Earth Song (Medieval Song 3)

He saw her jump to her feet and knew what was in her mind. He said very calmly, even though his eyes still burned from the soap and he wasn’t through with her, “Don’t, Philippa. Leave the key where it is. You’re not using your brain. Tancrid is outside the door. If you managed to trip him up and smash his head with something, there would still be all my men to be gotten through. Sit down on the bed and tell me more of your day. If you must, you may whine.”

She sat down on the bed and folded her hands in her lap. He resumed his scrubbing. She looked at his discarded outer tunic, the one that held the bedchamber key. She sighed. He was right.

“We will begin dyeing the wool tomorrow.”

He nodded.

“If there are skilled people, then the first of the cloth will be ready for sewing into garments the next day.”

He was washing his belly. Philippa knew it was his belly—or flesh even more southerly—and she was looking, she couldn’t help herself. She wondered what it would feel like to touch him, to rub soap over him . . . He looked at her then and smiled. “I will order clean water for you. I have blackened this.”

“Will you stay to watch me?”

Dienwald imagined that she’d choose to remain dirty if he said yes. He shook his head. “Nay, I’ll leave you in peace. But if you try anything stupid I will do things to you that you will dislike intensely.”

“What?”

“You irritate me. Close that silly mouth of yours and hand me that towel. ‘Tis the only one, so I will use only half of it. Thank me, wench.”

“Thank you.”

Wolffeton Castle, near St. Agnes

“That damned whoreson! He knew, damn him, the scoundrel knew full well that wine was bound for Wolffeton from your father. I’ll break all his fingers and both his arms, then I’ll smash his nose, stomp his toes into the ground—”

Graelam de Moreton, Lord of Wolffeton, stopped short at the laughter from his wife. He eyed her, then tried again. “We have but two casks left, Kassia. ‘Tis a present from your sire. It costs him dear

to have the wine brought to Brittany from Aquitaine, then shipped here to us. Care you not that the damned whoreson had the gall to wreck the ship and steal all the goods?”

“You don’t now that Dienwald is responsible,” Kassia de Moreton said, still gasping with laughter. “And you just discovered today that the ship had been wrecked. It must have happened over a sennight ago. Mayhap it was the captain’s misjudgment and he struck the rocks; mayhap the peasants stole the goods once the ship was sinking; mayhap everything went down.”

“You’re full of mayhaps! Aye, but I know ‘twas he,” Graelam said, bitterness filling his voice as he paced away from her. “If you would know the truth, I made a wager with him some months ago. If you would know more of the truth, our wager involved who could drink the most Aquitaine wine at one time without passing out under the trestle table. I told him about the wine your father was sending us. When we’d gotten the wine, Dienwald and I would have our contest. He knew he would lose, and that’s why he lured the captain to his doom, I know it. And so do you beneath all that giggling. Now he has all the wine and can drink it at his leisure, rot his liver! Nay, don’t defend him, Kassia! Who else has his skill and his boldness? Rot his heathen eyes, he’s won because he stole the damned wine!”

Kassia looked at her fierce husband and began to laugh again. “So, this is what it is all about. Dienwald has bested you through sheer cunning, and you can’t bear being the loser.”

Graelam gave his wife a look that would curdle milk. It didn’t move her noticeably. “He’s no longer a friend; he’s no longer welcome at Wolffeton. I denounce him. I shall notch his ears for him at the next tourney. I shall carve out his gullet for his insolence—”

Kassia patted her hair and rose, shaking the skirts of her full gown. “Dienwald is to come next month to visit, once the spring planting is undertaken. He will stay a week with us. I will write to him and beg him to bring some of his delicious Aquitaine wine, since we are neighbors and good friends.”

“He’s a treacherous knave and I forbid it!”

“Good friends are important, don’t you agree, my lord? Good friends find wagers to amuse each other. I look forward to seeing Dienwald and hearing what he has to say to you when you accuse him of treachery.”

“Kassia . . .” Graelam said, advancing on his wife. She laughed up at him and he lifted her beneath the arms, high over his head, and felt her warm laughter rain down upon his head. She was still too thin, he thought, but her pregnancy was filling her out, finally. He lowered her, kissing her mouth. She tasted sweet and soft and ever so willing, and he smiled. Then he hardened. “Dienwald,” Graelam said slowly, evil in his eyes, “must needs be taught a lesson.”

“You have one in mind, my lord?”

“Not yet, but I shall soon. Aye, a lesson for the rogue, one that he shan’t soon forget.”

St. Erth Castle

At least she was clean, Philippa thought, staring about the great hall, a stringy beef rib in her right hand. The dirty tunic itched, but she would bear it. She wouldn’t be a martyr; Dienwald was right about that. She wanted clean soft wool against her flesh; it was all she asked. She didn’t even consider praying for silk. It was as beyond her as the moon. Her eyes met Alain’s at that moment and she nearly cringed at the malice she saw in his expression. She didn’t react, merely chewed on her rib.

She heard Crooky singing in a high falsetto about a man who’d sired thirty children and whose women all turned on him when they discovered he’d been unfaithful to them, all nine of them. Dienwald was roaring with laughter, as were most of the men in the hall. The women, however, were howling the loudest as Crooky graphically described what the women did to the faithless fellow.

“That’s awful,” Philippa said once the loud laughter had died down. “Crooky’s rhymes are a fright and his words are disgusting.”

“He’s but angry because Margot refused to let him fondle her and the men saw and laughed at him.”