Chapter Eighteen
Thibaud held her so tightly he must have expected her to hurl herself bodily over the ramparts. The truth was she was incapable of movement. She’d gone numb right to the marrow of her bones, helpless to do anything but watch the tableau of the mud-trampled field below, where her brother held up a sword against her lover.
A silence fell over the gathered crowd, so heavy it suppressed the creaking of leather, the ring of mail, and the suck of horses’ hooves in the mud. Blood pounded in her ears and filled her head with pressure. This could be a mummer’s play, for all that she recognized the two men. Standing there with his arms flung wide, Jehan was the prince’s man, the bachelor warrior who’d risen to power by the strength of his sword arm, not the man who held her in his arms every night. And Laurent, her little brother, now bore no resemblance to the boy who used to curl up in a kitchen cupboard. The man in his place was a wiry, sly fighter whose feints and swift retaliations had already drawn blood from a larger, more experienced foe.
Don’t kill him.
Her brother stood like a stone, his sword raised.
I love him.
Jehan shifted his gaze to the ramparts and that’s how she knew she’d spoken aloud. A strange, regretful smile crossed his face. In his smile she remembered a thousand kisses, sweet words, warm caresses, the deep peace and satisfaction she felt in the circle of his embrace, the promise of their new life.
But as his smile faded, so did the certainty that the joy they might have had, all the life they might have shared, the family they could have made, now drained away like water sluicing out of a tipped water jug.
A curse cut through the silence, shattering the moment. The harsh words she heard fell from her brother’s mouth.
With an angry flip, Laurent tossed his sword away.
Then he fell to one knee in the mud.
***
“Release me, Thibaud.”
Her voice was calm as she watched Jehan lead her brother, whose hands were bound before him, into the castle.
Thibaud’s grip on her only tightened. “Not now, woman.”
“The fight is over.”
“Swords are sheathed, but the battle is not settled.”
“I will have a say in how it’s done.”
“This is not woman’s work.”
“I am the woman they fought over,” she retorted, as a painful tingling began in her fingers. “Who else is to settle this but me?”
Thibaud’s sigh held all the weariness of the world, and when he finally reached the end of it, he let her loose.
Rubbing her upper arms, she strode across the ramparts and stepped into the darkness of the stairs until she reached the bottom. The courtyard already milled with horses, men-at-arms, pike men, and knights. She wove through the crowd until she spotted Jehan dismounting from his horse. Her stomach dropped at the sight of the blood staining his hose and the surcoat below his arm.
She must have made some noise, for he turned and looked directly at her.
She knew every fleck of silver in the depths of those blue eyes. She knew every nick of scar on his skin. She knew the pattern in which black and rust-brown stubble grew upon his jaw, and how his cheeks rounded when he smiled.
But she hardly recognized this man staring at her. The grim, shuttered face he turned upon her may as well have been a stranger.
“That needs tending,” she said, gesturing to his leg. “Come inside, I’ll see to it—”
“See to your brother first.”
The order was like a slap of cold wind. “Your wounds are deeper.”
“They look worse than they are. Another woman can tend them.”
An argument rose to her lips and would have spilled out if it weren’t for the attention they were receiving from the servants and men-at-arms. This conversation, she thought, would be best had in private.
She said, “Where have you put my brother?”
“In the lower room of the tower.”
She flinched, for that was the same dank, dark, unhealthy place her father had imprisoned Jehan. The expression on her face must have shown her feelings for he turned on a metal heel and strode toward the castle.
She clutched her elbows in frustration. Later, she told herself. She could only deal with one irascible, stubborn, foolish man at a time.
She headed toward the kitchens to fetch linens and fresh water. A cluster of servants muttered in low tones by the door. They raised their heads as she approached, and she was reminded of a herd of deer going still at the crack of a twig in the woods. Except it wasn’t fear or wariness she saw in their eyes, but disapproval and a measure of blame.
“Fetch clean linens, wine, and water.” She spoke with all the calm authority she could muster. “And the tallow salve, as well.”
They scattered to do her bidding. She remained outside, feeling the heavy pulse of unwelcome. Did she deserve blame? Was this the price to pay for the choices she had made? Would everyone think that, having consorted with Sir Jehan, she’d usurped what rightfully belonged to her own brother? And if her brother truly had renounced the monastery, wasn’t that what she’d done, indeed?
A shivering came over her, a kind of unhinging, and to staunch it she focused on practical things. She patted her kirtle pocket and felt the thread and needle she always kept with her. She considered what else she might need to care for Laurent’s physical wounds. Soon the cook appeared before her, thin-lipped, thrusting a bowl with linens and unguent in her hands. Hugo loomed out of the darkness behind the servant, carrying water and wine.
On heavy feet she led Hugo across the milling courtyard toward the door leading to Laurent’s cell, retracing the same steps she’d once taken, in the dark of night, to tend to Jehan when he had been a prisoner. She felt the stares upon her like a hundred tiny arrow-darts. In all the months she’d lived with Jehan like a wife yet not a wife, she’d never felt even a small portion of such scrutiny as she was receiving now. She could hardly breathe for all the attention until she and Hugo passed through the tower door into the cold, damp, and darkness lit at intervals by wall-torches.
When she descended the last turn of the stairs, the guard straightened from his lean against the door. The flickering light cast shadows across his frowning face. “Sir Rudel,” she said, raising the bowl with its linens. “I’m to tend my brother.”
He dodged her gaze as he opened the door. By the look of things, someone had already prepared, for Laurent’s cell was bright with tallow candles and sconce light, which spilled into the passageway. She dipped her head to pass inside. Her brother, wrapped in a blanket, sat upon a stool next to a table with a goblet of wine.
Laurent raised his bloodied face, heaved himself to his feet, and gave her a sad, rueful smile.
“Hello, sor.”
She meant to scold him. She intended to rain her frustration upon his mussed, dark head, call him a reckless fool. But at the sight of him, at the sound of his oh-so-familiar voice, all her intentions crumbled to dust.
She flew across the distance, clattered the bowl upon the table, and threw her arms around him. The scent of blood and pine needles and wood-smoke rose from his clothes. He pressed his head upon her shoulder, just as he used to do as a boy, and it all flashed before her, all those years growing up, stashing him behind barrels to hide him from her father, playing together in the high tower, running across fields chasing rabbits, climbing the hills barefoot in the summertime, crying together on the same pallet after they buried their brothers.
She pulled away to look into his face and her heart turned over, for though he’d grown leaner and scruffier, he looked upon her with the same grave, solemn expression she’d always known.
“This is madness,” she blurted on a hitch of breath. “You coming here, with an army.”
“Courage requires a bit of madness.”
“Did some sell-sword tell you that? How thoughtless, Laury, reckless and foolish—”
“Not foolish enough.” His nostrils flared. “I couldn’t save you.”
He pressed his forehead against hers. Words gathered and stuck in her throat. She couldn’t deny that amid the tangle of fierce emotions, she felt a glimmer of warmth. But for Jehan, no one had ever tried to save her from anything.
“How,” she whispered, swallowing and pulling away from him, “did you ever learn to fight so well?”
“Not easily.”
“I’m astonished.”
“Because some of Thibaud’s teachings finally sank in?”
“Thibaud never taught you how to move so.”
He shrugged a shoulder that had gained bulk over the winter. “Sell-swords do have their tricks.”
“Does it matter to you I spent every night thinking you’d been murdered?”
“I nearly was.” He traced a puckered, badly knitted scar across his cheekbone. “Twice.”
“And why would those men teach you at all?”
“Because I asked them too.”
She huffed a sigh. She did not want to have this conversation, so she switched her attention to the slash across his jaw, still bleeding raw.
He touched it gingerly. “It’ll leave another scar.”
“Yes.”
“There go my chances with the fair ladies.”
Spoken with a strange grin. In that moment, he was as much a stranger to her as Jehan had seemed, turning his thousand-mile gaze away from her in the courtyard.
She snatched a linen and dunked it in the bowl.
“You look well, Ally.”
She wiped the blood from his throat. “Did you expect to find me in ashes and rags?”
“It’s some comfort he treats you well.”
“He treats everyone well.” She dabbed at the edges of the slash. “He treated you well, too, while you were here.”
“A pretense. He wanted me gone so he could be alone with you.”
That lie had enough truth to bite. “He bought a Bible for you, bound in tooled calfskin, as a gift for Twelfth Night.”
“Ironic, to give a Bible to the brother of the woman he dishonored.”
“I never once felt dishonored,” she retorted, tossing the bloody linen in the bowl of water, “until this very day.”
She pulled out her needle and threaded it in thick silence. Laurent turned his head as she pressed his jaw away. She squeezed the swelling edges together and made the first bloody stitch.
“I didn’t mean for that to happen,” he said, wincing.
“You didn’t mean for it to happen,” she mimicked, frustration joining anger as she let the string dangle long enough for her to pat the oozing blood. “What did you expect, when you rode up to this castle to fight for my honor?”
“I told everyone it was to regain my rights as heir.”
“Which only complicates everything.” She turned her mind away from the difficulties his latest claim would make. “Everyone knew why you were here.”
“I know you love him, Ally.”
Her throat went as dry as parched fields in a rainless summer.
“But I wonder,” he said, his breath hitching at another stitch, “does he love you?”
“Yes.”
She spoke the word with confidence though the image flashing through her mind was the distant look on his face as Jehan had dismounted from his horse.
“If he loves you,” Laurent said, “then he should have married you.”
Her ribs tightened. “He’s betrothed to another and bound by a sacred vow.”
“His only vow right now is to the prince.”
“To whom he owes his loyalty, his livelihood, and his life.”
“Then he should have done the honorable thing and sent you away to the king’s court—”
“To Paris? On winter roads swarming with thieves?”
“Inconvenience isn’t an excuse.”
Laurent’s jaw tightened under the split skin now bleeding from multiple puncture wounds. She battled to pat the blood away so she could see what she was doing, though she suspected her sight was impaired as much by tears as blood.
“I gave myself to him,” she blurted. “With a willing heart.”
“I know you did.”
A flush as hot as flames climbed up her cheeks, a blush she knew the flickering light of the sconces wouldn’t hide.
“The shame falls on him, Ally, for letting his ambition rule over love.”
“Ambition has nothing to do with it.”
“On the contrary. He wanted to have you and whatever fortune the prince is offering to him through a marriage to someone else. In the end, he got both.”
Her throat went tight. “I won’t listen to this.”
“If you refuse to face the truth, then you’re no longer the sister I remember.”
“You’re twisting everything.”
She slipped the needle through his skin for the last stitch, pinching off the guilt as he sucked in a breath through his clenched teeth. After tying off and cutting the thread, she returned the needle, thread, and scissors to the wool bag in which she stored them.
“I’ll bring you a Bible,” she said, gathering the bloodied linens. “Maybe in those pages you’ll discover your folly fighting for a woman who does not want to be saved.”
“Don’t be angry with me, Ally.”
“I had a choice.” She balled the linens tight in her hands. “I could go to a convent, take a dangerous journey into the court of a stranger, or be wife in all but name to a man I love. So I seized the future I wanted—the one within my reach.”
“I had a choice, too,” he said, “when I roamed half-starved upon the hills.” He stood up so fast that the stool scraped back against the flagstones. “I chose to fight for the honor of my most beloved sister. Would you have me choose otherwise?”
Yes.
No.
Yes.
“Why didn’t you do it?” she blurted, her heart pounding. “If you hate Jehan so much, why didn’t you kill him?”
“You’re wrong on both points.”
She shook her head, not understanding.
“I don’t hate him, Ally.” He hiked his hands to his hips. “And I didn’t come here to kill him.”
Her head ached trying to make any sense of his words.
“I expected him,” he said, “to kill me first.”