Velvet Song

  Jocelin stood. “You won’t be too hard on her, will you? Unless I’m mistaken, I think she believes herself to be in love with you.”

  Raine’s grin was face splitting. “Good. No, I’ll not harm her, but I will make her taste a bit of her own medicine.”

  An hour later, when Alyx returned to the tent, her chin pointed toward the sky, Raine and Jocelin were leisurely playing a game of dice, neither of them seeming to be much interested in the game.

  “Alyx,” Raine said, not bothering to look up. “Did you practice on the field today? You’re scrawny enough without losing the little muscle you have.”

  “Practice,” she gasped, then calmed herself. “For some reason I don’t understand now, I was concerned about whether you lived or died and gave no thought to embellishing my puny body.”

  With an expression of astonishment and hurt, Raine looked up at her. “Alyx, how can you speak to me so? Are you truly angry that I lived? Go away, Joss, I’m too tired to play anymore. Perhaps I’ll fetch myself some wine—as soon as I’m strong enough,” he added, lying back on the cot with a great show of weariness.

  Joss gave a choking cough before slipping the dice into his pocket, rolling his eyes at Raine and leaving the tent.

  Alyx tried to remain aloof, but when she saw Raine collapsed on the cot, looking so pale, so helpless, she relented. “I will bring you wine,” she sighed, and when she handed it to him his hand was trembling so that she had to put her arm around his shoulders, support him and hold the cup to his lips—those lips that even now made her breath come quick.

  “You are tired,” Raine said sympathetically. “And how long has it been since you’ve had a bath? No one in the world can get as dirty as a boy your age. Ah, well,” he said, smiling, leaning back. “Someday when you’ve found the right woman you’ll want to please her. Did I ever tell you of the time I was in a tournament outside Paris? There were three women who—”

  “No!” she yelled, making him blink innocently at her. “I do not want to hear your dirty stories.”

  “A squire should have more of an education than just weapons. For instance, when you play the lute, the tunes you choose and the words you sing are more suited for a female. A woman likes a man who is strong, sure of himself, she’d never like a wailing youth who sounds more like a female.”

  “A wailing—!” she began, thoroughly insulted. She may not be beautiful, but she was sure of her music. “And what do you know of women?” she snarled. “If you know as little of women as music, you are as ignorant as you are—”

  “As I am what?” he said with interest, propping himself on one elbow to face her. “As handsome? As strong? As lusty?” he asked, practically leering at her.

  “As vain!” she shouted.

  “Ah, would that the size of you matched the strength of your voice. Have you ever tried pulling down castle walls by screeching at them? Perhaps you could strike a note and an enemy’s army of horses would follow you off into the wilderness.”

  “Stop it! Stop it!” she screamed. “I hate you, you great, stupid, cowering nobleman!” With that she turned toward the tent flap, but Raine, his voice low, commanding, called her back.

  “Fetch Rosamund, would you? I don’t feel well at all.”

  She turned one step toward him but recalled herself and left the tent. Outside many people stood, obviously having heard the argument inside the tent. Trying her best to ignore the people as they laughed and punched each other, Alyx went to the training ground and spent three hard hours practicing with a bow and arrow.

  Finally, exhausted, she went to the river, bathed, washed her hair and ate before returning to the tent.

  It was dark in the tent, and since no sound came from Raine she assumed he was asleep. Now, she thought, if she had the courage, she’d walk away from this camp and never return. Why did she think that what was special to her was anything at all to this lord of the realm? No doubt he was used to women slipping in and out of his bed and paid little attention to them. What did one more matter? If she revealed herself as his last conquest, would he laugh or perhaps try to establish her as one of his many women? Would she and Blanche take turns entertaining him?

  “Alyx?” Raine asked sleepily. “You were gone a long time. Did you eat something?”

  “A bucket full,” she said nastily, “so I can grow to be the size of your horse.”

  “Alyx, don’t be angry with me. Come and sit by me and sing me a song.”

  “I know no songs like the ones you like.”

  “I will manage,” he said, and his voice was so tired she relented, taking up the lute and playing quietly, humming with the tune.

  “Judith will like you,” he murmured.

  “Judith? Your brother’s beautiful wife? Why should a lady like her bother with a baseborn lawyer’s . . . son?” She’d almost said “daughter.”

  “She will like your music,” he said, his voice heavy with sleep, and Alyx resumed her playing.

  When she was sure he was asleep she went to him, knelt by his bed and for a moment watched him, doing little more than assuring herself that he was alive. Finally, she went to her own hard bed and used all her strength to keep from crying.

  In the morning Raine insisted on going to the training ground. No protest from Alyx or Jocelin could persuade him to rest for another day. As he walked, Alyx could see the sweat on his forehead, the dull look in his eyes as he forced himself to move.

  “If you die, what use will you be to us?” Alyx tossed at him.

  “If I die will you go personally and notify my family?” he said in such seriousness that her breath caught. Then a dimple flashed and she knew he was teasing her.

  “I will throw your great carcass over a horse and go to meet your perfect family, but I will not kneel with your sisters to mourn you.”

  “There will be other women besides my sisters to cry at my passing. Did I ever tell you about Judith’s maid Joan? I have never met a more enthusiastic woman in my life.”

  At that Alyx turned away, her back rigid against the sound of Raine’s rumbling laugh.

  After an hour’s training, Alyx ran back to the tent to fetch some of Rosamund’s herb drink for Raine, and there she found Blanche sorting through his clothes.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Alyx demanded, making Blanche jump guiltily.

  “For . . . for laundry,” she said, her eyes darting.

  Alyx laughed at that. “Since when do you know what soap is?” With a quick movement she grabbed Blanche’s arms. “You’d better tell me the truth. You know what the punishment for stealing is—banishment.”

  “I should leave here,” Blanche whined, trying to twist away from Alyx. “There’s nothing here for me anymore. Let me go!”

  As Blanche pulled Alyx pushed, and Blanche went sailing across the room, her back hitting a tent pole.

  “I’ll repay you for this,” Blanche sneered. “I’ll make you sorry you ever took Lord Raine away from me.

  “I?” Alyx asked, trying to keep the pleasure from her voice. “And how have I taken Raine?”

  “You know he doesn’t take me to his bed anymore,” she said, rising. “Now that he has a boy—”

  “Careful,” Alyx warned. “It seems to me that you should worry about my anger toward you. What were you searching for when I came in?”

  Blanche refused to speak.

  “Then I guess I’ll have to talk to Raine,” Alyx said, turning to leave.

  “No!” Blanche said, tears in her voice. “I have nowhere else to go. Please don’t tell him. I’ll not steal. I never have before.”

  “I have a price for not telling Raine.”

  “What?” Blanche asked, frightened.

  “Tell me about Jocelin.”

  “Jocelin?” Blanche asked, as if she’d never heard the name before.

  Alyx only glared at her. “I will be missed soon, and if I don’t have the story by the time someone comes for me, Raine will hear of your stealing.”


  Immediately, Blanche began the tale. “Jocelin was a jongleur and all the highest-born ladies wanted him, not only for his music but for his . . .” She hesitated. “The man never grew tired,” she said wistfully, making Alyx believe she had firsthand knowledge.

  “He went to the Chatworth castle at the command of Lady Alice.”

  The name Chatworth made Alyx’s head come up. Chatworth was the man who held Raine’s sister and sister-in-law.

  “Lady Alice is an evil woman,” Blanche continued, “but her husband, Lord Edmund, was worse. He liked to beat women, watch their struggles as he took them. There was a woman, Constance, and he beat her until she died—or at least he thought she was dead. He gave the body to Joss to dispose of.”

  “And?” Alyx encouraged. “I haven’t much time left.”

  “The woman was not dead and Joss hid her, nursed her back to health and he fell in love with her.”

  “Was this unusual for a man of Joss’s . . . talents?”

  Blanche suddenly began to look very nervous, her hands pulling on each other, standing on first one foot, then the other. “I don’t believe he’d ever loved anyone before. When Lord Edmund found out the girl was still alive, he took her for his own again and threw Jocelin in an oubliette. And the girl . . . this Constance . . .”

  “Yes?” Alyx said impatiently.

  “She thought Joss was as good as dead and so she killed herself.”

  At that, Alyx crossed herself at such a sin. “But Joss did get out, and he came here,” she finished.

  “But first he killed Lord Edmund,” Blanche said quietly, and with that she pushed past Alyx and ran from the tent.

  “Killed a lord,” Alyx whispered to no one. No doubt there was a huge reward for his head, and no wonder he wanted nothing to do with the women of the camp. Alyx knew very well what it was to love a man and to lose him.

  “What are you doing in here?” Raine asked angrily from behind her. “You have been gone for at least an hour, and here I find you standing alone doing nothing.”

  “I’ll work,” she muttered, turning away.

  He caught her arm but released her as quickly as he touched her. “Have you had some bad news?”

  “None that would interest you,” she snapped before leaving the tent.

  Alyx’s thoughts for the rest of the day were taken up with Jocelin. Joss was a sweet, kind, sensitive man, and he deserved someone to love him. She wished she could have fallen in love with Joss; how much easier everything would be. Someday, probably soon, Raine would leave the forest and go back to his rich family and she would be alone.

  As she absently lifted a sword, trying to bring it straight down over her head, her eye caught a movement at the corner of the field. In the shadows, standing still, watching, was Rosamund. Following her glance, Alyx saw that the woman looked only at Jocelin, that in her eyes blazed passion and fire and, as Alyx recognized it, lust. Her head wasn’t bowed, and for the first time there was no subservience about her, no apology for having been born.

  “Alyx! You slacken!” Raine yelled at her, and with a grimace she put her mind back on her training.

  That night, Raine, exhausted, still very weak, went to his cot to rest, while Alyx sat outside in the cold night air and ate a bowl of beans. Beside her sat Jocelin.

  “You tore your shirt,” she commented. “Someone should sew it for you.”

  Before Alyx could breathe, three women cheerfully said they’d sew it.

  “No,” Joss muttered, looking at his bowl. “It does well enough as it is.”

  “Give one of them your shirt,” Alyx said impatiently. “I will fetch one of Raine’s to warm you. He has more than enough of them.”

  Reluctantly, Joss took off his shirt as Alyx hurried to the tent, cast one look at Raine’s sleeping form and hurried out again, a shirt over her arm. Outside, she paused. Jocelin sat before the fire, his body bare from the waist up, women all around him, their eyes greedy as they looked at Joss, at his handsomeness, his obvious melancholy, and far to one side stood Rosamund. But Jocelin never looked at any of the women.

  At the fire, Alyx handed Joss the shirt and dipped herself a mug of boiling cider, blowing on the liquid to cool it.

  Suddenly, a noise just outside the circle of light made everyone’s head turn in that direction.

  Later, Alyx didn’t really remember consciously planning what she did. No one was looking, she was standing next to Jocelin’s bare body and holding the hot cider. All she thought of was that if Joss were hurt, he’d have to go to Rosamund, and the next moment she poured half the cider on Joss’s arm.

  Instantly, she was sorry. Jocelin jumped away from her, the shirt falling from his lap.

  “Joss, I . . .” she began, looking in horror at the skin on his arm turning red.

  “Rosamund,” someone whispered. “Get Rosamund.”

  Within seconds Rosamund was there, her cool fingers on Joss’s arm, and she was leading him away into the shadows.

  Alyx wasn’t aware of it, but there were tears in her eyes and her body was trembling from what she’d just done. It had all happened so fast and she’d had no time to think.

  A great hand clamped on the back of her neck, paralyzing her.

  “You will follow me to the river, and if you do not I will take a whip to your back now,” Raine growled in her ear, his voice barely concealing his rage.

  Her guilt over what she’d done to Joss was replaced by sheer terror. A whip to her back? Swallowing, she followed Raine into the dark forest. She deserved punishment, for she had no right whatever to hurt her friend.

  Chapter Nine

  AT THE RIVER, Raine turned to her, his fine lips curled into a snarl. “I should beat you,” he said fiercely as he pushed her once, lightly, sending her sprawling onto the cold earth.

  “And what slight did you imagine Jocelin had done you?” he asked, teeth clenched. “Were you jealous of the cut of his doublet? Had he said something you disliked? Perhaps he played a better song than you.”

  That got her attention. “No one is better than I,” she said firmly, her jaw jutted forward as she stared up at him.

  “Damn you!” he said, grabbing the front of her shirt and pulling her upward. “I trusted you. I thought you were one of the few of your class who had a sense of honor. But you’re like all the others—allowing your petty differences to override your honor.”

  The two of them were an odd couple, Raine twice Alyx’s size, towering, looming over her, but Alyx’s voice was second to no one’s. “Honor,” she yelled back at him. “You don’t know the meaning of the word. And Jocelin is my friend. He and I have no differences.” She made it clear who she had the differences with.

  “So! Your low little mind poured boiling cider on him for the fun of it. You are like Alice Chatworth. That woman loves to give and receive pain. Had I known you were like her—”

  With that Alyx doubled her fist and hit Raine in the stomach. While he was blinking at her, she grabbed his knife from the sheath at his side. “Spare me the history of your stupid family,” she shouted, pressing the point to his stomach. “I will explain to Jocelin what I did and why I did it, but for you, you vain, arrogant braggart, you deserve nothing. You judge and condemn without one word of facts.”

  Impatiently, Raine brushed at her arm to knock the knife away, but Alyx’s reflexes had quickened in the last weeks and Raine’s were dulled from his fever. The blade cut the back and side of his hand and caused both of them to halt as they watched the blood well from the cut.

  “You thirst for blood, do you?” Raine said. “Either mine or my friend’s. I will show you how to receive pain.” He reached for her, but she sidestepped him.

  It took two tries to catch her, and when he did his hands clamped down on her shoulders as he shook her very hard. “How could you do that?” he demanded. “I trusted you. How could you betray me?”

  It was difficult for the words to register when her head was about to fly off, but she finally b
egan to understand what he was saying. Jocelin was Raine’s responsibility, and he took his duties seriously. “Rosamund, Rosamund, Rosamund,” she began to chant.

  When at last he heard her, he stopped shaking her. “Tell me,” he yelled in her face.

  Her body was weak from the force of his shaking of her. “Rosamund is in love with Jocelin, and I thought she could replace Constance, but not if they were apart.”

  This made no sense to Raine. His fingers tightened on her shoulders, and she wondered if soon they’d come through. Quickly, she explained Joss’s story about Constance, omitting the name of Chatworth.

  Stunned silence from Raine filled the air. “You are matchmaking?” he croaked. “You wounded Jocelin because of some idiotic ideas of love?”

  “What would you know of love?” she tossed at him. “You know so little of women that you don’t know one when you see one.”

  “True,” he countered quickly. “I am an innocent when it comes to the lying, deceiving ways of women.”

  “Not all women are liars.”

  “Name one who is not.”

  She was dying to mention herself but could not. “Rosamund,” she blurted. “She is a good, kind person.”

  “Not when she uses such methods to snare a man.”

  “Snare! Who would want to catch such a loathsome specimen as a man?” She stopped her tirade when she saw Raine’s eyes sparkling. “You know,” she gasped. “You know.”

  She did not waste much time in speculating on the truth of her assumptions but lifted herself from the ground and flew at him, her fists clenched. “You—!” she began in anger, but Raine stopped her. He caught her, clasping the slight body against him and drawing her mouth to his. Hungrily, he kissed her, his hand on the back of her head, his other hand about her waist, holding her off the ground.

  “Remember that I am a weak man,” he whispered. “And a long day on the training field has—”

  Alyx bit him on the shoulder. “How long have you known?”

  “Not as long as I would have liked. Why didn’t you tell me from the start? I understand why you had to dress as a boy, but I would have kept the secret.”