To Touch The Knight (25 page)
Read To Touch The Knight Online
Authors: Lindsay Townsend
“Yes, and it burns like a brand,” she replied, stopping as she realized what she had said. What had the stranger told her?
He is branding folk now . . . his own nurse . . . Ranulf much wronged . . . You did right to break out.
He is branding folk now . . . his own nurse . . . Ranulf much wronged . . . You did right to break out.
The dead spy knew they had escaped from the church. Did Giles know, too? Was that why he had murdered the man? What had he done to Ranulf in her lord's own homeland? And who, besides his own nurse, had Giles branded?
Edith began to count off names in her head and on her hands. Villagers of Warren Hemlet who had chosen to go on farming, who had decided that was the safer way of life than following the tourneys. Were those Giles's victims? But how, besides his own nurse, had he recognized them? Giles never knew any serfs, few knights ever did.
Ranulf knows. 'Tis one of the many reasons why I love him.
Ranulf was not in sight yet. Giles would surely not dare move against him, a fellow knight, a hardened warrior, but even so, she would be very glad when she could see him returning, safe and whole.
She trusted him, but not Giles. She trusted her former master not at all, no, not at all. . . .
Chapter 33
“Why trouble yourself, Ran? The brute is damned. If you must have him buried, let your men do it.”
“I will be quicker,” Ranulf grunted, digging on with the spade he'd had one of his men fetch from the camp. He had ordered the others out of the gaping hole because he wanted to put all his force into this and have no one in the way. The grave was still too shallow but he kept hitting tree roots that took much hacking. He sweated in the trench, loathing the dead man, despising his own useless, awkward oafs, and most of all distrusting Giles.
“I am sorry for any discourtesy to your lady,” Giles said. He was leaning against a tree, paring his fingernails with a narrow knife.
Ranulf heaved another gobbet of earth and roots out of the hole and did not bother replying. His shoulders burned and the callus on his sword hand was rubbing against the rough wood of the spade, but he kept on. A rough tangle of legs shifting nervously above him showed where his men stamped their slowly numbing feet and clustered in edgy little knots. He sensed their disquiet and the unease of Giles's men, too. A spear in the back had the knack of making men uneasy, although Giles seemed as puffed up and happy as a well-fed owl.
“My Lady Blanche is sick. A summer fever,” he remarked, stepping back as Ranulf chucked another spade-full of dirt out of the deepening grave. “And that unruly, unholy huddle at the church have vanished.” He gave a chuckle. “Moved on to better things, no doubt.”
How does Giles know these things?
Ranulf wondered.
The news of the church, yes, one of his men could have spotted that, but how does he know about Blanche? No one else in the tourney camp has spoken of her sickness.
He nodded as one of Giles's men jumped down into the trench with him and began to shape the sides.
Ranulf wondered.
The news of the church, yes, one of his men could have spotted that, but how does he know about Blanche? No one else in the tourney camp has spoken of her sickness.
He nodded as one of Giles's men jumped down into the trench with him and began to shape the sides.
No soldier does this for a stranger
, he thought as he dug, hearing the other man panting beside him.
He knew the fellow. Giles has killed one of his own.
, he thought as he dug, hearing the other man panting beside him.
He knew the fellow. Giles has killed one of his own.
He did not believe Giles's scandalous tale of ravishment for an instant. Edith had said she was unharmed and he believed her. She and the dead man had been yards apart.
But why had she been alone? Why had the man approached her?
Ranulf tossed the shovel onto the grass above his shoulders and scrambled out of the grave. This was the main reason he had dug: so he could dispose of the body and look closely as he did so.
He slung the corpse over his back and climbed back into the trench, aware of a low burning ache in his back. He would have liked to have seized a torch from somewhere and studied the fellow, but Giles was watchingâsighing and paring his nails, but watching all the same. He did not want Giles to suspect anything.
Swiftly, he laid the body out and despoiled it, taking this moment, where Giles could not see into the grave, to look more carefully. The stranger's limbs were cold now, his face pale and shrunken in death. Ranulf tried to recall seeing him around Giles's camp, but he could not think of a single occasion when he had noticed him. Frustratingly, in death the man looked like a hundred others that he had seen on battlefields around France. His eating knife, his short dagger, his belt buckle were all serviceable but commonplaceâperhaps Edith would know more, being a smith. Ranulf tucked them into his tunic, intending to question her later.
“Anything worth keeping?” called a languid voice from above.
“Nothing much,” Ranulf answered, appalled at his own easy lie. Giles was a fellow knight and he was as glib-tongued with him as his own maid-princess was to the rest of the world.
I must teach her by example; show truth and loyalty and no lies
, he thought,
but not with Giles
.
, he thought,
but not with Giles
.
“I go hunting tomorrow,” Giles said above him. “Will you ride with me, for the sake of old fellowship?”
“Most gladly,” Ranulf answered, the words feeling like stones in his mouth. Was this how Edith felt as she lied? But his lies were needed, and if he could keep Giles away from his camp and Edith by hunting with him, then he would do so. “Shall I come to your tent on the morrow?”
He began to scoop earth back into the grave, saying a swift prayer as he worked. The moonlight silvered his hands and gave Giles's profile a ghostly look. The soldier in the trench helped him, but Giles would not dirty his hands.
“Let us meet in Woodcock Wood, beyond the church,” his former friend suggested. “Just after sunrise.”
“And what of the mob?”
“They are long gone.” Giles flung back his head and stared at the moon, as if thinking. “If we catch a fine deer, Lady Blanche will reward us even from her sickbed.”
“Aye,” Ranulf said. He seized the spade again, dragging more earth over the dead man. Giles's device was naked to him, stripped bare by a new insight that was shocking. Before Edith, he had not thought it possible for fellow knights to lie; now he suspected everyone. Six months ago, he would have asked Giles directly, “Why did you kill that fellow?” Now he knew he would not get a true answer.
Giles, though, he had suspected for some timeâsuspected without admitting his suspicion, reluctant to do so because they had been friends and comrades in arms in France.
He tossed the spade to one of his men. “Finish this!” he barked, and stepped up out of the trench.
He did not like to feel this way about another knight, a man he had called a friend. Why agree to go on a hunt, then? Again, he admitted reluctantly that it would keep Giles away from the camp, away from Edith. And a hunt would bring them meat.
“Until tomorrow.” He thrust his hand out to Giles, who, after a small pause, took it. His clasp was firm, seemingly honest, Ranulf noted, as they both squeezed with sufficient force to crush a rat. Letting Giles think he had a victory, he released first.
“Take care in this dark,” he said, stepping back. “There are strange ones about tonight.”
Without waiting for Giles's answer he turned away, his spirits firing as he did so. Now he had another liar to deal with, his little liar, and she had better be waiting for him in her tent. . . .
“Where are the others?” Ranulf asked her in a low voice. He had entered her tent a few moments earlier with stark, unreadable eyes, but, finding her sitting alone, on a stool with only a small brazier blazing by her bare feet for warmth, he had softened.
She hoped he had done so. Her silent plea had been not for pity but to keep the rest of her folk out of the range of his rage. Now she pointed to the curtain hanging across the middle of the great tent, mouthing, “Behind there.”
“Eating their supper.” Ranulf's nostrils widened as he inhaled. “A white porry?”
She nodded, hoping her own stomach would not growl. She was also hungry, but their provisions were going down rapidly, so she had chosen not to eat. After what she had witnessed earlier that evening she had expected to have no appetite, but to her self-disgust the simple vegetable stew made her mouth water.
Ranulf's lips quivered. “I think we may do better than that.”
He crouched and deftly unpinned her veil. “They can keep the brazier, but tonight you are with me, Princess.”
Giving her no time to react or speakâalthough “Princess” was a good sign, a sign his earlier temper had cooledâhe lifted her and the stool into his arms, moving swiftly and lithely to the entrance. She could feel the steady beat of his heart as she rocked against his chest, and now, safe in his arms in this curious embrace, she found her tongue.
“The man you buried. I knew him. He was one of those who battened us into the church at Warren Hemlet.”
That startled him; she felt his heartbeat quicken. “What is this?”
Swiftly, before she was overcome by the memory of the event, she explained. “On the order of Giles, all the village was driven into the church and locked in there to die. Giles feared the pestilence, and when some of our villagers fell sickâ”
She stopped, seeing the revulsion, horror, and shame on Ranulf's face.
“On Giles's order, you say?” he ground out at last. He lowered her and the stool to the floor rushes and stared at her. “
Giles
was your overlord, the one who deserted you?”
Giles
was your overlord, the one who deserted you?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I am one of his serfs, out of bond.”
“From this Warren Hemlet.”
“It is to the east of here.”
Ranulf shook his head, as if that was nothing. “So here is your final secret. Here is why you feared and distrusted Giles so! Why did you not say this earlier? I asked you his nameâwhy not say then?”
“You and Giles were once friends, fellow knights. You might have found it too strange.” She tried to say
false
and failed. “Too outlandish.”
false
and failed. “Too outlandish.”
“You feared I might think it a falsehood?” Ranulf cursed, then crouched and gave her a tight, enveloping hug. “I would believe you all on this, Edith, all.”
They were still a moment together, in silence, both stunned. Finally, Ranulf spoke again.
“So Giles did more, even, than desert you?”
She nodded.
“And this man tonight was one of those who blindly followed such orders? Then, 'fore God, his death is no great loss! How long did it take him to recognize you?”
“He spoke of the priest and remembered him. He did not know that Gregory was my brother.”
“Ah,” said Ranulf, and she felt him kiss the top of her headâa consolation, she assumed. She felt herself and the stool being picked up again and then Ranulf was moving, walking with her, easily and steadily, from her tent to his.
“I did not seek him out. Rannie, I am sorry he is dead.”
He tightened his grip. “Not by your doing.” He understood her fear and rebutted it strongly. “Once Giles knew I was out in the woods and closing, he wanted the man dead.”
“But he was his own!”
“His own spy, I wager, and that is what killed him. But what did he know of Giles that Giles would not have me hear?”
“Warren Hemletâ”
“I am sorry, Edith, but Giles would not be concerned by that and he would not think me troubled by it, either.”
Edith shivered, but knew he was right.
“He said something strange, about your being much wronged by Giles, and that you should look at your homeland; something in your homeland.” Edith fought to recall the rest. Her memory, usually so reliable, was failing her tonight.
“My homeland? I do not understand that.”
She seized on what she knew for certain.
“He is branding people.” She could not say the word
runaways
: it was too near her own truth.
runaways
: it was too near her own truth.
Ranulf shook his head. “Giles would argue such was his right,” he answered, with the casual ease of a lord free of the dread of such punishments. “It must have been something else, something touching Giles directly, perhaps this homeland thing.”
Edith trembled at his accurate assessment, blinking as they entered into Ranulf's tent to be met by a living wall of men and torches. Ranulf swept through them and his soldiers, grizzled veterans every one, by their looks, saluted and marched outside.
“They will keep watch outside this night, though you will be glad to know the church mob seem to have melted into the earthâthey are gone, at least.” Ranulf lowered the stool beside his own couch, plucked her off it, and sat on it himself, with her on his lap.
“Giles has asked me to go hunting with him tomorrow.”
“You must not go!”
He raised his sandy eyebrows. “Is that a lady's request?”
She paused, sensing a trap.
“Should I obey you? As you did my request?”
Guilt overwhelmed her as she thought of the nameless spy, killed because he had spoken to her. Whatever Ranulf said, that death would always be on her mind. In a moment of weakness, she considered finding a priest to whom she could make confession.
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