“You will endeavor to be civil, will you, Lady?

“I see. Then perhaps a lesson or two in civility would not come amiss, do you think?”

There was no time to escape Sir Rhyan, for the scent of him already filled her nostrils as his mouth covered hers, and her lips had already begun to search for more.

Like a dry moorland fire roaring out of control, the kiss caught them both unprepared. Merielle was enclosed within the furnace, responding with a white-hot intensity she had never experienced before. Involuntarily, she pushed herself against him, trembling in an agony of desire.

Speechless, breathless, she twisted away and leaned against the paneling, her forehead pushing against the cool metal rim. “Madness!” she whispered.

The Passionate Pilgrim
Juliet Landon

www.millsandboon.co.uk

JULIET LANDON

lives in an ancient country village in the north of England with her retired scientist husband. Her keen interest in embroidery, art and history, together with a fertile imagination, make writing historical novels a favorite occupation. She finds the research particularly exciting, especially the early medieval period and the fascinating laws concerning women in particular, and their struggle for survival in a man’s world.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Epilogue

Chapter One

Springtime 1359

If Mistress Merielle St Martin had had her own way, she would have been soaking in a warm bath scented with lovage and lavender. Instead, she had felt obliged to accept a wreath of pennyroyal for her aching temples and then to listen with convincingly appreciative smiles to the love poem read to her by the faithfully adoring Bonard of Lincoln. It was not because it was in Latin that her mind wandered but because the day had been an especially long one with so much to be done before Sir Adam’s arrival.

She stretched her legs along the bench in the sunny courtyard and arranged the fine woollen folds to droop gracefully towards the stone-flagged floor, rotating her aching feet and watching how the evening light caught on the stones and pearls of the silver filigree nutmeg-case. Its pungent scent had been useful in the steaming dye-house that morning and then later in the messy pilgrim-packed streets of Canterbury where the odour of sweat and filth was inescapable.

Bonard’s voice was conspiratorial, which went to show, she thought, how little he knew about her, for he had assured her that the poem was his own composition, written for her alone. He read in Latin ostensibly because he said it sounded better, but more truthfully because he derived a secret pleasure from saying to his employer out loud things he dared not say in English. Now he was almost whispering.

Poor Bonard. He had been her late husband’s employee and good friend and, for the life of her, Merielle had not been able to dismiss one who believed himself to be one of the family. Even though his position as assistant manager had now been taken over by a younger man, Merielle found him to be a useful chaperon, escorting her with chivalry but leaving her the freedom to make her own decisions without interference. She could never have borne that, for it was now almost three years since Philippe of Canterbury’s death and interference had not been one of his weaknesses. Far from it; her grieving had been more for the unborn child she had lost than for her husband.

The whirring of the great wheel caught her eye and she watched from beneath thick black lashes how the bonny honey-coloured Bess flicked it on by one spoke and eased her other hand away, attached to the bobbin by a fine strand of madly twisting yarn. The maid caught her mistress’s eye and shot a quick look heavenwards, which she knew Master Bonard would not see for he wore a red scarf tied across one eye.

“Oh, do take it off, Bonard,” Merielle said, gently. “How can you possibly read with one eye in this light?”

He swivelled his head in an exaggerated arc to see her, the words Vultum Dioneum dying on his lips.

“And what’s this goddess’s reward, then, for heaven’s sake?” As if she didn’t know.

His mouth dropped open as his papers sank to his lap. “You…you understand it, mistress?”

Merielle sighed, smoothing the soft green fabric over her thighs. She had not meant to let that out. Preventing a further explanation, a diversion of sounds turned their heads towards the covered walkway that bordered the courtyard and Merielle swung her legs down, ready to stand at Sir Adam’s entrance, her hands already welcoming. The gesture was not wasted, but it was not the expected brother-in-law.

“Gervase. You’re back already?”

“I came immediately. Scarce had time to brush the dust off.”

Two lies at once, but she smiled her sweetest. “I’m flattered, sir. Welcome. Have you eaten?”

Gervase of Caen was one of those responsible for the supplies of food that passed through the king’s household each day. Such a man never went unfed for long, not in any sense of the word. He took her hands in his and kissed them individually. Slowly. Then her two cheeks. Then her mouth. His smile was intimate. “Enough to keep me upright, that’s all. What delicacies do you have to offer me, Mistress Merielle St Martin of Canterbury?”

An obvious answer sprang to her lips, but Bonard of Lincoln’s red scarf and baleful eye were rising over Gervase’s right shoulder like an angry sunrise and she would not ignore him. She swung their hands in his direction, prompting the handsome young man to remember his courtesies.

Gervase bowed. “Master Bonard, forgive my interruption, if you please. Another of your creations, is it? Ah, such talent. Will you continue?” Gallantly, he waved a hand, inviting the poet to resume his recital despite the discouraging retention of Merielle’s hand in his own. At twenty-six years old, his seniority over Merielle could have been taken for more than five years. His sleek fair hair curled obediently over the blue velvet silk-lined hood of his short tunic, a pleated and scalloped creation that did not, nor was meant to, cover his neatly muscled buttocks, or the bulge at the front. The pink and blue part-coloured hose clung to his legs and showed no sign of contact either with saddle or with dusty road, but his own fair skin was creased, and professed a world of experience in its folds which allowed him to ignore the attention-seeking red scarf and to quench his invitation with a subdued chatter against which the Latin stood no chance.

Merielle withdrew her hand, hoisting up the silver nutmeg by its chain, caressing its jewelled surface as they sat, pleased that the one who had given it should see it being worn. “You know that I’m expecting my brother-in-law, don’t you, Gervase?” she whispered.

“He’s not arrived yet?”

“No, I’ve been expecting him all this week. The second week after Easter, he said, and here we are, a week after Low Sunday and he’s still not appeared. I’ve been preparing and packing and tying up ends all day, but still no word.”

“Well, you won’t be travelling this side of Monday, will you? He’ll not want to set off back to Winchester again as soon as he’s arrived.”

“No, indeed. He’s not a young man, you know.”

He poked a finger at the silver ball in her hand, chuckling. “No, he’s not, is he? So there’ll still be a place for me, will there, even if you decide to marry him?”

“Shh.” She smiled and looked away, nodding to Bess to remove the wheel and the basket of fleece. The answer should have been a firm no, of course, but even after eight months of pondering the question, she was still undecided whether to accept Sir Adam’s informal proposal or whether to continue her pleasant life with her own flourishing business and a flattering supply of male admirers.

That Sir Adam Bedesbury was amongst these was in no doubt, but Merielle was not so oblivious that she could not see the advantages to him of marrying his late wife’s elder sister and thereby obtaining an instant step-mother-cum-aunt for his nine-month-old daughter. His grief had been genuine, but had not prevented him, only a month after his wife’s death from milk-fever in July last year, from suggesting to Merielle that she might consider taking her place.

Emotionally sapped by her sister’s birthing and death in quick succession, Merielle had almost given in to the potent urge to take care of the little creature who had shown such dependence upon her mothering, especially since her own recent losses. But she had not been able to overcome her doubts then, and had allowed Sir Adam to escort her home to Canterbury with only an assurance that she would give the matter some thought—how could she not?—and that she would return this year to see her niece, with an answer. His message had arrived before Easter to say that he would shortly be in Canterbury on some business for the king, whose Master of Works at Winchester he was, and that he would be happy to take her back with him as soon as it was concluded.

“I’ve never bumped into him,” Gervase of Caen said probingly.

“I don’t suppose you would.” Merielle removed the coiled end of her heavy black plait from his fingers, then the silk ribbon that bound it. “He spends most of his time at Winchester on the renovations to the royal apartments after that fire.”

“Which is why the king stays at Wolvesey Palace, I suppose.”

“Yes, I believe so. I expect the archbishop’s palace is as well appointed as any of the king’s are. But Sir Adam’s manor is outside the West Gate in the suburbs, with a large garden and orchards and green fields beyond.” Her eyes roamed the shadowed courtyard, seeing the greenness superimposed upon the stone. Here, it was solid, comfortable and convenient, and she had converted it to her own taste during her widowhood. But it had not been her choice. The lure of a country estate and clean air was strong, but there were those here who relied on her for their employment.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? But what of him?”

Her sigh told him that the doubts of last year were still firmly in place, and the construction he placed upon it were typically masculine. “I can guess. The thought of having an older man in your bed instead of…”

Merielle’s eyes flashed wide open in alarm, showing him the startling blue-whites around the velvet-brown irises. “Shh!” She darted a quick look towards Bonard’s one searching eye. She knew his teasing. He would not have embarrassed her before her household.

Even during puberty she had never been the shy maiden but had suddenly blossomed like a luscious bloom and, at fifteen, had been eager for marriage, though she had wished that the man her father had chosen for her, a middle-aged but wealthy Lincoln merchant, had looked more like Gervase of Caen. In 1353, the same year as her January wedding, another outbreak of the terrible pestilence had swept across the country. Merielle’s father and husband had been amongst the first to go, leaving her rudderless but extremely wealthy and healthy with properties in both York and Lincoln and jointures she had not expected to have the use of for at least twenty years.

One who had come seeking Merielle’s glowing voluptuousness and statuesque beauty was Philippe St Martin of Canterbury who, although totally inexperienced in the ways of women, offered her youth, security, wealth and a comfortable escape from an unknown city of so many bad memories. Even now, Merielle could scarcely recall how the fumbling and inept young man had managed to father a child on her, though she could well recall his embarrassed jubilation at the news, and if that one act had been a disappointment to her, the thought of bearing a child made up for it.

Sadly, the future had come to a bleak halt when the overcome father-to-be left his newly pregnant wife to give thanks for the event on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, as if it had more to do with fate than the physical performance. That had been the last she had seen of him, receiving the news during the summer that he had died from a snake bite in Sicily. It was then that she had lost the child, here in this great house, alone and very angry that she had made such a stupid mistake so soon in her life. Eighteen years old, and already twice widowed. She could still feel the loss, though these days it was being chanelled in more positive directions, given power by her wealth and business abilities. Her age and beauty were interesting additions, she knew, but a northern levelheadedness inherited from her father warned that these attributes alone were not enough to guarantee the interest of true and honest men. Indeed, she was quite sure that they were not.

Merielle had no wish to be seen as cynical or manipulative, but nor could she ignore the delights of being sought and courted, which had been lacking until now, to savour the freedom to choose without pressure from one’s family; even to sample, if she were discreet about it. Gervase was experienced, but she did not fancy herself to be in love, nor had she felt more than a warm excitement from being the recipient of his attentions, and though there were others in Canterbury who showed an interest in her, both for their sons and for themselves, she had not allowed them to come too close.

But Sir Adam’s suggestion carried weight, if only because his ready-made family was also her niece to whom she felt she owed some responsibility. Yet she was bound to admit, somewhat guiltily, that the lure of a motherless babe to call her own seemed to be a grossly unsporting bait to dangle above Sir Adam’s middle-aged and chaste bed. It had been chaste during his marriage to her sister, too, by all accounts, though Merielle had never been made aware of the details except that somehow, presumably by the usual methods, Laurel had become pregnant.

The suspicion which had leapt to the forefront of Merielle’s mind since then had sadly been allowed to fester unhindered by charitable thoughts, and although she had put past differences aside to be with Laurel at the birth, no confidences had been exchanged. Consequently, the grain of information that had been dropped about Sir Adam’s failure to perform had taken root at Canterbury during a visit in the year of Laurel’s marriage, and the delicious art of putting two and two together had been Merielle’s delight, even then. Now, she was unsure whether she could expect to bear a family with Sir Adam, should she accept him, or be treated to yet another inadequate partnership for the sake of her conscience. Understandably, her anger smouldered at the less-than-perfect choices before her, despite her attractions, and at that particular moment she would have given all she owned to turn time backwards to when her sister was still a convent-bred child of fifteen in York, unaware of the king’s wife-hunting Master of Works in Winchester. The rest of the story she pushed aside.

Her face must have been registering signs of interest, for Gervase, blissfully unaware of her musings, was giving way to an overspill of daily accounting that still impressed him by its size. “Fifty marks for nine thousand red herrings during Lent,” he was saying. “And I’ve brought you a lamprey pie, to bribe you with, of course. It’s with the cook.” He smiled.

In the moment’s silence that followed, they became aware that the flow of Latin had ceased and that Bonard of Lincoln was waiting for a chance to continue, a hope that seemed to be dashed still further when Bess returned with a tray of goblets, wine, and a dish of warm macaroons sprinkled with nuts and cinnamon.

“Please continue, Master Bonard,” Merielle said, pouring the wine. “This will keep our guest quiet for a moment. Where were we? Goddess’s reward, was it? Or had we moved on?”

Bonard shifted uncomfortably, scanning the page with second thoughts. “It’s difficult in this light, as you say, mistress.”

“Try,” Gervase told him. “You cannot stop in mid-verse, man. And why in Latin? Let’s have it in English, shall we?”

The red scarf jerked up in alarm but sank again under the level gaze of his audience. He cleared his throat, shuffled the papers and put them behind him. “The rest is not quite complete, as yet,” he said.

A deep voice called from the shadow of the thatched overhang. “You mistake, my friend. The rest you must have forgot. There are six more verses, all highly unsuitable for a lady’s ears. Shall I tell them, instead?” The tall man with thick dark hair stepped down into the courtyard, the low sun highlighting his strong cheekbones and nose, almost closing his laughing eyes.

Gervase of Caen rose, indignantly. “No, sir. Indeed you shall not. What do you here, Sir Rhyan? Do you have an invitation to this lady’s house?”

The man walked down into the courtyard and stood before them with feet apart and head back, his white teeth gleaming. “I thought I’d find you with a woman, lad. Saw you emerge from the ale-house a while back. Must get our priorities straight, eh?” He gave Master Gervase no time to respond. “As for having an invitation, well, that was for my uncle Bedesbury, but I’ve come in his stead. Will you be able to contain your disappointment for a few days, lady?”

Merielle was rarely at a loss for words. As owner of a tapestry workshop she had her need of wits at every moment, yet this was so totally unexpected that her usual civility eluded her, her only thought being that his uncle could hardly be blamed for tactlessness when presumably he knew nothing of her acrimonious communications with his nephew three years ago. Since then, she had met the obnoxious man only once when he had come down from his estates in Yorkshire to be at his uncle’s wedding to her sister and then they had kept well clear of each other. Nevertheless, she could criticise the man’s lack of diplomacy in taking his uncle’s invitation for his own.

“You mean to tell me that you assumed the invitation to Sir Adam to apply to you equally? I am astonished, sir. Is your uncle indisposed?”

“Busy, mistress.” Sir Rhyan’s laughter faded at her reproof. “I had business here in Canterbury and offered to do his for him also, which includes escorting you to Winchester. If you find my company too difficult to stomach…” He made a movement as if to turn away, then added, “But I could hardly discover your mind on the matter without speaking to you, could I? Was I expected to send a carrier pigeon, perhaps?”

His manner was everything she would have expected from one such as he, the man with whom cold and blighting letters had been exchanged through lawyers, which she had countered at a cost he would never know. She had tried to put it behind her, once she had won, but the bitter taste lingered with the foreboding that one day they would have to meet again and that the nearer she came to accepting Sir Adam, the sooner this would be. Sir Rhyan was his uncle’s heir and his visits to Winchester not infrequent. It crossed her mind for the second time that here was yet another excuse not to go to Winchester, but she ached to see the tiny moist bundle, and the negative thoughts dissipated while the haunting scent of babes lingered in her nostrils.

Merielle was tall, Gervase of Caen even taller, but this man was both broad and tall, topping them both with ease. She had been well aware of his strength: his uncle boasted of his nephew’s prowess at tournaments and her sister Laurel at his companionship during the first homesick months of her marriage, telling of his skill with falcons until Merielle had closed her ears, sick to death of their glorifications. They had not experienced his other aspect, nor would she enlighten them.

Gervase ignored the man’s rhetorical question and asked, for Merielle’s sake, “Did you arrive in Canterbury today, sir?”

“Good Lord, no. Days ago. Before Easter.”

Merielle found this unacceptable, too. “And you have only just seen fit to come and—?”

“Would it have made any difference? My uncle sent you word to say to be ready after Easter, so surely you’ve had time to prepare. Have you—” he looked around “—prepared?”

“As it happens, sir, I have. But would it not have been more courteous to—?”

“No, it wouldn’t. It would have spoilt your Easter and, in spite of what you believe, I had no wish to do that. I leave on Monday. Do you come, or stay? The choice is yours. I can tell my uncle…”

Merielle knew precisely what he would tell his uncle. That she was with her lover and doting servant and that she had no inclination to see her sister’s brat (of whose sire she was in doubt), or worse. Whatever he chose to tell his uncle would not be to her credit, she was convinced of that. “You will not tell Sir Adam anything,” she said. “I shall tell him myself. I shall be ready to set out early on Monday. There’ll be dozens of other travellers on their way home after Easter, I’m sure, so I shall not depend on your escort, sir. I have servants of my own.” The speech sounded brave enough, but the man was unmoved by it.

“Hah!” He turned to look at Master Bonard’s red scarf with contempt. “Your one-eyed shepherd? He had two last time I saw him. What happened?”

“Nothing happened.” Merielle came to his defence. “Tell him, Master Bonard. Chivalry will be a novelty to Sir Rhyan, I believe.”

Taking courage from her support, Bonard took a step forward, still clutching the twists of paper in one hand. “I have made a vow,” he said, “to use only one eye until I have saved my mistress’s life. There, sir, now you can scoff.”

The looks that passed across the faces of Sir Rhyan Lombard and Master Gervase of Caen were pictures of incredulity and pity, their reactions the only thing about which they were likely to agree on this occasion.

Sir Rhyan discarded ridicule in favour of reason. “On the contrary, no man should scoff at true chivalry, but have some sense. How much use d’ye think you’ll be to your mistress on a hundred-and-thirty-mile journey when you’ve only got half your vision to see what danger she’s in? Eh? What kind of protection d’ye call that? You’d be more of a liability wearing that thing. Take it off, man, and think again.”

Gervase agreed. “He’s right. Use your sense, or you’d be better staying behind.”

“Others do it,” Bonard said, lamely, looking at Merielle.

“Maybe,” she said, kindly, “but they don’t recite Latin poetry to me, Master Bonard, and I find that more acceptable.” She felt Sir Rhyan’s scrutiny upon her cheek and wondered if he knew he had exposed Bonard’s deceit and then protected him from scorn.

Master Bonard lifted a hand to the back of his head and removed the blindfold, revealing a compression of sandy hair and an eye that blinked with relief. He bowed. “Another time, perhaps. You two are acquainted, I believe?” Meaning Gervase.

“Only slightly,” Gervase replied. “My work at the exchequer brings me into contact with those who owe the king rents and dues for their land. Your lamprey pie, mistress, is part of Gloucester’s rent. They also give him eels three times a year. Sir Rhyan sends him…”

The conversation was leading them towards shaky ground. Merielle put a stop to it. “Gervase, there must be much that awaits your attention after your absence. Shall you leave us now and return to say farewell on Sunday?” She knew that Sir Rhyan would make of that what he liked.

“Are you sure?” Gervase whispered.

“Yes. Please go now. There are matters…” She offered him her hands and, to her relief, he kissed them, bowed, and left quietly, leaving the courtyard to darken with hostility.

“I think we should continue our conversation indoors,” she said, leading her guest along the walkway and through studded oak doors into the hall where tables were being prepared for supper. On one, pewter candelabra stood with candles already lit, and she indicated a bench, placing Sir Rhyan within the circle of light while she sat opposite, affirming as she did so that her late sister’s adulation was typical of her shallow insight. He was indeed exceptionally handsome, but looks could be deceptive. He had done his best to injure her, once. He would not be allowed to forget it.

The hall servants kept a discreet distance, but Master Bonard was closer at hand in an obvious display of protectiveness, and although Merielle spoke in a low voice, she knew that he would hear. “Let us understand one another, Sir Rhyan, if you please. I had far rather Sir Adam himself had come to escort me to Winchester for then I would have been in pleasant company. I go with you on sufferance because we happen to be going the same way at the same time. Is that clear? I do not intend to make polite conversation with you for appearances’ sake and I would rather you respect my wishes to be left alone. A safe conduct to Winchester is all I require.”

“Still smarting, I see. You got the land back, for all the good it’s done you. For all the good it’s done the tenants, rather. Sheath your talons, lady.” He held his head high on great shoulders and sturdy neck, his unusually blue eyes showing not the slightest flicker of consternation at her blatant antagonism.

“It can be nothing to you, sir, whether I smart or not. It was an agreement between my father and yours, presumably based on some whim…”

“No whim, lady, and you know it as well as I, so cut out the sham, for that’s something I cannot abide.” His glance bounced off Master Bonard and back to her again.

“Then you must be having a hard time of it in this world, sir, for life is borne along on such minor deceits made out of our care for others’ feelings.”

“And you must be well practiced, judging by the company you keep. Does Sir Adam know of the competition, or shall you sign yon pretty lad off on Sunday?”

“Mind your tongue, sir! Until your appearance, the company I keep is of my own choosing, and my choice of husband will never be a concern of yours, whatever your late father chose to believe.”

“Yours, too, don’t forget. And you are mistaken, lady, if you think that their agreement is now at an end by reason of their deaths. The pestilence that took them both from us in the same year does not alter one whit of what was written and signed while your mother was alive, and that agreement you are bound to, now and for ever. I shall enforce it. You obtained the king’s pardon once, lady, but you’ll not do it again.”

“I paid for it, damn you!” Merielle snarled.

“Yes, a fine. That was not in the contract,” he said, coldly.

“I paid, wasn’t that enough for you?”

“No. Nor was it enough for those poor sods whose living is made on the land you refuse to administer.”

“I do. The bailiffs. The steward. They…”

“No, they don’t! The pestilence took them, too.”

Merielle breathed out, slowly, controlling the flow. “It returned? When?”

“Last month. And never once since then have you enquired what was going on.”

“I thought…” No, she had not thought.

He watched her eyes search the table-top, then he leaned forward on thick leather-clad arms, his long fingers splayed. “The land your father leased from mine, the manor house, the villages, the fields and mills were taken for a term of three lives, remember. Three lives, not two. His own, his wife’s and yours, as the eldest daughter. And as security, because they both wanted to be sure that the property would remain in responsible hands even after their deaths, your father agreed to allow my father and his heirs the right to approve husbands for his widow and daughter. You, mistress. Your mother died, but you are still written into the contract which I took over when my father and eldest brother were taken in the sickness. And there you will remain for the rest of your life. But you chose to forget that, did you not? And after your first husband died, a man of your father’s choosing and approved by mine, you went ahead and chose a fool who acquired your property and then careered off to Jerusalem, for God’s sake, having no more care for the land that supports his tenants than he did for his breeding wife, it seems.”

Merielle leapt to her feet, trembling with fury. How dared he speak to her like that in her own home? Her late husband’s home. “That’s enough!”

But Sir Rhyan’s hand darted across the table and clamped around her wrist, holding her back. “Sit down, lady!”

Master Bonard leapt to his feet, also. “Sir! You are a guest here. I beg you, release the lady at once!”

He did not, but kept his eyes on her face, waiting for her compliance.

Merielle sat, frowning at her protector. “It’s all right. I told you that chivalry was not in his book. Sit down, Master Bonard.” She felt her hand being released but would not rub her wrist where his fingers had hurt her. “I have always believed, Sir Rhyan, that no woman should be obliged to accept a man’s say in her private affairs. A husband, of course, but not a complete stranger who cannot possibly know what is best for her.”

“Your feelings do not concern me—we are speaking here of families, mistress, not of one person only. Families who have a right to be protected by law. What did your late Canterbury husband know or care of Yorkshire estates hundreds of miles away to the north except for the rents that poured in each year? What do you know of them? He couldn’t even look after you properly, could he?”

“You will leave my late husband out of this discussion, if you please. Had things gone differently, we would not now be having this conversation. You vented your malice by confiscating my property—”

“My property! My late father’s. And I had every right to reclaim it. Who else would look after those families if I didn’t? Eh?”

“I’ve told you. But you timed your vindictiveness well, didn’t you, Sir Rhyan? You waited until I was a widow—”

“Nine months, I waited.”

“—and had lost the child I so desperately wanted,” she panted, willing the tears to stay away, “and then you—”

“I didn’t know of that, then. It would have waited.”

“—sent lawyers to me. I suppose you thought I’d inherited so much from my father and husbands that I could afford to lose a little. Is that what you thought, sir? Did you care about my distress?”

“Do you care about the distress suffered by those families at the hands of your so-called stewards, who knew damn well there’s no one to come and see what they got up to? The frauds? The thefts? The unjust punishments? The abuses? The taking of daughters?”

“What?”

“Yes, all of that, and more. It’s next to my land, woman, so I know what’s been going on. Is it surprising I wanted to get it back, to give those people some normality in their miserable lives? It’s good land going to waste with poor management, not enough oxen, ploughs, hardly a roof on the church. And you here, sitting around with your lovers—”

His quick reaction caused Merielle’s arm to swing blindly through space, missing his head entirely and slewing her round with the effort. To steady herself, she braced her arms on the table and glared at him through narrowed eyes ready to kill with one piercing stare. “Hypocrite!” she spat. “It’s all right for men, then, is it? I’ll have you know, sir, that I can administer all my property in York, Lincoln and Canterbury, run a household and a tapestry-weaving business and still have energy left over for lovers whenever I feel like it. And if you choose to tell that to Sir Adam to see if you can put him off the idea of taking me to wife, well, don’t trouble yourself: I can do it much more effectively. With embellishments. If anyone is going to deter my late sister’s husband, sir, it need not be you, I thank you.”

“Even so, lady, that is what I shall do.”

She gasped and stood upright. “Ah, yes, of course. Just to make sure. You are his heir, are you not? And it wouldn’t do for me to get in the way of your inheritance, would it? Think of the dower he might tie up which you’d not be able to reach until my death. I see you’ve thought of that.”

Unmoved, he stood and let his eyes rove slowly from the wreath of pennyroyal still on her abundant black hair, over her full breasts and narrow waist, the swell of her hips under the green woollen kirtle, then back to her eyes, blazing with anger. “I’ve remembered everything, lady, as you say. But let me remind you again, lest you forget. You will not marry anyone without my permission. Not even my uncle.”

“And what could you do about it if I did, pray? Apart from reclaiming my property once more, what could you do? Unwed us?”

“Tch, tch!” He shook his head, slowly. “Do you mean to tell me, Mistress Merielle St Martin, that you would leap into your brother-in-law’s bed, another middle-aged and wealthy admirer, just to spite me? I’m flattered that anyone should go to so much trouble, but I’m sure you must have a good reason.”

“Then you are even more arrogant than I thought, sir. The only reason I could have for spending the rest of my life with Sir Adam Bedesbury would be to fulfil my responsibilities to my baby niece, my sister’s child. Is that a good enough reason, do you think? If the child were related to you, Sir Rhyan, would you think of doing the same?”

“Alas, lady, the degree of kinship is too close. I would not be allowed to marry my uncle. But in any case, I’ve always found it too extreme for my taste to suppose that one must needs marry the parent of every motherless child, related or otherwise. Responsibility is one thing, but your plan is as irrational as Master Bonard’s one eye. I suggest you examine your reason more closely.”

Reluctantly, Merielle saw his argument and was annoyed that he had been the one to advance it. “I have no plan that you speak of,” she snapped. “My point is that I have a good enough reason and that, if I choose, there is nothing you could do to prevent me, Sir Rhyan.”

He looked surprised at that. “Ah, forgive me. I had thought you were quite determined, with your talk of dower and such. In that case, Sir Adam will have the pleasure of trying to persuade you while you will have to exercise great restraint not to accept him. It should be most entertaining. And I can stop you, lady. Don’t doubt it.”

“Leave my house, sir, before I have you thrown out!”

But even that was too late, for he had already made his bow as he spoke and was turning to go.

Her own exit was meant to show him how he deserved no courtesy, but his hearty bellow of laughter followed her out of the hall and beyond, where she snatched the crown of green leaves off her head and hurled it at poor Bonard who had appeared with condolences at the ready.

“A fat lot of good that thing did!” she yelped, massaging her bruised wrist at last. “And why is Allene not here when I need her?”

Knowing that for her mistress to run through her vocabulary of insults would not improve her temper, the ever-practical Allene placed a beaker of hippocras between Merielle’s shaking hands and nudged it upwards, hoping thereby to bring the flow of invective to a halt. She was tempted to revert to the gentle clucking noises of the nursery to calm Merielle’s anger, but Allene’s experience as her nurse told her that this was neither the time nor the place to attempt pacification.

To Merielle’s accusing enquiry about where she’d been, Allene retorted with commendable composure, “Upstairs, packing. Where else would I be? If I’d known your guest was going to march in and out as if he owned the place, I’d have made it a mite more difficult for him, believe me.”

“Guest? That rat-faced piece of manure?”

“Ugly, was he? Now, my memory’s not all that bad, but I seem to remember—”

“Revolting! Should have been smothered at birth. And I’ll be damned if I’ll ride all the way to Winchester in that monster’s company.”

Allene’s expression registered no shock; her double chins did not quiver, her kindly blue eyes did not widen. But the outrageous assertion that the unwelcome guest was ill featured made her look sharply at the beautiful woman whose slender fingers clenched tightly around the vessel, tipping its contents this way and that to catch the reflections on its surface. Allene had been Merielle’s complete family during the last few years and knew better than anyone every mood, every inflection of the voice, every look and every thought behind it. She had been present at Merielle’s birth and at every moment since, and the memory she spoke of was indeed not as bad as all that. So intact was it that she could pinpoint exactly the last occasion when Merielle had reacted so harshly to anyone. Then, at her sister’s wedding here in Canterbury when Merielle had been inescapably faced with the same man, her private response had been just as extravagantly savage and out of all proportion, Allene believed, to a man’s right to do the best he could with his own land.

With all the property from Merielle’s father and two husbands to bring in revenues enough to satisfy an army, Allene had never been able to understand why the thought of allowing some of it to return to its Yorkshire owner should be so very unthinkable. Some women might have been glad to shed the responsibility, especially since officials had to be paid to administer the properties even during the leanest years after the pestilence. Since that dreadful time, it was now becoming more and more difficult to find men to do the work efficiently, so why all the fuss about surrendering it?

Allene would have asked about the man’s particular offence this time, but Merielle’s next observation forestalled her, astounding the placid nurse by its immoderation. “He’s that child’s father. You know that, don’t you?”

Allene could not allow this to pass. Her voice sharpened in rebuke. “For pity’s sake, child! You cannot say so!”

Taking the beaker from Merielle’s hands, she drew her towards a stool whose top was padded with a tapestry carpet of flowers. “You cannot say that! You have no proof and you are speaking ill of your late sister, also. Now put the foolish thought from your head and replace it with something more charitable. Did Archbishop Islip’s Easter message have no meaning for you? You may not like your brother-in-law’s nephew, but you cannot lay a crime like that at his door.”

“Yes, I can, Allene. Do you remember the child’s hair?”

“Of course I do.”

“Well?”

“It’s dark. Look, plenty of infants start off dark and go lighter. Some do the opposite. Your hair was more the colour of new copper when you were born. Imagine what your poor papa would have made of that, if he’d had a mind to. You can’t pin Laurel’s child on the man by that alone, Merielle.”

“Her eyes are blue.”

“So are all new-born infants; you know that, surely? And why are you so keen to make him the father? Did Laurel ever say as much?”

“Hah!” Merielle stood, turning away from Allene’s good counsel. “You know how keen she was on him. I could have warned her off him, told her how he retaliated after I married Philippe, wanting to take the land back into his keeping. But she’d not have listened to a word against him, would she? Come, this talk is pointless. I have to find a way out of this situation.”

“You don’t have to go to Winchester, pet. Send a message instead to say that you’ve decided against it.”

Admit defeat and hear his laughter ringing in her ears? That was the last thing Merielle would do. “I do have to go, Allene. I need to hold that child again.”

“There are two whole days between now and Monday.”

“So, are we packed?”

“Of course.”

“Then we go tomorrow instead of waiting.”

“Alone?” The nurse pretended a soupçon of dismay.

“Hardly. There’ll be plenty of others going in the same direction.”

“Then why not find out from the guestmaster at St Augustine’s if any of his guests will be departing tomorrow and at what time? Then we’ll be sure of travelling in decent company. They’ll probably call here on the way to the Westgate. D’ye want me to see to it?”

“Aye, send one of the lads in livery so he doesn’t get ignored.”

“It’s not the ignoring that’ll be a problem, but how to get back through the city gate after sunset. Could you write a note?”

“Yes. Where’s that…that creature staying, I wonder?”

If Merielle had asked where that creature and his uncle had stayed last time they were in Canterbury for her sister’s wedding, Allene might have resorted to a diplomatic lie. But she had not, and when the messenger returned some time later to say that the guestmaster would be happy to direct a small escort of returning guests towards Mistress St Martin’s house on Palace Street early next morning, Allene felt that her suggestion had been an inspired one.

Chapter Two

It was one thing, Merielle muttered, to be allowed to make one’s own decisions, but to be pushed into a plan of action by another did not conform to the portrait of independence she had striven so hard to present to the world since her latest widowhood. Concealing her annoyance in a ferment of activity, she managed to make it appear as if the only factor to influence her unplanned haste was that, by travelling on a Saturday, she would be sure of a day’s rest at the abbey guesthouse on the Sabbath before the rush of Monday-morning pilgrims from Canterbury. And in trying to convince herself that all was in her favour, she managed to cloud the image of the ogre—her words—who had in fact precipitated the change.

Bonard of Lincoln was not so easy to convince of the rightness of the plan. He turned the red scarf over and over in his hands. “I would not have removed it had it not been for their insistence on my being able to protect you better, mistress,” he said. “Now I see that my gesture was all in vain. I may as well have ignored them.”

The illogicality of this did not escape Merielle, but she handed him one of the goblets of wine and prepared her mollifying words. “Dear Bonard, you are sadly mistaken. You are the only one of the household with enough authority to leave at such short notice and the only one I can trust to keep things going. There’s the new consignment of wools to be checked; I would have done that tomorrow morning. Then there are two more Flemings to interview first thing, and I can leave that to no one but you.”

“The tapestry-master can see them.”

“He’s a Fleming himself, isn’t he? He’d take them on even if they were one-eyed and fingerless.” She regretted the comparison, but it was too late to withdraw it. “I need an independent master who knows the business. You must be here. And besides that…” she took his arm and drew him down beside her on the wooden bench, “…I need you to explain to Master Gervase what’s happened. Go round to his lodgings tomorrow, Bonard. Will you do that for me?” She saw the shadow of pain that passed across his eyes, but ignored it. She had seen it before.

“I’d rather wait till he appears on Sunday, mistress. He must take the inconvenience like the rest of us. D’ye want me to tell him about your dispute with Sir Rhyan, too?” The tone of petulance lingered into his question, making Merielle wonder whether she was hearing sarcasm or mere pique.

She frowned. “He knows, doesn’t he? He’s the one who got me an audience with the king, remember.”

“I meant this evening’s dispute.”

“No, better not.”

His cloud lifted. “So you’ll send word when you’re ready to return?”

Relieved, she prodded him into a lighter mood. “You’re sure I’ll return, Bonard?”

He smoothed the red scarf over his bony knees. “I’m more sure of that than of anything, Mistress Merielle,” he said. “Your unwelcome guest was flippant about not being able to marry his uncle, but I wondered if he was not also trying to tell you that your own degree of kinship is outside the canon law, too.”

“What?”

Without looking at her, Bonard continued, “A man may not marry his wife’s sister, nor may a woman marry her sister’s husband. Was Sir Adam aware of that when he suggested that you might consider taking your late sister’s place? Is that what he was suggesting, mistress?” Slowly, he turned his head, watching his words register in her eyes. He might have known she would challenge them.

“But people do. Men marry their brother’s widows, don’t they?”

“To keep property in the family, they do, with permission. You’d hardly qualify for that, would you?”

“So you’re saying that I’ve misunderstood the situation?”

“I don’t know exactly what was said, but such things are easy enough to misunderstand. Think. What did he say, exactly? He must know the law as well as anyone.”

“Then why didn’t I?”

“Presumably because you interpreted it the way you wanted to at the time. Men don’t always make themselves plain, do they, when it’s in their interests to be misunderstood?”

“Don’t they?”

“No, mistress, they don’t.”

“So you believe Sir Adam deliberately misled me?”

“To lure you to Winchester? Of course I do. You’d not go so readily if he’d asked you openly to be his mistress, would you? He must know full well that you’d not be allowed to marry, but men like that have to explore every possibility. How d’ye think he’s risen so fast in the king’s favour? By seeking every opportunity and grabbing at it, that’s how. He’s an ambitious man.”

“And how exactly is having a mistress going to advance him?”

Bonard sighed gently and plucked the red scarf away out of sight. “I may be a romantic,” he said, “but I’m not so blind that I cannot see the way men look at you.” He watched her large eyes withdraw beneath deep crescent lids and a thick fringe of black lashes, then waited until they reappeared, veiled with unease. “He can see your interest in the child, but if all he wanted was a mother for it, he’d have married again long before now.”

“It was less than a year ago, Bonard.”

“That’s nothing when a man needs a wife. But it’s you he wants, and he’s hoping that you’ll believe it’s marriage he’s offering. Once you’re there, he’ll try to persuade you. Forewarned is forearmed, mistress.”

“Oh, Bonard. Is that what you believe, truly?”

“Yes, it is. A mother for his infant and you in his bed.”

She flinched at his plain speaking. This was a Bonard she had not encountered before. Even so, there was something he did not know. “But my sister implied that Sir Adam was not…not like that.”

Master Bonard straightened, recognising the gist. “Yes, well, you know what Mistress Laurel was like when she wanted to make a point, don’t you? Unrestrained, could we say?”

“A family trait, I fear.”

He did not contradict her. “Sir Adam was not the man for her, was he? Too set in his ways and too interested in her sister. Hardly likely to qualify him for much praise, was it? Could she have said that to put you off, d’ye think? She certainly did her best to make him jealous, didn’t she?”

“Flirting with that man!” Her voice chilled at the memory.

“It takes two,” he said, quietly. “He’s severe, mistress, but at least he’s honest. Unlike some others we could name.” The quiet comment slipped through the net, and his reference to Gervase of Caen was lost in the previous one, which he extended. “And from the sound of things he may well understand what his uncle’s intentions are, and is trying to protect you.”

“Oh, Bonard!” Merielle looked away with impatience. “That’s inconceivable. The only reason he has for preventing a liaison between me and his uncle is because it would put his inheritance in jeopardy. My personal protection is the last thing on his mind.”

“Perhaps your opinion of him is too harsh, mistress. He was not responsible for what happened afterwards, remember.” His voice dropped, although the servants had long since ceased their arm-laden excursions across the hall and were now seeking dim corners in which to lay their heads for the night. “And however much you dislike him, he must never know that there was more to it than a straightforward fine. If you had not gone to seek the king’s aid in the matter…”

“If that man had kept his nose out of my affairs, Bonard, I would not have needed the king’s aid in the first place. And if I’d known what the price would be, I’d never have gone there that day. Even you could not protect me from that, could you?” She had not meant it to sound like censure, but the tired and angry words had a way of emerging point first. “I’m sorry, my dear friend. You deserve no reprimand. There was nothing you could have done, I know. Nor could I have done without you, that day.”

He had done his best, such as it was, but even the faithful Bonard could not insist on being present at her interview with the king at Canterbury, if the king did not wish it. What had happened then behind the closed doors in the archbishop’s palace where the king was staying had had a direct bearing on the fine which was paid to Sir Rhyan Lombard for Merielle’s defiance of the contract between their late fathers. Afterwards, Merielle had explained nothing, nor had she needed to. The king’s reputation was well known and Master Bonard, romantic idealist, was no innocent in the ways of great men.

“I can make up for it a little,” he whispered, “if you allow me to accompany you to Winchester. No more Latin verses?”

Again, his words were lost on her, brushed aside in her quick, irritable dismissal of the incident. She stood, and Bonard recognised the futility of repeating his offer.

Long past midnight, the relaxation which the longed-for bath was meant to induce was effectively displaced by new problems that could be shared only in part by those she trusted most. In a cloud of steam, she wondered whether it was marriage or widowhood that made problems worse and decided that, but for men, life would have been simple. Regrets crowded after the dilemma of Sir Adam and his intentions; she should never have agreed to go, even to see her infant niece, to hold her, to nuzzle her peachy cheeks. Beneath the foamy waterline, she passed her hands over her womb, sliding them upwards to comfort the sudden ache in her breasts, remembering with a gasp of longing the tragedies contained there, the last of which she had brought upon herself.

The warm summer days of 1356 had already begun to lengthen by the time the news had reached her of Philippe’s sudden death, weeks earlier. From the south, the winds had blown gently, and Sicily was half a world away and what had Philippe been doing in Palermo on his way to Jerusalem? Like many another, it was a question never to be answered in the blank and sickening days that followed. She had not seen the need for him to leave her, nor had she known that the preparations they had made for his temporary absence would now become permanent. Nor had she had time to learn to love him.

“Determined’ had been the best way to describe his wooing, for every time she thought she had seen the last of him in Lincoln, he came back for another try until, finally, she came to look forward to his return; the novel idea of being sought with such constancy found a niche in her lonely existence. He had made Canterbury sound attractive. Their wedding night had been a non-event for which she had no regrets; it was only after supping with friends one evening and drinking rather too much of their fine newly imported Rhenish wine that the two newlyweds came to know each other better than during the previous weeks of celibacy.

Philippe had been good at his work, knew everyone in Canterbury and was well known also by them, and, if he lacked personal authority, his workshop’s reputation made up for that. His business partner, who had died just before their marriage, was not replaced; Philippe’s new wife appeared to be enough for him. And when, after only a few months of marriage, Merielle discovered that she was pregnant, Philippe’s astonishment catapulted him into a pilgrimage, as if thanks offered in the nearby cathedral would not suffice. It was as if they had both been taken unawares by something they had not quite remembered.

Whether from shock or from some other reason, the pregnancy had lasted barely three months, less than a week after the news of Philippe’s death had reached her. Merielle, who had never been truly ill before, thought that her world had collapsed with her beneath it, and, at eighteen, howled for all her dear departed ones and for the infant she had hoped would give her life some purpose. Believing no more in expectancies, only in losses, she was both horrified and frightened by the miscarriage, for the painful contractions were every bit as bad as girlhood scaremongers had said.

Then, during her recovery, had come the icily legal document telling her that her Yorkshire lands were to be repossessed by some grasping and merciless landowner who believed he had more claim to them than she did. A typical case, she believed, of stripping the carcass clean. An excusable exaggeration, in the circumstances.

Her worried expression had been commented upon by a pleasant acquaintance of Philippe’s, one Gervase of Caen, who had listened readily to her angry tale. He had been sympathetic, and helpful, assuring her that there were ways of dealing with scavengers of his sort.

His advice was perfectly timed. “The king,” he had said, leaning elegantly against a half-constructed loom that the carpenter was building. “You must petition the king in cases like this.”

Merielle, who appreciated directness, felt that this was the best advice she had had so far, Philippe’s lawyers having offered scant hope and, seeing little further than the end of her nose at that time, she had allowed Master Gervase to elaborate.

“He’ll be coming to Canterbury in two weeks’ time,” he said, “staying in the archbishop’s palace. You should see the food lists.” He unrolled an imaginary parchment into the air, smiling. “I can arrange an audience for you. He’ll settle the matter.”

In her mind, she had already half-accepted the suggestion, but felt it only polite to protest a little. “But there’ll be dozens of people pestering him, Master Gervase. Isn’t it more usual to leave a petition with one of his clerks?”

His smile had broadened at that and he had taken her elbow to lead her to a stool. “Mistress St Martin,” he said, “when you have friends in the king’s employ, you use them. I can get you a private audience, away from others’ ears, where you can explain the problem to his grace. It won’t be the first time he’s heard of such things happening, you know, to new widows.”

“A fortnight?” She would be fully recovered by then.

“Two weeks. All you have to do is to dress soberly and elegantly, as usual, and I will personally escort you.”

“And Bonard. I must take him.”

“If you will. That will depend on his grace.”

They had taken the letter, too, in Master Bonard’s leather scrip, on a day when darkness had fallen too soon beneath lowered clouds and a heavy drizzle. By the time they had reached the handsome stone porch of the archbishop’s palace in the cathedral precinct, they were almost drenched. Step by dark step, Merielle had followed the curve of the spiral stone staircase from the corner of the porch up to the small anteroom where a fire had been lit within a recess in the wall. She remembered how its stone hood looked like an upturned funnel.

Master Gervase disappeared through a door on the far side of the whitewashed room, and then reappeared some moments later. “His grace will see you alone, Mistress St Martin. No—” he put out a hand for emphasis “—alone, sir, if you please.”

Bonard had looked deeply uncomfortable, but helpless. “It is not seemly,” he protested, in a low voice.

Master Gervase raised his eyebrows. “I cannot argue with his grace if he insists, Master Bonard, can I?”

Through yet another chamber where clerks at tables scratched inky quills across parchments, Merielle was shown into a larger chamber, headily warm after the cold damp outside and glowing with colour from the wood-panelled walls. A fire blazed in one corner and candles made haloes of light that eclipsed whatever was nearest, their sweet scent of beeswax mingling strangely with a lingering aroma of linseed oil.

She had met the king only once before when he had been entertained by the merchants of Lincoln, of whom her first husband had been one. They had given a memorable feast in his honour and lent him vast amounts of money for his French campaigns at the same time and she, as a newly married merchant’s wife, had curtsied and been raised to her feet to meet a pair of admiring eyes. As she was doing on this occasion, only three years later.

His hands beneath hers were firm and warm. He was tall and of athletic build, a man renowned for his valour and skills in battle, his love of jousting, of building schemes, a patron of the arts. He was, she believed, everything one expected of a king. He recalled their meeting as he removed her cloak and, unexpectedly, her damp veil, draping them over a stool near the fire. “There,” he said, “we’ll give them time to dry, shall we?”

He came back to take her hands, rather like an uncle, she thought at the time. “Now, Mistress St Martin, these are sad times, are they not? But if you will sit with me awhile, I will do what I can to help. Your first husband was a staunch supporter of our French cause, you know.”

“Yes, sire. Sadly, he was lost to me soon after your visit to Lincoln.”

“Indeed. And your father also, I believe. You have had more losses than you deserve at your age. What is your age, mistress?”

“I have eighteen years and some four months, sire.”

She did not mention her most recent loss of the infant she had wanted, for she knew that, while she could control tears for Philippe, she could not do the same for the other. She had dressed with care for the occasion, black relieved by edgings of silver inkle-loom braids and silver grey fox fur. With her thick black hair in a nest of plaits around her face, entwined with silver cords and studded discreetly with pearls, the only contrasting colour was the warm apricot skin on her neck, which had now been uncovered. It did not unduly disturb her, for she knew that kings were different from other men in what they were allowed to do. His offer of wine was accepted while he listened attentively to her problem and read the lawyers’ letter.

Basking in the sympathy that followed, she saw her troubles receding already and was thankful that he did not ask her why it was so important for a woman as wealthy as she was to keep hold of these far-flung Yorkshire lands. That would have been difficult to answer except that she resented being fleeced like a helpless sheep, especially at a time like this.

He replenished her goblet with more of the sweet wine and held out his own to make a toast. “To your peace of mind, mistress. Leave it with me, if you will. I’ll have the appropriate fine sent to Sir Rhyan Lombard’s notary. Sir Rhyan is one of Lord Scrope of Bolton’s retainers, you know, both of them the Duke of Lancaster’s men. A good man in battle, so my son tells me. He holds fast, as well he should. A lovely woman should not have to cross swords with a man of his calibre.” He smiled at her and leaned his arm along the table behind her. “Now, tell me of your family. Are they still in York?”

Warmed by the fire and the wine, and more relieved than she could say, Merielle talked to him as a friend might, laughing at the way sisters, who should always agree, did not. She told him of her plans to bring Laurel to live in Canterbury.

The king’s eyes, lazily absorbing Merielle’s grace and beauty, blinked slowly. “I may be able to help you there, mistress. I have a well-connected bachelor in mind. Winchester. Would that be convenient, do you think? Near enough for sisters who agree to disagree?”

That had been another of her problems solved in an instant. “Oh, sire. How can I ever thank you?” She smiled, too radiantly. Looking back, it was probably the stupidest thing she could have said. The age-old response. A child’s, not an intelligent woman’s. It was the last time she ever said it to anyone.

The king slowly unfolded himself and rose, pulling her to her feet. “Come,” he said, “I think I have the answer to that.”

At eighteen, there was no reason for her to distrust him. She had heard, of course, of his reputed lack of scruples, his tendency to withhold repayments of loans, to forget some debts altogether. But he and his friends had, only eight years previously, founded the Most Noble Order of the Garter and that must surely be the ultimate guarantee of his attitude towards women. She thought, believed, that he was about to show her something of interest, and even when he led her across the shadowy room to a small door in the wainscot, she had no idea of what was in his mind.

The tiny chamber was no larger than a closet, built into the wall where the air was stuffy with the smell of candlesmoke and the same unmistakable linseed. Here, Merielle was drawn inside by one hand, still expecting the king, her hero, to light a candle and reveal a book, a relic, a document, perhaps. She found that she could not move backwards for something that pressed against her legs, and the last thing she saw was the king’s hand pulling the door closed behind him.

“Sire…I beg you…what?” She strained backwards, but too late to avoid his arm about her waist or the heat of his mouth on her throat, his other hand on her body. “Please…no, sire!”

His voice was hoarse, his previous manner now totally at odds with his assault. “You want to know how you can thank me, mistress? Or have you reconsidered? Am I not to receive some reward for my help…a small token as payment?”

“Payment, sire? I thought—”

“Hah! You thought?” He laughed, softly. “Don’t think. Women like you should not think too much.” While he spoke, his hand was finding its way into the wide neckline of her cote-hardie. “You’ll not deny me a little comfort before I return to France, surely? Something for us both to remember? By God, mistress, you’re beautiful.”

In the oppressive blackness, Merielle pushed and twisted, scratching herself on his gold buttons and smelling his heat. “Sire, I am a widow and recently bereaved. Have you forgot?”

“I’ve not forgotten that you’re free now, mistress, and ready for a man, eh? Come, give yourself to me. You are young and strong.” While he spoke, and without giving her a chance to reply, he leaned on her, forcing her backwards and rendering her helpless either to reach him or to right herself, and she wondered then, in the warning flash behind her eyes, how many other women had been lured into this same trap and held there until payment had been exacted in full, for surely this was not the first time he had done such a thing.

It was the blackest of experiences in which her participation was as unnecessary as her cooperation while he forced himself between her legs, both hands exploring every surface beneath her gown, taking her at last with a suddenness that made her yelp with pain and brought tears to her eyes. Even then, she would not tell him, knowing that if her bereavement could not stop him, then nothing else would. He kissed her only once, when it seemed as if he would never finish and, when he did, she understood why he had felt it necessary to closet them in this small place, for his roar would surely have brought in his men, if they had heard it.

The perspiration from his brow dripped on to her. “By the white swan, mistress, you’re good,” he panted.

Dazed and disbelieving that such a thing could have happened to her, she allowed him to pull her up and lead her by the hand back to the fire, to be cloaked and veiled as she had been before, to be offered more wine. His manner was once more that of the courtier, adding to her sense of bewilderment.

“No, I thank you, sire. I must go now,” she whispered, pushing a certain dampness off her cheek. Stiffly, she curtsied. “I beg you will excuse me.”

Blank-faced, Gervase of Caen answered the king’s summons, revealing nothing to Merielle of whether he knew or suspected what had taken place. In the clerks’ chamber, no faces looked up but, once in the antechamber, Bonard’s expression said it all. He felt her trembling as she leaned on his arm; he would not let go of her hand as they negotiated the downward spiral towards the light; he pulled her arm through his out there in the slippery courtyard and commanded Master Gervase, “Take Mistress St Martin’s other arm, if you please, sir.”

With care, the two men supported her back to Palace Street, which was not far, and Master Gervase left after being assured by Merielle that her petition had been successful. Then, she had clung to the faithful Bonard in silence, shaking uncontrollably, and had not objected when he had carried her to her room and given orders on her behalf to Mistress Allene and Bess.

After that, Merielle had told herself, over and over, that this was nothing compared to the losses she had recently sustained and that now she should put it from her mind. But the one thing she had found impossible to forget was her own foolish and misplaced trust in the ways of men, a personal anger that pained her as much as anything else.

The king had kept his word about her fine, for soon afterwards the matter was concluded by a tersely worded and painfully formal letter from Sir Rhyan’s notary to say that a fine had been paid from the king’s treasury office with a command not to pursue the affair. But for Merielle, that had not been the end of the matter. Far from it. In the weeks that followed, she, Allene and Bess had had to use all their skills to bring on the monthly flow that had refused to appear at its appointed time. An event which, only a few months ago, had been the cause of such excessive celebration was now the cause of anguish, for another pregnancy would be well out of time and a stigma not to be endured by one so recently widowed. Against all her bodily yearnings and in another red haze of illness, the tiny spark of life was intentionally snuffed out, and Merielle’s heart almost broke.

Illogically, she blamed Sir Rhyan, the man who had appeared from nowhere to prosecute her and then cause her to hand back the one thing she wanted above everything. Neither he nor the king would ever know, but she could hold it against them, nevertheless.

She climbed out of the bathtub into the towel that Allene held. Obviously, she should stay here in Canterbury, after all. Call Sir Adam’s bluff. His proposal was an insult, seen in the light of Bonard’s explanations. But the prospect of discovering for herself whilst ruffling the intolerable smugness of his nephew were rewards she was loth to concede. Burying her smile into the bundle of warm linen, she hugged it against her breast, rocking gently and inhaling its garden perfume.

“Come on, lass,” Allene said. “Into bed. You’re dead on your feet.”

Chapter Three

The resumption of her role as mistress of her own destiny was taken up once more in the early morning light that filtered lopsidedly on to the throng in the courtyard, rippling over mountainous panniers and the shoulders of intent grooms who tightened girths with upward-heaving grunts. Merielle sat in silence on her sturdy cob, a chestnut gelding of Suffolk parentage, whose back was broad enough to feast on. Her inner excitement was well contained. Beneath her figure-hugging brown woollen gown she wore soft leather breeches to prevent her legs from chafing on the saddle over the next four or five days, but this was her only concession to practicality. She had no intention of being mistaken for a party of rustics: that was not the best way to secure the best beds at inns and guesthouses or the best hospitality at an abbey.

With this firmly in mind, she wore her hair in an intricate and beguiling coronet of thick plaits coiled around her face and crown, each plait braided and interwoven with golden cords. From the lower edges of this, a pure white linen veil covered her throat and shoulders and this, with her remarkable peach-velvet skin, made a harmony of tones enough to make even the rough stable-lads gasp and nudge each other.

Nor was her retinue likely to be ignored. Two sumpter-mules were loaded with her personal possessions and those of Allene and Bess, and two pack-horses carried provisions and food for the journey in wickerwork panniers, their matching harness of green-dyed leather and merrily tinkling bells on their bridles showing them to belong to a person of some standing. The same green and gold livery was worn by the two young grooms, Daniel and Pedro, local lads who would have done anything their mistress asked without blinking an eye.

For Allene, not even the too-few hours of sleep of last night could diminish the heady prospect of herding five adults and nine horses all the way to Winchester and back. She called Bess away from the corner where a young house-servant held her captive. “Come on, my lass!” Every female was a lass to Allene. “If your lad wants a job, get him to lift you up into the saddle. It’s time we were off.”

“We’ll set off without them if they’re not here soon,” Merielle called to her. “You’d better mount as well. Pedro, give Mistress Allene a hand.”

Master Bonard laid a hand on the chestnut’s mane, pushing a wiry blond lock over the crest and flicking the green ribbons that cluttered each side of the brow-band. Bells tinkled along the rein-guards. “Give them a moment more,” he said. “You requested their company. You can hardly set off before they—” A shout echoed through the archway that led from the courtyard into the street.

“That’ll be the market traders coming in,” Merielle said to him.

Bonard stepped forward to peer through. “It’s them,” he said, leading Merielle on and passing Allene who hit the saddle with an audible squeak, despite Pedro’s assistance. Her Irish grey rolled its eyes in alarm.

On the Palace Street side of the archway, a party of almost forty riders had come to an untidy halt, filling every available space until one of Merielle’s neighbours opened his door to find a horse in the act of depositing steaming manure on his doorstep. From behind the towering rump, he yelled, “Get over to one side, will you? Clear the way for Canterbury citizens, dammit!”

Realising that she was the cause of the obstruction, Merielle clasped Bonard’s hand in a hurried farewell, took up her reins and moved out into the street, approaching two expressionless nuns, one on either side of a young woman, guarding her closely. Before she could reach them, she was intercepted by a young rider dressed in sober charcoal grey whose pleasant smile and shining tonsure held more of a welcome.

He beamed even more broadly. “Mistress St Martin? Forgive our delay, if you please. Our prayers took longer than we thought.”

A voice joined in with a lilting Scandinavian accent. “Longer because you chimed in, lad. Should’ve left it to the abbot.”

His smile bunched his apple cheeks. “And who’ll be the first person you turn to when there’s a problem, eh?” he countered, winking at Merielle.

“The smith, that’s who,” another voice called to a chorus of laughter. “Come on, let’s get out of here. Is the lady ready? How many are ye, mistress? Just you and the two gentlewomen, is it? Good God!”

Another roar of laughter went up as the three women were joined by Daniel and Pedro leading two horses each and pouring out through the archway like water from a burst pipe. Shouts of raillery rose above the din. “Thought you’d got her to yourself did you, chaplain? Out of your depth already, lad.”

Still smiling, the chaplain hauled upon his reins, confusing his mount and backing it rapidly into the others until, by a deluge of slaps on its haunches, it headed in the right direction accompanied by the wail of bagpipes, drums, and the barely heard sound of the St Martin bells.

All along the Saturday streets of early-morning Canterbury, the jests continued, threading their way through the din that cleared a path past heavily laden traders coming into town. It was market day. The Westgate had just opened to the predictable bottleneck of travellers coming in both directions, testing everyone’s patience in the jostling to present passes, tokens and excuses.

Merielle’s company of nine horses came in for some serious teasing from the men who vied with each other to make the most ridiculous suggestions about what she could possibly be carrying. Running off to meet a lover, was she? No, the lovers would be in the panniers. Merielle smiled and said nothing, not even to Allene’s tolerant grumbles, but their wait at the Westgate gave her a chance to study the nearest fellow-travellers and to realise that the two elderly nuns and the young lady did not join in the laughter nor did they communicate with anyone, not even with each other.

The Scandinavian accents belonged to a bluff Icelandic merchant and his brawny son, both of them smothered in boisterous haloes of pale blonde hair through which they kept up an irreverent comradeship with the young chaplain. Their pack-ponies were laden, they said, with furs and amber, but a third pony carried a stack of wicker baskets with square openings through which appeared beaks and furious eyes, striped backs and mottled breasts. Falcons, ready to be tamed; rare and already priceless.

Except for her own party and the silent trio, the rest of the travellers appeared to be men, for the most part respectably dressed, and mounted on strong beasts for which five days travel was nothing remarkable. And though she knew that the one for whom her eyes searched would not be present, the urge to comb the crowd for a certain breadth of shoulder, a certain height and arrogant stare could not be restrained. The most strident of her inner voices protested relief that he was not to be seen, joy at her artifice, pride at her cunning, but a quietly nagging voice sang to a different tune in a minor key.

“A good crowd,” she said to her nurse. “We made the right choice.”

She recognised the goldsmith and his assistant in the company of two young scholars who would be returning to Winchester after the feast days. Oblivious to the rest of the crowd, their conversation was conducted in a mixture of English and French, and Merielle felt herself fortunate to receive a quick smile and no more. There was a courier, eager to pass with his large leather saddle-bags and air of urgency; he would not be with them for long. There was an unmistakable scattering of palmers, professional pilgrims swathed in coarse wool and lidded with wide-brimmed hats, the front brims of which were turned up to display their collection of pilgrims’ badges like a jigsaw of armour-plating. Around and across their bodies was a medley of clanking tools, pouches, flasks and plates, ropes, sticks and spare shoes, ready for the moment their emaciated mounts dropped dead beneath them. Their talk, tooth-gapped and incessant, admitted only those who could boast of their hardships, adventures and achievements.

They were not the only pilgrims; three noisy young Italians moved closer to Merielle’s party before she could see them coming, foisting upon her their own brand of English which completely disregarded the usual sentence structure. Finding their questions too fractured to understand and suspecting that they were too personal to be answered anyway, she looked behind to see whether a slight tactical manoeuvre was possible. But a party of part-armoured soldiers had moved in close behind them and, beyond the sumpter-horses led by Daniel, their laughing faces implied that the Italians’ antics were not new to them.

The way south-west from Canterbury followed the gentle meander of the Great Stour, though soon the leaders of the cavalcade led them on to the higher ground to the north from where they could appreciate the wetlands and the distant herons reflected in the quiet sunlit waters. Despite all her expectations, the track appeared to be every bit as busy on this day as on any other, and the thought crossed her mind more than once over the next few miles that, if she had waited for Sir Rhyan’s escort, she would not now be wondering if she would get a bed to herself for the next two nights. Switching her mind to contemplate the scenery should have helped to postpone the problem, but the panorama filled as they merged first with the tail-end of one group and then another who had set out from the suburbs earlier than they. The groups were engulfed, sometimes overtaken completely like the entire household of one man’s family, chickens, pigs and all, but Merielle’s party swelled with each mile. With her nine horses, it was impossible for her to race ahead, and by the time they reached the gateway to the Norman castle at Chilham, the village square was teeming with people, many already breaking their fast, and Merielle’s hopes of being able to find, or even to reach, the privy at the back of the inn were dashed. The next best thing was a hedge with the outspread skirts of Allene and Bess to screen her.

About the same business was an exceedingly pretty woman whose blonde tresses were bundled untidily at the back of her neck into a black net, with wisps pouring out on all sides like silk in a high wind. She stood and adjusted her travel-stained gown of worn velvet, pulled her mantle across the front of an extremely revealing bodice, smiled and walked away.

Keeping the young chaplain and the two Icelanders in her sights and rescuing Bess from the unwanted attentions of the three Italians, Merielle took her brief meal standing, ready to mount when the leaders did. She found that the blonde young woman had moved nearer, and smiled encouragingly; there were few enough women of her own age with whom she might keep company.

The woman nodded in the direction of two others. Her brother and sister, she told Merielle. “We started off yesterday,” she said, “but both our mounts cast shoes and the smith here at Chilham was at his mother’s funeral and we couldn’t hire a horse for love nor money. Never seen the way so crowded in all my life. My sister’s blind, you see, but even so we had to sleep in a room full of men. Nowhere else.” She hunched her shoulders. “We’d lost so much time having to walk it.”

Merielle liked the sound of her and the look of the other two. Introduced as Emma, her brother as Adrian and the gentle blind sister as Agnes, the three appeared to offer the kind of company Merielle had been hoping for at the outset, good-natured, well-spoken and mannerly. The young man’s presence would no doubt deter the Italian infliction, too.

“Pestered you, did they?” Agnes said. “I heard their shouting.”

Merielle heaved a sigh, but forced a grin to back it up. “It’s young Bess I’m more concerned for. They’ve practically seduced her already.”

Her new friends snuffled in amusement. “Well, then, why don’t you allow her to ride behind me?” Adrian suggested. “I’ll keep ’em at bay, I promise you. Agnes usually rides pillion with me, but she can go behind you, perhaps? Your chestnut looks as though he could carry a family.”

“Oh, easily,” Merielle said. “That would solve the problem, thank you. And perhaps if we can move up to the front, we may do better for beds tonight. Shall we try?”

“Where are your party heading for?”

“Probably Wye next. Sometimes they give it a miss, I don’t know. Then to Charing, I suppose, and perhaps Harrietsham by suppertime. Look, the chaplain’s mounting. Shall we try and keep up with him?”

The sightless Agnes was lifted up on to a pad behind Merielle’s saddle, the two arms passing around her waist imparting a comfort uncommonly sweet after the last few troublesome miles. Adrian, the eldest of the trio, took Bess up behind him and the journey from Chilham was lightened accordingly as Merielle described to Agnes everything they encountered along the river valley, through the great King’s Wood and along the side of the hill with the river flowing away from them like a ribbon of silver.

They did not, after all, aim for Wye but skirted the hillside to Charing where Merielle would happily have called it a day, but dared not suggest it. Dinner was brief and taken standing by the track, looking, roaming and laughing at Adrian’s witty observations of their fellow-travellers whose trail stretched almost out of sight. His sisters obviously adored him and even Allene, usually the last person to be won over, agreed with Merielle that they had been fortunate to find such pleasant companions. Inevitably, Merielle was compelled to fend off gently probing questions about the reason for her journey, resorting to more general conversation at the first opportunity.

But even while she avoided mentioning the escorts she might have had, her mind returned to the implications of her sudden decision, not only the journey itself but the certain explanations she would have to concoct at Winchester. And no sooner had she convinced herself that four days on the road should be enough time to make up a story suitable to smooth Sir Adam’s feathers, if not his nephew’s, than her more immediate plans for a comfortable night’s rest suffered a set-back, for the approach to Harrietsham was obstructed by the slow progress of a nobleman’s household. Three four-wheeled leather-covered waggons pulled by six oxen apiece, dozens of sumpter-horses, mules, men-at-arms, retainers and domestic officers, servants and pages, squires and grooms. The small village was jammed solid, all hopes of accommodation dwindling with the light. There was nothing for it but to wait or go on to the next place, wherever that might be.

Merielle turned to consult Agnes but encountered the top of her head as she slipped nimbly to the ground. “Where are you off to?” she called to her departing friend.

Agnes made no reply, but crossed with surprising confidence to her brother’s horse where, astonishingly, she yanked the unsuspecting Bess to the ground by one arm, caught her brother’s outstretched hand and vaulted on to the pad behind him, her foot on his. Emma, still mounted, moved quickly after them.

“Hey!” Merielle called after them. “What’s to do?”

Emma called to her, still smiling, “We’ll find rooms and come back for you. Wait there.” Both horses broke ranks, swerved, and leapt away.

Immediately, there was a similar flurry of activity as liveried men sped past, hooves thundering on the grassy verge, and Merielle realised that the rush to get to the guesthouse and the inns, roomy cottage or stable, was now a matter of who could move fastest, and even that held no guarantee of success.

Allene brushed down the bewildered maid. “What are we going to do?” she said. “Nay, you’re not hurt, lass. Stop yer snivelling and find yer hoss. Should’ve stayed there in the first place.” She gave Bess a gentle shove and then, with little sympathy, answered her own question. “Wait a while, that’s what. Something’ll turn up. Always does.”

That was not the music to her mistress’s ears it was intended to be. Merielle was furious and in no mind to wait either for the return of the mysterious family or for Allene’s predicted miracle. “You wait, Allene,” she snapped, pulling her mount away. “If they think I’ve come all this way to sit and watch it get dark, they can think again. I’m going to see what’s going on down there.” She kicked at the cob’s flanks, but her way was blocked by the group of soldiers who had ridden behind them all afternoon and whose offers of assistance were now of an unmistakably personal nature. It was impossible for her to proceed.

Desperately, she turned again to seek a way through to the other side, berating herself and the circumstances which had brought them to this. Perhaps she should have allowed Bonard to accompany them, after all. Wheeling round, she searched the faces in the crowd, aware of the soldiers’ appraisal, their knowing grins, their intentions, sizing up the two lads and the women. Then, as if a command had been given, they scattered and opened up a way for her, dissolving into the crowd completely.

The silhouette of a rider appeared, almost black against the western sky and massively tall on a stallion that made her cob look like a pony by comparison, and it was instantly clear to Merielle that it was his presence that had dispersed the former menace. The breadth of shoulder, the height, the arrogant stare were all in place, but relief at his unexpected presence was quickly swamped by another surge of anger at being seen to be helpless, which she was not, and by being anticipated, which was humiliating.

With as much dignity as she could summon, she kept to her former plan to investigate the sudden departure of her companions, kicking the cob forward again and passing Sir Rhyan without a glance.

Casually, he leaned from his saddle and caught the cob’s bridle, pulling it round away from the crowd and so far on to the verge that they had to duck to avoid the low branches of a showy sweet-chestnut tree. “No, you don’t,” he said, “unless you want our conversation to be heard by half the crowd.” He kept hold, coming round to face her, knee to knee.

“Let go of my horse, sir. I have nothing to say to you.”

“Then that will make life easier for us both.” Facing the last rays of the setting sun, Merielle could see that he was wearing a sleeveless leather gupon over a tunic of dark green with tiny gold buttons from wrist to elbow. His green cloak thrown over one shoulder showed a lining of green plaid mixed with red and black, and his white chainse was open at the neck. There was no trace of tiredness about him; he sat his horse like one who had only just started out, radiating fitness and strength.

With little success, Merielle tried to pull away. “On the contrary, it will make nothing easier. You were not supposed to be travelling today and I have every intention of avoiding your company, as I set out to do.”

“Which I knew you would do. Why do you think I told you Monday? You were glad of my intervention just now, though. Or did you want to take on six soldiers and three Italians? Eh?”

“I have managed perfectly so far, Sir Rhyan, I thank you. Let me go. I must find my friends. They’ve gone—”

“Oh, yes, they’ve gone all right. The whore, her pimp and the cut-purse. What with those three and a crowd of eager bedfellows I’d say you’ve managed particularly well. A good day’s work.”

“Whore? Cut-purse? What on earth are you talking about?” Merielle’s senses, already alert, lurched sickeningly. She knew what he was talking about.

His words emerged low-pitched but harsh. “The blonde woman who calls herself Emma, that’s who. She’s one of the Winchester geese, woman. And the lad who reckons to be her brother is the other lass’s husband.”

“The blind girl? Agnes?” Suddenly her voice was breathless.

“Blind my foot!” he said, sarcastically. “She’s no more blind than I am, but it helps her to say so, as a thief.”

“You’re wrong. They’re perfectly respectable people.” Her defence of them lacked conviction, nor did it help her own credulity.

He leaned towards her. “The whore was at the inn where your Master Gervase spent an hour before he came to see you yesterday. I know because my men saw them there together. Affectionately. They’re from Southwark, the district owned by the Bishop of Winchester. Hence the name.”

“I know that!” She looked away. Everyone knew that.

“Then you will also know, mistress, that your purse is missing.”

“What?”

Again, he leaned and took hold of the leather strap that hung loosely from her shoulder, half-concealed beneath her cloak, pulling it until the complete length emerged, its ends neatly cut. It dangled from his hand like an eel.

“My purse! She’s taken my purse! A thief! I had her up behind me all that way. They shared our food.”

“So now you know what that motley crowd had in mind, seeing you in their company.” His eyes referred to the men he had sent packing. “But your purse I have here.” He delved a hand inside his leather jerkin and brought it out, its gold clasp still intact, its contents still safe. To her astonished silence, he explained, “I waited for them to take their leave and then sent my men after them. It was they who retrieved it.”

“Your men. Thank you. You are not alone?” She took the purse, half-dazed by events and fighting to hold back the wave of exhaustion that threatened to engulf her.

“No, I have my men with me, and some others who travel with me to Winchester. It was Sir Adam’s wish that you should accept our escort and allow me to find your accommodation. You and the rest of your party.”

She shook her head, her dislike of him surfacing even through her shattering tiredness. “I thank you, sir, but that’s quite out of the question. If you are to be of the same party I cannot stop you, but I cannot travel with you. My mind is made up. You are with friends…”

“They are Sir Adam’s friends and colleagues. I told you, I was about his business in Canterbury as well as my own. And I was not asking you, mistress, I was telling you. You will come with me and stay in comfort until Monday morning. Two more miles, that’s all we have to travel, then food, a warm clean bed and a long sleep. You’ll not get that here.”

Unable to continue her argument with the fierceness it deserved, Merielle turned to look for Allene, Bess and the boys, deliberating as much for their sakes as for her own. Bess’s safety over the next two nights would be a nightmare. They were not where she had left them but farther down the track, waiting within a large group of liveried men and others. Sir Rhyan’s men. Once more, he had taken charge as if her permission was irrelevant.

“This is intolerable!” She whirled round, reaching out for his wrist to wrench it away from her bridle. “I will not…”

But her arm was caught and held away in the same iron grip that had left its imprint on her wrist last evening. “You have a responsibility to your servants, do you not?” he said, showing his anger at last.

“Let me go, damn you!”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Then how can you not allow them safety when it’s offered? Are you so choked with resentment that you cannot accept anything from anybody?”

Her fury boiled over, incensed by every word of his well-aimed barb, his presence here, his restraining hand on her arm. He would never know in the slightest degree the cause of her animosity. “The only thing you ever offered me, Sir Rhyan, did me more harm than you could ever imagine. You must forgive me if I am less than enthusiastic about accepting anything else until that wound has healed.” She made one last effort to rid herself of his hand, expecting hers to be the last words. But now heads had turned to watch the undignified tussle.

“Then choose, mistress,” he snarled, releasing her arm but hauling the cob’s head closer. “Either you accompany me in a seemly manner or I leave you here alone with this crowd.” He indicated with his head the sea of faces. “I have your party, you see. They’ll come with me, willing or not.”

Allene and Bess, Daniel and Pedro were now out of sight, enclosed by his men, quite unaware of their impending separation. She could not afford to lose them and all her baggage any more than she could risk being left to the predictable attentions of so many strangers.

“Damn you!” she whispered. “You would not do so.”

“Try me.”

“Then I have little choice, have I? Damn you to hell!”

Chapter Four

The lessons of life had shouldered their way into Merielle’s twenty-one years with more urgency than was usual in one so young, but she had had to learn them fast. One of them was that, although it was acceptable to show anger, being a useful manly emotion, tears, tiredness and temperament were womanly and weak and not for the manager of a business. The rules were hard to stick to for one whose emotions lay naturally so close to the surface, and twenty yards was barely enough distance for her to squeeze back the threatening tears of anger that welled up behind her eyes.

As if he understood, Sir Rhyan proceeded slowly along the verge and then, hidden by a rider who crossed their path, handed back her reins. “Ready?” he said.

She took a deep breath, straightened and nodded, refusing to look at him. The extent of Sir Rhyan’s party was far greater than she had imagined from his casual reference to men-at-arms and guests, making anything more than cursory introductions out of the question in that quickly fading light. For which Merielle was much relieved; anything more demanding would have exposed her as inarticulate as well as stunningly beautiful, not a mixture to do her justice. She caught the names of Wykeham and Yeaveley and nodded briefly to each man without the customary smile, and if it seemed strange to them that Mistress St Martin and Sir Rhyan had only just thought to acknowledge each other after a whole day in the same party, they showed no surprise, nor did they comment.

Two miles farther on, he had said, though no more than that, and Merielle would have entered the gates of Hades rather than ask him where they were bound. She would have whispered to Allene—who was looking particularly smug—but for the fact that her own leather purse-strap was now threaded through the cob’s bridle, its ends in Sir Rhyan’s great fist. Another humiliation. No chance to lag behind.

The dwindling light and her self-absorption joined forces in concealing from her any indication of where she was going or how she reached her destination that evening. Slipping through her bleary senses were acres of wood and parkland, a rising moon, a certain peace after the clamour of the Canterbury crowd, the satin stillness of a lake, drawbridges, greetings and lanterns, welcoming hands and yapping hounds, the smell of roasting meat. Before she could throw off the light rug that covered her legs or protest that she could manage, she was lifted down as orders were given to her grooms.

“They’ll be well tended, mistress. Good stables. Warm lodgings and food. We’ll have your panniers sent in as soon as they’re off. This is Sir Walter Nessey, the castellan. He and his lady will attend to your needs; you have only to ask.”

The castellan bowed, his elegant figure etched sharply in the light of torches that billowed smoke into the blackening sky. “You are most welcome, lady. Your rooms are prepared.” His manner was efficient.

Through arches and over drawbridges they had clattered, across a large compound within walls with water beyond them, another cluster of buildings ahead. Rooms prepared? To have asked where they were at this point would have sounded ludicrous.

The great stone porch led them into a hall of massive dimensions where trestles had been arranged for supper, those on the dais at the far end covered with blazing white cloths on which silver salt cellars and glass goblets twinkled in the light from wall sconces and from the raftered ceiling. Around the dais, fabric lined the walls with muted colours which Merielle knew would come to life in the daylight. Clearly this was no ordinary guesthouse. A castellan? It was a castle, then?

She came to a halt so suddenly that Allene nearly knocked her over. “Sir Rhyan! I need to speak to you,” she hissed as he whirled around to face her. “Now, if you please. Over here.”

He followed her to one side of the mystified group, excusing himself to Sir Walter. “Look,” he said, “I know what you’re thinking.”

She flared, instantly set alight by his placating manner. “You do not know what I’m thinking, Sir Rhyan, nor will you ever know. This place is a castle, is it not? The king’s. How dare you bring me here? Are you entirely devoid of diplomacy, for pity’s sake?”

He shook his head, lifting darkly angled brows. “The king’s not here, mistress. I would not have brought you here if he was. You think he would see some form of reconciliation in our being here together, I know, but this is purely a gathering of his craftsmen to see what can be done to renovate the place, that’s all. If Sir Adam had been here in my stead, he would have called here, too, on the way to Winchester.”

“Where are we?”

“Leeds,” he said. “Leeds Castle. We’re still in Kent.”

“Queen Isabella’s place?”

“It was. She died last August, remember. It’s now the king’s. He’s sent his men to meet here, and I brought two of them from Canterbury.”

“Those two?”

“Yes. William Wykeham and Henry Yeaveley, John Kenton, too. I’m not involved, mistress, I assure you. I escort them to Sir Adam, that’s all, once they’re finished here. You’ll not be disturbed in any way.”

“You’re sure about the king?”

“I swear it. He’s at Windsor, I believe. Trust me.”

The sincerity of his plea found no foothold. “I do, sir. I trust you to find a way of humiliating me at every opportunity.” It was on the tip of her tongue to suggest that she might be accommodated in the queen’s own room to complete the affront, but that would have gone over his head, so she held it back.

As it transpired, her cynicism was prophetic, for the room to which the castellan led her beyond a narrow, hollow-sounding passageway had been used by the late Queen Isabella until last year. He apologised for its old-fashioned shabbiness, believing her words to Sir Rhyan in the great hall to have been a complaint, if her demeanour was anything to go by. It was, he told her, awaiting renovation like the rest of the gloriette.

“Gloriette?” Merielle said, liking the sound of the word.

He knuckled his nose with his fist as if being caught out by the word’s newness. “The keep, mistress. This is the keep, but the Spanish Queen Eleanor used her own term for it. Sounds prettier, and it’s rarely used for defence nowadays. The old queen loved it. Look here.”

He walked over to the deep window recess lined by stone seats cut into the thickness of the wall, and opened the heavy iron-studded wooden shutters. He stood to one side, looking out.

A cool spring breeze came across an expanse of water that stretched further than Merielle could see, even in the moonlight, filling her nostrils with the indistinct scent of bluebells. Beneath the window, the wall of the keep dropped sheer into the water.

“That’s why she loved it,” Sir Walter said. “Water all round and glorious parkland beyond. Good hunting out there.”

“Water all round the keep?”

“All round the castle, mistress. We’re surrounded by it. Like being on a ship without the rocking; you’ll be able to see it properly tomorrow.” He laughed, closing the shutters.

The bustle from the doorway made any response unnecessary; here were her two panniers dragged in by two red-faced lads muttering suggestions as to their contents. Sir Rhyan and the castellan’s wife waited to enter, watching like eagles and communicating to Merielle an impression that her presence here was an event of some importance to them, which she immediately brushed aside as being absurd.

Lady Alicia was as apologetic as her husband about the threadbare elegance, looking around her at the plain wall-hangings whose folds had faded to a paler rose. “It’ll all have to be redone,” she said. “And a new set for this.” She nodded at the great bed.

Merielle glanced only briefly at the structure that dominated the room, too tired to donate much interest or to catch the quick frown that passed from the castellan to his wife.

Redirecting her concern, Lady Alicia pointed out the fire crackling in a stone fireplace set into the outer wall, its white plaster hood rising like a conical hat up to the ceiling. “To take the chill off,” she said. “Water and towels—” she indicated a silver ewer and basins, a pile of linen folded on the pine chest “—and I’ll have food sent up to you straight away. Or would you rather eat in the hall?”

“No, I thank you, my lady,” said Merielle. “It’s been a long day. Please excuse us, if you will. I shall be asleep within the hour.”

The castellan’s wife was round and as plump as a wren, the top of her white starched wimple reaching only to her husband’s chest, her smile squeaking the linen against her cheeks. A woman in her position, Merielle thought, who could dress in the fashions of thirty years ago would have little idea how to begin refurbishing a room fit for the king’s Flemish wife, Phillipa. Even through her exhaustion, she could see that much.

Sir Rhyan began a move to leave Merielle alone. “So,” he said, “if there is anything else you need, you have only to—”

“Ahem!” Sir William nudged his wife.

“Oh, lord, yes.” Lady Alicia opened a small door on one wall and shot through like a rabbit with a flash of white. “Here,” she called. The room was smaller but every bit as comfortable, with two low beds along the walls and a log fire in the corner that filled the air with the scent of burning applewood. “The old queen used to bathe in here, but I thought you’d like your ladies close by.”

“You are most kind,” Merielle told her. “We shall only be here a day—”

“Yes, right then.” Sir William sprang into action, herding his wife out and leaving Merielle to the accompaniment of profuse goodnights.

But Sir Rhyan hovered, holding the door ajar. “Better than a hayloft at Harrietsham?” he asked with one eyebrow ascending.

“Better?” Merielle said with contempt. “In what way better? It’s the company I’ve found myself in that concerns me most. What did you have in mind as better, pray?”

He smiled as he made to leave, poking his head round the door to say, “The security, mistress, what else?”

Lacking the energy to sustain her misgivings, Merielle, Allene and Bess were bound to admit that this was indeed better in every way than having to suffer the discomforts that Harrietsham had offered, particularly over the Sabbath on which no one would travel except those in dire need.

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