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As they rode in silence, there was nothing to distract her from the breadth and strength of his back. He blocked the wind, but the heat that filled her came from some place inside. She had never been so close to any man, certainly not to one from the border lands.
Questions itched her tongue. Northerners were half-beasts, or so she’d been told. Yet he looked little different from other men.
‘Tell me about it,’ she said, finally, ‘where you’re from.’ She would not have another chance to ask.
He did not speak at first.
‘Full a’ mountains,’ he said, finally. ‘I’d lay a wager you’ve never seen a mountain.’
She shook her head, then realised he couldn’t see her. ‘No.’
‘Well, there’s fells and crags and becks—all of earth a man could ever want.’
This did not sound like the cold and gloomy Lucifer’s land she expected. ‘You like it, then?’
‘The soil speaks to me.’
‘That sounds like poesy.’ She bit her lip, afraid he would take insult, but he nodded.
‘The land is poem enough.’ He said the words without shame.
The pleasant phrase was more than she would have expected from a bumpkin. Still, God had given man dominion over the earth so he could control its fearsome power. Only a savage would choose to live in the wilderness.
Then he shook his shoulders, as if sloughing off a thought. ‘But it’s not home any longer. And where’s yours, lad? Answer me now. It’s not a fighting question.’
She chewed her lip, trying to think.
‘Is it?’ He looked over his shoulder.
The truth first. The lie second. ‘I’m from Essex, but I’ve been living near Bedford. With my uncle.’ She could say it safely. This man would not know the region. ‘Since my parents died.’
A family would prove inconvenient, so she orphaned herself without a qualm and braced for expressions of sympathy. She could answer with the appropriate emotion. After all, her father was dead.
But instead of clucking and compassion, she heard only a mumbled grunt that could have been ‘sorry’.
There was another stretch of silence. It seemed a man had much less to say than a woman.
‘I’m going to Cambridge to study law so I can serve the King,’ she said, finally. That was sure to impress him. He could probably not even read.
‘Oh, are you?’ He did not sound impressed. ‘And where did you school, then?’ He asked as if he knew something of schooling.
Too late, she realised she might have made a dangerous boast. ‘Uh, at home. With the priest.’ Schools were for boys.
‘And how old are you?’ Something more than a northern accent lurked in his tone. ‘Fifteen? You can’t be much past that. You’re still talking treble.’
She gulped, glad her voice had always been low for a woman. To pass as a boy, she was willing to lose a few years. ‘I’ll be fifteen after Candlemas.’ Only half a year away.
‘And this is your first time at University.’
‘Yes,’ she answered, before she realised it was not a question.
‘How much Latin do you have?’ His questions were coming thick and fast.
‘Some.’
‘Ubi ius incertum, ibi ius nullum,’ he said, with nary an accent.
It was something insulting about the law, that much she recognised.
‘Varus et mutabile semper femina,’ she answered, haltingly. An insult to women was always a good rejoinder.
‘Varium, not varus. “Woman is an ever fickle and changeable thing” not a bow-legged one.’
Her cheeks burned. The man was not the country simpleton she had thought. ‘I read better than I speak.’
‘I hope so. And you’re set on being a man of law?’ Amusement and disgust twisted in his tone.
She sighed. ‘Mostly, I wanted to get away from home.’
Another laugh. She was beginning to like the sound. ‘You’ll be in good company. Sometimes I think more come to university for that than for learning.’
At the burr in his voice, a pleasant buzz lodged between her legs where they nestled against him. More than pleasant.
Her sister had tried to explain it once, this thing between men and women. Solay had waxed poetic about bodies and hearts and souls and lifetimes. It sounded like a sickness, or worse, madness, meant to warp a woman’s mind so she would submit her life to a man’s control.
Jane had never felt such a thing and didn’t want to. Another way, perhaps, that she was different from other women.
But this, this was pleasant.
He shrugged, ‘I’ve not much use for lawyers, meself, but if you’re set on it, you’ll find John Lyndwood’s as good a master as there is.’
She mumbled something vague in reply. She didn’t need a Cumberland farmer’s advice about Cambridge, even if he had picked up a few Latin phrases.
She knew what to expect at University. Her sister’s husband had been educated at the Inns at Court in London and he’d told her all about it. There were lovely quadrangles and courtyards. She would stroll the gardens, read interesting books and debate their meaning with fellow students.
But as the horse ambled across the bridge and through the gate, the city pressed in around her, denting her dreams.
Houses jumbled tightly together in crooked, smelly streets, punctuated with gaps, like a row of pulled teeth, with only charred timbers to show where the burned-out homes had stood.
‘Where are you staying?’ Duncan asked, raising his voice to be heard over two squealing pigs chasing each other around the corner. ‘I’ll take you there.’
The late summer air was ripe with the smell of horse droppings and raw fish. Where was the peaceful, cloistered garden Justin had described? She had come to Cambridge because it was out of the way and her family was less likely to look for her here than in London or at Oxford. A mistake? She had wanted to be on her own, responsible to no one, but poised on the brink of it even a stranger with a northern tongue looked safe.
Her arms tightened around her rescuer.
‘Don’t squeeze the air outta me, boy.’
She released him quickly. This was no way for a man to act. ‘Let me down here.’ She scrambled off the horse to escape the contradictory feelings and the shelter of his back.
He eyed her, standing in the street clutching her small sack. ‘You’ve no place to stay, have you?’
‘Not yet, but I will.’ The sun was still high. She had time to find a bed. ‘I’m grateful for the ride.’
He looked down at her, frowning. ‘Have you friends who’ve come before? A master expecting you?’
She put on a cloak of bravura and shook her head. Did men feel this frightened inside when they looked so fearless? ‘I’ll make my own way.’
It was time to walk away, but she could not turn her back on his searching eyes.
‘You’ve no place to live, no master to take you and no friends to help.’ He leaned back in the saddle and stared her down. ‘You’ve made no plans at all, have you?’
She shook her head, suddenly ashamed. Cambridge loomed large and frightening around her. She’d never had to find her own food and shelter, but she would not cower like a woman. Royal blood ran through her veins.
She held up her head and met his eyes. ‘I can take care of myself!’
He shook his head. ‘The Fair starts tomorrow, so there’s nary a room to be had and Parliament’s lords and squires are still to come. I can give you a pallet for the night at least.’
Pride warred with fear. For a country newcomer, he seemed to know a lot about this city, but she knew nothing of this stranger. It was a woman’s way to depend on a man. She had abandoned her family in order to control her own fate, not turn it over to a bumpkin with strong arms and a lilt in his laugh. ‘Thank you, but I don’t need your help.’
He leaned over, put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a shake. ‘You’re going to need some friends, Little John. There’s no shame in taking an offered hand.’
She straightened her shoulders. This man scared her, somehow, and not because he ate his meat raw. ‘I would rather take care of myself.’ If she said it often enough, it would be true.
‘Ya would, would ya?’ His country tongue had returned. ‘Well, g’luck t’ya then.’ He turned the horse away, ready to ride on.
She bit her lip. Now she’d angered him. ‘But I thank you for your kind offer,’ she called, as he started to ride away.
He shouted over his shoulder at her, ‘You’ll nae get another.’
Feeling unsteady on legs that had been straddling a horse, she started walking in the opposite direction, trying to look as if she knew where she was going. She forced herself not to look back.
‘Hey! John!’
She turned, wondering whether he had called the name more than once before she answered. ‘Yes?’
‘Stay away from the butchers’ district. And if you get to the alehouse near Solar Hostel, stop in. We’ll lift a few together.’
She gave a jaunty wave and kept walking, wondering how she was to know where the butchers lived.
Duncan pulled up the horse and watched until the boy’s fair hair was swallowed by the crowd, resisting the urge to go after him. The poor lad had clung to him so tightly he could scarcely breathe and then refused his help. Young, vulnerable, full of enthusiasm and too proud to accept what was freely given—it had been years since he’d felt that way, but he remembered.
He should have kept his grip and dragged the boy with him. He was on better than speaking terms with pride, but the world was full of danger. It only took a moment. If the lad wandered into the wrong place, looked at someone the wrong way, met someone in the wrong mood—
Well, he would find out. Like all the rest, the boy had assumed Duncan was a Borderland bumpkin. Let him wander the streets alone, if he was so prejudiced.
Yet there was something else about him, something that niggled at Duncan’s brain and irritated him beyond reason when his help was rejected. Why was the boy so skittish?
Duncan turned his horse down the street towards Solar Hostel. He had more important things to think about than an ungrateful slip of a lad. Pickering would be here any day and there would be plans to make before Parliament convened. In the meantime, he had to be sure the hostel’s kitchen was stocked and the beds ready before the rest of the scholars returned.
Yet he knew, somehow, that he’d be worrying late tonight whether the boy had found a bed.
Chapter Two
Jane’s stomach growled as she watched the men come and go from the alehouse. She’d had nothing since yesterday’s porridge, doled out by a kindly porter at King’s Hall.
Controlling her own fate was dirtier and lonelier than she had expected. She’d seen little food and less bathwater for five days. When it was light, she went from college to college seeking a master who would take her. And when it was dark, she lay awake praying for her sister and the babe, hoping God and her mother would forgive her for running.
The college masters seemed no more sympathetic than the Almighty.
She was the right age and sex, or so people thought, but she had little money and the Latin that her family had so admired failed to impress the masters. They were not sympathetic to her excuses for her weakness in a language she must not only read, but speak in daily conversation.
Perhaps she should have let the northern man help her.
She had thought about him more than once. A woman’s thoughts, not a boy’s. Of the feel of his strong hand, warm on her shoulder. Of the musical laugh that spilled from his lips. Of the hardness of his chest, and the feel of him nestled between her legs.
Dangerous thoughts.
Yet this afternoon, she found herself outside the alehouse near Solar Hostel, looking for a scruffy, black-haired northerner. When she saw him, she would walk up and say hello as if surprised to see him. As if she were there by chance.
But she did not see him, and, after a time, the woman across the street was eyeing her as if ready to call the watch so Jane squared her shoulders. Perhaps he was already inside. She would just take a look.
She put her hand on the door. She had never been in an alehouse. Who knew what waited on the other side?
The open door threw light into the dark room and drew all eyes. She ducked her head, hoping no one would look closely, but when the din of conversation didn’t halt, she breathed again and let her eyes adjust.
She saw him, finally, in a corner, at the same moment he saw her. A flicker of delight—did she imagine it?—crossed his face. Her breath fluttered. Only because it was nice to see someone smile instead of scowl at the sight of her.
He waved her to the table and when she didn’t thread her way through the room fast enough, he came to her, draping his arm over her shoulders to lead her to the corner. ‘Oust fettal?’
Words she couldn’t understand, but in a kind tongue. She blinked back tears. ‘If you’re asking how I am, I’ve been well.’
‘Good. Sit.’
She did, hoping her smell wasn’t too potent. She had taken to sneaking into a stable and bedding down with the horses. She had always got on well with horses. A little pat and a crooning song and they would settle down and let her catch a few winks.
He continued to smile. She answered with her own, and for a moment too long, they simply looked at each other, speechless and happy.
The alewife interrupted. ‘A cup for ya?’
‘Here’s Little John at last,’ Duncan said, pounding her back so hard she nearly fell off the bench. ‘Bring him some peeve.’
She wondered what he had ordered.
The alewife’s grin was toothless. ‘He’s been telling us about this lad he met on the road. Glad your head and body are still attached.’ She chuckled as she went for his drink.
Startled, Jane looked at Duncan, warmed to think she had been important enough for him to mention. ‘And why wouldn’t they be?’
He sat back and took a sip of his drink. ‘Cambridge isn’t always a friendly place.’
