Suddenly, she was twenty years old, expecting any day to grow up and, she desperately hoped, out. But she stayed little, and flat, while the other girls her age married and had babies, and Alyx had to be content to sing the lullabies she’d written to teething infants.
What right did she have to be discontent, she thought now, hanging onto the apple tree? Just because the young men all treated her with great respect—except, of course, John Thorpe, who too often smelled like what he hauled—was no reason to be discontent. When she was sixteen and of marriageable age and not so old as now, four men had offered her marriage, but the priest said her music was a sign that she was meant for God’s work and not some man’s lust and therefore refused to allow any marriage. Alyx, at the time, was relieved, but the older she got, the more she was aware of her loneliness. She loved her music and especially loved what she did for the church, but sometimes . . . like two summers ago when she’d had four glasses of very strong wine at the mayor’s daughter’s wedding, she grabbed her cittern, stood on a table and sang a very, very bawdy song, which she made up as she went along. Of course, the priest would have stopped her, but since he’d had more wine than anyone else and was rolling in the grass, holding his stomach with laughter at Alyx’s song, he certainly wasn’t capable of stopping anyone. That had been a wonderful evening, when she’d been a part of the people she’d known all her life, not something set aside by the priest’s command, rather like a holy bit of St. Peter’s skull in the church, awe inspiring but far from touchable.
Now as she always did, she began to turn her thoughts to song. Breathing deeply, spacing her breath as she’d been taught, she began a ballad of life’s loneliness, of a young woman seeking her own true love.
“And here I am, little songbird,” came a man’s voice from behind her.
So intent on singing—and, indeed, her voice would have covered the sound—she had not heard the young men on horseback approaching. There were three of them, all big, strong, healthy, lusty as only the nobility could be, their faces flushed from what she guessed to be a night of revelry. Their clothes, the fine velvets and fur linings with a jewel winking here and there, were things she’d seen only on the church altar. Dazed, she looked up at them, didn’t even move when the largest blond man dismounted.
“Come, serf,” he said, and his breath was foul. “Don’t you even know your own lord? Allow me to introduce myself. Pagnell, soon to be Earl of Waldenham.”
The name brought Alyx alive. The great, greedy, ugly Waldenham family drained the village farmers of every cent they had. When they had no more, the farmers were thrown off the land, left to die wandering the country, begging for their bread.
Alyx was just about to open her mouth to tell this foul young man what she thought of him when he grabbed her, his hideous mouth descending on hers, his tongue thrusting, making her gag.
“Bitch!” he gasped when she clamped her teeth down on his tongue. “I’ll teach you who is the master.” With one grasp, he tore her cloak away and instantly his hand was at the collar of her dress, tearing easily, exposing one small, vulnerable shoulder and the top of her breast.
“Shall we throw such a small fish back?” he taunted over his shoulder to his friends, who were dismounting.
The reference to her lack of physical endowment above the waist was what changed Alyx’s fear to anger. Although she may have been born this man’s social inferior, her talent had caused her to be treated as no one’s inferior. In a gesture none of the men expected, Alyx pulled up her skirt, raised her leg and viciously kicked Pagnell directly between the legs. The next instant pandemonium broke loo
se. Pagnell bent double in pain while his companions desperately tried to hear what he was saying as they were still much too drunk to fully comprehend what was going on.
Not sure where she was going or in which direction, Alyx began to run. Her lung power from her many years of breathing exercises held her in good stead. Across cold, barren fields she ran, stumbling twice, trying to hold her torn gown together, the skirt away from her feet.
At the second fence, the hated sheep enclosure, she stopped, slumped against the post, tears running down her face. But even through tears she could see the three horsemen as they combed the area looking for her.
“This way!” came a voice to her left. “This way!”
Looking up, she saw an older man on horseback, his clothes as rich and fine as Pagnell’s. With the look of a trapped animal, she began to run again, away from this new man who pursued her.
Easily, he caught up with her, pacing beside her on his horse. “The boys mean no harm,” he said. “They’re just high-spirited and had a little too much to drink last night. If you’ll come with me I’ll get you away from them, hide you somewhere.”
Alyx wasn’t sure if she should trust him. What if he handed her over to those lecherous, drunken noblemen?
“Come on, girl,” the man said. “I don’t want to see you hurt.”
Without another thought, she took the hand offered to her. He hauled her into the saddle before him and kicked the horse into a gallop, heading toward the faraway line of trees.
“The King’s forest,” Alyx gasped, holding onto the saddle for dear life. No commoner was allowed to enter the King’s forest, and she’d seen several men hanged for taking rabbits from it.
“I doubt Henry will mind just this once,” the man said.
As soon as they were inside the forest, he lowered her from his horse. “Now go and hide and do not leave this place until the sun is high. Wait until you see other serfs out about their business, then return to your walls.”
Wincing once at his calling her, a freewoman, a serf, she nodded and ran deeper into the forest.
Noon took a very long time in coming, and while she waited in the dark, cold forest in a torn dress without her cloak, she became fully aware of her terror at what could have happened at the hands of the nobles. Perhaps it was her training by the priest and the monk that made her believe the nobles had no right to use her people as they wished. She had a right to peace and happiness, had a right to sit under a tree and play her music, and God gave no one the power to take such a thing away from another person.
After only an hour her anger kept her warm. Of course, she knew her anger came partly from a happening last summer. The priest had arranged for the boys’ chorus and Alyx to sing in the earl’s—Pagnell’s father’s—private chapel. For weeks they’d worked, Alyx always trying to perfect the music, driving herself to exhaustion rehearsing. When at last they had performed, the earl, a fat man ridden with gout, had said loudly he liked his women with more meat on them and for the priest to bring her back when she could entertain him somewhere besides church. He left before the service was finished.
When the sun was directly overhead, Alyx crept to the edge of the forest and spent a long time studying the countryside, seeing if she saw anyone who resembled a nobleman. Tentatively, she slowly made her way back to her apple tree—hers no longer, as now it would carry too many ugly memories.
There Alyx suffered her greatest shock, for broken into shreds and splinters lay her cittern, obviously trampled and retrampled by horses’ hoofs. Quick, hot tears of anger, hate, frustration, helplessness welled up through her body, spilling down her cheeks unheeded. How could they? she raged, kneeling, picking up a piece of wood. When her lap was full of splinters she saw the uselessness of what she was doing and with all her might began to fling the pieces against the tree.
Dry eyed, shoulders back, she started for the safety of her town, her anger capped for the moment but still very close to the surface.
Chapter Two