‘I’m just sayin’, lad. Don’t be foolish. You ha’ the de’il’s own luck. What if it runs out?’ he asked.
‘Then I’ll be dead,’ the captain said. He shrugged. ‘Someone had to do it.’
‘Jehannes did it, and he did it
The captain shrugged again. For once, he looked every heartbeat of twenty years old – the shrug was a rebellious refusal to accept the reality of what an adult was trying to teach him, and in that moment the captain was a very young man caught out being a fool. And he knew it.
‘Cap’n,’ Tom said, and suddenly he was a big, dangerous man. ‘If you die I much misdoubt we will ride through this. So here’s my rede: don’t die.’
‘Amen,’ said the captain.
‘The pretty novice’ll be far more compliant with a living man than a dead one,’ Tom said.
‘That based on experience, Tom?’ Atcourt said. ‘Leave the lad alone. Leave the
The captain shook his head. On balance, it was difficult to be annoyed when you discover that men like you and desire your continued health.
Atcourt laughed aloud. Tom leaned over him, and whispered something, and Atcourt doubled up – first laughing, and then in obvious pain.
The captain paused to look back, and Tom was taking cards and dice out of his purse, and Atcourt was holding his side and grinning.
The captain ran down the steps, his leather soles slapping the stone stairs, but she wasn’t there, and he cursed Tom’s leer and ran out into the new darkness.
He wanted a cup of wine, but he was sure he’d go to sleep. Which he needed.
He smiled at his own foolishness and went to the apple tree instead.
And there she was, sitting in the new starlight, singing softly to herself.
‘You didn’t come last night,’ he said. The very last thing he wanted to say.
She shrugged. ‘I fell asleep,’ she said. ‘Which, it seems to me, might be a wise course for you. My lord.’
Her tone was forbidding. There was nothing about her to suggest that they’d ever kissed, or had intimate conversation. Or even angry conversation.
‘But you wanted to see me,’ he said.
‘I wanted to tell you that you were perfectly correct. I plotted to meet you outside her door. And she used me, the old witch. I love her, but she’s throwing me at you. I was blind to it. She’s playing courtly love with you and substituting my body for hers. Or something.’ Amicia shrugged, and the motion was just visible in the starlight.
The silence stretched on. He didn’t know what to say. It sounded quite likely to him, and he didn’t see a way to make it seem better. And he found he had no desire to speak ill of the Abbess.
‘I’m sorry that I spoke so brusquely, anyway,’ he said.
‘Brusquely?’ she asked, and laughed. ‘You mean, you are sorry that you crushed my excuses and made light of my vanity and my piety? That you showed me up as a sorry hypocrite?’
‘I didn’t mean to do any of those things,’ he said. Not for the first time, he felt vastly her inferior. Legions of willing servant girls hadn’t prepared him for this.
‘I do love Jesus,’ she went on. ‘Although I’m not always sure what loving God should mean. And it hurts me, like a physical pain, that you deny God.’
‘I don’t deny God,’ he said. ‘I’m quite positive that the petty bastard exists.’
Her face, pale in the new moonlight, set hard.
She put her hand to her mouth. ‘You have a funny way of showing it,’ she said.
He sat down suddenly. Like saying
She reached out a hand to take his, and as their fingers met, she flinched.
‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Gentle Jesu, messire, you are in pain.’
She leaned over him, and she breathed on him. That’s how it felt.
He opened his defences, running
They kissed.
She laid her head on his arming cote and he opened his mouth.
‘Please don’t talk,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to talk.’
So he sat, perfectly happy, in the darkness. It was some time before he realised she’d magicked his bruises. By then she was asleep.
Later, he had to pee. And the stone bench was icy cold, despite the warm spring air. And the edge of the bench bit into the back of his thigh at a bad angle. Gradually cut off the flow of blood to his leg, which began to go all pins and needles.
He wondered if it was his duty to wake her up and send her to bed. Or if he was supposed to wake her up and attack her with kisses. It occurred to him that the loss of a night’s sleep was not a wise move on his part.