He seemed surprised by the sound of his own laughter.
“What kind of child were you?” she asked.
He glanced at her quickly as if to divine the reason for her curiosity. What would he do if she were to tell him that she wanted to know everything about him? She wanted to learn those pieces of his life she hadn’t seen, discover the emotions behind the glittering anger she’d witnessed and the smiles of happiness. She remained silent, instead, encouraging him to speak with a wish.
“A serious student, set to the task of learning more to keep my tutor employed than for the joy of it. I remember reciting Latin verbs only because my father was to be home the next day and was to test me on my knowledge. In my position of heir I was expected to excel.”
“Did you?”
He smiled. “Yes.”
She smiled at his confidence.
“It was the Sinclair prayer I spoke that day,” she said suddenly, giving him half the truth.
“Will you translate it for me?”
She let her fingers trail over the edge of the mullion as she did so. “The might of the Father of Kings, with the wisdom of his glorious son, through the grace and the goodness of the Holy Ghost, be with us at our beginnings, and give us grace in our mortal life living.”
“A beautiful sentiment.”
Her amusement was real. “My father always adds one sentence to it.” She looked up at him and smiled. “Grant us the power to prevail that we may not come too soon to your kingdom, and the wisdom to rule beside you when we do.”
His laughter caught her off guard. Had it been possible to freeze time, she would have wished it done now. Him standing before her, his smile transformed into a lusty laugh. Despite his injury, or perhaps in counterpart to it, he looked fit and strong. A tall man with broad shoulders. He stood, sovereign over this room and any space he commanded. A man who any other man might wish to emulate. That the visions had promised, and that they had made true.
He’d asked if she was a poet, and she’d responded negatively. But from some place she remembered something uttered by a man of sweet words.
And he is half a god
.
“I saw your drawings,” he said.
She turned away, focused on the view outside the window. No, in truth she didn’t see it at all. It seemed that more revelation was in order. She was private about her sketches. Occasionally she gifted them to people. The sketch of the young maid was for William, in gratitude for his help in looking for Douglas. The picture of Richard and Hannah had amused her. And Langlinais? She’d done it because she often gained comfort from sketching the castle, as if it held some power over her moods.
“I envy your talent,” he said.
She glanced over her shoulder.
“My father’s mapmaker taught me. He is a truly gifted man. His maps are works of art, decorated with tiny birds and animals. His lochs are so skillfully drawn that they look as if you might be able to swim in them.”
“You are as accomplished, Anne.”
She shrugged, oddly embarrassed.
Flanking the windows were two bookcases stretching from floor to ceiling. She walked to one of them, surveyed the titles. Two languages she did not know.
“Your education was more complete than mine.” She fingered the tooled leather spine of one of the books. “My father decreed that I was not to grow up unlearned. So anyone in the clan with something to teach me took their turn. From my mother there was needlework and patience. I’m horrible at both,” she confessed with a smile. “But I do know how to mix chalk and vinegar to clean the silver and use a horsetail and rag for the pewter and brass. Old Peter taught me how to catch a fish. So I’ll never go hungry,” she added in an aside.
“As long as there are fish around,” he said wryly.
She smiled. “Hamish instructed me on the pipes, but he laughed the one time I attempted to play them. I thought I would never get my breath back.”
“What did your father contribute?”
“How to swim and ride, to tally the annual barley crop, to bargain with the peddlers who came to Dunniwerth.”
“A woman of many talents.”
“I was taught that a willing mind was a virtue,” she explained. “But I confess to not wanting to know certain things.”
“Such as?”
“Stitchery,” she said. “As I said, I am woefully inadequate. And tanning leather, perhaps.”
His smile was surprisingly warm.
“Diverse topics. I know nothing of needlework, but I agree with you about tanning. It is a necessary chore, but it has a powerful odor.”
“I should never like to learn a stableboy’s job.”
His smile broadened. “There are worse occupations,” he said.
“I hope you will not tell me,” she said, and smiled.
“Poverty,” he contributed. “I am very glad not to have had to learn about poverty.”
She thought about it. Dunniwerth was not as large as Harrington Court, but it was still a prosperous holding. She’d lacked for nothing as a child, was considered an heiress by some. She nodded in agreement.
“Wounded,” she softly said. “I have not asked about your arm. Is it truly better?”
“I am a paragon of healing, according to Richard.”
She smiled. “While he does nothing but fuss at poor Hannah.”
“He has a great respect for your friend.”
“I suspect they are kindred spirits,” she confessed. “He is forever grumbling at her, and she is constantly complaining about him. But her words are only a screen. She is excruciatingly polite to people she despises.”
“So it is a mark of her favor if she is rude?”
She nodded. “She would hate to realize that she is so transparent, however,” she said, looking about the room. She had been here before, but her attention had not been on her surroundings. Only Stephen.
The room was filled with objects that drew her eye. The walls were lined with leather imprinted with a detailed geometric pattern. The ceiling was as ornate as anything in the rest of the house, with huge swags touched with gold leaf.
But the objects that filled the room were of greater interest. There was a massive globe, which sat firmly on a three-legged stand, a graduated series of blue-patterned ceramic bowls arranged on a set of shelves. On the top of a tall chest was a bronze bust of an imperious-looking man, his head topped with short curls, deep lines framing an unsmiling mouth. He looked down on Stephen’s desk as if he were judge. A gilt and enameled silver disk that depicted a battle scene lay propped against a high shelf, and a basin crafted from brass and inlaid with gold and silver, stood alone atop a low chest.
She turned, her mind filled with questions. As she did so, her glance happened on the mantel. A piece of embroidery caught her eye. The last thing she’d done with needlework had been a sampler decorated with huffing caterpillars and lazy bees. This was a work of art embroidered with tiny col ored beads. She picked it up by its silvered frame, studied it in the sunlight.
It was only the size of her palm, but it depicted a beautiful girl with blond ringlets and a soft smile.
“This is lovely,” she said.
Stephen walked to her side, looked down at the portrait. “It’s Sarah,” he said. “Richard’s daughter. She is very talented. The miniature was a gift from her.”
She replaced the portrait carefully where she’d found it.
Such gifts were personal, meant to be shared by dear friends or those with closer ties. The thoughts that swirled in her mind had their roots in a greater emotion than envy.
Her father had a sense of great fairness, and he had instilled it in his daughter. Lessons that had not been all that easy to learn.
If she was given two gifts, she was to offer one to another child. Before she received a new dress, the poorest member of the clan was outfitted. If she was offered a treat, such as a sweet or a piece of honeyed bread, it was only after those around her had been served first. It was difficult, sometimes, to be Robert Sinclair’s daughter.
But she’d learned to share and learned, too, to be responsible for those who did not have as much as she.
This afternoon, however, those lessons dissipated into mist. All she felt was a possessiveness that nearly swamped her. An emotion that had been forbidden to her as a child was now so strong that it was almost savage.
Mine
. All that she felt for Stephen could be dis tilled into one word. One word to account for all the prayers, all the dreams, all the wishes of a childhood. He was hers. Not for sharing, nor for granting to another. She had no wish to be unselfish and she was not capable of tolerance.
“She married last year,” he said, his words settling on her like feathers. Or cold water on the fire of her sudden and surprising rage.
She turned away, pretended a study of a ewer encrusted with lapis lazuli until she calmed.
Finally, she glanced up at him. He was unsmiling, his glance somber. He looked as if he would investigate her soul, peer inside her eyes until he came to the core of her. What would he find? A woman with too many sins, one of which she’d not known she possessed in such a degree. Pride, stubborness, and now envy. Or perhaps worse. Covetousness. This journey had illuminated all her faults.
She walked away from him, not trusting the sanctity of silence. She wanted to say too many things, and they were tamped down by only a thin layer of reserve. It was no more sturdy than a flaky pie crust bubbling up in places.
An odd structure in the corner of the room caught her eye. Her leather-soled shoes made a hollow sound as she walked across the wooden floor.
She’d seen it before. In a room devoid of all other furniture. Gently, she placed her hand on the nearly black wood, sensing that it was a very old object. Nearly as tall as she, it was a structure formed of three pieces, a center unit and two flanking areas of the same height. She went around to the back of it. One side was divided lengthwise, the other contained several pockets. The surface of the main unit was slanted and divided. Two holes were carved into the top, but only one was filled with a reservoir of greenish glass.
“It belonged to Juliana,” Stephen said. “It’s a scribe’s desk and the only piece of furniture to have survived the flood at Langlinais.”
Her fingers rested on the slanted top of the desk.
“I know nothing about the art of being a scribe.”
He smiled. “You are right to call it an art. She was very talented in her glyphs. Almost as much as you are in your drawings.”
She smiled. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll confess to even more ignorance,” she said. “I don’t know what a glyph is either.”
“Come over here and I’ll show you.”
She sat where he indicated at the side of his desk. This chair was not unlike the one in which he sat. But whereas his was elaborately carved with lions, this one was adorned with bears. Dozens of bears in various poses. “It’s a very interesting chair, isn’t it?”
“My father thought so. He had a dozen or so commissioned.” He looked up. “Do you like it?”
She didn’t want to offend him, but the words stuck in her mouth. His grin relieved her. “Each one is uglier than the next,” he said, smiling. “The one with the snakes is particularly loathsome.”
He handed her a sheet of parchment. The wooden bindings had been removed from the codex and set aside. The text that began the page began with the initial
W
. It was decorated in startlingly vivid reds and blues and green inks.
“See that figure?” he asked, pointing to the girl resting at the point of the letter. “That’s a glyph.”
On the middle of the
W
was a delicate drawing of a young girl, her legs swinging over the edge of the letter. On her face was a smile, so real that Anne could feel her own lips curve in response. Everything was perfect about the sketch, from the tumbling golden hair to the diaphanous garment the girl wore.
“She was far more talented than I,” she said, in genuine appreciation. She smiled up at Stephen. “Did she do them throughout the codex?”
He nodded. “She interspersed her text with drawings. One resembles Sebastian, her husband. She also drew another knight,” he said, turning to a separate page.
Anne studied it with the same fascination as the first drawing. Juliana had depicted a man dressed in padded cap and armor of intricately drawn links of mail. His white tunic was emblazoned with a cross consisting of four arrows joined together at the points. The symbol was duplicated on the short triangular shield at his side. The look on his face was one of cunning. In his hands he held a cup, which he held aloft. Juliana had drawn small points emanating from the chalice as if light streamed through it.
Anne tilted her head and studied the drawing, wondering what it was about the picture of the knight that prompted such a sense of recognition. It was as if she knew him.
“She left several recipes for her inks,” Stephen said, carefully turning the brittle pages. “I’m grateful that it’s easier to simply purchase ink today.”
“Would you like to have lived in Juliana’s time?”
“Been a knight?” He smiled. “It’s nice to consider such things, isn’t it? The romance of an era filters through the years, but we do not realize what it might be like to live then. The inconveniences, the lack of amenities.”
“Do you think they considered it? Or did they just do as we all do? Live our lives in the way they’ve been fashioned? Perhaps a woman of four hundred years ago would be amused that we think her life is considered fascinating.”
“And perhaps one day people will think the same of us.”
It was an odd thought, that someone might think of her in the distant future and wonder what she’d thought and felt and dreamed. “But for them to do so, I must leave something behind. Something to prove that I’ve been here, to mark my place.”
“Perhaps people do, in the form of their children.”
“Juliana did, didn’t she? Else you would not be sitting here.”
He looked surprised by the thought, then glanced down at the codex once more.
“I’ve translated her words. I haven’t used my Latin for years, but I’ve become accustomed to the cadence of her writing.”
“Cadence?”
He nodded, then smiled over at her. “She writes almost like poetry. It has a rhythm. Here, let me show you.