The Falcons of Montabard (7 page)

By the time she arrived in the hall, her father had entered with FitzSimon at his heels. The young knight's gaze was assessing as he folded his fur cap into the satchel hanging from his shoulder. His hair was spiked and tousled from the head-wear. Although patterned by a swirl of fading colours, his features were no longer swollen and distorted. He had clear, light eyes of variegated amber-green and bones that remained just on the elegant side of bold. Her stomach wallowed. She was unaccustomed to men and those she did know were family and without dangerous reputations.

'Sweeting!' Her father leaned down so that she could kiss his

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cheek, and then he folded her arm through his and presented her formally to his companion.

Sabin FitzSimon bowed, but did not attempt the liberty of kissing her hand, as she had half imagined he would do. 'Mistress Annais,' he said. 'I am pleased to make your acquaintance.'

Trained to music, she appreciated the quality of his voice and wondered how it would sound in company with her harp. 'And I yours,' she murmured. His cloak was pinned with the most magnificent brooch she had ever seen: a great silver thistle with an amethyst jewel in the head. Beneath the cloak, the hem of his tunic sparkled with metallic embroidery. Annais gazed admiringly. It was as if a gilded figure had stepped out of a stained church window and come to life ... or as much of life as it was possible for an effigy to possess. Sabin FitzSimon's eyes might be as clear as coloured glass, but they looked through rather than at her. The polite expression and amiable curl of the lips were born of distant courtesy and possessed no substance. A glance at her father showed that the greeting appeared to find favour with him.

The men exchanged looks and Sabin took a back-step. 'You will find me no oath-breaker,' he said.

'You know what would happen if you did,' her father said flatly. 'Come, you must meet my brother. He knows nothing of your reputation or your reasons for being here, other than your wish to make a pilgrimage in respect of your father's soul.' He gestured somewhat brusquely at his daughter. 'Annais, go and help your aunt. I will speak with you later.'

Annais pursed her mouth at the dismissal, but swallowed the urge to make a fuss. She could understand her father's concern. He was like a shepherd inviting a wolf to sup at his hearth and then spending the rest of the night in terror for his sheep. She wondered what the oath was that Sabin FitzSimon had no intention of breaking.

Over the following weeks, Sabin caused a minor stir in the household. Annais watched him charm her aunt, the normally

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dour lady Wulfgeat, until the woman almost simpered - a sight to make grown men shudder. He was the subject of endless discussion in the women's bower. Rumours abounded, from the almost true to the fantastical. Annais, who could have enlightened the ladies and wiped the approval from her aunt's expression with a single sentence, managed to keep her mouth closed. Convent training had been excellent for developing self-control.

Not that he had shown any signs of living up to the reputation that Annais knew he possessed. He was polite to all, but unforthcoming. Sometimes he would play dice with the men in the hall of an evening, or settle down with her father for a game of chess over a flagon of wine. But she never saw him the worse for drink and if his eyes occasionally strayed over this woman or that, it was in idle perusal. Annais herself might not have existed for all the attention he paid her.

She went to watch him train on the open ground beyond the keep where the garrison and the knights practised their craft. While he did not have the stolid strength of the older men he was unbelievably fast, skilled in the use of his weapons, and possessed the balance of a cat. She began to understand why her father had taken the risk. If her own God-given skill was music, then Sabin FitzSimon's was combat.

He came from the field flushed and sweating hard despite the raw cold of the day. No longer a polite and distant effigy, but a man vivid with life, filled with pleasure and pride. Annais drew a sharp breath and suddenly she was as flushed as he was. He caught her gaze on him and, for an instant, she was trapped like a doe in a hunter's snare. His eyes were woodland gold. It was no more than the briefest clash of engagement, for he immediately changed focus to the middle distance and she was free to hide herself within the concealing thicket of other women, her cheeks as hot as wafer irons.

For the rest of the day she avoided the hall and spent her time in the women's quarters, helping to embroider a cloth for the dais table, although embroidery was one of her least favourite pastimes. By the time dusk arrived, her eyes were blurred, her

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thumb sore where she had accidentally driven a needle into the quick of her nail and she had decided that she was being foolish. Sabin FitzSimon, whatever his reputation, was unlikely to attempt a seduction beneath her father's nose. What had happened was a single unguarded look, caused by no more than the residue of his triumph on the field and her admiration for his prowess. There was no reason to skulk in the purgatory of the bower. Indeed, by skulking she made it seem more than it was.

Setting her piece of the embroidery aside, hoping that her aunt would not notice the small brown bloodspot marring the bleached linen, she went down to the hall. Her father was deep in conversation with several of the household knights. Sabin had been playing a game of merels with one of the older squires but, as Annais arrived, the youth rose, stretched, nodded to Sabin and went off to attend to his duties. Sabin started to put the wooden gaming pieces in their leather pouch. He paused briefly as Annais took her place on the bench across from him, then continued the task with nimble fingers.

'I see that you are trying to get me killed,' he murmured with a rueful glance in her father's direction. The latter had turned with the unerring instinct of a hound on a scent and although he remained among his companions, it was obvious that his attention was no longer wholly on the conversation.

Annais frowned. 'Have you been told not to speak to me?'

He smiled grimly. 'I have been told that you are a beautiful, convent-raised innocent and that if I so much as loosen a single hair of your braid, your father will mutilate me where it matters.' He tugged the drawstring tight on the pouch and, placing it on top of the little gaming board, pushed it towards her. 'By all means play, demoiselle, but not with me.'

She reddened, for the words had a double meaning, and even if she had been raised in a convent, she was not entirely as innocent as her father thought. There had been a couple of women who had turned to God for solace only after living well-rounded lives.

'And if my father wasn't watching?'

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He rose to his feet. 'I think the answer would be the same. The match would neither be even, nor fair.' Inclining his head to her, he strode off down the hall.

She felt hot and a little foolish. It had been a rebuff in no uncertain terms. She also felt aggrieved because she had only been attempting to be civil... or had she? A small inner voice whispered that there was more. That she had wanted him to stay and play at merels, had wanted to watch his swift, supple fingers move upon the pieces.

Her father's shadow darkened the grainy light from the lantern standing on the trestle. Sitting down, he unfastened the drawstring of the gaming pouch that Sabin had pulled tight. 'You need a partner for merels?' he said.

Annais didn't really want to play but she nodded dutifully. 'You have warned him well,' she said. 'How are we going to be travelling companions if we are not even permitted to speak to each other?'

'I have set no such terms upon him,' Strongfist said, 'nor upon you.' His blue eyes were shrewd as he arranged the merels pieces. 'But when you come from the women's quarters and go straight to him with a high colour in your cheeks, it gives me cause to be anxious.'

'Without reason!' Annais's tone was full of righteous indignation. 'I merely spoke to him out of courtesy.'

'I am glad to hear it, daughter.' He gestured with his hand, indicating that she should open the game.

Annais was tempted to shove one of the pieces in temper, but her years in the convent had taught her discipline, and when she made her move it was measured and steady. 'You told him that you would harm him if he touched me.'

'Indeed I did, as I would tell any man who had not the right.' He looked thoughtfully at his daughter. 'Sabin knows my rules and he has agreed to abide by them. I hope you are not going to make them difficult for him to keep.'

Annais stared at him, her brown eyes wide and hurt. 'You do not trust me either?'

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'Of course I trust you.' He rubbed the back of his neck in discomfort. 'But men like FitzSimon are attractive to women. I've never seen so many ladies come out to watch battle practice in midwinter before. They see prowess on the field, and when its instigator is young and handsome, the results are inevitable.'

Annais looked quickly down at the merels board as if considering her strategy. What her father said was so true that it was mortifying.

'By all means be civil to Sabin FitzSimon,' Strongfist said in a gentler tone, 'but do not seek his company. I am glad to see from his behaviour just now that he has taken my strictures to heart. All I ask is that you do not hinder him.'

'No, Papa,' Annais murmured in a chastened voice. In a way, although she felt a little resentful, she was also relieved. Having rules by which to abide was like having an anchor in a stormy sea. She would not make a fool of herself again.

'Good lass.' He nodded and, dismissing the subject, settled down to consider his strategy. Although he won the first game easily, Annais had recovered sufficiently by the second to run him close, and the third time she defeated him, with a delighted laugh.

The hayloft was filled with the fragrant aroma of summer from golden stalks, fat dried seedheads, faded stems of clover, poppy and feathery Our Lady's bedstraw. His heart thundering in the aftermath of pleasure and exertion, Sabin inhaled the evocative scents of the season, blended with the sweat and woodsmoke exuding from his companion's damp skin.

She was a dairymaid, but since the dairy was not particularly active in the winter months, she had time to spare and was prepared to give generously. She was a widow, unattached, experienced and barren, all of which gave Sabin cause to thank God for His bounty.

Although his much-needed release had felled him like a poled ox, he managed to roll off her and flop on his back. After

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a moment, he found the strength to pull his braies back up and retie the cord that held them at his waist.

The woman leaned on her elbow and watched him. Her loose brown-gold hair tumbled about her shoulders. It was her best feature, shiny and clean.

'How long before you leave?' she asked, winding a coil of it around her forefinger.

He flashed her a grin, his chest heaving. 'Why? Was my performance so bad that you cannot wait to be rid of me?'

She laughed, her eyes full of candid humour. 'You dined with fine manners despite your hunger,' she said. 'I just wondered if you were going to be a regular guest at the board.'

He shrugged and pillowed his hands behind his head. 'We leave next month, providing we get no more snow.' He closed his eyes, feeling drowsy and replete. A smile curled his mouth corners. 'But I will need to feed myself up for the famine to come.'

'There is Sir Edmund's daughter,' she said slyly and rolled over so that she lay along the length of his hard, whipcord body.

Sabin chuckled and did not open his eyes. 'Precisely, sweeting,' he said. 'There is Sir Edmund's daughter, and I want to live.

It was late when Sabin finally bade farewell to his companion and they went their separate ways, she to the kitchens, he to the hall. They had slept for a time in their nest of hay, had woken and lazily taken a second appreciation of each other's bodies, by which time dusk was but a memory and outside it was full dark.

The evening meal had been served and finished for some while, but he intercepted a basket of bannocks on its way back to the kitchens and helped himself to a beaker of heather ale from a jug that had been left out on a trestle.

As he approached the dais table, he heard a soft ripple of notes, delicate and sensual as sunlit shallows over warm sand. Having dwelt at the English court, he was accustomed to hearing music, but usually in elaborate arrangements with more

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than one musician. Here, the single harp spoke across the layers of smoke with a beauty and poignancy that caught his attention and drew his eyes to follow his ears.

Not for one moment did he expect the musician to be Edmund Strongfist's daughter and he was so astounded that for a moment he checked his stride. Her skill was in the same realms as the bards who played at King Henry's court. The notes reached out and touched him like fingers. It was almost frightening that a thin slip of a girl with great brown eyes and gauche mien should have such a luminous talent.

She was thoroughly absorbed in her music, her head bent over her harp in the manner that he might bend over his sword blade as he honed it in preparation for battle. The look of concentration on her face made it quite tender and beautiful. Her audience on the dais was spellbound. Sabin watched from a distance, recognising the danger.
There is Sir Edmund's daughter,
the dairymaid had said and, although she had been teasing, her eyes had been shrewd. How easy it would be to go quietly to the dais, to take his place among the listeners, to look at her and let her know when she raised her head from the beguilement of the music that he had been watching her. He knew how to set a twig so close to the fire that it smouldered and smouldered, gradually becoming so hot and volatile that all it took was one gentle nudge forward to create a blinding immolation. He had done it many times. From curiosity, from boredom, for no more reason than the challenge. Now, because he had made a promise, he held back. For Edmund Strongfist, for the girl engrossed in her music, and for himself.