Medieval 01 - Untamed

having every servant in the keep gossiping about how their mistress trembled at the approach of her future husband.
    â€œNo, he doesn’t appear fearsome to me,” Meg said. “He looks like what he is, a man in chain mail riding a horse. A common enough sight, surely.”
    â€œTo think,” Eadith said in a bitter voice, “one moment he was a bastard knight and the next moment he was one of the king’s favorites. Though the Sword has no land of his own, men speak of him as a great lord.”
    â€œLord Dominic, called le Sabre, the Sword,” Meg murmured. “Bastard or noble, he saved a great baron’s son from the Saracen. ’Tis said without him Robert’s crusade would have ended badly. A wise king rewards such a fine warrior.”
    â€œWith Saxon land,” Eadith retorted.
    â€œâ€™Tis the king’s right.”
    â€œYou act as though you don’t care.”
    â€œI care only that the killing ends.”
    Did you learn pity in the Holy Land, Dominic le Sabre? Will the hope in my heart be answered by generosity in yours?
    Or are you like the chain mail you wear, glittering with harsh possibilities rather than future hopes?
    Eadith looked sideways at the delicate features of her lady. Nothing showed of whatever Meg’s inner thoughts might be. The handmaiden looked again at the Norman knight who was approaching the gates of a keep he had taken by promise of marriage rather than by honorable battle.
    â€œThey say he fought with the coolness of ice andthe savagery of a northern barbarian,” Eadith offered into the silence.
    â€œIt will do him no good with me. I am neither ice nor warrior.”
    â€œGlendruid,” Eadith whispered so softly that her lady couldn’t hear.
    But Meg did.
    â€œDo you think he knows?” Eadith asked after a few moments.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThat he’ll never have heirs of you.”
    Meg’s clear green eyes fastened on the Saxon widow her father had insisted Meg take as handmaiden.
    â€œDo you often trade gossip with the cotters, villeins, and peasants?” Meg asked crisply.
    â€œWill he?” Eadith persisted. “Will he have sons of you?”
    â€œWhat odd questions.” Meg forced herself to smile. “Am I a seer to know the sex of my unborn children?”
    â€œâ€™Tis said you are a Glendruid witch,” Eadith said bluntly.
    â€œGlendruids aren’t witches.”
    â€œThat’s not what the people say.”
    â€œThe people say many fanciful things,” Meg retorted. “After a year at Blackthorne Keep, surely you know that.”
    Eadith looked sideways at her mistress. “The people also speak the truth.”
    â€œDo they? No rocks burst into bloom for me, nor do trees bend to whisper in my ear. What nonsense.”
    â€œYou have a fine hand with falcons and herbs,” Eadith pointed out.
    â€œI am no more a witch than you are. Don’t speak of such things to me. Some slow-witted soul might take it for the truth.”
    â€œâ€™Tis true enough,” Eadith said, shrugging. “The common folk fear your mother, make no mistake of it.”
    Meg bit back a sharp remark. Eadith could be quite tiresome on the subject of Lady Anna. The tales surrounding Anna’s death fascinated the handmaiden.
    â€œMy mother is dead,” Meg said.
    â€œThat’s not what the shepard’s widow said. She saw the ghost of Lady Anna at moonrise out toward that pagan burial place.”
    â€œThe good widow is overly fond of ale,” Meg retorted. “It quite turns her wits. Wasn’t it she who swore that fairies danced on her milk saucer and that ghosts drank the ale she owed in payment for a piglet?”
    Eadith started to speak.
    With a sharp gesture, Meg demanded silence. She wanted to concentrate only on the warrior who was riding alone toward Blackthorne Keep.
    Dominic le Sabre seemed so certain of his own prowess that his retinue rode well behind, just now emerging from the mists, too far to be of any aid to him if an ambush had been laid. Nor was the thought of such attack unreasonable. Her father’s fury at hearing that he must wed his only heir to a Norman bastard had been so great that Lord John had nearly burst the heart within his body, a body once renowned for its size and brawn.
    But even at the height of his youth and strength, John had been a full hand shorter than the Norman knight who rode so disdainfully