Silken Threads (31 page)

“How much have you had to drink?” she
asked.

“Not nearly enough.” He hobbled past her,
through the salle, and into the darkened storeroom to refill the
cup from a ewer on the chest next to his cot.

Joanna hadn’t seen him drink to excess since
that first night, when he was trying to deaden himself to the
inevitable pain of having his leg set. She followed him as far as
the storeroom doorway. Cautiously she asked, “What’s troubling you,
serjant?”

Graeham tossed down his wine. “Aside from
the fact that there’s a little girl all alone on the streets of
London tonight and not a bloody thing I can do about it?”

“I spoke to the ward patrol. I went to
Holy
—
”

“It’s raining, for Christ’s sake!” Graeham
sat on the cot and tried to lean his crutch against the wall near
the head of the bed, but it clattered to the floor. He growled an
oath.

Joanna crossed the little chamber and
crouched to pick up the crutch as Graeham leaned over to do the
same thing. They collided, awkwardly but gently. His arm brushed
her breast; his hair swept her face.

Unbalanced by drink, he closed a hand on her
shoulder and squeezed his eyes shut. “Dizzy,” he muttered.

“I’m not surprised,” Joanna said, trying to
keep her voice steady as her heart rioted from his touch, his
nearness, his scent.
Fool
. She lifted the crutch and rested
it against the wall. “You should lie down.”

“I should drink some more wine.”

“Why don’t you lie down for a bit
first?”

Grumbling, he let her help him to stretch
out on the cot. The muscles of his arms and shoulders shifted like
moving stone beneath the soft linen of his shirt. He was looking at
her with that lazy intensity that left her breathless.

“There, now,” she said brusquely as she
straightened up. “Just rest a bit, why don’t you? I’ll put this
away.”

She lifted the ewer and turned toward the
door, halting abruptly when he reached out and seized the
embroidered sash tied around her hips; the keys on her chatelaine
jangled. “Don’t go,” he said.

She just stared at him, her chest rising and
falling too quickly, her heart pounding.

“Sit with me,” he said softly, his voice
only slightly slurred from drink. “Put that down and sit with me. I
won’t drink any more. I just want...” He closed his eyes. His hand
fisted tightly around the sash, his knuckles pressing into her hip.
“Please just sit with me.”

He tugged downward on the sash. Joanna set
the ewer on the chest and sat on the edge of the cot, turning to
face him. He didn’t release the sash, as if he thought she might
flee if he did. It unnerved her to be tethered next to him on his
bed in the dark this way.

Outside, the rain intensified, battering the
latched shutters of the rear window in an incessant barrage.
Graeham eyed the trembling shutters, his brows drawn together. She
knew what he was thinking.

“She’ll find shelter from the rain,” Joanna
said.

He looked at her.

“Alice knows the streets, serjant. She knows
where to sleep in bad weather.” Joanna forced a smile. “Mayhap
she’ll decide this is a good night to spend in the stable at Holy
Trinity
—
in which case, we’ll see her again soon
enough.”

“If the brothers don’t muck things up,”
Graeham said. “And if they can hold on to her once they find
her.”

“I’m sure they’ll handle it just fine.”

“I’m not. Damn this leg of mine. If I
weren’t a helpless cripple, I could go out looking for her myself.
Hell, I would have caught her as she was running away. I hate
having to depend on other people for things I ought to be doing
myself.”

“Brother Simon said that about you.”

“What did he say?”

“That you were never one to rely on others,
for anything. He said if you needed something done, you did it
yourself, and if you were bored, you found ways to amuse yourself.”
She smiled. “He knew about the door in the wall and the nighttime
trips to the horsepool.”

Graeham regarded her incredulously. “He
didn’t.”

“He did.”

“By the Rood,” he chuckled. “I should have
known.”

“I’m glad to see your spirits improve,”
Joanna said shyly.

He smiled at her in that drowsy-eyed way of
his. “‘Tis your doing. Just having you here, so close, makes me
feel...” His expression sobered. Still gripping her sash, he draped
his free arm over his eyes and sighed. “I’m drunk.”

“Perhaps you should try to sleep.”

“Nay. You must tell me what else he
said.”

“Brother Simon?”

“Aye. He told you about the horsepool.”
Graeham uncovered his eyes and looked at her. “What else did he
tell you about me?”

Joanna averted her gaze. “He said you were a
clever boy, very bright, and that at one time you’d wanted to be a
cleric, but then you chose a different path.”

“It chose me. What else?”

“That you tended to keep to yourself.”

“Ah. Did he tell you why?”

Joanna hesitated. “He said the other boys
didn’t quite know what to make of you, because you’d been brought
up there from the time you were an infant.”

Graeham’s gaze searched hers, his eyes
luminous in the dimly lit room. “Did he tell you why I was brought
up there?”

“Not in so many words. He...hinted about the
circumstances of your birth. I gathered you were...” How did one
say it politely?

“A bastard. A rich man’s bastard,
evidently.”

“Yes, Brother Simon said your father made a
generous contribution to the priory as compensation for your
upbringing.”

“Twelve marks a year, plus the cost of a wet
nurse for the first two years.”

“Twelve marks!” Graeham Fox’s father must
have been very wealthy indeed. “Who...Nay, ‘tis none of my
affair.”

“Who is my father?” Manfrid jumped onto the
cot and settled down between Graeham and the wall, nosing Graeham’s
free hand. The serjant gently scratched his head; Manfrid closed
his eyes and purred ecstatically. “I’ve no idea.”

“Brother Simon never told you?”

“Nay, he was sworn to secrecy, but there was
a time
—
before I stopped caring
—
that I used to
plead with him to tell me. All he would reveal was that I was sired
by an important man on a gently bred woman to whom he wasn’t wed. I
take it I was something of a potential embarrassment to everyone
involved. I suppose I should be grateful I was sent to Holy
Trinity. ‘Twould have been easier and cheaper to simply leave me
out in the woods.”

Joanna rubbed her arms.

Graeham’s hand slid along the sash, the
backs of his fingers stroking her hip through her kirtle. “You’re
shivering. I can feel it.”

“It saddens me to think of an unwanted
baby.”

His eyes grew hard. “It more than saddens
me. I’ll never...” He looked away self-consciously.

“Yes?”

He sighed. “I promised myself long ago that
I’d never sire a bastard. Every child deserves parents who want
him, and a home to call his own.”

How, Joanna wondered, did a man lie with
women and avoid siring bastards? The answer came to her in a
remnant of overheard conversation...
I was going to have her in
the Frankish manner...
And there were other ways a woman could
satisfy a man without fear of pregnancy
—
as Joanna knew
well from the things Prewitt used to make her do. No doubt the
handsome, blue-eyed serjant was well acquainted with all the more
sinful variations of lovemaking.

A devilish impulse made Joanna say, “Had you
become a monk, as Brother Simon wished, ‘twould have solved the
problem of siring bastards.”

Graeham gave her wry look. “‘Twasn’t a
solution that held much appeal for me. By the time I was fourteen,
I knew I could never spend the rest of my life in a monastery. I
decided I’d take minor orders. Clerics live with certain
restrictions, but at least they get to live in the world.”

“And those restrictions are often ignored,”
Joanna said, thinking of the many clerics in lower orders who
enjoyed the privileges of laymen, including wives. Even deacons and
priests often kept mistresses. “What happened when you were
fourteen?”

Graeham loosened his grip on the sash,
absently rubbing his thumb over the embroidered surface, the
movement of his hand a gentle and mesmerizing caress against her.
“My father instructed Brother Simon to send me to Beauvais so that
I might serve his old friend, Lord Gui, as a lay clerk. I was
outraged. I’d expected to be tonsured that summer and go to Oxford
to study theology and dialectic, but my sire insisted that I spend
two years serving his lordship first. Without his money, I couldn’t
afford to pay my teachers, so I had no choice but to concede to his
wishes. I arrived in Beauvais filled with resentment and determined
to be the worst clerk I could be, so that he’d send me packing and
I could go to Oxford.”

“Yet you stayed for...how many years?”

“Eleven.”

“And not as a clerk. Were you truly that bad
at it?”

“Not on purpose.” Graeham smiled; his
fingers glided back and forth along the sash, over her hipbone,
grazing her belly, raising goose bumps wherever they touched. “Lord
Gui took a liking to me, and I to him. I didn’t have it in my heart
to serve him poorly, so I tried to do my best. I wrote his
correspondence and delivered his messages
—
but whenever he
could spare me, I’d be at the sporting field, watching the
men-at-arms go through their training exercises.”

“Ah.”

“I can imagine how I looked to
them
—
this unworldly boy in a black habit gazing in awe as
men swung their swords and axes and charged each other on
warhorses. One afternoon Lord Gui brought me over to his master at
arms and ordered him to instruct me in small weaponry and the art
of defending myself with my fists and feet. I was thrilled, and my
enthusiasm made me a diligent student. Within a year, I was
wielding swords and hurling lances from horseback
—
and Lord
Gui had found another clerk to take my place.”

“What happened when your two years were up?”
Joanna asked.

“His lordship offered me a position with his
corps of soldiers, and I accepted unreservedly.”

“Did you ever ask Lord Gui who your father
was?”

Graeham’s expression sobered. “Once. He told
me my father had made him vow on a holy relic not to reveal his
identity. He said it vexed him to have to keep this secret, but he
had no choice. I never asked him again. I told myself I didn’t
care. If he didn’t want me...” Graeham turned his face toward the
wall, his jaw set.

Joanna touched his hand. “I’m sorry.”

He withdrew his fingers from beneath her
sash and closed his hand over hers. Joanna’s heart raced as he
brought her hand to his face. Her knuckles brushed his mouth, and
for a breathless moment she thought he might kiss her hand, but he
didn’t. Closing his eyes, he murmured, “I love the way you
smell.”

He opened her fingers and laid the flat of
her hand against his warm face; she hitched in a breath at the
strangely erotic sensation of needle-sharp stubble against her
tender palm. All she could hear was the drumming of the rain and
her own erratic breathing.

He pressed her hand to his cheek, rubbed
against it. “God, I wish...”

“Yes?” she whispered unsteadily, her heart
like a fist in her chest.

He opened his eyes and looked at her, the
heat in his gaze giving way to something that looked like
resignation. “I wish I hadn’t gotten so bloody drunk,” he said,
releasing her hand.

Joanna stood, smoothing her skirts awkwardly
as she strove for composure. “You should sleep it off, serjant. I
daresay you’ll feel better in the morning.”

“I daresay,” he muttered.

“Well.” Joanna crossed to the doorway and
began drawing the leather curtain across. “Sleep well.”

“Mistress.” He raised himself on an
elbow.

“Yes?”

He seemed to be having trouble finding his
words. Presently he sighed and lay back down. “Good night,
mistress.”

“Good night, serjant.”

* * *

Newgate Street was so crowded with St.
John’s Eve revelers that it took Joanna and Hugh twice as long as
it should have to make their way from Wood Street to the cross in
front of St. Michael la Querne. The small church, tucked into a
fork in the road at the apex of Ludgate Hill, was dwarfed by St.
Paul’s Cathedral, rising in dignified splendor right next to
it.

Shading her eyes against the midday sun,
Joanna scanned the hordes of people milling about, looking for
Robert and his daughters. It was as mixed an assembly as that at
the Friday fair, most of them dressed in their holiday finest. Not
wanting to wear the honey-brown silk again, Joanna had opted for
her least patched kirtle
—
the blue one
—
but
embellished it with her best girdle and purse. Over her braids she
wore a crisp linen veil secured with an embroidered ribbon.

“There they are.” Hugh pointed to an
audience that had gathered around two jongleurs acting out a little
comédie
involving a priest selling an indulgence to a portly
and pompous “Sir Alfred.” Standing at the edge of the crowd were
Robert, his daughters...and Margaret. Sir Alfred, cleverly
maneuvered into sacrificing his riches in order to avoid the pains
of hell, began extracting bags of silver from beneath his
overtunic, thus shrinking his considerable belly. Robert and his
cousin laughed along with everyone else. They caught each other’s
eye, as if to share the jest. Catherine was sucking on her two
favorite fingers; Beatrix was squirming.

Hugh cupped his hands around his mouth.
“Robert!”

Robert turned, smiling when he saw them.
Margaret turned, too. Her smile faltered when her gaze lit on
Joanna.