Buch lesen: «My Lady Reluctant»

Chapter One

“I vow, there is nothing more to bring up but my toenails,” moaned Gisele in the sheltered aftcastle of the cog Saint Valery.

“Yes, you’re no sailor, that’s sure,” Fleurette murmured soothingly as she smoothed the damp brown locks away from Gisele’s forehead as her lady lay with her head pillowed in her old nurse’s lap. “The Channel’s been smooth as glass from the moment we left Normandy. I’d hate to see how you’d fare in rough seas.”

“Well, you never shall, for I’m never setting foot on a ship again my entire life,” muttered Gisele, then grabbed the basin at her nurse’s feet as a new round of spasms cramped her belly.

“What, never returning home?” asked the old woman in shocked tones. “Of course you shall return to Normandy, if only to allow your father to meet the fine lord you will marry, and to show him his grandchildren.”

Gisele had yet to confide in her former nurse that her plans were different from those her father had made for her, and she didn’t have the energy to do it now, so she merely played along.

“Of course I shall go to Normandy to show off my husband and the babes he shall give me,” she told Fleurette with a wan attempt at a smile. “I’m sure we shall be so blissful that it will be no effort at all to just float across the waves….”

“Ah, go on with you, then!” Fleurette said, giving her an affectionate pat. “You always did have a ripe imagination!”

“I have an imagination? ’Tis you imagining me with a husband and babe in a triumphal return to l’Aigle, long before we have so much as landed in England, let alone met any of Matilda’s marriageable lords.”

“Eh, well, I don’t know what your lord father can be thinking of, sending you off to a country in the grip of civil war—”

“England lies ahead!” called the lookout in the crow’s nest.

Within an hour of landing, they were on their way to London. Gisele, exhausted from the hours of retching aboard the tossing cog, would have liked to lie overnight in Hastings, and she knew the elderly Fleurette would have been better off with a night of rest. But Sir Hubert LeBec, the senior of the knights, was a hard-bitten old Crusader who clearly saw escorting his lord’s daughter as an onerous chore, to be accomplished as swiftly as possible. He allowed Lady Gisele and her companion just time enough to take some refreshment at an inn, but no more.

Gisele had thought just an hour ago she’d never be able to eat again, but now, revitalized by a full stomach and delighted to be back on firm ground again, did not begrudge her father’s captain his hurry. She was eager to get on with her new life, the life that would begin once she reached London, which was now held by the empress.

Lark, the chestnut palfrey she had brought from l’Aigle, had smooth paces and gentle manners, allowing Gisele to savor the beauty of the coastal area as they left the town behind. The countryside was decorated in the best June could offer. Blue squill garnished grasslands nearest the sea, giving way to white cow parsley banking the roadsides, mixed with reddish-purple foxglove. Some fields were dotted with grazing sheep; others looked like they were carpeted in gold, for the rape grown to feed pigs and sheep was now in flower. In the sky, skylarks and kestrels replaced the gulls that had ruled the air over the harbor.

So this is England, she thought with pleasure. Her father had called it a foggy, wet island, but today at least, she saw no evidence of such unpleasant weather. This is my new home. Here I will build a new life for myself, a life where I am my own mistress, at no man’s beck and call.

After she had been a-horse for some three hours, Gisele urged her palfrey up to the front of the procession, where the captain was riding with another of the men. “How far is it to London? Will we reach it tonight, Sir Hubert?” Gisele asked LeBec.

He wiped his fingers across his mouth as if to rub out his smirking grin. “Even if we had wings to fly, my lady, ’twould be too long a flight. Nay, we’ll lie at an abbey tonight—”

“An abbey? Is there not some castle where we might seek hospitality? Monastic guest houses have lumpy beds, and poor fare, and the brothers who serve the ladies look down their pious Benedictine noses at us,” Gisele protested, remembering her few journeys in Normandy.

“We’ll stay at an abbey,” Sir Hubert said firmly. “’Twas your father’s command, my lady. Much of southern England is sympathetic to Stephen, and the even those who were known to support the empress may have turned their coats since we last had word on the other side of the Channel. You’d be a great prize for them, my lady—to be held for ransom, or forcibly married to compel your father to support Stephen’s cause.”

His words were sobering. “Very well, Sir Hubert. It shall be as my lord father orders.”

He said nothing more. Soon they left the low-lying coastal area behind and entered a densely forested area.

“What is this place?” Gisele asked him, watching as the green fastness of the place enshrouded the mounted party and seemed to swallow up the sun, except for occasional dappled patches on the forest floor.

“’Tis called the Weald, and I like it not. The Saxons fleeing the Conqueror at Senlac once took refuge here, and the very air seems thick with their ghosts.”

His words formed a vivid image in her mind, and as Gisele peered about her, trying to pierce the gloom with her eyes, it seemed as if she could see the shades of the long-dead Saxons behind every tree.

“Then why not go around the Weald, instead of through it?” she inquired, trying not to sound as nervous as he had made her feel.

“’Tis too wide, my lady. We’d add a full day or more onto our journey, and would more likely encounter Stephen’s men.” Evidently deciding he’d wasted enough time in speech with a slip of a girl, he looked over his shoulder and said, “Stay alert, men. An entire garrison could hide behind these oaks.”

Gisele, following his gaze, looked back, but was made more uneasy by the faces of the other five knights of the escort. Faces that had looked bluff and harmless in the unthreatening sunlight took on a secretive, vaguely menacing, gray-green cast in the shadows of the wood. Eyes that had been respectfully downcast during the Channel crossing now stared at her, but their intent was unreadable.

For the first time Gisele realized how vulnerable she was, a woman alone with these six men but for the presence of Fleurette, and what good could that dear woman do if they decided to turn rogue? What was to stop them from uniting to seize her and hold her for ransom, figuring they could earn more from her ransom than a lifetime of loyal service to the Count de l’Aigle? Inwardly she said a prayer for protection as she dropped back to the middle of the procession to rejoin Fleurette.

Fleurette had been able to hear the conversation Gisele had had with LeBec, and it seemed she could guess what her mistress had been thinking. But she had apprehensions of her own. “’Tis not your father’s knights we have to worry about in here,” she said in low tones. “’Tis outlaws—they do say outlaws have thriven amid the unrest created by the empress and the king both striving for the same throne. ’Tis said it’s as if our Lord and His saints sleep.”

Gisele shivered, looking about her in the murky gloom. The decaying leaves from endless autumns muffled the horses’ plodding and seemed to swallow up the jingle of the horses’ harnesses, the creak of leather and the occasional remark passed between the men. Not even a birdcall marred the preternatural quiet.

Gisele could swear she felt eyes upon her—eyes other than those of the men who rode behind her—but when she stared into the undergrowth on both sides of the narrow path and beyond her as far as she could see, she saw nothing but greenery and bark. A pestilence on LeBec for mentioning ghosts!

Somewhere in the undergrowth a twig snapped, and Gisele jerked in her saddle, startling the gentle palfrey and causing her to sidle uneasily for a few paces.

Gisele’s heart seemed to be ready to jump right out of her chest.

She was not the only one alarmed. LeBec cursed and growled, “What was that?”

Suddenly a crashing sounded in the undergrowth and a roe deer burst across the path ahead of them, leaping gracefully into a thicket on their left.

“There’s what frightened ye, Captain,” one of the men called out, chuckling, and the rest joined in. “Too bad no one had a bow and arrow handy. I’d fancy roast venison for supper more than what the monks’ll likely serve.”

“Those deer are not for the likes of you or me,” countered LeBec in an irritated voice. Gisele guessed he was embarrassed at having been so skittish. “I’d wager the king lays claim to them.”

“What care have we for what Stephen lays claim to?” argued the other. “Is my lord de l’Aigle not the empress’s man?”

“You may say that right up until the moment Stephen has your neck stretched,” the captain snapped back.

For a minute or two they could hear the sounds of the buck’s progress through the distant wood, then all was quiet once more. The knights clucked to their mounts to resume their plodding.

In the next heartbeat, chaos descended from above. Shapes that Gisele only vaguely recognized as men landed on LeBec and two of the other men, bearing them to the ground as their startled horses reared and whinnied. Arrows whirred through the air. One caught the other man ahead of Gisele in the throat, ending his life in a strangling gurgle of blood as he collapsed on his horse’s withers.

“Christ preserve us!” screamed Fleurette, even as an arrow caught her full in the chest. She sagged bonelessly in the saddle and fell off to the left like a limp rag doll.

“Fleurette!” Gisele screamed frantically, then whirled in her saddle in time to see the rear pair of knights snatched off their horses by brigands who had been merely shapeless mounds amidst the fallen leaves seconds ago. Then Lark, stung by a feathered barb that had pierced her flank, forgot her mannerly ways and began to buck and plunge. Gisele struggled desperately to keep her seat while the shouts and screams of the men behind her and ahead of her testified to the fact that they were being slaughtered by the forest outlaws. The coppery smell of blood filled the air.

With no one left to protect Gisele, the outlaws were advancing on her now, their dirty, bearded, sweat-drenched faces alive with anticipation, holding crude knives at the ready, some with blades still crimson with the blood of the Norman knights dead and dying around them. She was about to be taken, Gisele realized with terror, and what these brigands would do to her would make LeBec’s mention of being held for ransom or forcibly wed sound like heaven in comparison. They’d rape her, like as not, then slit her throat and sell her clothes, leaving her body to be torn by wild animals and her bones to be buried eventually by the falling leaves.

But her palfrey was unwittingly her ally now. As Gisele clung to Lark’s neck, her mount plunged and kicked so wildly that none of the brigands could get near her. One of them picked up his bow and nocked an arrow in the bowstring, leveling it at the crazed beast’s chest.

Then another—perhaps he was the leader—called out something in a guttural English dialect unknown to Gisele. The gesture seemed to indicate that they were not to harm the palfrey—no doubt that man, at least, realized the mare was also a valuable prize. The brigands fell back, but their eyes gleamed like those of wolves as they circled around Gisele and her mare, looking for the opportunity to snatch the wild-eyed horse’s bridle.

In a moment they would succeed, Gisele thought, still striving to keep her seat, and then they would rend her like the two-legged wolves they were. Our Lady help me! Then, on an impulse, she shrieked as if all the demons in hell had just erupted from her slender throat.

It was enough. Terrified anew, the mare sprang sideways, knocking a nearby outlaw over onto his back, then bolted between two other outlaws and headed off the path into the depths of the wood at a crazed gallop. Gisele bent as low as she could over the mare’s straining neck as branches whipped by her face, tearing at her clothes, snatching off her veil and scratching her cheeks.

The sounds of the brigands’ foot pursuit grew more and more distant behind her. If she could just circle her way back out of this wood, Gisele thought, she would ride back to the nearest village. She’d find someone in authority to help her go back and find the rest of her party, though she was fairly certain none were alive. Fleurette had probably died instantly, Gisele thought with a pang of grief, but there was no time to mourn now. A parish priest would surely help her find assistance to get to London and the empress—and she’d send the sheriff back to clean out this nest of robbers!

But Gisele had no idea which way the mare was headed. She had lost her reins as well as her sense of direction in the attack. For all she knew, the terrified beast was going in a circle that would lead her right back into the brutal arms of the outlaws!

She ducked just in time to avoid a painful collision with a stout oak branch, and after that she did not dare to raise her head again. The ground blurred by beneath her. Saints, if she had only been riding astride, it would be easier to hug the horse’s neck, but ladies did not ride astride.

Ladies did not usually have to flee for their lives, either, Gisele reminded herself. When a quick glance revealed no low-lying branches immediately ahead, she renewed her clutching hold on the beast’s streaming mane and threw her right leg over the mare’s bunching withers. There was no stirrup to balance her on that side, of course, but she gripped with her knees as if her salvation depended upon it. Without reins, she would just have to wait until the palfrey wore itself out, and hope that the Weald was not as deep as it was wide. Surely she’d come out before she was benighted here, and find some sort of settlement on the other side.

A log loomed ahead of them, and Gisele tried in vain to persuade the mare away from it by pressure from her knees and tugging on her mane, but having come so far on her own impulses, the palfrey was seemingly loath to start taking direction now. The horse gathered herself and leaped the log, with Gisele clinging like a burr atop her, but then caught her hoof in a half-buried root at her landing point on the other side.

Whinnying in fear, the mare cartwheeled, her long legs flailing. Gisele had no chance to do more than scream as she went flying through the air, striking the bole of a beech with the side of her head. There was a flash of light, and then—nothing.