A Knight to Remember (14 page)

Pride had placed Lady Neville here, and pride Edlyn comprehended. “I can’t help you become a good nun, but I can show you the herbs and what they’re used for. Then I’ll take enough to carry me through to my new home.”

Lady Neville brightened. “A fair exchange, indeed.”

For the remainder of the afternoon, Edlyn explained the duties and the remedies to Lady Neville. At the same time, Edlyn discovered the other reason why Lady Corliss had chosen Lady Neville to take Edlyn’s place. Lady Neville might not be able to start a fire, but she knew many herbs and quickly grasped the uses for the rest. At last, Edlyn straightened and rubbed her aching back.

Lady Neville surveyed her with a twinkle in her eye. “My barbette looks good on you.”

Edlyn touched the yellow linen band that passed under her chin and was pinned at the top of her head. “This is yours?”

“It was, but when that man came offering gold for clothes for you, I gladly gave it up. Better it should entice your husband than rot in my trunk.”

Edlyn couldn’t repress the chill of anticipation the thought of Hugh’s lovemaking brought her. “Do you think it will entice him? I had not thought the head covering would do so.”

“For a man like your husband, a head covering is a challenge. He’ll muster all his weapons, defeat your headdress, and win his way to your uncovered tresses in a flurry of triumph.” Lady Neville lined the herb boxes straight against the wall to avoid Edlyn’s gaze. “I know these things. My husband was a pigheaded fool of a knight, just like yours.”

“Do you miss him?” Edlyn asked.

“Every night,” Lady Neville answered.

Edlyn pulled the cork from a clay bottle and sniffed the contents. “I don’t miss Robin.”

“That’s not surprising,” Lady Neville said flatly.

Edlyn swung around and stared.

“Well, really, my dear, did you think his exploits were known only to you? The man couldn’t walk past the knothole in a tree without fornicating with it. He had bastards from one end of England to another and stupid girls lining up for their chance in his bed.” With a sly smile, Lady Neville said, “I met him once.”

“Did you?” And had she bedded him, too?

“I didn’t climb in his bed, but if it weren’t for my Neville, I would have. And I knew better! I knew his reputation, and I despised all the women who twittered about him. His charm, his masculinity, his handsome features. Pah!” Lady Neville sneered. “A grown woman like me should know better. But when I met him…”

“I know.” Lady Neville’s recollections had started an ache in Edlyn’s gut. “Who better? When he came along, I was a new-made widow, a virgin, far from anyone who loved me, but so cautious. I’d been knocked about almost all my life, and I didn’t trust anyone.” She
shook her head at the memory. “I tumbled into his bed the first night.”

Lady Neville looked around for a chair, and when she couldn’t find one, she hoisted herself up on the table. “At least he wed
you
.”

“I had dower lands.”

“Nonsense!” The dignified lady’s feet dangled, and she swung them. “There were heiresses all over this land waiting to lay their hearts—and their wealth—at his feet.”

Edlyn eyed the distance from the floor to the table-top. Lady Neville was taller, but she was also older. Surely Edlyn could pull herself up, too. Placing her hands flat on the table, she jumped—and missed.

“You’re soft,” Lady Neville observed. “That’s what you get when you don’t handle the patients, I suppose.”

Exasperated, Edlyn wiped her palms on her skirt. “Then you’ll be soft soon.”

“God grant.” Lady Neville put her hand on Edlyn’s elbow. “Come on, I’ll help you.”

This time she made it. The tall table gave her a different view of the dispensary she thought she knew so well. Was there more than one view of her marriage, too? “’Tis true, Robin could have married any number of women,” Edlyn acknowledged. “After the birth of our son, he scarcely bothered me for more than money, but at the beginning I think he loved me.”

“I think he always loved you, as much as his immaturity allowed him to love anyone.”

“He had so many gifts.”

“And he wasted them.”

“Aye. Always chasing after something better when the best waited at home. By the time the prince’s men came to throw us out of the castle, I was done with waiting. My love for him was a flame, and it went out for lack of tending.”

Edlyn thought she’d said it well, but Lady Neville shrieked in consternation and jumped off the table so fast, Edlyn thought she’d offended her.

“The fire.” Lady Neville laid her hand on the oven. “I forgot about the fire!”

“It should be fine.” Edlyn assured her.

“It’s warm,” Lady Neville said hopefully. Kneeling, she stared in the door. “It’s glowing.”

“Put some twigs on it and blow gently. You’ll see; they’ll burst into flame.”

Lady Neville cocked her head and peered at Edlyn. “So put some twigs on the fire of your feelings for Lord Hugh and see if they don’t burst into flame.”

Edlyn made a face. She’d started this silliness; now Lady Neville turned it on her.

Lady Neville laughed at Edlyn’s sour expression. “Don’t forget to blow gently,” she teased. “’Tis blowing which fans the flames.”

“You’re wicked.” Hearing a commotion outside, Edlyn jumped from the table. “No wonder Lady Corliss wants you to work by yourself.” But she couldn’t resist a grin as she opened the door.

Two lads in miniature monks’ habits bowled her over. “Mama,” they caroled, “we’re home!”

Hugh wanted to rush
forward and rescue her, but Edlyn lay underneath two squirming lads with every evidence of delight. She hugged them, ruffled their hair, kissed them, wiped her kisses away when they groaned, and generally acted as delighted to see he sons as he hoped she would someday be delighted to see him.

Then Parkin started asking questions. “Are we really going to a castle to take possession of it? Are we going with Hugh and his fighting men?”

“Aye,” she said. “That’s because—”

He didn’t wait for explanation but launched into a new series of questions. “Are we going into battle? Will I get to fight? Will Allyn get to fight? Can we use a sword?”

Rolling him over, Edlyn muffled Parkin with her hand. “We’ll talk about this later,” she answered with a frown.

Hugh moved so his shadow fell on her, and she looked up, startled. He extended his hand, and she started at it without accepting his help.

What was the matter with the silly woman now?
He’d brought her sons back, just as she wished. Leaning all the way over, he grasped her wrist and pulled her to her feet. He smiled warmly into her face.

She didn’t smile back.

Not many women could look dangerous, but Edlyn did right now. He hadn’t noticed before, but in the slanting light of the westering sun, her face stuck out with all sorts of weird angles, jutting and unrelated. Her chin was wide, and she had a habit of pushing it forward as if she were challenging his superiority. Her cheekbones rose at such an angle they pushed the outside corners of her eyes up and gave her an odd, witchy glare—a glare she now bent on him as if he were one of her sons she could reprimand.

Then Parkin bounded to his feet and put the finishing touches on her irritation. “Are we really going to train for the knighthood?”

“Nay,” she snapped, and Hugh remembered guiltily her determination that her sons should be men of peace.

“But Mama, Hugh said so,” Parkin whined.

She turned that glare on Parkin and said, “Hugh’s not in charge of you. I am.”

Allyn rose off the ground and nudged her arm with his head until she hugged him to her. Even at eight, the top of his head already reached her shoulder. In his quiet voice, he asked, “Is it true you wed Hugh while we were away?”

Stricken, Edlyn could only stare at her lad.

Hugh answered for her. “Aye, she really did, but she didn’t want to.”

Allyn fixed his thoughtful gaze on Hugh. “Why not?”

“I wanted to wait for you.” Edlyn shot Hugh a warning scowl, one he didn’t understand, and followed
it with a warm smile at Allyn. “But we couldn’t wait any longer, so we wed yesterday.”

Jealous of his brother, Parkin snuggled against his mother’s other side. He wasn’t quite as tall as his brother, but Hugh had seen twins like this before. They didn’t quite look alike, and their personalities showed little resemblance, but they shared the same father, of that there could be no doubt.

“Why couldn’t you wait longer?” Parkin asked.

“Sometimes people have to do things they don’t want to,” Hugh explained. “You’ll find that out when you’re grown.”

“Oh.” For the first time since Hugh had met Parkin, the lad calmed, and it seemed he donned the weight of added years. “I know about doing things you don’t want to.”

Like being thrown out of your father’s castle
, Hugh could almost hear the boy add.

Edlyn walked toward the bustle in the square, taking the boys with her. As she stepped away from the protection of the dispensary’s fence, she spotted a distraction. “Look, lads, there’s Sir Gregory who took you on your pilgrimage. Let’s go and thank him.”

Her sons groaned, and Hugh thought Sir Gregory must be groaning also. When Hugh found him trudging along the road with two lads in tow, he had been pathetically grateful for the offer of a ride to the abbey.

But the monk valiantly smiled when Edlyn hugged him and said, “I hope they weren’t too much trouble.”

“Not at all, Lady Edlyn.” Sir Gregory twitched as he lied. “They were exemplary lads and an honor to your name.”

“Do you think they’re ready to start the novitiate?”

Parkin said, “Ma-oh-ma!”

She pulled a lock of his hair. “Are they?”

“Mayhap in a few more years.” Sir Gregory faded back toward the monastery. “Not just yet, but soon.”

Edlyn looked frustrated, the boys looked relieved, and Hugh had to pinch himself to stop from laughing. Unfortunately, Edlyn knew his mirth without seeing it, and she started toward the camp at full speed.

Hugh had no trouble keeping up. “Aren’t you going to thank me?”

“For the clothes? Thank you.” She kept walking. The boys bobbed along beside.

“For fetching your sons,” Hugh said.

She glanced at him, then slowed reluctantly. “You fetched them?”

“Where do you think I’ve been all day?”

“I didn’t know. Your close-mouthed servant wouldn’t tell me.”

“He found us at the crossroads.” Parkin contributed his part cheerfully. “It would have taken two more days to get here because Sir Gregory walked so slow.”

“Maybe he was tired,” Edlyn suggested.

“Why?”

The boys couldn’t comprehend the stamina it took to keep up with them, and Hugh shared a grin with Edlyn. Then she wiped the smile from her face as if such mutual amusement had somehow betrayed her.

Hugh walked close to her and bumped her gently with his arm. “It’s hard to stay angry at me, isn’t it?”

“Your charm is much overrated.” The heat had gone from Edlyn’s voice. “But my sons are not training to be knights.”

“We’ll see.” Hugh knew how to use irritating phrases just as well as she. “For now they’re going with us.”

“I wouldn’t ever leave them behind!”

Hugh found himself confused. “I never suggested
so. I simply thought you wished them to be fostered by the monks, and for that they would have to stay here.”

“Not yet,” she answered decisively. “They’re not old enough to leave me yet.”

“They’re past the age when most lads leave their mothers,” Hugh said with what he thought was irrefutable logic.

“Most lads…” She stopped and stared at the whirlwind of activity around the tents. A “What’s happening?”

“We’re breaking camp.”

“But why?”

Because I want to get you away from this place and off to myself
. “I’ve lingered here too long,” he said.

“This doesn’t make sense.” She tried to sound reasonable and succeeded in sounding exasperated. “It’s evening! How far can we get tonight before we must set up camp again?”

Now he grinned. “I travel quickly.”

“Not when you’re burdened with two children, you don’t!”

“Ah, Mama.” Parkin shook with humiliation. “We’re not children. We can keep up.”

Allyn’s embarrassment, though quieter, struck just as deep. “No one will have to delay for us, Mama.”

Hugh turned a smug face on Edlyn. “If someone can’t keep up, I suppose it will be you.”

He had to give her credit; she didn’t suggest that her sons might be overestimating their endurance. But she did glare at him. Then she glanced up and saw Wharton supervising the breakdown of Hugh’s tent, and she picked up her skirts and ran. “Wait! Where are the contents of the tent?”

Wharton jerked a thumb toward the packhorses and carts. “There.”

“I left two blankets on the table.”

“Ye mean those two rags?” Wharton’s scorn could have curdled milk. “I flung them in th’ scrap bag.”

“Those were the two things I kept out of my possessions!”

“Ragbag’s in that cart.” Going back to his duties, Wharton said loudly enough for all to hear, “Women!”

Curiosity held Hugh in place as Edlyn climbed in the cart and began to excavate the contents. What bits of cloth had she bargained for so determinedly? What memories did they hold? Edlyn jumped down from the cart, waving faded bits of cloth, one in each hand, and her sons leaped toward her with a shout. Each grabbed the tattered remains of a blanket and furtively touched it to his cheek. Then Parkin shoved his beneath is surcoat while Allyn rubbed his with his hand. Edlyn watched with the kind of smile mothers get when they’ve sacrificed much and found the reward ample.

“What are they?” Hugh asked her.

“Blankets made for them before their birth. They were swaddled in them, carried in them. They’ve slept with them every night of their lives, except during this pilgrimage, and they’re the only things I managed to secure from jagger Castle when we were thrown out.”

Hugh had heard of things like this, but his warrior mind could scarcely comprehend. “You saved their blankies?”

“It’s their own link to their former lives. Their one contiguous link to their babyhood. It gives them security.”

“They’re too old for things like that.”

She turned her head and looked at him with a comprehension that made him shudder. “You’re too old to suckle, tool but when you were ill, you certainly seemed to enjoy it.”

She walked away before he subdued his chagrin enough to shout, “It’s not the same thing at all.”

She just waved a mocking hand, and he knew he’d lost. The boys would keep their blankies.

“I ain’t takin’ ye across tonight.” The ragged peasant faced Hugh’s whole troop with exasperation. “Are ye mad? ’Tis time fer sleep, not fer travel.”

Edlyn agreed with him wholeheartedly, but she could see Hugh took his criticism personally and ill. For some reason, Hugh wanted to get as far away as possible from the abbey, and he wanted to do it quickly. But faced with the River Avon swollen with spring floods, he had no choice but to use the ferry to move men and horses. The ferryman wasn’t having any of it, and she followed the conversation in this rough English as closely as she could.

“Th’ master wishes t’ go across now.” Wharton clearly expected that the ferryman would see the good sense in getting this knight and his retinue faraway from his pitiful house of mud and twigs.

The scrawny, cantankerous ferryman didn’t seem concerned with the knight, or his men, or how they could render their malice on his belongings. Mimicking Wharton, he said, “Th’ master’ll have t’ wait.”

“There’s time before the light fades entirely to get us across, and it would be in your good interest to do it.” Hugh sat tall in the saddle and used his deepest, most commanding voice, but it was still a threat.

The boil on the ferryman’s cheek darkened to crimson. “Aye,
ye’ll
get across in th’ light, an’
I’ll
have t’ come back in th’ day. I’d not do it fer th’ prince if he came abeggin’.”

Part of the problem, as Edlyn saw it, was that Hugh didn’t like having a common old peasant challenge him in front of his new wife and his men. Challenges were for knights and noblemen. Peasants did as they were told—except for this one. Unused to riding, Edlyn had dismounted to ease the cramps in her legs. Now, as she removed her riding gloves, she sidled closer. She didn’t like the nature of this confrontation.

Wharton eased a coin out of the hem of his surcoat. “There’s an extra shilling in it fer ye’t do it now.”

“Nay!” The ferryman hobbled toward his hut. “Just settle yerselves down an’ I’ll take ye in th’ morning.”

Edlyn saw the exact moment Hugh lost his temper. He dismounted with swirl of his cloak, marched up to the ferryman, swung him around by his arm, and glared, a warrior at his most ferocious. “You’ll take us
now
.”

The ferryman thrust his face right back at Hugh. “I’ll take ye in th’ mornin’…if I’m feelin’ charitable.”

Hugh fumbled for his knife, and Edlyn ran. Grabbing Hugh’s arm, she murmured in Norman French, “Would you kill an old man for this?”

Hugh answered her in the same language. “Nay, but I’d sure frighten him a bit.”

The old man showed his canniness when he answered Hugh in his rough English, “Ye can’t frighten me. I’ve fended off greater men than ye.”

“I’m sure you have.” Edlyn interposed herself between the stubborn dolts.

Hugh tried to shove her aside. “Woman, mind your needle and let me manage this.”

She used his impetus and her weight to bring Hugh around to face her. “How? By hurting him? He’s not going to yield, and in the morning we’ll have a ferry, all the light we want, and no ferryman to take us across.
By the saints, Hugh, some things can be handled without violence!”

If his most docile bitch had nipped at him, Hugh couldn’t have looked more astonished. Edlyn turned her back on him and threaded her arm through the old man’s. Speaking slowly, wrapping her tongue around the unfamiliar English words, she said, “Come. I’m chilled with the onset of night, and you’ve got a fire. Would you object if a mere woman warmed herself there?”

“Not at all.” The ferryman, who smelled like dung and reached no taller than her shoulder, patted her hand and shot a smug glance over his shoulder at the astonished and horrified men of the troop. “It has been many a night since I’ve had such a pretty lady sittin’ at me fire.”

“I can hardly believe that.” She smiled into his face and ignored the rank breath that bathed her. “A handsome man like you.”

He responded well to that kind of teasing, if only to annoy Hugh.

“What’s Mama doing?” she heard Allyn ask from the cart where he rode.

“Making a nuisance of herself,” Hugh snapped.

That made her smile at the ferryman all the more.

“Aye, I was handsome in me day, but since I lost me last wife, women heave come only t’ board th’ ferry.”

“Aye, to board the ferry.” Edlyn winked at him as she gave the phrase a salacious intonation, and the old man almost collapsed from pleasure. “What’s your name, if I may ask?”

“I’m Almund, m’ lady.” He reached up to pull his forelock and had to settle for touching his bald head. “At yer service.”

With a flourish, he showed her his place on the log.
He’d worn the bark away, he’d been there so long, and she seated herself, ignoring the men, the horses, the carts, her sons, and her new husband, all lined up on the road and waiting for attention. She had none to give them right now. She needed it all for Almund. Stretching out her hands to the feeble fire, she said, “I noticed, Almund, you have a boil on your cheek.”