Chapter Twenty-three #2
her fingertips over the star of green silk sewn onto a square of
white velveteen, then laid it over her belly, six months swollen
with child. She and Denys had been married on Christmas Eve at the
keep, and she’d become pregnant almost the same night. “It’s so
beautiful. Is it silk?”
“It is. Talon bought it in
Tours.”
“I can’t accept it, then.”
Marta laid the square back on the table, its top covered in squares
of linens, wools, and stuffing for the quilt making.
“Yes, you can. I have
plenty more.”
“You do?” Patience said.
“I’ve never seen you in a gown made of this.”
“Nor will you,” Lara said
meaningfully. The green silk had been made into a low-cut,
body-skimming nightgown that she wore only for Talon.
“Do tell.” Patience hid
her grin behind her drink of cold cider. “We are all friends
here.”
Lara glanced at Doralice, whose cheeks
were flushing pink. “But not all are married.”
All attention turned to Doralice, who
flushed bright red.
“What’s taking that man so
long?” Berta sorted through the squares of cloth as birds sang from
the oak’s branches above them. “According to Anglbert, Phillipe’s
been smitten from the moment he laid his pretty blue eyes on
Doralice.”
“Oh he’s smitten, sure,”
Lara said. “He’s just reluctant to admit it. Still, when he does,
and he will—” She smiled kindly at poor Doralice, who was obviously
as smitten as Phillipe but too shy to do anything about it. “—he’ll
have been worth waiting for.”
Doralice sat pink-cheeked and
tongue-tied, and Lara reminded herself that she was still young,
only seventeen, and had been raised by her widowed father since she
was six years old. Lara had been twenty-two when she met Talon, an
old maid by most standards, and she’d had Sophie to guide her. She
gazed at the grassy mound that was her Tante’s final resting place
and gave silent thanks to her, for her. It was Sophie who’d kept
Lara’s true lineage a secret. Sophie who’d kept Nithard at bay with
her curse.
Lara looked around Marta’s outdoor
table at her dear friends, old and new, at Issy playing in the
grass with Wilric, at the new house built over the ruins of her and
Sophie’s old house: a testament to the tenacious strength of the
women enjoying the day and each other’s company. And the Midereds’
deceit and spite. She pressed her lips tight, refusing to think any
more today of Nithard or Ranulf or Ravenna. Or the steward Roumel
and his two blonde daughters who’d stayed in the valley after the
Midereds had left, and who’d been nosing around her and Patience a
month ago market day when they’d bought the tinker out of his bolts
and scraps of cloth for the quilt making today.
“Mark my words,” Berta
told Doralice. “You’ll not have to wait much longer for your man to
get down on bended knee.” She winked at Lara. “I’m sure the
countess would be happy to supply you with a vial or two of
Sophie’s love potion.”
“Love potion?” Doralice
set her doe eyes wide.
“It’s responsible for two
score or more marriages in over four provinces,” Berta said.
“Including Patience and Willem’s, and Enid and her
husband’s.”
Doralice looked to Patience, who
grinned. “It only took Willem ten and four days after I gave him
the potion to propose.”
“How long?” Doralice’s
eyes grew even wider.
Patience laughed. “I knew he was mad
for me, and I let him know I was mad for him by offering him the
love potion.”
“Which is the true secret
to the potion,” Lara told Doralice. “I’ll make up a batch and give
you a vial. Phillipe will know what it is and what it means, and
we’ll be having a wedding at the keep before the summer is out and
sewing a quilt for your firstborn this time next year.”
Red crept across Doralice’s cheeks and
down her neck, and Lara thought it a good thing Phillipe was a kind
man with enough experience to make their wedding night
special.
“Mama.” Isabeau toddled
toward Lara, a dandelion in full bloom clutched in her little hand.
“Mama, ook.” She scrunched up her face and blew with all her might
at the feathery seed ball and missed.
“Here, Issy.” Wilric,
almost a year older, took the dandelion stem in his pudgy hand.
“Yike dis.”
He held the stalk still, making sure
Isabeau watched as he blew. Next to their mamas and papas, they
were each other’s favorite people in the world: a preference so
obvious that Willem had been teasing Talon about his daughter’s
dowry since Wilric first laid eyes on Isabeau. Issy clapped as the
dandelion puff blew into a hundred floating pods, and Wilric beamed
and marched around in circles with the bare stalk brandished high.
The women all laughed and clapped their approval, when Wolf, who
was lying in the cool grass next to Sophie’s grave, lifted his head
and cocked his ears toward the river.
He stood, sniffing the air, and Lara
went to stand beside him, shading her eyes with her hand to gaze
across the water at the far shore where shadows and light moved
amidst the trees. The hairs on the back of her neck rose as Wolf’s
bristled.
“What is it, Wolf?” she
asked. The women at the table had fallen quiet too, so she glanced
over at the bench outside the barn where Tree had been sitting
while whittling away at a piece of wood. He had stood and was
surveying the river’s edge.
“Ladies.” Lara kept her
voice calm and serious. “Take the children into the house.” She
pulled her waist knife and gripped it tight.
An arrow whistled and struck Wolf in
the haunch with a sickening thunk.
“Run,” she yelled over her shoulder as she dropped to the ground
beside Wolf, who snarled and chewed at the shaft sticking out of
his thigh, a shaft with a cresting and fletching that she’d seen
sticking out of hundreds of dead men and horses at Roncesvalles
Pass. “Take the children and flee. Now.”
Tree came running toward her and Wolf,
but arrows struck him down in his chest, arm, and leg. Loathe to
leave Wolf, Lara broke off the shaft in his leg close to his wound
so he couldn’t do as much damage to himself and stood to go to
Tree.
Before she’d gotten three strides, a
volley of arrows pinned her to her spot, followed by a second
volley pinning the women and children scrambling away from the
table. Doralice held Isabeau, who started crying, and Berta
shielded a still-seated Marta. Patience had a hold of Wilric, and
Enid glanced wildly about at the palisade of arrows circling
them.
“Stay where you are,” a
man called out from the river, his voice heavily accented, “and you
will not be harmed.”
Lara nodded to the other women,
sheathed her knife, then held her hands up. Six men dressed in
plain brown breeches and tunics with arrows notched to their bows,
all aimed at the women, crossed the river. Tree lay unmoving as
Wolf pulled himself up and limped over to stand next to Lara, a low
growl rumbling in his throat.
As the men made the near shore, Wolf’s
growl grew louder. One of the men lowered his arrow’s point at the
hound’s chest.
“No.” Lara dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around
Wolf’s neck. “You don’t need to shoot him. He’ll not attack if I
tell him to stay.”
The man pointing the arrow at Wolf
looked to a swarthy man with shoulder-length brown hair and a trim
beard, waiting, it seemed, for his decision.
“I swear to you,” Lara
said directly to the man she guessed to be their leader. “The dog
will do what I say.”
The man nodded.
“Down, Wolf.” She helped
him lie down on his good side, then kissed his nose and laid her
hand on his head. “Stay.” She stood to face the raiders as they
stopped no more than three paces from her.
“Otsoa,” one of the men muttered. The Basque word for
wolf.
“Bat da
txakurra,” the leader snapped.
It’s a dog.
Lara stared blankly at the men,
pretending not to understand a word of what they’d said. Though she
was nowhere near fluent in the Basque language, she’d grown up on
the border knowing a little and had learned more from Talon. He’d
also taught her the value of letting your captive, or captor, think
you ignorant of their language until it was to your advantage not
to.
“Your knives,” the leader,
who obviously spoke and understood the Frank language, said,
holding his hand out. Lara handed him her waist knife. “Leg knife
too.”
How would he know she wore a dagger
tied to her thigh?
“Leg knife,
now.”
Lara lifted her skirt and handed the
blade to him. He motioned with it toward the other women and
children, who were being herded together by the other four raiders.
Reinforcing her stay command to Wolf with a hand signal, Lara
joined the other women and took a hiccupping Isabeau in her arms.
“What now?” she asked the leader.
“Now, we tie you together,
take you with us.”
“To where?”
“You find out when we
there,” he said as two of his men poked and prodded the women into
a straight line and a third man started tying their hands to a line
of rope.
“Is it a long journey?”
she asked, switching Isabeau to her hip.
“Long enough.”
Lara indicated the heavily pregnant
Marta, who stood crying into her grandmother’s shoulder. “She is
too far along with child. She won’t survive a journey of any
length, and the babe won’t survive if born this early.”
The leader had a quick conversation
with the slightly older man who’d threatened to shoot Wolf and who
seemed to be his second. She heard the words “baby” and “die” and
“slow down” and “move fast.”
“She can stay,” the leader
told Lara. The older man went to Marta and started to pull her away
from Berta, who went red-faced and mother hen, screeching and
slapping at the man’s hands.
“Berta,” Lara called out
over the din. “Berta, stop. They’re letting Marta stay here. She’ll
be safe here.” Until our men find her.
Then she’ll be able to tell them what happened.
“Baina, Inigo,” one of the
other men said. “Ranulf…” The only other words Lara recognized were
“all” and “women.”
“Ez keskatu.” Don’t
worry, the leader, Inigo, answered.
“Lortuko du haren sariak
preziatua.” He’ll
get his precious prizes.
Forewarned by the Basques speaking
Ranulf’s name, Lara was prepared when they crossed the river into
the woods where a hooded man waited with horses enough for each man