Jack Whyte - Order in Chaos

At the top of the stairs, he heard laughter from an open door nearby, at the far end of the passage, and he went and stuck his head into a well-lit chamber to find the boy Henry, propped up in bed and being spoon-fed from a bowl of soup held by one of Jessie’s women, the one called Marie. Beside her, on a chair nearer the foot of the bed, the girl Marjorie sat chattering gaily, her eyes on the bright embroidery on which she appeared to be working industriously. As Will entered, she looked up at young Henry, her eyes dancing with mirth, and added some quip that made the boy laugh, even as he caught sight of his lord and mentor. The laughter vanished quickly and he sought to push himself up farther, wincing as his shoulder tensed, but Will stopped him with an upraised hand and told him to stay where he was. The sudden quiet in the room had a strange quality, as though all three occupants had been frozen in mid-motion, the woman Marie caught with the hand that held the spoon upraised, the girl Marjorie suspended in bewildered surprise, her smile fixed in place, and young Henry himself poised as though about to fall over on one side. Will nodded cordially and greeted each of the ladies in turn, then spoke briefly to the boy, asking him how he felt and embarrassing him by asking whether he was happy with the quality of attention being paid to him.

The boy was looking well, he thought; still pale and waxen looking, with deep purplish rings under his eyes, but the eyes themselves were bright and the lad’s hair was clean and shone with health. Although he was still heavily bandaged, his injured shoulder appeared to be normally positioned, and his arms lay easily upon the bed’s surface. Will spoke for a little longer, attempting to put them all at ease, though with little success, he felt, and then he took his leave, heading resolutely down the stairs with a profound sense of relief that his squire was thriving.

TWO

Seated in front of the fire that now roared in the open grate, Jessie Randolph kept her head lowered and pretended to be engrossed in mending the piece of fabric she held on her knees, but she had to fight against the impulse to look up eagerly when Will knocked and entered.

Now, come inside, Will Sinclair, and take your proper place without stopping to question every impulse that occurs to you. In God’s name, play the man and not the monk, the champion but not the knight. Summon up that famous bravery of yours and let it strengthen you to see me as a woman and a friend and not as Threatening Woman. And when I do look up at you, God help me, let me see a change in the man to match the change in what he is wearing now.

Will stood silently just inside the threshold and stared at her, holding his breath and waiting for her to look up.

“Come and sit,” she said quietly, without looking up. “If you will be patient with me, I will be no more than a few moments in finishing what I am doing.”

He crossed silently to the chair opposite her, then stood there, feeling strangely shy and illogically awkward without the protection of his armor, but when she showed no reaction to his closeness he sat down slowly, watching her fingers at her needlework. Eventually he began to relax, lulled by her air of calm concentration, and he found himself enjoying the heat from the fire as it washed over him. She kept sewing, betraying no awareness of his presence. She was bareheaded, her hair parted straight down the middle of her bowed head and worked into two flawless plaits that were twisted into perfect spirals and pinned so that they covered her ears. In the stillness of the room, broken only by the fluttering of flames and shadows and the swift, deft movements of her busy fingers, he imagined that he could smell the scent of her, a wafting awareness of warmth and sweet-smelling cleanliness, and as he watched, moment by moment, he became aware that the stiffness and tension that had held him in suspense was bleeding out of him with each breath.

Jessie had to fight hard to keep her eyes on the sewing in her lap, but from the corner of one eye she could see his feet and ankles in their rich green boots and was aware when they crossed and uncrossed and finally rested comfortably, one flat on the floor, the other lolling sideways, resting easily on its heel. From that point onward, she could almost feel the strain easing in him, and as the awareness of that grew in her, the fiercely held joy in her burned brighter. Yet still she kept her head bent to her sewing, hoping he knew sufficiently little of needlecraft to be unaware that what she was doing there was nonsense.

Will, fortunately, knew nothing of sewing. But something strange was happening here, he knew, and he knew, too, that whatever it was, he was at ease with it, for reasons that he made no effort to define. As he gazed at Jessie’s bowed head he was dimly aware of a tiny, tenuous stirring somewhere at the back of his mind that tugged at deep-seated ideas of loyalties and conflict, but he ignored it deliberately, content for the time being to trust his instincts as he always had before, to enjoy looking at what lay before his eyes and to believe that all was as it should be.

It was only when Jessie raised her head suddenly and smiled at him that he snapped to attention, startled that he had come close to dozing off, lulled by the fire’s warmth and his feelings of well-being. He straightened guiltily, glancing about him and realizing for the first time that the two of them were alone in a comfortable firelit room, in a situation that could only be described as intimate. Embarrassed to be caught thus off-guard, and acutely ill at ease, he found himself almost glaring at his hostess.

“Where is everyone?”

Jessie merely blinked at him, her expression demure and slightly puzzled. “Everyone? Oh, you mean Tam. I told him to spend a night at leisure.”

She stood up, her sewing still clutched in one hand, and moved towards a large side table that stood against the wall to one side of the fireplace, and as he saw the way in which her clothing shifted around her he was surprised to realize that, for all his sudden discomfort, he had been unaware of her body until that moment.

Jessie, unable to see his face, was still talking, speaking to him over her shoulder as she scanned the tabletop in front of her.

“That poor man has no life of his own at all, you know. He spends far too much time with you, waiting upon your every wish and whim. And so I set him free for the night, to thank him for rescuing us today. He is probably enjoying himself now with Mungo and the others, for I am sure Hector will have left them well supplied with drink and food, if he has not joined them himself.”

Will cleared his throat, then blurted out what was in his mind. “I was not thinking of Tam, Lady Jessica. I was wondering about your … companions, your ward and your two women. Should they not be with us?”

“And why should they be here, my women?” She turned to face him, holding up her sewing in both hands, and he could not read the expression on her face or in her eyes, though she gave him no time for either. “To ensure propriety? Are you concerned for your safety here, alone with me?”

“No, that is not what I meant at all.” He threw up his hands, then let them fall to his sides and shook his head. “Of course I meant no such thing. But I have never known you be without them for so long. The child Marjorie rarely leaves your side, and the two women are ever in the background, one of them or the other if not both.”

“Things have changed here since the arrival of your young squire, and I have grown accustomed to being neglected, taking second place to his needs. He has bewitched my ward, you know. She has appointed herself his guardian, and she rules all of us like a tyrant in seeing to his every need. And so the women of this household wait upon Henry, and entertain Henry, and hover around Henry constantly—myself included, most of the time.” The fondness in her eyes removed any possible sting from the words she uttered. “So that is where everyone is … seeing to Henry, while I have supposedly been seeing to you. But I have been neglecting you, I fear.”