My Lady Reluctant

“It is past midday, my lady. I did not think to find you abed,” he said in his sententious way, nodding toward the interior, where bed with rumpled linens was clearly visible from the corridor. “I knocked only as a courtesy. I thought you would be about your duties with the rest of the empress’s ladies.”

“I was ill,” Lady Manette said, a trifle defensively. “My belly was cramping—my monthly flux, you know. And now,” she said, glancing meaningfully over her shoulder at the bed, “if you will excuse me…”

Gisele watched, fascinated, as the chamberlain’s face turned livid, then crimson.

“Such plain speaking is neither necessary nor becoming of one of the empress’s ladies,” Talford reprimanded her. “And I regret that you will have to rise to the occasion despite your um…ill health. The empress’s new lady has arrived, and she is to share your chamber. Not only that, but you will need to find her something suitable to wear—immediately,” he added, as Manette opened her mouth and looked as if she were about to protest. “Lady Gisele de l’Aigle has fallen upon misfortune and has naught but what she is wearing, and that will never do in the hall at supper, as I’m sure you can see.”

Manette’s eyes, which had only briefly rested upon Gisele, now darted back to her and assessed her frankly. “Ah, so you’re the heiress from Normandy,” she murmured in her sleepy, sultry voice. She looked at least mildly interested. “Well, in that case, you may come in,” she said to Gisele. “She’ll be fine, my lord,” she added, waving a hand dismissively at the chamberlain, who once again sniffed and stared as Manette took hold of Gisele’s hand and pulled her none too gently inside, then shut the door firmly in Talford’s face.

“The pompous old fool,” she said, jerking her head back toward the door to indicate the chamberlain.

Gisele was not sure how she should reply to that, although she’d found the chamberlain’s manner annoying, too. “I regret to disturb you while you are ill, Lady Manette,” she began diffidently. “If you will but indicate where the rest of the empress’s ladies are working, I will join them and you can go back to bed—”

A trill of laughter burst from Manette. “Oh, I’m not truly ill, silly, unless you count lovesickness! That was but a ruse to get Talford to leave the quicker! I thought if I embarrassed him enough—but never mind.” She went to the bed, and bent over by it, raising the blanket that dangled from the bed to the rushes. She said something in the gutteral tongue Gisele knew was English, though she didn’t understand it.

A moment later, a lanky, flaxen-haired youth crawled out from under the bed, and blinking at Gisele, bowed, then straightened to his full height, looking at Manette as if for direction.

“This is Wulfram. A gorgeous Saxon, isn’t he?” drawled Manette in Norman French, running a hand over the well-developed youth’s muscular shoulder. “And speaks not a word of French, so we may discuss his attributes right in front of him and he’ll never know. Nay, I wasn’t ill—Wulfram and I were just indulging in a little midday bed sport. Wulfram is um…very talented at that. Is he not handsome? A veritable pagan Adonis, if one may call a Saxon by a Greek name?”

The lanky Saxon looked distinctly uncomfortable, and Gisele was sure he had a very good idea that he was being discussed, even if he did not speak French.

Gisele, feeling the flush creeping up her cheeks, cleared her throat. “Yes…very handsome.”

She was startled when the Saxon extended his hand, touching her scraped cheek with unexpected gentleness. He asked Manette something.

“Wulfram wants to know what happened to you. He asks if ’twas over-rough lovemaking?” She giggled.

Gisele found herself flushing at the Saxon’s supposition. “Nay!” she said, then quickly told the other girl about the attack.

“Oh.” Manette seemed disappointed as she translated for Wulfram.

“I am intruding upon your…time together,” Gisele said. “Perhaps I might share another lady’s chamber, so you are not forced to…interrupt your trysts with Wulfram?” She started for the door, determined to escape this embarrassing situation.

Manette laid a detaining hand upon her wrist. “Nay, stay,” she said, laughing as if Gisele had said something hilarious. “It was inevitable I should be made to share with some lady sooner or later, as some of the other ladies are three to a bed! Besides, Wulfram and I can resume our play another time. We can work out an arrangement, you and I, so that neither of us interrupts the other in this chamber when we have male…company.”

Gisele felt her jaw drop open. “But I shall not be doing any such…” She couldn’t find a polite word for what she meant. Manette’s behavior was beyond her experience.

Manette’s eyes narrowed, and she studied Gisele again. “A virtuous demoiselle, are you? Never mind, you may begin to see things differently here, as you meet the courtiers about the empress. Or not,” she added with a shrug, as Gisele opened her mouth to deny it. “In any case, we shall get along very well, you and I. And you must not join the other ladies—they’d devour you, in your present state, dear Gisele,” she said, indicating the travel-stained gown. “It will take us the rest of the afternoon, but that will be sufficient, since Wulfram is here to fetch the seamstress to alter one of my gowns to fit you. I am bigger here than you,” she said, indicating Gisele’s bust, so that Gisele, aware that Wulfram was watching, blushed all over again. “But you have a lissome figure nonetheless. You will have knights and lordlings agog to meet you.” She rattled off something in English to the flaxen-haired lackey, then turned back to Gisele. “I told him to fetch Edgyth the seamstress, and have a wooden tub and hot water brought for a bath.”

Chapter Five

Two hours later, Gisele had bathed, submitted to Manette’s washing her hair, and donned the gown of mulberry-dyed wool the other girl had given her from her own wardrobe.

“Turn around and let me see,” Manette commanded.

Obediently, Gisele twirled around, feeling the pleated wool skirt bell around her, then settle against her legs. The gown had smooth, close-fitting sleeves with inset bands of embroidery just above the elbow; below the elbow the wool fell into flared pleats that came to mid-forearm in the front, and fingertip length in the back, revealing the tight sleeves of her undergown. Bands of embroidery that matched those on her upper arms circled her bodice just below her breast and made up the woven girdle that hung low on her hips. Her hair had been parted in the middle and encased in mulberry-colored bindings. Manette had even furnished her with a spare pair of shoes to replace her other pair, of which the left one had been clumsily repaired by the monks.

“Your hair is so thick and long, it doesn’t even need false hair added to lengthen it to your waist, as most of the ladies at court must do,” Manette approved, reaching out a hand to bring one of the plaits which had remained over Gisele’s shoulder when she had whirled around, back over her breast.

“Thank you—for everything,” Gisele said, a bit overwhelmed by the girl’s generosity. “I will return the gown to you as soon as I am able to purchase cloth and sew my own….”

“Pah, never mind that,” Manette said with an airy wave of a beringed hand. “’Twas one I was tired of, for the color looks not well with my fairness.” She patted her own tresses, in which the gold was supplemented, Gisele guessed, with saffron dye.

“And now for the finishing touch.” Reaching into a chest at her feet, Manette brought out a sheer short veil, which she placed atop Gisele’s hair, then added a flared and garnet-studded headband that sat on Gisele’s head like a crown.

“Ah, no, Manette, ’tis too much,” Gisele protested, reaching up to remove it. “I could never accept such a costly—”

“Don’t worry, silly, the headdress is but on loan,” Manette said, laughing at her as she reached out a hand to forestall Gisele from removing it. “Uncle Geoffrey is sure to find you very attractive, and that is all to the good,” she added in a low murmur, as if to herself. Her green eyes gleamed.

For reasons that Gisele could not understand, the strange remark, coupled with the avid glint in Manette’s eyes, made her uncomfortable.

“Come, they will be gathering in the hall for supper now,” Manette said, taking her by the elbow and steering her toward the door.

“I understand Lord Geoffrey de Mandeville is your uncle,” Gisele said, more to fill the sudden silence than because she had any desire to learn more of the man.

“Yes, and dear Uncle Geoffrey is the Earl of Essex and Constable of the Tower,” Manette boasted as they walked down the long drafty corridor, “So ’tis Matilda’s good fortune that he decided to favor her, for ’twas he who persuaded the Londoners to grant her imperial haughtiness entrance to the city.”

Gisele looked uneasily about her, for while Manette had been speaking so plainly, they had drawn near to others, lords, ladies and servitors, all thronging in the direction of the hall. “You…you do not like the empress?” she whispered. “But…you are her attendant.”

Manette gave her a sidelong glance. “For now. While the winds of fortune favor the empress, yes.”

“But what of your parents? Where are they? Surely you are here because they owe allegiance to the empress?”

Manette gave a casual shrug as they began to descend, single file, the winding staircase that led from the residence floors to the hall below. “They are dead. I am my uncle’s ward.”

“’Twas good of him to bring you to court, then, rather than shut you away in a convent as some guardians would do until they arranged an advantageous marriage for you,” Gisele said.

Again, that casual lift of one slender shoulder. “Mayhap I shall not marry,” Manette said. “I enjoy myself here at court. I like the freedom to do as I please, to take a lover if I want. Why should one surrender all one’s control to a man? Gisele, do you not agree?”

Hadn’t Gisele been longing for this same sort of freedom Manette spoke of? The freedom to control her own destiny, rather than be like a puppet whose strings were controlled by a man? She had been profoundly shocked earlier, though, when she saw how Manette used that freedom—how she had casually revealed the presence of her lowborn English lover in the bedchamber, and the manner in which she had spoken of their “bed sport”—as if what they did together were no more important than any other game!

“But never mind. Here we are. Follow me to where the empress’s ladies sit,” Manette said as they entered the high-ceilinged great hall with its several rows of trestle tables that were set at right angles to the high table. Expertly threading her way among the throng of scurrying servitors and chattering noblemen and women, she led Gisele to a place at a table very near the center. Half a dozen other ladies had already positioned themselves there.

“Manette, I trust you are recovered?” one said in a voice oozing with skepticism.

“But of course,” Manette purred. “I sent for Wulfram to massage my…brow. It works every time, like a charm. You should try it, Aubine.”

While Aubine was still exchanging looks with her fellow attendants, Manette continued: “But I have not introduced our newcomer. Ladies, this is Lady Gisele de l’Aigle, newly arrived from Normandy. Gisele, that is Aubine on your left, and Cosette across from you, and beyond them, Halette, Emmeline, and from Germany, where Her Highness was empress, Winifride and Rilla.”

All of them eyed her assessingly, their welcoming remarks blending into a meaningless blur. Gisele was very sure she would never remember which of them was which, for though each was dressed differently from her neighbor, and they all had differing heights and figures, they seemed alike in the suspicious manner in which they stared at her.

Then a horn was blown, and everyone who had not found their places hastened to do so. The procession to the high table began.

“Here comes Brien fitzCount, Matilda’s faithful knight,” Manette explained as a sturdy-looking man with graying hair strode by, his head held proudly. “Some say he is more than just her faithful knight,” she added in a silky, insinuating purr.

“Manette, hold your tongue,” the lady named Wilfride commanded in her thickly accented French.

But Manette was irrepressible. “Pooh, Wilfride. I say nothing that all the realm is not thinking.” Her eyes went back to the procession. “And that is Robert, Earl of Gloucester, the empress’s half brother—born on the wrong side of the blanket, of course. The late King Henry was a lusty man.”