The Passionate Pilgrim

“Gloriette?” Merielle said, liking the sound of the word.

He knuckled his nose with his fist as if being caught out by the word’s newness. “The keep, mistress. This is the keep, but the Spanish Queen Eleanor used her own term for it. Sounds prettier, and it’s rarely used for defence nowadays. The old queen loved it. Look here.”

He walked over to the deep window recess lined by stone seats cut into the thickness of the wall, and opened the heavy iron-studded wooden shutters. He stood to one side, looking out.

A cool spring breeze came across an expanse of water that stretched further than Merielle could see, even in the moonlight, filling her nostrils with the indistinct scent of bluebells. Beneath the window, the wall of the keep dropped sheer into the water.

“That’s why she loved it,” Sir Walter said. “Water all round and glorious parkland beyond. Good hunting out there.”

“Water all round the keep?”

“All round the castle, mistress. We’re surrounded by it. Like being on a ship without the rocking; you’ll be able to see it properly tomorrow.” He laughed, closing the shutters.

The bustle from the doorway made any response unnecessary; here were her two panniers dragged in by two red-faced lads muttering suggestions as to their contents. Sir Rhyan and the castellan’s wife waited to enter, watching like eagles and communicating to Merielle an impression that her presence here was an event of some importance to them, which she immediately brushed aside as being absurd.

Lady Alicia was as apologetic as her husband about the threadbare elegance, looking around her at the plain wall-hangings whose folds had faded to a paler rose. “It’ll all have to be redone,” she said. “And a new set for this.” She nodded at the great bed.

Merielle glanced only briefly at the structure that dominated the room, too tired to donate much interest or to catch the quick frown that passed from the castellan to his wife.

Redirecting her concern, Lady Alicia pointed out the fire crackling in a stone fireplace set into the outer wall, its white plaster hood rising like a conical hat up to the ceiling. “To take the chill off,” she said. “Water and towels—” she indicated a silver ewer and basins, a pile of linen folded on the pine chest “—and I’ll have food sent up to you straight away. Or would you rather eat in the hall?”

“No, I thank you, my lady,” said Merielle. “It’s been a long day. Please excuse us, if you will. I shall be asleep within the hour.”

The castellan’s wife was round and as plump as a wren, the top of her white starched wimple reaching only to her husband’s chest, her smile squeaking the linen against her cheeks. A woman in her position, Merielle thought, who could dress in the fashions of thirty years ago would have little idea how to begin refurbishing a room fit for the king’s Flemish wife, Phillipa. Even through her exhaustion, she could see that much.

Sir Rhyan began a move to leave Merielle alone. “So,” he said, “if there is anything else you need, you have only to—”

“Ahem!” Sir William nudged his wife.

“Oh, lord, yes.” Lady Alicia opened a small door on one wall and shot through like a rabbit with a flash of white. “Here,” she called. The room was smaller but every bit as comfortable, with two low beds along the walls and a log fire in the corner that filled the air with the scent of burning applewood. “The old queen used to bathe in here, but I thought you’d like your ladies close by.”

“You are most kind,” Merielle told her. “We shall only be here a day—”

“Yes, right then.” Sir William sprang into action, herding his wife out and leaving Merielle to the accompaniment of profuse goodnights.

But Sir Rhyan hovered, holding the door ajar. “Better than a hayloft at Harrietsham?” he asked with one eyebrow ascending.

“Better?” Merielle said with contempt. “In what way better? It’s the company I’ve found myself in that concerns me most. What did you have in mind as better, pray?”

He smiled as he made to leave, poking his head round the door to say, “The security, mistress, what else?”

Lacking the energy to sustain her misgivings, Merielle, Allene and Bess were bound to admit that this was indeed better in every way than having to suffer the discomforts that Harrietsham had offered, particularly over the Sabbath on which no one would travel except those in dire need.

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