He was speaking to her. She hadn’t expected it, given the dislike she’d felt coming from him. She raised her head and kept her face expressionless.
“If you will but tell me this cousin’s name, I will see that you are quickly on your way out of this keep and away from Dienwald de Fortenberry.”
“Why?”
His good humor slipped. “You don’t belong here,” he said, his voice loud and vicious. He immediately got hold of himself. “You are an innocent young lady. Dienwald de Fortenberry is a villain, if you will, a rogue, a blackguard, a man who owes loyalty to few men on this earth. He makes his own rules and doesn’t abide by others’. He raids and steals and enjoys it. He will continue to hurt you, he will continue to use you until you are with child, and then he will cast you out. He has no scruples, no conscience, and no liking for women. He abused his first wife until she died. He enjoys abusing women, lady or serf. He cares not. He will see that you are cast out, both by him and by your family.”
His venom shocked her. She’d smashed a chamber pot over the lord’s head the previous night, but that had been different. That was between the two of them. Dienwald hadn’t ravished her, and he could have. He hadn’t abused her, even when she’d angered him to the point of insensibility. She’d hurt him. She thought suddenly of the thrashing he’d given her, but then again, what would she have done to him had he smacked her over the head with a chamber pot? But this steward of his, who should be praising his master, not maligning him—it was beyond anything she’d ever seen.
“Why do you hate him, sirrah?”
Alain drew back as if she’d struck him. “Hate my master? Certainly I don’t hate him. But I know what he is and how he thinks. He’s a savage, ruthless, and a renegade. Leave, lady, leave before you die or wish to. Tell me this cousin’s name and I will get you away from here.”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “I will tell you.”
She watched him closely, and saw immense relief flood his face. His eyes positively glowed and his breath came out in a whoosh. “Who?”
“I shan’t tell you today. First of all I must earn a new gown for myself. That was my bargain with your master. I cannot go to my cousin as I am now. You must understand that, sir.”
“I think you are a stupid girl,” he said. “He will grunt over you and plow your belly until you carry a bastard, then will kick you out of here and you will die in a ditch.” He turned on his heel with those magnificent words and strode away, anger in every taut line of his body.
Philippa brooded a moment. This was a peculiar household, and the lord and master was the oddest of them all. She rose from the wooden bench, replete with cheese and bread, and made her way to the weaving building.
Old Agnes had assembled six women, and silence immediately fell when Philippa entered the long, narrow, totally airless room. There were three old spinning wheels and three looms, each of them more decrepit-looking than its neighbor. Philippa looked at each of the women, then nodded. She spoke to each of the women, learned their names and their level of skill, which in all cases but two was nil. Then she tackled the looms. A shuttle had cracked on one; a harness had come loose on
another; the treadle had slipped out of its moorings on yet another. She sighed and spoke to Old Agnes.
“You say that Gorkel knows how to solve these problems?”
“Aye, ‘tis a monster he is to look at, but he has known how to repair things since he was a little sprat.”
“Fetch Gorkel, then.”
In the meanwhile Philippa inspected the spinning wheels and the quality of thread the women had produced from the wool. Given the precarious balance of two of the spindles and the wobbling of the huge wheels, the results were more than satisfactory. She smiled and praised the women, seeing her mother’s face in her mind’s eye.
Two hours later, the women were at their looms weaving interlacing threads into soft wool. They worked slowly and carefully, but that was to the good. As they gained confidence and skill, the weaving would quicken. Old Agnes was chirping over their shoulders, carping and scolding, then turning to Philippa and giving her a wide toothless grin. “Prink—he were the weaver, ye know, milady—well, a purty sod he were, wot with his proud ways. Said, he did, that females couldn’t do it right, the weaving part, only the spinning. Ha!” Old Agnes looked toward the busy looms and cackled. “I hope the old bugger corks it. Thass why none of the females knew aught—the old cockshead was afraid to teach them. Make him look the fool, they would have done.”
Philippa wanted very much to meet Prink before he corked it.
All was going well. Philippa de Beauchamp, lately of Beauchamp, was busy directing the weaving of her father’s wool into cloth for the man who’d stolen it. She laughed aloud at the irony of it.
“Why do you laugh? You can’t see me!”
“I should have known—how long have you been watching, Edmund?”
“I don’t watch women working,” Edmund said, planting his fists on his hips. “I was watching the maypole!”
“Nasty little boy,” she remarked toward one of the looms, and turned her back on him.
“I’ll tell my papa, and he won’t let you use my chamber pot again!”
Philippa whipped around, pleading in her eyes and in her voice as she clasped her hands in front of her. “Ah, no, Master Edmund! I must use your chamber pot. Don’t make me use the jakes, please, Master Edmund!”
Edmund drew up and stared. He was stymied, and he didn’t like it. He assumed a crafty expression, and Philippa recognized it instantly as his father’s. She whimpered now, wringing her clasped hands.
“My papa will make you sorry, and thass the truth!”
“That’s, not thass.”