Blythe Gifford - The Knave and the Maiden

Speechless, he shook his head.

“Come.” The Prioress beckoned him to the window overlooking the garden. “See for yourself.”

The girl knelt in the dirt, facing away from him. Her hair lay like poured honey in a thick braid down her back. She hummed over her plants, a soothing sound, like the drone of a drowsy bee.

Of its own accord, his heart thumped a little harder. Even from behind she had a pleasing shape. It would not be difficult to take her, but the idea rekindled a sense of outrage he thought long dead.

“I’ll not force her.” He had seen too much force in France. Knights who took vows of chivalry and then took women like rutting boars. The remembrance churned in his stomach. He would starve first.

“Use whatever methods you like.” The Prioress shrugged. “She must not return from this trip a virgin.”

He looked back at the girl, digging up the weeds. He was no knight from a romance, but he had a way with women. Camp followers across France could attest to that. Every woman had a sweet spot if you took time to look. Where would this one’s be? Her shell-like ears? The curve of her neck?

She stood and turned, smiling at him briefly and the purest blue eyes he had ever seen looked into his wretched soul. He felt as transparent as stained glass.

And for a moment, he shook with fear he had never felt before a battle with the French.

He shrugged off the feeling. There was no reason for it. She was not that remarkable. Tall. Rounded breasts. Freckles. A broad brow. Her mouth, the top lip serious, the bottom one with a sensual curve. And an overall air as if she were not quite of this earth.

She turned away and kneeled to weed the next row.

“Why?” He had asked God that question regularly without reply. He didn’t know why he expected a country Prioress to answer.

The Prioress, broad of chest and hip, did not take the question theologically. Her dangling crucifix clanked like a sword as she strode away from the window, out of hearing of the happy hum. “You think me cruel.”

“I have seen war, Mother Julian. Man’s inhumanity is no worse than God’s.” He had a sudden thought. The usual resolution to a tumble with a maid would find him married in a fortnight. “If it is a husband you need, I’m not the one. I cannot support a wife.”

I can barely support myself.

“You will not be asked to marry the girl.”

He eyed a neatly stitched patch on her faded black habit and wondered whether she had the money she promised. “Nor fined.”

“If you had any money you would not be considering my offer. No, not fined, either. God has a different plan.”

God again. The excuse for most of the ill done in the world. Hypocrites like this one had driven him from the Church. “If you do not care for my immortal soul, aren’t you concerned about hers? What will happen to her? Afterward?”

Her eyes flickered over him, as if trying to decide whether he was worthy of an answer. “Her life will go on much as before.”

He doubted that. But the money she offered would be enough for him to give William the gift of the pilgrimage. Enough and more. William would be dead soon. Garren would have no welcome under Richard’s reign. All he owned was his horse and his armor. With England and France at peace, he had no place to go.

With what she offered, and the few coins he had left from France, he might find a corner of England no one else wanted, where he and God could ignore each other.

“Can you pay me now?”

“I’m a Prioress, not a fool. You’ll get your money when you return. If you succeed. Now, will you do it?”

The girl’s happy hum still buzzed in his ear. What was one more sin to a God who punished only the righteous? Besides, the Church didn’t need this one. The Church had already taken enough.

He nodded.

“Sister Marian also goes to the shrine. She knows nothing of this. She wants the girl to fulfill her vow and return to the order.”

“And you do not.”

The Prioress crossed herself. A faint shudder ruffled the edge of her robe. “She is a foundling with the Devil’s own eyes. He can have her back.” Her smile was anything but holy. “And you will be His instrument.”

“Look. There he is. The Savior.” Sister Marian’s words tickled Dominica’s ear. She whispered so no one would overhear the blasphemous nickname for the man who, like the true Savior, had raised a man from the dead.

“Where? Which one?” Dominica did not bother to whisper. The entire household had gathered in the Readington Castle courtyard to witness the blessing of God’s simple pilgrims before they left on their journey. The sounds of braying asses, snorting horses and barking dogs assaulted her ears, accustomed to convent quiet. At Sister’s feet, Innocent barked fiercely at every one of God’s four-legged creatures.

“Over there. By the big bay horse.”

She gasped. He was the man she had seen through the Prioress’s window.

He certainly did not look holy. His broad shoulders looked made to stand against the real world, not the spirit one. Dark brown curls, the color of well-worn leather, fought their way around his head and onto his cheeks, where he had begun to grow a pilgrim’s beard. His skin had lived with sun and wind.

Then he met her eyes again. Just like the first time, something called to her, as strongly as if he had spoken. Surely this must be holiness.

With an unholy bark, Innocent dashed across the courtyard, chasing a large, orange cat.

“I’ll get him,” Dominica called, too late for Sister to object. It was going to be difficult to keep Innocent safe among the temptations of the world.

Her first running steps tangled in her skirts, so she swooped them out of the way. Fresh air swirled between her legs. Laughing, she scampered around two asses, finally scooping Innocent up at the feet of a horse.

A large bay horse. With a broad-shouldered man beside it.

The Savior was taller than he looked from a distance. A soldier’s sword hung next to his pilgrim’s bowl and bag. Something hung around his neck hid beneath his tunic, not for the world to see. A private penance, perhaps.

“Good morning,” she said, bending back her neck to meet his brown, no, green eyes. “I am Dominica.”

He looked at her squarely, eyes wary and sad, as if God had given him many trials to make him worthy. “I know who you are.”

At his glance, her blood bubbled through her fingers and around her stomach in an oddly pleasant way. “Did God tell you?” If God spoke to her, He must certainly have lengthy conversations with one so holy.

He scowled. Or repressed a smile. “The Prioress told me.”

She wondered what else the Prioress had told him. The dog wriggled in her arms. She scratched his head. “This is Innocent.”

The smile broke through. “Named in honor of our Holy Father in Avignon, no doubt.”

That, she was sure, the Prioress had not told him. Dominica raced on, not giving him time to wonder whether the name honored the Pope or mocked him. “We are all grateful to you for bringing the Earl back from the dead,” she said. “Did he stinketh like Lazarus?”

“Pardon?”

“The Bible says ‘Lazarus did stinketh because he hath been dead four days.’

The corner of his mouth twitched. “You did not hear about Lazarus’s stench in one of the Abbot’s homilies.”

Best not to tell him she had read it herself. “At the noon meal, the Sisters read the Scriptures and let me listen.” She waited for a sign of anger. Could one so touched by God discern her small deception?

“The story of Lazarus hardly sounds appetizing,” he said. “But, yes, we both did stinketh by the time we got home.”