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‘Worse than that. People are mean.’
‘Harder than you expected, is it?’
Mustn’t show her weakness. She shrugged. ‘It’s not too bad.’
Her drink appeared and she sipped it, wrinkling her nose at the cloudy brew.
Duncan chuckled. ‘That’s student ale, lad. Good as daily bread.’
She nodded, grateful to have sustenance filling her empty belly. It tasted of oats and oak.
Her shoulder brushed Duncan’s and the feel of sitting behind him on the horse flooded back. There, pressed to his back, she had learned the size of his chest and the strength in his muscles, but she had not had to face him.
Now, he peered at her in the dim light. She leaned into the shadow, afraid he would see too much. Most men only glanced at her, seeing what they expected. Duncan’s eyes lingered.
To avoid his gaze, she looked at his hands. Large and square, strong, but gentle. Firm when they had gripped hers.
‘Have you found a master, then?’
‘Not exactly.’ Even a cursory quizzing had revealed she was not ready for the rigours of rhetoric and grammar. She was in grave danger of ending up as a glomerel, condemned to do nothing but memorise Latin all day. ‘I’ve talked to a lot of them.’ She hoped her in-difference was convincing. ‘Still deciding.’
‘Well, don’t be too long about it. You must be registered with a master within fifteen days of yer arrival.’
She tapped her fingers against the table, counting. Ten more days. ‘I’ll find one by then.’
His smile was sceptical. ‘If you haven’t, you’ll be expelled.’
‘Expelled?’ She groaned. How could she be expelled before a master had written her name on the matricula list?
‘Or detained,’ he answered cheerfully, with a lift of his mug, ‘according to the King’s pleasure.’
The King. She wanted to draw his attention for her academic prowess, not for being a student no one wanted.
But Duncan might be teasing again. Surely the King had more important things to do than worry about Cambridge schoolboys. ‘You made that up.’
His smile vanished. ‘No, it’s true.’
She would not let him scare her again. ‘How is it that you know about the University?’
‘Would it surprise you if I told you I’m a master?’
Now he was teasing. ‘You can’t be.’ A master would have completed seven years of study and be ready to teach his own students. He looked the right age, but scholars were sober, celibate fellows, usually seen in a flowing robe, never seen in alehouses. ‘You don’t look anything like a master.’
‘Oh? I can see you know as much about masters as you do about the north country.’
He thought her a fool. No scholar was allowed to wear a beard. ‘You don’t even have a tonsure.’
He rubbed the top of his head and smiled. She noticed, uneasily, that the hair was shorter there. ‘It went to seed over the summer.’
She narrowed her eyes, trying to judge him. ‘If it’s true, what do you teach?’
‘If? Are you calling me a liar as well as an ignorant barbarian?’
She groaned. ‘No.’ It was wiser to placate him before he asked her to step outside and put up her fists. ‘What do you study?’
‘Not the law, I can tell ya.’ His rough accent had returned. ‘I’m teaching grammar and rhetoric and studying something that actually helps people. Medicine.’
The very word made her queasy. She shut her eyes against the memory of her sister’s screams. No, she wanted nothing to do with sick bodies.
‘Did ya find a place to stay, then?’
She opened her eyes, glad to see a sympathetic smile replace his moment of irritation. The ale had begun to work on her empty stomach and muddle her wits.
He wanted to help. Why didn’t she let him? If she asked him to teach her, he would certainly say yes. Then, she would have a master and a bed in his hall and her troubles would be over.
But sitting beside him made her chest rise and fall. Looking at his hands made her mouth go dry. Meeting his eyes, her boyish bravado evaporated into feminine silliness.
He was the only man who had ever made her want to act like a woman.
Which made him the most dangerous man of all.
No. She could not take help from him.
‘I’m staying off High Street.’ She jerked her head vaguely in the direction of Trumpington Gate. ‘Widow lady. Needed help in exchange for a bed. So you see, I didn’t need your help after all.’
‘Well, you’re settled then.’
He turned away and she felt as if a cloud had stolen the sun. No, she must spend no more time with this mercurial man. She was beginning to seek his smiles and long for his laughter.
She rose, a little unsteady on her feet. ‘Thanks for the ale. I’ll be taking my leave.’
Duncan grabbed her arm to steady her.
His touch ricocheted through her, setting off a tingle in her breasts that even the binding couldn’t squash.
‘You drank that quickly. Are you kalied?’ Concern touched his voice, though the word meant nothing to her. ‘I can walk you to the widow’s.’
She pulled away. ‘No, no, you stay and finish.’ Reckless, she drained the rest and wiped her mouth with her sleeve. She must leave before she confessed she was sleeping with the horses. ‘I must go now. She’ll be expecting me. For evening tasks.’
‘Well, if you get into trouble, come to Solar Hostel and ask for me.’
She fought the girlish smile threatening her lips. ‘Oh, I don’t think I will.’ She would not see him again. It was a promise she made to herself. ‘I’ll be busy. With my studies. And helping the widow.’ She forced the words out. Words to push him away. If she insulted him again, an easy task, she had learned, he would let her leave.
‘I won’t have much time myself,’ he answered, dropping her arm and sitting back. She heard the pique in his voice and longed for the laughter. ‘I have better things to do than to worry about a boy who has no sense.’
Good. He was angry. So angry he did not tell her to fare well.
She was out of the door quickly, but hid in a shadow across the street, hoping to see him again. She did not have to wait long. Duncan came out and lingered, looking up and down the street, as if for her.
And as she saw him turn towards a warm, dry bed, she bit her cheek to keep the tears from slipping.
You’re gonna need some friends, he had said.
Fifteen days. She had ten more. But five Colleges had refused her. If the other four did the same, she would start visiting the hostels.
The one called Solar would not be on her list.
‘What word?’ Duncan asked, without preamble, a few days later. He knew from the look on Pickering’s face that the news was not good. He had no patience to wait while the man washed off the road dust. ‘Tell me.’
Sir James Pickering slumped against the table, the lines on his face deeply shadowed by the morning sun streaming into Solar Hostel’s empty gathering room. ‘All the talk’s of Otterburn, but it’s in the west they hurt us worst. Carlisle’s still standing, but Appleby—’ He shook his head. ‘Appleby is gone.’
Sweet, defenceless city. It would have had no hope. ‘Damn the Council. I begged…’ The remembrance of his entreaties, and the Council’s refusal, seared his heart like the mark of a hot iron.
‘They told you no?’
‘They told me next year.’ He had almost, almost succeeded. ‘The King was ready, I vow. He told the Council he was going to mount a horse and go off riding in all directions.’
‘But the Council’s not his to command.’
He knew that, but it made no difference. ‘I should have said something different, something else. Something that would have convinced them to send help now!’
‘You swayed the King.’
‘No victory at all.’
Pickering sighed. ‘Well, the Council’s cautious these days.’ At February’s Parliament—Merciless, they’d called that one—the King’s closest advisers had been condemned to death at the Council’s behest. Now, the Council’s Lords Appellant themselves were wondering whether Parliament would turn on them.
‘Tell that to those facing the Scots alone.’
‘Winter’s coming. The Scots won’t be back until next year.’
Ah, you’re sure of that, are you? What if you’re wrong?’ Are ya still breathin’? ‘If I’d persuaded them, if they’d ridden that day—’
‘Don’t punish yourself. Before you even reached the King, the Scots had crossed the border for home.’ The man paused, as if holding worse news.
‘What else?’
‘Your father.’
Duncan gripped the rough wood of the table, then sat, feeling the world shift. ‘What about him?’
‘The Scots. They took him.’
The words hit him like one of his fadder’s punches.
He could see the old man, scarred from countless battles, many of them waged against his own sons. All of home that he had tried to escape was tied up in the old man.
And all that he couldn’t.
‘Me madder? Michael?’ The words of childhood were all he could speak.
‘Unharmed, by God’s mercy. Your brother has taken over as he was born to do. The tower held, but the village, the fields…’ He shuddered. ‘Burned.’
Duncan stared at the Common Room’s blackened hearth, seeing charred huts and homeless serfs. There’d be nothing to harvest.
They must pray for thick wool on the flock or there’d be nothing to sell.
Nothing to eat.
You left, Little John had said. He should have stayed. Much as he hated it, he should have stayed. His strong arm would have done more good there than his useless tongue had here.
He let Pickering describe the battle and his fadder’s bravery, only half-listening. He knew what the end would be.
‘They’re holding him for ransom,’ Pickering said, finally.
‘Then they’ll be sore disappointed.’ There was no joy in his laugh. ‘We’ve barely a pot to piss in.’ The funds it took to send him here were hard won. Now, at last, he was ready to take on students who would pay him, but it would be no knight’s ransom. He rose. ‘I must return.’
Pickering’s hand on his shoulder was gentler than his fadder’s had ever been. ‘You’ve given your oath here, son. To teach. And what little there was at home is less now.’
Waves of The Death had rolled over the countryside every few years, over and over until it seemed the land was trying to purge itself of people. Between the Scots and The Death, the ground, once lush with oats and wheat, had turned bleak.
‘I’ve got one mouth to feed, but two good hands.’ He held them up, proud of their strength. He could swing a spade better than some of the serfs. ‘I can help rebuild, replant—’
‘You can help here, persuading Parliament to send money north. They’re in no mood to vote more taxes.’
He shrugged off Pickering’s hand and paced the room, his rage too strong to let him sit. ‘They’ll never listen to me.’ All of them, even the boy, thinking they were cleverer and better because of where they were born and how they talked.
‘If they don’t, there will be no ransom money.’
He stopped in mid-stride and stared at Pickering. Helpless fury lodged in his gut. ‘But my fadder, the rest, they defended the border while these southerners listened to poetry readings.’
‘Between the battles in the west and the east, the Scots took more than three hundred knights, including young Hotspur and his brother.’
Duncan smacked the wall, welcoming the sting on his palm. The Percies and their knights would be redeemed long before his father. ‘That’s how it is, then? The lords who already have money are worth saving, but those of us who live in dirty stone towers and guard the borders year in and year out are not?’
‘Parliament convenes in five days,’ Pickering said. ‘We’ll have to entreat every single member for his vote.’
Duncan sighed, relief glossing over his guilt. The time had come to put on his southland demeanour. The accent first. Then he would shave the beard, and, finally, don the master’s costume he’d earned.
Finally, he would be ready to do his work here. The work he could do instead of going home again.
‘The University has two votes,’ he began. ‘I’ll make sure they go our way.’
Chapter Three
Restless, Duncan left the hostel late that afternoon to walk the city. Plucking the gittern had not soothed him today.
At home, he would have been roaming the countryside. Harsh land, but he saw beauty in what civilised folk feared. Clear lakes. High hills. Fields, when they thrived, green enough to hurt the eyes.
