Warrior's Song (Medieval Song 1)

“No, you know that you are not like all other men. You are quite perfect. You surely are not blind to what you are. I am not blind either.”

“You are saying that my body pleases you?”

“I said nothing about any pleasure. I merely speak the truth, state an obvious fact, as one would remark upon a beautiful statue or a lovely fattened pig ready to be slaughtered. I really must go now, Jerval. There is much for me to do.”

“Will you believe me perfect this night when we come together for the first time?” He squeezed the sponge over his chest, seemingly intent on the rivulets of water that trickled to his belly.

She stared at him. “I do not wish to think about that,” she said.

“Surely it is not a thought to distress you or frighten you.”

He expected her to hurl an insult in his face, to deny that anything could ever frighten her, but she said nothing for a long moment. To his surprise, she slowly nodded. “Mayhap it is,” she said, and was out of the bedchamber before he could even think of anything else to say.

CHAPTER 11

Chandra stood quietly as Alice pulled the soft, linen chemise over her head. When she lifted the wedding gown, fringed with magnificent ermine, over Chandra’s head, and smoothed it down over her hips, Mary sighed with pleasure.

“It is really quite beautiful,” she said, fingering the green silk, elegant and soft to the touch. There were full sleeves that fell beyond Chandra’s fingers, and a long train. Her pointed shoes were made of vermilion leather and threaded with more gold embroidery. They pinched her toes.

“Here is the girdle,” Mary said. It was made of pieces of gold, each set with a good-luck stone—agate to guard against fever, sardonyx to protect against malaria. The clasp was fashioned with great sapphires.

Since the morning was bidding to be warm, Chandra carried her mantle over her arm. Like the gown, it was of silk, intricately embroidered and dyed a royal purple.

After Alice had arranged Chandra’s long hair to her satisfaction, Mary stepped forward and placed a small saffron-colored veil held by a golden circlet on her head.

“You will not shame my son,” Lady Avicia said when she walked into the bedchamber, Lady Dorothy at her heels.

“She looks well enough,” said Lady Dorothy, looking at a point beyond Chandra’s right shoulder.

Julianna said nothing at all.

Chandra thought to herself, as she looked at the strange exquisite girl in her silver mirror, Aye, I look well enough, and then she closed her eyes for a moment. She wouldn’t shame her father. She was marrying the man he had chosen for her. Everything would be all right. She straightened her shoulders and smiled. It was her wedding day, the only one she would ever have. That gave her abundant food for thought.

The castle chapel was too small to accommodate all the wedding guests, so Chandra, her father at her side, walked toward the orchard, where Father Tolbert waited to conduct the ceremony.

Her brother, John, walked to stand beside Lord Richard. There was a smile on that thin little mouth, and it wasn’t a nice smile. It was triumphant and smug. The paltry little kidling, she thought, then realized that what Mary had said was exactly right. She pictured herself here at Croyland in ten years, when John would be eighteen and a man and ready to wed. She would be nothing once her father died, and the stark reality of it was very clear to her now.

She looked at Jerval.

She didn’t belong here at Croyland any longer. She belonged with him.

He was her future. She couldn’t begin to imagine it.

The servants, under Lady Dorothy’s direction, had raised an archway and threaded colorful flowers in the latticework. When Chandra and her father walked beneath the arch, Jerval stepped forward to join them. He wore fine brown silk leggings and a tunic of blue sendal silk that reached to his knees. His mantle, like hers, was edged with miniver. He wore a golden chaplet, set with flashing gems, on his shining wheat-colored hair.

Jerval met her gaze, looked as solemn as a priest, and winked at her. To his surprise, and to hers, she winked back.

She heard some of the men who had seen the exchange of winks guffaw.

The guests, fifty deep, formed a half circle about Father Tolbert, who looked both stern and pompous—and, to Chandra’s relief, clean. He nodded toward Lord Richard, who stepped from Chandra’s side and turned to face the wedding guests.

He unrolled a wide parchment and read aloud the goods, servitors, gold, and fine garments Chandra would bring to Jerval as her dowry. Next he read King Henry’s greetings to the bride and groom, and his formal permission for them to wed.

Jerval reached out and took hold of her hand. “If the ki

ng had dared refuse, why then, I would have abducted you. Unlike Lord Graelam, I would not have bungled the job.”

Probably not, she thought.