The Mistress of Normandy

“What if he challenges us?”

“He’s probably old and feeble. I have no fear of him.”

“You’re not afraid of anything, are you, Lianna?” It was more an accusation than a tribute.

Nom de Dieu, he did not know her at all. Soon enough, no doubt, some loose-tongued castle varlet would tell him of her soul-shattering terror of the water, that childhood nightmare that plagued her yet as an adult.

“I fear some things. But I won’t waste the sentiment on this Baron of Longwood.” With distaste she recalled his flowery missive, scented with roses and sealed with a leopard rampant device. “In fact, I look forward to sending him on his way.” She touched her chin. “I’ve been thinking of saluting him with Chiang’s new culverin, the one on the pivoting gun carriage....”

“It’s all a damned game to you, isn’t it?” Lazare burst out, his eyes flaring. “We court the disfavor of the two most powerful men in all Christendom, yet you talk of cannon charges and fireworks.”

Although dismayed by Lazare’s mood, Lianna bit back a retort. “Then let’s talk of other things,” she said. “It is our wedding night, mon mari.”

“I’ve not forgotten,” he muttered, and poured himself another draught of wine.

She almost smiled at the irony of the situation. Wasn’t it the bride who was supposed to be nervous? And yet, while she faced her duty matter-of-factly, Lazare seemed distracted, hesitant.

“We’ve bound our lives before God,” she said. “Now we must solidify the vow.” Dousing a sizzle of apprehension, she went to the heavily draped bed and shrugged out of her robe. Naked, she slipped between the herb-scented linens and leaned back against the figured oak headboard.

Lazare approached, drew back the drapes, uttered a soft curse, and said, “You’re a beautiful young woman.”

Her brow puckered; the statement was not tendered as a compliment.

Cursing again, he jerked the coverlet up to her neck. “It’s time we understood each other, Lianna. I’ll be your husband in name only.”

The sting of rejection buried itself in her heart. Ten years without a father, seventeen without a mother, had left scars she’d hoped her marriage would heal. “But I thought— Is it King Henry or my uncle? Are you so afraid of them?”

“No. That has nothing to do with it.”

“Then do you find me lacking?”

“No! Lianna, leave off your questioning. The fault doesn’t lie with you.” Lazare’s eyes raked her shrouded form. “You are magnificent, with your hair of silk and sweet, soft skin of cream. Were I a poet, I’d write a song solely on the beauty of your silver eyes.”

The tribute stunned and confused her. He laid his hand, dry and cool, upon her cheek. “You’ve the face of a madonna, the body of a goddess. Any man would move mountains to possess you!”

The stillness between them drew on. A faint crackle from the fire and the hiss of the ever-shifting river pervaded the chamber.

Lazare jerked back his hand. “Any man...” He laughed harshly. “Except me. One of the wenches downstairs will have to do as a receptacle for the unslaked lust you inspire.”

Lianna shivered. “Lazare, I don’t understand.”

He leaned against a bedpost. “This marriage is one of mutual convenience. No children must come of our union.”

“Bois-Long needs an heir,” she said softly. And in her heart she needed a child. Desperately.

“Bois-Long has an heir,” said Lazare. “My son, Gervais.”

A cold hand took hold of her heart and squeezed. “You can’t do this to me,” she said, clutching the sheets against her as she sat forward in anger. “The château is my ancestral home, defended by my father, Aimery the Warrior, and his kinsmen before him. I won’t allow your son to usurp—”

“You have no choice now, Lianna.” Lazare smiled. “You thought yourself so clever, marrying in defiance of King Henry’s wishes. But you overlooked one matter. I am not a pawn in your ploy for power. I’m a man with a mind of my own and a son who deserves better than I’ve given him. My life ended when my first wife died, but Gervais’s is just beginning.”

“My uncle will arrange an annulment. You and your greedy son will have nothing of Bois-Long.”

Lazare shook his head. “If you let me go, no one will stand in the way of the Englishman who is coming to marry you. Your uncle of Burgundy has been known to treat with King Henry. He may force you to accept the English god-don. Besides, you’ve no grounds for annulment. We are married in the eyes of God and France.”

“But you yourself have decreed that it is to be a chaste union!”

“So shall it be.” With a smooth movement, Lazare drew a misericorde from his baldric. Shocked by the dull glint of the pointed blade, Lianna leapt from the bed, shielding herself with the coverlet. Lazare chuckled. “Don’t worry, wife, I’ll not add murder to my offenses.” Still smiling, he pricked his palm with the knife and let a few ruby droplets of blood stain the sheet.

Lianna bit her lip. In sooth she’d never quite understood where a maid’s blood came from; it was destined to remain a mystery still.

“Now,” he said, putting away the misericorde, “it is your word against mine. And I am your lord.”

She clutched the bedclothes tighter. “You used me.”

He nodded. “Just as you used me. I’m tired, Lianna. I’ll pass the night on cushions in the wardrobe, so that no one will look askance at us. After a few days I’ll be sleeping in the lord’s chamber—alone.”

“I’ll fight you, Lazare. I won’t let Gervais have Bois-Long.”

Giving her a long, bleak stare, he left the solar. A river breeze snuffed the lamp. Lianna crept back into bed, avoiding the stain of Lazare’s blood, and lay sleepless. What manner of man was Lazare Mondragon, that he would not take his bride to wife on his wedding night? Her wedding night.

Moonlight streamed into the room, casting silvery tones on the pastoral scene painted on the wall. Beyond the woman and her children, a richly robed knight knelt before an ethereal beauty, gazing at her with a look of pure, mystical ecstasy.

An artist’s fancy, Lianna told herself angrily, turning away from the wall. An idealized picture of love. But she couldn’t suppress her disappointment. The whimsical dreamer she so carefully hid beneath her armor of aloofness had hoped to find contentment with Lazare.

Instead, she realized bitterly, the sentence of a loveless, fruitless marriage hung over her. No, she thought in sudden decision. Lazare was wrong to think she’d relinquish her castle without a fight. She wrested the wedding ring from her finger. “I am still the Demoiselle de Bois-Long,” she whispered.

* * *

The chaplain’s rapidly muttered low mass was sufficient to satisfy the consciences of the castle folk who attended the morning service. Grateful for the brevity, Lianna sped to the great hall.

After nudging a lazy alaunt hound out the door, she stopped a passing maid. “It smells like a brewery in here, Edithe. Fetch some dried bay to sweeten the rushes.”

The maid bustled off, and Lianna crossed to the large central hearth, where Guy, her seneschal, stood over a scullion who was cleaning out the grate. Guy, a gentle giant of a man, ruffled the lad’s hair and chuckled at some joke. Both came to grave attention as Lianna approached.

Once, she thought, just once I wish they’d share their mirth with me. But her aloofness, cultivated to augment the authority she so feared to lose, did not invite intimacy. “Are the stores in the kitchen adequate?” she asked Guy.

He nodded. “We’ve yet a side of beef, and fresh eels, too. Wine’s a bit diminished after last night, but it’ll suffice.”

“Are the stables cleaned and stocked?”

Another nod.

She took a deep breath. “Gervais and his wife?” Her tongue thickened over the name of Lazare’s son. Did he know of his father’s plan?

Guy’s face was expressionless. “Stumbled abed not an hour ago, my lady.”

Fine, she thought. Gervais would have no part in running the castle. “My...husband?” She faltered over the word.

“Out riding the fields with the reeve, my lady.”

He would be, she thought darkly. Inspecting his new acquisitions, no doubt. Stifling a feeling of despair, she turned and spied Edithe returning. The maid dropped a handful of bay leaves onto a fresh bundle of rushes. “Nom de Dieu,” Lianna snapped, “they must be spread out, like so.” She took a twig broom from the girl and scattered the leaves.

Sulkily Edithe took the broom and set to sweeping. Spying the scullion staggering beneath a bucket of ashes from the grate, Lianna hastened to propel him out the door before he spilled his burden on the new rushes. He made it as far as the stone steps; then the ashes fell in a gray heap. A stiff breeze blew them back in again. Catching Lianna’s look, Edithe hurried over to ply her broom.

Lianna leaned her head against the figured stone of the doorway and sighed, thinking again of her mother. It was said that Dame Irène, singularly unattractive but beloved by her handsome husband, had been a gifted chatelaine. Guy, who was old enough to remember her, often said Irène’s success stemmed from the devotion her sweet nature inspired in the castle folk.

Lianna knew she possessed no such endearing quality. She directed every task with immutable logic, her manner distant yet implacable. Her thoroughness amazed the devoted members of the château staff and dismayed those who tried to shirk their duties. Yet no one, perhaps not even Chiang, understood that beneath her cool mien lived a lonely soul who did not know how to spark warmth in others.

* * *

Troubled by Lazare’s duplicity and seeking answers for her dilemma, Lianna rode out alone that morning. She crossed the causeway that spanned the Somme, then paused to look back at the château. The quiet impregnability of the stone keep, stout curtain walls, and limewashed towers comforted her. A month ago she had no adversary save droughts and hard freezes that threatened her crops. Now she had enemies within, enemies without.

She vowed to contend with each. Never would she let the castle fall to Lazare’s son. Nor would she allow Longwood’s leopard standard to supplant the golden trefoil lilies that now waved over the ramparts of Bois-Long.

As she nudged her horse into the long stretch of woods leading to the sea, the restful harmony of the landscape enveloped her. She found solace in the reflection of cottony clouds in the river, the calm strength of ancient beeches, the deep peace of cows udder deep in grass.

She did not stop until she reached the sheer, windswept cliffs overlooking the roaring Norman sea. Her fear of water held something of a horrifying fascination; simply looking at the churning swells made her tremble. Dismounting, she approached the lip of a cliff. Her palms grew damp; her breath came in curiously exhilarating shallow gasps. She sat on the promontory, hugging her knees to her chest, watching the white spray as it battered the rocks. Behind her reared a cleft of dark gray shale where she and Chiang mined sulfur for their gunpowder.

Yesterday morn, at her nuptial mass, she’d listened to the recitation of the Hours of the Blessed Virgin and dreamed of the children Lazare would give her. Children to bring to this beautiful, wind-worn place, to share the dreams she’d never dared reveal.

No children must come of our union. Lazare’s sentence rang like a death knell in her head. Lianna had never felt so alone. She buried her face in her arms and anointed her sleeves with hot, bitter tears.

The ship appeared while she wept. It was suddenly there when she looked up, a beautiful four-masted cog bounding over undulating swells. Sails painted with whimsical dragons and writhing serpents puffed like the breasts of great, colorful birds over the hull. Shields emblazoned with a leopard rampant flanked the ship’s sides.

She recognized the device from Longwood’s letter and King Henry’s written order. Her heart catapulted to her throat.

The English baron had arrived.

Two

From the deck of the Toison d’Or, Rand studied the Norman coastline. Squinting through a dazzle of sunlight against the chalky cliffs, he watched a pale rider mount a horse and gallop toward two dark gray clefts of rock. In moments the lithe horseman was gone, like a fleeting silver shadow.

Unhappy that his arrival had sparked immediate fear, he moved down the decks. Eu, the town where he planned to land, huddled against the tall cliffs. Denuded orchards and burnt fields, remnants of turmoil, lay about the village. France was a hostile, war-torn land, plundered by its own knights and the chevauchées of the English. Atrocities committed by the nobility had schooled mistrust into the plain folk of France. Rand resolved that when he took his place at Bois-Long, he would prove himself different from those greedy noblemen.

A swarm of tanned and wiry sailors climbed barefoot up the rigging to reef the sails for landing. The chains of the anchor ground as a seaman studied his knotted rope and called out the depth. Horses in the hold stamped and whinnied. The winds and weather had been relentlessly favorable, shortening the voyage from Southampton to a mere three days.

Rand was in no hurry to reach his objective, despite King Henry’s impatience to secure a path into the heart of France.

A moan sounded. His face a sickly pale green, Jack Cade staggered to Rand’s side. “I’ll never get seasoned to these goddamned crossings,” he grumbled. “Praise St. George I’ll be on dry land ere nightfall, upon a sound bed...and, if I be lucky, between a woman’s thighs.”

Rand laughed. “Women. You use them too carelessly.”

“And you use them not at all, my lord.”

“They are meant to be protected, revered.”

Jack belched, grimaced, and scratched his unshaven cheek. “Faith, my lord, I know not how you quell your man’s body into submission.”

“It’s all part of a knight’s discipline.”

“Remind me never to become a knight. I’ll get no comfort from golden spurs.”

Rand regarded his scutifer with affection. The droll face, the merry eyes brimming with earthy humor, marked a man whose feet were planted firmly on the ground, happily distant from the unforgiving demands of chivalry. “Little danger of that,” Rand remarked, “given your complete aversion to anything resembling high ideals and saintly devotion.”

“Goddamned right,” Jack said, and leaned over the side to heave. The bright, mocking laughter of a sailor drifted across the deck. Turning with elaborate casualness, Jack dropped his breeches and presented his backside to the seaman. A chorus of whistles and catcalls arose.

“You’ll not catch a fish on that shrunken worm,” remarked a seaman.

Jack hitched up his breeches and thumbed his nose.

Grinning and shaking his head, Rand looked again at the coast rearing ahead of the bounding ship. He’d crossed the Narrow Sea numerous times, under the colors of the Duke of Clarence, and usually he felt a surge of anticipation at the sight. This time he came in peace yet felt only dread, like a hollow chamber in his heart. His arrival heralded the end of the dreams he’d shared with Jussie, changed the path his life would have taken. That it also heralded the beginning of King Henry’s grand scheme gave him little enough comfort.

“My lord,” said Jack, “you’ve been too silent these days past. Are we not boon companions? Tell me what troubles that too pretty head of yours.”

His hands gripping the rail, Rand asked, “Why me? Why did the king choose me to defend this French territory?”

A grin split Jack’s pale face, and the wind ruffled his shock of red hair. “To reward you for exposing the Lollard plot at Eltham. And Burgundy’s envoys gave it out that the duke would have only the finest of men for his niece.”

Rand held silent; honor forbade him to voice his thoughts on the liberties Henry and Burgundy had taken with his life.

“You should be thankful,” said Jack. “Your new rank gives you a rich wife and her château. What had you at Arundel save a meager virgate to plow and a burden of boonwork to the earl?”

Rand looked at him sharply, felt a rattle of longing in his chest. “I had much more than that.”

The corners of Jack’s mouth pulled downward. “Your Justine. How did she take the news of your betrothal?”

Rand stared at the white breakers exploding against the cliffs. The seascape gave way to Jussie, sweet as cream and biddable as a lamb. As children they’d raced laughing through the ripening wheat that clothed the gentle landscape of Sussex. As youths they’d shared shy kisses, whispered promises. She’d listened to his songs and his dreams; he’d watched her clever fingers at their carding and spinning. He thought he loved her; at least he felt an affection and concern deep enough to control his manly urges and remain loyal. He’d wanted to plight his troth to her years before but couldn’t subject Jussie to the uncertain existence of a horse soldier’s wife.

Now it was too late. His grip tightened on the rail. Justine had taken the news with surprising aplomb. “’Tis fitting,” she’d said simply. “Your father was of noble blood, and French.” At first her response had confused him. Where was her outrage, her weeping, her defiance? She had merely bade him adieu and pledged herself as a novice at a convent.

Rand attributed the gentle reaction to her serene inner strength and admired her all the more for it. When he turned to answer Jack’s query, hopeless longing creased his fine-featured face. “Justine understood,” he said quietly.

“Perhaps it’s for the best. I always thought you two a mismatched pair.”

Rand glared.

“I’m only saying that you’re very different, as different as a hawk from a songbird. Justine is passing sweet and retiring, while you are a man of action.”

“She was good for me,” Rand insisted.

Jack raised a canny eyebrow. “Was she? Hah! Other than keeping you to your inhuman vow of chastity, she had no real power over you, offered you no challenge.”

“Had anyone save you made that observation, Jack, his face would have swiftly met with my fist.”

Jack brandished his maimed hand. Three fingers had been severed to stumps. “You’re ever so tolerant of a cripple.”

Rand clasped that hand, that archer’s hand that had been ruined by a vindictive French knight so Jack might never draw his longbow again. “Soon we will both live in this hostile place.”

“Think you the woman will prove hostile?”

“I don’t know. But she’s twenty-one years old. Why has she never married?”

“You don’t want to think about that,” said Jack. He extracted his hand and spat into the sea. “You’re determined not to like her, aren’t you, my lord?”

“How can I, when she stands between Jussie and me?”

Jack shook his russet head. “You know better than that. ’Twas the king’s edict that took you away from Justine.”

“I know.” Rand let out his breath in a frustrated burst of air. Ever loyal, he said, “I cannot fault Henry. Longwood is vital to him. He’s trying to secure it peaceably, and this is the best way he knows.” Rand tried to fill his empty heart with a feeling of high purpose, of destiny. It felt cold, like a draught of bitter ale after a cup of warm mead. “I suppose winning back the French Crown is larger than one man’s desires.”

* * *

Presently the Toison d’Or dropped anchor in the small, quiet harbor of Eu. Wedged between the granite cliffs, the town seemed deserted. Disembarking with his contingent of eight men-at-arms, his squire, Simon, the priest Batsford, and numerous horses and longbows, Rand recalled the ruined fields he’d observed. His shoulders tensed with wariness.

“Goddamned town’s empty,” said Jack. “I like it not.”

Their footsteps crunched over shells and pebbles littering the road, and the wind keened a wasting melody between the shuttered stone-and-thatch cottages.

His sword slapping against his side, Rand approached a large, lopsided building. Above the door, a crude sign bearing a sheaf of wheat flapped creakily. A faint mewing sound slipped through the wail of the wind. Rand looked down. A skinny black-and-white kitten crouched behind an upended barrel. Unthinking, he scooped it up. As starved for contact as for food, the kitten burrowed into his broad palm and set to purring.

“I puke my way across the Narrow Sea and for what?” Jack grumbled. “A goddamned cat.”

“Easy, Jack,” Rand said. “Maybe she’ll let you sleep with her.” The men chuckled but continued darting cautious glances here and there as if half-afraid of what they might see.

Rand shouldered open the door to the inn. Afternoon light stole weakly through two parchment-paned windows, touching a jumble of overturned stools, tables, and broken crockery. The central grate was cold, the burnt logs lying like gray-white ghosts, ready to crumble at the slightest breath.

Absently Rand stroked the kitten. “The town’s been hit by brigands. Lamb of God, the French prey upon their own.”

“And leave us naught,” Jack said, scowling at an empty wall cupboard. The other men entered the taproom. Jack looked at Rand. “Now what, my lord?”

A chunk of plaster fell from the ceiling and landed squarely on Jack’s head. He choked and cursed through a cloud of dust.

Rand’s eyes traveled the length of the ceiling. In one corner a small opening was covered with planks. “There’s someone in the loft,” he said. Ducking beneath beams too low to accommodate his height, he knocked lightly on the planks.

“We come in peace,” he said in French. “Show yourselves. We’ll not harm you.”

He heard shuffling, and more plaster fell. The planks shifted. Rand saw first a great hook of a nose, then a thin face sculpted by sea winds, its high brow age-spotted and crowned with a sprinkling of colorless hair. Sharp eyes blinked at Rand.

“Are you an Englishman?”

Rand rubbed absently behind the kitten’s scraggly ears. “I am a friend. Come down, sir.”

The face disappeared. A muffled conversation ensued above. An argument, by the sound of it, punctuated by female voices and the occasional whine of a child. Presently a rough ladder emerged from the opening. The old man descended.

“I am Lajoye, keeper of the Sheaf of Wheat.”

“I am Enguerrand Fitzmarc,” said Rand. “Baron of Bois-Long.” Yet unused to his new title, he spoke with some embarrassment.

“Bois-Long?” Lajoye scratched his grizzled head. “I did not know it to be an English holding.”

“All Picardy belongs to the English, but a few thickheads in Paris refuse to admit it.”

Lajoye glanced distrustfully at the men standing in his taproom. “You do not come to make chevauchée?”

“No. I’ve cautioned my men strictly against plundering. I come to claim a bride, sir.”

Interest lit the old pale eyes. “Ça alors,” he said. “Burgundy’s niece, the Demoiselle de Bois-Long?”

Rand handed him a stack of silver coins. “I’d like to bide here, sir, while I send word to her and await her reply.”

Lajoye turned toward the loft and rasped an order. One by one the people emerged: Lajoye’s plump wife, two sons of an age with Rand, and six children. More noises issued from the loft.

“The others, sir?” Rand said.

Lajoye glared at the men-at-arms, who were shuffling about impatiently. Instantly Rand understood the old man’s concern. “The first of my men to lay a hand on an unwilling woman,” he said, touching the jeweled pommel of his sword, “will lose that hand to my blade.”

Lajoye stared at him for a long, measuring moment, then flicked his eyes to Robert Batsford, the priest. Although he preferred hefting a longbow to lifting the Host, Batsford also had an uncanny talent for affecting an attitude of saintly piety. “You may take His Lordship at his word,” he said, his moon-shaped face solemn, his round-toned voice sincere.

Apparently satisfied, Lajoye called out, and the women appeared. Children dove for the skirts of the first two; the second two, their hair unbound in maidenly fashion, stood back, fearfully eyeing Rand and his soldiers.