Tristan swore under his breath, scooping up the carcass with knightly dignity and striding to the door. “Cats,” he muttered darkly. “No sense of timing whatsoever.”
Sir Whiskerbottom leapt to the vacated spot on the table, purring with smug satisfaction.
Rachel pressed trembling fingers to her lips, torn between laughter and longing. The taste of Tristan still lingered, bittersweet as honey and sage, and she had the terrible, wonderful sense that nothing would ever be quite the same again.
CHAPTER 12
Rachel thought she was prepared for medieval market day. She’d watched enough BBC productions and Renaissance fair documentaries to have some idea of what to expect—rustic charm, colorful characters, maybe some authentic folk music drifting through the air while rosy-cheeked vendors hawked their wholesome wares.
She had not been prepared for the assault on every single one of her senses that hit her the moment they crested the hill overlooking the village of Greystone.
“Sweet mother of all that’s holy,” she breathed, pressing her sleeve to her nose as the warm summer wind shifted and brought with it the full aromatic bouquet of medieval commerce. “What died? And why is it being sold as food?”
The market sprawled across the village square like some sort of olfactory nightmare, a maze of wooden stalls and makeshift booths that seemed to specialize in everything she had spent her adult life trying to avoid. The smell alone was enough to make her eyes water—unwashed bodies pressed together in the summer heat, animals of questionable hygiene wandering freely among the crowds, and the sweet-sick scent of food that had clearly given up the fight against decomposition sometime last week.
“’Tis market day,” Tristan said unnecessarily, though she caught the slight tightening around his eyes that suggested he was also reconsidering this particular expedition. “The villagers gather to trade what they’ve grown or crafted, and... socialize.”
“Socialize,” Rachel repeated faintly, watching a man with what appeared to be livestock living in his hair attempt to sell something that might once have been vegetables to a woman whose teeth situation could generously be described as “optional.” “Right. Because nothing says ‘good times’ like haggling over questionable produce while breathing through your mouth to avoid passing out.”
Beside her, Tristan made a sound that might have been suppressed laughter, quickly disguised as a cough. “Perhaps you would prefer to return to the castle?”
“Oh no,” Rachel said, squaring her shoulders with the determination of someone who’d survived restaurant health inspectors and Yelp trolls. “I need to learn how this whole medieval commerce thing works if I’m going to fit in here. Plus, Marta said we need supplies for the kitchen, and I’m not about to let her down.”
What she didn’t mention was that she was also desperate to prove to herself—and possibly to him—that she could handle more than just improved pottage and kitchen disasters. That she was useful for more than comic relief and anachronistic fashion choices.
They made their way into the crowded square, and Rachel tried not to flinch every time someone brushed against her with clothing that had clearly never met soap and probably never intended to. The noise was overwhelming—vendors shouting their wares in accents so thick she could barely understand them, animals bleating and lowing and making sounds she didn’t want to identify, children shrieking with either joy or terror while their parents conducted business with the focused intensity of people who knew exactly how many coins they could spare.
“Stay close,” Tristan murmured, his hand briefly touching her back in a gesture that sent warmth racing through her despite the chaos of the market. “These folk can be... suspicious of strangers.”
They’d barely made it three stalls into the market when Tristan suddenly went rigid beside her, his attention fixed on something beyond the crowd. Following his gaze, Rachel spotted a chestnut destrier tied near the tavern—a horse that clearly didn’t belong to any village merchant.
“Saints preserve us,” Tristan muttered, his voice gone tight with tension. “That’s Sir Edmund’s mount.”
“Who’s Sir Edmund?” Rachel asked, but Tristan was already moving, his hand dropping from her back as his entire demeanor shifted from protective companion to alert warrior.
“One of Guy’s creatures,” he said grimly, scanning the crowd with predatory intensity. “If he’s here, ’tis not by chance. Stay close to the stalls, do not draw attention to yourself, and whatever you do, keep your voice low and your words... traditional.”
Before she could ask what exactly constituted traditional words in medieval marketplace vocabulary, he was striding away through the crowd, his imposing frame cutting through the press of bodies like a sword through silk. She watched him disappear around a cluster of livestock pens, clearly intent on avoiding whatever confrontation awaited him.
Which left her standing alone in the middle of a medieval market, surrounded by suspicious villagers and armed with absolutely no knowledge of appropriate fifteenth-century commerce etiquette.
“Wonderful,” she muttered under her breath. “No pressure at all.”
She approached the nearest stall, which appeared to specialize in what might charitably be called root vegetables, though several specimens looked like they’d been excavated from an archaeological dig rather than a garden. The vendor, a woman whose face suggested she’d been personally wronged by joy at some point in her youth, regarded Rachel with the kind of suspicion usually reserved for tax collectors and plague carriers.
“Good morning,” Rachel said carefully, using her brightest customer service voice while trying to remember Tristan’s warning about traditional words. “These... roots... look robust. What’s your best price for a dozen?”
The woman’s eyes narrowed slightly, but she seemed willing to engage in commerce despite Rachel’s obvious foreignness. “Three pence for twelve.”
Three pence sounded reasonable, though Rachel had no idea what medieval money was actually worth. She was about to agree when her modern haggling instincts kicked in—the same instincts that had gotten her deals on everything from her apartment rent to overpriced organic groceries back home.
“Three pence?” She laughed, the sound bright and confident in the sudden quiet around the stall. “For roots that look like they’ve been through a blender? Come on, we both know that’s highway robbery. I’ll give you one, and that’s being generous considering I’ve seen more appetizing specimens in the compost heap.”
The silence that followed was so complete she could hear her own heartbeat echoing in her ears. Every single person within earshot had stopped what they were doing to stare at her with expressions of shock, horror, and what appeared to be religious terror.
“She... she...” The vendor was pointing at Rachel with a shaking finger, her face gone pale as fresh parchment. “She mocks the price! She speaks of... of... what manner of demon’s mill is this ‘blender’ she names?”
“Highway robbery!” Father Clement’s voice thundered across the square with the authority of someone who’d clearly been waiting for exactly this moment to prove his point about demonic influences. “She speaks of crimes unknown to Christian lands! What manner of highways does the devil’s realm possess that can be robbed?”
