“Despite all his shortcomings,” Graelam said.
“I must needs hear some of these shortcomings, my lord. Edward is sure to be suspicious if I give him only this glowing praise.”
Graelam grinned, and Burnell saw the answering smile on his lady’s face.
“He is stubborn as a mule, grandiose in his gestures, poor in his material belongings, and doesn’t care. He revels in danger and enjoys treading the narrow path. He is crafty and sly and cunning as a fox. He isn’t greedy, however, so Edward need have no fear of his coffers. As I said, he doesn’t lust after earthly things. Further, there is no family, so Edward need have no worry that he will be pressed for endless favors. Dienwald is also a shrewd, ruthless, occasionally disgraceful man who will do anything to gain what he wants.”
“Ah,” said Burnell, writing again. “He becomes human at last, my lord.”
“The lady, Philippa de Beauchamp,” Kassia said. “Is she a pretty girl? Sweet-tempered?”
“I know not, save what I have been told, my lady. That is, she is a Plantagenet and thus must be considered beautiful. Since his majesty said that, it is a matter of close-held opinion and not be contested.”
Kassia laughed. “And her disposition?”
“I know not. She was raised by Lord Henry and she still believes him her father. I know aught about the Lady Maude. The king, very young then, ordered that if the child survived her infancy, she be taught to read and write and cipher. She does these things well, I was told. She is perhaps too well-learned for Dienwald de Fortenberry—or mayhap for any man, no matter his rank or his leanings toward kindness and tolerance. She is possibly too set in her own ways of thinking to be content with a master’s heavy hand, but truly, I know not for certain.”
“Dienwald needs a woman of strong character,” Graelam said. “A woman who can kick his groin one minute and salve his wounds the next.”
“I travel to Beauchamp upon my return to London. I will see the girl then and report all to the king. De Fortenberry sounds like a man the king might wish for his daughter. Does the king know de Fortenberry?”
“I don’t think so,” Graelam said. “Edward hasn’t been long in England yet, nor has he come to Cornwall to see his vassals. Dienwald is not a man to travel to London to wait upon his majesty. He is a man who holds to himself.”
“I suppose that could show that he is not a leech. It is also true that his majesty has not long been home, but Edward is so overwhelmed with all the needs of England.”
“Aye, and there are Wales and Scotland to be ground under the royal foot.”
Robert Burnell gave Lord Graelam a thin smile. The lord was criticizing, though his tone was light and his sarcasm barely touched the ear, but Burnell wouldn’t tolerate it. He harrumphed as his eyes narrowed, and said, “Did I tell you, my lord, that it was the queen herself who suggested that you be consulted? The queen! She advised him on his illegitimate daughter.”
“The queen,” Graelam said, “is a lady of honest and gracious ideals. Edward gained another part of himself when he wedded with her. Mayhap the best part.”
At these last words, Lord Graelam smiled yet again at his wife as Burnell sipped his milk and looked on.
St. Erth Castle
Dienwald avoided his prisoner. He remembered, the next morning, what he’d said in his drunkenness. God’s ribs, had he truly gone on and on about deep spring? What nonsense! Had he truly told her of Kassia and of his feelings for her? What idiocy! He despised himself so much that he’d welcomed the violent retching. He’d been a blockhead and a loose-mouth. The next thing he knew he’d be singing to her in rhyme like his fool.
Thinking of Crooky, Dienwald wondered where he was and went in search of him. He asked Hood, the porter, but he hadn’t seen the fool. He asked the armorer, who merely spat and shrugged. It was Old Agnes who told him.
“Aye, the little mistress is fitting him for a tunic, master. She told him she would have two sewn for him if he would but promise not to sing to her for a month.”
“She’s not little,” Dienwald said, and strode away. Damn the wench’s eyes, he thought, interfering in everything, sticking her big feet in where they didn’t belong. If his fool’s elbows stuck out of his clothes, it wasn’t her mission to give him a new tunic. He looked down at his own nearly worn-through tunic. He had yet to see the one she’d made for him, sewed it herself, he remembered, and for an instant he softened. But only for that brief moment. He’d told her about Kassia, blathered on about a pagan belief that, in his mind at least, fitted cleanly with Father Cramdle’s heaven and its multitude of saints. Then he’d gone on and on about Walter de Grasse, a man he’d sworn to kill, a man who’d given him no choice but to try to kill him. He’d made an ass of himself. It wasn’t to be borne.
Everywhere he looked these days, the women were sitting in small groups, gossiping whilst they sewed. They’d see him and giggle, and he wanted to bellow at them that Philippa wasn’t their damned mistress.
How had things gotten so twisted up? She’d jumped out of the wool wagon looking like a fright from hell itself, and then she’d proceeded to take over. It wasn’t to be tolerated, despite the fact that she slept in his bed and he touched her and caressed her whenever he wished to—but it was harder now, because it was no longer the game it had started out to be. He wanted her, wanted her more than he’d ever wanted any of the women who’d always welcomed him when he’d had the need. But because the witch was still a maid and because he had somehow come to regard her as more than just another female to be treated according to his whims, he couldn’t, wouldn’t, suffer the obvious consequences of taking her maidenhead. He wasn’t that great a fool.
His thoughts were interrupted by a shriek from his son, near the cistern by the weaving shed. Dienwald didn’t worry about it until he heard Philippa yell, “Hold still or I’ll break your ear! Edmund, hold still!”
Interfering again, and this time with his son. What was she doing now? He broke into a trot.
“You rancid little puffin! Hold still or I’ll cuff you!”
Dienwald rounded the corner of the weaving outbuilding to see Philippa holding Edmund’s arm and dousing him with a bucket of water. She quickly picked up a block of soap once she’d gotten him wet, and now she was scrubbing him with all her strength, which was considerable. Edmund was squirming and fighting and yelling, but he couldn’t break away. He was also naked, his ragged clothes strewn on the ground.
Philippa wasn’t unscathed, however. She was sopping wet, her hair loose from its tie at the nape of her neck and flying out in a wild nimbus around her head. Her frayed gown was plastered against her breasts. She and Edmund were standing in a growing mud puddle from all the water she was throwing on him.
Dienwald watched Philippa pull Edmund back against her, and now she scrubbed him with both hands—his face, his hair, even his elbows. He was shrieking about his burning eyes, but she just kept saying over and over, “Edmund, stop fighting me! It will go easier with you if you just hold still.”
Edmund went on howling like a gutted hog.
Dienwald came closer but kept out of range of the deepening mud puddle. His people were wandering by, not paying much attention, but there was Father Cramdle, his arms crossed over his chest, looking pious and quite pleased. The pig, Tupper, was squealing near Philippa, coming close to her, then retreating quickly when threatened with flying streams of water from the bucket.
Dienwald kept quiet until Philippa had doused Edmund with another bucket of water to rinse him off. Then she wrapped him in a huge towel—one newly cut, he realized—and lifted him out of the mud and rubbed him until he was dry.
She kept him wrapped up, then lifted him onto a plank of pine and hunkered down to her knees in front of him. “Listen to me, you wretched little spittlecock. ‘Tis done, and you’re clean. Stay away from all this mud and filth. Now, you will go with Father Cramdle and garb yourself in your new clothes. Do you understand? And then you will have your lessons.”
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Dienwald heard a muffled shout of, “I hate you, Maypole!” coming from beneath the towel that covered Edmund’s head.
“That’s all right. At least you’re clean and I don’t have to watch you stuff food in your mouth with filth under your fingernails. Go, now.”
Edmund’s head emerged from the towel. He glowered at Philippa, but she didn’t change expression. Edmund was about to retire from the field when he saw Dienwald.
“Father! Help me, look what the witch did to me!” And on and on it went as Dienwald just stood there, wanting to laugh, yet furious that Philippa had forced cleanliness upon his son, and wondering how she’d enlisted Father Cramdle in her task, for the priest was surely on her side.
Meanwhile Edmund kept shrieking and complaining, dancing about on his clean feet. Finally Dienwald, seeing that the result was to his liking, even if Philippa’s pushing ways were not, said in a voice that brought his son to instant silence, “Edmund, I fancy that I hear your mother in you, which is distressing. You will go with Father Cramdle and clothe yourself. I had no idea you had become such a filthy little villein. Keep your shrieks behind your teeth or you will feel my hand.”
Edmund, head down and silent as a pebble, trailed after Father Cramdle, the towel wrapped around him like a Roman toga.
“Thank you,” Philippa said to Dienwald. He said nothing for a moment, just watched her try to straighten her hair, pulling it back, away from her face.
He strode up to her. “Hold still yourself, wench.”
She did. He smoothed her hair and retied it with the bit of leather. He frowned at the dirty strip of hide. She needed a proper ribbon, a ribbon of bright color to complement her hair, something . . .
“You look worse than Edmund. Much worse. Like a dirty wet rag. Do something with yourself.” With those pleasing sentiments duly expressed, Dienwald turned on his heel. He heard a loud whoosh, but not in time. A half-filled bucket of water struck him squarely between the shoulder blades and he went flying forward from the force of it, hitting a goat. The goat reared back and kicked Dienwald on the thigh. He cried out, grabbing his leg, which caused him to lose his balance and fell sideways into a deep patch of black mud. He came up on his hands and knees, but for a moment he didn’t move. He had no intention of moving until he’d regained complete control of himself. Slowly, very slowly, he rose and turned to see Philippa standing there like a statue yet to be finished, a look of mingled horror and defiance on her face. People had stopped their conversations and were converging and staring. Then Gorkel, with a low rumbling noise, came forward, stepped squarely into the mud, and began to brush off his master.
“ ‘Twere an accident,” Gorkel said as he grabbed gobs of mud from Dienwald’s clothing and flung them away. “The mistress acts, then thinks—ye know that, master. Aye, but she’s—”
“You damnable monster, don’t defend her! Be still!”
Gorkel obligingly shut his mouth and continued scraping off mud.
Dienwald shook himself free of his minion’s help and strode over to Philippa, who took one step back, then stopped and faced him, squaring her shoulders.
“You struck me!” The incredulity in his voice equaled the outrage. “You’re a female, and you struck me. You threw that damned bucket at me.”
“Actually,” Philippa said, inching a bit further back, “it was the bucket that struck you, not I. I didn’t realize I was such a marksman, or rather, that the bucket was such a marksman.” Then, to her own astonishment, she giggled.
Dienwald drew several very long, very deep breaths. “If I throw you into that mud, you will have nothing to wear. You haven’t yet sewed anything for yourself, have you?”
She shook her head, not giggling quite so loudly now.
He looked at her nipples, taut against the wet tunic. The material also clung to her thighs.
He smiled at her, and Philippa felt herself shrivel with humiliation. “Throw me in the mud,” she said. “Do that, but please don’t do what you’re thinking.”
“And what is that, pray? Ripping off that rag and letting my people see the shrew beneath it?”
She nodded and tried to cover her breasts with her hands. “I’m not a shrew.”
“All right,” he said, and without another word, moving so quickly she had only time to squeak in surprise, Dienwald grabbed her about the hips, lifted her, and strode to the black puddle and dropped her. She landed on her bottom, arms and legs flying outward, and mud spewed out in thick waves, hitting him and Gorkel. She felt it squishing over her legs, felt it seep through the gown, and she wanted to laugh at the consequences that she’d brought upon herself, but she didn’t. She now had nothing to wear, nothing save this now-ruined gown.
She looked up at Dienwald, who stood in front of her, his hands on his hips. He was laughing.
Philippa saw red. Tears clogged her throat, but her fury was stronger by far. She managed to come to her feet, the mud clinging and making loud sucking noises. She flung herself at him, clutching his arms and yanking him toward her. She locked her foot behind his calf and he fell toward her, laughing all the while. Together they went down, Dienwald on top of her, Philippa flat on her back, the mud flying everywhere.
Dienwald raised himself on his hands, his fingers clenching deep into the muck. He slowly raised one mud-filled hand and opened it against her face and rubbed. She gasped and spat, but then he felt her knees against his back and he was falling sideways as she rolled against him, knocking him onto his back, pounding her fists at him, her muddy hands sliding over his face, slapping him with it.
He dimly heard people laughing and shouting and cheering for him, cheering for Philippa. Wagers were screamed out, and even the animals were dinning, for once louder than the children. Then Tupper leaped into the mud, not three inches from Dienwald’s head, snorting loudly, poking his snout into Dienwald’s face.
It was too much for a man to suffer. Dienwald spread his arms in surrender and yelled at the bouncing fury astride him, “I yield, wench! I yield!”
Tupper snorted and squealed and kept the mud churning.
Philippa laughed, and as he looked up at her, he wanted her right then—muddy black face, filthy matted hair, and all.
“Master, pray forgive me.” Northbert stood on the edge of the mud puddle, consternation writ on his ugly face.
Dienwald cocked an eye at him. “Aye? What is it?”
“We have visitors, master.”
“There are visitors at St. Erth’s gates?”
“Nay, master. The visitors are right here.”
13
Philippa was shocked into numb silence. She didn’t move, but of course, she had no drier place to move to. Dienwald looked behind Northbert and saw Graelam de Moreton striding toward them, tell and powerful and well-garbed and clean, and he was staring toward Dienwald as if he’d grown two heads. And then he was staring at Philippa.
“God give you grace, Graelam,” Dienwald said easily. His eyes went to Kassia, standing now beside her husband, wrapped in a fine ermine-lined cloak of soft white wool. She looked beautiful, soft and sweet, her chestnut hair in loose braids atop her head. He saw she was trying very hard not to laugh. “Welcome to St. Erth, Kassia. I hope I see you well, sweet lady.”
Kassia couldn’t hold it back. She burst into laughter, hiccuping against her palm as she gasped out, “You sound like a courtier at the king’s court, Dienwald, suave and confident, while you lie sprawled in the mud . . . Ah, Dienwald, your face . . .”
Dienwald looked up at Philippa, who’d turned into a mud statue astride him. “Move, wench,” he said, grinning up at her. “As you see, we have visitors and must bestir ourselves to see to their comfort.”
Kassia, Philippa was thinking, her mind nearly as muddy as her body. Kassia, the lady that Dienwald held so dear to his wretched heart. And Philippa could understand his feelings for the slight, utterly feminine confection who stood well out of range of the mud puddle. That exquisite example of womanhood would
never, ever find herself sitting astride a man in a mud puddle. Philippa’s eyes went to Lord Graelam de Moreton, and she saw a man who would never yield, a man both fierce and hard, a man who was Kassia’s husband, bless his wondrous existence. She remembered now seeing him once at Beauchamp when she was very young. He’d been bellowing at her father about a tourney they were both to join near Taunton.
“Wench, move,” Dienwald said again, and as he spoke, he laughed, circled her waist with his hands, and lifted her off him. He carefully set her beside him in the mud.
She felt the black ooze sliding up her bottom.
“Graelam, why don’t you take your very clean wife into the hall. I will scrub myself and join you soon.”
“ ‘Twill take all the water in your well,” Graelam said, threw back his head, and laughed. “Nay, Dienwald, sling not mud at me. My lady just stitched me this fine tunic.” He laughed and laughed as he took his wife’s soft white hand in his and led her away, saying over his shoulder, “All right, but I begin to cherish that black face of yours. It grows closer to the color of your heart.”
Dienwald didn’t move until Graelam and Kassia, trailed by a half-dozen Wolffeton men-at-arms, had disappeared around the side of the weaving shed. He could hear Kassia’s high giggles and Graelam’s low rumbles of laughter.
Philippa hadn’t said a single word. She hadn’t made a sound, merely sat there in the mud, a study of silent misery.
Dienwald eyed her, then yelled for another bucket to be brought. “Get up, Philippa,” he said, and when she did, he continued, “Now, step out of the mud,” and when she did, he threw a bucket of cold water over her head. Philippa gasped and shivered and automatically rubbed the mud off her face. The late-April air was chill, but she hadn’t realized it until now.
After three more buckets she was ready for the soap.
“You will have to remove the tunic soon,” he said, then called for Old Agnes to fetch two blankets. He looked at the score of people staring at them, laughing behind their hands, and roared, “Out of here, all of you! If I see any of you in two seconds, you’ll feel the flat of my sword on your buttocks!”