far better than anyone else.

  She raised her head and looked out the long, narrow window that showed her the world. She did not need to turn her head to know that he was watching her, studying her in the way she learned those books she was to later transcribe. Brethren, be ye not lax in your translations, but of alert mind and willing heart. An admonishment she repeated to herself every morning before taking up her quill.

  He carefully turned over a page of the encyclopedia. “Is this what you are transcribing?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s not a very long book. But its author is quite verbose, and has a great deal to say on all manner of plants. But there are no illustrations, for which I’m grateful. I’m not much of an artist.”

  “Yet your glyphs are charming.” He traced a gloved finger in the air above her Q.

  “An
elementary talent, I’m afraid.”

  “You do not give yourself enough credit, Juliana. Is this something you learned again, this self-abasement?” His smile robbed the words of their sting.

  “No, rather the truth. I know my skills or lack of them well. The abbess expected a great deal from all of us. Aut disce aut dicede.”

  “Either learn or leave? And here I thought my father a stern taskmaster. Your abbess sounds like a gorgon.”

  She smiled. “No. I quite liked her. I think I confused her, however. I truly believe she was always expecting me to be someone other than I was.”

  “Perhaps she was waiting for the daring child to emerge again.”

  “She never did,” Juliana said softly. “I learned to accept what I was told.”

  “Do you accept everything you learn, Juliana? Do you never question those things you see and hear and know? What would happen if you ever discovered a truth that made a lie of everything you know?”

  She looked up at him then smiled again. “That the sky is green and the grass is blue?”

  He nodded.

  “Truly?”

  “What if you woke up tomorrow morning and saw that the sky was green? That it had always been green, even when you thought it was blue. What would you do?”

  She thought for a moment. “I don’t know. I would probably question myself first, to see if I had seen it correctly. Then, I would wish to know why people had not told me. And why I had learned that it was blue in the first place.”

  “Do you know what I think most people would do?” he asked, his smile vanishing. “I think they would say that it was blue still. That the ones who called it green were wrong.”

  “Is the sky green, Sebastian?”

  She had expected him to answer with a laugh, but instead, he said, “I don’t know, Juliana.”

  He turned to go. When he hesitated at the doorway, she reached out one hand as if to forestall his departure. He moved aside from her touch, a repudiation as telling as his earlier one. But his look was kind, and his words surprising.