Crown of Passion Read online

  Falsworth crowed, “Ranulf will wish he had found this one himself! What will the king say!”

  “The king,” said Rainault, stressing every word, “will never see this fine recruit. Are you totally bereft of any sense? One word from her to the king — and we’ve lost our heads!”

  Falsworth was suddenly sober. “I mislike this.” He frowned, but then added hopefully, “We could cut out her tongue?”

  Rainault raised his fist in anger, but lowered it slowly. “Why I ever agreed to come with you fools, I don’t know.” He shook his head, like an embattled boar. “But the court will see her first and, thinking she is the man she appears to be …” He gestured broadly.

  Slowly, the cream of the jest dawned upon his companions. Valdemar burst into a loud bray of laughter. “And them with all their ohs and ahs whenever a fine figure comes in!” In a startling transformation he became a mincing minion of the court. With exaggerated shoulder sway and a fluting falsetto, he cried, “Oh, what have we here! Such fine muscles, such lovely black hair! Delicious!”

  The three whooped with laughter. Gwyn felt the chill of horror ice her very skin. She was worldly enough to understand the full foulness of Rainault’s scheme. To set her down among a flock of the king’s rare birds, as her father had called them — the woman-hating, man-loving striplings might, like the vultures they were, rend her to shreds when they discovered the deception. And what could the king do, after she was dead?

  Freezing terror held her paralyzed for a moment too long. Before she could make more than a futile gesture of protest, do more than form soundless syllables with trembling lips, the three were on her.

  “Now then,” cried Rainault, “think of us as benefactors.” He started toward her.

  “Bene —” The word ended in a scream.

  “How else? We answer your wish. Take off the cloak.”

  “Never.”

  “Then,” said Valdemar, with a surprising appearance of reason, “we shall help you. I’ve never been a lady’s maid but I can try.” He smiled wolfishly. “And enjoy learning,” he added softly.

  Rainault was helping Falsworth with his surcoat. “For ours would fall off the wench before we left the forest. Come on, Falsworth, the chausses, too. Not the mail shirt. The wench may find her dagger yet, and I do not wish your blood on my hands!”

  “Yours first,” grumbled his friend. “You took your turn on her first — it’s beyond reason that you should enjoy her and I should get my death from her.”

  “It won’t come to that,” Rainault assured him.

  Valdemar stood before her and pushed her hands away from the silver clasp at the throat of the mantle. Roughly he opened the clasp and, looking curiously at the silver brooch, dropped it to the ground. She stood naked, gleaming white in the advancing twilight, and Valdemar let his hands stroke the pearly skin, intimately, persistently.

  “She’s ready to be dressed,” remarked Valdemar, totally caught up in the new jest. Forgotten seemed to be the Saxon maiden, and even the wager that had brought them all to the clearing by mischance.

  She calculated that they might be too drunk, even yet, to run after her, encumbered as they were by their link mail, their leather surcoats, and heavy boots that covered their ankles.

  She looked beyond Valdemar’s shoulder, with an expression of amazement. The trick worked. Valdemar half turned, and she was gone. He made an abortive attempt to catch her, but her smooth flesh slipped past his fingertips.

  The men were helpless to catch her, but no more than a yard away from Valdemar stood the great silent, menacing Wolf, moving like a deadly shadow to bar her way.

  This time the three men were as desperate as she. For their very lives depended — now that she knew who they were — on silencing her, one way or another. Her death could quiet her tongue, but there were those who knew they had ridden out in this direction, and there was always a chance that one of the three might bare his soul to save his own life.

  With one accord they reached out to take her arms.

  She did not waste breath this time on heaping curses upon their heads. She began to battle in earnest.

  “I vow she’s no Saxon!” panted Falsworth. “She fights like a true Norman! Rainault — Help me — Oh!”

  That, last cry was cuffed from him by a well-directed blow to his nose, where his nasal armor did not reach. He loosed her wrist involuntarily, and she snatched at his dagger.

  She was nothing but elbows, thought Rainault, and heels and teeth and fingernails, and above all a wriggling eel. He wished heartily that he had never set the wager, never sent Wolf on the trail of the Saxon pigeon. He was more than uneasy on the score of this afternoon’s work, since he had no preferment at King William’s court. But he had never yet left unfinished anything he started, no matter how mad —

  Suddenly, the girl stopped struggling and sagged limply against Rainault’s rock-hard chest. He put his arms around her to keep her from falling to the ground.

  “Another trick?” he demanded harshly.

  He owed her much, and not in kindness, but his heart turned in pity as he studied the face swollen by tears and bleeding from a handful of scratches. A bruise near her left eye gave promise of darkening by nightfall. Her small breasts heaved in long shuddering gasps of exhaustion. Yet he approached her as he would an uncertainly wounded wild boar.

  “Can you not trust us?” he cajoled. “You stand there naked, your clothes destroyed by your struggles —”

  She lifted her head to stare defiantly at him. “My struggles? I must be more careful not to rend my clothing before your hands do so. Is that your meaning?”

  With a half wave he saluted her. “You are our captive, you know. We could take you, each of us, and you can no longer help yourself.”

  A sob, of heartrending anguish and desolation, escaped her.

  “Think of it,” suggested Rainault, almost gently, “if you could think — if you struggle, we shall have to silence you before your tongue wags too much to the king. But you could join us — if you could but see the jest we plan.”

  She looked down at her white body, dishonored by greedy eyes and hurting fingers, and did not see the long scratches on her hips, the gash running from her shoulder diagonally across her breast. She saw only that she had no choice. Either way offered to her — to continue defying them, when she was so near exhaustion, or to fall in with their ugly scheme — was no choice at all.

  Guile entered her spirit at that moment. She lifted her eyes again to Rainault. “I do not see the jest. But perhaps if you were to explain it to me —”

  Rainault’s eyes narrowed. He searched her face, but saw only the beauty of the flawless skin, flushed now to a warm glow, saw only the limpid frankness of the tilted green eyes. He cast his eyes downward over the slender, budding body. Only a child after all.

  The jest had lost its savor. Had it not been for the avid Valdemar and the fawning Falsworth, he would have given the whole of it up and fled to France. For he had done — or almost done — a heinous thing.

  But Valdemar’s impatience burst its weak bounds. “Her hair! That’s the best part of it!” he cried. “This is too long!” He lifted a long black braid in one hand. The gold-embroidered green casings had been long ago loosened in her struggles and now lay forgotten in the trampled grass. “We’ll have to cut it off. Falsworth, hold the maid still!”

  “Slippery,” mumbled Falsworth.

  His nose still bled. Valdemar reached for his dagger, still holding on to his handful of hair.

  Rainault still held her, but loosely. Falsworth, obediently, edged around him and seized her wrists, pleased to feel no resistance.

  Gwyn had no time to be crafty. Screaming defiance at them, she wrested herself away from Falsworth’s grip and eluded his outstretched arm. She ran full tilt into Rainault, hastening to head her off. She took him by surprise. He was slow to reach out for her, and when he did, she kicked savagely at his leg. Her heel caught him just behind the knee, and
he fell.

  Flight was now her only chance.

  Her two long braids, entwined with soft green ribbon, swung behind her as she darted from the clearing.

  Behind her she could hear voices raised in surprise, in accusation — but she did not hear Rainault’s great voice crying, “Stay, Wolf!” Even if she had, she would not have trusted the Normans to hold back their dogs from the hunt.

  A braid caught by one green ribbon on an outstretched twig, jerking her head painfully backward. She lost her balance and fell halfway to her knees before catching herself.

  She no longer had any sense of direction. She could not outwit the dogs again, and she knew that she had wounded the hunter where no salve could heal — she regretted calling Rainault a coward. But it was the truth, and she would tell him again if she ever had the chance. It looked very doubtful whether she would.

  He had been almost gentle at the end. But only, she thought shrewdly, to get her to go along with their infamous plot — the plot that in itself meant her death.

  All these reflections occupied only the surface of her mind. The main thrust of her feverish thoughts ran along the lines of seeking a tree to climb, a running rill to wash away the traces of her scent to fool the dogs — all the tricks that, to this day, had been ruses she admired in the game she had hunted, riding beside her father. Now, she herself was the quarry …

  She had gone far too short a distance when she had to stop to catch her breath. The life of a hunted fox was strenuous. She realized that she was panting just as the Saxon slave had gasped for breath, and with a strong effort of will power she forced herself to breathe deeply. In a few moments she found her racing heartbeat had slowed, and she was ready to run again. But this time she would take more care, planning the best way to run. She listened, but could hear no signs of pursuit behind her.

  She swept a searching glance around her. She was in a sort of clearing, smaller than the glade around the spring. This one had been formed when a fallen tree had let in the sunlight and small saplings rushed to fill in the gap. A faint game trail crossed the grass at an angle. Perhaps she could make her way along it.

  She moved stealthily, her bare feet making no noise on the floor of the forest. Past the great oak, and the younger one next to it, past the shadberry bush that squatted like an old woman belling her skirts around her.

  And then she saw the man.

  A Norman, on horseback, astride the game trail. Dressed in light armor, he had merry eyes and a growing smile of admiration.

  He sat low in the saddle, a man of not quite middle stature. His helm was raised, and she noted that he had hair as black as her own. His face, she noted without thinking, was greedy and proud — a Norman face, haughty and cunning. And, as well, he wore an air of assurance that marked him as of very high rank. He was not the king. William, so Countess Maud had told her when Gwyn was first brought to her after her father’s death, was blond of hair, red of face, and bulging of eye.

  But this man was a Norman, after all. Her heart stuck in her throat.

  Her hands fluttered downward to clutch her garments together, before she remembered she had none. Even a ragged piece of her white linen shift would have been something, even though it was nearly transparent. But she had not a scrap to cover her.

  The Norman did not move. Plucking courage from his stillness, and remembering that she might be able to slip out of sight before he dismounted, she quavered, “Who are you, sir?”

  He breathed an exaggerated sigh of relief. Easing his body in the saddle, he confessed, “So you can speak. And with a human voice, what’s more. I quite thought you were a wood sprite.”

  A faint smile touched her eyes. “I wish I were. Then I would not be in quite so desperate a state.”

  He frowned. “Even wood sprites, as far as I know, do not travel the forest unclothed. Will you permit me to take you where you left them? Or” — he paused as though struck by a new thought — “are you perhaps indulging in a new game?”

  “No new game!” she protested. “It is the old game where men are the players and maids the pawns.”

  The squat man raised a broad black eyebrow. “You speak with Norman tongue. And by my fay, you look Norman. In your face and hair, of course. All else — as far as I have explored — is universal in nature, be she Norman, Saxon, or Provençale.”

  It was hard to maintain one’s dignity, she found, without thread to cover her. She could not yet decide whether to trust this man, Norman as he was, or to flee again, hoping she could somehow make her way back to the lodge. She could think later how to explain to Countess Maud what had happened.

  He made as though to dismount, and in a flash she was behind the nearest tree, watching him from its shelter, ready to run.

  “I wonder,” said the Norman, both hands again in full view on the reins, “what can have frightened you so? Will you tell me?”

  She had lost too much time. She could hear the arrival of her pursuers, heralded by voices in the distance. She took a chance.

  “Sir, I do not know who you are. But I am Gwynllion Ramsey. My father was baron of the Ramsey honor.”

  The horseman frowned in concentration. “He has died recently, I seem to remember?”

  “Two months ago, sir. And I am the king’s ward —”

  “Newly arrived in Countess Maud’s custody,” he finished swiftly. “I know you now.” He thought for a moment. Then he said, slowly, “Can it be that the Baron Ramsey left his child so penniless as not to own even a russet gunna? Or is it perhaps the royal hand which has despoiled the estates?”

  “I am the king’s ward,” said Gwyn with immense dignity, but the effect was spoiled when she shivered. She seemed suddenly a small unhappy child when she said, forlornly, “I wish I had my cloak. I’m cold.”

  “We shall retrieve it,” he promised, “if you tell me where you left it. Perhaps by a spring where you bathed? No? Then mount before me, and we will search.” He laughed at the fright in her eyes. “No, do not worry. As the king’s ward you are entirely safe, with me or with any Norman knight.”

  Her mouth twisted. “How wrong you are!” She added quickly, remembering his presumably exalted rank, “Sir.” She would have said more but that he held his hand up to enjoin silence. The voices of her pursuers were clear enough now to make out their words.

  “We’ll take the girl, by the back way, so nobody sees us” — that was Valdemar — “and we’ll call her — think of a good name.”

  “First we must find her.”

  “We will, you fool. Where can she go?”

  “Wolf could track her if you let him go,” complained Valdemar.

  “And have her in bloody shreds before we can hold him?”

  “Oh, I suppose you’re right. What name shall we give her?”

  “Just a page for somebody. No need for a name. She’ll make a tooth’s morsel for those beady-eyed vultures.”

  “Shall we tell the king?” That was doubting Falsworth.

  “I think — what great sport if we could fool the king. Do you think we could?”

  “I think we ought to tell him. Let him in on the jest. Better than having to run to France, when he finds out. The wine is good enough here.”

  “And I’d hate to miss the sport — a jest falls flat if you don’t watch it!”

  The voices now took shape beyond the fallen tree. Rainault, holding Wolf in check, Valdemar, and Falsworth. Laughing, sure of their quarry, knowing the girl could not have gone too far for Wolf to lose, they entered the glade exulting. They stopped cold at the sight of the horseman.

  “What evil sport is this?” said the mounted Norman in a pleasant enough voice. “Does my brother’s court now chase Norman ladies?”

  Gwyn shrank against the sheltering tree. She forgot that the wind was cold against her bare skin, that she dreaded the dogs even more than she feared the men. She was stunned by the realization that her champion — in her great need — was none other than Prince Henry, younger brother of th
e king! She watched with rising glee the Norman knights shifting ground, faced with an authority they could not defy.

  At length, Rainault found his voice. “Sire, we thought she was a Saxon slave. We loosed the hounds after her at the edge of the village. And somehow —” He swallowed. It came hard to blame his beloved hound, but the prince seated on the horse was far more dangerous than even the crowned king. And the prince was within a lance throw at this moment.

  “Somehow?” prompted Prince Henry.

  “Somehow Wolf lost the track. Missed it. I’ve never known him to do such a thing before.” He frowned at the hound.

  “I imagine not,” said Henry, still pleasantly. But Gwyn could detect a menacing edge of steel in his voice. It was no secret, Gwyn had learned, that Prince Henry had little use for his brother’s courtiers. “I am sure,” he continued, “your horses are restless by now. Wherever they are. It takes the fine edge off their mettle to let them stand. But I believe you know this? I recognize you, Rainault, and your companions, and” — the threat was silken, but shiveringly real — “I shall watch your career in the future with great interest.”

  Rainault frowned and dropped his hand to his dagger hilt. But it was an empty gesture. After all, one could not kill a royal prince before witnesses.

  “I shall relieve you of the duty of restoring the lady to her maidens,” Henry told them, “so she will not delay you in your return to the court.”

  The suggestion was civilly phrased, but the men took warning and Valdemar and Falsworth could not depart quickly enough, after a sketchy salute to the prince.

  Rainault was the last to leave. He had caught sight of Gwyn, crouching half hidden behind a shadbush. He looked long, and she felt his gaze burning over her nakedness, even, she fancied, penetrating the thick brush.

  “You have only yourself to blame,” he said heavily. “Valdemar called you a witch. Perhaps so. Spells can be cast and work their magic well, whether it be by sorcery or no.” A smile quirked his lips. “Beware, lady, of laying your spell on the wrong man.”

  “I have laid no spell, Norman,” she said haughtily. “Except for the truth, I have said not a word.”