Earth Song (Medieval Song 3)

She hummed and arranged the clothing in the steward’s room. Then she began to work, quickly and happily, still humming. She sent Gorkel to direct the children to collect fresh rushes after she measured him for a new tunic. She asked Bennen for rosemary to scent it. More lime was dumped down the privy, for the easterly winds were strong.

The following morning, she and Edmund rode out from St. Erth again, this time with three men in attendance. Gorkel was master in Eldwin’s absence, and he was directing the remaining men in the practice field. As they rode out, she could hear the men’s shouts and yells and the dull thuds of the lances as they rode against the quintains. She wanted to see the cattle in the northern pastures, to make a count so she could be certain that her steward’s ledgers were correct. She was garbed anew and felt like a very fine lady surrounded by her courtiers. Then it rained and she worried and fretted that her new clothing would be ruined. The cattle counted, they returned to St. Erth, Philippa to her steward’s books.

On the third morning, she wore the gown she’d sewed for herself and left her legs bare. It didn’t matter, for the day was warm and the master wasn’t here to see her and perhaps smile at her with lecherous intent. Ah, but she missed him and his hands and his mouth and the feel of his hard body. She missed his smile and his volley of words. She missed arguing with him and baiting him. She thought suddenly that debauching him was an interesting notion—folly, to be sure, but seductive folly. Her fingers flexed as she remembered holding his head on her lap that morning and how he’d turned his face inward and kissed her. She doubted she would have time to debauch him before he’d already done the debauching. She laughed aloud, and Edmund stared at her.

As to her future, she refused to think about it. As to St. Erth’s future, it looked much brighter. With luck, there would be some cattle to sell and coins in Dienwald’s coffers. She would need to check on the pigs just as she had on the cattle. She wanted nothing left to chance or hearsay. Her entries in her steward’s ledgers grew longer, by the hour, it seemed, and she felt pleasure for St. Erth’s master as she worked. Repairs were needed in St. Erth’s eastern wall. Soon, perchance this fall, there would be enough coin to hire them done. She whistled and worked faster.

She turned her attention back to Edmund as he demanded to know why she, a heedless maypole of a girl, could read and write and cipher. “Because my father wished it, I suppose,” she said, frowning as she spoke the words, the same reply she’d given Edmund’s father. “I do wonder, though, why he wished it. My sister, Bernice, has naught but space in her head, that and visions of chivalrous knights singing praises to her eyebrows. Aye, she’s a one, Master Edmund.”

“Is she a maypole like you?”

Philippa shook her head. “She’s short and plump and has a pointed chin and very red lips. She pouts most virtuously, having practiced before a mirror for the past six years.”

“And she had all your suitors?”

“Must you keep asking me questions? All right, there was Ivo de Vescy, and he was wildly in love with me.”

“His name sounds shiftless. Did he truly wish to wed with you? Was he a giant? You’re almost as tall as my father.” Edmund paused, then shook his head. “Mayhap not.”

“You’re naught but a little boy. How can you possibly tell from down there? I come nearly to your father’s nose.”

“He likes small women, short women. Just look at Alice and Ellen and Sybilla—”

“Who are Ellen and Sybilla?”

Edmund shrugged. “Oh, I forgot. Father married Ellen to a peasant when he got her with child, and Sybilla sickened with a fever and died. But Alice is small, not like you.”

Philippa wanted to cuff his ears and stuff one of her new leather slippers into his mouth. She wanted to scream so loud that it would chase the cawing rooks away. Edmund’s flowing child’s candor had smitten her deep, very deep, with pain; she wanted to weep. Of course Dienwald had made no secret of his couplings. He’d said merely that they saved her maidenhead. And she’d not cared then because he was a stranger she hadn’t come to know yet. But now she had and she wanted to send her fist into his belly and hear him bellow with pain. She wanted . . .

“Father will send you back to Lord Henry. He has no choice. He doesn’t want to wed, ever. Thass what he tells everyone.”

“That’s,” Philippa said automatically. “Why do you believe that?”

Edmund shrugged. “I heard him tell Alain once that women were a man’s folly, that if a man wished more than a vessel, he was naught but a windy fool and an ass.”

“Your memory rivals a priest’s discourse in its detail.”

This was greeted with another shrug. “My father knows everything. Thass . . . that’s why he doesn’t use you as he does the others. He’d be ashamed, perchance worried that he would have to wed you. Is your father very powerful?”

“V

ery powerful,” Philippa said. “And very mean and very strong and—”

It was then that Edmund grunted and jerked at his pony’s reins. “Look yon, Philippa! Men, and they’re coming toward us!”

15

Philippa saw the men and felt her heart sink to her toes. They were riding hard, and even from a distance they looked determined. Who were they?

“Your father, Edmund?”

“Nay, I don’t recognize Father or Northbert or Eldwin, and they ride the most distinctive destriers. I don’t know who they are. We must flee, Philippa.”

The man-at-arms, Ellis, turned to Philippa, consternation writ clear on his face. “There are too many of them, mistress. Ride! Back to St. Erth. We can’t fight them.”

Philippa, without a word, jerked on her palfrey’s reins and dug her bare heels into the mare’s sides. She looked sideways at Edmund and realized that his pony didn’t have the endurance to keep pace with the rest of them. Their pursuers’ horses were pounding toward them, ever closer, their hooves kicking up whorls of dust into the clear air. Who were they?

It didn’t matter. Philippa lowered her head and urged her palfrey faster. When Edmund’s pony faltered, she’d simply bring him onto Daisy’s back with her. Daisy was strong and stout of heart. Philippa gently tugged Daisy’s reins to the right and drew closer to Edmund.