Warrior's Song Read online

“I thought it would be since you hunted me down in my bathing tub.” He was delighted to see her, and pleased that she would search him out on their wedding morning. It was simply not done, but then again, she was unique, this bride of his. “Come, what concerns you, sweeting?”

  Sweeting. An endearment that sounded natural when he said it. She liked the feel of it, the warmth of it, but there wasn’t time for that now.

  “It’s Mary. She is Sir Stephen’s daughter.”

  “Aye, I have spoken briefly with him. He appears a hard man, with little humor and an iron fist.”

  She nodded. “Mary has been my friend forever. We were raised together. I would like her to come with us to Camberley. I am here to secure your permission.”

  He lifted his arm to soap his chest, aware that she was looking at him now, and wondering if she believed him well made. He said, “Surely such a matter should be discussed with Sir Stephen. She is young, comely, ready to wed.”

  “No, we cannot do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I suppose you should know,” she said, looking at his hand holding the sponge, rubbing over his belly now. “But you must swear to me that you won’t tell anyone else of this. Please, Jerval, it is very important.”

  “I would never betray your confidence, Chandra.”

  “Lord Graelam raped Mary. In front of me and two of his own men.”

  Jerval leapt to his feet, sending waves of water splashing onto the stone floor. “Raped her? By God, that miserable whoreson.”

  He realized he was naked, and quickly eased down into the tub again.

  She hadn’t seen him naked before. It was a revelation even though she had seen many naked men over the years. She was very grateful that he was firmly seated in the tub again.

  “Yes, he raped her.”

  “But it was you he wanted.”

  “It was to bring me into line. Neither Mary nor I would tell him where my mother and John were hidden. Without them, he could not force me to wed him. It was my fault that it happened, for had I only spoken, Mary would have been spared, but I did not speak. I held myself silent while he raped her, praying that her sacrifice would be worth the cost.

  “But it wasn’t, of course, for Lady Dorothy came out of the hidden room with John by herself. No one may know. Mary’s father, Sir Stephen, would blame her. What you felt when you met him is true. And he would come to know the truth, for Mary would have to tell him when he sought her a husband. I doubt that he would be kind to her. He might kill her, for she wouldn’t be worth anything more to him. It isn’t fair, Jerval. None of it is her fault.”

  “No, it isn’t. Of course she will come with us. Fret no more about it, sweeting. It will be our secret. Assure Mary that I will not betray this.”

  “Thank you. You are a man and yet you are reasonable.”

  “You are a woman. Are you reasonable as well?”

  “I will try to be,” she said, and he smiled at that. She was chewing on her lower lip, thinking hard.

  “I can already hear the merrymaking,” he said, then added, “I jumped up because I was so surprised at what you said. I am sorry if I shocked you.”

  “You did not shock me. I have seen more men unclothed than women. You are a man.”

  “As in just a man like all other men?”

  “No, you know that you are not like all other men. You are quite perfect. You surely are not blind to what you are. I am not blind either.”

  “You are saying that my body pleases you?”

  “I said nothing about any pleasure. I merely speak the truth, state an obvious fact, as one would remark upon a beautiful statue or a lovely fattened pig ready to be slaughtered. I really must go now, Jerval. There is much for me to do.”

  “Will you believe me perfect this night when we come together for the first time?” He squeezed the sponge over his chest, seemingly intent on the rivulets of water that trickled to his belly.

  She stared at him. “I do not wish to think about that,” she said.

  “Surely it is not a thought to distress you or frighten you.”

  He expected her to hurl an insult in his face, to deny that anything could ever frighten her, but she said nothing for a long moment. To his surprise, she slowly nodded. “Mayhap it is,” she said, and was out of the bedchamber before he could even think of anything else to say.

  CHAPTER 11

  Chandra stood quietly as Alice pulled the soft, linen chemise over her head. When she lifted the wedding gown, fringed with magnificent ermine, over Chandra’s head, and smoothed it down over her hips, Mary sighed with pleasure.

  “It is really quite beautiful,” she said, fingering the green silk, elegant and soft to the touch. There were full sleeves that fell beyond Chandra’s fingers, and a long train. Her pointed shoes were made of vermilion leather and threaded with more gold embroidery. They pinched her toes.

  “Here is the girdle,” Mary said. It was made of pieces of gold, each set with a good-luck stone—agate to guard against fever, sardonyx to protect against malaria. The clasp was fashioned with great sapphires.

  Since the morning was bidding to be warm, Chandra carried her mantle over her arm. Like the gown, it was of silk, intricately embroidered and dyed a royal purple.

  After Alice had arranged Chandra’s long hair to her satisfaction, Mary stepped forward and placed a small saffron-colored veil held by a golden circlet on her head.

  “You will not shame my son,” Lady Avicia said when she walked into the bedchamber, Lady Dorothy at her heels.

  “She looks well enough,” said Lady Dorothy, looking at a point beyond Chandra’s right shoulder.

  Julianna said nothing at all.

  Chandra thought to herself, as she looked at the strange exquisite girl in her silver mirror, Aye, I look well enough, and then she closed her eyes for a moment. She wouldn’t shame her father. She was marrying the man he had chosen for her. Everything would be all right. She straightened her shoulders and smiled. It was her wedding day, the only one she would ever have. That gave her abundant food for thought.

  The castle chapel was too small to accommodate all the wedding guests, so Chandra, her father at her side, walked toward the orchard, where Father Tolbert waited to conduct the ceremony.

  Her brother, John, walked to stand beside Lord Richard. There was a smile on that thin little mouth, and it wasn’t a nice smile. It was triumphant and smug. The paltry little kidling, she thought, then realized that what Mary had said was exactly right. She pictured herself here at Croyland in ten years, when John would be eighteen and a man and ready to wed. She would be nothing once her father died, and the stark reality of it was very clear to her now.

  She looked at Jerval.

  She didn’t belong here at Croyland any longer. She belonged with him.

  He was her future. She couldn’t begin to imagine it.

  The servants, under Lady Dorothy’s direction, had raised an archway and threaded colorful flowers in the latticework. When Chandra and her father walked beneath the arch, Jerval stepped forward to join them. He wore fine brown silk leggings and a tunic of blue sendal silk that reached to his knees. His mantle, like hers, was edged with miniver. He wore a golden chaplet, set with flashing gems, on his shining wheat-colored hair.

  Jerval met her gaze, looked as solemn as a priest, and winked at her. To his surprise, and to hers, she winked back.

  She heard some of the men who had seen the exchange of winks guffaw.

  The guests, fifty deep, formed a half circle about Father Tolbert, who looked both stern and pompous—and, to Chandra’s relief, clean. He nodded toward Lord Richard, who stepped from Chandra’s side and turned to face the wedding guests.

  He unrolled a wide parchment and read aloud the goods, servitors, gold, and fine garments Chandra would bring to Jerval as her dowry. Next he read King Henry’s greetings to the bride and groom, and his formal permission for them to wed.

  Jerval reached out and took hold of her hand. “If the ki
ng had dared refuse, why then, I would have abducted you. Unlike Lord Graelam, I would not have bungled the job.”

  Probably not, she thought.

  She heard only bits and pieces of the long, solemn mass of the Trinity, as, she suspected, did Jerval. He kept shifting from one foot to the other. She wondered if his shoes pinched as hers did.

  At last Father Tolbert drew near the couple and pronounced his special blessing. Chandra nearly swallowed her tongue at his words.

  His voice rang out, loud as church bells. “Let this woman be amiable as Rachel, wise as Rebecca, faithful as Sarah. Let her be sober through truth, venerable through modesty, and wise through the teaching of heaven.”

  “By the blessed saints,” Jerval said out of the side of his mouth, “you will be all that?”

  “He should have told me to be as strong as an Amazon queen.”

  “I doubt he has ever heard of the Amazons since they did not have their adventures in the Bible.”

  The mass ended. Father Tolbert chanted the Agnus Dei, then stepped back. It was the first noble ceremony he had performed since coming to Croyland, and he was quite pleased with himself.

  Lord Richard was thinking about other matters—the various gifts he would be expected to distribute among the guests, gifts that had cost him dearly. He heard the Agnus Dei, and brought his attention back to his daughter. She was behaving well, her bearing proud, her manner gracious. More important, she seemed to have accepted the inevitable. He was suddenly aware of a tensing in Lady Dorothy. For a moment, he believed the bitch would announce that Chandra wasn’t the daughter of her womb, but a bastard foisted off on her. He grasped her hand and squeezed. She made a small, pained sound, nothing more.

  He watched his son-in-law embrace his new wife, watched her arms slowly go around his waist.

  He felt immense relief, and immense pain.

  A loud cheer went up from the wedding guests, signaling the last silent moment of the day. The jongleurs Richard had hired for the wedding puffed their cheeks against their flutes and began to dance among the laughing guests. Jerval, feeling as jubilant as their guests, pulled Chandra close to him and led the procession back to the Great Hall. “You are the most beautiful bride I have ever had,” he said loudly, to be heard over the raucous singing of the jongleurs and the guests.

  “I am your only bride,” she said, looking straight ahead, and he shouted with laughter. “I am also the only bride you will ever have, so you can lock away all your man’s dreams.”

  He pulled her around and kissed her mouth. “Every dream that invades my brain is of you.”

  He kissed her again, hard, and prepared to suffer through at least another six hours of feasting before he could have her.

  * * *

  It was nearly seven hours before the huge wedding feast at last drew to a close. Jerval never wanted to see another bite of food again. The haunch of roasted stag, the larded boar’s head with herb sauce, beef, mutton, legs of pork, roasted swan and rabbit were strewn about on the tables, now little more than meatless carcasses, or tossed to the boarhounds, who growled happily, pulling the bones through the reeds. He was ready to throw his bride over his shoulder and run as fast as he could up the stairs when the servants staggered into the hall carrying yet more food—rabbit in gravy spiced with onion and saffron, roasted teal, woodcock, and snipe, patties filled with yolk of eggs, and cheese, cinnamon and pork pies.

  He cursed.

  Chandra was eyeing the pork pies when Sir Andrew, nearly as drunk as his wife, shouted, “Jerval, how will you go about bedding your warrior bride?”

  “Aye,” came another drunken shout. “Will the bride remove her armor?”

  “Will you challenge her for her maidenhead?”

  “Aye, now that’s a challenge I would willingly accept,” Sir Stephen yelled out.

  Chandra looked ready to leap from her chair and run her sword through them all. Jerval laughed at her. “Let them bray, sweeting. It means nothing. Besides, it is a guest’s obligation to tease and jest and get drunk at a wedding.”

  “A man’s rod is his wife’s dearest friend,” Sir Malcolm’s wife, Joanna, called out, her voice slurred after a day of drinking wine.

  “How would you know, my lady?” Sir Andrew yelled. “That old man you’re married to wouldn’t know what to do if he discovered what he had between his legs.”

  “On and on it goes,” Jerval said, and fed her a bite of pork pie from his fingers. “I had expected this much sooner, but it doesn’t matter. That’s right. You’ve eaten very little. Open your mouth.”

  “Look yon, Jerval feeds her.”

  “That is because he cannot yet feast his mouth between those long legs of hers. Aye, he’ll see to it that she is well eaten.”

  Jerval grinned as he listened to the ladies and men alike, and he saw himself indeed kissing her between those legs of hers, and quickly gave her another bite of pork pie.

  He doubted she even knew what they meant. That pleased him. She would learn soon enough because he would teach her. Tonight. He could nearly taste her. He sucked in his breath—and choked on his wine.

  Why would Jerval wish to eat whilst he was between her legs? It made no sense to her. Chandra chewed slowly, smelled the sweet scent of mulled wine on his breath and felt the warmth of his body as he pressed close to her. She’d drunk a goodly amount of wine herself. She didn’t feel any fear, any distaste, at the closeness of him.

  “Will Lord Richard’s men or Lady Dorothy’s ladies lead the bride to her wedding chamber?” Sir Andrew shouted.

  “And who will do the mounting? Sir Jerval, be you the stallion or the mare?”

  Jerval yelled, “You, Hubert, and you, Mark, see that I am blessed to have both a mare and a stallion. I will have the joy of mounting and being mounted.”

  Richard rose suddenly from his great chair and banged his knife handle onto the table for quiet. “Avery,” he shouted, “bring in the three men.”

  Jerval looked on in surprise as three filthy men, pale from their weeks in Croyland’s dungeon, were dragged into the Great Hall by Avery and Ellis and shoved to their knees before Lord Richard.

  Chandra watched her father draw a parchment from the full sleeves of his robe and wave it toward the men. “Listen well,” he shouted. “This parchment is for your master, Lord Graelam de Moreton, from our beloved King Henry. I release you to return to your lord. You will tell him that the prize he sought will never be his. He will live the rest of his life knowing that my daughter is another man’s wife. The king herewith orders that he will pay half of all Croyland’s taxes for the next full year in just retribution for his actions.” Richard thrust the parchment into one of the men’s hands. “Tell your lord that the king has saved his lands from my revenge. Go now.”

  Richard smiled down at his daughter and bowed. “My gift to you, Chandra. Now, the dancing.”

  Time slowed, then stilled entirely. Jerval looked at Lord Richard, saw that he was staring at the two of them, and he didn’t want to know what Chandra’s father was thinking.

  They danced until, finally, Jerval returned Chandra to her chair, amid more drunken wit and advice that left her pale and wild-eyed, and said to Lord Richard, “It is time. I do not wish her to be embarrassed more. I will see to her if you will control all the guests, and my family.”

  Lord Richard looked at his daughter and slowly nodded. He was afraid that she would bolt, and Jerval saw the fear on his face. He felt it as well.

  “You do not wish to follow the traditional bedding?”

  Jerval shook his head. “Nay, not with her. She has drunk a goodly amount of wine, but still, I—”

  “You’re afraid she will run?”

  “Aye.”

  “Go then. I will hold everyone here.”

  In Chandra’s bedchamber, the women had been busy. There were rosebuds strewn on the rushes, incense that smelled of lilac filled the air and the nostrils, and a dozen wax candles were lit.

  It was warm and a
bit dizzying in the room.

  She turned slowly to look at her husband, his back against the closed door, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “It has come to pass,” she said, standing in the middle of the room, looking blankly around her. “You are here in my bedchamber, and it is expected that you be here. I cannot hurl you out.”

  “Nay, you cannot. I hope that you do not wish to, now that I am your husband.”

  “I am not certain. I know nothing about this, Jerval. Perhaps it is troubling.”

  “Troubling? Not at all, sweeting. It is pleasure I will give you, I swear. Now, I have thought of this moment, Chandra. Come here.”

  He doubted she would obey him, but it didn’t matter. He simply wanted to see what she would do. Her eyes were a bit glazed from the wine she’d drunk. Mayhap she had drunk enough so that she wouldn’t fight him.

  Fight him? Mayhap go for his throat. She was strong, this wife of his.

  “Come here,” he said again, and waited.

  She picked up the skirts of her beautiful silk gown and slowly walked to him. “Aye, sir?”

  She was looking up at him, no fear on her face. By all the saints’ elbows, she was beautiful. He knew he had to go slowly, very slowly. She was a maid, and despite all her knowledge of men and their ways, despite the fact that the wine she had drunk had eased her, she was as ignorant as a stoat.

  “I’m going to kiss you now. Put your arms around me.”

  She did; then, to his surprise, she raised her face. It was almost more than he could bear. He kissed her mouth, very lightly, no threat at all, just a beginning exploration, a savoring.

  Chandra rose to her tiptoes, and Jerval, his arms now tight around her back, let his hands fall to her hips. The feel of her through the gown and her shift—he wanted to strip her wedding gown off her, have her naked and beneath him in the next moment, but he couldn’t. He had to go slowly. He wanted to curse, but since he was kissing her, it wasn’t possible.

  And so he did go slowly, and tried to ignore the prodding and the urgency that gnawed in his gut. He was gentle, patient, and he was rewarded by a very worried look from his bride when a small sound came from deep in her throat.