In that twilight between waking and sleeping, I smelled the stench of battle. The reek of blood and fear filled the air. Sir William was fighting a dark-haired knight. A sword swung at his head, removing it a single blow. The sense of it was so sharp I sat straight up on the straw-filled paillasse, gasping for breath. My heart was pounding.
I rose and padded to the table and filled a bowl with water. Dipping my washrag in it, I sponged from my face and arms. It was only a dream. Nothing like that had ever happened. So I dressed for mass. After, Gil and I left the villagers to their preparations for the Holy Saturday and then the Easter feast. Instead, we went to work up a sweat with our wasters.
Gil swung hard at the improvised peel I had padded with a hay-stuffed bag. The wooden waster hit with a resounding thump.
“You have the makings of as good a man-at-arms as any lord could want. Mayhap a serjeant.” I worried my lower lip with my teeth. “We had better spar for a while.”
He lowered the practice blade and rubbed his arm. Then his face brightened, and he called out, “Joneta, lass. How did you ken I were was panting like a hard run hound?”
I turned, and my heart skipped a beat. She carried a pitcher of ale and cups, the morning sun gathering about her curls like a halo. She shook her head as she came, although with a tolerant look. “How can you practice with weapons on Good Friday?”
I held up the one in my hand. “It is nae a real weapon. See. ‘Tis only wood.”
Gil took one of the cups and let her fill it with water for him. He eagerly slurped it down. “You wouldnae believe what hard work it is using these things. And he isnae through with me yet.”
She gave a humph. “At least it is nae iron, or else you would be spending even more time doing penance.”
Granny had already scolded Gil and me like errant children for missing yesterday’s mass, and today touching iron that symbolized the nails of the crucifixion would be almost as bad. On the morrow, during the fast of Holy Saturday, I would creep on my knees to the altar with many others in penance for my sins. I could not help smiling. It was a good thing there would be more chances for penance because I was not yet ready to give up sinning. I reached for the cup. Joneta modestly lowered her eyes, but the smile that curved her lips was full of mischief.
Two younger girls were running up the hill, and a woman shouted that they could only watch for a short time. I grunted, but Gil’s face split with a grin, and he swaggered to pick up one of the wooden shields that lay on the ground. I took the other. Filan and three other boys joined them. Soon we worked up a sweat to clapping and cheers from our little audience.
Easter mass started in the cool darkness of daybreak with only a thin bit of pewter light on the horizon. The priest’s Latin flowed over us like a refreshing stream. If most did not understand the words, they understood the feeling. Then it was time to break the long Lenten fast.
The deer had been turning on a spit over an open fire even while it was still dark, so it would be done by the time mass was over. The low fire crackled as juices dripped, sending up wonderful, mouth-watering smelling smoke. I poked the meat with my dagger, proclaimed it cooked, and Gil started craving off steaming slices.
Trestle tables were set out for sharing the spring’s bounty. Bowls piled with boiled eggs, bread baked the evening before, and sliced to be piled with steaming venison, bowls of butter, mushroom pies, and the big round of English cheese I had brought from Douglasdale.
Raso brought out a tabor drum and a gray-haired grandfather his bagpipes. It was a feast such as I had never seen before. Watching Joneta hand in hand with the other lassies, dancing, head thrown back, with the blue ribbon entangled in her curls, the longing reached all the way to my soul.
* * *
Two days after Easter, the sun was westering through a cloud-streaked sky. The morning rain had left puddles that Filan splashed through when he came running from the farthest field. “Riders! A score of them.”
“Any banner?” I shouted.
“A black eagle!”
“Ramsay, then.” Eagle banners were uncommon enough that it had to be him. The door of the next cot down creaked open, and Gil tromped out to join me.
Soon the black eagle abaissé of the Ramsays came into sight. Will rode beneath it. He rode at a walk, horse’s legs splattered with mud, at the head of his men. I laughed in pleasure at the sight of him. He slid from the saddle.
I strode to meet him, pounding him on the back in greeting. “God’s bones, but you are a welcome sight!”
He thumped me on the arm with his fist as usual. “Tired of lazing about and ready to kill some English?”
“Negotiations broke down then?”
He blew derisive breath through his lips. “They never started. The English wanted King David to swear fealty to them for Scotland. He refused, so the English negotiators never even came.” He turned and shouted for his men to dismount.
“I want to hear the news, but…” I turned about, frowning over what to do with his men.
“Camping will do them good.” He sniffed. “They grew lazy waiting around for his lordship to decide we were done there.”
Atop the hill next to the kirk was the driest place for a camp, so we strolled in that direction.
“Did Douglas tell you his plans?”
“His lordship.” —He quirked his eyebrows — “expects us at the cave. He is storing more supplies there, and then we look for English convoys to relieve of their goods.” He shrugged. “The usual.”
I appreciated that Will resented Douglas’s scorn for me. I had often told him that the time would come when things would change. I still believe it though it was taking longer than I would have liked. Patience still was not one of my virtues. Perhaps I should work on that. Or just confess and not worry about it.
The men were soon settled there, cook fires lit and makeshift tents held up with branches. I was ready for action, for something that was more than time-wasting to keep me out of my cousin’s way. But that did not make leaving easy. I made my farewells to Granny, but when Joneta gave me a secretive smile. She was sure to come to me in the gloaming, and I waited.
When the door opened, she stepped out and walked slowly to meet me. Silhouetted against the moonlight, her hair was a golden aurora. She lifted her face and seemed to be listening, perhaps for my footsteps or just for the rustle of the wind in the leaves.
I moved toward her. She jerked at the sound of a twig snapping beneath my foot. “You came,” I said and felt foolish.
“As did you, Archie.” She tilted her head, serious, inquiring like the first day I saw her, and waited until I came close, and then she lowered her eyes.
With my fingertips, I stroked the side of her neck and leaned my forehead against hers. “Joneta.” My voice was thick. “Walk with me, my lady.” She looked up at that, showing the mischievous smile I had come to love.
“I am nae lady.”
“I love you,” I whispered in her ear and took her hand. The heather in the meadow was in heavy bloom and gave up a sweet scent when we walked through it. At last, I found the shelter of the overhanging blackthorns, thick with flowers.
When I turned her to me, she put a hand on my chest. I pulled her into my arms, burying my face in her hair.
“I love the softness of your skin. I love your golden hair. I love your mouth and the way you smile at me.”
“Soft?” she whispered. “My fingers are calloused from spinning. Arms scratched from gathering. Are you sure it is me that you see and nae some lady in a tale?”
He kissed her. “You have a softness that I think mayhap only I can see. A sweetness that everyone sees. And sometimes, when we talk, you laugh. Did I say that I love your laugh? My sweet…”
She chuckled then, low and throaty. “I am sharper than sweet, and you ken that. But if you will take me as I am, then so be it.”
I wanted to ask her to be my wife, then. But the words would not come, imagining Douglas’s smirk if I wed a freeholder’s daughter. What a coward. I knew I was being a coward, but I kissed her mouth instead. She kissed me back and twined her arms around my neck. I turned her and pressed her back against the beech tree, leaning into her, so I felt her body beneath her kirtle. When I broke off, she was breathing fast.
“Your woman,” she whispered. “Just a plain woman with no graces or airs. But yours.”
I kissed her again and whispered against her ear, “And I am a landless bastard knight. With less than any freeholder. But I love you with every part of me.”
She made a sound half laugh and half sob and said in a choked voice. “Then we each have the other.”
“Lie with me? Now? My own love.”
“On the hard earth?” Her voice wavered.
“Aye. Earth is as hard as life, but the heather will ease it.”
She looked up at me thoughtfully. Her eyes gleamed in the moonlight, and I waited. “I will.”
She loosed the laces of her kirtle, not hurrying until a yellow pool was around her feet. My hands shook as I shed my clothes, dropping them in piles.
Her skin glowed ivory in the moonlight. I drank in her proud, straight body. She stretched out a hand, touched a scar on my neck, and stroked it lightly, but her glance was sly and playful. “When you looked at me across the market that first day, were you thinking of this?”
“Aye. Of course. Could you tell?”
She chuckled. “I could.”
I took the hand that stroked my neck to kiss her work-roughened palm and her wrist. “I was afeart so. Or I hoped. I dinnae ken which.”
She slipped the other arm around my neck. “Truly?”
There were no more words. I stroked her soft, round breasts and pulled her against me. We sank into the bed of heather to learn of each other’s bodies, pleased and pleasing. She wrapped her arms around me and welcomed me. The world narrowed down to the two of us. Slow and ecstatic, the surge of fire built. She called out, “Archie!” in a spasm of pleasure, and I went up in a burst, passion rushing through me. I shuddered as everything boiled up and out and into my sweet love.
Wrapping her in my embrace, we trembled together, moist skin and panting breaths mingling. Then she held me, and her embrace poured through the cracks, healing losses I had thought would never be healed. Murmuring comforting words that made me smile into her hair, she rocked me in her arms as we caught our breaths. She was so young, so sheltered. Yet she knew the ease I needed better than I did myself.
I pillowed my face into the depth of her hair and breathed in her scent. The pulse in my throat matched hers. Hearts beating together. There were no words sufficient for such a union.
The next morning I rode away.