The Rose at Twilight (13 page)

“Well?” he prompted.

She smiled. “Perhaps you are right, sir.” It was always better, she knew, to agree with a man until one had marshaled one’s thoughts with care. One accomplished two things thereby. One pleased the man in question, thus disarming him, and gave oneself a chance to think of a new and better argument. Then, when the time was ripe, one still might have the last word if one was careful and a bit lucky. A woman in these perilous times had few weapons with which to protect herself against masculine power and authority, so it behooved her to make careful use of the two greatest ones she did possess, her wits and her allure.

With these thoughts in mind, she turned the subject, but it was not long before the conversation died again. She was finding it harder to keep her seat, and Sir Nicholas seemed reluctant to stop the cavalcade to rest properly. Her replies to his comments became monosyllabic, and although the fog had lifted, the scenery around her began to blur. Her eyelids were heavy, and kept drooping, until suddenly and without warning, she slept.

When she awoke, the first thing she noticed was that the sounds around her had not changed. There was still the rhythmic clatter of hoofbeats on the road, the tumult of the river to her left, and the steady murmur of men’s voices behind her. She was also still mounted, although her saddle seemed to have grown more supportive. Even as the thought crossed her mind, she realized she was no longer riding her palfrey, or riding alone.

When she realized that she leaned against a broad masculine chest, her head nestled comfortably in the hollow of his shoulder, she started, straightening as best she could to look about her in bewilderment.

“You ought to have told me how tired you were,
mi geneth
,” Sir Nicholas said behind her. “I should not have liked it much had you fallen beneath the horses’ hooves.”

“I am sorry to have troubled you,” she replied tartly, straining to turn and look at him. “I suppose it was too much to expect you to stop this procession while I rested.”

“There was no need. You are not ill, merely exhausted, and that is not to be wondered at.”

“I can ride my palfrey now,” she said stiffly.

“I think not. You will do better to rest while you may, and Black Wyvern can carry us both easily. You are no weight at all for him compared to a full suit of armor.”

“I am surprised he will consent to carry me at all. He cannot be accustomed to skirts.”

“He does as he is bid,” Sir Nicholas said with meaning in his voice. “Moreover, he is fully accustomed to trappings of all sorts. Though we do not burden our horses with all the colorful but unneeded ornaments that the English do, we do, even in Wales, have tourneys and ceremonies for which such trappings are worn.”

“But you do not wear armor now either, though you travel in enemy lands,” she said, voicing a question she had wanted to ask since she had first laid eyes upon him and his men.

She felt him shrug, the plates of his brigandine feeling rough even through her cloak. “We are a cavalry troop,” he said. “It behooves us to move swiftly, and heavy armor slows the horses. Therefore do we wear as little as safety allows, much as foot soldiers do. War is not like a tournament these days,
mi geneth.
The victory goes to those who can deliver their blows and move away again with speed to strike again. Moreover, if a man falls from his horse, he does not want to be spitted by his enemy like a tortoise flipped over in his shell.”

She encouraged him to tell her more about the methods of war, and an edgy truce was begun between them that lasted until they reached London. The days of travel soon fell into a routine that made them seem to pass swiftly, and the nights passed quickly, too, for Alys no sooner swallowed her supper than she took to her pallet and slept like one dead. She rode her palfrey in the mornings, gaining strength with each passing day, and after the midday meal, she rode with Sir Nicholas, who made no more mention of placing her in charge of anyone else.

He told her of his childhood in Wales, of his studies at the Blackfriars’ school in Brecon, and some of his adventures as a soldier. She liked the sound of his voice. With her head against his chest, she let its deep vibrations lull her, and often she slept. Her grief for Jonet faded when she was with him like this, and she felt secure with him in a way she had never felt before. A little unsettled by these feelings, she told herself she merely looked upon their conversations as highlights of what otherwise would be a rather dreary passage of time.

They crossed the Trent at Fiskerton ford to join the Great North Road south of Newark. Although Alys had never been so far south before, the rolling green hills and the rivers soon began to look alike, as did the villages through which they passed. Each had cottages, common, manor house, and tithe barn. And each had its curious citizens, who turned out to watch the cavalcade. Men bowed and touched their forelocks and women made their curtsies, but Alys, knowing they recognized the red dragon on Sir Nicholas’s standard and bowed to the Tudor, ignored them. She was tired of travel and longed to be clean again, to enjoy once more the caressing softness of velvet or silk against her skin.

Even Leicester failed to impress her. She had seen York, after all, a vast city of ten thousand people, so she was not likely to widen her eyes at a town of fewer than one thousand folk. There was a fair in the town, however, and she laughed to see the jesters and wished she might visit the stalls and perhaps purchase a new ribbon or two. She was riding with Sir Nicholas at the time, and she glanced over her shoulder at him, but his face was set, his eyes narrowly watching the crowd of people in the streets, no doubt on the lookout for unfriendly faces.

There did not appear to be any. After all, they were south of the Trent now, in a land where people had long been easily swayed from faction to faction, preferring peace to principle. If there was any expression to be seen, it was curiosity, and Alys soon realized it was directed at her, not at the soldiers. The people had seen many soldiers, but rarely had they seen a cavalcade accompanied by a lone young woman in a scarlet cloak.

“I hope they never learn my identity,” she murmured to the man behind her. “I would acquire a most undesirable reputation.”

“They will not do so,” he said calmly. “It is one reason we do not stop in the villages through which we pass, or at houses of religion. I do not want the lads chatting with strangers, nor do I want any of them made vulnerable to an assassin’s blade. Had I provided you with waiting women before now, I’ll wager they’d have been more trouble than their presence was worth.”

“They would have slowed us, to be sure,” she agreed, repressing a sharp pang at the inevitable thought of Jonet.

“Aye,” he replied, “and more. My men will not trouble you, mistress, but women of a lesser station might tempt them. I want no additional worries on this journey, but I trust you have not been put to a great deal of trouble.”

“No, sir,” she said. “Your squire and the Scotsman make admirable maidservants.” When he chuckled, she was pleased, for there was a warmth and intimacy in the sound that she found soothing. Shifting in her seat, she settled more comfortably against him, having long since given up any attempt to sit bolt upright when they rode together.

The villages were coming closer and closer together, with less expanse of open countryside between them. On the morning of the ninth day of their journey, Sir Nicholas sent Hugh with a party of four men to ride on ahead of them.

“You anticipate danger, sir?” she asked.

He glanced at her, smiling. His helmet was lashed to his saddle, and his gauntlets hung from his sword hilt. “Look yonder, my lady, betwixt us and the sun.”

She had been riding with her eyes on the roadway because the sun shone bright enough that day to hurt her eyes. But she obeyed him now, squinting into the brightness. They had come to the top of a rise, and there, just to the right of the brightest rays of the sun, she could see the towers and walls of a city, with a wide silver ribbon of river beyond.

“London?”

“Aye, London.” His voice throbbed with pleasure, his eyes gleamed with anticipation, and she realized that, like herself, he had never been there before.

Reaching the gates of the city took longer than she thought it would, and the nearer they got, the more her excitement grew, for it was as clear as could be that this city was much, much larger than York. She had heard that it was the greatest city in Christendom, and now she believed it, for so large was it that it had spilled over its walls to the fields beyond, to sprawling villages unlike any others she had seen. There were not only cottages dotting the land but shops and great houses as well, and large gardens with trees and bright flowers that could be seen from the road. The cavalcade passed between hedgerows and elm trees, beyond which they could see pleasant meadows with rivers and brooks meandering through, and people walking or riding.

Just before they reached the city gates, the party Sir Nicholas had sent ahead joined them again, and after speaking with Hugh, he turned to Alys and said, “Harry is at Greenwich. We are to join him there.”

“Where is Greenwich?” she asked, disappointed to think she would not see London after all.

Sir Nicholas grinned at her. “Downriver,
mi geneth,
but we ride through the city, for the only nearby bridge across the Thames is here, and ’tis too wide a river for swimming or for ferrying so many horses. Art fit to continue riding alone?”

“Aye,” she said firmly. Not for the world would she ride through London on his saddlebow. But he did not debate her decision and when she glanced at him several moments later, she saw that he was as fascinated by all he saw as she was herself, though he took more pains to conceal it.

London bustled with humanity, for it was ten times the size of York, larger even than England’s second city combined with the next three largest in the country. But, for all that, it had not lost its country flavor. Alys remembered York as a pretty city of cobblestones and people, noise and clatter. London was certainly noisy, for besides the shouting of people and the clatter of horses, there was also the clamor of church bells and the cries of street vendors. Houses were built flush to the streets, and many of the streets she saw were narrow, with upper stories hanging over them, just as in York, but there were trees around and behind the houses, and the air was fresher than she had expected it to be, for there was a breeze from the river.

There were birds, too, and flowers and trees everywhere, for they passed pleasant squares of houses built around central gardens. And even when the streets grew more crowded, as they neared the great river Thames, she caught an occasional glimpse of a tree beyond a garden wall. They did not have far to ride, for the city was built in a wide half-moon crescent along the river, measuring a mile and a third from the Tower to Westminster and little more than half a mile from river to northernmost gate.

The river was as fascinating as the rest. There were ships drawn up to great wharfs and others riding at anchor, all towered over by the huge five and six-story warehouses that crowded the banks. The noise and bustle were greater than ever, but once they had crossed the stone, shop-flanked bridge to Southwark, the populated area soon merged into meadows and woods. Behind them, back across the river, they could see the Tower of London against the horizon, until a turn in the river hid it from sight.

The road took them along the riverbank, where late summer wildflowers made colorful splashes in the green and golden meadows that punctuated otherwise dense woodland on their right. They saw several great houses, and then suddenly, ahead, lay the stone battlements and towers of the palace of Greenwich. The drawbridge over the moat was down, and soon they were clattering over it into the outer court. Alys barely had time to look about her before Sir Nicholas lifted her down from her saddle and they followed a pair of retainers in royal livery into the hall. So far, her impression was that Greenwich was a fortification built to withstand siege, so the hall came as an astonishing surprise.

It was magnificent, gilded and hung with exquisitely worked tapestries. The floors were paved with terra-cotta tiles bearing the monogram of Queen Margaret of Anjou, the spirited wife of Henry the Sixth, whose palace it had been before the York kings had taken possession. The windows were glazed with expensive glass, and sculptors had adorned the pillars and arcades with Queen Margaret’s emblem, the ox-eyed daisy called the marguerite.

“His noble grace will see you at once, Sir Nicholas,” one of the lackeys said. “The lady is to come with us.”

Panic surged in Alys’s breast, and without thinking she clutched at Sir Nicholas’s sleeve.

Placing his hand comfortingly over hers, he said calmly to the servant, “Where do you take her, sirrah?”

“Why, to the ladies’ chamber, sir. His noble grace, the king, will send for her later, after she has rested.”

Not wanting the Welshman to guess that she was still afraid, Alys removed her hand from his sleeve and raised her chin, looking at a point beyond the lackey’s shoulder. But Sir Nicholas must have sensed her unease, for after a momentary silence he said gently, “Go with him, Lady Alys. I swear by mine own honor that no harm awaits you here.”

Comforted more than she would have liked to admit by these simple words, she said, “I do not fear harm, sir.” Then, to prove it, she said firmly to the lackey, “I shall want to order a bath at once.” Looking back over her shoulder, she had the satisfaction of seeing a delighted grin on Sir Nicholas’s face. Its warmth supported her up a broad stairway and along a wide stone gallery, but her poise nearly deserted her when she saw two armed men ahead, flanking a pair of tall doors. They flung them wide at her approach, and panic rose again when the first person she saw upon passing through them was Elizabeth of York.

Without rising from the elegantly carved and gilded armchair in which she sat, Elizabeth said with sweet, albeit right royal, dignity, “Why, Alys Wolveston, how pleasant it is to have you with us again. We hope we see you well.”