“You’re nuns! I won’t marry him! Don’t let them do this to me!”
“No one is doing anything to anyone, marriage or otherwise, until I know more about what’s toward here,” Domina Alys said grimly. “Dame Frevisse, have her down from there. Take her into the cloister.”
Frevisse started down the stairs to obey, for once as openly angry as Domina Alys; but Sir Reynold backed his horse across her way and said over her head to Domina Alys, now above her on the stairs, “Alys, Alys, come on, my girl. It’s not so bad as all that. Benet means to marry her. Your priest can do it ere supper, if you like. She’s only merchant-get, but there’s money enough in it to make it worth the while. And better that Benet have her than that fool of a Fenner her people were planning to betrothed her to.”
“Fool or not,” the girl cried, still twisting in Benet’s hold, “he has friends at court and they’ll make you sorry for this!”
Without looking around, Sir Reynold said, “Benet, muzzle her.”
The girl instantly twisted her head around as far as it would go, to snap her teeth at Benet before he had made any move at all against her. Around him the other men were offering suggestions, none of them helpful, some of them lewd. Benet, tight-mouthed and intent, answered nothing, kept hold of her and clear of her head. Frevisse moved sideways to go around Sir Reynold, but again he backed his horse, still blocking her way, saying over her, “Call your nun off, Alys. The girl is Benet’s.”
“I’m not anyone’s!” the girl cried back.
“Dame,” Domina Alys snapped, “I said take her into the cloister.”
“Alys, don’t push this,” Sir Reynold warned.
“Don’t you push it, Reynold,” Domina Alys warned him back, fists on her hips, her face mottled red with temper in the white surround of her wimple. She had nothing to set against him but God’s displeasure and her own, and Frevisse doubted that either was likely to matter much to Sir Reynold. Worse, Father Henry had come out of his chamber door beside the gateway and was taking in what was happening. He was a burly man, almost a match in size for Sir Reynold, but with no complications in him. Direct to the point of simpleness in both his religion and his living, he would side without thought with Domina Alys once he understood what was happening here, even if it came to blows, as it all too readily could, given the tempers there were; and if it did, Frevisse doubted his priesthood would protect him from Sir Reynold or his men.
As he stood trying to decide what was going on in front of him, before Domina Alys saw him and demanded his help, Frevisse threw up her hands and her full black sleeves at Sir Reynold’s horse’s face. The animal startled backward, tossing its head aside out of her way, and more quickly than Sir Reynold could recover control, Frevisse ducked not only past him but between the two riders beyond him, to Benet’s side. Grabbing hold of the girl’s skirts as if laying a claim of her own to her, she ordered, “Give her to me, Benet. Now.”
Unhesitatingly, he did, shoving her from his saddle into Frevisse’s hands as if only too willing to be rid of her as Sir Reynold shouted, “You fool! Don’t let her go!” But Frevisse noticed that he did not fully loose her until he was sure that Frevisse safely had her. Only then did Benet let her go, but if the girl noticed, it made no difference to her. The moment she was on her own feet, she twisted free of Frevisse and the cloak, flinging the cloak from her as she spun around to snarl up at Benet, “You ever touch me again, I’ll kill you!”
Raw color surged across Benet’s face and Frevisse urged the girl away from him toward the cloister door as behind them Sir Reynold ordered, “Someone stop them both!”
Another rider swung his horse in front of them, and Frevisse jerked the girl to a stop and her own head back to look up at him, ready to demand he let them pass; but he was Sir Hugh, one of the few of Sir Reynold’s men she knew by name, another Godfrey, fair-haired where most Godfreys were dark but large-built like Sir Reynold and as close to being his next in command as anyone was in the rough order among the men. He sat looking down from his horse’s height at them with an easy smile that said any try they made to pass him would only pleasure him, and Frevisse, feeling the girl trembling with fury or fear under her hand, tightened hold on her, willing her to stand steady. Neither fear nor fury would serve any better now than Frevisse’s own desperation to reach the cloister’s safety before somebody’s rashness made more trouble than there already was.
From the cloister doorway beyond Sir Hugh and out of Frevisse’s sight, Lady Eleanor’s clear voice inquired, raised to carry over man and horse and across the yard, “Pray, what’s toward here? Hugh? Reynold? What are you about?”
Before they could answer, Domina Alys flung back angrily, “These fools have grabbed a girl to marry to Benet, but she doesn’t want him.”
“A girl?” Lady Eleanor’s voice rose in sharper inquiry. “Hugh, move. I can’t see anything.”
Sir Hugh’s head had turned from her to Domina Alys and now back again, but he did not shift his horse, and impatiently Lady Eleanor slapped its flank, repeating, “Move, I said.”
Grudgingly, Sir Hugh pulled back from her way.
And Benet, before anyone else could do anything, dismounted and in a single swift movement caught up the fallen cloak and put himself between the girl and Sir Hugh, holding out the cloak to her with one hand, holding out his other toward the cloister door as a lord at the height of manners would do to make way for a lady.
“Benet, you idiot,” Sir Hugh muttered. His leg tensed as if he would urge his horse forward, but Lady Eleanor, equally low, said quellingly, “Hugh,” and he held where he was, while Benet-as if he more than half expected to have his words shoved back down his throat-said stiffly, with a slight bow, his eyes on the girl’s face, “My lady, this way, if it please you.”
The girl would have drawn back from him, but Frevisse wasted no time on hesitation or revulsion, simply pushed her toward Lady Eleanor and the cloister door. Sir Hugh spat out a word that she chose not to hear. Behind them Sir Reynold swore, “You’re a fool, Benet!” and louder with rising anger, “There’s no use to this, you women! She can go in, but she’s not coming out again except to marry him! Be sure of it!” while Benet said low and in a rush, as they passed him, “Joice, this isn’t what I meant to happen. This isn’t how I meant for it to be.”
The girl turned a fierce and disbelieving stare on him. “But it is this way, isn’t it?” she hissed. “And you can’t unmake it, can you?” And as he recoiled from the force of her anger, she snatched the cloak from him and swept on past Lady Eleanor into the cloister, followed by Frevisse who gave a grateful look at Lady Eleanor, who nodded acknowledgment and followed them both, shutting the door behind them, against Benet and all the rest, with something more than necessary force, leaving Domina Alys to whatever else she might want to say to Sir Reynold.
Chapter 3
As they came out of the passageway into the cloister walk, Frevisse overtook the girl, laying a hand on her shoulder again to turn her around, wanting to ask the questions for which there had been no time in the yard, but the questions fled as she saw Joice had gone ash white and was beginning to shudder the whole length of her body, her eyes dark and large with all the fear she must have been hiding behind her fury until now it was safe to give way to it; and instead of questions, Frevisse took the cloak from her and swung it around her shoulders without a word. Joice garnered it close to her, huddling into it with an unsteady attempt at a grateful smile. Cut in a full circle, made of close-woven, Kendal-green wool and lined with lambs’ fleece, it reached from her chin almost to her feet. Her gown was equally fine, Frevisse had noted-of light wool dyed darkly red and falling in deep folds from the close-fitted, high-waisted bodice to the floor, its high-standing collar shaped to her delicate throat and the wide sleeves gathered to cuffs at her wrists. Such quantity and quality of cloth in cloak and gown meant wealth went with her, bearing out Sir Reynold’s contention that she was worth the risk of carrying her off.