Fairest of Them All (Once Upon A Time #3)

Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

Austyn’s ears, like those of every man in the great hall, had been tuned to hear the melodic warbling of an angel. Which explained his overwhelming urge to clap his hands over them when the woman on the dais opened her mouth and cheerfully croaked through blackened teeth:

Nary a lady had a knight wi’ such a roamin’ lance.

Slay the wenches he did,

And begged they for more,

Til his lady booted him out the door

With nary a second chance!

Austyn’s hand slowly uncurled from his trophy. He knew he should be thanking God for his good fortune, but as the gossamer threads of hair slipped through his limp fingers, he swayed as if some incalculable loss had left his heart bleeding from shock.

“She could have been anyone,” he murmured, dazed by the revelation. “A lady-in-waiting. The earl’s sister. His mistress.” Austyn shook his head to clear it of that intolerable vision. “I never thought to ask her name. I just assumed…”

Carey smiled weakly, making a transparent effort to swallow his own revulsion. “’Tis fortunate you were mistaken. Why, she’s just what you wanted! A nice plain little wife.”

Austyn forced back a shudder as the woman launched into the chorus of the ditty with rousing enthusiasm and wretched pitch. “She’s not plain. She’s…hideous.”

From the discordant buzz rising around them, he wasn’t the only one present to reach that conclusion. Mutters of trickery and fraud were swarming through the hall like angry honeybees as the men exchanged nudges and suspicious glares. A timid mention of witchcraft led several challengers to cross themselves and back away from the dais.

’Twas only the heartfelt sigh of a richly garbed noble that kept the crowd from disintegrating into a dangerous mob. The man shook his head regretfully, the badly singed plume of his enormous hat drooping over one eye. “Aye, a wasting disease. She tried to warn me of it, but her beauty was still such that I refused to believe her.”

This produced several fresh murmurs of “webbed feet,” “bouts of blindness,” and an even more alarming whisper of “pox” that had the men crossing their knees instead of their breasts.

As the rumors sped through the great hall, the knowing nods gathered momentum. At last the men understood the reason for the earl’s haste in seeking a husband for his daughter as well as his offer of such a generous dowry. He plainly hoped to marry her off before her appearance deteriorated further. Several of the challengers cast horrified glances at the dais, the prospect eluding even their superior imaginations.

The song mercifully reached its conclusion. After gaping at his daughter for several long, terse moments, the earl stepped forward. Austyn narrowed his eyes. More often than not, his own survival had depended on his ability to judge the mood of his opponent, and he would have almost sworn the earl’s clenched fists were shaking not in mortification, but in fury.

His host’s voice cracked like a whip, lashing the gossip to a halt. “We shall proceed with the contest of verse. Who will be the first to pay tribute to my daughter in poetry or song?”

The silence swelled and deepened. The empty space around the dais seemed to be spreading of its own accord. Some of the men fidgeted. Others tried to hide lutes behind their backs or tuck flutes down the front of their hose.

Austyn was rooted to the spot.

Carey hissed in his ear, “Was it not you who said ‘a comely wife is a pox upon her husband’s fortunes’? God has given you a chance to outwit destiny. Don’t squander it.”

Austyn glanced at the tempting specter of the door behind him, then back at the dais where the woman stood beaming at the crowd as if too dull-witted to comprehend the stir her appearance had caused. Her father was mopping his shiny brow with his sleeve and inching toward the curtain.

Austyn was robbed of his right to choose when Carey planted a shoulder firmly in his back and shoved. He half stumbled, half lurched forward, regaining his balance amongst a chorus of ugly titters.

Clearing his throat of its sudden obstruction, he squared his shoulders, rested one hand on his sword hilt and boldly announced, “I’ve come for the woman.”

Holly was having little difficulty maintaining her beatific smile. She was already savoring dreams of victory. She’d seen audiences enthralled by her performances before, but she’d never seen one quite so aghast.

She might have feared for her ruse had not Lord Fairfax of the scorched hat plume unwittingly come to her defense by repeating those ridiculous fables she had told him. Her sole remaining concern was the muffled thumping coming from the upstairs wardrobe where she and Elspeth had locked Brother Nathanael. Even that was fading as the minutes wore on.

Aye, she confessed to herself, the back of her papa’s neck was a deplorable shade of magenta, and he was bobbing on his heels like a rotund cauldron about to overboil, but he would forgive her in time. He always did. Her smile took on a dreamy quality as she anticipated the clever wiles she would employ to coax him out of his temper.

First, she would order his favorite supper prepared: fresh peacock stuffed with rosemary and dressed in its own feathers, tiny capers roasted to golden brown perfection, tender sweetmeats and confections drizzled with melted butter. Her own mouth began to water in anticipation.

Then she would don his favorite cotte—the violet one with the matching wimple trimmed in cloth of gold. She resisted the sudden urge to reach up and touch her hair. ’Twould grow in time and until it did, she had dozens of lovely wimples to cover it. She could only hope her eyelashes would grow as quickly.

Once her papa was settled on the brocaded bench before the hearth, she would kneel on a cushion at his feet, pluck a melody from her harp, and sing his favorite song—the one her mama had sang to soothe him after he’d returned from breaking a new stallion or battling the obstinate Welsh.

Oh, he would sulk and grumble a bit as was his custom, but after she’d finished singing, he would shake his head ruefully, chortle beneath his breath, and reach down to ruffle her…well, her wimple. Then he would confess how relieved he was to keep her by his side and the two of them would toast her ingenuity with a glass of mead and…

“I’ve come for the woman.”

The graceless declaration jarred Holly from her pleasant fantasies. Her grin faded.

She blinked away her sunny haze to discover an unexpected thundercloud looming on the horizon. A cloud of alarming proportions that had scudded in from the west on a tempestuous wind. She would have never thought it possible, but her nemesis from the garden was even more intimidating by daylight than moonlight.

He towered over the other men, his long, unruly hair and bristly beard a startling contrast to their Roman-cropped heads and drooping mustaches. He looked less a different nationality than a different species of creature. He bore his weight on his lean hips with such ease that he seemed to swagger even when standing motionless.

Holly could hardly fathom that such a shaggy beast of a man could have tasted her lips with such beguiling tenderness. They still tingled at the memory.

Her initial shock surrendered to an irrational flare of anger. So the wretch fancied himself one of her suitors, did he? Yet he’d been trysting with another wench the very night before he planned to challenge her father for her hand. Worse yet, when his lady had been tardy, he had actually thought to sample Holly’s favors, therefore betraying his potential bride with none other than herself! She scowled, slightly befuddled by the paradox.

“Come forward, sir,” her father commanded.

Holly swallowed a fervent No!, the resulting squeak earning her a simmering glower from her papa that warned her he itched to strip away her disguise before the entire hall, but did not dare risk igniting such a scandal.

As the stranger lumbered forward, the crowd shrank out of his path, warily eyeing the hand welded to his sword hilt. He was trailed by a slender man, as fair as he was dark.

“Your name, sir?” her father demanded.

“Sir Austyn of Gavenmore.”

At the name Gavenmore , speculation once more churned the crowd to a muttering froth. Holly mentally searched her limited store of gossip, but found no reference to an arrogant Welshman with boorish manners and a fickle heart.

“Have you come to pay tribute to my daughter?” her papa asked.

The knight hesitated, his gaze flicking to the floor, the smoke-stained rafters, his companion’s battered boots, anywhere to avoid glancing directly at her. Holly supposed she couldn’t blame him.

He finally drew in a breath that swelled his chest to daunting proportions. “I have.”

An unbidden shiver raked Holly. Gavenmore imbued the simple words with grim destiny, making his claim seem both inevitable and irrevocable.

Her father waved a hand and said, “You may proceed,” before sinking into his chair. The narrow look he shot Holly plainly said, I hope you’re satisfied, girl .

Holly locked her hands in front of her to hide their sudden tremor, her only consolation being that the knight looked even more miserable than she felt. His companion shoved a crumpled sheaf of paper into his hand. As he squinted at it, a fierce scowl claimed what little was visible of his features.

After clearing his throat twice, he began to read, his voice barely audible. “She walks in dreams, my lady sweet—”

At a sniveling gust of laughter from the back of the hall, he jerked his head up and dropped his hand back to his sword hilt. Holly found herself holding her breath with the rest of them, waiting for him to snatch out his sword and begin to cleave off limbs and heads like some fearsome berserk. His hand twitched once, twice, then returned to grip the paper tightly enough to blanch knuckles dusted with dark hair.

This time, perfect silence greeted his halting recitation.

She walks in dreams, my lady sweet. With p-p-purple eyes and dainty feet.

He shot his companion such a tortured glance that even Holly felt a pang of sympathy for him. The blond man offered a wink of encouragement, all the while taking great pains to sidle out of reach of those brawny arms.

She haunts my sleep, my lady fair. With snowy brow and curly—”

He dared a tentative glance at the dais. Holly bared her walnut-stained teeth at him in what she hoped would pass for a flirtatious smile. His hand dipped absently into his hauberk as his gaze seemed to fixate against its will on the uneven tufts of hair afflicting her scalp.

“—hag,” he finished. His companion winced.

Sudden coughing fits seized several of the lords and knights. A man in the back of the hall escaped out the door, his howls of laughter echoing in the bleak silence.

“Hair,” Gavenmore muttered, correcting himself through clenched teeth. He crumpled the paper in his fist, standing so rigidly he might have been carved from a block of stone.

His deliverance came from an unlikely quarter. The earl bounded to his feet, applauding with such enthusiasm that the other challengers had no choice but to join in or risk offending their host.

Amid a half-hearted chorus of “Huzzah’s!” Holly’s papa called out, “A noble performance, Sir Austyn of Gavenmore! What man among you is bold enough to challenge such an eloquent opponent?”

Silence descended once more, fraught with renewed twitching and longing glances toward the door.

“Very well, then,” her papa said. “I pronounce Sir Austyn the victor of the contest of verse. Let us proceed to the lists, shall we? Perhaps some of you would prefer to test your mettle on the jousting field.”

A mad dash for the door ensued. Holly suspected most of the men would be driving their horses across the drawbridge before the frozen behemoth in their midst so much as blinked an eye.

She started toward her father, but his frigid demeanor stopped her in her tracks. He disappeared through the curtain in a flash of saffron.

She had assumed he would cancel the joust. Now her lovely plan was going awry. All because some Welsh clod was too stubborn to admit defeat.

She pivoted to shoot the knight a baleful glare only to find the flagstones before the dais empty. It seemed her champion had gone skulking off with the rest of them. She had little time to savor her disdain before her papa’s arm shot back through the curtain, seized her by the wrist, and jerked her after him.

Holly stumbled along behind her papa, her rump already stinging in anticipation. He had never so much as lifted a fist to box her ears, but she suspected this hoax had earned her a full-fledged thrashing. Ah, well, she thought philosophically, ’twas best to have the unpleasantness done with so she could concentrate on wriggling her way back into his favor.

But when he dragged her behind the relative privacy of a carved screen and whirled to face her, ’twas not the ruddy flush of anger that tinged his face, but the sallow pallor of fear. “Have you any idea what manner of man you’ve provoked?”

“Now, Papa, I know you fancy yourself possessed of a fearsome temper, but I’ve never been the least bit afraid—”

“I’m not talking about me,” he bit off between clenched teeth. “I’m talking about Gavenmore.”

Holly knew more about what manner of man Gavenmore was than she cared to reveal. She forced an airy laugh. “He’s naught but a lowly knight. A boorish Welshman with appalling taste in verse.”

Her papa tilted his head back to thrust his face next to hers. “Sir Austyn of Gavenmore is one of the most dangerous and powerful warriors in all of Wales. And one of the most unpredictable. If I dare to slight his honor or incite his rage, it might very well cause a renewal of the hostilities between England and Wales. If Gavenmore doesn’t claim my head, then the king most surely will.” Groaning, he spun around to pace the confined area. “I should have snatched you off the dais the moment you appeared in that ridiculous costume. It never occurred to me that some fool would actually offer for you. Now ’tis too late.”

Holly could weather her papa’s blustering better than his despair. “Shall I confess my deceit?” she offered in a small voice. “Issue a public apology?”

“And disgrace yourself before all of England? What decent man would want a shameless liar for a bride? You might as well shave off what little hair you’ve got left and doom yourself to a nunnery.” He ruffled his own hair until it stood on end in a manner almost identical to Holly’s and muttered, “I suppose even Gavenmore would be better than no husband at all.”

Holly could not fully convey the violent depths of her disagreement so she simply smoothed her father’s disheveled locks beneath her fingertips. “You needn’t fret, Papa. The arrogant knave is probably halfway back to Wales by now. ’Twas but a momentary twinge of madness that prompted him to declare himself for me.”

He batted her hand away, pinning her with an icy glare that chilled her to the marrow. “You’d best pray that you’re right, girl, because Gavenmore has taken every purse in every joust he’s entered in the past five years. If you’re wrong, you may very well be his most extravagant prize.”

The queen of Love and Beauty reigned over the tournament from her throne atop the wooden gallery, the irony of her title not wasted on her.

Holly wiggled on the hard seat to avoid the rolls of cloth Elspeth had crafted to pad her skirt. Her breasts were beginning to ache from being bound so tightly and the urge to claw at her freshly cropped head was becoming impossible to resist. The midday sun beat down on her tender skin. She licked the sweat from her upper lip only to get a mouthful of the soot she had used to darken the imperceptible hairs there to the shadow of a mustache.

Half of the challengers had already fled. Remaining were those lords and knights who had pledged fealty to her father and a stubborn handful reluctant to forfeit their honor to rumors of cowardice. They clustered at each end of the list, making half-hearted gestures toward donning their armor and outfitting their mounts for a joust they knew would never take place.

A parade of curious gawkers had also joined the crowd: peasants from the village, scampering children, castle servants, slatterns who’d emerged from the hillside encampment with tangled hair and eyes slitted from too little sleep and a dizzying variety of masculine attentions.

Their shrill laughter was echoed by the more subtle, but no less malicious, giggles of the ladies seated with Holly on the gallery. Her aunts and cousins huddled on benches at her back, giving her a broad berth lest her affliction be contagious and they should awake in the morn to discover their own eyelashes and hair lying in clumps upon their pillows.

She stole a glance at her papa’s stony profile. He perched on the throne next to hers, his feet dangling a good six inches from the floor of the gallery. He had snubbed all of her feeble attempts at conversation since their earlier confrontation. Given no choice but to sit slumped miserably in her chair, Holly was beginning to wish this grim farce over and done with.

As the heralds took the field, gleaming trumpets in hand, she suspected she was about to get her wish. When not a single challenger accepted their brassy invitation to battle, she would be free to retire to her chamber and face her father’s well-deserved wrath. She shifted in a vain attempt to relieve an unpleasant tingle in her bottom.

The heralds lifted the golden bells of their trumpets. A flourish of notes trilled through the hazy air.

Holly yawned and scratched her head, anticipating a lazy afternoon nap.

A lone rider materialized at the far end of the list. Before she even realized it, Holly was on her feet, gripping the gallery rail in her damp palms.

As the Welsh knight muscled his broad-flanked bay destrier through the scattering mob, her father muttered, “Can’t say much for his taste in verse or women, but the lad has a hell of a head for horseflesh.”

If Holly could have choked a word past her shuttered throat, she might have agreed. There was no question that Gavenmore cut a majestic figure on a horse. He sat the saddle as if he’d been born to it. The armor beneath his quilted surcoat was modest, simple chain mail enhanced by steel plates at his elbows and shins. A silver helm obscured his features, making him look even more forbidding.

Praying he hadn’t seen her rise, Holly sank back into her seat, fighting an involuntary thrill of excitement. “I don’t know why he troubles with a helm. It seems his head is hard enough to deflect any blow he might receive.”

As the destrier pranced down the list toward the gallery, its rippling drape mirroring the dusky greens and crimsons of its master’s surcoat, the agitated snatches of gossip from Holly’s aunts and cousins became impossible to ignore.

“Aye, Gavenmore…so arrogant he brought only a single man-at-arms to the contest, but ’tis rumored there are a thousand Welshmen crouched in the forest awaiting his signal to attack.”

Holly felt her papa stiffen.

“… little more than a savage…”

“… once incredibly wealthy…”

“… stripped of their earldom when his father murdered his own wife.”

“Murdered her? I heard he ate her!”

A muffled rejoinder, too low for even Holly’s ears to catch, provoked a round of naughty titters from the women.

An icy ball of dread hardened in Holly’s chest. Dear God, she thought, what manner of man had she provoked? She had precious little time to contemplate her recklessness, for horse and rider had reached the gallery.

Steadying the restless beast between his powerful thighs, Gavenmore raised a gauntleted fist, displaying the baleful length of his lance for her perusal.

Holly might have ducked had she not been paralyzed by trepidation. She gazed at the thick staff until her eyes crossed. She briefly considered throwing herself on it, but its deadly tip was blunted by a ceremonial coronal.

Her papa dug a less than paternal elbow into her ribs. “As your champion, he wishes a tribute. Have you no favor to offer him?”

“Um…uh…well…” Holly shot her costume a panicked look, knowing that if she tugged the wrong thing, her entire disguise was likely to unravel before their eyes.

The knight shifted impatiently in his stirrups. Perhaps ’twas not too late to discourage this brash suitor, Holly thought. She reached beneath the skirts of her cotehardie to peel off one of the stockings she’d pilfered from Elspeth. Sensing the downward shift of the knight’s gaze beneath his slitted helm, she quickly dropped her skirt. There was little she could do to mask her slender ankles.

She tied the dingy, hole-pocked stocking around his lance in a pretty bow. Fluttering her pruned lashes at him, she lowered her voice to a provocative croak. “Fare thee well in the joust, sir. My heart rides with you.”

His answering mutter was blessedly muffled by the helm. As he wheeled the horse around, Holly fully expected him to go cantering off toward Wales, or perhaps Baghdad. Instead, he halted at the edge of the gallery and shoved back the faceplate of his helm. His narrowed gaze deliberately glanced off of her, but searched the faces of the women behind her with peculiar intensity. A chorus of nervous twitters greeted his perusal.

Holly swiveled around, stabbed by an unfamiliar pang. Surely his garden assignation hadn’t been with one of her sniveling Tewksbury cousins?

He slammed the faceplate shut with a clang of finality, leaving her to wonder if he had found what he sought.

As he trotted to the end of the sand- and straw-sprinkled list, the earl’s marshal took the field, bellowing, “Challengers, take your places!”

Amid much ribbing and jibes from his cohorts, a blushing Lord Fairfax took up lance and shield and drove his dappled mount to the opposite end of the list from Gavenmore. Holly noted that he’d rescued his scorched plume from his hat and affixed it to his helm.

The earl stood and lifted both arms. His familiar benediction lacked its usual heartiness. “Fight with honor, gentlemen, and show mercy to your opponent.”

Robust cheers and cries of excitement went up as the horses roared toward their inevitable confrontation. Gavenmore rode low over his mount’s back, at one with the speed and thunder of the magnificent beast. Holly clenched the gallery rail, her heart racing in her parched throat with involuntary suspense.

Gavenmore lifted his lance. Lord Fairfax went tumbling head over heels off the back of his mount.

Holly squinted in confusion. As Fairfax clambered sheepishly to his feet, dusting off the plume of his fallen helm, the chorus of jeers and boos that greeted him confirmed her suspicions. Gavenmore’s lance had never touched him. She doubted he’d even remained mounted long enough to feel its wind whistle past.

Dispatching the next challenger required even less of the knight’s effort. Sir Henry of Sovermoth launched himself off his horse before Gavenmore could so much as raise his lance. Holly’s horror mounted as she realized that not a single one of her former admirers was willing to risk his neck to rescue her from the Welshman’s clutches now that her legendary beauty appeared to have deserted her.

Gavenmore was more exasperated by their cowardice than she was. After his third opponent managed to fall off his horse before the heralds could even sound the call to battle, he hurled his shield, tore off his helm, and plunged down from his own mount. Shaking off the restraining hand of his man-at-arms, he strode toward the center of the list, no less threatening without destrier or lance.

A terse silence fell over the crowd, broken only by the snap of his dark hair whipping in the wind. He slammed back the faceplate of his helm, condemning them all with his unflinching gaze.

Drawing his broadsword, he hefted it in the air with both hands. “English curs! Is there not one among you man enough to offer me a fair fight?”

As her papa slowly rose, Holly resisted the urge to jerk him back down. The shameful proceedings seemed to have sapped him of his ability to feign even feeble enthusiasm. “If there are no other challengers, I am forced to pronounce Sir Austyn the vie—”

An imperious voice rang out. “Stay your hand, my lord. I’m more than prepared to offer this Welsh savage a fair fight for the lady’s hand.”

A cloaked figure at the edge of the crowd eased back his elegant damask-trimmed hood. His mocking gaze was not fixed on Sir Austyn or her father, but on Holly. She rose, blinking the sunlight out of her eyes to find herself staring into the dark, malevolent eyes of Eugene de Legget, baron of Montfort.