Sing Me Home (3 page)

He knew there had been no man. It was written in the darkening of her cheeks, in the stiff carriage of her neck and chin, in her straight-back way of walking that spoke of fine, upstanding, moral good sense. He avoided such women whenever he could, but this lass was starting to feel like a challenge.

“You asked where I was going,” she said, “and now I’ve told you. So go back to your troupe and leave me be.”

“St. Patrick’s Purgatory is three weeks’ walk, at least.” He eyed her rucksack. “You have enough food for the journey?”

“Aye.”

“You know how to work the miracle of the loaves and fishes, then.”

“I’ll make do better than you’ll ever know.”

“And lodgings?”

“You and your troupe camped in the woods without trouble.”

“If you’re thinking of sleeping in the woods, you’d best sleep with one eye open. Else you’ll wake up to the breath of wolves, or the knives of ruffians.”

“The only wolf I’ve seen so far walks on two feet, and insists on following me around asking questions, questions, questions.”

“And how are you to pay to cross the Shannon? There are tolls at every ford, and few enough fords.”

Her lashes fluttered. “I’m a fair enough swimmer.”

“Others have tried that. The constable enjoys catching such toll-evaders on royal land. With you, he’ll extract his toll in the way that will please him most, and you’ll end up in the king’s jail, less virtuous for your sin.”

Her nostrils flared. “I’ll trust in God.”

“Spoken like a true novice, but then again,” he said, daring to reach out and brush his fingers against the soft curls spilling out beneath the hem of the coif, “Brides of Christ are cloistered, and shorn to the scalp, and you most definitely are not.”

Her pace quickened, but though she was tall and fast, he was taller, and faster, and more determined than she knew.

In frustration she said, “Still here? Is it the copper you’re after? I’ll give you back your coin if that’s—”

“I won’t take away a woman’s fee, well earned. You could earn a great deal more.”

“Sin pays well, I’ve heard. I’ve also heard that Saracens travel with carts full of concubines, but this is a Christian country.”

“I don’t dip my quill into my own inkwell, lass.”

“And what could that possibly mean?”

“It means I don’t swive the women in the troupe.” Even in the moonlight Colin could tell she was blushing to the roots of her hair. “Also,” he added, “I don’t pay for my pleasure.”

“Does your arrogance have no bounds?”

“There’s no profit in lying. But your voice, Maura. For the troupe, there’s much profit in that.”

“Not according to the man who pulls your leash.”

“Arnaud thinks with his belly.”

“A big enough thing—”

“—and empty as a cavern. We haven’t greased our knives at a decent table since well before Lent. Which is why we are very much in need of you, though he’d eat his own shirt before he admitted it.”

She turned upon him, pointing the stick whence they’d come. “Just moments ago your leader told me he had no use for a saint to bless the alehouses. He said that sin pays better than sanctity. He said my voice would be a bucket of ice water on the fire of profit. Then your minstrel brethren chased me away with their teasing and laughter.”

“Don’t blame the men for wielding the tools of their trade.” He veered far enough away to avoid the spike of her stick. “A tongue is a blade that must be honed like any other, or it will soon grow dull.”

“I won’t be the whetstone for you and your men.”

“Forgive them. They didn’t know how to react. They’ve never heard anyone sing like that. You have the voice of an angel.”

“Flattery now? I’ve seen men hop and jig like trussed roosters trying to get under a woman’s tunic. Have you no pride?”

“We were all felled by your song, every one of us.”

“What kind of joke is this?”

“It’s no joke. We need you lass. And you need us.”

She crossed her arms and looked at him through narrowed eyes, still gripping the stick in one of her hands. He took it as a good sign that she wasn’t swinging it.

“All our food and shelter comes only by the grace of those we entertain,” he said. “The Irish are generous but poor. The English who rule them are rich, but think we are no better than spies. We entertain the first, but strive to entertain the latter. You,” he continued, “could get us inside the great English halls all over Ireland … if you were to tune that lovely voice of yours to a different sort of song.”

“A song about rutting no doubt. You’d like that.”

He stared at her, from the tip of her cap, down over her full chest, to the tiny waist and the thrust of those ample hips, down, down to the toes of her slippers peeping beneath the mud-caked hem of her surcoat.

“I’d be a lying son of a cheat,” he murmured, “if I told you I haven’t thought of swiving you.”

She didn’t bat an eyelash. “There’s the first bit of truth I’ve heard out of you all evening.”

“Then admit this truth of your own—you need travelling companions, or you won’t make it to St. Patrick’s Purgatory.”

Those dark eyes narrowed, the little nostrils flared, and Colin could tell by the tightening of her jaw that he’d found her weakness, though he’d probably have to kiss her senseless to get her to admit it.

He found himself saying, “I’d give a good portion of my dinner to know the name of the man who made you as prickly as a thistle, lass.”

“Not name, minstrel, but
names.”
She uncrossed her arms. “In the kitchens of the convent, not a day goes by when some day-laborer or butcher or tinker tries to wheedle his way into my graces—”

“You worked in the kitchens?”

“I ran them, thank you very much. I’ve been doing so since I was sixteen. And so I know the true meaning of cupboard love.”

A smile came over him. “I think we’ve just found a way to crack open Arnaud’s hard little heart.”

***

The next morning, Arnaud palmed the shallow bowl in one pudgy hand and lifted the rim to his mouth. Behind the shield of the bowl, he sucked down a gulp of the soup.

Maura stood before him, one foot tapping in the grass of the roadside campsite. She curled her hand tight around the handle of a long wooden spoon. Steam hissed out of the small cauldron hitched upon a makeshift tripod, and the last of the fire Colin had made for her now simmered to embers. Behind her came the slurping and scraping noises of minstrels setting to the last of their morning meal at the bottom of the cauldron—a cauldron they’d descended upon like wolves the moment she’d announced that it was done.

Arnaud lowered the bowl. Pinching a square of his mantle between two fingers, he patted either side of his lips.

“Well?” Colin sat sprawled on the ground beside the leader, all long, loose limbs. “The wench can make a roast out of weeds, eh?”

She ignored him and instead eyed the mountain of the man. This wretched creature best show some appreciation for the labor and skill it took to stir up a soup of wild onions and herbs in less than an hour. She’d had to rise from her bed of leaves before everyone else to find herbs in the woods to add to the broth, dipping into her own meager stores of smoked bacon to flavor it. She’d been willing to make the sacrifice because the more Colin talked last night, the more the fiery edge of her impulsiveness receded. Three weeks’ walk to St. Patrick’s Purgatory! She hadn’t even known there was that much road in all of Ireland, never mind this information about tolls to pass rivers and brigands with knives. Clearly she needed the protection of a crowd—even a wicked crowd—more than she’d even suspected.

At least, for all of the minstrel Colin’s flirtation, he’d made no effort to force himself upon her when she made herself a pallet in the leaves last night—no force beyond the oozing glamour of the man.

Arnaud barked, “You learned to cook like this in a convent, girl?”

She stopped tapping and shifted her weight to the other leg. “I told you, I ran the kitchens.”

“Convent fare is bland stuff.”

“Not at Christmas,” she argued. “Or at Easter. The convent at Killoughy is full of laywomen and girls of noble blood. They’re accustomed to fine fare.”

“I’m a full-blooded Gascon,” he muttered, “and I’m used to thicker stuff than this watery soup.”

“Better meat will make a better stew.”

“The soup wants salt.”

“Aye, and it could do with a bit of cabbage and milk,” she said, “but I didn’t run across a cow wandering the forest, or conjured cabbage in full growth in the woods.”

“Tell him what you can do with rabbit,” Colin said, sprawled on one elbow like a libertine. “And fish—we often stumble upon fish flapping on the shores.”

“I can poach fish in milk and thyme,” she said, “when the season’s upon us. Rabbit can be roasted with wild mustard rubbed into the skin.” She hiked her hands on her hips. “I’ll work with what the forest yields to us—but don’t go and tell me how you find your meat or fish. I won’t be a part of poaching or thievery.”

“Admit it, Arnaud.” Colin chewed lazily on a sliver of hazel bark. “She cooks better than Matilda.”

Arnaud grunted. With two fingers, he scooped up the wild onions and sucked them into his mouth. He spoke through the last of them. “Colin tells me you’re off to St. Patrick’s Purgatory.”

“Aye, that I am.”

“Why?”

Maura straightened her spine. She found herself remembering the painful, gentle laughter of the Abbess when Maura first broached the idea of making this pilgrimage. Her parents had made it, she’d said, why shouldn’t she? Then the Abbess had grown somber and rueful, regretting ever telling Maura about the group of pilgrims who’d passed by the convent around the time that Maura had been found, mewling, on the convent steps.

It’s a foolish idea, Maura, no sense to it at all. You should be thinking about your future here.

Now Arnaud and Colin were looking at her, expecting an answer. “I’m making a pilgrimage,” she insisted. “There’s nothing more to say.”

Arnaud clattered the bowl by his side, pinching his mantle up again to clean the corners of his mouth. “You travel with us, we will know with whom we travel.”

“I am Maura of Killeigh.”

“Who is Maura of Killeigh?” he said, raising his meaty arms. “Adulterer? Witch? Will English knights come chasing after us, an irate father, or the men of the church?”

“I’m a free woman. I’ve made no vows, I’m bound to no one.” She wished she didn’t have the kind of skin that flushed whenever she felt ashamed. “I don’t even have kin to chase after me.”

“Every woman has kin.”

“As a baby,” she said, her throat growing tight, “I was abandoned on the convent steps.”

“A foundling?” Arnaud grunted. “Did you come up with that story yourself, woman, to put off my inquiries? I’ve no stomach for nasty surprises.”

“I would think a stomach such as yours must have room for many things.” The troupe leader narrowed his eyes. Maura knew she should shut up, but this man was teasing her temper, and when she was mad she got prickly and couldn’t hold her tongue. “Let us strike a compromise, shall we?” She swung around to gesture to the minstrels watching them. “I shall not ask why that dirty little man lacks an ear—for surely such was the result of an accident, not mutilation for the crime of trespassing. And the piper wears his hair over his brow like a monk just to show his piety, no doubt, not to mask a thief’s brand upon his forehead. And I trust,” she continued, gesturing to the twin women swathed in woolen cloaks, “that the acrobats wear their hair so close-shorn so as to keep it from getting in the way of their tumbling—not in payment for the crime of … selling passion.”

“She’s a hellion, Colin,” Arnaud grumbled, as if she wasn’t standing right there. “This one will scratch your eyes out rather than give you a soft word.”

“She’ll be all the finer for the taming.”

The hairs on the back of her neck bristled. She shot arrows at him with her gaze but he only smiled as if they were flower petals falling from the trees.

“There are eight of us,” Arnaud said, “and by the autumn we will be nine. Now you would have me take on this choir maiden who can do no more than cook.”

“Arnaud, you are a man of great wisdom and business sense.”

“I support a blind harpist and a pregnant sword-dancer. I am a man of
no
sense.”

“But we need someone who is as lovely as our dear Matilda Makejoy.” Colin gestured to one of the three women near the cart. Maura followed his gaze to a young woman whose long, black hair spilled over her swollen belly. “Our lovely Matilda will soon not be able to play the same sort of parts she did before.”

“Playing parts?” Maura pointed the spoon at him, her suspicions rising. “Whatever you’re set upon teaching me, it best be worthy.”

“Do you hear her?” Arnaud raised the palms of his hands. “What could you possibly teach this abbess that would be worthy to take Matilda’s place?”

Maura opened her mouth to say something, but Colin’s sharp look stopped her. She bit her lower lip and thought about wolves, lusty toll keepers, and thieves in the woods, and tried not to feel as if she were about to sign her soul away in blood.

“Never fear, Arnaud,” Colin said, smiling a slow, wicked smile. “We’ll have enough time on the road to turn our foundling into a proper minstrel.”

Chapter Three