A Knight’s Enchantment (14 page)

Joanna stirred, finding Hugh draped over her like a heavy flag, an arm wound like a huge adder about her middle and a massive leg threaded through both of hers. She felt replete in a way she had not known before, but then she had not known making love could be like this. She touched herself, remembering, wondering when she and Hugh might make love again. She was tempted to wake him, tease him, beguile him, but he was so boyish, so peaceful in sleep. She kissed his ear and murmured, “Roll over, Hugo,” hugging herself when he grunted and did as she asked, thrusting his hips back toward her so that they might cuddle together.

She snuggled against him, tracing old scars on his arms and a deeper, old wound on his right flank. For a warrior he was almost unmarked, but then she knew he was a skilled fighter. When she recalled the joust he had taken her to, she felt only pride, recalling the wary men and avid-eyed women.

Happy and content as she had not been since a child, she dozed again, then came awake in the darkness, blinking up into the night sky and spotting the waxing moon, half hidden behind gray clouds.

The moon!

Joanna’s spine cracked as she snapped up into a sitting position and found herself unable to stop her forward momentum, rolling out of their makeshift bed onto the hard-packed earth. Ignoring her dirt-encrusted knees, she stumbled to her feet, her breath coming in sharp, shallow bursts as she fought down a searing rush of panic and shame.

How had she forgotten her deadline, even for a day? And here surely was her chance: she must steal away while Hugh was sleeping, while the villagers were sleeping.

She dressed with fumbling fingers, putting her shoes on the wrong feet and having to change them about. She kept glancing at Hugh, telling herself she was ensuring he was still deep in slumber. She replaced the net on her hair, taking pains with the pins. She brushed down her skirts, making them hiss. Still he slept, his arms now raised above his head. It pierced her to think of leaving him without saying good-bye. He would never know how much he had touched her.

She was sniveling again. Swiftly, before her tears became sobs, she turned and ran softly out of the enclosure, leaving Hugh with the sleeping bees.

Hugh yawned, stretched, and reached for his woman. Finding her gone, he leaped up with a curse.

But no, she had not left him. She was standing with the village elder and two lanky young men by the gate to the bee enclosure. As Hugh scrabbled for his leggings and cloak under the rough horse blanket and began to dress, Joanna raised her hand to the three and started walking toward him.

“I lost my way in the dark and these gentlemen found me wandering and guided me back,” she said.

“That was kind of them,” Hugh answered, not believing a shred of it. He was glad, though, that these fellows had been more wakeful than himself, or his disruptive little hostage would have escaped his custody.

Well, he was wakeful enough now, and when he saw the trace of tears on her pallid face and marked her drooping shoulders, he said nothing. He knew what it was like to be scolded and berated when already heartsore and weary. He raised an arm in greeting and farewell to the men, then turned his full attention to Joanna.

“Are you hungry? I am.”

She chewed at her lip, a rare gesture of nerves. “We have the honey…” Her voice trailed into silence, as if she did not know what to say, how to interpret his mood.

Sweeting, I am not going to scold,
Hugh thought, producing the honeycomb, together with some cheese and rather hard bread—a day’s travel in a cloth had done little to keep it fresh.

“I did not know if the villagers would have anything for us to eat, so I brought some provisions,” he said, spreading the meager offerings on their bed. “’Tis well the bees are asleep or they would be after this.” He broke off a piece of comb and stretched out his hand to her.

She took it with a precision that reminded him he was still naked and she was still nervous. He wanted to prove to her that she need not fear him; that he would save her and her father and David.

He sat again on their couch and lifted the blanket. “Get in. No, do not trouble with your shoes; you are shivering like a wren in a gale.” He gulped down his piece of honeycomb and folded her firmly into his arms, holding her until her trembling stopped.

“Eat. You will feel better.”

“Are you a healer now?” she asked, between mouthfuls of cheese and honey.

“If my lady requires me to be so.” He watched her trying not to wriggle with pleasure at the sweet comb. “They work well together, do they not? Cheese and comb? Will you have more mead, too?”

“Thank you.”

He rejoiced at the thanks. “Are you warm enough?”

“Can we…? Can we make love again?”

He was delighted at her blushing directness. “For sure, if you are sure!” He did not want her offering herself as a peace offering, but could think of no elegant way to say as much. “If it pleases you, Joanna.”

“It does,” she said quietly. “Unless it is now too late? You were sleeping…”

He wondered why she felt it needful to give him a means to refuse her and again wanted to strangle Bishop Thomas. He put down the flask and wrapped his arms tightly about her, knowing she would feel his desire.

“You are my pretty lady, my hazel-willow woman, brown as the hazel and slender as the willow.” He touched her hair and waist and kissed her. “I have ached and lusted for you for weeks! I would love you for a week and not be sated.”

She ran both hands over his chest. “Only a week?”

Two can tease, squirrel.
He turned her onto her stomach and fondled her beautifully plump backside and pert breasts, alive to her squeaks and gasps, lifting her skirts and caressing afresh as her whispered, “What if someone comes?” became a moan of “Oh, yes!”

“You have a saucy tongue, lady.” He patted her bottom and, as she raised her haunches higher, slipped his hand between her legs.

When Joanna stirred it was still dark, but this time Hugh was up and dressed. He gave her a flask of ale and nodded to the clear skies.

“We can ride now by the moon, and I think it is time we left. The village elder knows we are going and we can leave with his blessing.” He shrugged. “It saves them having to find us more food for a breakfast.”

“May I thank the elder?” she asked.

Hugh gave her a very knowing look. “The villagers here have welcomed you in ways far better than others have elsewhere, I warrant. Yes, I think he will be delighted by your thanks. I have to gather our things and collect Beowulf and Lucifer, so you have time.” He pointed back to the village. “If you follow the track you will see him sitting under the church porch, feeding scraps to a young pig.”

He paused. “You will not rush ahead?”

“You have my word,” Joanna answered firmly. “I will not stray.”

They both knew what that meant.

Joanna stared at the bishop’s messenger, a man unknown to her. She and Hugh had scarcely returned to Castle Manhill when the messenger appeared. Joanna was still trying to understand what had happened to her; how she could respond so completely to Hugh. She was his hostage and he was her captor. How was it that, riding with him, she was so at ease in his company? So glad of his touch? So happy?

The messenger, Sir John Woodvine, clad in the blue and purple of the bishop’s entourage, woke her out of her girlish daydream. She was inside again, trapped within stone walls again, and with work to do. Hugh might speak of loving her for a week, but he was not soft enough to release her to Sir John.

Not that Sir John was asking for anything so overt, merely to “have words” with her in private. A dapper, older man with smooth fair hair and a baby-fine complexion, he reminded Joanne of a ferret: sleek and dangerous. She would not want to meet him in any street in West Sarum alone: not with the burning looks of interest he kept giving her. Standing in Sir Yves’s private solar behind the great hall, straddling a wolf-skin rug and occasionally touching the coat of arms emblazoned on the front of his surcoat, Sir John seemed all courtesy. But each time he glanced at her, sitting on a stool beside the fireplace with a scrap of another woman’s embroidery on her lap—provided by Sir Yves, who thought it made her look “aptly feminine”—Sir John stripped her with his eyes.

Standing at the other end of the fireplace, fanning his long tunic by the flames, Sir Yves looked bored and embarrassed. Hugh meanwhile prowled around the solar, asking if she needed a drink, or a cushion, or a maid: any question to claim her attention and make it clear to Sir John that if he so much as breathed on her, Hugh would rip out his heart and roast it on a spit. The tension crackled between the pair as much as the roaring fire in the grate, an opulent, showy fire that Joanna longed to escape. Her left side felt to be scorched and at one point she was certain she could smell her own hair singeing.

“I see from your sword belt and its repair that you have fought in Outremer,” Hugh was saying, pacing relentless beside the couch on which his father sat and threw scraps of old bread to his dogs. “Did you go on crusade?”

“I am with a military order,” Sir John replied, glancing at Joanna as she tried to lean away from the fire. “Are you too hot, my lady?” Somehow the tone of his question suggested she would be cool if she allowed him to peel off her gown, and his sharp brown eyes were a fire in themselves.

Before Joanna could answer Hugh was beside her, lifting the stool off the floor timbers and moving her and her seat away from the blaze. He touched her hand and then confronted the messenger afresh.

“Templars or Hospitallers?”

“The Templars, Hugh Manhill. And before you ask”—Sir John held up a narrow hand on which his third finger was missing—“I am here as friend and herald of my lord Bishop Thomas, not as the emissary of my order.”

There was an astonished silence, but only for a moment.

“By all the teeth in hell!” Hugh smacked his thigh in frustration. “David is in your order, man! You will have known him in Outremer! You will have fought beside him! He is your brother-in-arms!”

Sir John stiffened. “I did not know him. I never saw him or met him anywhere and I have not seen him in West Sarum. All I do know is that the charges against him are heavy—”

“False!” Hugh spat.

“—and as such, reflect badly on my order. Sir David is obdurate,” he went on. “My lord bishop had ordered him placed in the lowest prison of the donjon but he has lately allowed Sir David back into the first-floor chamber. Still your brother refuses to deny these charges.”

“Hell’s teeth! He put David into that hellhole!”

“He is out of it now, Sir Hugh, so save your protestations.”

Joanna clutched the scrap of embroidery in her lap and willed herself not to be sick. David trapped in that foul lower prison, beneath the trapdoor, in the darkness…She gagged and swallowed a bitter mouthful of bile.

Sir Yves raised his eyebrows at this exchange but said nothing. He seemed unconcerned at the fate of his middle son and the pain of his youngest son. “State your terms, Sir John,” he remarked, motioning to a thin, limping page—not the lanky, curly-haired Peter, this time—to refill his wine cup.

Sir John glanced at his own empty cup, deposited by him on one of two great chests, but when no wine was forthcoming, he sighed and spoke. “My lord bishop shall, as a gesture of his goodwill, release his prisoner into the care of the Manhills.”

On what terms?
Joanna wanted to yell at him, but Hugh was already asking that vital question.

Sir John appeared surprised. “Why, that my lord may see this lady for himself, on neutral ground. That, and some other minor issues.”

He meant the gold, Joanna knew. She had spoken of it eloquently in her previous messages and the bishop was interested. But she would not hand it to a messenger.

“That is between my lord and me,” she said quickly.

Sir Yves frowned at her interjection: in his eyes, her function at this meeting was supposed to be decorative, nothing more.

Hugh nodded. “Agreed. So when will this exchange take place?”

Sir John looked at them one by one, a ghost of a smile suggested on his narrow lips. “Today at sunset, if it please you all. My lord Thomas is returning to West Sarum this very day and can break his journey here to resolve this matter.”

“Do you trust him?” Joanna asked Hugh later. They had remained in the solar by the ruse of Hugh offering her a game of chess. She had accepted, though she did not know how to play it, and now they were bent over the chessboard on one of the chests, their heads close together. A maid was sweeping a twig broom slowly round the chamber: Sir Yves’s idea of a chaperone.

“What now?” Joanna whispered, pointing to the maze of pieces.

“Move your queen, to the fourth square. There!” Hugh whispered. He was playing both sides, and to Joanna’s amusement
she
was winning.

Hugh rubbed at his chin as if deep in thought and lowered his head still more, as if studying the board. “I do not trust the bishop for a moment,” he admitted. “And now, after hearing that news of David spending time in the oubliette, I understand why you do not trust him, either. Hell’s teeth! It makes me livid to think of it! Such filthy behavior is against all forms of honor.”

Joanna waited, not daring to ask Hugh what he meant by her not trusting Bishop Thomas. Memories of their night together swept through her, making it impossible for her to think. She had to know one thing, however. Half-knowledge would drive her mad.

“Do you blame me?” she asked. “For last night? Do you see how I was—acted—as a betrayal of the bishop?”

He stared as if her question surprised him, his ready color fading from his lean features, and then he shook his head at her. “No, Joanna. You have betrayed no one.”

Hope flared in her. “Truly?”

“Truly, wench! But now we must play what we have. If Bishop Thomas is at all honorable, if the meeting goes well, then there will be an exchange: you for David.”

Unless the prisoner was her father, Solomon, Joanna thought, wishing with all her heart and will that it would be. Her father was older than David: he would fare less well in the donjon or worse, the oubliette. She was very sorry for David, appalled that he had been treated so, but her wish remained the same.

Hugh picked up his own queen and cradled it in his large hand, tracing the rough-hewn features of the figure with a thumb. “We shall all be back in our own worlds: my brother with the Templars, should he care to trouble with them, you with your elixirs, me with the joust.”

He replaced the queen on the board with a small snap. “If you ever wish for a change, send me another of those golden tassels and I will bear you off to a tourney. The life is interesting, though I do not think you could practice your arts, which would be a pity. I think in the end you would miss it too much.”

Joanna gave him a sharp look, wondering if he meant as the bishop’s leman, but his face was solemn.

“Send me word when you find gold, eh?” He looked deeply into her eyes. “I will be glad to know you have attained your heart’s desire, my lady alchemist.”

Say more, please!
Joanna felt the passion in her heart brimming as tears in her eyes. But what could Hugh say? He was a landless knight with less treasure than he had begun with at the beginning of the year: he could support her but not give her a home. She was as he termed her: an alchemist. For her to continue her work she must have a constant place, not a traveling tent.

He took her cold hand in his and warmed her fingers. “This is a maze, but we may yet find our way out.”

“I pray so,” Joanna said, stopping before she broke down and wept.