The Mistress of Normandy. Susan WiggsЧитать онлайн книгу.

       Two

      From the deck of the Toison d’Or, Rand studied the Norman coastline. Squinting through a dazzle of sunlight against the chalky cliffs, he watched a pale rider mount a horse and gallop toward two dark gray clefts of rock. In moments the lithe horseman was gone, like a fleeting silver shadow.

      Unhappy that his arrival had sparked immediate fear, he moved down the decks. Eu, the town where he planned to land, huddled against the tall cliffs. Denuded orchards and burnt fields, remnants of turmoil, lay about the village. France was a hostile, war-torn land, plundered by its own knights and the chevauchées of the English. Atrocities committed by the nobility had schooled mistrust into the plain folk of France. Rand resolved that when he took his place at Bois-Long, he would prove himself different from those greedy noblemen.

      A swarm of tanned and wiry sailors climbed barefoot up the rigging to reef the sails for landing. The chains of the anchor ground as a seaman studied his knotted rope and called out the depth. Horses in the hold stamped and whinnied. The winds and weather had been relentlessly favorable, shortening the voyage from Southampton to a mere three days.

      Rand was in no hurry to reach his objective, despite King Henry’s impatience to secure a path into the heart of France.

      A moan sounded. His face a sickly pale green, Jack Cade staggered to Rand’s side. “I’ll never get seasoned to these goddamned crossings,” he grumbled. “Praise St. George I’ll be on dry land ere nightfall, upon a sound bed...and, if I be lucky, between a woman’s thighs.”

      Rand laughed. “Women. You use them too carelessly.”

      “And you use them not at all, my lord.”

      “They are meant to be protected, revered.”

      Jack belched, grimaced, and scratched his unshaven cheek. “Faith, my lord, I know not how you quell your man’s body into submission.”

      “It’s all part of a knight’s discipline.”

      “Remind me never to become a knight. I’ll get no comfort from golden spurs.”

      Rand regarded his scutifer with affection. The droll face, the merry eyes brimming with earthy humor, marked a man whose feet were planted firmly on the ground, happily distant from the unforgiving demands of chivalry. “Little danger of that,” Rand remarked, “given your complete aversion to anything resembling high ideals and saintly devotion.”

      “Goddamned right,” Jack said, and leaned over the side to heave. The bright, mocking laughter of a sailor drifted across the deck. Turning with elaborate casualness, Jack dropped his breeches and presented his backside to the seaman. A chorus of whistles and catcalls arose.

      “You’ll not catch a fish on that shrunken worm,” remarked a seaman.

      Jack hitched up his breeches and thumbed his nose.

      Grinning and shaking his head, Rand looked again at the coast rearing ahead of the bounding ship. He’d crossed the Narrow Sea numerous times, under the colors of the Duke of Clarence, and usually he felt a surge of anticipation at the sight. This time he came in peace yet felt only dread, like a hollow chamber in his heart. His arrival heralded the end of the dreams he’d shared with Jussie, changed the path his life would have taken. That it also heralded the beginning of King Henry’s grand scheme gave him little enough comfort.

      “My lord,” said Jack, “you’ve been too silent these days past. Are we not boon companions? Tell me what troubles that too pretty head of yours.”

      His hands gripping the rail, Rand asked, “Why me? Why did the king choose me to defend this French territory?”

      A grin split Jack’s pale face, and the wind ruffled his shock of red hair. “To reward you for exposing the Lollard plot at Eltham. And Burgundy’s envoys gave it out that the duke would have only the finest of men for his niece.”

      Rand held silent; honor forbade him to voice his thoughts on the liberties Henry and Burgundy had taken with his life.

      “You should be thankful,” said Jack. “Your new rank gives you a rich wife and her château. What had you at Arundel save a meager virgate to plow and a burden of boonwork to the earl?”

      Rand looked at him sharply, felt a rattle of longing in his chest. “I had much more than that.”

      The corners of Jack’s mouth pulled downward. “Your Justine. How did she take the news of your betrothal?”

      Rand stared at the white breakers exploding against the cliffs. The seascape gave way to Jussie, sweet as cream and biddable as a lamb. As children they’d raced laughing through the ripening wheat that clothed the gentle landscape of Sussex. As youths they’d shared shy kisses, whispered promises. She’d listened to his songs and his dreams; he’d watched her clever fingers at their carding and spinning. He thought he loved her; at least he felt an affection and concern deep enough to control his manly urges and remain loyal. He’d wanted to plight his troth to her years before but couldn’t subject Jussie to the uncertain existence of a horse soldier’s wife.

      Now it was too late. His grip tightened on the rail. Justine had taken the news with surprising aplomb. “’Tis fitting,” she’d said simply. “Your father was of noble blood, and French.” At first her response had confused him. Where was her outrage, her weeping, her defiance? She had merely bade him adieu and pledged herself as a novice at a convent.

      Rand attributed the gentle reaction to her serene inner strength and admired her all the more for it. When he turned to answer Jack’s query, hopeless longing creased his fine-featured face. “Justine understood,” he said quietly.

      “Perhaps it’s for the best. I always thought you two a mismatched pair.”

      Rand glared.

      “I’m only saying that you’re very different, as different as a hawk from a songbird. Justine is passing sweet and retiring, while you are a man of action.”

      “She was good for me,” Rand insisted.

      Jack raised a canny eyebrow. “Was she? Hah! Other than keeping you to your inhuman vow of chastity, she had no real power over you, offered you no challenge.”

      “Had anyone save you made that observation, Jack, his face would have swiftly met with my fist.”

      Jack brandished his maimed hand. Three fingers had been severed to stumps. “You’re ever so tolerant of a cripple.”

      Rand clasped that hand, that archer’s hand that had been ruined by a vindictive French knight so Jack might never draw his longbow again. “Soon we will both live in this hostile place.”

      “Think you the woman will prove hostile?”

      “I don’t know. But she’s twenty-one years old. Why has she never married?”

      “You don’t want to think about that,” said Jack. He extracted his hand and spat into the sea. “You’re determined not to like her, aren’t you, my lord?”

      “How can I, when she stands between Jussie and me?”

      Jack shook his russet head. “You know better than that. ’Twas the king’s edict that took you away from Justine.”

      “I know.” Rand let out his breath in a frustrated burst of air. Ever loyal, he said, “I cannot fault Henry. Longwood is