He smiled at me. His teeth were white and almost even. His eyes were pure guileless blue. “Now here’s a handsome guardsman!” he said laughing, sweeping a bow in his high saddle. “Fair lady, will you have mercy on poor travelers, and let us into your bower?”
Mere Adele snorted. “I’d sooner let a bull in with the cows. Are you here to take what’s left of our men? Or will you believe that we’re drained dry?”
“That,” said Lys behind, still on the stair, “was hardly wise.”
“Let me judge that,” said Mere Adele without turning. She folded her arms on the parapet and leaned over, for all the world like a goodwife at her window. “That’s not a device from hereabouts,” she said, cocking her head at the banner. “What interest has Montsalvat in poor Sency?”
“Why, none,” said milord, still smiling. “Nor in your men, indeed, reverend lady. We’re looking for one of our own who was lost to us. Maybe you’ve seen her? She would seem to be on pilgrimage.”
“We see a pilgrim now and then,” said Mere Adele. “This would be an old woman, then? With a boy to look after her, and a little dog, and a fat white mule?”
I struggled not to laugh. My lord Giscard—for that he was, no doubt of it—blinked his wide blue eyes and looked a perfect fool. “Why, no, madam, nothing so memorable. She is young, our cousin, and alone.” He lowered his voice. “And not … not quite, if you understand me. She was my brother’s mistress, you see. He died, and she went mad with grief, and ran away.”
“Poor thing,” said Mere Adele. Her tone lacked somewhat of sympathy.
“Oh,” he said, and if he did not shed a tear, he wept quite adequately with his voice. “Oh, poor Alys! She was full of terrible fancies. We had to bind her lest she harm herself; but that only made her worse. Hardly had we let her go when she escaped.”
“Commendable of you,” said Mere Adele, “to care so much for a brother’s kept woman that you’ll cross the width of Normandy to find her. Unless she took somewhat of the family jewels with her?”
Lys hissed behind me. Mere Adele took no notice. Milord Giscard shook his head. “No. No, of course not! Her wits were all we lost, and those were hers to begin with.”
“So,” said Mere Adele. “Why do you want to find her?”
His eyes narrowed. He did not look so pretty now, or so much the fool. “She’s here, then?”
“Yes, I am here.” Lys came up beside me. She had lost a little of her thinness, living with us. The weight of the child did nothing to hamper her grace. Her hands cradled it, I noticed, below the parapet where he could not see. She looked down into his face. For a moment I thought that she would spit. “Where were you? I looked for you at Michaelmas, and here it’s nigh All Hallows.”
He looked somewhat disconcerted, but he answered readily enough. “There was trouble on the road,” he said: “English, and Normans riding with them.”
“You won,” she said. It was not a question.
“We talked our way out of it.” He studied her. “You look well.”
“I am well,” she said.
“The baby?”
“Well.”
I saw the hunger in him then, a dark, yearning thing, so much at odds with his face that I shut my eyes against it. When I opened them again, it was gone. He was smiling. “Good news, my lady. Good news, indeed.”
“She is not for you,” said Lys, hard and cold and still.
“If it is a son, it is an heir to Montsalvat.”
“It is a daughter,” said Lys. “You know how I know it.”
He did not move, but his men crossed themselves. “Even so,” he said. “I loved my brother, too. Won’t you share what is left of him?”
“You have his bones,” said Lys, “and his tomb in Montsalvat.”
“I think,” said Mere Adele, cutting across this gentle, deadly colloquy, “that this were best discussed in walls. And not,” she added as hope leaped in milord’s face, “Sency’s. St. Agnes’ priory can house a noble guest. Let you go there, and we will follow.”
He bowed and obeyed. We went down from the gate. But Mere Adele did not go at once to St. Agnes’. People had come to see what we were about. She sent them off on errands that she had given them long since: shoring up the walls, bringing in such of the animals as were still without, shutting Sency against, if need be, a siege.
“Not that I expect a fight,” she said, “but with these gentry you never know.” She turned to me. “You come.” She did not need to turn to Lys. The lady would go whether she was bidden or no: it was written in every line of her.
It was also written in Francha, who was never far from her side. But she took the child’s face in her long white hands, and said, “Go and wait for me. I’ll come back.”
One would hardly expect Francha to trust her, and yet the child did. She nodded gravely, not a flicker of resistance. Only acceptance, and adoration.
Not so Celine. In the end I bribed her with Pierre, and him with the promise of a raisin tart if he took her home and kept her there.
Mere Adele set a brisk pace to the priory, one which gave me no time to think about my frayed kerchief and my skirt with the stains around the hem and my bare feet. Of course milord would come when I had been setting out to clean the pigsty.
Lys stopped us at the priory’s gate, came round to face us. The men had gone inside; we could hear them, horses clattering and snorting, deep voices muted in the cloister court. Lys spoke above it, softly, but with the edge which she had shown Messire Giscard. “Why?”
Mere Adele raised her brows.
Lys looked ready to shake her. “Why do you do so much for me?”
“You’re our guest,” said Mere Adele.
Lys threw back her head. I thought that she would laugh, or cry out. She did neither. She said, “This goes beyond plain hospitality. To chance a war for me.”
“There will be no war,” said Mere Adele. “Unless you’re fool enough to start one.” She set her hand on the lady’s arm and set her tidily aside, and nodded to Sister Portress, who looked near to bursting with the excitement of it all, and went inside.
Messire Giscard had time for all the proper things, food and rest and washing if he wanted it. He took all three, while we waited, and I wished more than ever that I had stopped to change my dress. I brushed at the one I had, and one of the sisters lent me a clean kerchief. When they brought him in at last, I was as presentable as I could be.
Mere Adele’s receiving room was an imposing place, long and wide with a vaulted ceiling, carved and painted and gilded, and a great stone hearth at the end of it. It was not her favored place to work in; that was the closet by her cell, bare and plain and foreign to pretension as the prioress herself. This was for overaweing strangers; and friends, too, for the matter of that. I hardly knew what to do with the chair she set me in, so big as it was, and carved everywhere, and with a cushion that must have been real silk—it was impossibly soft, like a kitten’s ear. It let me tuck up my feet at least, though I was sorry for that when the servant let milord in, and I had to untangle myself and stand and try to bow and not fall over. Lys and Mere Adele sat as soon as milord did, which meant that I could sit, too: stiffly upright this time.
He was at his ease, of course. He knew about chairs, and gilded ceilings. He smiled at me—there was no mistaking it: I was somewhat to the side, so that he had to turn a little. I felt my cheeks grow hot.