Chapter 12
Ranulf knew he should be preparing for
the afternoon joust, but instead of returning to his own camp, he
found a woodland path and followed it. Stealing through the elders
and hazel, listening and keeping a wary lookout for wild boar, he
witnessed the cautious return of the lady’s servants. They emerged
from the greenwood, shy as squirrels, and hurried away on the paths
leading to her great tent. Some were as brilliant as church wall
paintings in their bold new clothes, others were as discreet as
sparrows in browns and grays.
But I will not see my
maid here, and now I believe I know why the princess wears
gloves.
As a fighter he knew fear. He knew the
look of it, the stench of it. The princess had courage. She faced
him and hurled words like knives, but she was terrified of Giles.
The paling of her skin and tightening of her hands which he had
taken at first as signs of shame, of being discovered with her
lover, he now recognized as fear.
He regretted his questions now, and his
jealousy. I have learned nothing since poor
Olwen—when will I learn to be less judging? Who am I—God? Why does
my princess doubt all but the evidence of her own senses? What has
happened to her? And how does she know Giles?
The more he considered the matter, the
stranger it became. Giles, by his extravagant smiles and winsome
behavior, did not know the princess. He was never so fulsome with
women he knew.
If this is what I
believe, then whatever my Eastern firebrand thinks, she needs a
strong protector. Or her whole device—and device I think it must
be—will unravel like thread off a spinster’s distaff. I wonder that
no one has noticed.
But he had not, or if he had, he had
not greatly cared, until the advent of Giles had forced him to
consider. She had cast her device well, with her veils and wanton
costumes.
Perhaps she is a
witch. His flesh crawled and his scalp itched at the
thought. Was she leading them all to hell? If the whole world was
dying of pestilence, as priests fleeing from stricken towns and
villages claimed, then were she and her court demons?
“By Lucifer, she cannot
be!”
His denial was so strong that he
startled a blackbird, who fled alarmed into deeper cover. He strode
over a patch of dying daffodils and placed his open hand on the
wide trunk of a massive beech tree, remembering the young beech the
little maid had hidden by.
Olwen said I was
over-hasty, too keen to condemn. I will not be the same with these
mysteries. Let them play out more.
Whatever she was, she was no knight,
bred to speak the truth.
“Little liar,” he said softly, and he
smiled grimly. She still owed him kisses, too.
At sunset Sir Tancred died
unexpectedly, in his sleep. Edith was sitting on the bed beside
him, talking quietly to Christina and Maria, when she heard his
breath slow. Christina heard it, too, and she began to
weep.
“We need a priest,” Maria said,
crossing herself and backing away on the bed.
“Fetch Teodwin,” Edith said, and she
took Sir Tancred’s cool hand in hers while Christina, on his right
side, took his other hand.
Edith tried to remember the prayers she
had heard Gregory make, but her brother was now loose in her mind
and what she saw and heard was his death, his final, gasping
moments, his awful choking and writhing and ear-splitting screams
of pain. Sir Tancred was going peacefully.
Teodwin put his head round the curtain,
then walked closer, his face solemn. “I could send a lad to the
church,” he offered.
Christina bent low and whispered
something in Sir Tancred’s ear.
Edith shook her head. “No time. He goes
with the sun. Will you say a prayer?”
There was no time to find any priest,
she told herself, as Teodwin knelt by the bed and began to pray.
She knew she should send someone to fetch Sir Tancred’s men, but
she could not choose who should go. She felt numb. She wished
Gregory was here. He would know what to do.
“I will go for his squire,” Maria said,
moving as swiftly as her bulk would allow.
“No, not at this time with so many
dagger-girls wandering about the camp, seeking lovers. Martin and
Walter should go.” Edith forced herself to think, though all she
wanted was to lie beside this dying, gentle man and howl. “Let them
go and let whoever of Tancred’s men in. Draw back the curtain and
open the tent flaps. Go to our wagon, Maria. Stay there with the
children.”
The tent became a whirlpool of activity
as braziers were brought and Tancred’s men began to hurry to their
master’s bedside. Edith stayed, holding Sir Tancred’s limp hand and
joining in what prayers she could.
He died at sunset, in his sleep,
surrounded by his men, his friends, his woman Christina, and
Edith.
“A good way to go,” several of his men
murmured as they left the tent for the womenfolk to wash the body
and to lay him out. By agreement, he was to be carried to the small
church, where Christina and Edith would keep watch, among others,
through the night.
No one remarked on a Princess of Cathay
doing this, for which Edith was dimly grateful. For the rest, she
was stunned. She had not thought Sir Tancred so old, so vulnerable.
And already the captain of Sir Tancred’s men was speaking of
leaving, of the men needing to find another lord. Even plump,
pretty Christina surprised Edith by announcing that she would soon
travel to London, to find and live with her widowed
sister.
“You are most welcome to stay,” Edith
reminded her, wishing she could stop time, reverse the day and make
Tancred live again, feeling events moving relentlessly on, as
swiftly as a stream in a winter flood.
Christina shook her head, red-eyed.
“This world is too grand for me. I only stayed for
Tancred.”
She began to weep again, quietly, and
Edith hugged her, stroking the woman’s lifeless blond hair as
Christina cried, “What will become of us? We are lost, quite
lost.”
Not lost,
stranded, Edith thought as Christina cried harder, breaking
down completely. We cannot leave now. I have lost a
good friend, a teacher, a kind ally. He must be buried well, with
honor. We cannot go.