Chapter 11
Eleven
HARPER
Geoffrey stood beside the destrier with one gloved hand resting on the saddle, his charcoal cloak already damp at the shoulders from the mist drifting off the river.
“Lady Harper.”
Court address. The grooms were within hearing and we didn’t know who might sell information for a price.
“Sir Geoffrey.”
He had pulled off his right glove, folded it once across his palm, then unfolded it. It was the only restless gesture I had ever seen him make.
“I will write to you,” he said.
“I’ll write back.”
“It will sound like business.”
“Most of it.”
His mouth shifted very slightly at that. Then, without looking as though he meant to, he brushed his bare knuckles once across the inside of my wrist where my sleeve had slipped back.
The grooms didn’t see anything.
I felt it in my spine.
“Try not to scandalize the court,” I said, because if I did not say something ordinary I was going to throw myself at him in front of half the stableyard. Was this what women felt like in wartime photographs? Sweethearts seeing soldiers onto trains while trying not to dissolve in public?
“I intend to scandalize the court immediately and on principle.”
He swung into the saddle in one smooth motion as the destrier wheeled once beneath him and settled. As he rode out through the gates, he didn’t look back. If he had, I think I would have run after him, begged him not to go.
Instead I stood at the edge of the bailey until the sound of hoofbeats disappeared into the mist, and then a while longer, until one of the grooms cleared his throat politely in the universal tone of my lady, do you require assistance or are you simply suffering dramatically in the rain?.
The Baron was already at supper when I returned to the hall. The room felt empty with both sons gone even though it was bustling with servants.
There was no Aldwin laughing too loudly. No Geoffrey seated beside his father with one hand around a wine cup while quietly dismantling someone’s argument. The great hall seemed larger now, its noise thinner somehow, as though the castle itself had noticed the absence.
The Baron sat alone at the high table beneath the banners of Thames in dark green wool despite the warmth of the evening. A servant poured wine into my cup as I took the seat Geoffrey usually occupied.
For a moment neither of us spoke. Below us, servants crossed the hall carrying platters of roasted river trout dressed with parsley and sorrel, trenchers of dark bread still warm from the ovens, soft white cheese, buttered peas, and a dish of cherries split open by the summer heat.
Somewhere near the kitchens a dog barked once and was immediately shushed.
The Baron cut into the trout. “You are riding adequately now.”
It was the closest thing to praise I had received from him in a week.
“I fall off less often.”
“Progress.”
I hid a smile in my wine. The Gascon red tonight was lighter than the bottle opened during the council before Runnymede, watered for supper and fragrant with spice. Geoffrey would have barely touched it. Aldwin would already be arguing with someone three cups deep.
The thought landed harder than I expected. The Baron seemed to notice.
“Empty castles are unpleasant,” he said abruptly.
I looked up. “You miss them.”
“I miss their efficiency.” He tore off a piece of bread. “Aldwin creates problems but solves them quickly. Geoffrey prevents problems before they exist. Together they reduce my workload considerably.”
I laughed despite myself. One corner of his mouth moved slightly, which on the Baron of Thames was practically hysterical laughter.
He ate another bite before speaking again. “Your gowns are insufficient.”
Thrown by the change in topic, I blinked at him. “For what?”
“For your current station in this household.”
Which was not remotely an answer. I set down my cup carefully. “I was not aware I had a station.”
“You do. Geoffrey made me aware of his intent to woo you before he left. You are the highest ranking lady at Thames.” He gestured once with his knife toward my sleeves. “Those are serviceable but provincial.”
I stared at him, warmth spreading through me at the thought of a medieval nobleman wooing me.
The Baron continued eating as though he hadn’t just made what was, for him, an outrageous joke.
“A seamstress arrives tomorrow from Oxford,” he said. “You will permit her to take measurements. My late wife, Eleanor, left instructions years ago regarding appropriate household presentation for unmarried noblewomen under my protection. Maud has located them.”
Under my protection.
The words settled strangely in my chest.
“I don’t need expensive dresses.”
“That is irrelevant.” He reached for his wine. “A woman visibly attached to this household should look attached to this household.”
There it was. Not generosity. Strategy. Protection disguised as practicality. I understood the politics.
“You expect me to remain at Thames for some time,” I said carefully.
“Based on your knowledge, I expect the kingdom to become unpleasant.”
That, apparently, was answer enough.
* * *
The seamstress arrived the following morning with two assistants, a wagon full of fabrics and trim, and the exhausted expression of a woman who had spent twenty years arguing with noblewomen about sleeve widths.
Bolts of cloth unfurled across the solar in rich waves of color. Deep blue wool soft as smoke. Forest green trimmed with silver thread. Cream linen fine enough to slip through a ring. Heavy winter velvet the color of dark wine.
I touched one length of blue fabric carefully.
Geoffrey would have chosen this one.
Aldwin would have declared all of it wasteful and then stolen the best bottle of wine in the room while the fitting was underway.
The thought struck me so suddenly I had to look away for a moment.
The seamstress, mercifully, mistook my expression for indecision and launched into an aggressive argument in favor of blue sleeves over green.
The Baron worked while I was fitted. That became the rhythm of the summer.
We worked for hours and hours each day. I had imagined the war, when it began, would announce itself somehow. Trumpets. Fires. Armies on distant hills. Instead it began as paperwork.
Letters in. Letters out. Lists of households updated in careful columns. Maps spread across the Baron’s desk with small marks added in his neat controlled hand. Reports from scouts sent in various directions on casual pretexts.
The Baron read everything aloud to me and asked my opinion. Most mornings my opinion was I don’t know.
Most mornings he made a small mark beside the parchment that meant acceptable and continued.
He tested me at first.
Small things.
He asked what I knew of northern households and quietly sent riders to confirm my answers. He asked which monasteries along the southern road could be trusted with couriers. A week later his riders returned having found shelter exactly where I said they would.
After the fourth or fifth of these tests, he stopped testing me.
I wouldn’t say the Baron came to trust me. He, I was learning, did not trust in the ordinary sense of the word. What he did instead was shorten the distance between hearing my opinion and acting on it until the gap became indistinguishable.
I learned to ride properly in those weeks because the Baron decided I should continue what Geoffrey had begun.
A tall patient mare named Cora was assigned to me, along with a groom named Walter whose primary responsibilities appeared to involve rescuing me from humiliation and pretending not to laugh while doing it. The bruises down my left side counted out the days.
The first letters arrived three weeks after Geoffrey rode south.
One for me.
One for his father.
The courier who carried them had ridden through two days of rain and was visibly in love with the kitchens. I told him to eat before speaking another word while his horse was seen to, and sent him away carrying two meat pies the size of his head.
I took Geoffrey’s letter to my chamber and closed the door before opening it. The handwriting alone made my pulse stumble.
Written at Westminster on the fourth day of July, in the year of Our Lord 1215.
I stopped.
July fourth.
Somewhere eight hundred years ahead of me, everyone in Boston was probably buying fireworks and arguing over rooftop views of the harbor.
And here I sat in medieval England holding a letter written three weeks after Magna Carta while the future United States of America remained centuries away from being born.
None of this was useful in helping me survive my current life. I sat down at the desk and read.
To Lady Harper Ainsley, at Thames Castle.
From Sir Geoffrey de Warenne, presently in attendance upon His Majesty’s court at Westminster.
The court arrived this morning, having spent three nights at progressive stations along the road. I will spare you the catalogue of complaints regarding the inn at St. Albans. They were many.
The King’s mood is what you would call unstable...