Chapter Sixteen
“Come with me, Aliénor.”
Aliénor felt so numb she didn’t notice Jehan’s grip on her arm until she was halfway down the stairs. The fabric of her slippers caught on the rough surface of the stones, making her stumble. Only when they emerged into the courtyard, when the weight of a hundred stares struck her, did she manage to summon a measure of dignity to shake free of Jehan’s grip. She continued to follow him, this time under her own power.
They entered the donjon, passed through the great hall, and climbed the stairs all the way up to his tower room. There, Jehan shut the door behind them.
She blurted, “He doesn’t know what he’s doing, Jehan.”
He yanked his surcoat over his head. “His message was clear enough.” He balled the cloth and tossed it with force into a corner.
“He’s still a child—”
“A boy who gathers men-at-arms to fight under his banner is no longer a child.”
A scuff of a foot startled her and she realized they were not alone. His squire, Esquival, approached with a padded doublet in his hands. Jehan shoved his arms through the armholes of the garment.
Jehan was putting on armor.
“This is nonsense,” she whispered, as her heart skittered like a frightened mouse. “There are hardly enough men to threaten the castle—”
“And yet,” he interrupted, while his squire laced the garment, “too many to ignore.”
“You could capture them, subdue them.”
“Not without killing one or more. Think, Aliénor. How did your brother recruit those men?”
She shook her head, pressing fingers against an ache in her temple. She couldn’t fathom what had happened over the long, cold winter that would change Laury so much that he would emerge three months later to challenge a seasoned knight.
“Did he promise them gold, riches?” Jehan persisted.
“No.” She swallowed. “He wouldn’t pillage his own home.”
“Does he think he can control them if they were to breach these walls?”
“He would never put me in harm’s way, or any of his people.”
“How else do you lure sell-swords and mercenaries?” He tied off the ends of the laces as his squire fetched his chain-mail shirt. “What else do you offer them but plunder?”
She suddenly realized Jehan wasn’t asking questions in expectation of answers.
“Those men who follow your brother,” he continued, “were probably starving on the hills when he met them. Wondering where their next meal was coming from, or when the next war would start up so they might sleep under canvas again.”
She went very still, for he rarely spoke of such things. Once, in the middle of a cold night, she’d woken up to see him staring blindly at the wooden beams of this tower-roof. Sometimes, he’d said, I still think I’m sleeping on the hard ground with a hungry belly and the cold freezing my blood.
“But if I were a sell-sword who’d come upon your brother,” he murmured, “I could be talked into fighting for him.”
She blinked, nonplussed. “Why?”
“To regain pride,” he said. “For a chance to fight for a rightful cause.”
She pressed a finger to her temple harder as Esquival carried the heavy chain-mail tunic to his master.
“Those men see in your brother a position in his household,” Jehan continued, raising his arms. “It’s a chance for security as well as a rightful cause.”
“You’re making this sound like a crusade.”
“Exactly.”
“Except he doesn’t want the castle, the lands, the title—”
“He’s not doing it for that.” Jehan fixed his blue, blue eyes upon her. “He’s doing this for you, Aliénor.”
The only sound in the room was the ringing of chain-mail links as he ducked his head into the neck-hole and the garment unfurled to the top of his thighs. She took a step back, and then another, until the edge of the new bed, large enough and comfortable enough for the two of them, struck the back of her knees.
Denial was a lie she could not push through the tightening of her throat. She sat on the bed and pressed her palms against the hay-stuffed mattress. She and Jehan had spent the cold morning here, making their own warmth under its linens. But for Laurent’s disappearance, she had been happier in the past months than she had ever been. This was the liberty she’d always craved, a home and hearth of her own, and a good man to share it with.
Love was something she’d never dared hoped for, a blessing beyond all her wishes.
Now she gathered the links of her belt in her hand and squeezed until they bit into her palm. “If my brother has come to save me from dishonor,” she said, “then his cause is more misguided than I imagined.”
“Not so misguided.” He twisted to tie his chain mail-hose as his squire buckled his chausses on his feet. “If I were your brother, I would have done the same.”
She heard the frustration in his words, as well as something else—gruff, unreadable, unnerving.
“I told him,” she said, “this was my choice.”
“I heard every word, couret.”
His cheek flexed in the way it did when a matter vexed him to distraction. She’d lain in bed many a night watching that face, knowing when something bothered him, whether it was due to an issue as small as a theft of a lamb or as complicated as brokering a peace between two villagers arguing over the positioning of a border stone. If the matter threatened to steel sleep from him, she would press her lips against his brow, take his head in her hands, and lead him to pleasure and bliss.
She pushed up from the bed. “Enough, Esquival,” she said, as the squire slipped the surcoat over Jehan’s head. “I shall finish the task.”
Jehan nodded at his squire as he wrestled his arms through the sleeves. Esquival bowed and slipped out the door.
Her fingers trembled as she approached. She searched for the loose laces on the side of his surcoat, conscious of the intensity of his gaze. She pulled upon the laces as if she were pulling her wits together. She would need every wit she had to prevent this madness.
“Perhaps I have been blind.” Her voice came out in a whisper though no one else was in the room. “Laury is my youngest sibling, and I have spent a lifetime protecting him. I have only ever seen him as a boy.”
She felt his perusal like a warmth upon her head.
“Clearly,” she added, fumbling to tie the last lace, “you understand my brother better than me. Perhaps, then, you can find a way to convince him to give up.”
“Couret, he’s as stubborn as you.”
“But not as clever as you. After all, you managed, with the prince’s help, to seize a castle that’s never before been taken.”
“If your father hadn’t abandoned it, the outcome may have been different.”
“Still,” she said, wandering to his other side, to the other laces, “your influence with the prince assured that this castle, and the village, weren’t burnt to the ground.”
He gave her a curious frown, as if he hadn’t expected her to guess he was the cause. Yet everyone in the castle had heard the reports that the prince had burned a swath from Seissan to Narbonne, skipping right over them.
“And since then,” she continued, “you’ve managed to stay in this castle three full months longer than the Prince of Wales wanted.”
She did not have to look up to know his gaze had intensified.
“I’m your chatelaine,” she explained. “Do you think a single message arrives at this castle without me knowing of it?”
“I took it from the messenger’s own hand, and then sent him on his way.”
“A large, mud-splattered horse at the gate? Bearing a dagged-edged blanket beneath its saddle, and a fine leather pouch at its side? I see everything, Jehan, and what I miss, the kitchen servants report.”
“Is a man not master of his own castle?”
“It’s my task to make you believe so.”
A grin flittered across his face. She let her fingers linger on the trailing leather tie, hoping he would put his arms around her, kiss her, reassure her, but his smile faded as quickly as it had come.
“My point,” she said, feeling the absence of his touch like an ache, “is you are older, better trained, and more experienced than my brother. Certainly you can trick a fifteen-year-old boy into surrendering without a battle?”
He pulled a fraction away. “You’d rather I trick your brother than have him fight like a knight?”
“He belongs in a monastery.” She brushed a fleck of hay off his surcoat, feeling the weave of the wool and the ripple of chain mail beneath. “Don’t make him pay dearly for a misguided cause.”
He ran a bare finger down her cheek. When it reached her chin he tilted her face up to meet his.
“I wonder, Aliénor, who you care for more: Me or your brother.”
“How can you ask such a thing?” Her heart turned over. “I love you both.”
“He would make me his executioner.”
“You won’t kill him—”
“He would rip me out of your heart.”
“That’s not possible,” she said huskily, “if you refuse to fight him.”
She tried to read the changing expressions on his shuttered face, desperate to see some sign of agreement. He couldn’t be thinking of fighting Laurent, her skinny brother who’d rather spend days with his nose in scripture. She pressed out of her mind a memory of Laurent laughing in the great hall with a wooden sword in his hand and blood on his teeth.
Jehan dropped his hand from her face and stepped away in silence. The fabric of his surcoat fell out of her hands. She watched it go, the green and blue embroidery shimmering in the dim light.
Her brother and her lover would be wearing the same colors.
“You won’t fight him,” she blurted, clinging to hope.
She heard a clatter as Jehan took his sword belt in hand.