Even as he spoke the harsh words and saw her flinch, Jaufre regretted his churlishness, but the burning pain and growing sense of giddiness stifled any attempts he might have made to ask her pardon. He did not want to rip up at Melyssan. If only she could let be. If only she understood the true source of his agitation. But he could not bring himself to add to her distress by telling her of the messenger that had arrived early that morning. He hated to watch the way her face drained of all color, how her eyes dilated with fear at the mere mention of the king's name.
How would she react if she knew that John had summoned the earl to march with his army against the Welsh, a summons that concluded by declaring that if Jaufre did not come, John would know once and for all that the earl was his enemy and a traitor to the realm of England?
To send word now of his injury would seem like fabricating a convenient excuse. If he were attainted for treason, what would happen to Melyssan, Tristan, his knights, and all those who followed under his banner? They would be dragged down with him. What of the pledge of his grandfather, which he had not yet tried to fulfill? Jaufre rubbed his thumb over the swans on the signet ring. He had no choice. He had to join the army at Nottingham. But how he would manage it when his head swam with every step he took, he did not know.
`If only you had left those splinters," he said. "At least I could still walk on the leg without sopping in my own blood."
"Your flesh would have mortified," she cried. “'You would have perished."
He shook off her hands, repulsing her attempts to balance him. "I am of little use to anyone the way I am. Better to be dead than crippled."
He pulled away from her, limping across the great hall, not even aware she no longer followed him. The hands that had been reaching out to him dropped back to her sides as she stood there, too stunned to even cry. Such cruel words she could have borne from another man, but not Jaufre! She believed she had won his esteem, and now to hear him voice the same scornful thoughts she had heard since the cradle!
Better dead than crippled. The words pounded through her head as she whirled blindly and fled from the great hall.
Jaufre glanced back in time to obtain a glimpse of the distraught, almost wild look on her face before she disappeared. For the first time, it occurred to him what he had said. But Melyssan could not possibly think he had been speaking of her. A fear sharper than any pain from the leg struck through him.
"Melyssan? Lyssa! Come back!" His voice grew hoarse with shouting as he struggled to overtake her. But for once, she was the swifter of the two. Hampered by the pain throbbing through his leg and light-headedness, he reached the archway at the top of the stairs to find Melyssan was nowhere in sight.
"Lyssa!" His cry sounded muffled even to his own ears. He felt hands tugging at him, and Arric's voice drifted to him as if from a great distance.
"Have to stop her and tell her," he mumbled as he felt his legs caving in beneath him. He clutched at the young page, but it was too late. Both he and Attic toppled headlong down the stairs. Something cold and hard struck Jaufre's forehead, and then all was blackness.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lady Enid thrust her needle into the linen held taut by the tambour and wondered what sort of punishment would be dealt a woman if she shoved her mother out the tower window. Would she be hanged? Drawn and quartered? Burned at the stake? It might be worth the risk. Dame Alice was so reed-thin, Enid wagered that she would fit, even stuffed through the arrow slits of the ladies' bower.
She tucked back a stray tendril that had escaped from the golden braids twisted around her head and glanced across at the older woman, whose jaws worked as swiftly as her fingers winding flax onto the distaff. Time had left some traces of once acclaimed beauty in Dame Alice's angular face, but her voice had never been melodious. Most of Enid's ladies-in-waiting had found some excuse to absent themselves from hearing range of her mother's sharp tongue.
Would that Enid had been as fortunate. The nasal tones droned in her ear with the same monotonous regularity of the katydids in the trees by Kingsbury Castle's moat.
"Never was any woman so plagued by her children. Now here's Beatrice with child and wed to a landless knight as poor as a mendicant friar. Though I suppose I must thank God anyone would have her after the disgraceful way she ran off from Lord Jaufre. And you!" Dame Alice directed a reproachful glance at Enid. "Your husband not cold in his grave and you marry that steward."
"Since my lord Harcourt has been buried a year and more, I trust he is very cold by now," Enid said. "God knows he was frigid enough whilst he lived. And that steward has a name, Mother. It is Robert." She curved her mouth in a slow, sensuous smile, mostly because she derived great pleasure from thinking of her sweet, handsome Rob, but partly because she knew the expression would irritate her mother.
Dame Alice compressed her lips in a look of disgust.
"And then there is Melyssan. Who would ever have thought she would be clever enough to win Lord Jaufre for a husband?" The stiff white wimple that framed Dame Alice's face shook as she tossed her head to express her amazement. "And what a waste to have such a daughter for a countess, one who can never take her place at court. For even though the earl was taken in enough to marry her, you can be sure once he had his first good look at that foot, he must have shut her away somewhere.
"It is the only way I can account for the fact she has never once sent any messengers to me with tidings. Why, with the retainers the earl keeps, she might even have dispatched an entourage to escort me to Winterbourne for a visit. Yet it appears never to have occurred to her."
"Well, I always thought Melyssan a very clever girl," Enid murmured. When her mother's lips quivered with anger, she added hastily, "Had Whitney nothing to say of my sister when he returned home?"
"Him! He has been so closemouthed one might mistake him for a lackwit. And Father Andrew is just as bad. When I made a few pleasant inquiries after my own daughter, he behaved as if I sought to pry into the secrets of the confessional. There is something gravely amiss at Winterbourne, you mind my words."
The dame's hawklike eyes glinted with satisfaction. "And whatever the trouble is, you may be sure Melyssan is at the root of it. From the moment of that girl's birth, she has brought nothing but misery. I always said . . ."
Enid closed her eyes, wishing she could as easily stop up her ears as her mother launched off into another diatribe. The castle was so overrun with guests come to attend the tournament to be held at Kingsbury Plain that this was the first moment Enid had been able to sit down in two days. All the same, she hailed with relief the interruption of the red-haired lady who burst unceremoniously into the chamber.
"Beg pardon, Lady Enid." Dena dropped a quick curtsy and then bent over and whispered in Enid's ear, "There is a passing strange woman in the garden asking for you. A lame beggar woman."
"Why, then tell Cook to give the poor creature some food," Enid replied in low tones.
"Nay, my lady. The woman is amazingly persistent and has such an air about her and she bid me say that Lyssa begs to be remembered to you."
Lyssa! Enid jabbed the needle into her finger, spattering a few droplets of blood onto the white linen.
"You know who I believe she is?" Dena continued excitedly. "I think it is your sis--"
Enid clapped her hand over the girl's mouth while Dame Alice glared at her with suspicion.
"What is that rude wench saying to make you look as if a spirit had crept out of the walls? Pretty behavior you teach your maids, upon my word! Rushing about so boisterously, whispering secrets and suchlike." She leaned forward and poked Dena in the ribs. "If you have anything to say, girl, then out with it."
As Dena pouted and rubbed her side, Enid leapt to her feet, her tambour flying unheeded to the floor. "It is only a petty domestic matter, Mother, nothing you should fret about."
Dame Alice started to protest, but for once Enid was able to cut her short. "Pray remain seated, my lady. I will return anon." Lifting the train o
f her gown, she fled the room with Dena hard after her.
Silencing Dena's stream of breathless questions, Enid raced down the curving stone stair that led to the castle courtyard. In the herb garden near the great stone baking kilns, she caught sight of a small figure whose features were muffled in the folds of a ragged cloak. Drawn by the aroma of fresh wheat bread emanating from the large ovens, many beggars found their way to the castle from the nearby town of Kingsbury Plain. Ever since Lord Harcourt had died, none had been turned aside without something to warm their bellies.
But as to Dena's foolish assertion that this particular pauper could be Enid's youngest sister . . . Enid halted a few feet away as the figure turned and pulled back her hood. A pale face peered out at her, dark circles rimming her green eyes. Dear God, it was Lyssa.
Melyssan attempted a feeble smile. "Forgive me, Enid. I knew nowhere else to go." Then she collapsed into Enid's outstretched arms.
Swallowed up in the folds of her tall sister's robe, Melyssan leaned against the pillows of Enid's bed. To please Enid, she picked at the contents of the wooden bowl in her lap. The blancmange of chicken and rice boiled in almond milk did little to tempt her appetite. All she desired was to sleep and to forget.
Enid bustled about the chamber, taking the ointment and towels from the red-haired maid and dismissing the girl. She settled on the edge of the bed near Melyssan's feet.
"I should have cautioned Dena to keep your arrival a secret." Enid frowned. "If our stream ran as fast as that girl's tongue, we would be able to grind enough wheat to feed all of England. Perhaps I shall speak to her as soon as I have attended to your poor feet."
Gently Enid raised the foot that bore most of Melyssan's weight. It was swollen so badly she had to cut away the soft leather patten whose sole had worn through many miles ago. Both feet were tom and bleeding, and Melyssan winced as her sister began to dab at them with a damp cloth.
"Sweet Jesu, child! How long have you been on the road?"
"I don't know, perhaps as long as a month," Melyssan murmured. "I rode with a merchant and his wife as far as Canterbury."
"At least they must have fed you well, little sister. You were always so thin, but you have rounded out since I saw you last, become quite the woman."
Enid's eyes seemed to linger on Melyssan's midsection, causing her to cross her arms defensively over her stomach. She was fully conscious herself of the changes in her body, the slight swell of her breasts and abdomen. But she could admit her secret dread to no one as yet, not even Enid.
Hastily, she changed the subject and began to speak of her journey. It was so much easier to speak of that than of Jaufre, whose face she tried to block from her mind a hundred times each day. She described how she had hidden in the merchant's wagon and had not been discovered until the caravan was many miles from Winterbourne. The merchant's wife had been so kind, believing Melyssan's tale of wanting to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket in hopes of attaining a miracle cure for her foot. The good woman even insisted that her husband go miles out of his way to take her to Canterbury.
"When I slipped away from her at the cathedral," Melyssan said, "I left her the gold-braided chain you gave me the Christmas before you left home. I am sorry, Enid. Besides a few coins in my purse, it was all I had of value to repay her for her kindness."
"Never mind, sweeting. I have a dozen gold chains to give you." Enid tucked the fur coverlet more snugly around Melyssan's legs. "And then you walked all the way here from Canterbury!"
"It was not so bad. I was not alone always. I traveled with some strolling tumblers. People were very kind—most of them."
She refrained from troubling Enid with an account of all she had suffered, the bone-shaking weariness, the strange waves of nausea she experienced upon waking every morning, to be followed later by some of the sharpest hunger pangs she had ever known. Her feelings of loneliness and desolation. Once, when she had passed by a pond, she had stopped for long moments staring at the dark water. Jaufre’s words had echoed in her mind. Better dead than crippled. She could not swim. It would have been so easy to slip into the peaceful depths of the dark water. Then she had crossed herself and begged God's forgiveness for such wicked thoughts, doubly wicked, if her growing fears proved true. More than her own life might be at stake.
There had been those few moments of pure terror as well, a stray dog tearing her cloak, the time she had begged for food at an inn and been forced to watch while the king's soldiers tortured a Jew. They had knocked out his teeth one by one until he revealed where he had hidden his purse. It was rumored that the king would do anything these days to acquire more wealth. It was rumored the king was going mad. Melyssan shivered.
"Are you cold, sweetheart?" Enid asked. "I will have more logs put on the fire."
"You are very good," Melyssan said, putting aside the half-eaten bowl of food.
"Dear Lyssa. Who could be otherwise to you?" Enid flashed her sister a brief smile. "But you make my blood run cold, sweetheart, thinking of all that might have happened to you, wandering about the countryside this way, sleeping out in the open."
"I found shelter most nights." Melyssan managed a weak chuckle. "You've no idea how warm a few pigs braced up against you can feel."
"Faith, I'd rather have a husband to warm my backside."
Melyssan dropped her eyes to the coverlet and felt the color flooding into her cheeks. Enid moved closer and gently chafed one of Melyssan's cold hands between hers.
"Lyssa, it pains me to distress you so. But the time has come for you to tell me everything. It is obvious you have run off from your husband." Enid's pretty face hardened. “It does not surprise me. I have worried about you ever since I first heard that you wed the earl. I want to help you, truly I do. But it will l not be easy for you to escape your husband, no matter how cruelly the knave treats you. The law will be against you."
"Do not speak of Jaufre that way!" Melyssan raised her chin, defying her sister's scorn, yet dreading it. "He is not my husband, Enid. But I have bedded with him, shamelessly seduced him. What think you of that?" She gave a half-hysterical laugh. "And I would do it again, because I love him so much I think I am like to die of it." Her voice trailed away as hot tears trickled down her cheeks, the tears she had refused to shed ever since the day she had fled from Jaufre.
Enid's shocked expression faded as she drew Melyssan's head against her shoulder, stroking her hair. "There, there, my little Lyssa. Hush, babe. Don't cry. It is all right. Enid is here now. Enid will take care of you."
Melyssan clung tightly to her sister, attempting to draw comfort from the words she had heard so many times in her childhood. If only Enid could make all better, as she had done so many times in the past, but what was hurting her now was well beyond her sister's capacity to heal.
"Oh, Enid," she cried. "He turned against me, just as Father Andrew warned me he would. In the end, he pitied me the same as all the others. I thought he was different. I thought perhaps he cared a little bit. But when he said that, I knew he didn't and that he never would. But I couldn't stop loving him, and I couldn't bear to stay and see the change in him, especially when . . ."
"When you worry that you might be carrying his child?" Enid asked softly.
She might have known Enid with her uncanny perception would guess the truth. But it made her situation no easier to hear her fear voiced aloud. Her body shook with fresh spasms of grief.
Enid rocked her to and fro. "Oh, hush, sweetheart. Then, when you are calm, you can tell me everything."
But even after Melyssan's tears had abated, the tale of her days was so disjointed, Enid was still greatly confused. She had seen Jaufre de Macy at court often while Lord Harcourt yet lived, had noted the cold, dark eyes, the handsomeness of the man carved from granite. She knew well the earl's reputation as a harsh, ruthless man with the heart of a rock.
Yet Lyssa's wistful remembrances conjured up images that did not fit with what Enid knew of the earl. Who woul
d ever have believed Lord Jaufre would allow such an outrageous imposture to go unpunished, or that he would risk his life to protect a woman from rape? That he would share his bed with Lyssa and treat her with all the dignity he would have accorded his countess? Or more unheard-of still, that he would allow anyone to persuade him to show mercy to one he deemed a criminal?
As Enid patted Melyssan's quivering shoulders, she wondered if her young sister realized how much out of character Lord Jaufre's behavior had been. She wondered if Lyssa understood what she had run away from.
"Now tell me again," she demanded. "What were his exact words?"
"He told me it was time for him to take a wife."
"And that was all?"
"It was enough." Melyssan disengaged herself and sat up, mopping the wetness from her cheeks. "I knew what he meant. And then after he was shot, he said . . .well, I knew then any hopes I cherished were folly and it was time I should be gone."
She stole a glance at Enid. Her sister was the most generous of women, but surely even she must condemn what could only be construed as wanton behavior. But although Enid's brow furrowed, she appeared more abstracted than angry, as if she wrestled with some unsolvable problem.
"It is the strangest tale I ever heard, Lyssa." She sighed. "I still do not quite understand why you went to Winterbourne in the first place and began this mad pretense."
"I thought you knew. It was to escape King John. He desired me and made threats if I did not comply. All I could think of was---"
Melyssan got no further, for Enid caught her roughly by the shoulders. Her sister's face blanched as white as the bed linens. "What! You were in peril from the king!"
"Yes, and I should warn you, Enid. I might still be. Since the old comte died, Jaufre does not think—"
"Sweet God in heaven." Enid’s usually serene blue eyes dilated with fear. "Of all the places in England for you to come seeking refuge. Lyssa! I've got to hide you. Don't you know—"