Chapter 6

Fordwich Castle, 1317

Fordwich Castle contained the most celebrated cherry orchard in the south of England. A grand sight it was during Eastertide, with row after row of cherry trees exploding in brilliant white blossoms and the spring air heavy with their fragrance. In 1300, Hugh and Henrietta d'Arderne had held their wedding feast in the orchard, and the surrounding divertissement had since been dubbed the Cherry Fair. Held annually, it attracted members from the kingdom's most powerful houses. Once Edward II had even attended the jousting events, though he'd soon left, grumbling that tournaments merely provided an excuse for his barons to gather and plot against him.

In conjunction with Fordwich's activities, nearby Chilham Castle, owned by the powerful Lord Bartholomew Badlesmere, conducted a fair that sold everything from bolts of cloth and Venetian cut glass to the pewter and vests and cambrics of traveling peddlers. As the festival grew in extravagance, however, it had created an alarming drain upon the d'Arderne family's already precarious finances.

In addition to all other expenses, costly gifts must be distributed to each important guest, and the floods, rotting crops and famines so characteristic of the winters of 1315-16 had hit Fordwich as brutally as any demesne. To finance the current Cherry Fair, during which the d'Ardernes would announce their daughter Maria's betrothal to Sir Edmund Leybourne, earl of Dorset, Hugh had been forced to sell their Sturry townhouse, the Leopard's Head.

I will accept my fate gracefully, Maria d'Arderne thought, gazing out the window of her bedchamber. Soon Edmund Leybourne and his troupe would arrive, bringing bustling life to the near deserted bailey.

That morning Maria had been dressed and her hair brushed until it shone of a color with the cherries that would soon strain the branches of Fordwich's fabled orchard. Momentarily, she would descend the chamber stairs and exit to the courtyard in order to await her fiancé's arrival.

Maria closed her eyes. Her forehead felt damp; she suppressed the urge to wipe it with a sleeve. The air was humid and close, signaling a storm in the offing.

"Three years," she whispered. "Papa gave me three years." And now, at age seventeen, she must do her duty.

Maria inhaled deeply, trying to quell the dread she felt whenever contemplating her fiancé. It wasn't simply the vast difference in their ages for, while Lord Leybourne's waist had thickened and he walked with a limp due to gout, he remained commandingly tall with a powerful barrel chest and a manner that caused far younger men to seem insignificant in his presence.

It was something more.

During their conversations, Maria had sought unsuccessfully to draw out kindness, consideration beyond the normal chivalric platitudes; common interests, even a sense of humor.

Mayhap it was the eyes that watched her beneath thick grey brows. Like a hawk, assessing its prey. Despite his obsequious manner—and that in itself struck her as false—the Leybourne temper was legendary. The earl's past was littered with wives, mistresses, bastard children and rightful progeny who seemed to be forever declaring war upon one other. What did such chaos portend for her future?

"Daughter?"

Maria turned to watch her mother enter the tiny room. During the past brutal winter, Henrietta had developed a persistent cough and had lost so much weight that Maria sometimes likened her to the angels in the stained glass at Canterbury Cathedral. Which was fanciful, of course, for Henrietta's imperious personality had not changed. And, with the warmer weather and copious amounts of linseed and honey cakes, she would soon regain her previous plumpness.

Scrutinizing Maria, from the chaplet encircling the back of her head to her embroidered slippers, Henrietta asked, "Are you going to wear that?"

Maria looked down at her green velvet. "It might be a bit warm for the season but 'tis my second best gown."

Henrietta sighed deeply, as if her daughter's stupidity pained her. "Someday you'll understand the benefits of your marriage." She fingered her necklace of sapphires and rubies—a present from her soon-to-be son-in-law. "Lord Leybourne has more earldoms than anyone save Thomas Lancaster, as well as a glorious past. He was one of our old king's most trusted advisers. You cannot reach much higher than that."

"Our first Edward has been dead ten years now."

"Are you being insolent?"

Maria groped for the proper words. "'Tis just once we're... wed I fear Lord Leybourne's manner would change. That he might be... cruel."

Henrietta responded with another dramatic sigh.

Trumpets blasted from the outer bailey.

Maria flinched.

Henrietta smiled. "They're here." Four steps to the door before turning. "Tell Alice to dress you in your Cyprus silk, the blue one that clings to your waist. Then join us in the great hall. Waiting will whet Lord Leybourne's ardor. But do not make him wait too long."

Maria nodded, but after Henrietta's departure, she sank down upon her bed and stared into the distance.

"Countess of Dorset," she whispered after a time.

Rising abruptly, she exited the chamber, down the stairs to the great hall. Through a side door, away from the activity in the bailey, heading for the stables. Edmund Leybourne might have to wait a bit longer than Henrietta had suggested.

"Saddle Baillet," Maria ordered Wat the Stableboy. "And, please, be quick about it."

* * *

Maria maneuvered her jennet along Palace Street, toward Canterbury Cathedral. Once inside she would be lost in its vastness and could sit unnoticed with only God and Thomas Becket aware of problems that would seem totally insignificant to them. As they seemed to all in her life, save her.

Just as Maria reached the cathedral gates, a jag of lightning escaped from roiling clouds. Thunder boomed. Clerics, professional palmers, friars, and false pardoners, beggars and pilgrims all ran for cover while the vendors on Mercery Lane slammed closed their stalls in order to protect their sacred relics and other trifles.

Another crack and the storm broke wild. Rain slashed directly in Maria's face, attacking her exposed hands and drenching the light material of her dress; wind whipped her hair about her face, lashing her eyes and cheeks. Baillet bolted, and by the time Maria had the mare under control she was unsure of her surroundings.

Desperately, she peered into the stinging rain until she spotted what appeared to be St. Mildred's Church. She knew the church as a sanctuary for escaping prisoners from the royal prison of Canterbury Castle.

It would have to do.

Once inside the yard, Maria leapt from Baillet's back, looped the reins around a hitching post and scrambled inside. Slamming the door against the howling wind, she collapsed against it.

Looking down at the mud-caked dress clinging to her body, she moaned. "Jesu! Mother will have me on the rack."

"'Tis a brutish storm, is it not, damoiselle?"

Heart in her throat, Maria whirled, expecting a knife-wielding prisoner to leap from the shadows.

Instead she faced a knight bearing a blue wolf's head upon his jupon.

"Pardon, my lord," she said, her voice catching. Not a prisoner at all. "You frightened me. I thought I was alone."

"Nearly. Just myself and my squire."

The knight smiled and Maria felt the strangest thrill in the pit of her stomach for he was easily the most striking man she'd ever seen. Tall, well formed, with a muscular torso that tapered to narrow hips, belted about by a sword. Even in the dimness of St. Mildred's, he appeared as deeply tanned as the Spaniards who unloaded the painted galleys along the River Stour. The darkness of his skin only heightened the blueness of his eyes.

Rain rattled on the tiled roof, but already with less fury than when she'd entered.

"'Twould appear the storm will soon be over," he said.

The black-haired knight had a most unsettling way of looking at Maria—pleasantly unsettling. Common sense and propriety told her she should not be alone with any stranger, let alone speak with him.

"Have you a name, damoiselle?"

"Maria d'Arderne." She found her voice and even managed an awkward curtsy. "From Fordwich Castle."

"Ah, the Cherry Fair!" His eyes swept her length, taking in the clinging gown, the lustrous hair beginning to dry and frame her face, the straight nose and long-lashed eyes.

"You have heard of our fair, Lord—"

"Rendell. Phillip Rendell."

Her eyes widened. "The knight of whom minstrels sing? The knight who saved our Lord Sussex's life and was personally ransomed by His Grace?" From the minstrel's descriptions Maria had formed a certain image of Lord Rendell, but her imaginings had never prepared her for the man before her.

"I would not know what minstrels say of me or anyone else. I've not been in England these past three years."

A feeble ray of sunlight struggled through the narrow windows of St. Mildred's. Scattered drops of rain slithered down tiny panes to pool in the corners.

"'Tis past," said Phillip.

"What? Your travels?"

He smiled. "Those too. But I meant the storm." He turned to his squire and Maria saw that his cheekbones were high, his profile virtually flawless. "Bring the horses round, Gilbert. I'll be along."

When Gilbert moved to obey, Phillip turned back to her. "This is a stroke of luck for both of us, damoiselle. 'Twould appear you are in need of proper escort and I am in need of direction."

"Direction, my lord?"

"Aye. I have heard much of the Cherry Fair's tourney and I'd thought to try my fortune there." Phillip smiled into Maria's eyes. "Perhaps 'twas not luck at all that brought us together, but fate."