‘When you’ve quite finished drooling,’ Ned said in his ear, ‘you might move along.’
Eyes glazed, Denis the Red stumbled to a bench. It was Paradise, and he hardly knew where to begin. A tower of trenchers was stacked at one end of the table. He took the top one.
Ned, as Red’s sergeant, should by rights have taken the upper crust, but no slight had been intended and Ned let it pass. Settling beside Red, he reached for a wine jar and poured himself a measure. ‘You must find Lent an ordeal,’ he said, glancing at the festoons of flowers, which he knew to be Gwenn and Katarin’s handiwork, for he’d seen the girls at work that morning.
Pained folds creased the plump cheeks. ‘Don’t mention Lent,’ Red groaned. ‘You’ll give me indigestion. Lent’s Hell on earth.’ He stuck his fingers in the waist of his braies, which since he had undone his belt, hung in loose, baggy folds. ‘Look, I’m a shadow of the man I was. That’s what Lent does for me. My breeches are falling off.’
Sir Jean had given the signal for everyone to begin. Ned tasted the wine. Since leaving England, he had learned a thing or two about wine. This one was a good Burgundy, rich and mellow. St Clair was generous with his men. Ned glanced towards the knight, sitting on the special high dais that had been made expressly for today’s festivities. Sir Jean happened to be looking in his direction. Smiling, and careful to keep his eyes from Mistress Gwenn, Ned raised his cup in acknowledgement of the wine and the compliment St Clair paid his men that day. It was an open-handed gesture that not many men in his position would have bothered to make, especially when one considered that there was not likely to be a sober head among them in half an hour’s time, not sober enough at any rate to tell the difference between good wine and vinegar. ‘Aye,’ Ned murmured softly, ‘Lent’s over for another year.’ Casually, he twitched a cluster of the apple blossom from the ivy and tucked it into his sleeve.
Later, when bellies were full – most of them over-full – Ned judged that enough wine had been downed for no one to care where his eyes wandered. Inevitably his gaze was pulled to the top table. Lady St Clair, as Yolande Herevi must now be called, sat between her husband and his brother. Her gown was of cream silk brocade trimmed with gold braid. She was laughing, her face was alight with happiness. Ned had never seen her looking so well. As was the custom, Gwenn, in the bright blue she favoured, was further down the board, sharing her meats with her brother. Her cheeks were flushed with the good burgundy wine, and her head was flung back. She was laughing too, at something Sir Waldin had said. Her veil, held in place by a slim circlet of flowers, was slipping. The champion leaned across the trestle and gave one of her thick, brown plaits an affectionate tweak. Favouring her uncle with a slow smile, Gwenn twitched her hair out of his hand and tucked it demurely beneath her veil. Ned felt his stomach twist and gulped down another mouthful of wine. What he wouldn’t give for the right to sit at her side.
‘Pretty, isn’t she, Ned?’ Red nudged him in the ribs, a knowing expression in his eyes.
Ned coloured to the roots of his hair, but he drew himself up. Ignoring Red’s snatching the top trencher was one thing, but he could not let this pass. ‘Sergeant Fletcher to you, Red,’ he said, more sharply than he had intended.
Red raised a russet brow. The wine had made him careless of the fact that he was Ned’s subordinate. ‘Hark at you.’ He grinned familiarly. ‘You’ll be trying for a knighthood next.’
Ned ground his teeth. Red was impertinent, but it was all the more galling because there was a grain of truth in his remark. Ned did dream that perhaps, if he won favour, he might better himself. It flashed in on Ned that his cousin Alan le Bret would not stand for such insolence. Alan would have had a man flogged for less. Aware that he had supped a drop more wine that was wise, and that his command of his temper was slipping, Ned sucked in a breath, and counted to ten. Today was meant to be a celebration, and he was not about to sour it. He moderated his tone. ‘In any case, you’re wrong.’ A white lie might put Red off the scent. ‘I was looking at Lady St Clair. She looks about sixteen.’ This last was no less than the truth. She did look sixteen, her eyes were sparkling every bit as brightly as her daughter’s.
Red crowed. ‘I’m not the clod you take me for, Ned...Sergeant,’ he amended, with the understanding but insensitive smile of a drunk unable to recognise when he was going too far. ‘Come on, we’re none of us blind moles. No one need follow the direction of your eyes when you wear that dreamy expression. Every man in the guard knows who holds your heart in her keeping.’
Feeling his temper heat up, Ned flung Red a look that was all daggers.
A temperate man would have heeded the warning. But Red was not temperate, the wine was flowing freely in his veins and it had driven caution from his head. ‘It is May Day...’ He made a lewd gesture.
Ned could not stomach this. He’d not sit around listening to bawdy suggestions about Mistress Gwenn. Standing precipitately, his bench rocked, and one of his neighbours pitched into the rushes. A chorus of slurred complaints reached his ears, but Ned ignored them. ‘Your tongue wags too freely, soldier,’ he said, using a voice that was a cold copy of one he’d heard his cousin employ. ‘Take care lest it wags once too often.’ Turning on his heels, he stalked out.
Denis the Red’s jaw sagged as he watched the sergeant slam out of the hall. ‘Well, well. I must really have touched him on the raw for him to storm off like that.’ His gaze still on the door, he blinked in astonishment for Ned was not the only one to be leaving the hall. Mistress Gwenn was sailing serenely towards the door. He leered. ‘The dice have finally rolled in Sergeant Fletcher’s favour.’
Ned was not in the yard when Gwenn reached it. All that morning, she had meditated on the conversation she had had with her uncle, and she saw that it would be wicked to let matters drift as they had been doing. She must tell Ned that though she liked him, her liking did not match his.
The churchyard gate was open. Concluding that Ned must have gone that way, she went through the glebeland towards the wood. A few minutes later she found him, sitting on a tree stump in a pool of sunlight a little way from the main path. His head was bowed, he was staring at the ground, a sprig of apple blossom in his hands. ‘Ned?’
Ned started, and the blossom fell to the ground. ‘Mistress Gwenn! I thought you were at the feast.’ He stood up clumsily, and while the too-ready colour flooded his cheeks, the wine Ned had drunk made it easier for him to speak to her. ‘Will you sit and talk with me?’ he asked, halfway between a request and a command.
Gwenn seated herself on the bole of the tree and shook out her sapphire skirts. The sun’s rays streamed through a gap in the leafy canopy. Ned’s corn-flower blue eyes blazed with love. He moved closer. Gwenn held her back stiff as a post. Ned was never devious, but he was not usually so bold. This was going to be more awkward than she had anticipated. She hauled in a breath and launched in. ‘I’m glad I found you, Ned. I wanted to speak with you.’
‘You did?’
Ned’s voice was breathless and so full of hope that her heart contracted. Waldin had made her see that sometimes one had to be cruel to be kind. So, because she realised she must, Gwenn hardened her heart to the pain her words would bring. And in order that Ned might be spared some dignity, she turned her head away from him, so the sun played on her cheeks. She did not want him to think she was willing to witness the hope dying on his face.