Miles Cameron - The Dread Wyrm

Amicia took a deep breath, dismounted, and curtsied.

The duchess smiled. “You are really such a pretty thing. Don’t you think those breasts and those legs are wasted on God? He doesn’t care. Let him have the ugly old maids. Those legs were made for sport, sweeting.”

Ghause’s men-at-arms were used to her. No one leered. No one commented.

Amicia rose from her curtsey. “No one could be immune to your grace’s flattery, or fail to perceive your meaning,” the nun said.

Ghause smiled. “I like you, my little witch. Come and share a meal with an old woman. You know my son is, by all report, in yonder fortress.”

Amicia smiled. “So I have heard.”

“You look tired,” Ghause said. “Too much prayer?”

Amicia was tempted to say that she’d been drained of her ops for two days and nights, but chose not to share that. She made herself smile. “Too many young lovers,” she said.

Ghause’s beautiful blue eyes almost bulged. There was a long silence, and then she snorted so hard that her horse started and she had t0 curb the animal. Then she laughed and laughed.

Amicia was not used to the level of service that the duchess provided. The duchess retired and changed into a yet more splendid dress of green velvet that left no man present in any doubt as to the shape-and tone-of her body. Her hair was brushed until it shone like the red gold of her jewels.

It came to Amicia that the great duchess was nervous.

The innkeeper and his staff were as courteous as the strain of twenty men-at-arms and forty more servants on a country inn could leave them, and she chose a strong red wine to steady her nerves, but the best tonic was the sight of Helewise-Lady Helewise to the older locals. She was the lady of a manor just to the south, and she came in quietly, wearing a good wool gown and an apron, with her daughter Phillippa and another girl the same age, Jenny, both pretty and blond and capable of being gentlewomen when called on to do so. After a whispered conversation with the innkeeper, Helewise went out into the yard and spoke to the captain of the duchess’s men-at-arms and took wine to Ser Aneas in person.

Ser Aneas gave her a deep bow. “You are no inn servant,” he said.

She smiled at him. “Nor I am, ser knight, but in a village, we all help each other. Especially in these times, mm?”

The men-at-arms were all gentlemen, and they had dismounted, and stood in knots in the yard. The inn was too small for them to all go in at once.

Through the windows, Helewise could see the keeper’s wife bustling to make the two common room long tables fit for gentry.

“We will have two tables ready for you in a moment,” Helewise said. “If you gentlemen would be kind enough to enter in files, and file to your seat, that would allow the duchess some privacy. And allow us to get you fed efficiently.”

Ser Aneas bowed.

Phillippa and Jenny came into the yard with silver trays-her own-full of good Venike glasses, each filled with the best Occitan, a sweet wine that travelled well. They served like ladies, and the gentlemen appraised them with the glass and the silver.

Helewise took Ser Aneas’s glass. The duchess’s captain bowed. “I am Ser Henri,” he said with an accent as Venike as the glass.

Helewise dropped him a straight-backed curtsey without tilting her tray. “My lord does us honour.”

Ser Henri laughed. “By God, I’ve seen more courtesy in this inn yard than in a year at Ticondaga.”

Helewise nodded. “You’ll find that the keeper is your countryman, if I read your accent aright, my lord.”

“By the cross of Christ!” Ser Henri said. “Mayhap he has some of the wine of home, then. Goodwife? My lady?”

Helewise nodded. “Folk hereabouts call me a lady, ser knight. But my husband, while a good man-at-arms, was never a knight.”

She went in with her tray-but not before her eyes summoned her daughter and Jenny, who were basking too long in the admiration of twenty young men.

“What brings you to Albinkirk?” the duchess asked. She had a healthy appetite-she wolfed down half a rabbit, all of a capon, and moved on to a dish of greens in the new fashion, apparently oblivious to the miracle of the innkeeper having greens in late Martius.

Amicia ate more sparingly due to her Lenten vows, but the food was good and the wine better. She sat with the duchess, curtained off from the men-at-arms who were now seated and loud, ensconced at the two long tables nearest the door.

“My Abbess does not feel that she can travel just now,” Amicia said. “I will represent the Order at Ser John’s council.”

The duchess met her eye. “You are full of surprises, my love. Will you sit in Sophie’s chair and be the Abbess? By God, that might be enough power to turn my head away from marriage. Who wants men anyway?” She laughed, swallowed a morsel of truffle and sat back to sip wine. “Outside of the one thing they do well.”

“War?” Amicia asked.

“An excellent point. War and sex.” Ghause smiled. “I am just a crude old woman.”

“So you insist,” Amicia said.

Ghause raised a hand and one of her own ladies came.

“Fetch me the keeper,” Ghause said. “So-you feel you might have to spurn my son’s advances to make yourself the most powerful woman in the north?”

Amicia felt that she was getting better at dealing with Ghause. “No, I don’t feel that way at all,” she said.

The innkeeper came through the curtain and bowed deeply.

“Keeper-your food is wonderful. I am most pleased. ” The duchess held out her hand, and the keeper bowed and kissed it-an almost unheard of honour given their relative stations. “And these dumplings-what are they?”

The keeper bowed. “In Etrusca, they are called gnocchi .”

“Made with truffles,” the duchess said.

“Your grace has all my secrets,” the keeper replied gallantly. “But I will tell my wife. She made them.”

Ghause nodded. Her green eyes were smiling. “I feel these dumplings might threaten the shape of my thighs but, by the crucified Christ, they make me want to eat all day.” She sparkled at him.

He bowed, clearly overwhelmed.

She dismissed him with a wave. “I will tell every gentle I meet to visit you,” she said. “Please feel free to display my arms in your window.”

The keeper bowed and retired, the colour of his spring business altered for the better. Amicia had a glimpse of Lady Helewise-a good friend-and the two women shared a glance, and the curtain closed.

“So you won’t change your mind,” Ghause snapped at Amicia, the moment that the keeper was gone, as if the interruption had never taken place.

Amicia was tempted, to her own surprise, to confide in this terrible woman, but she held her peace. “No, your grace.”

“Damn you, then. You’d have made me some fine, sly, long-legged grandchildren with powers.” She leaned in. “If you won’t have him for yourself, will you help me find him a mate?”

Amicia gave a small cry.

Ghause laughed grimly. “Just as I thought.”

“But of course I’ll help,” Amicia said. She was surprised at herself-at the speed of her reaction and its intensity. She’d had a year to adjust. She was in charge of her own destiny.

Ghause smiled. “You are very brave. Good. Come, travel with me, and we’ll hold each other up, as women must in this world.”

In two hours, the inn had fed and wined the duchess, all her staff, twenty men-at-arms and their squires and pages, the bird’s handlers, two huntsmen in charge of a pair of dead aurochs in a wagon, and a hundred horses had been fed and watered. Every man and woman in the village had been involved at some level, from the making of winter sausage last autumn to the desperate plea for grooms and maids.