Cully guided her firmly around the tent-stakes as if she were a wayward infant, which made her mad.
“Lady Blanche,” the Red Knight said.
“I’m no lady, and I’ve a-told you so before, my lord. My lady, her grace, has sent me to ask for her breviary, which she left in your tent.” She gave a stiff-backed curtsey. “And I’d appreciate it if any other little thing her grace left might be returned, so that I don’t have to make another trip.”
She could see she’d wounded him. In another mood, she might have relented.
“Toby, I’d like to speak to Blanche, if I might, and then perhaps-”
“No, my lord, I will not be alone with any man, thank you,” Blanche said. She spat it more than said it.
His back went up, she saw it, and liked him better for it, right through her anger.
With a coldness she admired he looked down his nose at her. “Very well. Fetch the Queen’s things, Toby, I’m going out to have a look at our posts.”
“Oh, Christ Jesus,” muttered Cully. “Lady…”
He made a sign to Cat, hidden by the tent flap, and the younger archer ran off into the darkness just before the captain stalked out of the tent and vanished into the darkness.
Nell looked at her accusingly. “What was that for?” she asked.
Toby didn’t meet her eye, but his disapproval was obvious. He had the Queen’s prayerbook, as well as a small reliquary that Ser Ranald had rescued and a ring, and he put them all in a soft bag and handed it to her.
“Look for yourself,” he said, in almost exactly his master’s tone. “We wouldn’t want you to have to come again.”
Blanche sniffed. It was a sniff of dismissal, contempt, the most formidable of all the weapons her mother had given her, and she had used it to put apprentices and laundry maids in their places on many occasions. She took the bag and did indeed walk around the pavilion, giving everything a careful look.
She knew the great tent well from a day spent with the Queen; the inner hangings, the small chest of bound books, the absence of any kind of religious equipment. On the back was a small tapestry of a knight and a unicorn.
She loved the tapestry.
But she was too angry-and hurt-to enjoy it. So she turned, delivered another sniff, and started out.
“I’ll take you back to the bishop’s palace,” said Nell. “I wouldn’t want anyone to do you an injury.”
“I can find my own way,” Blanche shot back.
“Can you?” Nell asked. “Military camps can be dangerous for unarmed women. You don’t want Cat Evil finding you alone. Or any of the others. They’re only tame to some fists, like falcons. They ain’t tame.”
Blanche, who’d survived months of the Galles at court, snorted. “And you’ll protect me?” she asked. Nell was tall and big-boned, but she was fifteen years old to Blanche’s twenty, and Blanche suspected she could drop the younger woman with a single blow. Laundry gave a girl muscles.
They were out in the darkness. “What’s eating you?” Nell asked. “Why’d you go and spit at the cap’n? He likes you.”
“He wants me,” Blanche said sullenly. “That doesn’t mean he likes me.”
“Is that the rub? Toby says the two of you…” Nell made a hand motion that was, blessedly, hidden in the darkness.
“Toby doesn’t know shit,” Blanche spat.
“Now you don’t sound like a lady,” Nell allowed, so very reasonably that suddenly Blanche stopped, crouched-and burst into tears.
She found herself crying on Nell’s shoulder. Like the Queen, she shook it off. “You should give me your coat,” Blanche said. She pushed a smile. “It stinks.”
Nell nodded. “I’d be happy-” she said. “I thought we was friends. But then you were-”
Blanche put up a hand. “I’m tired and-” She shook her head. “Damn it,” she said. She knew the fatigue and the worry had sapped her. Last night’s lack of sleep was no help. “I’m not a whore,” she said.
Nell laughed. “No one said you was!” she allowed.
“Cully thought so, and Cat,” Blanche said. They were walking more quickly.
“Aye, well, Cat pretty much hates women and Cully doesn’t think there’s another kind.” Nell shrugged. “I never get close to Cat.” She looked out into the darkness. The gate was close.
“But the cap’n likes you,” she went on. “And people are going to catch holy hell ’cause you spat on him. He’s out there right now, looking at sentries. Hear it? He’s caught someone asleep. Pay lost, and maybe a beating.”
“Very nice,” Blanche said stiffly. “Not my fault.”
Nell’s face, by the light of the torches burning at the city gate, showed a worldly cynicism that belied her years. “No?” she asked. “If’n you say.”
“You love him yourself-you lie with him if it’s so important to everyone.” Blanche regretted the words as soon as she said them.
Nell frowned. “No,” she said, as if considering the proposition. “No, that wouldn’t work. Bad for discipline, I expect.” She shook her head. “You need sleep,” she said, as if she were the older one. She gave Blanche a brief hug.
Blanche didn’t resist.
Released, she fled in past the town guards. She thought that if she met Prince Tancredo in the corridors she’d kill him, but everyone was asleep but a handful of servants. She put the Queen’s treasures in her outer room, found that Lady Almspend had rather thoughtfully made her up a pallet with a sheet and blanket next to her own, and lay down on it.
She wanted to go to sleep. Instead she lay thinking about what a fool she was for a long time.
Chapter Twelve
The Company
Dawn found a surly company, sour from too much wine and too much marching. The horses were tired, and the oats were not enough to raise their spirits. Pages stumbled, half asleep, along the lines.
To add insult to injury, a light rain began to fall on men who’d slept with no tents and a single blanket.
Dropsy, one of the archers, was chained to the captain’s wagon, the only wagon left in the camp. Before they marched, the captain sat in judgment on him, and invoked the lesser penalty for sleeping on duty; not death and not a flogging. Instead, when all the men were formed, Cully stripped Dropsy to the skin and made him run down the ranks, and all the archers took a slap at him with their bows, or with arrows or leather belts or whatever they fancied. Running the gauntlet was a punishment as old as armies, and Nell, who hadn’t seen it done before, might have expected that the archers would go easy on one of their own.
She might have expected it, but she didn’t. The average archer’s capacity for cruel humour exceeded his kindness on the best of days-nice men stayed home and farmed. Nor was Oak Pew any different-her heavily studded belt slapped into Dropsy’s buttocks with a sound that made men wince and miss their blows.
Dropsy wailed at the pain and wept for it, but he didn’t fall down and he didn’t protest, and he was fast enough, when awake. He made it to the end more injured in pride than body. Cully was waiting with his filthy hose and his braes and shoes and a surgeon’s mate, who put a salve in the deeper welts.
The captain watched it all like an angry hawk watches rabbits.
“Mount,” he said to his trumpeter.
The men and women of the company were in a better mood for having punished Dropsy, and while the man still sobbed, which was disconcerting in a grown man and a killer, the rest ignored him, made dark jokes about his name and habits, and got their horses.
Mounted, they formed quickly, aware of the captain’s mood. The Occitans were slower off the mark, and the captain sent Ser Michael to move them.
Then he rode over in front of the company.
“We’re going into the worst place we’ve ever been,” he said. “If we’re lucky, we’ll only have to march two hundred leagues and then fight once. But my friends, the fun is over. I was gentle with Dropsy. In a day, a man asleep could be our deaths and the failure of our cause.” He looked them over. “The sorcerer has taken Ticondaga. To the best of our knowledge, he’s going for the Inn of Dorling-and after that, Albinkirk.” He sat back. “We will endeavour to stop him. But for the next few days, we will move very fast through country that may already be hostile. The next man or woman asleep on duty will be flogged-even if it is a knight.”