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When he closed his eyes, night or day, the gold of her hair lingered in his vision. It was like a beam of searing sunlight that had left an indelible mark across his eyes, and he was not sure he wanted it ever to fade. It was better than every other thing that waited for him in the dark.
For three silent days he had walked behind her on narrow paths and byways, avoiding the main road after they had left Godmanchester and the merchant Alfred behind. Three days of waking to find another little offering of food had been left next to him as he slept. Three days of staring too much at the braid that fell down her back and between her shoulder blades, shining like a thin river of gold flowing through a forbidden landscape. After two days of silence and staring he had finally looked beyond the tip of that braid and noticed that the thickening at one side of her leather belt was not poor craftsmanship, but rather the hilt of a knife. The belt was also a kind of sheath, the weapon parallel to her waist and the grip made of the same leather as the belt, very cleverly hidden in plain view.
She wore leather braces buckled to her forearms, thin and supple, fashioned to fit closely beneath the split sleeves of her dress. In the braces were eight of the strange, short blades with no grip – four on each arm. These were in addition to the simple eating knife that hung from her belt and another concealed in her boot.
Five years without a woman, and the first one God put in his path was beautiful enough to tempt angels to sin – and covered in weapons.
Now she came dripping from the river where she had stopped to wash the mud from her dress – his fault, because the falcon’s dive to the lure this morning had caused the dog to run between her ankles and her to slip in the mud. Wading into the water, she had pulled the filthy gown off and left only her linen undertunic to cover her as she scrubbed. For shame, he had turned away from the sight of her bathing. She might only be a servant, but he was mannered enough for the king’s court, not an uncouth lout.
When she came out of the water, holding the wet gown modestly before her linen-clad form, he looked and saw another knife between her breasts. He turned away again to allow her to put on a fresh gown and wondered where else there might be blades hidden beneath her clothes, tucked against skin that was as golden and glowing as her hair.
She was silent – she never made a sound except for that odd hissing noise she employed to call or quiet the dog – but he knew she was dressed again when she led the mule ahead on the path. Unlike the gown she had dirtied, the one she wore now was made of rough material, the kind of garment only the meanest peasant would wear. She had tucked the skirt of it up into her belt, to let the linen beneath dry as they walked. He had seen servant women tuck their skirts up like that, to scrub floors.
The splatters of mud had been washed from her hair, too, and now it hung loose to dry. It spread across her shoulders, a veil of sunlight on this gray day.
“Come ahead little Bran,” he called, though there was no need. The dog was well trained to keep up with its mistress. It was only that Gryff grew weary of the silence, and had taken to speaking to the animals only to hear words again.
He had become aware at some point that though Nan might be mute, she was not deaf. Once he had realized that she could hear, he spoke his nonsense only in Welsh – and no matter how hard he tried it was memories of his childhood that came out. He found himself talking idly of walks with his brothers in the hills, claiming the hawks and eagles that wheeled against the sky as their own, arguing over it, searching for the lake where a fairy was supposed to live. Pointless reminiscing. A world that was gone. It meant nothing to anyone, these memories of a lost life. Fitting, then, to talk to a dog, a mule, a falcon about it.
He had mumbled in Welsh for no more than a mile or so, about how according to legend the fairy in the lake would name one of the brothers king, when Nan stopped abruptly and turned to look at the falcon, and then at him.
“Aye, she must hunt,” he answered, for that was the polite question in her face. She did not need words, so uncommonly skilled was she at communicating without them. Now she swept her eyes back toward the river and nodded slightly. He looked to see a mallard floating peacefully by.
He said a quick prayer for better luck than this morning, when Tiffin had missed two coneys and a fat partridge, and he had the falcon in the air. “Quickly, quickly,” he whispered, because there was no way to know if this seemingly empty stretch of land belonged to someone who would call them poachers. Nan was looking up at the falcon, rapt. After a time she inhaled sharply, he looked up too to see that Tiffin had gone into a dive.
It did not take long. When the hunt was done they had two mallards, both kills blessedly fallen to the ground and not in the cold water. Gryff came back with the second one and found Nan already dressing the first. She pulled out the feathers over its belly before cutting it open and removing the viscera. She looked like she had done it every day of her life, and yet she seemed ignorant of every other aspect of the hunt.
He watched her hesitate, shy of the falcon.
“The heart belongs to the hunter,” he said, and pointed to it in the red mound. She picked it up and looked at Tiffin. He could feel it in her, the breathlessness and the awe, the fascination with the falcon, the fear of making a wrong move.
He pointed a finger to his falconer’s glove, just below where Tiffin sat waiting for her reward. Nan looked at the place and then at him, as skittish and hopeful as a shy child. She held her breath as she placed the scrap next to the falcon, and her face transformed as she watched the bird take it. There was the start of a smile on her parted lips, a quiet rush of air escaping her, watchful eyes softened with delight. The sight of it took his own breath away.
Then she turned back to the ducks and tended to the kill better even than he could have. Beauty and blood.
It was not just her skill with the knife that was remarkable. She plucked the mallards as quickly as a kitchen maid. She packed the carcasses with grass and hung them from the saddle, then took a cake of soap from her bag and washed her hands in the river. Not even a feather clung to her when she was finished, and they were on their way once more with her leading the mule before him on the path.
He walked behind her, blinded by something as simple as her hair, and thought of her face looking up at the falcon’s flight. How the soft pink of her lips parted in that small smile, the way the wet linen clung to her legs. More images to keep him company when he closed his eyes.
Hair like spun gold floated in waves down her back. It mesmerized him. He reached out a hand to touch it, an impulse he seemed unable to control.
The contact was so slight that it seemed impossible she could feel it, yet she immediately halted. Her hair was like cool silk against his fingers, a miracle of softness in the midst of this harsh world. Because she did not move, did not pull away or protest, his hand gathered a sheaf of it and let it fall over his palm, his thumb brushing lightly over the strands.
She was perfectly still while he held the shining wave, tilting it this way and that to catch the light. Warmth rose from her body to touch the back of his hand, setting off a cascade of lustful thoughts. Her face turned toward her shoulder until she was in profile to him, and now the pulse in her neck was visible. He was sure he did not imagine it, though the sight of it beating so fast made him almost lightheaded.
Here was something he knew well, that he could recognize even without the heat of her skin or the evidence of her heartbeat. Curiosity. Hidden desire. The sudden and unmistakable tension in her body.
She was not indifferent to him. All these silent hours together, she had hidden this. It made his own pulse race. God save, that she might actually want him.
He let his fist fall gently to the place where her neck met her shoulder and watched her pulse leap, her shallow breaths quicken. The feel of her tender skin against his knuckles raised the lust in him so sharply that if she turned now he would fall on her, devour her, slide himself into her and take her here in the mud like an animal.
She must sense it, but still she did not move. She might almost be carved of marble.
A fingertip traced up the side of her neck and felt her tremble sweetly, faintly. His hand turned over and opened over the smooth skin at last, palm sliding around the curve of her throat, and now relief and excitement flooded him as she turned – a quick, bewildering flurry of movement that happened in the blink of his eye – and then she was perfectly still again, facing him and holding the point of her knife to his belly.
The swiftness of it stunned him utterly. There was no trace of desire in her look; there was only a cool, hard warning. He stood with his heart hammering, his skin turning cold, his vision blurring.
He blinked, mortified less by the thought that he had imagined her response than by the way he was now frozen in fear. Utterly frozen.
Not fear of her. Not really. It was only a warning, clearly communicated without words, as she communicated everything. It was not fury and the promise of retribution, as it had been the only time he’d escaped the thieves. A day of running, sure of his freedom, relaxed and finally believing it was over when Baudry appeared from behind a tree and held a dagger to his throat.
This was not that. But it felt like it.
He looked down at the knife, blinking. A shape was carved into the grip, and he seemed only able to consider the question of what it was – a circle, a snake, the letter G? – instead of what might happen if she pressed the blade forward. He knew he must say something. Once, long ago, courtly words had come so easily to him, smooth and polished, the accepted ways a man would beg pardon of a lady. But now his mind was a desert. If only she would take the blade away.
When she finally did, concern ceased her features. She looked at him with her brows drawn together, obviously wondering what ailed him. All the warning in her had dissolved into uncertainty, and she seemed to become smaller. It was a trick of his mind – she had always been this small, coming only barely to his shoulder and so slight of frame that it would take no great strength to overpower her.
She stepped back from him and returned the knife to its place at the back of her belt, never fumbling for the hidden sheath. He waited to feel relief, but it did not come. Her eyes flicked over to the hooded falcon in the cage, then roamed over the baggage strapped to the mule, an aimless wandering of her attention. He gradually became aware that she was waiting for him to move from this place where he had turned to stone, so that they might resume their journey.
It was mortifying. She saw it in him, this outsized fear, and knew what it was.
The shame brought him to his senses, and he concentrated on forcing the memory of Baudry away. It was quickly done; he knew how to forget better than he knew anything. He let himself think only of the road ahead, the little dog, the freedom he finally had for the first time in his life. He would not squander it in fear.
“I’ll have you walk ahead or beside me, if you please, and not behind.”
For a long moment, he thought it was the mule that had spoken and that he was going mad. When he finally comprehended that it was Nan, he could do nothing but blink in astonishment. She only picked up the rope that served as the mule’s rein from where it had fallen, and began wiping the mud from it.
“You can speak.” It was a witless thing to say, but he seemed incapable of anything else.
She paused only slightly in her work, glancing up at him and giving a brief nod to acknowledge it – but no more words. He struggled to find any himself.
“But...wherefore have you played at being mute these many days?”
She looked disconcerted at the question. “It is not play.” When he only blinked at her, she said simply, “When words are needed, I speak them.”
With that, she gave a little jerk of her chin that asked him to take a place beside the mule so that they could begin walking again.
He would have refused to move until she explained more fully, but the sound of her voice still echoed in his head. The fact of her speaking was easier to accustom himself to than the manner in which she spoke. Even in so few words he could hear that her voice was unrefined, with none of the polished tones of Norman nobility. It matched the way she had tucked up her skirt and gutted the birds with no squeamishness, and how she was busily braiding her own hair with quick, efficient moves.
A servant. Her speech matched exactly what she was, but her face had made him forget it.
“Do you think to pretend a higher station, and so hide your speech?”
The look of affront that crept over her was more eloquent than any words she might have spoken.
“Your pardon,” he said hastily. “I mean you no insult. I thought...”
He had thought of his own pretending, how he had spent so many years trying to hide the Welsh in his voice. But he didn’t say so. He just walked with her in silence until he could stand it no more.
“Where do we travel? What village?”
She made no answer, nor acknowledged the question. It was as though he had not spoken at all.
“What business have you there?” he tried.
But it seemed she thought words were not needed on the subject, and she only walked ahead without speaking again.
They continued all afternoon in a silence that felt both more companionable and more strained until the sun was low in the sky. They moved off the path to find a likely place to camp for the night. She went, as she did every evening, to bring water from the river while he built a fire and roasted the meat. As she always did, she gave him two oat cakes to her one, and a thick slice of the hard cheese that she never seemed to eat.
He almost refused it. He did not know if she did it out of practicality – for even in his recently starved state he was considerably larger than she was – or out of pity for him. But she did it so naturally and easily that he worried he would offend her further if he refused it now.
After he had smothered the fire and made his bed on the ground, she made one of her gestures to the dog that began their nightly ritual: she would choose a spot within sight of the little camp and wait there in the dark, and the dog would do the same at a spot in the opposite direction. They were silent sentries, keeping vigil while the night fell and then creeping back quietly after a time to sleep. Gryff had spent the last three nights trying not to remember things that the thieves had done to travelers who wandered off the road at night. He would wait, only able to sleep when both girl and dog returned to the camp.
As the dog trotted by him on its way to keep watch, Gryff called out softly. “God grant you a peaceful night, mighty Bran.”
The dog went on to its duty, but Nan stopped where she was. She turned to Gryff, a peevishness in her face he had never seen before.
“He’s named Fuss,” she scowled. “Nor would I never give him such a name as Bran.”
He blinked in surprise that something so insignificant would cause her to speak again. He remembered the strange huffing hiss she used to call the dog. It wasn’t a hiss. It was a word. Fuss.
“Fuss?” he asked, skeptical, and she nodded. “Is not a fitting name for such a steadfast creature. He answers well to Bran.”
Her own look was far more skeptical than his own, with more than a hint of scorn in it.
“You would have us called Nan and Bran?”
She gave a delicate snort of disgust as she walked away in the failing light.
If she had been more good-humored about it, he would have given in to his amusement and laughed. Nan and Bran was no more absurd than Gryff and Tiff, he should have said. But he had somehow managed to annoy her several times in just this one day, from causing her to fall in the mud to misnaming her dog, and he saw no need to antagonize her further.
He lay in the dark and remembered the feel of her hair, her throat. In the moment, he’d been so sure that she wanted his touch. He even thought he had felt her lean toward him. The prolonged hunger must have addled his brain. Or it was just her and all her contradictions that addled him. Golden beauty and lowly manners, a dozen blades and a friendly dog, days without speaking and then breaking her silence for a trivial request. It spun his head.
When she came back from her vigil among the trees and settled on the ground a little away from him, she spun his head even more.
“I speak Welsh,” she said, in that language. It struck his ear with a sweetness, the sound of his lost home floating toward him in the dark. “Nor was it my intent to deceive you. If you have said aught you would not wish me to hear, I am full sorry. Be assured I will repeat none of it. Idle talk is not in my nature.”
It stunned him into silence. All of it: that she had spoken at all, that she understood Welsh, that she had heard all his meandering memories, that she was contrite. But the most stunning fact of all was that her Welsh was perfect. She had only the slightest accent, and every word as polished and correct as a Welsh princess.
She was at every turn a mystery and a contradiction.
“How come you to know Welsh?” he asked finally.
There was a long pause. He could hear her draw a slow, deep breath before she spoke. “I am sorry,” she said softly, reverting back to English. “Truly, I am. Good night to you.”
That was all. Explanations, it would seem, were considered idle talk.
He stared up at the branches against the clear night sky, sure he would not sleep. But he did, and when he woke in the morning he found she had left a small gift of food beside him as usual, as though nothing had passed between them at all.
