“You should eat a sliver of loaf sugar,” William said. “I always do when I run out of strength.”
“You do?” Her eyes lit with a moment of genuine warmth. “Do you remember when I gave you that piece at Chinon?” She leaned a little towards him, her gaze eager.
“Indeed, madam, I do. It was the best gift I have ever received, and I am not teasing you. Boiled sugar truly does lift your spirits if you are flagging.”
“Then I will have some brought to my chamber. I wish…” She started to speak and then changed her mind.
“William, stop making love to my wife and tell my lord of Flanders about de Neauphle’s escape!” Henry gave William an impatient nudge.
Marguerite flushed at her husband’s words, but William read nothing more into them than Henry’s impatient desire to have his captain’s attention directed towards discussing the tourney rather than making small talk with a woman.
“I would rather talk to a beautiful lady than tell tales about de Neauphle’s acrobatics,” he retorted, but nevertheless obliged the impatient Young King with a repeat of the story. Marguerite begged leave to retire with her women, pleading the fatigue of her pregnancy. Henry managed to be solicitous to her for a moment, escorting her out, holding her hand, and kissing her temple, but he was obviously relieved to see her depart, and returned to the gathering, rubbing his hands and exhaling with anticipation. “Wigain says there’s a pair of eastern dancing girls doing the rounds of the lodgings. Rubies in their navels, so I’m told. Now the women have gone, I’ll have them sent for.”
William raised his brows. At least, he thought, Henry had waited until his wife had retired. He supposed that not every lord would have done so.
It was well past midnight before William finally made his way to his pavilion, his footsteps still reasonably steady. He had enjoyed watching the dancing girls perform, and they had indeed had jewels in some interesting places. One boasted a ruby, the other a pearl. Someone said that the latter was a symbol of her virginity. William doubted that any girl who was prepared to dance on a table clad in exotic nothings still had her pearl to give, but it was an entertaining fantasy—even if it would have to be admitted next time he sought the grace of confession.
Rhys was waiting outside his tent mending a piece of harness, but jumped to his feet when William arrived. “Sir, you have a visitor,” he said.
“At this time of night?” William cast his glance towards the closed tent flaps. “Who is it?” Notions of a few decent hours of sleep fled.
“It is a lady, sir. She said she knew you and that you would not refuse to see her.”
William looked severely at the Welshman. “If you have allowed a camp whore into my tent, I’ll have you picking rust off hauberk rivets with your fingernails for a sennight. Did she give her name?”
“No, sir, but she said she was an old friend.”
Mystified, William parted the flap and stepped inside his tent. Seated on the folding stool at his bedside, hands clasped in her lap, was a young woman of about his own age. She was wearing a cloak of good wool, although it had been patched near the hem, and her hair was properly concealed beneath a veil of fine, bleached linen. William stared. In the years since he had been a hostage to the de Lusignan brothers, he had had his share of dealings with women, most of them fleeting due to the peripatetic nature of the Young King’s household and his own decision not to add the complication of a woman to his baggage train. Names, faces had blended into each other, but he had never forgotten the woman sitting before him. Her face was thinner, her bones more defined, but the wide dark eyes were the same, and the straight, fine nose. What she was doing in his tent without an attendant for decency’s sake and at midnight was a mystery.
“Lady Clara,” he said, and bowed.
She rose and came to him, a smile on her lips, but her eyes filled with caution. “You remembered my name,” she said. “I did not know if you would.”
He kissed her hand in formal greeting. “It is not so much a case of remembering, as never forgetting, my lady,” he murmured. “Has my attendant offered you wine?”
She shook her head. “No, but do not rebuke him. I gained the impression that he was risking his life by allowing me to wait in your tent.”
“He was indeed,” William said. “You would not guess the number of subterfuges that some of the camp women perpetrate, and Rhys knows that my bed is usually a solitary one.”
She lowered her lids and the light from the hanging lamp in the tent roof made fan shadows of her lashes. “I would not have to guess,” she murmured, “because I am one of them.”
William went to the pitcher standing on his coffer and poured wine into the cup standing beside it, making time to compose himself. One-handed, he unfolded a second stool for himself, and gesturing her to be reseated, gave her the cup.
“None for yourself?” she asked.
William shook his head. “I need a clear head for the morrow,” he said, “and perhaps for now as well. What do you mean, you are one of them?”
Her mouth twisted. “I am a whore…one of the women of the camp. You can put finer words on it—say that I am a courtesan and a concubine, but it amounts to the same thing. I belong to any man who has my price, and providing he pays it, I will do all that he asks.” She took a sip of the wine.
Her words sent an involuntary shock down William’s spine and into his loins. “How did you come to such a pass?” He leaned forward on the stool. “When last I saw you, you were lady of a castle.” Looking closer he saw that the discoloration on one cheek he had taken for shadow and rouge was actually a bruise. He thought of the argument he and Henry had overheard earlier in the day as they walked through the camp, and wondered.
She gave a bitter laugh. “When last you saw me I was Amalric’s mistress, not his wife—a concubine. My mother was the youngest daughter of a knight and my father a passing troubadour who duped her into lying with him. I was always going to be either a lady’s maid, a whore, or a nun. I started off as the first, became the second when Amalric took me out of the bower for his own use, and some day, who knows, perhaps I’ll repent and take my vows.”
William’s eyelids tensed as he thought of his brother and Alais. The stories ran parallel, save that Alais had the security of a roof over her head and had borne John a son upon whom his brother clearly doted.
“Amalric was killed in a skirmish with the troops of Guillaume de Tancarville,” she continued, “and the keep was seized. I gathered what I could, saddled up Amalric’s palfrey, and fled to the tourneys. I’ve been following them for four years now, finding ‘protectors’ when I have been able.”
“That is a sorry tale, my lady.”
