Blythe Gifford - In The Master's Bed

Her stomach moaned. She should have stuffed more bread and cheese in the sack, but she was not accustomed to making plans for her own food.

Two days on the road already felt like ten.

After two nights of sleeping by the side of the road, she looked and smelled nothing like a lady. She had lost the walking stick in a tumble into a stream on the first day, walked in damp clothes for two, and then been stung by a wasp.

She itched her swollen hand, wondering how far it was to Cambridge.

Behind her, she heard a horse at a trot and turned, too tired to run. If it was a thief, he’d get little enough.

Unless he realised she was a woman. Then the threat would be much greater than losing her meagre purse.

She put on her most manly stance as the black horse and rider came closer. Good shoulders on them, both the steed and the man.

The man looked as rough as an outlaw. Perhaps in his mid-twenties, his face was all angles, the nose broken and mended, black hair and beard shaggy. The stringed gittern slung over his back was small comfort. Travelling entertainers were the personification of all vices.

He pulled up the horse and looked down at her. ‘Where’s t’ gaan?’

She eyed him warily, puzzling over the words, run together in an unfamiliar accent. Yet his eyes, grey like clouds bearing rain, were not unkind. ‘What do you say?’

He sighed and spoke more slowly as if in a foreign tongue. ‘Where are you going?’

She cleared her throat. ‘Cambridge.’ She hoped she had pitched her voice low enough.

He smiled. ‘And I. You’re a student, then?’

She nodded, afraid to risk her voice again.

He studied her, running his eyes from crown to toes. She shifted, feeling something like lightning in his glance.

‘Students dinna travel alone,’ he said, finally.

‘Neither do jongleurs.’

He laughed, a musical sound. ‘I play for meself alone.’

She felt a moment’s envy of his stringed instrument. To live as a man, she would have to abandon song, the only womanly thing about her.

‘What’s your name, boy?’

Boy. She bit back a grin. ‘Ja—’ She coughed. ‘John. What are you called?’

‘Duncan.’ He held out a hand. ‘Where’s t’ frae?’

Frae? He must mean from. She swallowed, trying to think. She had planned to say Essex, where she’d lived until spring, but she was on the wrong side of Cambridge to tell that tale. ‘What does it matter?’

Looking down at her from his horse, he didn’t bother to answer. It always mattered where a man was from. ‘You’re not Welsh, are you? The Welsh are no friends of mine.’

She shook her head.

‘Nor Irish?’

‘Do I look Irish?’

‘You look as if you have a drop of the Norse blood in you.’

She bit her tongue and shook her head. Her fair hair came from her father, the late King, one more thing she must hide. ‘Where’s your home?’ she countered.

‘The Eden Valley,’ he answered. The words softened his face, just for a moment. ‘Where Cumberland meets Westmoreland.’

That explained his strange tongue. He had raked her with his eyes and now she returned the favour. ‘You eat your meat uncooked?’

She had never seen someone from the north lands. Everyone knew the people from there were coarse, uncouth creatures and he looked the part, except for that moment his eyes had been gentle.

They looked gentle no more. ‘You’ve heard the stories, have you?’ He growled, leaning down to bare his teeth at her. ‘Aye, we do. We tear into the raw flesh like wolves.’

She stumbled backwards, as if blasted by the wind, and ended up sitting in the dirt.

When he laughed, she realised she’d been played with.

She waited for him to offer his hand to help her up, then remembered she was a lad and could rise on her own. ‘Well, that’s what they say,’ she answered, brushing the dirt from her seat as she stood.

He shook his head. ‘You’re a south lander, that’s certain. While you spent the summer growing pretty gardens and spouting poesy, we’ve been keeping the Scots from cutting across England like a scythe through wheat.’

Ah, yes. She would have to learn to relish talk of war. ‘And you’re a long way from having to face the French. ’

‘You think so, do you? And are you so ignorant you’ve forgotten that the last time the French set foot on English soil it was a Scot who opened the door?’ His expression was grim. ‘While you stand here fluttering like a woman, the Scots have delved our borders and burned our crops.’

Like a woman. The Scots were a less immediate threat than discovery. She lifted her hands and spread her feet. ‘Come down from that horse and face my fists and we’ll decide who’s a better man.’

His grimace turned to laughter, a wonderful sound, and he leaned over the horse’s neck to clap her on the shoulder. ‘Well, Little John, I see you’ve much to learn, but I’ll spare you a brayin’ today.’

She tried not to look relieved.

‘Come.’ He held out his hand. ‘Share my horse. You’ll see Cambridge afore day’s end.’

Caked with the dirt of her days on the road, she slouched and shrugged as if it didn’t matter. Men, in her experience, were not good at welcoming help. ‘Well, if you insist. I can take care of myself, you know.’

Unlike a woman, dependent on a man for the food that filled her belly and the air that filled her lungs.

‘Oh, yes, and a fine job you’re doing, too,’ he said, raising his eyebrows at her bedraggled state. ‘Now accept a hand when it’s offered.’

He swung the gittern from his back to his chest and slipped his foot from the stirrup so she could have a leg up. Then he grabbed her arm, his grip firm and safe, and hauled her up behind him. She scrambled to keep her seat as the horse trotted sideways and the stringed instrument bounced against Duncan’s chest.

‘Hold on, Little John. Fall and you can walk the rest of the way.’

She patted the horse as the beast started down the road, then grabbed the man around the waist, reluctant to press too close. Her breasts were bound, but would he feel a softness against his back? Her legs, splayed wide and tucked against his hips, seemed to expose her most intimate secret. Would he notice what was missing there?

Talk. Talk would distract him. And her. ‘You had a skirmish with the Scots, you say?’

‘Skirmish? Aye, if you want to call it that. Three thousand swooped into the valley and were halfway to Appleby before I left.’

‘You left?’ Astonished, she could not stop the words. Men did not shirk battle.

‘I was sent to ask, nay, to plead for help from our illustrious King and Council.’ The sentence held a sneer.

‘You’ve seen the King?’ Her mother, the old King’s mistress, had fled the court at his death. Jane had been five then and remembered little, but Solay had returned to Court last year and her sister had listened to her every tale.

‘Seen him? I’ve spoken to him. He knows me name.’ The return of his accent hinted at his pride.

She was dumbstruck. The relationship was muddled in her mind, but the new King was some sort of half-nephew of hers, although he was older than she by a few years. Yet she had never even seen him.

It seemed that even a commoner from the north had more stature than a lowly woman. ‘So what did they say, the King and Council?’

‘Next year.’ His words were harsh. ‘They said next year.’

Invaders would not wait on the Council’s convenience. She wondered how far away Appleby was. ‘Why not now?’

‘Because they’ve no money, winter is a miserable season for a campaign, and a few more excuses I can’t remember.’