Chapter Nine #2
Alys sighed and rolled her eyes, replacing the foodstuffs in the bundle. She reached for her own bag and began searching through it. “Very well. But I am going to the river to wash while there is still light.”
“I’ll go with you,” he said.
“I think not,” Alys said with a laugh. “Although we are married, I still feel we don’t know each other well enough for you to watch me bathe.”
Piers’s face burned at the thought. “We’re not married.”
“Whatever you say, husband.”
His brows lowered even further. “Is that soap?”
“Yes,” she said mildly, looking at the items in her left hand. “And my hairbrush. How else am I to bathe properly? Would you be so kind as to make use of one of those knives in your pack and cut a towel from my blue gown, please?”
“You’re going to wash with perse.”
“As I imagine it will feel quite smooth against my skin, yes.”
Piers shook his head as he retrieved a knife and cut a long, rectangular strip from the hem of the costly gown.
He handed it up to her, and noticed that while he had been mangling her dress, Alys had also retrieved her fine slippers from her bag and exchanged them for the worn leather shoes on her feet.
She was going to wash in a river, with a perse cloth, while standing in silk slippers.
“Thank you,” she said sweetly as she took the rag.
“Don’t go far,” he warned. “Just below us. I won’t watch.”
“Very well,” she conceded, and then pointed to Layla when the monkey scampered over to join her. “No, Layla, you stay with Piers.”
The monkey hunkered down on her haunches as if pouting. Piers felt a bit resentful himself.
Alys turned to leave the ravine, but paused at the edge to look back at him. “And Piers?”
“Yes?”
“You have my complete permission to go through my bag.” She gave him a wide grin and then disappeared down the bank.
“Holy—!” Alys shrieked when she first dipped the wadded up perse in the river.
Icy did not even come close to describing the temperature of the water.
Her skirts were tied into a knot just below her knees, and she’d already brushed and re-tied her hair back from her face.
Unlike Piers, she was unwilling to wash her hair in such cold weather without the assurance of a warm fire to dry it by, but she was pleased to note that the smell of it wasn’t completely unpleasant—rather woodsy, actually.
“Alys?” She heard Piers’s faint call. She looked up and saw him standing at the edge of the shelter, looking wide and wild.
She waved at him, signaling that all was well. Then she turned back to her task grimly, wincing as the frigid water ran over her knuckles when she wrung out the perse rag.
She scrubbed at her face and neck, her skin burning both from the vigorous washing and the cold water.
Then she dipped into the bodice of her dress, huffing out her breaths in “ha-ha-ha” as her skin threatened to shiver from her flesh.
The spots under her arms and breasts were the worst, by far, but the fresh scent of sandalwood from her soap did ease the discomfort a bit.
After her legs and private areas were swiped clean, she rinsed the rag in the river and laid it on a nearby rock while she loosened her skirts and then attacked them with her hairbrush.
Even the full-body chill that had seized her was not strong enough to shake the image of a freshly-clean Piers from her mind.
She had been right at her earlier guess that a bit of washing up would do wonders for his person, but she could never have imagined the sight which would be revealed beneath all that dirt and old robes.
The gooseflesh on her arms and legs were only partly due to her damp skin now.
Noble, strong of body …
And he had helped her down the ravine—actually extended his hand and touched her without her request. Alys could not help but think that perhaps he was beginning to soften toward her.
She paused for a moment, her hairbrush held mid-stroke over her skirt, as a realization occurred to her.
Alys had not known that Piers’s bag contained something as meaningful as the signet ring when he’d left it in her care, but Piers had.
A sudden breeze swept through the ravine over the river at her toes and Alys smelled smoke. She turned her head toward the bank and saw Piers crouched down near the opening of the overhang, a column of smoke fluttering sideways under his hands.
He was making her a fire!
A slow smile crept over her face and she felt a warmth in her chest beneath the field of prickly flesh. Perhaps the risk of a fire was a repayment for the food she had obtained them, or perhaps he was simply weary of bearing the cold, as well. Alys hoped those weren’t the only reasons, though.
She watched him pull his straggly, uneven locks of hair away from the growing flames, and an idea struck her.
She gathered up the slippery soap and damp rag.
Stepping gingerly in deference to her thin-soled, silk slippers on her wet and frozen feet—she hadn’t wanted to get her only pair of shoes suitable for walking wet—she made her way over the rocky river bank to the ravine wall, and began to climb carefully.
Piers only glanced at her as she came into the overhang—he was busy skewering the onion between a pair of apples and situating them over the flames.
The sidemeat was already leaning over the fire at a sharp angle, so that its juices would run down the slab and into the little wooden bowl she recognized from Piers’s pack.
Doubt came into her mind for a moment, and as much as she was looking forward to the meal and the warmth, she hoped they weren’t taking a foolish risk by having a fire.
“You think it’s alright, then?” she asked, as she was putting her things away, save her slippers which she had kicked off by the fire.
She tried to watch him closely as she pulled the drawstring tight, having learned already that Piers’s emotions were fleeting across his face.
She wanted to be sure to catch them if they showed.
He looked over at her, his eyes not quite reaching hers before he brought his attention back to the food once more. “What’s alright?”
“The fire.” She approached him and sank to her bottom, already feeling the delicious warmth radiating from the flames. The meat popped once, a prelude of the grand meal to come.
He shrugged. “‘S’fine.”
“I hope so, because I don’t believe I’ve ever felt anything so lovely,” she sighed and began brushing at the bottoms of her feet with her hands before slipping into her leather shoes. “If you told me we had to put it out, I’d likely throw you from this cliff.”
He snorted. “You couldn’t throw Layla from this cliff.”
“You underestimate me again, husband. I’m quite strong for my size.” She thought he would rise to the bait of her calling him by that title, but he just huffed and shook his head. He was proving quite difficult to draw into conversation unless he was angry.
“Did you do that?” she asked, pointing to the little carved bowl collecting the drippings.
He nodded, and then after a moment, said, “It was a way to pass the time while I was healing.” He glanced at her. “It’s not very good, I know.”
“I think it’s a lovely bowl,” Alys argued. “It’s round, and—” She searched her mind frantically for some other quality to praise. “Not very deep, which can be bothersome in a bowl. And it’s very … well, round. Nicely so.”
He made no comment.
Oh, well. Nothing else for her to do but go on and ask.
“I want to cut your hair,” she blurted.
His movements ceased abruptly and he froze for a moment. Then he turned his face slowly toward her. “What did you say?”
“Your hair.” Alys cleared her throat, wondering at his hostile stare. “I want to cut it.”
“That’s what I thought you said. No.”
“No? Why?”
“Just … no.” He brushed his hands together and rose to his feet.
“It looks simply dreadful, Piers,” Alys argued.
“What do you care what my hair looks like, eh?”
“It’s not entirely for my benefit,” Alys reasoned. “You can’t give audience to the king looking like … like—” She broke off when he turned to look back at her expectantly, and then she settled for waving her hand in the general direction of his head, and pulled a frightened face.
To her surprise, he gave her an amused grin. “Grendel, perhaps?”
She gasped, snapped her fingers and pointed at him. “That’s it exactly! Grendel!”
He huffed a laugh and shook his head, squatting down once more near his bag to retrieve the roll of bandages.
He spoke as he pulled a length of the cloth from the ball which still held his ring tight in its center.
“I had two men chop at my hair in a fortnight, neither with my permission. You’ll forgive me if I don’t allow you to do the same. ”
“Why were two men cutting your hair? And so badly, at that?”
He sliced off a length of bandage with his blade, and seemed to think on her question as he draped the piece over his knee and replaced the roll in his bag.
Alys waited while dusk crept quietly around their fire, as if to sit with them and share their company.
She welcomed the dark, felt more safe with each tree across the river that was lost to her sight, consumed by the advancing, hungry night.
Piers turned slightly away from her while he rewrapped his fingers where Layla had bitten him, and Alys realized he was not going to answer her without encouragement.
“Of course, the style of the day is for men to wear their hair rather long,” she commented nonchalantly. “But it’s most oft fashioned to be straight, and certainly no longer than the shoulder. Yours is much longer—in, ah, parts, that is—and quite, um … wavy. Ish.”
“Wavy-ish?” Piers teased.
“Yes. And I do believe I can see your scalp above your left ear. It’s not at all becoming to you, if you’ll forgive me for saying so.”
He pulled the knot of his bandage tight with his teeth. The tangy scent of cooking pork was blooming in a warm cloud around them.
“The last man to cut at my hair was the monk who saved my life,” he said quietly. “He did it while I was unconscious, in order to tend the wounds on my head.”
“And before that?” Alys prompted.
Piers sighed and looked to the ground between his knees. “Bevan. Before he tried to beat me to death.”
Alys swallowed, shocked, but unwilling to break the spell of the conversation by an exclamation of horror. “He thought you Samson?” she asked lightly.
“Perhaps.” Piers nodded absently. “He said I was always vain of my hair. It repulsed him, reminded him of the common trash I was. More likely he was envious of it, the bloody-headed bastard.” He looked to her suddenly. “Do you know him?”
“I have seen him on scant occasion,” Alys admitted. “His head is quite the nastiest part of him, I agree.”
“If only that were true, mayhap he would not be so evil.” Piers moved to the fire to adjust the meat, which was now sizzling in earnest. The wonderful smell of pork roasting over glowing coals seemed almost too pleasant, playing in accompaniment to Piers’s grisly anecdote.
The wide blade of his smooth-edged knife caught the fire like a mirror as he prodded the fruit.
“Any matter,” he continued, “both were unpleasant experiences, to say the least.”
Alys nodded. “I’m sorry. But Piers, you can’t go into Edward’s court looking as you do now. You’re to request something of the king, are you not? That’s why you’re going?” She didn’t want to reveal her suspicions of his mission too soon.
Piers nodded, but said nothing.
“Then you must approach him with respect, for him and for yourself. No man worthy of audience with the king would dare enter his court looking less than his very best.” She waited. “Surely you can’t think to leave it like that … forever?”
He shook his head and sighed. “No. I’ve considered my appearance as well. You’re right.”
Alys’s heart leapt. She’d never thought to hear those words from his mouth.
He looked at her again, and in his eyes, Alys saw doubt bruised with distrust. “How much would you cut?”
Alys winced. “All of it, I’m afraid. There’s nothing else to do, Piers. If you could only see—”
“I know. I know how it must look, just by the feel of it.” Still, he had not consented.
“You can sharpen your knife until it would cut a kiss,” she encouraged. “And I have a hairbrush, and—”
He held up a hand, cutting off her enthusiastic speech. “Fine.”
“Fine?”
He swiped the blade, flat side, against his thigh and then spun the knife expertly in his hand, offering it to her handle first. She took it hesitantly, worried that he might snatch it back in the last instant.
But he did not. “I must succeed with the king, Alys. If cutting my hair will help in the smallest way, so be it. I can not fail. If I do, I am truly a dead man.”
“Then you shall not fail,” she assured him solemnly, shaking her head. Then she cracked a smile for him. There was no need to be so dour. “I am Lady Alys Foxe, and I will not allow it.”
To her relief, he returned her grin. She rose to fetch her brush from her bag once more as he relaxed fully to his backside.
She came to stand behind him, and an only slightly sinful notion occurred to her. “You should take off your shirt.”
He glanced over his shoulder at her.
“You’ll itch,” she explained sensibly, trying to keep her eyes from going wide.
He nodded and an instant later, his broad back glowed in the firelight. Alys frowned at the old bruises, still yellow and green, painted across his ribs and lower back. My poor Piers, she said to herself. She wanted to touch those marks, comfort him.
Instead, she began brushing his hair, jerking the brush through the half dried snarls roughly so that he would not suspect the tears in her eyes or the weakness of her heart in that moment.
He was beginning to trust her, and that was enough for Alys.
For now.