The Mistress of Normandy

“But you yourself have decreed that it is to be a chaste union!”

“So shall it be.” With a smooth movement, Lazare drew a misericorde from his baldric. Shocked by the dull glint of the pointed blade, Lianna leapt from the bed, shielding herself with the coverlet. Lazare chuckled. “Don’t worry, wife, I’ll not add murder to my offenses.” Still smiling, he pricked his palm with the knife and let a few ruby droplets of blood stain the sheet.

Lianna bit her lip. In sooth she’d never quite understood where a maid’s blood came from; it was destined to remain a mystery still.

“Now,” he said, putting away the misericorde, “it is your word against mine. And I am your lord.”

She clutched the bedclothes tighter. “You used me.”

He nodded. “Just as you used me. I’m tired, Lianna. I’ll pass the night on cushions in the wardrobe, so that no one will look askance at us. After a few days I’ll be sleeping in the lord’s chamber—alone.”

“I’ll fight you, Lazare. I won’t let Gervais have Bois-Long.”

Giving her a long, bleak stare, he left the solar. A river breeze snuffed the lamp. Lianna crept back into bed, avoiding the stain of Lazare’s blood, and lay sleepless. What manner of man was Lazare Mondragon, that he would not take his bride to wife on his wedding night? Her wedding night.

Moonlight streamed into the room, casting silvery tones on the pastoral scene painted on the wall. Beyond the woman and her children, a richly robed knight knelt before an ethereal beauty, gazing at her with a look of pure, mystical ecstasy.

An artist’s fancy, Lianna told herself angrily, turning away from the wall. An idealized picture of love. But she couldn’t suppress her disappointment. The whimsical dreamer she so carefully hid beneath her armor of aloofness had hoped to find contentment with Lazare.

Instead, she realized bitterly, the sentence of a loveless, fruitless marriage hung over her. No, she thought in sudden decision. Lazare was wrong to think she’d relinquish her castle without a fight. She wrested the wedding ring from her finger. “I am still the Demoiselle de Bois-Long,” she whispered.

* * *

The chaplain’s rapidly muttered low mass was sufficient to satisfy the consciences of the castle folk who attended the morning service. Grateful for the brevity, Lianna sped to the great hall.

After nudging a lazy alaunt hound out the door, she stopped a passing maid. “It smells like a brewery in here, Edithe. Fetch some dried bay to sweeten the rushes.”

The maid bustled off, and Lianna crossed to the large central hearth, where Guy, her seneschal, stood over a scullion who was cleaning out the grate. Guy, a gentle giant of a man, ruffled the lad’s hair and chuckled at some joke. Both came to grave attention as Lianna approached.

Once, she thought, just once I wish they’d share their mirth with me. But her aloofness, cultivated to augment the authority she so feared to lose, did not invite intimacy. “Are the stores in the kitchen adequate?” she asked Guy.

He nodded. “We’ve yet a side of beef, and fresh eels, too. Wine’s a bit diminished after last night, but it’ll suffice.”

“Are the stables cleaned and stocked?”

Another nod.

She took a deep breath. “Gervais and his wife?” Her tongue thickened over the name of Lazare’s son. Did he know of his father’s plan?

Guy’s face was expressionless. “Stumbled abed not an hour ago, my lady.”

Fine, she thought. Gervais would have no part in running the castle. “My...husband?” She faltered over the word.

“Out riding the fields with the reeve, my lady.”

He would be, she thought darkly. Inspecting his new acquisitions, no doubt. Stifling a feeling of despair, she turned and spied Edithe returning. The maid dropped a handful of bay leaves onto a fresh bundle of rushes. “Nom de Dieu,” Lianna snapped, “they must be spread out, like so.” She took a twig broom from the girl and scattered the leaves.

Sulkily Edithe took the broom and set to sweeping. Spying the scullion staggering beneath a bucket of ashes from the grate, Lianna hastened to propel him out the door before he spilled his burden on the new rushes. He made it as far as the stone steps; then the ashes fell in a gray heap. A stiff breeze blew them back in again. Catching Lianna’s look, Edithe hurried over to ply her broom.

Lianna leaned her head against the figured stone of the doorway and sighed, thinking again of her mother. It was said that Dame Irène, singularly unattractive but beloved by her handsome husband, had been a gifted chatelaine. Guy, who was old enough to remember her, often said Irène’s success stemmed from the devotion her sweet nature inspired in the castle folk.

Lianna knew she possessed no such endearing quality. She directed every task with immutable logic, her manner distant yet implacable. Her thoroughness amazed the devoted members of the château staff and dismayed those who tried to shirk their duties. Yet no one, perhaps not even Chiang, understood that beneath her cool mien lived a lonely soul who did not know how to spark warmth in others.

* * *

Troubled by Lazare’s duplicity and seeking answers for her dilemma, Lianna rode out alone that morning. She crossed the causeway that spanned the Somme, then paused to look back at the château. The quiet impregnability of the stone keep, stout curtain walls, and limewashed towers comforted her. A month ago she had no adversary save droughts and hard freezes that threatened her crops. Now she had enemies within, enemies without.

She vowed to contend with each. Never would she let the castle fall to Lazare’s son. Nor would she allow Longwood’s leopard standard to supplant the golden trefoil lilies that now waved over the ramparts of Bois-Long.

As she nudged her horse into the long stretch of woods leading to the sea, the restful harmony of the landscape enveloped her. She found solace in the reflection of cottony clouds in the river, the calm strength of ancient beeches, the deep peace of cows udder deep in grass.

She did not stop until she reached the sheer, windswept cliffs overlooking the roaring Norman sea. Her fear of water held something of a horrifying fascination; simply looking at the churning swells made her tremble. Dismounting, she approached the lip of a cliff. Her palms grew damp; her breath came in curiously exhilarating shallow gasps. She sat on the promontory, hugging her knees to her chest, watching the white spray as it battered the rocks. Behind her reared a cleft of dark gray shale where she and Chiang mined sulfur for their gunpowder.

Yesterday morn, at her nuptial mass, she’d listened to the recitation of the Hours of the Blessed Virgin and dreamed of the children Lazare would give her. Children to bring to this beautiful, wind-worn place, to share the dreams she’d never dared reveal.

No children must come of our union. Lazare’s sentence rang like a death knell in her head. Lianna had never felt so alone. She buried her face in her arms and anointed her sleeves with hot, bitter tears.

The ship appeared while she wept. It was suddenly there when she looked up, a beautiful four-masted cog bounding over undulating swells. Sails painted with whimsical dragons and writhing serpents puffed like the breasts of great, colorful birds over the hull. Shields emblazoned with a leopard rampant flanked the ship’s sides.

She recognized the device from Longwood’s letter and King Henry’s written order. Her heart catapulted to her throat.

The English baron had arrived.

Two (#u7d520697-4991-57ed-b557-ff347843aa77)

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.”