She gaped, hugging her arms about her. ‘Wash it off, sir?’
Alan moved a step closer. The woman’s body was ivory in the half-light. She was more fragile than Gwenn, and so thin as to be almost all bone, but she would be attractive if she carried more weight. Her eyes were sharp as daggers, and hostile.
‘You want me to keep your secret?’
‘Aye, sir.’
‘Then scrub that poison off.’
The sharp eyes widened.
‘Move, damn you! Else I’ll do it for you.’
His tone was such that the woman believed him, and when he took a threatening pace towards her, she gave in to the inevitable and waded into the river. ‘It’s cold,’ she said peevishly.
‘If you hurry,’ Alan offered gruffly, not knowing why he should care if this waif starved or not, ‘I’ll stand you a meal at the inn.’ The pale, thin limbs gleaming in the starlight must have uncovered a store of compassion in him.
The woman in the water shot him a look which was a heart-wrenching blend of hope and disbelief, and hurried.
The Green Man was all but closed when they got there, and the landlord, a pot-bellied, pigeon-toed fellow with a shiny bald pate, was clearing the boards with economical efficiency. To judge by the way the beggar-woman slunk in after Alan, she had never been allowed past the door before. The landlord threw her a disdainful look, and half-raised a fist. The woman shrank closer to Alan, unable to prevent hungry eyes lingering on the cured hams hanging in the glow of a beaming fire.
Hands on his hips, Alan intercepted the landlord’s sneer. ‘She’s with me.’
Noting the newcomer had a fine cloak, stout leather boots, and a good-quality sword, the landlord shrugged. He made it a rule never to query likely customers, however odd their companions. He motioned the newcomer and the beggar-woman to a table by the fire.
‘Have you anyone to watch my horse?’ Alan asked, noting with approval the military orderliness of the tavern. Serried ranks of hams and sausages dangled from blackened beams close to the fire. The beams away from the smoke and heat were in use too, hung with long pendants of shiny, golden onions and bunches of dried herbs. Alan felt a sudden surge of longing to see his home, for his mother had always kept a good larder. He wondered how his father was faring without her. If it were not for his duty to the Duke, he would go and visit his father when he had Ned and Gwenn safe. But he was sworn to the Duke till after the tournament. After that, however, he would take his leave.
The landlord nodded. ‘Mathieu!’
‘Father?’ A spindly, weed of a lad popped up at the innkeeper’s elbow.
‘See to this man’s mount, will you?’
‘Aye, Father.’ The boy slipped like an eel through the door.
While they ate, Alan studied the beggar-woman. The inn-keeper knew her, and it was all too easy for Alan to conjure up a vision of her loitering by the tavern door, scavenging for discarded scraps like a stray. She would be pretty if she filled out a little, and now that her face was not twisted with that acute, feral mislike of all mankind that was common to most beggars, he glimpsed a hint of sweetness in the wasted features. Her injudicious use of the spearwort had not done much for her complexion, and her skin was marred with unsightly blotches. The lamplight revealed her to be even younger than Alan had thought, and he found himself wondering what had reduced her to beggary. Her eyes, like Gwenn’s, were brown.
‘Have you no family?’ Gwenn had lost her family... Thank God for Cousin Ned.
The girl, for that was all she was, paused in the act of biting into a chicken leg, and as she lifted her head to look at Alan, her face took on a cunning, shiftless look. ‘I’m a widow,’ she said, employing the whine of the professional beggar. ‘When my husband died, he left me destitute.’
Alan estimated her to be sixteen – about Gwenn’s age. ‘Isn’t there something else you could do, apart from begging?’
‘Like what?’ she asked, strong teeth worrying at her chicken bone.
His wave took in the orderly tavern. ‘Work here, for instance?’
‘Ha!’ Hurling an acid glance at the landlord, the girl spoke through a mouthful of meat. ‘Work for that mean old wind-bladder? You must be touched if you think he’d employ me.’
Alan dropped the subject. He had neither the time nor the inclination to root into her past, and he wondered at himself for showing even this much interest in her. It felt good to have seen her eat a decent meal, though. Thank God Gwenn had Ned.
While he waved for another pot of ale, it occurred to him that he had not purchased liquor from the hospital, and wine would be welcome on the road. ‘Landlord?’
The man shuffled over, almost tripping over his feet. ‘Sir?’ The cloth he had tucked into his belt was snowy white and spotless.
‘I’d like to buy some ale to take with me, and perhaps some wine. I’ve a couple of leather bottles you could fill. What have you got?’
While the landlord scratched his polished pate and began listing his stock, the girl studied her benefactor. This rare consideration from a complete stranger had won her interest. He was tall for a Breton and sounded vaguely foreign. Her guess was that he was a soldier, probably a mercenary. She eyed his sword – he’d been quick to draw it when he’d prised her out from under the bridge. Black brows arched over alert, grey eyes. His nose was straight; his mouth full and sensuous. The man was handsome, if one went for those strong, dark, pirate looks. She knew his type, his creed was bound to be love them and leave them, just like her Eujen’s had been. And just like her Eujen, she found him dangerously, devilishly attractive.
While giving his order, Alan glanced briefly across at her. Feeling her cheeks glow, she dropped her eyes to her trencher in case he misunderstood her look, and thought she was making eyes at him. She never looked at men these days, not since Eujen had gone. She never looked at anyone, only glancing at people’s purses to see how plump they were, or at their hands to see if they were giving her anything. The only face she had looked at properly in months was Brother Raoul’s, and that was because he saw her fed, and asked how she was, and seemed to care.
She listened to her companion’s deep voice asking the landlord how much he was owed, and wondered where he came from. She tore a chunk off her trencher. She could not for the life of her work out why a man like him should have taken it into his head to buy her a meal. If only she could find a man to protect her, and care for her, and not run off like Eujen had done when he had discovered she was pregnant. The girl sighed. It was easier to catch a rainbow than catch a man.
She cast her mind back to the unhappy time after Eujen had abandoned her and she had been forced to tell her parents that she was to have a child. Her parents, deeply religious, had been horrified by her pregnancy. They had thrown her out of her home in a nearby village, and she had trudged to Pontivy, thinking she could find work. But no one wanted to employ a pregnant girl who might become a burden on them, and she had soon been reduced to begging for scraps. Her baby had died, and the old crone who had helped her through the birth had told her that she was unlikely to bear another child. She remembered weeping at the time, not only for the loss of her Eujen’s child, but also because she was become barren. What man would take a barren woman to wife?
But the old woman had taken her by the shoulders and had shaken her. ‘You fool!’ she had hissed. ‘You should count it a blessing that you are barren.’
‘A b...blessing?’ Tears had streamed down her cheeks.
‘Aye. For now you can follow the oldest profession in the world, but unlike most of the other poor sluts, you need never worry about the consequences. You need never beg.’
But she had not been able to bring herself to look at a man in that way, for none of them were Eujen. Unable to become a whore, in the end she had been driven to begging.
And now, for the first time since Eujen had gone, she had stopped to look at a man. Her heart warned her that this one was not the sort to let himself be pinned down by the likes of her. He was Eujen all over again. He had not told her his name when she had asked, only replying that he was a traveller. A traveller. What the foreigner meant was that, like Eujen, he had the wanderlust. He wanted no ties. Nonetheless, she warmed to him. He had made her wash the poison off. He had fed her. He had cared for her, if only for a few hours. Why was it that she was only attracted to men who’d run a thousand miles to escape commitment? This man’s eyes were not green like Eujen’s had been. This man had grey eyes which were as cold as a December frost. But by the saints, he was comely.