On the other hand, Graelam de Moreton had taken Croyland just to get her. Perhaps his father had somehow spread the same exaggerations to Lord Graelam, and he’d believed them.
Why had Lord Richard left so few men to guard the castle? Why had she left to go hunting? Her small, dainty falcon was bored? Didn’t she have a brain? He didn’t want a stupid wife. No matter, he would save her from her own folly. Then he would very likely go home without her, pleased to escape.
Jerval left his men to their talk and walked down on the beach. He watched the waves, low, gentle, fan out onto the shore, then slowly fold back. He watched the sun lower in the sky. Mark looked after him as he said to Lambert, who was scratching his ear, “Now, he goes to think and plan. What do you say, Lambert? How long will it take him to come back with a strategy?”
“Ten minutes,” Lambert said. “No longer. It’s not all that difficult a problem.”
“Nay, I disagree. It’s a knotty problem.”
Exactly ten minutes later, Jerval called out as he strode back up from the beach, “Let’s go. I have a plan to save the little princess.” He looked very pleased with himself.
Mark dug a coin out of his tunic and tossed it to Lambert, who bit on it out of habit, and chuckled. Soon all the men were laughing.
Jerval frowned at them as he mounted his horse. “What is the jest?”
Crecy, wearing his best wine-colored robe, which really required very little precious material since he was so short, walked beside Chandra down the deep stone stairs into the great hall. He saw that Graelam stood in front of her father’s huge chair, with its high carved back and its lion’s-head posts, waiting for her. On his left sat Lady Dorothy, John next to Graelam’s man, Abaric.
“He is an honorable man,” Crecy said in his low, soothing voice, knowing there was no hope for it now. “He will not mistreat you. You will not have to protect yourself from his violence, for there will be none. He will treat you well, if you will but allow him to. He admires you. Give over, mistress.” He paused a moment, alarmed by her pallor. “Cornwall is a beautiful land, harsh along its northern coast, but just a few miles to the south there are palm trees and the water is balmy. It will please you. His holding, Wolffeton, is magnificent.”
“I have no wish to go to Cornwall.” She shook her head. “I don’t understand. Why me, Crecy? A powerful lord like Graelam de Moreton shouldn’t select a wife who brings him nothing, a wife who would carve out his heart if she had the chance. He must know that I will always hate him, that I will never bow to him.”
Crecy said, “That you, a girl, would have the skill and the courage to actually fight him, to kill him if you were the more skilled, the more ruthless—it fascinates him. Two years ago when you were but sixteen, a wandering minstrel came to Wolffeton. It was Henri of Agris. Do you remember him? He was a young Frenchman who worshipped you.”
“Yes, I remember him. He was annoying with all his drowsy-eyed looks, but he did sing sweetly.”
Crecy thought that Henri was a credulous puppy, beyond annoying, what with all his sighs of adoration, making him miss his footing and trip into
piles of muck as he followed the mistress around, but no matter. “After he left Croyland, he went to Cornwall. He sang of you in vivid verse to Lord Graelam, painting you as the virgin warrior of great beauty who rode and hunted like a man. He painted you as a woman more desirable than any lady in the king’s court, a woman without a woman’s wiles, a woman who held honor dear.”
“I look like no warrior now,” she said, bitterness hard and flat in her throat.
“No,” Crecy said, his voice at its very driest, “you do not.” She was dressed in a pale yellow silk gown that made her look soft and white, and very much a lady. Her father had brought the fabric with him from London for her birthday, just three months before, and had it sewn for her to his own directions. This was only the second time she had worn the gown. Its arms were long and tapered at her wrists; a woven yellow belt hung loose at her hips. Her hair fell halfway down her back, nearly dry from its washing. There was no more stench of boar’s blood; even the bits of blood and dirt from beneath her fingernails were gone.
Crecy cleared his throat, ran a short, thick finger over his sparse beard, and said, “When Henri was there two years ago, Graelam’s wife, a whining lady from the French court, had just died birthing a stillborn child. Graelam had wed her to please his father and to fill his father’s coffers. But then his father died, followed by both his wife and the babe, and he was his own man and the lord of Wolffeton. He now wants a wife like none other in all of England. He wants you.”
Chandra said, “The man is an idiot to believe anything that a minstrel would put to verse.”
“He just told me a while ago, whilst he was dressing, that if he could find Henri, he would give him a handful of gold. Your beauty came as a surprise to him, for, like you, he said that only a fool would believe a minstrel’s weeping verses.”
Chandra saw Mary, seated on the other side of Graelam’s man, Abaric, who was leaning very close to John, set there, undoubtedly, to guard him and see that he kept to his place. Mary’s head was down, but Chandra could tell from where she stood that Mary was very pale. Graelam had raped Mary, even though he said there’d be no violence, no brutality. He’d just done it as if it was nothing at all, and it was over and nothing had changed. Mary’s silence had bought naught. But for Mary, Chandra knew, nothing would ever be the same again.
Chandra realized that no one must ever know what had happened, particularly Mary’s father, Sir Stephen, a hard man who looked at his young daughter with the sole thought of selling her to the richest man he could find. If he ever found out that she was no longer a virgin, he would kill her, for she would have no more value to him.
Very little in life, Chandra thought, was fair, particularly when it came to women, particularly when it was the men making the decisions, which they always did.
She saw a dagger hanging loose in a man’s belt. She could get it, she knew she could, and she could kill Graelam. She would die, but it would be over.
Slowly, she sidled nearer and nearer to the man and that dagger of his. He was laughing, talking, drinking her father’s ale, paying no attention. She was close now, her hand stretching out now to ease the dagger out of his belt.
CHAPTER 4
“Ah, mistress,” Crecy whispered against her ear, “do not, I beg you. Graelam is looking at you. He will see you take it. It’s possible that he would kill John as a punishment.” Crecy knew this wasn’t true, but it stopped her cold. He watched her draw in a deep breath, gain control again.
“I want to kill him, Crecy. Then it would be over.”
“Graelam is a very hard man to kill. Leave go, mistress.”
There was really no choice. She sighed as she saw her mother staring at her from across the Great Hall. The pleasure in her faded brown eyes was stark and clear. So pleased she was to be rid of her daughter. But it didn’t hurt, not the way it had when she was small. Ah, yes, and Lady Dorothy was now smiling, a triumphant smile. Why had her mother so disliked her only daughter? Chandra nearly laughed aloud. Not just dislike, that was too tame a word. All those years of abuse, done in the privacy of Lady Dorothy’s bedchamber, and she had never complained to her father about it, knowing, even as a child, that if she ever said anything, Lady Dorothy would somehow manage to kill her. A mother killing her own daughter—but she’d felt it, known it would happen. At age eleven, Chandra had been large enough to protect herself, and she had. She would never forget when her mother backhanded her for some misdeed, and she had known at that instant that she wouldn’t be beaten anymore. She’d growled like a young animal, deep in her throat, and leapt on her mother, her hands going around her neck. She’d nearly choked her to death before her old maid, Alice, had pulled her off.