The Passionate Pilgrim

But her arm was caught and held away in the same iron grip that had left its imprint on her wrist last evening. “You have a responsibility to your servants, do you not?” he said, showing his anger at last.

“Let me go, damn you!”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Then how can you not allow them safety when it’s offered? Are you so choked with resentment that you cannot accept anything from anybody?”

Her fury boiled over, incensed by every word of his well-aimed barb, his presence here, his restraining hand on her arm. He would never know in the slightest degree the cause of her animosity. “The only thing you ever offered me, Sir Rhyan, did me more harm than you could ever imagine. You must forgive me if I am less than enthusiastic about accepting anything else until that wound has healed.” She made one last effort to rid herself of his hand, expecting hers to be the last words. But now heads had turned to watch the undignified tussle.

“Then choose, mistress,” he snarled, releasing her arm but hauling the cob’s head closer. “Either you accompany me in a seemly manner or I leave you here alone with this crowd.” He indicated with his head the sea of faces. “I have your party, you see. They’ll come with me, willing or not.”

Allene and Bess, Daniel and Pedro were now out of sight, enclosed by his men, quite unaware of their impending separation. She could not afford to lose them and all her baggage any more than she could risk being left to the predictable attentions of so many strangers.

“Damn you!” she whispered. “You would not do so.”

“Try me.”

“Then I have little choice, have I? Damn you to hell!”

Chapter Four

The lessons of life had shouldered their way into Merielle’s twenty-one years with more urgency than was usual in one so young, but she had had to learn them fast. One of them was that, although it was acceptable to show anger, being a useful manly emotion, tears, tiredness and temperament were womanly and weak and not for the manager of a business. The rules were hard to stick to for one whose emotions lay naturally so close to the surface, and twenty yards was barely enough distance for her to squeeze back the threatening tears of anger that welled up behind her eyes.

As if he understood, Sir Rhyan proceeded slowly along the verge and then, hidden by a rider who crossed their path, handed back her reins. “Ready?” he said.

She took a deep breath, straightened and nodded, refusing to look at him. The extent of Sir Rhyan’s party was far greater than she had imagined from his casual reference to men-at-arms and guests, making anything more than cursory introductions out of the question in that quickly fading light. For which Merielle was much relieved; anything more demanding would have exposed her as inarticulate as well as stunningly beautiful, not a mixture to do her justice. She caught the names of Wykeham and Yeaveley and nodded briefly to each man without the customary smile, and if it seemed strange to them that Mistress St Martin and Sir Rhyan had only just thought to acknowledge each other after a whole day in the same party, they showed no surprise, nor did they comment.

Two miles farther on, he had said, though no more than that, and Merielle would have entered the gates of Hades rather than ask him where they were bound. She would have whispered to Allene—who was looking particularly smug—but for the fact that her own leather purse-strap was now threaded through the cob’s bridle, its ends in Sir Rhyan’s great fist. Another humiliation. No chance to lag behind.

The dwindling light and her self-absorption joined forces in concealing from her any indication of where she was going or how she reached her destination that evening. Slipping through her bleary senses were acres of wood and parkland, a rising moon, a certain peace after the clamour of the Canterbury crowd, the satin stillness of a lake, drawbridges, greetings and lanterns, welcoming hands and yapping hounds, the smell of roasting meat. Before she could throw off the light rug that covered her legs or protest that she could manage, she was lifted down as orders were given to her grooms.

“They’ll be well tended, mistress. Good stables. Warm lodgings and food. We’ll have your panniers sent in as soon as they’re off. This is Sir Walter Nessey, the castellan. He and his lady will attend to your needs; you have only to ask.”

The castellan bowed, his elegant figure etched sharply in the light of torches that billowed smoke into the blackening sky. “You are most welcome, lady. Your rooms are prepared.” His manner was efficient.

Through arches and over drawbridges they had clattered, across a large compound within walls with water beyond them, another cluster of buildings ahead. Rooms prepared? To have asked where they were at this point would have sounded ludicrous.

The great stone porch led them into a hall of massive dimensions where trestles had been arranged for supper, those on the dais at the far end covered with blazing white cloths on which silver salt cellars and glass goblets twinkled in the light from wall sconces and from the raftered ceiling. Around the dais, fabric lined the walls with muted colours which Merielle knew would come to life in the daylight. Clearly this was no ordinary guesthouse. A castellan? It was a castle, then?

She came to a halt so suddenly that Allene nearly knocked her over. “Sir Rhyan! I need to speak to you,” she hissed as he whirled around to face her. “Now, if you please. Over here.”

He followed her to one side of the mystified group, excusing himself to Sir Walter. “Look,” he said, “I know what you’re thinking.”

She flared, instantly set alight by his placating manner. “You do not know what I’m thinking, Sir Rhyan, nor will you ever know. This place is a castle, is it not? The king’s. How dare you bring me here? Are you entirely devoid of diplomacy, for pity’s sake?”

He shook his head, lifting darkly angled brows. “The king’s not here, mistress. I would not have brought you here if he was. You think he would see some form of reconciliation in our being here together, I know, but this is purely a gathering of his craftsmen to see what can be done to renovate the place, that’s all. If Sir Adam had been here in my stead, he would have called here, too, on the way to Winchester.”

“Where are we?”

“Leeds,” he said. “Leeds Castle. We’re still in Kent.”

“Queen Isabella’s place?”

“It was. She died last August, remember. It’s now the king’s. He’s sent his men to meet here, and I brought two of them from Canterbury.”

“Those two?”

“Yes. William Wykeham and Henry Yeaveley, John Kenton, too. I’m not involved, mistress, I assure you. I escort them to Sir Adam, that’s all, once they’re finished here. You’ll not be disturbed in any way.”

“You’re sure about the king?”

“I swear it. He’s at Windsor, I believe. Trust me.”

The sincerity of his plea found no foothold. “I do, sir. I trust you to find a way of humiliating me at every opportunity.” It was on the tip of her tongue to suggest that she might be accommodated in the queen’s own room to complete the affront, but that would have gone over his head, so she held it back.

As it transpired, her cynicism was prophetic, for the room to which the castellan led her beyond a narrow, hollow-sounding passageway had been used by the late Queen Isabella until last year. He apologised for its old-fashioned shabbiness, believing her words to Sir Rhyan in the great hall to have been a complaint, if her demeanour was anything to go by. It was, he told her, awaiting renovation like the rest of the gloriette.

“Gloriette?” Merielle said, liking the sound of the word.

He knuckled his nose with his fist as if being caught out by the word’s newness. “The keep, mistress. This is the keep, but the Spanish Queen Eleanor used her own term for it. Sounds prettier, and it’s rarely used for defence nowadays. The old queen loved it. Look here.”

He walked over to the deep window recess lined by stone seats cut into the thickness of the wall, and opened the heavy iron-studded wooden shutters. He stood to one side, looking out.

A cool spring breeze came across an expanse of water that stretched further than Merielle could see, even in the moonlight, filling her nostrils with the indistinct scent of bluebells. Beneath the window, the wall of the keep dropped sheer into the water.

“That’s why she loved it,” Sir Walter said. “Water all round and glorious parkland beyond. Good hunting out there.”

“Water all round the keep?”

“All round the castle, mistress. We’re surrounded by it. Like being on a ship without the rocking; you’ll be able to see it properly tomorrow.” He laughed, closing the shutters.

The bustle from the doorway made any response unnecessary; here were her two panniers dragged in by two red-faced lads muttering suggestions as to their contents. Sir Rhyan and the castellan’s wife waited to enter, watching like eagles and communicating to Merielle an impression that her presence here was an event of some importance to them, which she immediately brushed aside as being absurd.

Lady Alicia was as apologetic as her husband about the threadbare elegance, looking around her at the plain wall-hangings whose folds had faded to a paler rose. “It’ll all have to be redone,” she said. “And a new set for this.” She nodded at the great bed.

Merielle glanced only briefly at the structure that dominated the room, too tired to donate much interest or to catch the quick frown that passed from the castellan to his wife.

Redirecting her concern, Lady Alicia pointed out the fire crackling in a stone fireplace set into the outer wall, its white plaster hood rising like a conical hat up to the ceiling. “To take the chill off,” she said. “Water and towels—” she indicated a silver ewer and basins, a pile of linen folded on the pine chest “—and I’ll have food sent up to you straight away. Or would you rather eat in the hall?”

“No, I thank you, my lady,” said Merielle. “It’s been a long day. Please excuse us, if you will. I shall be asleep within the hour.”

The castellan’s wife was round and as plump as a wren, the top of her white starched wimple reaching only to her husband’s chest, her smile squeaking the linen against her cheeks. A woman in her position, Merielle thought, who could dress in the fashions of thirty years ago would have little idea how to begin refurbishing a room fit for the king’s Flemish wife, Phillipa. Even through her exhaustion, she could see that much.

Sir Rhyan began a move to leave Merielle alone. “So,” he said, “if there is anything else you need, you have only to—”

“Ahem!” Sir William nudged his wife.