Читать книгу Rhiana - Michele Hauf - Страница 7

As opposed to setting up a small bake shop in her own home, Rhiana’s mother worked in the castle kitchen. Lydia rose before the sun and wandered home late in the evening. It was a labor of love, for Lydia was the castle’s pastry chef, and delighted many with her designs fashioned from sugar, nuts and honey. Holidays such as Lent and Midsummer, were made all the more festive with Lydia’s creations gracing the high table.

Odette, Rhiana’s half-sister, would be either at home fretting over some bits of lace to attach to her sleeves or in the castle kitchen sampling Lydia’s wares. Odette strove for little in life, save a plump waistline to attract a fine and fruitful husband. Though she did favor the medical arts—stitching up wounded knights landed high on her list of activities.

None in St. Rénan strove for much more than a simple life filled with all the luxury that could be managed. Thanks to the hoard, the village thrived. Where most cities and villages paid the taille to their lord, St. Rénan had developed its own form of reverse-taille, paying to each citizen a yearly stipend. One would think the entire city lazy and roustabouts, but that was not so. Every able body worked hard, and in return celebrated the fruits of their labors with fine furnishings, elegant clothing and always food on the table. Starvation was not something the people of St. Rénan understood, for should the crops be poor one summer, a trek to a neighboring village, or even a sojourn to the debauched city of Paris, to purchase food was undertaken. Anything could be had for a price.

The Hoard Council, formed by Pascal Guiscard three decades earlier, monitored the disbursements and insured none in the village became slackards. If you did not pull your weight, you did not receive the stipend. Very few were thrown into the dungeons for shirking their duties. The village was small, working as a companionable hive. All guarded the secret with a blood oath taken before Lord Guiscard upon their sixteenth birthday.

Bi-yearly hoard-raids were celebrated with a fête and great bonfire (which, Rhiana mused, was lit in defiance of the dragons). Though, not many had been venturing beyond the curtain walls the past few days.

So Rhiana’s trip through the city this morn was met with little but the stray pig from Dame Gemma’s stables snorting in the onions and cress planted outside the woman’s three-story manor. Children were kept safe behind closed door, or close in sight splashing in a nearby puddle or playing stones with a neighboring child.

Rhiana gave no regard to the half-dozen knights who marched purposefully toward her—in full armor, as usual. Though Lord Guiscard’s knights were called to little warfare, and even less martial exercise, Rhiana had decided they wore the full armor to look opposing. And to attract the opposite sex. There were many marriageable young women in St. Rénan; wenching was one of the knights’ favorite exercises.

Champrey, Guiscard’s seneschal, strode in the lead. He was hounded by a rank of hulking shoulders and rugged, dirty glares.

The men in the village were so desperately primal. Baths were rare, for the claim of little physical exertion kept them clean. Yet, much as Odette was always complaining of the knights’ awkwardly amorous attempts to seduce her, Rhiana had never fielded an unwarranted touch from any. She knew what the men thought of her. Not right, mayhap a witch. Certainly not feminine. She did try, when she thought of it. But emulating Lady Anne’s walk always saw Rhiana tripping over her own feet.

But did the men in the village, at the very least, see her as a woman?

Obviously not. It was only when Rhiana had developed breasts that Rudolph’s father had admonished him not to play with her. She was a girl, not the boy his father had thought her. Fortunately, Rudolph had never cared one way or the other. Their friendship remained strong; like siblings, they continued to taunt, torment, and love one another.

Rhiana craved a kind look from a man—any man who was not Rudolph or Paul. And, perhaps, not so kind a look as a promising one. Something that said to her, I favor you. Your strength does not frighten me. I can accept without fear or jealousy.

For those were the reasons no man approached her. They feared her independence. They were jealous of her strength.

Sighing, and striding onward, Rhiana realized the band of knights had stopped before her. Armor clattered and gauntlets clinked about sword hilts. Not a one would make a move to allow her passage.

“Demoiselle,” Champrey sneered. He did have a way of sneering his speech. It ever gave Rhiana a tickle. He wasn’t half so villainous as his lord and master, but he certainly tried to compete. “My lord wishes an audience with you.”

“Oh? Well, but I’ve—” A hungry belly to fill. And a certain lusty baron to avoid.

“Immediately.”

What could Lord Guiscard want with her? Had someone witnessed her entry into the village, sans proper clothing and wearing but the dragon scale armor? She was ever vigilant of the men who sat in the towers placed upon the battlement walls.

“I was on to the kitchen to speak to my mother. Does Lord Guiscard wish me to speak to Lady Anne?”

Rhiana often visited Lady Anne. Upon her arrival three years ago, the lady of St. Rénan had taken a liking to Rhiana and frequently requested she tend her in her solar. Anne allowed Rhiana to comb her hair and plait it, one of the rare feminine skills Rhiana possessed.

“Hold your tongue and follow me, wench.”

So that was the way of it, eh? She hated being labeled wench.

Shrugging, Rhiana followed Champrey’s sulking steps, and as she did, felt the ranks close about her. Lifting her skirts to keep the mud from lacing the hem, she cursed her lack of shoes.

An escort to Lord Guiscard? No good could come of this.

They entered the castle through the iron doors that stretched two stories high. Grinning stone gargoyles sporting lion heads and eagle bodies overlooked the human cavalcade. A three-legged mutt bounced past Rhiana as she moved swiftly through the great hall. Rushes were scattered upon the stone floor, but she did not notice the fennel and mint mixture Lady Anne insisted be sprinkled over all.

Normally Rhiana’s keen senses picked up every smell, almost to the point of annoyance. ’Twas nerves, she knew. Anxiety dulled her senses. She did not like being called to Lord Guiscard, unless it concerned Anne. In truth, a summons to speak only to Guiscard had never before happened. Foreboding tightened the muscles in her jaw.

The keep was a grand room, four stories high, and capped with a vault ceiling that captured triangles of colored glass between each of its sectioned ribs. The painted sky, Rhiana had named the stained-glass ceiling.

The yellow Guiscard crest—a red salamander passant guardant, and in the lower quarter of the bend sinister a green cricket; a combination of both houses’ coat of arms—fluttered from banners hung upon the walls low enough to brush a mounted knight’s polished bascinet helmet.

Along the west wall hung a series of tapestries depicting the dragons’ fall to temptation with the dark angels, and the resulting hand of God touching one on the forehead, cursing them with the kill spot ever after.

Always the great hearth at the north end of the room blazed; now, some four-legged beast turned upon the spit. While the village consumed an inordinate amount of fish, the occasional land-roving boar or deer was blessedly welcome.

The high table was set with gold candelabras and gold place settings. The lower table was not set up, and would not be until later this evening. For as much as the village was ensured wealth, there remained a fine line of social hierarchy. The baron did not boast a full court with lords, ladies, minstrels and such, but he did have his inner set of trusted alliances. And while most of the villagers were always welcome at the lower table, many found the settings and food at their own homes of equal taste and wealth.

Rhiana spied Lord Guiscard’s elegant dagged emerald velvet surcoat and made a beeline through the crowd of assorted craftsmen and gossiping ladies to him. She knew it would not be truly proper to approach him in such a manner—without being announced—but whenever she sensed trouble it was better to face it straight on, than linger and fret about it.

“My lord Guiscard!” Champrey, yet struggling through the crowd behind her, hastily announced Rhiana’s approach.

Narcisse Guiscard, baron de St. Rénan, turned. To his right, an iron torchiere shaped like a dragon’s head flickered, though the sunlight beaming through the colored glass overhead brightened the room sufficiently. Narrow brown eyebrows lifted in lascivious manner upon spying Rhiana, but his wondering expression quickly crimped to a frown.

Even ugly moods could not dampen his elegance. Rhiana always caught her breath at sight of him. So young and attractive. She fancied him her age, but he must be years older, for his father had been sixty-two when he died five years earlier.

Tall, lean, and wrapped with muscle, Guiscard stood, feet spread and thumbs hooked at a hip belt of interlocked gold medallions. Thigh high boots, revealed by a sweep of his surcoat, emphasized long legs wrapped in parti-colors of emerald and black. He wore not the fashionable pudding-basin cut that had the men shaving the backs of their heads up to ear-high level. Long dark hair was braided at the baron’s ears to keep it back from his face. Possessed of bright blue eyes and cheekbones sharp as any blade, he easily slayed all females who fell to his allure.

Sapphires glinted at his fingers and along the gold chain that strung from shoulder to shoulder. Rhiana lingered on the gold. She liked gold, its brilliant and warm veneer. To hold it in her hand made her feel safe—comforted—strange as that sounded.

It was with great willpower she resisted reaching out and touching the finery that glittered everywhere on Lord Guiscard.

The baron had taken command of the castle upon his father’s death five years earlier. Pascal Guiscard had succumbed to fever after eating rotten fish, and following months of suffering, had died after three decades of benevolent rule over St. Rénan. He had been known for his gentle yet precise ways. It was Pascal who had discovered the hoard, and he who had chosen to share it with all.

Narcisse Guiscard shared his father’s attention to detail and possessed a forced kindness, but there were things about him that put up the hairs on Rhiana’s arms.

“Ah, the Tassot wench. Our very own rumored dragon slayer.” He spat the words through teeth clenched tighter than the fists at his hips.

She would not deny the truth. But until now, Rhiana had not known the castle was aware of her slaying activities. How could they know of this morning’s kill? Had Rudolph—?

Mayhap now she could explain the situation to Lord Guiscard, perhaps even suggest he loan her a few strong knights. If there was another dragon, as she suspected, she would require assistance. For where there were two, could there be even more?

“My lord,” she said, and bowed.

Her unbound hair spilled to the floor as she did so. The tresses were not clumped with mud, which relieved her, but certainly they were in need of a comb. The only time she was aware of her lacking femininity was in the presence of a powerful man.

The men standing around the baron, smirking and handling all manner of shiny weapon from ax to bow to leather-hilted sabre, focused their attention on the woman who so boldly approached.

Oh, but the bravado heavy in the air put her to guard. Absently, Rhiana slid her palm over her left hip. No dragon talon dagger to hand.

Guiscard glided out from his entourage and met her in the center of the keep. The clean lavender scent of his soap attacked her senses as if a fox dashing for the rabbit. Now she smelled everything, from the fennel and mint rising about her skirt hem to the barrage of musk that claimed the keep as a man’s domain. Women belonged in the kitchen and the laundry, she had heard Guiscard say before, or as ornaments decorating their man’s arm.

Curious blue eyes preened across Rhiana’s face, and then tilted a smile at her. Not a generous smile, most always devious.

“Tell me,” he said, “what it is about slaying dragons that intrigues you so? Be it the danger? The fight? The desire to touch such fierce evil?”

“Is not the desire to see my family safe enough of an attraction?”

“But you are a woman. Women do not gallivant after dragons. Why…” He glanced over his shoulder to a fellow knight and murmured, “Women are to be made sacrifices, no?”

A few snickers from the men enforced Guiscard’s cocky stance. A shrug of his broad shoulder tugged tight the gold chain across his chest and with a distracting clink.

Drawing in a breath, Rhiana grabbed back the courage and focus she had initially held. “My apologies for being so abrupt, my lord, but is it possible we may discuss the business of these dragons come to nest in the caves?”

“Dragons in our caves, my lady?”

“Three men have been devoured in five days.”

“You said dragons, as in, more than one?”

“Mayhap.” A surreptitious glance about saw many more eyes had become interested. She did wish to alarm no one, especially the women, so she lowered her voice. “Do you not wish it put to an end?”

The baron now regarded her with a lifted brow. Utter arrogance seeped from him as if the lavender scent. “And you propose to be the one to end it? My lady, I had not thought to entertain such a humorous farce this morn, but I thank you heartily for the amusement.”

He touched her chin with a finger that glittered with enough gold to serve a peasant family for an entire year, and lifted her head to look directly into her eyes. The look was familiar, and dreadsome. On occasion Guiscard caught Rhiana as she was entering Lady Anne’s room. A silent capture, which held her against the embrasure outside the solar, his blue eyes eating her apart with unspoken lust.

“You’ve been to the caves,” he said. “This morning? My men report seeing you leave just after lauds. Your return was not remarked.”

She would lie to no man, for integrity of word was important to her. “I did, my lord.”

“Such boldness to tromp about a dragon’s lair.”

“I killed one rampant this morn. But there may be another. I…sensed its presence.”

“Just so?” He spread his gaze across her face. A curious look. Fascinated or horrified? “You sensed another? Without sighting it? Sounds…magical, to me.”

“I have no magic, my lord.” She wanted to follow with, “I am not a witch,” but best to leave that word unspoken. For once heard…

“Who gave you permission to do such a thing?”

Permission? Rhiana gaped. To protect— To— Why, to see her family safe? She did not know what to say to that.

“You say there are others?”

“Mayhap,” she answered. Still at a loss—he expected her to ask before slaying a danger that threatened the very people of his village?

“So you are not sure. And yet, you boldly approach me with these ideas of another. You frighten us all, my lady.”

“I do not mean to. I only wish to protect—”

“Against imagined evils?”

“They are not imagined!”

“Did you see this other dragon?”

“N-no, but I—” Blessed be, why must the man be so difficult?

“You are not like other women.”

How many times had she heard that statement, and always as an accusation? It deserved the usual response. “I try, my lord, but sewing and cooking does little to satisfy me.”

“Ah?” He delivered a smirk over his shoulder. A few knights snickered. “Well, if it is satisfaction you desire….”

Oh, but she’d put her foot in it with that one.

“Is there a reason you had me escorted to you this day, my lord?”

“Indeed there is.” Mirth fell at Guiscard’s feet. The air of his forced humor instantly hardened. “I was boldly woken by my seneschal this morning with news of your foolhardy deed. Besides the rude awakening, I feel your cut against all in the village. How dare you take matters into your incapable hands.”

“But, my lord—”

“You are forbidden to prance about playacting at this nonsense of slaying dragons.”

“No one is playacting. You can find the carcass on the shore to the north.”

“I believe you, and I am horrified.” He said the last word with such drama, any who had not been discreetly listening now stared boldly at Rhiana. “How many others?”

“One.”

“You are sure?”

She nodded. Not sure, but willing to trust her instincts.

“I will not abide you to go near the caves. And should I hear you have gone against my wishes, I will have you chained and put in my, er—the dungeon.”

“But, my lord, the innocent people! Who will protect them?”

“That is what slayers are for.”

“A slayer?” But she was… Well, she wanted to be—no, she had slain two thus far. She was a slayer! “It will take well over a fortnight to call a proper slayer to St. Rénan. In that time half a dozen more will be plucked out from their boots. I can do this! I am—”

A woman who chases dragons.

The words caught at the back of Rhiana’s throat. Why could she not boldly declare her mien?

“And who will protect you?”

Her? Protection? The man did no more care for her welfare than he concerned himself with the crumbling infirmary that desperately needed repair.

“You, my lady, will heed my warning, and thus get yourself into the kitchen, where you can be taught proper skills such as kneading and sweeping and whatever else it is you females do. Isn’t that where your mother works?” A glance to Champrey verified. “Indeed. It is high time the woman trained her child to be the female she appears to be.”

The very nerve of him!

With nothing but snickers, male eyes bared, and weapons circling her as if a pack of hungry dogs, Rhiana thought the wiser at protest.

Nevertheless, her passions always ruled over her better sense. Girls are better than boys.

“I refuse to stand back and allow the dragons to take another life when I can stop it!”

The baron whipped a dagger glare from his arsenal. “You raise your voice to me, wench?” he hissed out of the side of his mouth.

Rhiana focused. She had become irate, her heart pounded, her shoulders tight. Lowering her head, she breathed through her nose, coming to accord with this ridiculous demand. Guiscard was a fool. Yet notions of a woman’s place were not unusual—to a man.

“It appears you have great concern for the womenfolk in your village. I can accept that.” No, she would not, but small lies were sometimes necessary. “Have you called for a slayer, then?”

Guiscard shrugged.

“You cannot dismiss the danger!”

“Champrey.”

At a nod from Champrey, three knights surrounded Rhiana, not touching, but it was evident they would wrangle her to their bidding if she spoke so much as one more word out of order.

A simple kick to their knees and a fist to a few jaws would serve her anger well.

“Now.” Guiscard sighed, and ran his fingers through his hair in an utterly vain display. “Will you be a good girl and listen to your betters?”

Betters? Rhiana required proof for that statement, but knew not to ask for such.

“Very good.” Guiscard took in the masses of hair spilling over her shoulders to her elbows.

The look made Rhiana clutch her arms across her breasts. ’Twas not a condemning look, more luxurious. Either one, it made her skin crawl.

Not sure if he considered, or if he merely played the moment out for effect, she waited nervously as the man stepped back from her and studied the floor, hands to hips. Finally he lifted his head, and again slipped close, so close Rhiana smelled his intentions, and they were not sincere. “Be you a witch?”

“N-no, my lord.”

“Come now, time to tell the truth. You’ve bewitched my wife.” He lowered his voice to a whisper, “You have bewitched me.” Spinning and stretching out his arms in declaration, he stated, “Obviously, you’ve the power to bewitch dragons to lie down before you and seek death.”

All eyes in the keep fixed to her. Chitters and smirks rose amongst the rough scent of power and dirt and rosemary-tainted curiosity.

“I have but skill and dexterity, my lord. I have been trained to know the dragon, its habits, its hunting rituals—”

“And yet you could not foresee the deaths of the three who have been taken from our bosom?” Allowing that fact to settle in, Guiscard grandly stalked the floor. “You know nothing, wench. Now, will you walk from the keep to tend the feminine skills, or must I have you arrested and thrown into the dungeon?”

“I will walk from the keep, my lord.” But she would vow fealty to no man. Especially one who risked the lives of innocents through his ignorance. “Good day to you.”

And she turned and walked away, feeling many eyes on her back, and likening it to a nest of hungry dragons. But these dragons did not kill for sustenance, no; these dragons toyed with women for their humor. They had put her in her place, upon a shelf to be regarded only when chores needed be done or fancy be met.

Not allowed to slay the dragons?

She’d see about that.