Desiderata smiled-and it was like her old smile, full of a woman’s provocative wisdom. “But you wanted me to know,” she said.
The Red Knight shrugged. “I suppose. There’s no one else to share the jest save Blanche. Lady Blanche, I’ll fetch you some food.”
“I’m not a lady,” she hissed at his back. Her heart was beating very fast.
She had really thought he was about to kill the Queen.
When he was gone, the Queen’s face sagged. “Oh, blessed Virgin, give me strength,” she said. She managed a tired smile at Blanche. “Oh, he scared me, too, Blanche.” She looked around. “We need a Royal Standard, Blanche.”
Blanche laughed. “Your grace, I’m a fine hand with a needle, but even I couldn’t run up a gold dragon tonight.”
She held a cup of water for her mistress to drink, and used a cleanish spot on her kirtle to wipe the Queen’s lips. “Sleep, your grace. I don’t think he’d actually… but I’ll still attend you.”
“Nonsense, my dear. Go sleep. He’s not as dangerous as he-”
Ser Gabriel came in. He had a tray this time-a tray which proved to be an archer’s leather and steel buckler full of bread and cheese and apples.
He motioned to Blanche.
She looked at the Queen, but her eyes were already closed. Her babe lay on her breast with his eyes tightly shut and mouth slightly open.
Blanche glanced back at the Red Knight, who beckoned her. She shut the door to the Queen’s chamber behind her. There was a small stall-probably the abode of a favoured riding horse-just off the passage. He had a camp stool and an upturned barrel there and he set the food down.
“May I join you?” he asked.
“I’m not gentry,” she said. “You don’t have to waste your fine manners on me.”
“Alas, once started they’re very hard to turn off.” He sat on a leather trousseau rather suddenly, as if his knees had given way.
“Does all your chivalry extend to terrifying my mistress, then?” she asked.
He looked at her. His eyes were queer in the darkness-almost like a cat’s. He took out a knife-the same knife-and began to cut another apple into slices. He held one out to her and she took it without thinking and ate it. The apple was tart and hard despite a winter in a cold cellar, and she could not stop herself from seizing the next two slices he offered, greedily.
His mouth made a strange shape-neither smile nor frown. “Sometimes, things need to be said, between people of power,” he said. “Even between lovers, or parents. Things that show intent, or honesty. Or simply draw a line, for everyone’s peace.” He sat back, so his face was hidden, except his odd eyes.
It occurred to Blanche that he was giving her a real answer. It was like when her mother had first spoken to her as a woman. Heady stuff. She was alone with him. She suspected his motives. But he was interesting.
“You had to tell her that you could kill her and be King?” she asked. She was into the cheese.
So was he. “Do you think she’d rather go to sleep wondering what was on my mind?” he asked. “Or knowing?”
Blanche chewed. “Depends,” she said.
“Too true,” he said. “The bread’s stale.”
“I’ve had stale bread before,” she said, and took a slice. It was good bread, if a day or two old. “We lived in Cheapside.”
He poured wine into a somewhat crumpled silver cup. “We’ll have to share,” he said. “I tried to find Wilful’s cup, or Michael’s, but I couldn’t in the dark.”
She murmured a prayer and drank. The wine was dark red and had a lovely taste, almost as if it had cinnamon in it, with a little sweetness.
“Does your company always eat and drink this well?” she asked.
His teeth flashed. “Good food and good wine recruit more men-and women-than silver and gold,” he said. “When Jehan and Sauce and I started the company, we agreed we’d always have good food.” He said, “My father always fed his men…” And stopped, his face working. He put his face in his hands for a moment, and she wondered if he was laughing, but she thought perhaps-not.
She rose to her knees and handed him the wine cup. He took it carefully-so carefully that he didn’t touch her. Blanche was used to a more forward kind of boy and dismissed her earlier suspicions of his intentions.
She wondered what it would be like to be his mistress. Was he rich? He was likely to be the Queen’s captain for some time. He had nice manners-nicer than the court gallants she’d known.
She almost giggled aloud at such an absurd fantasy. Blanche, the laundry mistress, was more like her speed.
“You drank all the wine!” he said in mock annoyance. He had cried, then. Odd man. And now, like all men, sought to pretend he hadn’t.
“I didn’t mean to,” she said.
“You tell that to all your boys,” he said.
She blushed, but it was dark. “I’m so sorry, my lord,” she said. “I should go look at the Queen. The wine was very good.”
“Your servant, Lady Blanche,” he said.
He rose-for a moment she thought he might…
Then he was past her, holding the door. “Since you tumbled the last bucket,” he said wryly, “I’ll draw another before I rest.”
He came back with the bucket, and with Nell, who had a straw palliasse over her arms and her boy in tow. The two of them made her a bed at the foot of the Queen’s. Nell looked well pleased-Blanche, in passing, plucked a straw out of her hair. Diccon, her young man, was diligent in avoiding his captain’s glance.
The Red Knight nodded, and went out the door.
Blanche fell onto her pallet and was asleep before she could think.
Gabriel fell into the straw next to his brother. Gavin muttered something. He’d been kind enough to leave room and two blankets. Gabriel refused to think about Ticondaga or all the errors he’d made-because if he stayed awake mourning, the morrow would be worse.
He closed his eyes. Smiled at a thought instead of weeping, and went into his palace of power. There-in the cold, clear world of the aethereal -he could work his own sleep.
“You need to sleep,” Pru said.
“That’s what I’m here for,” he said.
He cast a simple working, using only two symbols and one statue. Pru’s hands moved, and he was asleep.
“Gabriel-they want you. Gabriel-get up!”
Gabriel surfaced slowly. His self-imposed working was strong enough to keep him down unless he made an effort of will. The effort of will broke the working, but it also brought him a flood of images.
“Ohh,” he said. He moaned. “Oh, noooooo.”
Mater, dead. Ticondaga-destroyed. Thorn, triumphant. The Queen. Amicia.
“Fuck,” he said.
“Sorry.” Gavin was shaking him. “It is Dan Favour, from Gelfred, and he says it has to be you.”
“Fuck,” he said again. He sat up. His eyes filled with tears and he banished them as best he could.
He rose from his blankets in shirt and hose and climbed over the rest of his lance and his casa sleeping in a small loft. Nell cursed him. Gavin had a taper lit and handed it to him.
“I’m going back to sleep,” he said.
Gabriel wished he had that power. Instead he went down a ladder and then out to the main area of the barn, where long lines of men and women lay in rows on straw bundles or pallets. The barn was a cacophony of snores and heavy breathing.
The outside air was sharp and cold. He saw Ser Danved in full harness, standing watch with his lance by the road. Cully was dressed. He was buckling his sword belt while he talked to young Favour, who was head to toe in a dark green that looked mostly black in the fitful torchlight.
Cully gave a sketchy salute. “Sorry, Cap’n,” he said. “But you ha’ to hear this your own sel’.”
Favour knelt on one knee. “My lord,” he said. “Ser Gelfred ordered me to find you-he sent ten of us out. We have the main column formed as you ordered, south of Lorica.” He looked at Cully. “But there’s already an army on the roads-Galles and Albans and much of what’s left of the Royal Guard. More’n a thousand lances, my lord.”