To Touch The Knight Read online

  “We had a meeting on the road,” Maria said, rubbing her swollen belly and settling down awkwardly on the nearest stool.

  “Everyone had a say, even the youngsters,” Teodwin admitted. Busy checking the guide ropes, he produced a hammer from his pack to secure one that was sagging. “A few—Henry, David, Solomon, Bella, those with children—found a place with good land,” he went on, between hammer blows. “The lord there is keen to have them and will pay good wages.”

  “So they stayed.” Edith understood. It had happened before on their travels. Villagers found other hamlets where the pestilence had swept in and taken laborers and the survivors were eager for them to stay. “We should visit them in a year or so, see how they fare.”

  “That was the arrangement,” Teodwin agreed. “The rest of us—” He shrugged and nodded to the tent. “We like this world. And we missed you, Edee.”

  The nickname, given her by the children of Warren Hemlet, made her eyes fill again. Teodwin opened his arms and she staggered into them, crying harder than ever as he patted her head and said, “Now then! Now then!” in a way that her old husband would have done. She sobbed with mingled relief and fear and found herself crying, “He means to take me and now you, too, as his prize!”

  “What?” Teodwin yanked on her hair plait to make her look at him. “What is this?”

  “Not our old master, at least,” Maria dropped in slyly, “Or she would be fleeing, not crying.”

  “The black knight?” Teodwin demanded, giving her hair another tug. “Is it Sir Ranulf? Are those his men outside?”

  Edith nodded, easing her plait away from his shovel-like hands. His less-than-gentle treatment was a contrast to Ranulf, she realized, who had always treated her as if she was as fragile as a lily. Suddenly she missed Ranulf’s warm, rough-yet-tender hands, and even more, his kisses.

  When he comes this evening, I will remind him that he owes me kisses.

  “Good,” said Teodwin, turning away to help Walter carry in a pallet. “That should see us settled.”

  “And safe,” Maria added as she pointed to the brazier and stew pot. “I am hungry. When can we eat?”

  “As soon as I have made a fire.” Her spirits lifting more and more, Edith hurried to do just that.

  Ranulf comes this evening, and he will come by way of the stream. I will wait for him there, in another guise.

  At sunset, Ranulf rode Hector through the camp, acknowledging the cheers of victory by fisted salutes. Giles had yelled something as he had gone down, but he had yielded, so that was no matter.

  He had won, Sir Tancred’s warhorse was still fresh, and he and Hector were eager for more.

  “A dip in the stream, eh, lad?” That would irk the princess, too. He could flick water over her bare middle. The thought was sweetly tormenting.

  He passed the little beech tree and looked there, as he always did, and now his heart stampeded in his chest. She was there, the maid in brown, peeping out from the branches but plainly watching for him, for she instantly turned her back.

  Chuckling, Ranulf allowed Hector to canter at his own pace to the tree, swung out of the saddle, and tethered him to another sapling.

  “I would have brought feed for him, too, sir, had I known.”

  Her voice was lower, less singsong, and her manner altogether more quiet. He could not see her clearly, half hidden as she was by the low branches of the tree.

  “Hector will wait for his supper. He, like me, will live on his triumph.” Ranulf ducked, cracking through branches, amused as she stepped back into deeper cover. Less sure of me and yourself, eh?

  “I have a message from my mistress.”

  He could see her hand hovering around her mouth and felt tender to her. For the first time he wondered how old she was and how much she knew, truly, of women and men.

  “Here.” He passed her his cloak. “Wrap yourself in that, for we are going riding. I wish to pray at the shrine for Sir Tancred.”

  He knew that whatever her lack of faith, or odd beliefs, she would not refuse to take part in such an act, and indeed she swiftly covered herself and emerged from the shadows into the fading sunlight.

  “Come, then.” He held out his hand.

  Chapter 15

  He put her before him on the saddle, where she had always ridden behind Sir Tancred. Her thighs and groin pressed closely against the pommel and his long, powerful thighs and boulder-hard belly were tight against her back and rump. She could feel his arousal and was savagely pleased that he too suffered.

  “Tell me your name,” he said as each jolting step of the horse shivered up and down her spine and rocked her intimately against him.

  “I am Edith.” She fought not to rub herself against his lap.

  “Edith of lilies. Hush, now!” He ran his hand down her trembling arm, kissing her ear through the cloth of her head-and-face covering. “I swear you have nothing to fear from me. Let us be at peace this evening.”

  Edith wet her parched lips with her tongue. Before she had closed her eyes, the better to savor his embrace, she had glimpsed a cross and garlands of dying flowers set into a tall bank of soil. “Did we not just pass the shrine?”

  She felt his laughter throb against her back. “Well spotted. I thought you too distracted to notice, as in truth am I.”

  He brushed her other arm with his other hand. When she leaned into his caress he said softly, “If I have you tonight and we make a child, it will be a sign from God that we should be together.”

  “And if we do not?” Edith knew she should protest and be indignant, but she was not so much of a hypocrite. Her whole body was tingling with desire as she yearned for more.

  He reached around her and tickled her belly. “Then I think we should try again.”

  I should not be doing this. Edith pressed herself back against him. He was so hard and warm and he smelled sweet and salty together. She wanted to lick him all over. “So do I,” she whispered, and she wriggled in the saddle, bumping against him. For a wild, almost drunken moment, she imagined their making love even as they were, Ranulf dragging up her skirt and entering her as she lay half sprawled across the stallion’s flanks.

  He growled and tightened his grip on her. They both dug their heels into Hector’s sides, encouraging the great charger to lunge past the high field banks as they swung this way and that in the saddle, seeking out a gap in the banks where they might be together.

  “There!” Ranulf growled, snapping the reins. Edith saw nothing but a blur of shadows and felt her ears popping as the horse moved downward on a steep, twisting path. Before they crashed into a massive wild rosebush, Ranulf drew rein and she was off Hector and in his arms, his mouth colliding with her shoulder as he tried to kiss her.

  “I would see your face,” he murmured, running his hands up and down her back.

  She shook her head, her hands flying to protect the “veil” of his cloak.

  “I may see the rest of you, but not what you share every day with your mirror?”

  It was the sadness in his eyes and not the temper in his voice that made her lunge upwards, tighter into his arms.

  “I am more than a face.” Let him acknowledge that first.

  “To be sure you are, and truly, if it is against your custom . . .”

  He stopped as her fingers closed on the first pin of his cloak. Looking always into his dark, deep eyes, she felt for the clasp that would release the pin.

  “Dada. Da—”

  The child’s cry was faint but they both stiffened, listening, and then broke apart to search.

  “Here, little one,” Ranulf called, crouching to peer beneath the huge rosebush.

  “We are coming,” Edith called, in every dialect she knew.

  Ranulf pointed and froze like a hunting dog. Edith guessed that the hairs on the back of his neck were up, for hers were the same. Tottering from beneath a rowan tree with orange berries were two tiny children. Dressed in torn, filthy tunics and shoes far too large, they were brot
her and sister, Edith guessed. The smaller of the youngsters had the longer hair, but what color that hair was she could not tell. Leaves, cobwebs, and dung clung to the pair.

  She sensed a movement and flinched, half expecting Ranulf to shoo them off or stalk away, but he had crouched to make himself less threatening. Stilling her own questions, Edith knelt and beckoned.

  The children did not yet have the glazed look of hunger she had seen and known herself in the past, but they were already beyond fear. The girl pointed at the flask on Ranulf’s belt and the boy stepped ahead to snatch it first.

  “There is enough for two,” Ranulf said softly.

  “Drink slowly,” Edith warned, in an old dialect she had learned from her husband’s mother.

  The boy glanced at her, possibly understanding, but he still seized the flask, only to be stopped from drinking by Ranulf.

  “She first,” he said with a frown. “Our ladies should be allowed to go first.”

  “He will not understand,” Edith said quickly, as she made a “cup” with her hands and Ranulf poured ale into them before finally allowing the lad to have the flask. “He is a boy. He will always have been first and eaten first, so he knows no different.”

  Ranulf threw her a quizzical look before staring with something like horror as the girl lapped and slurped at Edith’s hands like a half-starved animal. “You know a great deal about English peasants,” he said slowly, his expression changing to pity as the child drank and drank. “I have been their lord for years and I did not know that.”

  “When food is scarce the menfolk eat first. They must, for they must plow and hunt.” Remembering she was not supposed to know these things, Edith shrugged. “It is the same everywhere.”

  “So where are they from?” Leaving the lad tipping back the flask to extract every last drop, Ranulf rose to his feet. Shielding his eyes, he frowned again. “There is no smoke.”

  “Where is your mother?” Edith asked the little girl. The child grinned and tottered closer to cuddle her. Ignoring the stink, Edith cradled her.

  “I think you are now,” Ranulf said wryly. “There is a path behind them. I can set them both on Hector and go down to whatever settlement there is left.”

  Edith knew without him saying so what he dreaded. A frisson of fear ran through her on a prickling track and then was gone. She had, after all, dealt with such sights and things before.

  “I will go,” she said. “I know their language.” She swung the child onto her hip and prepared to leave, holding out her hand to the boy.

  Her way was blocked.

  “You do not go alone,” Ranulf said. “If these have wandered off and no one is seeking them or calling for them, then what is amiss down there? No smoke, no sounds. You know what it can be, Edith.”

  “I know, and I have seen it before. I have tended others.” She answered his unspoken question. “Most died.” Including my brother, who never harmed anyone. “But one who sickened lived, the oldest, and I lived, though I tended him.” She felt a flea crawling on her, possibly sprung from the children, and she pinched it dead; she loathed fleas with a passion. “The pestilence does not seem to touch me,” she admitted softly.

  Ranulf caught up the lad, who was clamoring and clutching at his leg, and put him onto his back. For an instant, she expected him to comment on her survival, or even to make a sign against the devil or the evil eye, but what he said was, “We should get down this track before nightfall, or we shall break our necks.”

  He took Hector’s reins and her hand and together, with the children, they set off.

  There were game traps set off the winding path, Ranulf noticed, and places under beeches where folk had herded pigs for the fall bounty of beech mast. There were steps cut in the steeper part of the track and, left against an ash coppice, a bow saw that had been forgotten.

  We are going to a village, so where are the people?

  Behind him, riding on his back but as light as a hollow bone, the grubby lad wiped his runny nose on the back of his best tunic. About to rebuke the boy, Ranulf recalled what Edith had said and held off. The child had learned no better. Who knew, besides, what he and his sister had already endured?

  The silence ahead crawled on his skin, the cold breath of a deserted battlefield. He shortened and slowed his steps, although here the path had broadened to take two, and through the trees he could spot thatched roofs, light in the evening gloom. Every step took him closer to an unseen killer.

  There was no deliverance from the pestilence, no charm or words or posy that would hold it off. He could not fight for Edith or the children.

  Helplessness made him peevish. “You are my prize, so do not die on me,” he snapped at the small, slight figure gliding beside him, now jumping smoothly over an abandoned wheelbarrow.

  “If you heed me, none of us will be ill. If you do not like it, stay here.”

  Her cool response irked and shamed him, but also was as bracing as a slap. He glanced at her, knowing they had reached a change between them. The maid of the riverbank and the princess were one and the same, and they both knew it. And Edith had been ready to unveil for him.

  He stopped on the track. “Tell me what to do.”

  Her large eyes considered him, then she sat down in the middle of the path and tugged at his leggings for him to do the same.

  “I need so much telling?”

  “Hush, you,” she said, but she was smiling; he could tell as much from her voice. She placed the little girl on her lap and he did the same with the boy. The lad snuggled and squirmed like a puppy and again he wondered where the parents of these lost youngsters were.

  His companion’s thoughts were clearly with them, too, but her mind ran on more practical measures. “Please, Ranulf, have you aught else for these children? They must be famished.”

  Ranulf felt in his tunic and discovered some sweets he had filched from the castle and had intended to torment her with. Over the children’s heads he showed off the candied fruit, feeling ridiculously pleased with himself when she nodded in approval. “I know you will not do so, but please, do not give them too much,” she added, in a whisper.

  “Never fear.” As an ever-hungry page, he had once stolen and stuffed down a massive venison pie, still piping hot from the ovens. He had burned his mouth and been copiously sick. Mindful of that rough lesson and knowing the youngsters with them might not have eaten for days, he gave each a tiny piece of candied fruit. The boy sniffed his and ate with surprising delicacy, clearly enjoying each morsel of sugared orange, a treat he would never have tasted before. The little girl gobbled hers in a single swallow, went very red in the face, and began to cry.

  “Have some apple, sweetheart.” Ranulf swiftly offered a coil of dried apple. This at least the child devoured a little more slowly, chewing noisily with an open mouth.

  “Thank you,” Edith said quietly. “Though I think she has gulled you.”

  “Not the first female to do so,” he admitted, amused to see Edith look away. If she had shown her face, he wagered he would see her blushing, but such play was not for now. “We should start with finding the church. People will have gone there to pray.”

  He was surprised to see her flinch and added, with some heat, “Not all feel as you do on matters of the soul. Some of us know there is more than what we see and touch.”

  He thought she colored up more.

  “You misunderstand,” she said in a low voice. “But it may be you are right. And I am very sorry you are disappointed in me.”

  Was she truly so afraid of losing his good opinion? Without thought, he caught her hand and squeezed it. “If not the church, then where, good mistress? The reeve’s house? It will be the largest.” He handed the children another sweet and more coils of dried apple. “Whatever house we choose, we should stay together.”

  “I agree.” This said in a rush, as if she was relieved to do so. “Can we find the well first? I think we shall need water.”

  “For thirsty people—ye
s, I wager that is a good plan.” If we find any alive. They were sitting on the main track above the village, in plain view of a scattering of thatched houses, and no one, not even a dog, pig, or hen, had ventured out to them. Even Hector was uneasy, standing quietly close with his ears laid back.

  Edith sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, running her fingers across the dark brows as if they pained her. “Have you ever been in a village where there is great sickness?”

  He shook his head. He had lived through harsh winters, where every man had a cough, and dry summers, where folk burned with fevers and the hunger of summer before harvest, but he had not witnessed the pestilence as near as this before.

  “The villagers in my lands have been spared,” he said. “I had a mighty relic from a pardoner last winter and that has kept us safe.”

  He heard her take a quick breath and knew she had bitten down on a less believing answer.

  “It is not the same, here in the south. I have seen the pestilence.”

  They were beyond pretense now and he did not ask if she had seen it in Cathay.

  She gave him another long, considering look. “We could take the horse and the children and pass by.”

  “As those other travelers did before the good Samaritan came? That is not my way, so let me know what to do.”

  She hugged her knees. “What we should both do, Ranulf.”

  He disliked it but knew he would not stop her so he said gruffly, “Agreed.”

  Lifting the child in her arms, she went up on her knees, pointing this way and that with her head. “After we find the well and fill what vessels we can, we should call out first.”

  Ranulf drummed his fingers on his knees. “Do not waste time with the obvious, woman.”

  That earned him a glare and a fast, “Very well! If we find any that live, keep back if they are coughing blood. Nothing can be done for them, and their foul breath will infect you. Those with boils and pustules, if such boils have broken open they may survive, so you may take them water.”