“It’s past dawn – look.” The knife cut of light through the shutters was beginning to dazzle. “The storm has all blown away and the sun is shining. But someone is crying in your stables.”
“Disaster follows me, it seems. I will ask later. For now I want my wife. Then my breakfast. Finally my squire, and last of all my next adventure.”
“I’m used to being up early.” She came to sit on the edge of the bed, pulling the ties of her bedrobe tightly about her. “Papa always insisted we attend morning mass immediately after Prime, and then we had wafers and a little ale for breakfast. No more. He said eating would make us complacent and we’d forget our duties.”
“Which I suppose is why you wake early and eat excessively. I have never known anyone else so fond of apple codlings.”
“Never? And so surprising? Don’t you usually feed your women, then?”
“You are an urchin,” Nicholas remarked, then frowned. “Which reminds me, I suppose I know who is probably crying in the stables.”
“More secrets?”
“I imagine this is going to be a busy day.”
“Then I must dress too. But I have no dresser, no lady’s maid, no nurse and no idea where to find one. Can I have servants now if we’re going to live here for a while longer?”
“No doubt there’s a parcel of women wandering this house somewhere,” Nicholas said with vague disinterest. “Normally there’d be some poor wretch sleeping on the truckle bed from beneath this mattress, ready to defend me from thieves in the night, get me ale if I wake parched, comfort me if I have nightmares, and generally disturb me with his snoring. There might also be a scruffy page or two waiting to obey all my irascible demands and clean up the dog shit if those inexhaustible puppies disgrace themselves. There should also be someone else lurking in the annexe beyond the garderobe, ready to leap from his bed to warm my shirt as soon as I wish to get dressed, though I’ve no desire to have our lovemaking witnessed, even from beyond the bed curtains. You make far too many little gasps and squeals, and at the happy end you groan loudly as though in terrible pain. Small boys giggling from beyond the arras might put us both off.”
An hour later Nicholas had entered the stable courtyard. Fully dressed but with his hair still uncombed, he strode past the assortment of busy grooms and fretting horses, and demanded the whereabouts of the new stable boy he had brought with him yesterday. Someone said, “Right there, m’lord. Got kicked up the arse. First by your lordship’s hoby, and then by me.”
“Ah,” said Nicholas, running his hands through his hair, a form of grooming less effective than the horses’, and peered down into the rummage of straw in the corner. “Boy? Hurt, are you? If you and my liard don’t get on, I’d better get you some work in the kitchens instead.”
“I’s used to being beat,” snuffled the boy. “But not whupped by them big horses. They got nasty hard feet, an’ a lot harder than my Ma’s.” Nicholas conceded this probability while Wolt continued. “But I don’t wanna turn no spits in no kitchens neither. I had a friend once, went to be a spit boy for the bishop. Burned all his fingers till they was just little sticky stumps.”
Nicholas sighed. “When you decide what degree of discomfort you might manage to suffer in comparative silence, do let me know and I shall attempt to organise a suitable place for you.”
But he was interrupted. A small clattering of hooves was entering the courtyard behind him, and a voice called, “Is that you, Nicholas? There’s remarkably little organisation here, whatever else you’re planning. The last time I stayed here the stables were fairly well staffed. You seem to bring chaos in tow, cousin. Is it intentional?”
Adrian dismounted, and signalled for his small retinue to do the same. He then waved the three men off to arrange their own quarters, and turned back to Nicholas. “Oh bloody Bedlam,” exclaimed Nicholas. “I only moved in yesterday because you weren’t here.”
“Then I have come in perfect time.” Adrian refrained from smiling. “I’ve come to talk of duty to you, cousin. There is a good deal to talk about.”
“Then you can talk to my wife,” said Nicholas. “She’s been fretting for company for days.”
“Ah, then your wife is here with you, Nicholas?” Adrian followed his cousin towards the house. “It was her I wished to talk about. She was worrying about you. So was I. I hear you had some slight contagion from the pestilence after all. Entirely finished now, I presume?”
“Well, of course it is,” said Nicolas with some irritation. “Am I covered in black swellings and about to drop to the ground? That was weeks and weeks ago. If you must stay here, at least talk some sense. Now come and gossip with my wife. I have other things to do.”
It was over a pleasant dinner served in the main hall that Emeline began to summarise her last few days on the road and in the hostelry by the docks. Nicholas was not present, and had politely absented himself with promises of an immediate return, which his wife did not believe. Chattering and animated with Adrian, apple codlings having magically appeared on a huge platter at her right hand, she was describing her first view of the Bridge with the massive beauty of The Tower’s stone fortress beyond. She was, however, also interrupted, and it seemed far more alarming than Adrian’s earlier arrival had been.
Baroness Wrotham swept into the hall, a bright scarlet coat over her arm, a tasselled turban swinging dangerously around her ears, and her vivid green skirts swirling with a determined silken rustle. She swooped on her daughter and the laden table, and threw her coat to an empty stool. “My dear girl,” announced her mother, “you have had me chasing across the countryside, and near dead with the wind in my hair. I always thought those wretched litters your Papa insisted upon were too horrid to contemplate, but believe me, riding is worse. I am sore in places I cannot mention, and I never wish to see another horse. Now,” she looked around, frowning. “Where is your sister?”
Emeline, mouth already open in astonishment, hiccupped. “Avice?”
“You have another?”
“Avice is at home with you,” mumbled Emeline, “At least, you aren’t at home, which you should be. But you shouldn’t even know where I am. And I haven’t the faintest notion where Avice is.”
“If,” warned her ladyship, “you are hiding her, Emeline, I shall – well, I shall think of something.” She promptly sank to the stool where she had previously thrown her coat, and even in her new finery, began to look forlorn. “I have lost her, Emma. She ran away. But then I was told she was with you.”
“And Sissy too?” gasped Emeline.
Adrian, who had remained in politely quiet disapproval until now, said loudly, “My sister? What has this to do with her? I ordered her to stay at home in Nottingham and learn her manners while reorganising the household after the devastation of that foul disease.”
“Well, she didn’t,” said the baroness with considerable impatience. “The dear girl came to visit us, and I was most pleased to have her. Until she and Avice ran away, that is.”
Adrian went as white as the tablecloth. “My sister would never act so reprehensibly, so irresponsibly –”
“Clearly she did,” said the baroness curtly, “and my daughter left a silly note about going off to discover who murdered Peter.” She turned back to Emeline. “Then two days later, while I was nearly dead with fear and worry, two of her little maids came riding back to say they had gone some way south east, but had been sent home as it cost too much to put them up at inns along the way. Sysabel’s maid is still with them I gather, and that silly old groom Bill, who I kept meaning to retire since he is of no use to anyone. But he’s evidently gone with them as a guide and protector.”