“Just living with you is the biggest punishment anyone could endure.”
Suddenly, without warning, the older woman, so exquisitely beautiful in her pale blue robe, that incredible hair long and loose to her hips, swung her arm as hard as any man and struck the girl’s cheek. The girl staggered back, lost her balance and hit her hip against a stone bench.
He was poised to run to her, to do something, he didn’t know what, when the girl bounced back, ran straight at the older woman and grabbed a good amount of that beautiful hair in her fists. She tugged hard and the woman began to yell, hitting her, struggling madly, but the girl didn’t let go. She was as determined as that scrappy little dog Kiri had begged him to keep when they’d been in Rouen just three weeks before.
It couldn’t go on and it didn’t. The older woman finally pulled free. She stepped back, panting, her face pale with rage and undoubtedly pain. Her beautiful hair was disheveled and tangled. “You’ll be sorry for that, Chessa. By all the gods, I’ll make you sorry. You think you’re so important here, so above me and my sons. Well, you’re not. Your father’s important, not you. His sons are important, not you. And I’m more important than all of them. Aye, you’ll regret this.” She turned and strode from the garden through a small door Cleve hadn’t noticed before.
“Are you all right?”
The girl turned at the sound of his voice.
“Who are you?”
Her breasts were heaving. They were nice breasts, full, straining against the soft linen of her gown. She was smaller than he’d first thought, seeing her leap at the older woman without a shadow of fear. Her eyes were as green as the wet moss beside the river Liffey. She looked ready to leap at him and pull out his hair, too. He said mildly, in his soothing diplomat’s voice, “My name is Cleve of Malverne, messenger from Duke Rollo of Normandy.”
She looked him up and down, all disdain and unveiled dislike. He waited for her to recoil, to say something that would hurt. He knew she would. After all, she’d certainly spoken her mind to that other woman with the incredible hair. But she said instead, more than a hint of sarcasm in her voice, “Not just a messenger from what I hear. You represent the duke, don’t you? You’re his emissary. You’re here to negotiate some sort of agreement with the king.”
“I suppose you could say that.”
The sarcasm thickened. “All of you emissaries, you talk like limpets, don’t you, so low and quiet, your words slicker than wet skin. You come here from your kings or from your dukes and you want something. A fat minister from King Charles’s court in Paris was here just last month. He was oily and kept looking at me as if my robe was lying at my feet. He made me want to bathe. None of you say anything, but you say it nicely and hope the other person is stupid. Well, I’m not stupid. At least you’re not oily and I feel like I still have my robe on. Now, why were you spying on us? What do you want?”
“That was quite a lot you just said.” He smiled at her, and still waited for her to flinch, to step back from him, but she didn’t. He continued, more than curious now because she hadn’t flinched, hadn’t looked at him and recoiled. “Actually I was merely learning my way about. I heard voices and came into this beautiful garden. I’m rather glad you didn’t succeed in pulling out that other woman’s hair. It’s far too beautiful to be left in knots on the ground.”
“It is her pride, that hair of hers.” She sighed. “Her hair is strong, curse her. I did try, I yanked as hard as I could but it did no good. It’s the first time I’ve managed to get so close, and I failed. The gods know what she’ll do to me now. She always manages something that hurts.”
He took a step closer. He could see the red hand print on her left cheek. He reached out his hand, then realized what he was doing, and withdrew it. “Are you all right?”
“Oh, yes. She’s struck me so many times that now I hardly even notice. This time was different though, but still, we fight whenever we’re within the same chamber.”
“How was it different?”
She was thoughtful for a long moment. Finally she said, her brows knit, “There was deep hatred this time, not just annoyance or irritation. I’m full-grown now and she can’t bear that, although I don’t understand why.”
“Who is she?”
“My father’s second wife.”
“Ah, the stepmother. There are many tales about their vanity and evil. A skald I know well tells of a stepmother who turned her stepdaughter into a pumpkin and left her in a field to rot. Luckily for the pumpkin, a child came along, kicked it, and when it moaned with pain, the child touched it just right and the stepdaughter reappeared. The child ran away.”
“That didn’t sound like a diplomat. Perhaps you are human after all.”
“Perhaps one day you will hear the full tale. Now, about your stepmother.”
“Yes, that’s what she is, and my father loves her, despite her vanity, her temper, her meanness. She’s given him four sons, you see.”
“I see.”
“You needn’t repeat any of this,” she said, her eyes narrowing in warning.
“Why should I? Surely it isn’t all that interesting. Who would I tell who would be amused or hold me in higher esteem?”
She snorted, actually snorted, and he was, for just an instant, enchanted. “There you go again, not saying anything, just asking a stupid question that doesn’t carry as much weight as a bee’s wings. I don’t think I’d be a good diplomat.”
“No, probably not,” he said in that same mild voice. “You haven’t answered my question. Why should I tell anyone about you trying to pull out your stepmother’s hair?”
That jaw of hers was stubborn as a stoat’s but nicely rounded, quite soft looking, really. “Oh, very well. You’ll find out anyway, the way you sneak around and speak so softly like you’re licking honey. She’s Queen Sira, the king’s wife. He used to call her Naphta, after my mother, but she hated it so he let her have her own name back again. That was after the birth of her first son.”
“It all sounds very complicated. I take it then that you’re the king’s daughter.”
