Мериел Фуллер – Her Battle-Scarred Knight (страница 9)
The chair cradled his body at a stiff, unyielding angle, compressing his bones. His right hand had gone numb; he gritted his teeth, flexing his fingers as the blood returned with a painful prickling. Shaking off the shrouds of sleep, his mind jumped into action, remembering, remembering the task that Hugh had set him. He recalled the spark of determination in Lady Brianna’s eyes, the stubborn set of her mouth when he had informed her that they would not leave until morning.
Propelling himself from the chair, he strode over to the door of the solar, wrenching the door open. In normal circumstances, he probably would have knocked, but up to this point everything about Lady Brianna had been anything but normal. He knew, he just knew, before he’d even looked at the bed and saw that the furs lay flat, unused, that she had gone. Little witch! He had offered to come to Sefanoc as a favour to Hugh; in reality it was turning out to be an ordeal.
Stepping over to the bed, he hauled the covers back; the spotless, empty white sheet shone back at him, the slight indentation in the mattress where she would have slept mocking him. The scent of crushed lavender rose from the bedlinens, delicious, seductive, reminding him of those long, hot summers in Poitiers, and his heart jerked in memory. That all seemed so long ago now.
A small sound on the other side of the bed caught his attention.
‘She’s not here, my lord.’ Alys sat up on low pallet bed, clutching the covers to her bony chest. Her frizzled hair stuck out from her head like grey lace. Her veins traced blue ridges on the backs of her hands.
‘I can see that,’ Giseux replied bluntly, his cheeks sculptured hollows in the sepulchral light. ‘And against my better judgement I’m about to go after her.’
Big fat tears welled up in the maidservant’s eyes. ‘Oh, my lord, don’t be too harsh on her.’
‘Why on earth not?’ he growled back. ‘The woman’s a prize fool, putting herself at risk.’
‘She hasn’t seen Hugh for such a long time. Once she has a plan in her head …’ Alys trailed off miserably, her voice rising on a half-sob.
‘She’s difficult to rein in, I can see that,’ Giseux replied, grimacing. ‘When did she leave?’
‘Not long after you fell asleep, my lord.’
‘She hasn’t had much of a head start.’ He thought of the dying embers in the fireplace, calculating rapidly. ‘What does she ride … a palfrey? She wouldn’t go above a trot on one of those. I’ll easily catch her up.’
The maidservant was silent, staring at him like a ghost, her knotted fingers still clutching the coverlet against her. ‘She … she took your horse, my lord.’
Through the dark tracery of bare branches, the moon appeared sporadically, shifting behind veils of cloud, dribbling a faint light down to the forest floor. A rising breeze sifted through the trees, a sibilant sound that spoke of the old stories surrounding the forest of Sefanoc, the drifting ghosts. The woods held little mystery for Brianna; she had grown up in this place, had laughed and played through the woodland with Hugh. She felt no fear as the giant skeletal shapes of the trees rose up before her, no fear as she glimpsed the deep pools silvered by the light of the moon and heard the twitterings and rustlings of the animals in the undergrowth. Nay, the forest did not scare her. But being caught by Lord Giseux de St-Loup did.
In despair, she kicked the rounded flanks of the horse beneath her once more. In her haste to leave for Winchester, she had failed to adjust the stirrups to the length of her leg and now they bumped uselessly against the horse’s sides, polished metal hoops shining in the darkness. Even without the use of the stirrups, she considered herself to be an excellent horsewoman, but this animal simply refused to move at anything greater than a sporadic, half-hearted trot! Really, it was as if his master was controlling him from afar!
All of a sudden, the animal stopped, pointed ears moving round as if to locate a sound. And then she heard it—a shout on the wind. She failed to decipher the words, but she knew, knew it was him. Knuckles rounding tautly on the reins, her heart lodged in her throat—how had he managed to catch up with her so quickly? The horse begun to turn in response to his master’s voice, Brianna yanking desperately on the reins to point his head back in the right direction, but to no avail. The horse turned abruptly in the narrow, muddy track, almost throwing her off in its excitement. In the last moment before the horse took off, Brianna managed to throw her leg over the horse’s neck and slip in a flurry of skirts to the ground.
Head held high, she stalked forwards, marching purposefully, swiftly, along the lane towards Winchester, wrapping her woollen cloak firmly around her. She could have run to hide in the darkness of the forest, but what would that achieve? He would surely find her—his face held a lean, hunting expression, that of a predator. Moments later, the sound of galloping hooves thumped up behind her. Her heart plummeted, trickles of fear stinging her blood.
‘Lady Brianna!’ Giseux bellowed. The words rained down on her back as if they were physical blows and she hunched over, chest thudding painfully.
Giseux wore no helmet; his hair stuck up in rough spikes. His eyes, sparking anger, glimmered down over her. Despite her determined demeanour, she hoped that a great crevasse would open up beneath him and swallow him up.
‘What do you think you are doing?’ The roughness of his tone cut into her. His face glimmered with a sheen of sweat: he must have run to catch up with her before his horse turned back.
‘You know what I am doing.’ Not wanting to meet his eyes, to admit that she had defied his orders, Brianna stared mutinously at his mail-covered foot, stuck in the stirrup on a level with her chest, the gleaming armour dulled with spots of mud.
‘I told you to wait until morning, then I would have escorted you.’ His voice was low, level, but she detected a steely thread of exasperation winding through. The strengthening breeze stirred the wayward strands of his hair, making him appear more tousled … more devastating, she thought suddenly, a lump in her throat.
‘I know the way,’ she replied, truculently. Tilting her head to one side, she crossed her arms across her chest, a defiant gesture. In the shifting moonlight, her copper-coloured hair faded to a pale silk, loose strands drifting treacherously down from beneath her veil.
‘It’s not a question of whether you know the way or not,’ he replied tersely, ‘but the fact that you’re a woman. No noblewoman goes out unescorted—it’s utter madness.’
Brianna pushed the white froth of her veil back over her shoulder. ‘Since Hugh went away, I have had little choice in the matter,’ she replied practically, bending her gaze to his horse’s flank. Beneath the animal’s shining coat, a pulse throbbed near the surface, the beat regular and strong.
‘Up to now, maybe not,’ he agreed, ‘but you knew I would escort you to Winchester and you deliberately defied me.’
She jerked her chin up, eyes flashing fire at his chastisement. ‘I wanted to get to Hugh—I haven’t seen him for three years! Surely you can understand that?’
Aye, he could. He understood her need, her desire to be with her brother, especially after her harassment from Count John’s men. He suspected the beating he had witnessed today was one of many.
‘Besides,’ she continued, ‘who are you to order me about? You are not my lord, or my master. I can do what I want, go where I want. It’s my choice.’
In the shadows of the forest, the silver embroidery along the hem of his tunic twinkled like starlight. ‘So you do exactly as you please, without any consideration for others.’
Why, he made her sound like a spoiled brat! ‘It’s not
like that!’
‘How do you think Hugh would feel if something had happened to you?’
‘I can take care of myself!’
‘Hah! Like you took care of yourself this morning?’ he growled down derisively. The moonlight turned the ruffled strands of his hair to gold. ‘If I hadn’t come along when I did …’
She shrugged her shoulders, trying to suppress the doubt that mired her chest. ‘Those men are cowards … Lord Fulke is a coward! They would have left me alone soon enough. You, coming along like that, would have made no difference.’
‘Fighting words, my lady! Yet I suspect even you know that you lie to yourself. A woman alone is vulnerable, especially one who is stupid enough to believe she can best a man!’ She reminded him of a wild animal, cornered and vulnerable, the display of viciousness masking its puny strength.
‘I can—Hugh taught me how to use the crossbow … and the knife!’ The pitch of her words notched upwards, emerging in a spiral of rising anger and, yes, fear as well. How dare he challenge her methods of self-preservation, her hard-won skill? Instinctively her fingers moved to the jewelled knife hilt on her belt.