Кэндис Робб - The Apothecary Rose

Owen sensed he was being watched. He looked around, saw her. Dear Lord, all his work to put her out of his mind, and there she stood in her shift, her hair tumbling down around her slender shoulders. “You should not come out here like that.”

“I thought you were an intruder.”

“All the more reason.”

“What are you doing?” She stepped closer. He smelled of sweat and rich earth.

Owen stabbed the shovel into the pile and used it to climb out, staying on the side of the hole farthest from her. “I could not sleep.”

“Something troubles you?”

He thought of some innocent lies, but it was no use dissembling with her. She obviously had no idea how he felt about her, to let him see her like this. “Lucie, our arrangement is not working. I was a fool to think I could work so close to you and not want you.” He wiped himself down with his shirt.

“You dreamt of me?”

“Aye. A scoundrel, eh?” If he made light of it, perhaps she would not notice how he was trembling on this warm night.

Lucie stepped around the pit to him, coming so close he could see the moon in her eyes, feel the heat of her body. “You’re shivering,” she whispered, and opening her shawl, she pulled him to her, wrapping them together, and pressed herself to him. It felt good to touch flesh. And when he put his arms around her, she felt the life in him, the warmth. She kissed him.

“Do you know what you’re doing, Lucie?”

“I dreamt of you once. It frightened me.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I never dreamt such dreams about Nicholas.”

Their bodies moved against each other.

He pressed her to him, delighting in the scent of her. “I cannot trust myself, Lucie.”

Nor could she trust herself. Perhaps she was wrong. She thought of running, but the empty room and cold bed were uninviting, and he was warm and alive and he wanted her. “Kiss me.”

They slipped to the ground entangled in each other and made love, Lucie with a passion unlike anything she had experienced with Nicholas, Owen with a tenderness he had never before known.

They woke chilled by the dew.

“I love you, Lucie,” Owen whispered, kissing her.

She propped herself up on one arm and looked at him. “Did you really think I might have poisoned Geof for my family’s honor?”

“Why bring that up now?”

“I want to know.”

“You were strong and proud. I thought it possible.” She looked beautiful with her damp hair clinging to her face.

“You are certain now that I was innocent?”

He smiled. “Innocent in that instance, yes. But you are still strong and proud. I cannot say what you might be capable of.”

“Soldiers prefer their women meek and obedient.”

“Then ’tis a good thing I’m no soldier, eh?”

She brushed his hair off his forehead and touched his cheek gently. “I think I could love you, Owen.”

Could. Merciful Mother. “You could not lie, just for this moment, and say you love me?”

Lucie gave him that damnable level gaze. “That would not be a good way to begin.”

Instead of arguing, he gathered her to him and held her close. She clung to him. And he thought perhaps he had not been a fool to save the jongleur. Perhaps the blinding was God’s way of leading him to Lucie.

“We will marry,” Lucie said at breakfast. “And you will remain my apprentice.”

“Have you decided you love me, then?”

She smiled. “I think I will.”

“I will have to work at convincing you that life is sweeter when I’m about, I see.”

Her eyes softened. “You have made a good beginning.” She bent to pet Melisende.

When Lucie straightened up, Owen reached across the table and took her hand. “I mean to make you love me.”

Lucie looked at Owen, and already his scarred face was dear to her. “I think you just might, Owen Archer.”

Bess found them in the shop, working side by side. Something about the way they moved together told her what had happened. She hurried back to the York Tavern for a pitcher of the Archbishop’s brandywine.

“What’s that for, then?” Tom asked. It was but midday.

“Lucie and Owen. Just as I told you it would be.”

“Well, then, Bess, so you were right. Patch and all.”

“That eye was never his problem, Tom. I don’t even know why you would think it.”

England in the reign of Edward III (1327–1377) was an exciting, dangerous place. Change was in the air, as momentous as a stronger Commons voice in Parliament and as frivolous as the greatest advances in fashions in centuries. The proud, ambitious son of a deposed king and a ruthlessly ambitious queen, Edward embroiled his country and France in a war that would drag on intermittently from 1337 to 1453, at first in an effort to save the last piece of the Plantagenet empire in France, Gascony, but later as the self-proclaimed “King of England and France.” His constant requests to Parliament for new taxes to finance the war led to the stronger voice of the Commons; the wealth brought by the spoils of the war led to the frivolity of fashions.

It was in this war that my main character, Owen Archer, lost the sight in his eye, defending French nobles who were being held for large ransoms. As Captain of Archers for Henry, Duke of Lancaster, Owen had been in the service of the military hero of the age and an expert with the weapon that brought the English their resounding victories at Crécy and Poitiers, the Welsh longbow. In losing this life, Owen Archer mourned much more than his left eye. The longbow was the weapon of the day. It was fortunate for Edward III that his grandfather Edward I saw the value of putting aside the crossbow for the simpler but deadly Welsh weapon. A good longbowman could shoot 10 or 12 arrows/minute to the crossbowman’s 2. Even though the range of the crossbow was greater, by the middle of the 14th century the 6-foot longbows of yew, maple, or oak were capable of penetrating chain mail and had a range of about 275 yards, although above 165 yards they were less effective. Edward III combined cavalry and archers, the archers literally darkening the sky with their arrows, the horsemen then rushing in to take advantage of the bloody confusion of the enemy. It was a deadly combination. The archers proved so critical in battle that in 1363, Edward ordered that regular archery practice should take the place of football on Sundays and Holy Days.

This long war was fought on French soil, particularly in the north of France. In the book, Lucie’s mother, Amelie D’Arby, is the daughter of a Norman noble whose land was so devastated by the armies that he could not raise the money for his ransom. He offered his marriageable daughter to Sir Robert D’Arby instead. She was brought to Yorkshire while still in shock over the horrors of living in a war zone. She had seen her brother’s head on a pike, watched a schoolmate raped and murdered by an English soldier, and was now wed to the enemy and brought to a country in which Norman French was being replaced by English. Today, Normandy and Yorkshire don’t seem so far apart; then the two were separated by long, dangerous journeys and cultures in no way homogenized by media coverage. Without the war and its consequences there would have been no Amelie, and no story.

All was not safe on the island of England. Edward was also embroiled in intermittent wars with the Scots, who were in league with the French and often cooperated by distracting Edward from his empire building. Yorkshire was not out of the range of the skirmishes with the Scots. Edward actually moved the government up to York in 1327 and 1333–38 to have it handy while he was busy at the borders. He and Phillippa of Hainault were married in York Minster. It was in the 14th century and because of the Scots threat that York’s city walls were repaired and completed in stone. Today the city center is still within the walls, but the city spreads out beyond them. In the 14th century, it was the unfortunates who lived outside the walls. The Forest of Galtres to the north was the haunt of thieves, there were roving bands of outlaws, including Scots, on the roads, and it was a practice in the Middle Ages to burn the “vermin cities” and other shanty communities that grew up outside the city walls in preparation for defense. So although the population might rise, the physical dimensions of a city remained the same, causing crowding and taxing the sanitation systems beyond their limits. Periodical and inevitable fires made room for new buildings, often the stone houses of wealthy merchants.