Читать книгу The Knight's Fugitive Lady - Meriel Fuller - Страница 12

Chapter Five

Gradually, the evening stretched into full night. The knights, noblemen and their ladies, the peasants in service to the Earl of Norfolk, pushed back from the tables, having eaten their fill of roasted meat, braised vegetables and crusty bread; servants scurried around, scooping up the debris. Trestles were pushed back against the circular walls of the great hall, clearing a large space in the middle of the swept stone floor. Bereft of the safety of their table, Isabella’s ladies stood in a miserable huddle, forlorn figures in their silks and satins, gaudy butterflies against the plainer attire of the peasants. Noting their plight, Isabella summoned them up to the high dais, where she ordered more benches to be placed behind her so her women could sit in relative comfort.

Through the curtained doorway, a group of musicians entered, setting themselves up with their instruments to one side, backs against the wall. Most of them looked like they hadn’t bathed in a year, a motley collection of scruffy itinerants, with ragged, drooping clothes, missing teeth and lank, greasy hair.

‘Christ in Heaven,’ Philippe whispered to Lussac, ‘where did the Earl find this lot?’

But then they began to play. And the music was beautiful: haunting, lilting, building slowly in rhythmic beats, faster and faster, until the sound reached a dramatic crescendo. A troupe of acrobats ran into the hall, running, cartwheeling, somersaulting, contorting their bodies with amazing flexibility, fast and skilled. Their costumes were fashioned from bold reds and yellows, fitted braies and tunics that allowed them to bend and stretch with ease. The watching crowd gasped in awe at the acrobatic feats, roaring with approval at each daring manoeuvre. Even the Queen, not known for praising any sort of entertainment, was smiling, turning and nodding with approval at the Earl.

The acrobats ran to the middle of the hall, gathering together to form a human pyramid: three men at the bottom, then two climbing up, one man vaulting deftly to the very top. His head was on a level with the wrought-iron chandelier that hung with chains from the ceiling. One by one, he extinguished the candles, pulling the waxy sticks from each holder and tossing them to a companion down below.

As the chamber plunged into dappled shadow, the crowd shifted, a palpable tension running through the room, a ripple of expectation. Isabella looked about her, an expression of curiosity on her face. The triangular formation of six acrobats moved carefully as a group to the other chandelier, dousing the flickering light once more. Now the hall was in darkness, lit only by the flickering firelight and the few candles set into stone niches around the walls.

The crowd began to stamp their feet, chanting; it seemed they had the advantage over the royal guests and knew what to expect. The noise of the chanting rose, swelled, filling the hall.

‘What are they saying?’ Philippe leaned forward, intrigued.

‘They’re chanting in Latin,’ Lussac narrowed his eyes, trying to decipher the words from the jumble of noise. ‘It sounds like silver...silver bird?’ He shrugged his shoulders, sprawling back into his oak chair.

A sliver of light appeared in the doorway. A momentary hush fell upon the crowd; they held their breath, collectively. Then the roars and shouts returned, louder this time, insistent. The slip of light moved inwards, transformed into a figure, a girl dressed from head to toe in a white-satin garment, the top half of her face covered by a white, leather mask. Every inch of the satin was covered with tiny beads, faceted so they caught the light, shimmering in the dusky shadows of the hall. Tiny, sparkling beads even decorated the outside edges of her mask. Every movement, every fraction of movement was accompanied by a rippling, twinkling sparkle from the costume.

‘I’ve never seen anything like it before,’ Isabella breathed out, stunned, her eyes transfixed upon the pearly figure.

The girl raised her arms and the crowd went wild, the music hitching faster, dominated by a repeated drumbeat. Cut in a bell shape, the sleeves flowed downwards from her outstretched arms, like the spread wings of a bird.

‘Silver bird!’ Philippe thumped the table triumphantly. ‘Now I understand. You were right, Lussac. What a wonder she is, eh?’

Lussac’s piercing blue eyes studied the figure, the slender curves, the diminutive stature. His heart kicked up a beat. Despite her masked face, the maid looked remarkably familiar. Was it her, the girl from the forest?

From her demure, gentle entrance, the girl sprang into action, somersaulting in a series of forward flips to the pyramid of acrobats. As her hands hit the floor, her feet lifted upwards in precise, fluid harmony, travelling over to arch her spine in a graceful curve. Placing one small foot on the bent knee of her companion, she climbed the human pyramid to the chandelier. Hooking one leg over the iron loop, she held herself upright, balancing strongly on her hands and arms whilst the acrobats beneath tumbled away in all directions. The audience applauded them heartily as they ran out of the hall, laughing and waving, tumbling and springing.

She waited until the last man had exited, before swinging her body down, sharply, held on to the chandelier by her bent legs. The metal circle swung with her slight weight. In the time it had taken her companions to leave she had attached a short rope around one ankle, tying the other end to the chandelier. Her arms swept out, then one leg came down, forming a right angle with her other leg. She began to spin, slowly at first, then faster, faster, the magnificent cloth of her costume flowing around her like shining phosphorus.

‘Good Lord,’ Philippe jumped out of his seat, ‘she’s going to fall, that rope’s not going to hold her...’

‘I think she will be fine,’ Lussac reassured him drily. He was certain now of the girl’s identity and hated the way his heart tripped faster with the knowledge. The waif in the forest who had hoped to outsmart him with a jittery combination of bravado, luck and agility. Serving girl, indeed!

Half of Isabella’s ladies had covered their faces with their hands; they couldn’t watch. The rest of the audience stared upwards, open-mouthed, hearts thumping with anticipation. The girl spun faster and faster until her body became a glittering blur up in the rafters, before she stopped abruptly, shocking them, pulling herself up to release the rope, throwing it joyfully down into the crowd.

Then, dropping her body below the chandelier again, although this time hanging by her hands around opposite sides of the iron loop, she began to swing, the strong chains of the chandelier supporting her. The arc of the swing grew bigger and bigger, until she had sufficient momentum to let go, somersault once in mid-air, which carried her towards the other chandelier. The crowd went mad, an element of hysteria in their approval, a joyfulness that the girl had survived such a daring act. She repeated the swing back again, latching on to the first chandelier. She then swung that, audaciously, over the high dais, jumping down straight on to the top table, in front of the Queen and the Earl of Norfolk. For a moment, the Earl looked apoplectic, disbelieving that a common acrobat had possessed the sheer audacity to land, feet first, before royalty. But Isabella was laughing, exchanging appreciative comments with her ladies, and clapping this unknown acrobat as if her life depended on it. The Earl relaxed.

‘You’re amazing! Your name! What is your name?’ Isabella shouted at the girl above the roar of the audience, half-raising herself from her seat, her face flushed with excitement. But the acrobat sprung away, flipping backwards off the top table in one elegant, bouncing arc to cartwheel across the hall.

As the glittering wing of the acrobat’s sleeve vanished through the curtain, Lussac pushed back his chair and stood up.

‘Where are you going?’ Philippe quirked one eyebrow at his friend.

Lussac threw his linen napkin down on his empty plate. The pewter gleamed in the low candlelight. ‘I need some fresh air,’ he said. ‘I’m going outside for a bit. Coming?’

Phillipe shook his head, indicating the food left on his plate with a half-hearted smile. ‘No, I’ll finish this. Besides, I think there’s more of the show to come.’ He nodded across the hall at the acrobats crowding back into the hall, amidst cheers and clapping from the audience.

‘I’ve had enough.’

As Lussac slipped through a low door at the side of the high dais, Isabella turned ecstatically to the Earl. ‘Do you know her name?’ she asked, her eyes alight with excitement. ‘Where does she come from, who is she with? I have never seen such skill, such flexibility!’

‘My bailiff hires the entertainment,’ Thomas replied, his hands fluttering forwards in apology. ‘I will ask him for you.’

‘What a treat!’ Isabella smiled over at Roger. ‘Wasn’t she stunning? She made me quite forget my true purpose here.’

* * *

Body prickling with sweat from the exertion of her performance, Katerina’s fingers fumbled in the heavy folds of the curtain that separated the great hall from the square entrance area to the castle. Applause roared in her ears, people stamping their feet, clapping their approval at her back. Noticing her struggles to exit, a young knight standing to one side pulled back the thick, double-lined fabric, allowing her to slip into the cooler shadows of the entrance hall.

Once through the curtain, her fellow acrobats clustered around her, congratulations rising into the air. Muscles trembling, the back of her head throbbing from the earlier fall, Katerina smiled at their happy faces, their joy at another successful performance, and grabbed their hands as they reached out towards her in gestures of support.

‘You were fantastic,’ whispered Waleran, at the front of the group. ‘The Queen loved you.’ His brown eyes darted over her slim figure encased in the shining costume, the white mask obscuring her face. Katerina squeezed his hand, grateful for his words.

‘It’s a bit too early to celebrate.’ Big shoulders propped up against the wall, John boomed at them, ‘Come on, you still have to go out there and perform the finale.’ With an exaggerated groan, he levered his vast bulk forwards and began to shove the acrobats back through the curtain, out again to rapturous applause.

As the acrobats left to perform their finale, Katerina moved across the freezing flagstones, her feet in soft, calf-skin slippers making no sound as she stepped towards the huge entrance door. The circular metal door handle glinted in the meagre light.

‘Katerina!’ A hand clamped on her shoulder. John!

She spun slowly on one heel, hampered by weighty fingers crushing the fragile bones in her shoulder. ‘What is it?’ she asked, annoyed. ‘Surely you don’t have a problem with my performance?’ Rolling her shoulder forwards angrily, she tried to dislodge his heavy hold.

‘Nay, the crowd loved you.’ John replied bluntly. ‘But I need you to do something else for me.’

She tilted her head up at him, wishing she could remove the mask so her employer could see the look of defiance on her face. ‘You ask too much of me, John. I can do no more.’ Her body wilted with fatigue, sinews wrung out by the intricate moves. She needed to push her body through a series of stretches in order to avoid the muscles seizing up.

‘Not to perform! Nay, you misunderstand me!’ he hissed down at her, a fleck of spittle landing on her sleeve. ‘But while most of the castle was riveted by our performance—’ he jerked his square-shaped head towards the noise coming from the great hall ‘—I managed to slip down to the cellar and pilfer.’

‘Pilfer?’

‘Aye, that’s right. Here, take these back to the camp, will you?’ He pushed a couple of hessian sacks into her stomach, forcing her to grab hold of them. She staggered back beneath the bulky weight. ‘There’s enough food in there to feed us all for a couple of days, at least.’ Shoving her towards the arched entrance, he thumped his fleshy hand against the vertical planks, pushing the door open. ‘Get going, will you! Before someone notices!’

Clutching at the gaping bags, the contents threatening to spill out from the loose, gathered tops, Katerina lurched her way through the gap and out into the cool night air. After the intense heat of the hall, the cold pierced through the gauzy satin of her costume. Perspiration chilled rapidly on her skin and she shivered.

A soldier stood guard outside the main door, pulling himself to attention as she appeared and nodded at her. ‘A fine show, miss,’ he congratulated her gruffly. ‘Do you need any help?’

‘Er, no, thank you,’ she muttered hurriedly, acutely aware of the lumpy goods shifting inside the sacks: the loaves of bread, the meat and vegetables that John had stuffed firmly down. Flushing beneath her white leather mask, she prayed the soldier wouldn’t look inside. The unwieldy bags filled her vision; unable to see her way down the steps, she inched forwards, her toes in their thin silk slippers seeking the edge of the top step. Carefully, unable to grasp at the iron hand-rail for support, Katerina edged her way down beneath the soldier’s watchful eye.

She almost made it.

Constructed with a deeper drop than the rest, the bottom step caught her unawares; she reeled to one side, her balance thrown out by the heavy load, her arm banging painfully against the gritty castle wall. A large glistening ham plopped out from the one of the bags, landing with a thump on the cobbles.

‘Hey! Stop! What have you got there?’ the soldier’s voice shouted down at her.

Heart plummeting, she threw both bags down. The incriminating contents spilled out across the ground: parsnips, turnips, floury rounds of bread. Even without them, she would fail to cover the length of the inner bailey before the soldier caught up with her; it was a wide open space and he would gain on her easily. She needed to find a hiding place and fast.

Plunging down along the castle walls, Katerina turned a corner, around one of the turrets, seeking the shadows. The beads decorating her white leather mask, her costume, twinkled in the softening glow of the September moon as she flew along, her feet barely touching the ground. She gained a second turret, spinning around another corner, and cannoned into a tall, bulky shadow leaning up against the walls.

She had the briefest impression of deep-set, sparkling eyes, of a sculptured jaw, before her hands rose instinctively, frantically, pushing against the soft cloth of a tunic, against a hard, unyielding chest beneath, trying to lever herself away from the impact, to create some distance between herself and this...this stranger.

‘Let me pass!’ she gasped with a sob. ‘Let me go on!’

‘In a hurry, Silver Bird?’ The sarcastic tone cut through her panic. A familiar tone.

Her mouth opened in a dry scream of shock, and disbelief. The knight from the forest! Katerina recognised him instantly. The bulk of him. The smell of him. She backed away, hands fluttering up to her mask self-consciously, checking her disguise was still in place. Why, oh why, did it have to be him? The full, creamy-coloured orb of the moon washed his face with a pearly gleam, striking the high, rigid slash of his cheekbones, the strong upward curve of his dark brows. He stared down at her, his expression incisive, predatory, silver embroidery sparkling around the collar of his cloak, like clusters of stars.

‘I need to go,’ she muttered, attempting to slip around his substantial frame, head turned stubbornly away, ignoring him, trying to clamp down on the rivulets of fear that coursed her body, the heightened bump of her heart. She could not allow his presence to deflect her escape and beyond him, around the back of the keep, the shadows were dark, intense. She would hide there, until the soldiers became bored of searching for her.

‘Nay.’ One lean hand snaked out, whipped around her forearm as she passed him. Her heart squeezed with trepidation; she stared in panic at the muscular fingers wrapped around her beaded sleeve, the cold causing her eyes to blur, shimmer.

‘Let go of me!’ Katerina hissed, jerking her arm downwards, to break his hold. Her feeble movement had no effect, merely ripping at the muscle in her shoulder.

‘That was quite a performance you gave in there.’ His voice, low and sensual, curled around her. Beneath the flimsy, slippery material, her soft flesh yielded beneath his strong grip.

‘I need to hide!’ She jogged her elbow angrily. She had to move out of view! Her costume gleamed out like a beacon of light, an iridescent bird pressed back against the dark towering walls.

‘Then you’re wearing the wrong clothes,’ he said. Before she could stop him, before she even had time to think, steady, decisive fingers pushed at the mask, peeling the leather back to reveal the full delicate beauty of her heart-shaped face, her alabaster skin, silky, exquisite. In the same movement, he plucked back the beaded hood of her tunic, dragging it from her neat, golden-spun hair.

‘So,’ Lussac breathed out slowly, ‘not just a serving girl after all. Is this your other job?’

She brought her hands upwards, slim fingers clutching around his with anguish, hot tears of frustration welling in her eyes. The warm muscle of his hands pressed into the sensitive curve of her palm; she dropped her hands immediately, stung by the intensity of his touch. A lick of heat curled oddly in the pit of her stomach.

‘I don’t have time for this!’ She glanced frantically behind her.

‘What are you running from?’ His tone was underscored with steel.

She heard the soldiers’ clustered shouts from around the corner, gathering momentum. Her heart sank. ‘It’s too late,’ she murmured, chewing nervously on the fullness of her bottom lip. ‘There’s no point in running now.’ Her body wilted, strength leaching from her limbs, but she raised her chin up, tilting her head proudly. ‘No matter. I’m sure I’ll manage to extricate myself from this situation. I usually do.’ Doubt clouded her tone, as if she couldn’t quite convince herself of that certainty.

A lock of hair, silvered in moonlight, had escaped from the mound of braids pinned tight against her scalp, falling across her cheek. Without thinking, Lussac smoothed the velvet coil back behind her ear, savouring the fine softness, a silken thread between the rough pads of his fingertips. Desire punched him, deep in his gut—powerful, swift.

‘Come here,’ he said roughly. He spun her around, swiftly, so her back was against the wall.

‘What are you doing?’ she squeaked, keenly aware that he had moved much, much closer. The heft of his shoulders blotted out the vast expanse of star-studded sky. The wall pressed into her spine, the lightweight fabric of her outfit rustling against the rough-hewn stone. Her arms dropped, hands flailing by her sides.

‘Saving your skin,’ Lussac murmured.

‘I can look after myself,’ Katerina shot back hurriedly, senses scrabbling as his head dipped. ‘Nay,’ she stuttered out, ‘this is not the way...’ Her breath emerged in truncated gasps, floundering; her heart fluttered...with fear?

‘It is the only way,’ Lussac muttered.

He told himself her expression alone had motivated him, for the maid possessed the appearance of someone who was utterly alone in the world, an overwhelming sadness tingeing her exquisite features. He had recognised that fleeting, haunted look, identified with it, the look of someone compelled to rely completely on their own resources, their own resilience. The maid was exhausted; even he could recognise the blue shadows beneath her eyes. Pity, not lust, propelled him to kiss her; in all honesty, she was the last person he would desire: a raging spitfire with a temper to match, scant flesh on her bones. He wanted to help her, he told himself, that was all. But since when had he wanted to help anyone?

At the implacable press of his lips, her hands whirled upwards, shocked, trying to push against his chest, to gain some distance between them. Her body squirmed. His big hands cradled her face, stilling her, thumbs pulsing warmly against her flaming cheeks. Heat surged through her chest, her stomach, her loins. As his lips played against hers, dancing along the delicate seam of her tightly closed mouth, she heard the soldiers call out to him and her cheeks flamed once more at the indecency of their shouts. This was outrageous! He’d reduced her to the level of a common whore!

The soldiers moved away from them, their bawdy teasing drifting on the breeze, but Lussac barely noticed. The faint awareness that he should end the kiss now, that the ruse had worked, tickled at his conscious mind. The thought was an unnecessary irritant; he dismissed it, flicking it away like a fly on the window-pane. The maid tasted of roses, this silver girl who could swing through the air with ease, a sweet powerful nectar that twisted around his senses, winching him in, stronger, closer. Bracing his sturdy frame against her, he curved his big arms around her back, lifting the lithe fragility of her body against him. At the intimate, shuddering impact of his body, Katerina gasped, hands clutching at his bulky shoulders for support. Her feet swung inches from the ground. Against her lips, he smiled, his tongue delving into the warm recesses of her open, unsuspecting mouth. Exhilaration, boiling, spiking, swept through her, a thrill of pleasure as his tongue entwined with hers; and for one single precious moment, she forgot who she was, and where she was, surrendering to the astonishing sensations coursing through her body.

And then it was over.

Wrenching his mouth from hers, Lussac stepped back, his breathing hoarse, ragged. Unsupported, her limbs strangely weak, fluid, Katerina flopped back against the solid stone, bracing herself against the wall with flat palms. Like a piece of linen cloth forced through the mangle, a strange, wrung-out sensation gripped her body. Her lips burned.

‘How dare you kiss me like that!’ she flung at him, across the tense, icy silence. But her accusation sounded feeble, pathetic, like a mewl of a half-drowned kitten.