Page 4 of The Rose at Twilight

I NSIDE THE LARGE TENT, Alys drew off her gloves and looked silently about her.

Even the soft golden glow of the oil lantern did not improve the spartan furnishings or make the place look homelike.

On the damp dirt floor, near the left canvas wall, lay a pallet of furs with more furs piled on a joint stool beside it.

An open coffer stood opposite, with a wood prayer bench between—the sort known since Norman days as a prie-dieu.

The only other furniture to be seen was a traveling washstand near the pallet.

The lantern hung from a hook on the center pole.

“This is your tent,” Alys said to Sir Nicholas, pushing off her hood to reveal her damp and tangled tresses.

“Yours now, mistress. One of my lads will take me in. Tom there is my squire and will gather my gear. Have you eaten?”

“Aye, some bread and butter at noon.”

He frowned. “I’ll have someone prepare a proper meal. ’Tis after five, but despite the clouds, it will not be dark for some hours yet, so mayhap you wish to rest a bit before you sup.”

“Can someone bring me water?”

“To drink? There is a flask—”

“To remove some of the dust of the road from my person,” Alys said tartly. She held out a muddy wrist. “My skin is not generally this color, sir, I promise you.”

He chuckled. “Would you bathe then, mistress?” He gestured toward the little washstand.

She eyed it dubiously. “Is there no proper tub?”

“One might be fetched from the castle, I suppose, but you will catch your death of cold.”

“I can scarcely be wetter or colder than I am right now,” she pointed out, “and I would like very much to—”

“I’ll order the water heated,” he said, shaking his head in amusement. “I have no canopy or curtains, but like as not, the tent walls will protect you from most drafts. Nonetheless, you are not to wash your hair, Lady Alys.”

“That she will not,” put in Jonet, looking sourly at her mistress, “for ’twould never dry in this weather. The very idea! You can do what needs doing as well with yon basin, my lady, so there be no need to make Sir Nicholas’s men tote water for the next hour only to satisfy a foolish whim.”

Sir Nicholas smiled at Jonet. “I have no objection, and the task will not take so long as that. By the time they have found the tub and fetched it out, we will have hot water. ’Twill warm your mistress through, I’m thinking, and thus be no bad thing.”

Alys nodded gratefully, then pointed out that her hair was already wet. “Washing can only improve it,” she said.

“Nage, mi geneth.” He felt it, his hand strong against her scalp.

“’Tis damp only, not wet through like ’twould be if you washed it.

Your woman has the right of it. You rub it dry and then brush it out.

I would like to see it dry,” he added. “Though it is not dark, as I prefer a wench’s hair to be, ’twill look like burnished gold and mayhap be even prettier than her highness’s, for hers is too pale, like flax.

Insipid, I thought it, though long and smooth as silk, withal. ”

His touch sent a flame of warmth shooting through her chilled body, and Alys, disconcerted by the sensation, stepped away from him and turned, her chin held high so that he might not guess the effect he had had upon her.

“Thank you for your kindness, sir,” she said evenly.

“I look forward with pleasure to my bath.” With a casual gesture of dismissal she turned to Jonet.

“Have we herbs at hand to stir into the water?”

“Aye, my lady, when they fetch the coffers off the sumpter ponies. Best you get out of that damp cloak in the meantime.”

Alys nodded, but before she could remove the scarlet cloak, Sir Nicholas said from behind, startling her, “Keep it on.” To Jonet he added, “Damp or not, ’twill keep her warmer than she would be without it, unless you have another with the baggage.”

Alys looked down her nose at him, no easy task since he was nearly a foot taller than she was. “I thought you had gone to order my bath.”

He said steadily, “Have you another cloak, mistress?”

“Not as warm as this one, but my mother had a fur one, I think. Perhaps, since your men must go to the castle—”

“Your mother’s cloak might be infected,” he said. “Keep that one on till I find you something else. Then we can dry it by one of the fires. If the rain keeps off, that is.”

“You worry so much about infection,” she said, “that I cannot help but wonder why you will risk two of your men merely to fetch a tub for me.”

He shook his head. “You forget that we Welshmen seem not to be at risk. I have a few healthy Scotsmen and—”

“Scotsmen?” She remembered then, vaguely, that he had spoken before of foreigners. “But the Scots are our enemies!”

“There are any number of them, however, and Frenchmen, too, who are not the enemies of the king’s noble highness.”

She scowled. “Mercenaries!”

“If you like. I shall send a Scotsman for your tub, shall I? Mayhap he will sicken and die to please you.”

Pointedly she turned her back upon him, and a moment later a sharp but brief stir of cold air announced his departure. She heard him shout but paid no heed to his words, turning her attention instead to her companion. “It appears that we shall soon be bound for London, Jonet.”

“Aye, mistress. I have never been there.”

“Nor have I, as you know full well.” She wrinkled her nose.

“I wonder what it means to be the king’s ward.

I have no wish to find myself a slave to Elizabeth, but if wardship is like fostering, that is what will happen, for she told me once that she expects to marry that Tudor knave.

’Tis most likely she was lying, of course, just as she did when she said poor Anne’s Dickon would wed with her, or the time before that when she told everyone he had gifted her with a Christmas gown when Anne herself had presented her with the fabric left from her own. ”

“The Tudor has named her princess,” Jonet pointed out.

“Aye,” Alys admitted thoughtfully, “and ’tis a grave risk for him to do so, for if she is a true princess, her brothers are likewise royal, and the Tudor has no true claim to the throne.”

“Lord Drufield said Henry Tudor did lay his claim by right of battle, claiming God had thus clearly chosen him king.”

Alys hunched a shoulder. “God cannot be so cruel. Our king was betrayed by men he trusted, and that is all there is about it. If the Tudor was chosen by God, why does he date his reign, as he did in his round-letter, from the day before the battle? I expect God to punish him for such a falsehood, do not you?”

“We know why the Tudor did that,” Jonet said acidly. “’Tis otherwise impossible to name loyal men traitors who did fight for their king. By claiming to have reigned from the day before, he calls them traitors to himself, but what God thinks of such can be known only in His own good time.”

“I know what I think about it.” Feeling another draft, Alys turned sharply to see that the squire, Tom, had entered the tent.

He bowed, touching his forelock. “I ha’ come for m’ meistr’s trappings, an it please you, m’lady.”

Alys nodded, then looked at Jonet, not surprised to see a frown on her round face. Alys, too, wondered how much the lad had heard and whether he would repeat her words to his master.

When Tom had gone, hefting the heavy coffer before him, Jonet clicked her tongue.

“I know,” Alys said before she could speak, “and you are right. I shall henceforth mind what I say.”

“’Twill be a new thing, that will,” muttered her henchwoman.

Alys grinned at her ruefully. “I vow to you that I will mend my ways. Indeed, I have behaved right well these several months past, have I not?”

“Out of fear of her ladyship’s swift right hand,” retorted Jonet. “Not for else, I’m thinking.”

Frowning, Alys said thoughtfully, “I disliked Lady Drufield, ’tis true, but I feared Anne’s displeasure the more.

So gentle was she that the slightest reproof—” The knifing pain in her throat and chest caught her unaware, as did the tears that welled into her eyes.

She turned away, trying unsuccessfully to stifle the sudden gusting sobs that threatened to overwhelm her.

Jonet moved swiftly to her side and put a strong arm around her, hugging her but giving her an admonitory shake at the same time.

“Lassie, do not,” she said in the same way she had spoken when Alys was small.

“’Twill do thee no good to weep. She’s been gone these five months and more, and ’tis as well that she has, for had she lived to hear how the villains desecrated his noble grace’s blessed body after they murdered him, she’d ha’ been wracked asunder by the shame of it.

Thinkst tha’ of that now, and dry thy tears.

’Tis naught but selfishness to dwell upon thine own grief. ”

Hiccoughing in her attempt to regain control of herself, Alys turned and laid her head upon Jonet’s plump bosom, letting herself be held like a child.

At last her sobs eased in their intensity and she straightened, brushing tangled hair from her tear-streaked face with the back of her fist, and said, “I have been wicked to think only of myself. You are right to remind me of what her pain would be. God in His mercy took her before she might suffer, and here am I, wishing she were with us yet.”

“Let be now,” Jonet said gently. “Sit tha’ down on yonder stool, and let old Jonet do what she may to dry thy hair before thy bath be prepared.”