At The King's Command

Juliana stood backed up against a gargoyle-infested cupboard. The carved, leering faces with their wooden eyes and lolling tongues surrounded her dirt-smudged face as if they recognized her as one of their own.

Nance Harbutt advanced like a besieging force on the gypsy. Nance had been part of Lynacre for as long as Stephen could remember, as ever present and unchanging as the gargoyle cupboard. The goodwife wore a starched wimple tied with a strip of cloth knotted beneath her well-fleshed chin.

“Stay away from me, you old gallows crow,” Juliana yelled.

Nance gestured at Juliana’s tattered skirt and blouse. “I know you felt pressured to wed, my lord, but where in God’s name did you find this slattern cat?”

“Long story,” Stephen said, perfunctorily searching Juliana for signs of physical abuse. Old Nance had never been averse to applying the switch or the rod where she deemed it necessary. “What’s the trouble?”

Juliana tried not to wince as a knob from the cupboard pressed into her back. What manner of man was Stephen de Lacey that he would come barging, all unbidden, into a lady’s chamber?

“She’s trying to make me sit in that—that—” Feigning horror, Juliana waved her hand at the trunklike bathing tub on the hearth. “That cesspool!”

“’Tis a fine, hot bath and you’re in sore need of it,” Old Nance snapped, scrunching her doughy face into an expression of disgust. “Jesu, you reek like a jakes-farmer.”

Juliana recoiled from the tub, when in sooth, she yearned to plunge into the steaming water. It was a singular arrangement with an open conduit that could be connected with a cauldron over the hearth fire for a steady supply of hot water. Steam rose from the tub. Bits of harsh-smelling herbs floated upon the faintly oily surface.

For Juliana, dirt and grime had been a shield from lusty men for five years. With the exception of Rodion, she had managed to keep all interested males at bay, and she meant to continue with the disguise.

“That is what all the yelling is about?” Stephen said with a short laugh. “A bath? I view it as an occasional necessity, not a cause for panic.”

Juliana shuddered. “I have seen people catch fever and die from sitting in stagnant water.”

“You never bathe at all?” Stephen asked calmly.

Juliana sniffed, folding her arms protectively. “I bathe once a twelvemonth in running water. Not—” she pointed a grimy finger at the tub “—in a stagnant vat that reeks of poison simples.”

“Poison simples!” barked Nance, all a-quiver. “Those are my own good herbs. I’m no necromancer, not like that Jenny Fallow, who done in her husband with mandrake. Told him it’d prolong the sex act, see, and—”

“Nance,” Stephen said, and Juliana suspected the woman had a penchant for meandering bits of gossip.

“And she said it did for a time, but—”

“Nance, please.” Stephen’s tone was edged with impatience.

“Ah, I do go on, don’t I, my lord?” She glared at Juliana. “God blind my eyes, she’s a pert one.” Scowling, she planted her fists on her hips and leaned menacingly toward Juliana. “If you want running water, go bathe in the millstream.”

“Never!” snapped Juliana. “I take orders from no one.” For good measure, she kicked out with a grimy bare foot, knocking over the ewer beside the tub. Several gallons of water spread over the rush-strewn floor. Not yet satisfied, she ducked past Nance, grasped the edge of the tub, and upended it.

As Nance yelled to the Catholic saints and reeled back against the wall, a tide of scented water flooded the room.

A blur of motion streaked toward Juliana. Stephen cursed—another disgusting body-part word—and she felt herself being lifted and slung with dizzying speed over his shoulder.

She screeched, but it did no good. She pounded on his broad back and earned a slap on the rear for her troubles.

Pushing past Nance, Stephen grabbed a stack of linen toweling, a cake of lye soap and a vial of dark liquid and marched toward the door.

Her great bosom bobbling, Nance ran after them. “My lord, have a care—”

“I’ll be all right,” Stephen said. “She doesn’t bite.” As he hastened from the room, he added, “Actually, she probably does, but I haven’t caught her at it yet.”

When they emerged from the manor house, Pavlo launched into a barking frenzy. Slung upside down over Stephen’s shoulder, Juliana called a command to the borzoya, but saw that he had been tethered to a hitch rail.

She felt the ground slope as Stephen stalked on, muttering under his breath, toward their destination—a swift-running river.

“You would not dare,” she said through clenched teeth.

“Your charms give me courage, darling,” he said. Handling her like a sack of cats he wished to drown, he threw her into the stream.

A mouthful of water silenced Juliana’s screams. The cold shocked her, but not nearly so much as the cruelty of the man she had married. She planted her feet on the pebbly bottom and surfaced, her hand on her dagger, ready to do battle.

He gave her no chance. He had waded out, fully clothed, and he, too, was armed—with a block of soap.

Juliana howled like Pavlo when he was confined to a cage. She bruised her hands and feet against her husband’s hard body, all to no avail. Stephen de Lacey was relentless. He drenched her hair in a witch’s brew of noxious herbs, then scrubbed every thrashing, squirming inch of her, and dunked her as if she were an armful of soapy bed linens.

When he finished, he did not even look at her, but turned and sloshed his way to the riverbank. “The towels are there,” he said, indicating them with a jerk of his head. “And supper is at the toll of six. We’re having company.”

“I hope I gave you lice,” she yelled after him.

Old Nance tucked a finger up under her hat and gave her head an idle scratch. Then she sighed heavily, the sound of a woman who was absolutely convinced of her own saintliness.

“I’ve set the lady’s chamber to rights, my lord.” She waved her chubby arm, showing off the fresh rushes. “It were no small task, I might add.”

Stephen offered her a straight-backed chair, and with a self-important rustling of fustian skirts, she lowered herself to the seat. He had hastily donned dry clothing and combed his damp hair.

“Well,” she said, her manner brisk. “I’ll not devil you with questions, my lord. We’ll leave the gossips to mull over how it is that the baron of Wimberleigh came to wed a wild gypsy.”

“Thank you.” Stephen pulled up a chair of his own, straddling it and folding his arms over the back. He was grateful she did not demand an explanation. Yet at the same time, he realized she alone would have understood, for she alone knew the nature of the blade King Henry held poised over Stephen’s neck.

“Aye, ’tis not my place to ponder the whys and wherefores of your new wedded state. Lord above knows, my poor old mind is too feeble to grasp how you got in such a fix.” She clasped her work-reddened hands. “Now that you’ve seen to the bathing, my lord, the gypsy needs a set of clothes. As to her savage ways, we’ll see about them later.”

“Is she truly strange, Nance?” Stephen asked, trying hard not to relive the tempest in the millstream. “Sometimes I glimpse something in her manner, hear a note in her speech, and I wonder.”

“She’s a gypsy, my lord, and everyone knows gypsies are great imitators.” The goodwife sniffed and poked her broad red nose into the air. “Much like a monkey I once saw. ’Twas a mariner at Bristol, see, and he…”

His attention fading, Stephen nodded vaguely and planted his chin in his hand. It struck him that he had not entered this room in eight years. The chamber, with its adjoining music suite and solar, wardrobes and close-rooms, had been Meg’s domain.

Though hastily aired and dusted for the new baroness, the room still bore Meg’s indelible imprint—the fussy scalloped bed draperies of fading pink damask, the blank-eyed poppet propped on the window seat, the mirrored candle holder Stephen himself had designed. And on a slim-legged table lay a bone hairbrush, its back etched with a scene of the Virgin guarded by a unicorn.

Fearful of the emotion building inside him, he scowled at the floor. And spied, half-hidden by the fringe of the counterpane, a bright bit of string. Distracted by the out-of-place object, he stood and crossed the room to pick it up. “What is this?”

Nance caught her breath. “Milady was playing at Jacob’s ladder the very night—”

Stephen turned toward Nance. His icy glare stopped her cold.

Nance’s hand fluttered at her bosom. “Ah, the sweet-ling. Ever the child, she was.”

The memory stung like salt on the wound of Stephen’s guilt. He thought of his vagabond bride invading this room, sleeping in Meg’s bed, handling Meg’s things.