
Amber Quill Press www.amberquill.com
Copyright ©2007 by Nina Merrill
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"No wonder everyone thinks the Freemasons are involved in a world conspiracy. Look at this." Jennie turned her laptop so Harrison could read the screen. "The Templars created the whole mess that's become banking with checks and credit cards! They used letters of credit documenting funds they had on deposit in, say, London, while they were traveling for pilgrimages in the Holy Land. And---"
Harrison sighed, pushing his papers into a neater pile on the library table before tucking them in his satchel. "What is it with you and the Templars? They're a bunch of old men who play with swords and wear fancy hats they've probably killed thousands of ostriches to decorate. Come on. I'll take you dancing."
Jennie scowled at her boyfriend and spun the laptop back to herself, since it was clear Harrison wasn't interested. "That's what's left these days, but back in the Middle Ages and before that, during the Crusades, they were the closest thing Europe had to an international consortium. Except maybe the Catholic church." She leaned back in her library chair and pushed her legs out in front of her. "Even the governments weren't as organized as the Templars."
Sometimes she wondered why she was bothering with a doctorate in French literature ... as time marched on, it seemed there was less and less need for skills like hers. Who, really, would find her translations of obscure illuminated manuscripts valuable? Would her life's passion ever pay the bills? Or would she always be seeking the next grant or survey class at universities to make ends meet?
"Jennie."
"What?"
"Dancing, remember? I'll even spring for dinner."
"Sorry, I can't. Busy..."
"With what?"
"A new cipher."
Harrison rolled his eyes, just like Jennie knew he would, and she smiled as she watched him go.
Later that evening, Jennie, too, rolled her eyes as she struggled with the cipher. She had long since finished dinner and dressed for bed in a short cotton nightie and her ankle-length blue silk robe that matched her eyes.
She sat at her dining room table with books, computer printouts of scanned illuminated manuscripts, and pencils strewn in front of her. To one side, her journal lay opened to a drawing penciled on one of the pages, with a ruler holding it flat.
Baphomet was variously described in Jennie's many sources as a goat-headed woman, a demon, the devil himself, or even an alternate spelling of Mohammed. Its image contained many symbols, any or all of which could be errors introduced through the centuries, or taken from the forced confessions of the Knights Templar when King Philip the Fair of France had them arrested and tortured in October of 1307.
In the past week, Jennie had translated an ancient document that confirmed a Hebrew cipher or code, known as the Atbash cipher, could decrypt "Baphomet" into the Greek word for wisdom, "Sophia." Jennie had been proving that to herself and experimenting with the Atbash cipher to decrypt other words found on monuments known to be of Templar origin. Thus far, nothing had proved interesting, revealing no ancient secrets about the Templars' legendary treasure or a hint to its location.
Tonight she planned to reverse the Atbash cipher and try some of the words again with the new letter mapping and her thick Hebrew dictionary.
The cryptography work wasn't strictly related to her doctoral dissertation, languishing across the table with her laptop. Her study of the Templars had begun with a few manuscripts and texts she encountered while researching old French literature. These days, it had become an avocation, and she was fascinated to observe the tendrils and trails that led from the Templars and the Freemasons into every aspect of Western civilization. Their rituals and stylized language had permeated even casual slang with such expressions as "on the level" and "the third degree."
The devastation of the Templars in 1307 by Philip the Fair had even given rise to a popular superstition surrounding any Friday the 13th. It was an unlucky day, falling as it did on the astrologically disadvantageous thirteenth, but even unluckier for the Templars who were arrested that day, then tortured for confessions, and tried for heresy. Its implications still resonated hundreds of years later.
Jennie took a mysterious series of letters from a picture of a Masonic master's tombstone found in Scotland and wrote them in a column in her journal. The letters had never been successfully decrypted, according to multiple sources. She reversed the Atbash cipher and wrote out the re-ordered Hebraic alphabet on the journal's facing page. Slowly she cross-referenced each letter from the tombstone and wrote out its ciphered equivalent.
As she filled in the last three letters, her vision swam before her. She rubbed at her eyes and took a long swallow of her spearmint tea waiting to the side. A little steadier, she pulled the Hebrew dictionary close, opened it, and began to search for the nearly-impossible word she had created using her inside-out cipher.
She was not surprised to find nothing like it in the Hebrew dictionary. It made no sense, but perhaps when she translated it into Greek letters using the cipher once more, it would.
Her vision swam again and she shook her head to clear it. She wrote the Greek letters in a column next to the Hebrew letters. As the column grew, her heart began to pound. Her Greek was minimal, but surely...
Jennie deciphered the last letter and traced her finger over the words she had written. She must really be overtired, she decided, when the table seemed to shudder beneath her hands. She put her pencil down, picked up her journal and hesitantly spoke the words aloud.
"I am the door."
Her dining room lurched weirdly and spun around her. The overhead lights dimmed and flickered before blinking out altogether. Jennie clutched her journal close to her breast as she fell from her chair, down and down, never reaching the floor, disoriented by a horrific rending noise as if her apartment was breaking in two.
"It is she! It is our Lady Mary!"
Jennie stared wildly around her at the circle of strange figures. Beyond them, what appeared to be stone walls were lit by smoky, flickering torches. The light was dim and uncertain, and she turned slowly, drawing her arms across her body to conceal her state of undress.
She stood in the center of a circle of men dressed in white tunics with red crosses over their hearts.
"Our prayers have been answered."
"It is she!"
"God be praised!"
"The Magdalen!"
"She will guide us."
Jennie turned as each new voice added words of worshipful awe. With an unpleasant jolt, she realized the voices were speaking in French. Strangely-accented French, bearing little resemblance to the language she had learned in high school and perfected in college as part of her master's degree. The hem of her blue robe dragged on something on the floor and she could feel cold, damp stone beneath her bare feet.
Glancing down, she saw her hem had snagged on a skull and two leg bones set in the configuration of a Jolly Roger. She heard her own grunting scream as she scrabbled away from the ghastly things, tangling her feet in her robe and sprawling. In her fright she flinched back with a full-fledged shriek when three of the men rushed forward.
One of them reached her first, offering a hand to help her to her feet. She gawked, with wide eyes, at the man who dropped to one knee at her side, at his shoulder-length sandy hair falling in tangled waves, the beard and moustache surrounding the most sinful mouth she'd ever seen, the concerned eyes framed in a thick sweep of lashes, and unkempt eyebrows arching above a large and Gallic nose. She gazed back, frightened and entranced at the same time.
Who the hell is he? And where the hell am I? Where's my dining room? My books? My laptop?
"Touch her not. We know not what our prayers may have summoned."
The booming voice came from an elderly man standing to her left. His words were full of the confidence of long command. Two of the men who had leapt to her aid straightened and stepped back as if a single look from her would burn them, but the man kneeling next to her merely froze, his hand hovering inches from her upper arm. His gaze held hers and, as she stared, she became aware of the strong odor of unwashed male---stronger than any locker room she'd ever snuck into as a teen---overwhelming the scents of incense, burning tar and fat, and bringing water to her eyes.
The man at her side spoke to the men around them. "It is the Lady Mary. It is dishonor to allow her to remain on the floor amongst the rubbish. See how she weeps at our shameful treatment." He gently gripped her by her upper arms and lifted her to her feet as he rose.
Jennie was astounded by the strength evident in his hands and arms. The men she'd dated around campus---including Harrison, while fit, were not the Hercules this man was. She would have fallen again, completely confused, were it not for his support.
Nothing was as it should be, nothing made sense. Had she fallen asleep and drifted into a dream of the Templars and their secret meetings? She looked down at her feet and saw them buried to the ankles in the rushes and straw that covered the stone floor, and felt the prickling of the sharp ends against her skin. A dream had never seemed so tangible before. She looked up at the man who held her upright. She would never conjure such a rescuer for herself. He was handsome, yes, but so in need of a comb and some soap that she shuddered.
There was a shuffling sound to her left. The sandy-haired knight---what else could she call him, dressed as he was and armed with a sword at his left hip---snapped his head toward the sound and took a firmer grip on her.
"Do you disobey your commander, Bergère?" A second knight, whose hand hovered near the hilt of his sword, took a step forward.
The rest of the knights in the circle stiffened. Jennie stifled a gasp. Who knew what would happen if she drew more attention to herself than she already had by sprawling in their midst.
Bergère inclined his head slightly. "I but seek to aid a lady, Napier." His look swung to the elder man. "Commander de Payraud."
Jennie turned her head to follow his gaze. The commander had compressed his lips and was looking sternly at Bergère.
Payraud came forward into the circle, gaze fixed upon Jennie. She stared back, her heartbeat skyrocketing. Her first reaction was to cringe back against Bergère until his strong chest was against her shoulder blades and she could feel the hilt of his sword pressing against her left hip. Some jangling, innate sense of propriety prevented her from nestling close to a stranger. The young knight, while seemingly unafraid and confident, might react poorly to a female intruder pressing her backside against his loins.
Payraud lifted a hand in a gesture of benediction. "Be at peace. I am master of this commandery, Hugh de Payraud. Will you tell us your name, lady?"
Jennie gaped, her mind whirling. He spoke in French, they all spoke in French, his name was Hugh de Payraud and he was master here. Hugh de Payraud.
It was a name she knew.
Hugh de Payraud had lived in Paris, Treasurer to the Knights Templar, the man who had overseen the extraordinary funds of the order, bankrolled kings and wars. A man owing allegiance only to his fellow Templars and the pope.
In 1300 or thereabouts.
...A.D.
Not that anno domini meant a thing when there was a difference of seven hundred years yawning at her from the torch-lit dimness of this windowless room.
Jennie saw and felt blackness swarming in from all sides and slumped, aware, with her last vestige of consciousness, that strong arms lifted her as she fell.
Jennie came to herself with hands chafing her wrist and strong odors in her nose, lying on a hard, narrow bench. When her eyes flickered open, she saw the knight Bergère kneeling at her side. It was he who was chafing her wrist, her forearm half engulfed in his grip, while the roughness of his thumb rubbed over the flesh below her hand. Over Bergère's shoulder she saw the other knight---Napier---peering down at her. It was a different room than where she had first arrived. The room was lit by a candle and a bowl lamp rather than torches. The light was less bright, but more certain.
The smell this time was a mixture of unwashed male, burning fat and cooking stew. Under it all was the odor of stone and old mortar, cold and salty like an underground tunnel.
At her awakening, Napier spoke. "Master de Payraud, she returns to us."
Payraud moved to look down at her, his hand on the hilt of a dagger sheathed at his waist. He did not threaten her directly, but Jennie was clear he would defend himself and his knights should she prove dangerous. "What is your name? Are you angel or demon?"
It was, apparently, time to learn whether her collegiate French with its medieval tinge from all her studies was adequate to the task at hand. Jennie looked up at Bergère. Seen in the more steady light of candle and lamp, his eyes were gray. She licked her lips before speaking, and his gaze flicked to where her tongue appeared.
"I am Jennie Pierson---neither angel nor demon, just a ... a..." She fumbled for a word. How did one explain the concept of doctoral candidate to a pack of medieval Frenchmen, if she was right in her assessment of Payraud's identity? "A student of history," she finally finished. She turned her gaze back to Bergère. "I am well, sir, thank you. May I sit up?"
"She is still pale." Bergère shook his head. "Perhaps it is best if---"
"Bergère, step away. You have done enough for now."
Jennie thought of course she looked pale. She'd just---if she had it right---traveled backward seven hundred years in time to someplace in Paris. Her mind raced. If the master was indeed Hugh de Payraud, the time was before the autumn of 1307, when King Philip the Fair had every Templar in the length and breadth of France arrested for heresy, perfidy, and treason.
Bergère rose. His eyes flicked to Payraud, but he bent his head in obedient acquiescence. Napier stepped forward aggressively as Jennie levered herself upright.
She found she had been settled on a wide bench. Swinging her legs to the floor, she pulled the blue silk of her robe closer about her body and noted that the Templars had moved her to a kitchen of sorts. The bench was next to a table, and on the other side was a monstrous hearth with kettles and pans, and the glowing eyes of coals and embers heaping what looked very like a Dutch oven. A kettle dangled over a bed of flame, and she could see steam rising from it. Perhaps that was what smelled like stew---onions, cabbage, and the scent of meat.
Jennie looked at Bergère, who hadn't really taken his eyes off her, and though he had stepped back as his commander had ordered, he still stood between her and Napier.
Almost as if he were guarding me. What is it about Napier that Bergère doesn't like? Aloud, Jennie said, "My thanks, sir. You must have carried me to safety." What made her phrase it that way she was not certain, but she deemed it the better part of valor to play the demure maid. With any luck, all that reading and all those movies had at least some historical accuracy to them...
Bergère gave a stiff nod.
Payraud had obviously been ignored too long. "How came you among us?"
Jennie felt her eyes widen. "I don't---I know not, sir. I was at home, reading, and then I was---here." The memory of the skull and leg bones made her shudder, but it also was one more piece of the puzzle. The Templars, and later the Freemasons, had used such a symbol in some of their rituals. She was too scattered at the moment to remember just what they'd used it for.
"Reading?" The knights looked at each other, and Jennie bit her lip. Women didn't often learn to read in the fourteenth century.
"We brought her. Our prayers brought her." Bergère looked at Payraud with wide eyes, and Jennie marveled at how sincere he seemed. A knight, parfait gentil? Surely by the fourteenth century chivalry was long dead. The most recent crusade to the Holy Land had been over for decades, and King Philip was ensuring that he and his descendents would never be forced to crusade again.
Jennie longed to ask what Bergère meant by prayers. How had she arrived here? By what mechanism? Or was she dreaming? Surreptitiously she pinched her skin between two fingernails. The pain was real, as was the stench in her nostrils and the chill of the room, despite the fire in the hearth. She shivered and wrapped her arms tightly around herself, as much to conceal her body beneath the thin silk of her robe and knee-length gown as to warm herself. She had never felt so exposed or uncomfortable. Or frightened. Doctoral candidates aren't meant for this sort of thing. I want my books.
Whatever had happened, it wasn't normal, and it wasn't safe. If she wasn't dreaming, then these men were real, and she was their captive. Her stomach flipped and she swallowed hard, trying to keep panic at bay.
"She is a demon." Napier stepped forward again and addressed the commander. "See how she draws our warden's eye ... see how she is dressed, as no decent woman would. I say she is a demon. We should learn what she knows and then send her back to her true master in hell."
"What? No! Are you insane?" Jennie blurted in English. She cast about for the door, prepared to sprint for her life, and found it closed and secured with a heavy wooden bar, gouged by the blades of adzes, and dark with the smoky patina of the kitchen.
"She speaks the tongue of hell!" Napier's finger pointed right at her, as rigid, accusative and menacing as any sword blade could have been.
Bergère put up his hand and slowly pushed Napier's hand down. "She is no demon. She wears the color of purity, the blue of the Madonna. Surely she is simply confused. We have diverted her from her celestial duties---"
"Napier, calm yourself. Warden de Bergère, your brother is right---you are distracted. Demon or not, I think we can control her if we must. She makes no attempt to escape." That tone of command was back.
In relief, Jennie saw the two men do as they were bid.
"Give me your name again, slowly this time."
"Jennie."
"From whence do you hail, Jeanne?"
Jennie did not bother to correct his pronunciation of her name. She was more concerned with how to explain the reality of a place so prosaic as Minneapolis. Indeed, how to explain the USA? Or even a land far to the west, yet to be discovered by the Europeans? She lowered her eyes and whispered the first thing that came to mind. "St. Paul." It wasn't entirely a lie.
Bergère gave Napier a disparaging look. Napier's face darkened and his hand clenched at his side. Jennie feared the man's hot temper and the jealousy she could read on his face. Bergère had something Napier wanted---perhaps it was the ear or the good opinion of Payraud, or a position of favor in the commandery, but whatever it was, she didn't want to be a pawn in Napier's bitter game.
"There is a mystery here." Payraud shook his head. "A great mystery. You appeared among us just as we were calling upon the saints for guidance. Women are not permitted to attend our meetings or know our mysteries. Your appearance is either a great boon from God or a trick of the devil." He thought for a moment, then motioned over his shoulder. "Napier, your crucifix."
"It is ever at your service, Commander." The knight leapt eagerly past Bergère, who straightened sharply but held his position as he had been ordered. Napier dangled a rosary with a heavy silver cross entirely too close to Jennie's face for comfort, and she flinched yet again.
"Jeanne, you will kiss the holy cross to prove your nature."
Jennie looked askance at the cross Napier held before her. Its arms were dark with age, or perhaps tarnish and grime.
"Surely you jest," she stammered.
"She is a demon!" Napier pushed the sword closer to her face and bared his teeth as she drew back. "See how she pulls away. The symbol of our faith is anathema."
"It's filthy! I can't kiss that. I'll catch my death of some foul disease!"
From the corner of her eye, she saw Bergère fold his arms across his chest and tighten his mouth as though he were holding back a smirk. Her eyes flicked to him. Would he intervene?
Payraud's hands went to his waist, where a leather pouch dangled from his sword belt. To her surprise and horror, he pulled out her journal and opened it to the page with the drawing of Baphomet. His hand shook faintly as he showed the drawing around the room, and even Bergère blanched. "Convince me you are no demon, woman. For this grimoire tells me you are."
Jennie opened her mouth to explain, then realized she could not, unless she wanted to be imprisoned or worse. She found her gaze moving to Bergère's face. Whether she sought sympathy or aid there she was not sure, but he met her gaze before inclining his head the barest amount to indicate she should do as Payraud and Napier demanded.
At least he doesn't seem afraid of me. Fear makes men violent. I'm frightened enough for all of us. Still meeting his gaze, as if drawing strength from that steady, even-tempered look, she leaned forward the short distance to press her lips against the cross' center. He gave another slight nod. She sat back and fought the urge to drag her hand across her lips.
"I am unconvinced," Napier stated, but when Bergère's hand moved the cross away from Jennie, Napier stepped back a pace.
"She has proved herself no demon." Bergère crossed his arms over his chest once more, brooking no more discussion, but it seemed Napier would not be silenced on this point.
"She has proved she is no demon, perhaps, but she may very well be a witch. They use the crucifix for their own wicked purposes." Napier jerked his head toward the journal Payraud was slowly paging through. "Look you how our commander shudders at her spells." His voice dropped into a sneer. "And look you how she has enchanted you, Tibald. Look well."
Tibald? Is that his given name? Jennie could not stop her scholar's brain from following a foolish track to Shakespeare and the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, and Tybalt the King of Cats. She wondered if Tibald de Bergère would be as light on his feet and good with a sword as Shakespeare's cocky character. Certainly Tibald did not seem as hot-headed as Tybalt.
Then she mentally stumbled. If this was truly 1307, Shakespeare hadn't written his plays yet.
He wouldn't even be born for another two hundred years.
She couldn't stifle the sob that wrenched her throat.
"Ah! We have discovered your secret!" Napier crowed. "She is a witch. Master de Payraud, let me dispatch her for you---"
"I am not a witch!" Jennie surged to her feet, fearing the dark-haired knight's eagerness to prove her evil. "I swear on my mother's gr---I swear by all that is holy---" Thinking desperately, she began to recite a middle French paternoster, the only prayer she knew, in the hopes it would convince them of her innocence. "Sire Pere, qui es enceaus, sanctifiez soit li tuens uons, avigne li tuens regnes..."
When the men crossed themselves and murmured the rest of the prayer along with her, despite her stumbling accent, she felt herself trembling in relief. She hastened to follow suit, touching brow, breast, and shoulders. Stunt praying, she thought. Wonder what God thinks of that. Thank you, Professor Milbeck.
When she had finished, Payraud held up the journal once again. "Despite the proof you have offered, much here disturbs me. Many secrets of our order are contained in this book. How came a woman to possess them?"
Her mind raced to fabricate a plausible explanation and found none. Looking from Payraud to Napier's sharply hungry face, she locked her fingers together in front of her. Tell the truth, just not all of it.
"Where I come from, such facts are not secret." She found her gaze wanting to drift to Tibald Bergère, whose gray eyes were calmly fixed on her face. But Tibald was not the key here. She must convince Payraud, first and foremost, which would then take the wind out of Napier's malicious sails. "They are venerated, respected. They form the basis of organizations---I mean guilds---everywhere. They---"
Napier interrupted her. "Guilds do not admit women."
"Where I come from, they do."
"Yes---do tell us where you come from. For I believe it is not from Paris." The spite in Napier's voice was clear.
Jennie shivered. Not only was the room chilly, despite the fire on the hearth, but she was clearly unwelcome and rash speech would endanger her further.
"I do not come from Paris, no. I am from the west."
"A Spaniard?" Payraud queried.
"No, sir. From farther west. But please, let me explain my book." She held out her hand for it. "If I could just show you---"
Payraud snapped the journal closed. "There is only one thing I wish explained. How came you into our meeting? Did we summon you, or did you magick yourself among us?"
Jennie recalled the strange whirling of her dining room as she murmured the Greek words decrypted by her cipher. Had she sent herself back into the past? Was there such a thing as magic, and did the Templars somehow have the knowledge to harness it? She couldn't answer their questions without making herself seem more threatening than she was.
"I don't know." She swallowed hard as she stood before them. "One moment I was in my home, and the next I was in the center of your circle."
Tibald spoke. "Commander, we were seeking a solution to our present difficulties. Could it not be that we summoned her ourselves? Should we not pursue that possibility? If the good Lord sent her to us, she must have information we need. Allow me to question her further, in more congenial surroundings---"
Napier threw back his head and laughed. "Allow you. Allow you. You are so blinded by this woman's charms, her indecent clothing, her loosened hair---look! She does not even cover her head. And yet we should allow you to be bespelled further? What have you in mind? The congenial privacy of your chamber?"
Jennie heard her own voice registering a complaint, but the flurry of motion that was Tibald, grasping the fabric of Napier's mantle and twisting it in his fist, silenced her. His forefinger tapped sharply on Napier's breastbone. "You impugn my honor, brother. Have a care. My oaths have meaning."
"Silence!" Payraud thundered. "None but I shall question this woman, but it will not be tonight. We should return to our brethren. We have been long away. Napier, cease your insolent needling. Bergère, I asked you before to calm yourself." He turned to Jennie. "You will remain under guard this night, a guest in one of our rooms. In the morning, we will speak again. I will see through your deceptions, so beware."
"I will guard her," Napier said.
"You both will," said Payraud. "But let there be no words spoken to her, nor ill will between you. Guard your temper, Alain, and you, Tibald---guard your emotions. Let not a woman's charms sway either of you from your oaths as Templars."
"Be assured, Commander," said Tibald. "I am true."
Payraud's face and voice softened. "I know. But still do you permit your brother to prick at your pride. Come, you are my warden and must be present as we close our meeting. Alain, see that Jeanne is taken to the north tower and guard her, but first cover her with your mantle. She is indecently clothed, and I would not have more of the men see her thus."
Tibald stepped between Payraud and Jennie, swinging his white woolen mantle from his shoulders and draping it about her. She was grateful for the cloak, warm from Tibald's body, and welcomed the chance to conceal herself from Napier's petty, crawling eyes. There was a wicked eagerness in them that made her feel dirty and frightened at the same time. Please let him be one of those who sticks to his oath of chastity. The north tower sounds like a place where no one would hear me scream.
"Take mine," Tibald said. "I will not need it to close our meeting this night. I will bring blankets when I come to the tower shortly."
Jennie felt something sharp inside her easing at Tibald's words. He was clearly warning Napier that he would follow as soon as he could. Though she had no concrete reason to trust Tibald, he made her feel safer than did Napier.
Payraud turned to leave, and Jennie rose. Her burning need to ask a single question drove her to speak. "Sir? Might I know the date?"
"The date?" The older man turned back to her. "Why, it is the seventeenth of September."
The year ... what is the year? In her present state, she couldn't remember if the Gregorian calendar had settled by 1307 or not. Jennie knotted her fingers before her and dared one last question. "Does Catherine de Valois yet live?"
Payraud's eyes narrowed. "I have heard the count's wife languishes of a wasting sickness. We must go, Bergère." The commander ushered Tibald through the kitchen's doorway and left Jennie alone with Napier.
She snugged the cloak around herself and waited. Napier watched until the commander and Tibald were out of sight before motioning to her to precede him through the door. He took Payraud's admonition of silence seriously, for his only communication was to direct her left or right.
She tried to memorize the halls and turns and doorways as they moved through the temple, unsure why it was important to know the way back to the kitchen, but feeling she must begin to get control of something, no matter how small. She caught glimpses of tiny rooms with beds off to each side and surmised they were passing through the barracks area where the Templars lodged. The floor was harsh under her feet. Why didn't I wear my slippers? At least then I wouldn't be barefoot in Paris. With it not even spring to take the curse off.
"Pull up your hood. Cover your hair as a decent woman should." Napier halted before a heavy wooden door reinforced with iron straps. His hand was on the bulky latch.
"Are we going outside?"
Napier grunted, a sound neither positive nor negative, and merely gestured at her hair again. Jennie bit her lip and lifted the hood of the mantle over her head, tucking her braid down the hood's collar. It galled her to think she must conform to the rigidly sexist society, but until she understood more about what had happened to her, it seemed the wisest course.
When he opened the door, she was glad of the mantle's concealing folds. Beyond was a large room with a central fire pit and many benches and tables scattered throughout. Men of all ages were seated and eating, or standing and talking. Some wore the Templar garb, and others looked as if they'd just come from field or stable, muddy boots on their feet and straw in their hair. All turned to look at the open door. An arrow of fear shot through her. She balked, and Napier caught her by the elbow and hustled her into the room.
The place smelled of burned meat, yeasty ale and the apparently ubiquitous odor of unwashed fourteenth-century male. Another cherished myth dies ... the famous great hall filled with mighty warriors is nothing more than a college dining room full of sloppy students.
"Quickly. Keep your head down."
Jennie did as Napier suggested, if only to keep from tripping over the uneven flagstones and litter. He hurried her along the wall where there were no benches, evidently heading for a door at the opposite end. Midway, a series of chuckles began in the room, and Napier shook his head in aggravation, yanking her along faster.
"Who's the new duck then, Napier?" This from a tall Templar with a flagon in his hand. "Why not introduce us?"
"I am on Payraud's business," Napier hissed through his teeth.
Jennie scraped her toes on the rough flooring as he all but pulled her along, but she, too, wished to hurry. So many eyes made her anxious, too much like a pigeon in a room full of cats.
"Commander de Payraud has business with wenches? Not likely, thinks I." The Templar pushed back his bench and got to his feet. "You, though..."
Napier halted and turned toward the Templar. "Mock me not, Maillet. And why are you not with the commandery?"
The other man grinned and lifted his hands to show he meant no harm, but his gaze flicked over Jennie once again. She crowded closer to Napier---better the devil she'd met than one she hadn't.
Napier pulled her out the door and across a dark lawn. She could hardly spare a glance around her with every grain of concentration required to keep her feet. They were headed toward the stone hulk of a tower---short to her skyscraper-accustomed mind, but tall for its age. A door at the bottom led into an anteroom, lit by a single torch that guttered wildly in the breeze from their entrance. Napier seized it and gestured to the flight of stairs at the corner.
Jennie would much have preferred to follow, instead of climbing unfamiliar stone steps shadowed by her own body and lit by erratic firelight. She didn't like having Napier at her back, but there seemed no choice, so she climbed, clutching the stone wall as best she could. They passed multiple windows in the spiral staircase before Napier bade her exit at a landing. He pushed open a door and gestured her inside, following for no more than a moment before leaving and closing the door behind him. All was darkness and silence.
Jennie was glad to see him go, but wished mightily for any sort of light. She'd had very little time to look around the room before he departed with the torch, and now she put her hands out and groped across the floor to where she thought she'd glimpsed a shuttered window. Her feet were chilly and sore, and she tried very hard not to think of all the things she had stepped on or in. It took a hard bite to the inside of her cheek to stifle a wail of despair.
Fourteenth-century Paris was nothing like she had imagined it to be. It stank. It was black and frightening. The knights Templar were not the chivalrous men of legend dressed in bright satins and ermine and chain mail, but muscled, egotistical soldiers dressed in grubby wool.
Her fingers connected with the stone wall, and she groped to the left. After feeling two or three feet and finding no shutter, she shifted right and found it. Her fingers skimmed over it lightly, finding at last a wooden toggle that secured the shutters. She turned it and felt the right-hand panel swing toward her.
Outside a bright half-moon was rising above the silhouettes of trees to her right. Its familiar bright face with the dark blotches made her want to weep. At least something was recognizable about this world.
Where the moon rose must be east. She fumbled with the left hand shutter and opened it as well, leaning out on the embrasure. The shadowy ground seemed far below. She leaned further, trying to see the wall beneath the window---was it scalable? If it were, did she dare try it in a bathrobe and bare feet?
Maybe in the morning. I'll look around when there's more light. If they let me live through the night. She tried to push the morbid thought aside, but she was in no way certain Payraud would listen to her warnings, much less believe them. Especially since he'd had such an adverse reaction to the drawings and codes in her journal.
Jennie stood for a while, allowing her eyes to grow used to the darkness. There was more light and at the same time much less, in Paris than in Minneapolis. She looked to her right and saw distant clusters of mellow gold light that had to be candles and fires and torches in houses and taverns. In contrast to the pinkish nightscape of a modern city, Paris was black as the inside of a barrel of tar. Yet the sky was dazzling, brilliant with stars, pinholes of light against the velvet dark. Far more stars than she'd ever seen in her life, and a river of light above that could only be the Milky Way. She clutched at the embrasure to steady herself. The night had a faint edge of chill signaling the imminence of autumn and colder weather.
She slipped back inside the room and wrapped her arms around herself beneath Tibald's cloak. Now that she was alone, it was time to think. She had to find her way back to her own century. She had come here, so surely she could return.
Jennie turned from the window to see what more of the room the moonlight would reveal. Before her were the outlines of a stool and a bed, a small table with something on it, and the dull gleam of metal across the room where the door was. She shuffled over to the bed and groped about with her hands briefly.
There seemed to be a cloth ticking, and inside the cloth she could hear rustling---probably straw---as she pressed. The bed was nothing more than a pallet over a frame. There was no blanket and no pillow. Certainly no feather bed or comforter. She sank down and drew Tibald's cloak tightly around her to stave off panic.
The enormity of her situation struck her at last, and she trembled. Hot tears welled, but did not spill. Jennie reminded herself that she was not a crybaby.
The problem was, she hadn't an inkling of the mechanics of how she'd arrived where---or precisely when---she had, and thinking herself out of it might take skills she didn't possess. It would very likely require resources she did not possess as well. She couldn't hop onto the Internet and coax a search engine into giving up useful information. She couldn't pick up the phone and call someone who knew or cared. Harrison would eventually wonder where she was ... in a couple of days. Their schedules didn't often mesh for more than an hour or two at a stretch, unless they managed to have dinner or a weekend together.
I'll end up like those people I've read about but never believed in---the ones who went missing from their own lives, vanished into thin air. It's a good thing I don't have any pets.
For several moments Jennie had been hearing a faint scratching sound coming from her right. It finally intruded into her thoughts. Peering in the direction of the sound, she could see nothing in the gloom.
Nothing at all.
But she felt when the thing brushed past her bare foot where it rested on the stones.
Her scream was a thing of beauty. Loud and shrill and long, expressing more than mere terror at being crawled over by what was probably a rat. She jerked her legs up onto the bed and knew a fleeting fear that the ticking was probably infested with fleas, bedbugs and lice, and that motivated rats could climb. There was no place safe, but at least the scream was therapeutic.
And it brought instant results. There was a scuffle in the hallway outside her room and a juddering bang as the door slammed open. Dancing red light filled her room and two figures rushed in. One was Napier, sword drawn in his right hand and a torch in his left, and the other was Tibald, with a bundle of cloth and a flask in one hand and another torch in the other. They stared at her as she knelt on the bed. They looked for all the world like television cops guarding each other's back in a firefight.
Napier's sword flicked here, there, as he assessed the invisible threat, and Tibald held his torch high to provide as much light as possible.
"What is the matter with you?" demanded Napier.
"Rat," gasped Jennie at last, in English, for her medieval French had fled her in her panic. She looked wildly around the floor and saw the rat huddling in a corner on the outer wall and pointed.
Tibald laughed. Napier sheathed his sword, straightening erect from his fighter's crouch. His hand brushed over his belt and a moment later there was a bright glint of silver in the torchlight, and the ringing of metal on stone. Napier lunged across the small room and bent, coming up with something in his hand. He came toward her and thrust the twitching dark bundle at her---the rat, spitted on a small, wicked dagger.
"Dinner, madame? I understand they're not bad in soup."
"Excellent throw," said Tibald. "In bad light, too."
Jennie shrank away from the vermin Napier held practically under her nose, and drew a shuddering breath that sounded more like a moan. The grin Napier tossed over his shoulder toward Tibald made him seem more boyish than brutish.
"She doesn't look hungry, Tibald."
"Nor would you, with a rat shoved in your face. Find someplace else for it, can't you?"
Napier moved to the window, and with a flick of his wrist, flung the rat off the blade of the dagger and into the night. Jennie clapped her hands over her ears so she wouldn't hear the corpse hit the ground, but nothing shut out the men's laughter. Napier wiped the blade on his sleeve and sheathed it at his belt.
Tibald moved back to the door and set his torch in a bracket placed high on the wall. He put the bundle of cloth on the bed near her with a slight bow. "Blankets, lady. And wine." He put the flask on the table, next to what Jennie could now see was a basin and ewer. He lifted the ewer, poured, and realized it was empty. "No water, Alain?"
"There hasn't been time."
Jennie could have sworn Napier looked abashed at Tibald's quiet rebuke.
"Go now. I will watch her."
"I was waiting for you. I dared not leave her alone. You heard the commander's orders."
Tibald inclined his head. "Indeed. But now, water. And perhaps a little bread?"
At this, he looked toward Jennie, who nodded weakly, still crouched on the bed. If they're planning to feed me, maybe they're not going to kill me. Just yet.
She surprised herself by saying, "And the water---please boil it first, as you would for a tisane."
Napier turned back from the doorway with the ewer in his hands and stared at her. "What?"
"Water, to drink---" she began. She didn't dare drink fourteenth-century water that hadn't been sterilized. "Please boil it first."
"You want to drink your wash water?"
Confused, Jennie looked at Tibald, as though he might translate for her, but he, too, seemed mystified. She caught on. "Oh. That pitcher is for wash water. Might I have water to drink, boiled water?"
"When there is wine?" Tibald gestured to the flask sitting on the table.
"I ... oh. I suppose not." Ah, yes. Alone and drunk in the fourteenth century. There's a recipe for success.
The two men looked at each other, Tibald shrugged, and, with a glower, Napier disappeared with his torch down the stairs.
"You are unharmed, lady?" Tibald's voice was quiet, and stroked over her jangled nerves like suede.
"It didn't bite me, if that's what you mean."
His lips quirked in a smile that she could see even in the flickering torchlight. "'Twas only a rat."
"It was horrid."
"I live so much among men that I forget the vapors of women." He twisted the stopper out of the flask for her. "Here, drink."
"I don't have the vapors," Jennie objected, but realized that was exactly how her behavior must look. She had fainted practically the instant she arrived, been completely disoriented in the kitchen where they had questioned her, and now had screamed like the girl she was when a rat ran across her foot. "It's just ... all been a bit frightening." She couldn't stop the quiver in her voice and was surprised when he pushed aside the edge of his cloak she had pulled tight around her and put the flask into her hand.
"Drink. It will do you good." Then he moved quickly to the window and leaned out as if her presence disturbed him. He took a few deep breaths. "The night is quiet."
Jennie sniffed at the flask. It smelled like wine, and hopefully of a high enough alcohol content to kill whatever contagions might be present. She put it to her lips and tipped it back. The wine was bitter and harsh with tannin. Tibald turned to look at her as she was wiping the corners of her mouth. Something in his pose, the way his gaze seemed to focus on her lips, made her sit very still, the way a mouse freezes so the hawk's gaze will pass over it.
Eventually she could no longer bear the silent perusal. "What is the hour, sir?"
Tibald blinked, as though recalled to himself from a dream. Jennie saw his throat move as he swallowed. "It is long after compline. You should rest."
"I am not tired, but I thank you for the blankets. And your cloak ... it was kind of you." She made to rise and give him back his cloak, but the moment she put weight on her feet, a sharp pain shot into the ball of her right foot and she gasped.
Oh, you wimp! she swore at herself.
"You are hurt," Tibald chastised her, and in only a few movements had taken the flask from her hand, pressed her to sit again, and was now on one knee, with her bare foot resting on his other knee. His thumb brushed away detritus from her sole with a gentleness that surprised her. "It is but a small cut, though in a tender place. Have you no shoes?"
"Of course I have no shoes! I came here unexpectedly. I had no warning, no time to dress."
"We must remedy that." He looked up at her where she sat in her robe and nightgown, his cloak fallen from her shoulders. He caught the silk of her robe between his fingers briefly. "You are the daughter of a noble house, are you not? Such tender skin, and such fine silk..."
Jennie shook her head. "I'm hardly a noble, sir. Just a student." She was trying her best to ignore the awareness spreading from where his hands wrapped around her foot. Come on, Jen. He's a thick-skinned, rude man seven hundred years your senior. He shouldn't be commenting about your skin, or be close enough to sample it for himself. And you shouldn't be having so much trouble breathing.
"Let me see your other foot." He suited action to words, lifting her foot and checking the sole. "This one is unmarked, but both should be washed, and you must be shod." He sat with his hand linked around her ankle, as if deep in thought. "There are none here with feet so small as yours. We will send for a cobbler come day."
Jennie tried to breathe normally and control the fluttering in her belly. It was ridiculous, this feeling of instant attraction. He no doubt had rotten teeth, and she already knew he---and all his brethren, for that matter---smelled like a locker room at half-time. It could only be that he'd shown her kindness in this storm she was experiencing.
Tibald's head flicked to the door and his hand jerked away from her leg. Jennie followed his gaze and saw Napier standing in the doorway, his eyes narrowed.
"She has cut her foot."
Napier grunted, advancing into the room with the ewer in his hands and a loaf of bread under his arm. He set the ewer on the table next to the basin with a thump and let the bread drop beside it.
"It should be washed, and she will need shoes." Tibald had not moved from where he knelt in front of her, but Jennie slowly removed her foot from his knee.
Napier's disapproving sidelong glance made her feel ashamed, as though she had somehow sullied Tibald.
Napier gestured with his chin at the basin and ewer. "She has water now. We must do as we were bid, and not have further speech with her."
"It will do no harm to tend a fellow creature's hurts, Alain." Tibald's face tightened and he reached to the table behind him for the basin, which he set at her feet, then added a small amount of water. He looked up at Jennie, who had not moved. "Soak your foot."
Reluctantly, imagining a million bacteria swarming the cut and single-mindedly seeking her bloodstream, Jennie obeyed. There's no hope for me---if I'm not killed by Payraud or a rat bite or some contagion spread by fleas or lice or tainted wine, it'll be an infection from a cut on my foot.
"Do not use our order's oath of charity as an excuse to---"
"Alain!" Tibald glared over his shoulder. "Speak civil words or hold your tongue."
"I seek but to remind you of your own oaths, Tibald."
Tibald got to his feet and clapped Napier on the shoulder. "Fear not for my soul, my brother." There was mirth in his voice, and Napier's own lips twitched in a smile.
"It's not your soul I fear for, my companion, but your virtue."
"Sullied long before yours."
"Never."
"She was a milkmaid, blonde and plump and eager. And your sister."
God, are men the same no matter where, no matter when? Jennie rolled her eyes and flexed her foot in the water. The coolness soothed the cut and she reached down to rub at her skin and rinse away the worst of the dirt.
Napier cuffed Tibald lightly alongside his head. "My sister would have made mince of you, boy."
"I hear she wields a sword better than you."
"But she can't throw a dagger half so well." Napier was jollied out of his black mood, and now he used that same dagger to hack chunks from the loaf of bread he had brought with the water. Jennie swallowed hard, imagining rat blood tainting each chunk, though she had watched him wipe the blade. He tossed a wedge to Tibald, who caught it one-handed with a grin and took a bite like a shark's.
Maybe not rotten teeth then. She shook her head at her own idiocy. Even when she'd been sick with a high fever two years before, her dreams had not had such a surreal intensity. This couldn't be real, and yet it must be. She couldn't continue to doubt the evidence of her own senses.
She half-rose, stretching to reach for the wine on the nearby table. The least she could do was to rinse the cut with alcohol, no matter how watery. The two men were near the door talking quietly, but both turned when they heard her breath hiss through her teeth as the alcohol stung in the cut, which was bleeding somewhat freely.
"What are you doing? There is plenty of water still in the pitcher." Tibald and Napier both came to stare down at her.
Primly, her bare leg across her knee, Jennie spoke. "The alcohol in the wine will disinfect the cut. If I'm lucky." She wasn't sure she had translated disinfect properly, and, at their looks of confusion, was even less sure. "There are ... um, invisible creatures in dirt that cause sickness. The wine may kill them."
The two men looked at each other, and Napier shrugged. "She speaks like our old Saracen chirurgeon. He often washed wounds with wine or mead. Even ale."
"The knights he cared for recovered more often," mused Tibald. "Mayhap there is something to it." To Jennie, he said, "Do not waste good wine, however."
"And eat your bread before another rat comes to dine." Napier's tone was droll, but Jennie knew it was meant to amuse Tibald, while mocking her at the same time. I thought you were jealous of Tibald, and that he disliked you. Now here you are like old school chums. Men. I'll never understand them.
Jennie shifted on the bed so her cut foot could air-dry, and dipped the other into the basin to wash it as well. Napier's glance slid down her body to her bared legs, reminding her that decent medieval women did not expose themselves as she was doing. Gritting her teeth, she ignored him and bent to her foot. When she had finished, she dried her hands on a corner of one of the blankets Tibald had brought, and tucked her feet beneath her on the bed, safely out of the reach of rats, and out of sight of Napier's judgmental eyes.
The men finished gnawing the hunks of bread, and both took long swigs from the wine. Jennie watched the muscles of Tibald's throat move as he tipped his head back and swallowed. Napier caught her watching and narrowed his eyes again. Nudging Tibald, he jerked his head to the exit.
"We would be better guarding her from without."
Jennie bit her lip. Much as she disliked Napier, she didn't want to be left alone again. But Tibald was nodding and setting the flask on the table, so she gathered up his cloak, holding it out to him. "I thank you, sir."
He smiled with a graceful bow, one hand to heart, one hand to hilt, and accepted his cloak from her. "You are welcome, lady."
This is what it means to swoon. Harrison might open a car door for me once in a while, but he's not what I'd call chivalrous. Jennie should have found Tibald's clichéd action laughable, but instead, because it was so earnest and honestly meant, was overwhelmed. She tried to chastise herself for her starry-eyed idiocy and could not. Way to go, Jen. Travel back in time and fall for an ideal. Who's sworn off women.
Napier plucked the torch from the wall sconce as the two men headed toward the door, and, at the realization she would be in utter darkness again, Jennie cried out. "Please! Leave the torch."
"You will set fire to something." Napier took it into the hall with them.
"I promise I won't touch it. Please."
Tibald paused in the doorway. When he replied, his voice was sympathetic. "We cannot risk it, lady. You will have moonlight for a time."
"Please! I ... I'm afraid of the rats."
"Alain has seen to that." Tibald did not bother to hide his chuckle, and out in the hallway, Napier snorted. Tibald began to close the door, and, at this, Jennie rose from the bed, ignoring her hurt foot, and padded swiftly to him.
"Then leave the door open, if you will. Take the torch, but let me have the light from the hallway!"
"Tibald, come away. Heed not her pleas. They are the blandishments of a demon."
"Please!" Without thinking, she put her hand on Tibald's arm, feeling the prickle of hairs at his wrist. In an instant, Napier's hand had seized her own and bent it back at the wrist until she went to her knees, gasping. Tibald's hand was nearly as swift, freeing Jennie from Napier's hold.
"Consider your actions, brother." Jennie was stunned to hear a curl of menace in Tibald's voice. "She came at our summons, where we had called for aid. Harm her not."
"Consider your actions, brother," Napier hissed back. "She has besotted your wits. She preys upon your weakness."
"Mayhap." Tibald helped Jennie up almost thoughtlessly, his attention focused on Napier. She shot to her feet like a cork rising through water. "But judge me not."
"I am your companion. It is my duty. You would do the same for me."
Jennie took two steps back as the men argued. She held up her hands, palms out, fingers spread wide. Tears threatened again and spilled as everything that terrified her came out in gasping sobs. She struggled with the language. "I do not seek to cause ... strife. It's just that I'm afraid. I'm far from home, in a place I don't know, out of my own time, with no one to help me. All I want is to return there, but I don't know how. Please don't fight. I promise I won't try to escape, and I'm not trying to---to seduce anyone, or come between you in some way. But it's so dark here, and there are ... there are ... rats, and God knows what else!"
"Lady ... Jeanne. Weep not." Tibald caught at her hands.
Jennie clutched him as if he were a lone spar floating in a stormy sea and bowed her head against his chest. It was foolish and stupid and childish, and she couldn't help herself. Behind Tibald, Napier made a disgusted noise and she heard him hawk back in his throat, followed by a wet splat against stone.
"Be it on your head, Tibald. I watch from without."
Jennie struggled to control the storm of emotion that swept over her, but the past hour's fear and confusion was overwhelming. Tibald's chest rumbled as he spoke words of comfort that she could hardly hear, much less comprehend, and his hands were warm on her back. The work-roughened skin of his palms made tiny snagging sounds as it brushed over the silk of her robe.
Eventually one hand settled between her shoulder blades and the other at the back of her waist. There was no crowding close to him, not with the hilts of various weapons protruding from the belt slung low at his waist, but just his nearness and warmth steadied the world. His scent was a complex brew of hard-worked male, wool and oiled leather, and the briny odor of iron. It should have repelled her, but instead the smells spoke of strength and solidity and provided a needed link to reality, proof that she wasn't dreaming.
He was only a few inches taller than she. Her brain, always running like a hamster in a wheel, fetched disparate and useless facts and offered them like hazelnuts for her consideration. It's poor nutrition in the Middle Ages. Rampant disease. But while Tibald and Napier were not the six-foot giants of modern America, they were strong as bulls. Their speech was rough and simple, but not uneducated, and only somewhat tainted by superstitious or religious twaddle.
Payraud had proclaimed he would wait until morning to question her, but Jennie sensed she needed an ally, someone to take her side. Let Napier snort and deride, warn and fork the sign of the evil eye at her ... she would tell Tibald everything she knew or suspected. Perhaps the telling would cement the reality in her own mind.
She lifted her head from his chest and put her palm where her tears had wet his tunic. "Forgive me."
"There is naught to forgive, lady. Will you not sit? You are injured."
Jennie smiled weakly. Nice of you, but it's nothing compared to what's about to happen to every Templar in France. "I will sit, kind sir, but I must speak with you."
Tibald ushered her to the bed and spread one of the blankets on the rough ticking with an efficient flick. Jennie sat down, looking up at him as he shook out a second blanket and draped it around her shoulders, closing it in front of her. She permitted the relative intimacy, trying to hold his gaze, even as he seemed to grow uneasy.
"We will speak in the morning."
"There is urgency," she insisted, sniffing back the last of her tears. "It concerns the Templars. And the king."
"Lady..." Tibald moved away, but she put a hand on his wrist again. He froze.
"Please. You don't have to say anything, just ... listen." And maybe tell me I'm insane, or fade away like the dream you must be.
Outside in the hall Napier cleared his throat. Tibald closed his eyes briefly, and Jennie knew he was torn between duty and curiosity. But he didn't pull away, so she began speaking, struggling for the right words.
"The king's sister by marriage, Catherine de Valois, is ill. Soon she will die, if she has not already. Your order's grand master is Jacques de Molay. He will travel to Paris for the funeral, and the day after that---Friday the thirteenth of October---every Templar in France will be arrested. The king has issued writs. He seeks to destroy your order, Tibald. The knights have too much power, too much money."
Tibald's gaze riveted on her face, and without looking she knew Napier had moved to stand in the doorway of the room to listen.
"There is less than a month to prepare your order. The king's envoys are already traveling through France, delivering their writs to his seneschals and deputies. Lives are in danger ... your entire way of life at risk. Your fortunes. Your holdings. All will be confiscated by Philip."
"Are you a seer? Are your words true?"
"I am no seer..." Jennie frowned, trying to think of a way to explain what had happened to her. "I am a student, as I have mentioned. I do not know exactly how I came to be here among you, but here is the truth as I know it." She took a deep breath. "I come from a western land, a land that won't be discovered in your time, or even in your grandchildren's time. I know it looks like magic---it seems that way to me, also---but I am no seer, no witch and no demon. You are here in the year 1307. I am from the year 2007, seven hundred years in the future. The story of the Knights Templar is legend in my time. Your secrets are no longer entirely secret."
"She speaks treason, brother," said Napier. "'Ware."
Tibald did not react to the other knight's comment. "These are grave charges to lay at the feet of our king."
"I know. I would not speak them did I not believe them to be true."
"What more do you know?"
"The order will fall ... the king wishes to break the back of the Templars' power. I have reason to believe he is responsible for the death of Pope Boniface. He is the one who put Clement on the papal throne. The Templars have financed wars, set kings and popes upon their thrones. You are too powerful, and Philip the Fair will end your reign himself."
"You say he has sent out letters?"
Jennie nodded. "All over France, calling for the arrest of every Templar."
"A month from now."
"Friday the thirteenth. And there is worse---there is a spy among you already, an agent of the king. A man who joined this Temple since July."
Tibald sucked air through his teeth and put a hand to the hilt of his sword. "Alain, go and find our commander. If she speaks the truth, this cannot wait."
"He is surely abed. Let it wait for morning light."
"Very well then, I will go." Tibald suited action to words, leaving Napier gaping after him.
It was dawn before the interrogation with Payraud ended. Jennie's brain was sucked dry of every last scrap of information. After the hours in the torch-lit darkness, drinking wine and nibbling on chunks broken from the loaf to avoid the cut edges where there might be rat blood, Jennie was dizzy and sick with exhaustion and dehydration, and her throat was raspy from all the talking. She liked Napier less than ever, weary of his devil's advocate stance and his slanderous comments regarding her motivations and morals.
Payraud seemed to value the input of both men. Tibald, who was so patently on her side, though confused by what she presented as the facts of the situation. Napier, who cast doubt on her least words. During the interview, Payraud sat stiffly on the stool next to the table, his hand on her journal. She had asked twice to have the journal returned to her, but he had refused.
When the pearly light of dawn filtered into the tower room, she was finally out of words. She couldn't tell if Payraud was convinced, but thought she had detected discomfort each time she mentioned the subject of the letters sent out by King Philip. He knew more than he was telling. All three men looked knowingly at each other when she mentioned the king's agent. And, of course, there was the fact the knights had been asking God for help when she arrived. She could not help but think they already suspected something of what she was telling the three men.
None of the men seemed to comprehend that she had come backward through time. They believed her insane or deluded, in the cases of Payraud and Tibald, or a lying witch, in the case of Napier.
She wasn't sure she believed it herself, even after what amounted to a defense of a doctoral thesis, hours of questioning and reasoning her way through the morass of data and the shock of finding herself seven hundred years in the past. What had once been a hobby, the romantic study of the Templars, their secrets and their bloody end, might now save her life.
With dawn came bone-deep exhaustion. Even breathing was a chore---each breath seemed to pull drowsiness deeper into her veins. She swayed with fatigue, and at last Tibald put a hand on Payraud's shoulder and spoke quietly in his ear. Payraud nodded and rose, slipping Jennie's journal into the pouch at his belt. With regret she watched it, and him, leave the room. She needed that journal to recreate her ciphers and try to send herself home. She'd done what she felt she must in warning the order, though she had no idea whether her efforts would have any effect. All she knew was that she'd violated the tenets of every time-travel science fiction television episode she'd ever seen---she had tried to alter the past.
When Tibald, with Napier looking on from where he leaned in the doorway, pressed her backward on the bed, she did not protest. She hardly felt the itchy weight of another blanket settling over her, so quickly did sleep take her under.
When Jennie woke, the yellow quality of the light in the tower room seemed to indicate late afternoon. Her bladder insisted she find a bathroom, or its medieval equivalent, in short order. She sat up, swinging her feet to the floor, and discovered someone had put shoes on her feet. They were soft, shapeless leather booties with thicker soles. They looked just like the high-topped moccasins she'd seen in religious paintings from the period and appeared to be unworn, with pristine soles. She marveled that she hadn't wakened when someone touched her. She hoped it was Tibald who had laced the shoes onto her feet. The idea of Napier touching her with his ratty hands made her shiver.
The door to the hallway was closed. Jennie was alone. Glancing around the room, she saw more than she had last night. A pottery commode---nothing more than a crude thick-walled bowl---waited under the table where the basin, ewer and wine flask stood. Scowling, but with her bladder giving her little choice, she used it, feeling clumsy and unhappy. The realities of medieval Paris had destroyed her dreamy ideals. She poured water into the basin---someone had emptied last night's water---and washed briefly.
A noise from outside the open window caught her ear. Crossing the room to the embrasure, she noted that her foot seemed not too much the worse for wear.
In the daylight she saw that her window looked out over the Templars' complex, acres filled with church and chapel, charnel house, dormitories and farm buildings. Below she saw a series of lawns, and a few sheep nibbling here and there. A goat busily scratched its flank on the stony corner of the building across the way. A wall, crenellated and marked by turrets, surrounded what she could see of the preceptory.
Jennie looked her fill, swept away anew by the excitement of experiencing her scholarly passions in person. While her doctorate involved medieval French literature, in her free time, she'd gorged on the legends of the Templars. The prospect of seeing the legends for herself, and perhaps catching glimpses of real illuminated manuscripts in use, or even in the process of creation was intoxicating. She leaned out and saw the source of the noise that had attracted her.
The Templars were drilling.
She had known they were militaristic, but this late in their history she'd expected them to have grown soft and hedonistic in their moneyed splendor. Payraud's knights still knew how to use their swords, as she had seen last night, and today she saw them moving in formation about a parade ground just below. It seemed to be the end of their exercises, for they were filing into the building just across the grass. She watched until the last of them had disappeared, then she turned to her door.
Would it be locked? Was she a prisoner? She put her hand on the latch, which lifted easily. She pulled the door open.
Outside was a young man, much younger than Tibald or Napier. He had been sitting on the landing, his back to the hallway wall, in what light was shed from one of the windows in the spiral staircase at the corner of the tower. When she opened her door, he scrambled to his feet, leaving his dice on the floor. His hand went to the hilt of his sword.
Jennie bowed slowly, keeping her eyes on the youth. "Good afternoon."
"Lady."
"I would like to find Monsieur de Bergère or de Payraud, if you please."
He nodded, his fringe of unwashed, curly hair falling forward over his eyes. He seemed young indeed to Jennie, a colt compared to the warhorses Payraud had set as her guard last night. "Warden de Bergère asked me to bring you to sup when you wakened."
"Then I am not a prisoner?"
His gaze slid away from her. "He did not say, lady. Just that you are not to be unattended for any reason."
"What is your name?"
"I am called Boudin."
Blood sausage? she wondered. She looked at him curiously. Perhaps it was a nickname or perhaps he was the child of a butcher. In either case, it didn't matter---she needed to find Bergère and continue trying to wheedle her journal out of the master of the Temple. She saw no other way to return herself to her own time, and tempting as it was to explore the here and now, she must get home again.
She realized the youth's gaze had been moving over her from head to foot. She flushed, crossing her arms over her breasts. Still in her bathrobe and nightgown. Scant covering indeed for a woman of the fourteenth century. "Have you a cloak I might borrow, Monsieur Boudin?"
"Just Boudin," he corrected, huskily. "Warden de Bergère left a gown for you." His head tilted toward her room, and his too-big Adam's apple bobbed in his throat.
"Oh." She bit her lip and retreated, gently closing the door.
The gown lay on the foot of the bed. She'd taken it for just another blanket, in its anonymous, slubby beige wool. Jennie lifted it in both hands and carried it to the window. It was shapeless and sack-like, with long sleeves and a long hem. She shook it out the window, hard, hoping to dislodge anything that might be living inside. Dust and fuzz blew from it, but nothing more frightening. She pulled it over her gown and robe, which might protect her skin from the harshness of the wool.
Sighing, she stood. Now I've got my makeup on, I'm ready for the world. Ha.
Boudin escorted her down the twisting staircase. Jennie kept close to the outer wall where the treads were widest and her footing, in the floppy boots, most sure. At the bottom of the stairs, Boudin took her out into daylight, and she looked around her with pleasure at the blue sky, breathing deeply of the fresh air. No contrails crossed the sky, no jet engine noise or the ambient rumble of highway traffic met her ear. She marveled at the quiet, broken by the clangs of what might be a forge nearby, and the bleating of goats.
"Watch your step," Boudin advised, gesturing at a mound of dung before her. He took her arm in his grasp.
A footprint marred the heap, and she wondered whether a knight had stepped in it while marching. Once again reality broke in on her fanciful musings. She avoided the mess and kept her eyes on the ground after that, trying hard not to think about crossing this stretch of ground in the dark the night before. God only knew what she had stepped in; Napier had given no quarter.
Boudin led her down the same hallway as the night before, into the hall where men sprawled, eating and gaming and talking. The room was smoky and filled with the odors of stew and ale. Her stomach knotted and saliva filled her mouth. She clenched her hand over her belly, biting her lip as her presence attracted the attention of every person in the room. Her gaze flickered desperately over each face, seeking the one safe haven she knew.
Tibald de Bergère sat on a bench in the far corner, and even from where she stood, Jennie saw his face change when he caught sight of her. He pushed to his feet and crossed the room swiftly. Her breath snagged in her lungs as she watched him stride toward her so purposefully, his tunic clean and white with the red splayed cross over his heart, belted at his narrow waist, the laces of his boots wrapped over his round calves in their leggings.
He was a fine figure of a man, this knight. Jennie felt her pulse rocket into the stratosphere. Her strongest instinct was to meet him halfway, hurrying as fast as she could, to be close to him and the safety he represented. She controlled the impulse, but only because Boudin's hand was still linked around her arm just above her elbow.
Tibald's gaze passed over her and she flushed, aware of how the shapeless dress hung on her, and wishing she had thought to use the belt of her robe to cinch the waist. He smiled as he saw her feet in the shoes. Arriving at her side, he nodded to Boudin and took her arm himself. "You will be hungry. Come, we will sup together."
Jennie looked around at all the male eyes fixed on them as they crossed the hall. Some were blatantly speculative, others narrowed in dislike, still others were frankly curious. She dropped her gaze to the floor, as much to avoid the stares as to avoid the bones and offal tossed amongst the rushes. Thank God for the shoes. She was horrified to think she'd hurried through this mess last night. It was probably where she'd got the cut on the ball of her foot.
She took a seat on the bench when Tibald gestured. His own trencher was filled with stew and chunks of bread. A tankard stood nearby. He pushed both toward her. "Eat, Jeanne."
"Oh, but this is your meal---"
"Eat." His eyes lingered on her face briefly, then skimmed over her hair. "I neglected to find a kerchief and girdle for you. I will remedy that."
Jennie touched her braid, fuzzed from her time abed. She must look a wreck. "A kerchief?"
"You cannot go about bare-headed. It is not seemly."
She recalled that more than one religion---even in her own times---required women to cover their hair, as if by concealing its beauty they could control the desires of men. In reality, what was hidden became all the more alluring, much like the Victorians aroused by the forbidden sight of a neatly turned ankle or the glimpse of bare legs.
"Did you bring me the shoes? I must thank you."
Tibald nodded, then pushed the trencher another inch closer. "Eat."
It hasn't killed him ... it probably won't kill me. Jennie eyed the platter. There was a wooden spoon at Tibald's elbow, but he picked up a crust of bread and scooped it through the stew before lifting it to his mouth. She watched it disappear, his lips framed by the neatly trimmed beard, and had to look away. How did his sandy beard make his mouth seem that much more sensual, a mouth made for hours of kissing, or shaping words of love? She gulped, swallowing the rush of saliva that had filled her mouth at the sight of food, and reached for the spoon.
Did she dare ask what sort of meat formed the basis of the stew? She prodded at what looked like a root vegetable, took it up on the spoon, and decided it would be best if she did not know the details of what she was eating. Bravely she took a bite, and Tibald nodded his approval. It wasn't bad, though it lacked pepper. It was pungent with garlic and onion. Her stomach received the first bite with a growl of welcome, which Tibald heard.
With a chuckle, he pushed the tankard toward her as well. The ale was cool, though not chilled, and cut the grease from the stew's gravy nicely. When a few more bites had taken the edge off her ravenous hunger, she ventured a question.
"What will happen to me now, Tibald? What does your commander have in mind?"
Between bites and sips, he chewed while obviously musing over her question. "He has not said."
She repeated the question she had asked Boudin. "Am I a prisoner?"
Tibald's eyes slid away from hers. "Not exactly, though you are not to be left unattended. Napier or I or Boudin will accompany you always."
She put down the spoon and looked him in his gray eyes, noticing faint lines at their corners, the product of a life spent out of doors. "I must have my book back so I can try to get home again."
His thick lashes shuttered his gaze, and he took a deep drink of the ale. "Commander de Payraud has your grimoire."
"It's not a grimoire. I'm not a witch, just someone out of her rightful place and time. I must get home again." She reached out and put her hand over his where it rested on the table. "Please, can't you understand?"
The trencher was dragged away from them across the table, clattering wood against wood. Napier emptied a bowlful of stew into it and slammed a small crusty loaf down on the table, glaring at them both. Jennie withdrew her hand, angry at the guilt Napier's stare made her feel.
"The entire hall can see you sharing your plate with this temptress, Tibald."
"We are doing nothing wrong!" she sputtered in fury. "It's only your vile imaginings that make it seem so. I don't understand why you're so convinced I'm evil."
Napier curled his lip and ripped off a chunk of bread before commencing his meal. "I see the shameful effect you have on my companion."
"Hold your tongue, Alain." Tibald drew a deep breath. "We have been given the task of guarding the lady and we will perform our task with all proper respect."
"And one of us will enjoy it more than the other."
Tibald's face tightened as he looked at Napier. Gone was the easy camaraderie she had noticed the night before. Jennie anxiously interposed. "Gentlemen, I have no wish to be a cause of discord between you. Therefore, if we might visit Commander de Payraud, so that I may request he return my book---"
Both men's shoulders relaxed slightly, though Napier's lip remained curled when he replied around his mouthfuls. "The commander is very concerned that your grimoire should not fall into the wrong hands."
"We will not discuss this now," said Tibald. His gaze went to the men seated near them at another table, and Jennie recognized one of them as the man---Maillet---who had accosted Napier the night before.
Jennie bit her lip. It seemed she could say or do nothing right. She felt the pressure of tears behind her eyes and angrily fought them back. The stew sat like a stone in her belly, but perhaps enough ale would numb her, even if only a little. She reached for the tankard, ignoring the stares as she drank the whole thing down.
My second night on this dreadful bed. What I wouldn't give for a decent wash and a clean pair of panties. A hairbrush, even.
From where she lay on the lumpy pallet, Jennie could just see the landing where torchlight reddened the stone walls. She smelled the torch's pitchy smoke, glad of the fresh night air from the open window. Tibald cleared his throat quietly. She was glad it was Tibald watching over her as she slept, and not Napier. She wondered what he was doing and how he kept himself awake. Turning onto her side and scooting to the edge of the bed, she could just see his boots and leggings and knew he was seated where he could watch the approach from the stairs.
After several more minutes of wakeful tossing, she gave in to the impulse that had nagged at her for an hour and rose, pulling on the boots without lacing them, and wrapping the topmost blanket around her. She padded to the doorway. Tibald turned his head to look at her.
"Another rat?"
She smiled. "Not since the one Napier spitted."
"It is night. You should be sleeping."
"I am wakeful. Can I come and talk with you?"
His brows drew together and then smoothed. "Of what do you wish to speak?"
"Oh ... anything. Your favorite foods, what you were like as a little boy, when you first held a sword." She crept past the door and bent to settle herself on the cool stones next to him.
"Why should that interest you?"
"It's lonely being locked up here." She watched his lips quirk in a smile, and felt warmed by the response, and emboldened to speak further. "So when did you first hold a sword?"
His finger traced the knobby hilt of the sword lying on the floor on the side away from her. "I shall tell you instead of when I was given this sword. I cannot remember when I first held a sword. It was always expected of my family. We serve. My father before me, and his father."
"I thought Templars didn't marry?" Her scholar's soul was fairly trembling. The opportunity to learn first-hand all the things she had only speculated about excited her. Too bad you'll probably never get the chance to put all this in your dissertation, Jen.
"We are not all Templars. Besides, some knights do marry, or become knights late in life after wedding and fathering children. Many never returned from the holy wars after falling in love with infidel Saracen women, or beautiful Jewesses."
"Then why does Napier make such a fuss---"
Tibald's amused gaze flicked to her. "Did you want to talk of marriage, or Alain, instead of swords?"
Jennie blushed. Do I want to talk of marriage? Not exactly. But I do want to sit here with you, feeling your warmth, and learning the grace of your hands while you talk. Aloud, she said, "No."
He brought the scabbard to lie across his lap, the grip pointing toward Jennie. It was simple and undecorated, except for the tooling on the leather that wrapped it. The pommel was marked with the splayed Templar cross on one side, and the Greek letters chi and rho on the other. The rho was superimposed on the chi, the upper loop forming what looked almost like the skull in the Templars' skull and crossed leg bones glyphs. Jennie made a mental note to quiz Tibald about the skull his fellow knights used in their meetings---did it truly speak? And if so, had it spoken as she tumbled among them, newly shot from Minneapolis?
"My father's father brought it from the Holy Land many years ago. He won it from a Maronite there."
"In battle?"
Tibald slanted her a charming smile with his eyes crinkled nearly closed. "A game of dice."
Jennie laughed. Her delight seemed to please him, for his smile grew wider.
"It is a fine sword, forged in the Lebanon. It served my grandfather well, and my father after him. My father taught me to fight with one of his heavier swords, but in my fourteenth year, he gifted me with this, his finest weapon. It defeated many an enemy for him."
"And for you?"
"I have never traveled east to war---by the time I was of age, the Holy City of Jerusalem had fallen from Templar hands. The farthest I have been is to Cyprus."
Jennie's eyes widened. "When did you go?"
"Twelve years ago, when I was fifteen. I went with my father as his squire, in service to Master de Molay."
She considered the image of a teenage Tibald, earnest and quiet, sandy-haired and still mostly beardless, and smiled. "Did you see battle?"
His gaze turned away. "A little. They are bloody things, battles. Not what I had expected. Nothing so easy as training with my cousins ... God does not simply give His warriors the victory." He shook his head. "It was while we were in Cyprus that my father introduced me to the Templar mysteries and had the pommel of the sword stamped with these emblems. Two years later he was taken by a fever. I returned home without him, came to Paris and sought to become a knight of the order."
"And did you?"
"I cleaned stables and cared for horses for another two years before I was admitted into the secrets." His tone was wry and yet nostalgic.
"But all along you had your family's sword, and I'm sure you continued to practice."
"Of a certainty. Alain was here as well. We were squires together. How strange is your speech. Truly from elsewhere."
At the mention of Napier's name, Jennie scowled a little. "He does not trust me."
"Napier trusts no one. He is made that way."
"He trusts you."
"That is different. A knight must trust his brother, for who else would stand at his back in battle? Alain has known me longer than any here except for Master de Payraud, who raised us both in the order."
There was a long pause. Jennie realized Tibald was not the sort who needed to fill a silence with chat. At last she asked the question she had been longing to ask. "Do you trust me, Tibald? Believe me?" Her hand touched his drawn-up knee, and after a moment, he put his hand over hers, squeezing it briefly. His touch was warm, the skin rough with work.
"Let us say I cannot yet disprove your words."
"Are you trying to?"
"Not truly." He squeezed her hand a second time, then lowered their linked hands to the floor between them. It seemed to her that he was reluctant to release her, but he did, and she brought her hand back to her own lap. "There are many mysterious things in the world, and I think perhaps your coming is one of them. I cannot explain how you know what you know. Yet something tells me it is the truth."
"It is!"
"If you are correct, we are all in grave danger."
"You will all be imprisoned. Tortured to confess. Killed for your supposed crimes. I couldn't let that happen without trying to warn you, even if no one listens." In her anxiousness to be understood and believed, she crowded close to him, looking him in the eye. He met her gaze, stoic and calm.
"This frightens you."
"It should frighten you as well!"
"The king's men will not harm a woman, Jeanne."
"You cannot know that, Tibald. The king is desperate for power. In telling the Templars what I know, I have set myself between him and his goal. God help me if he discovers what I have done." The full scope of what her actions would mean to Philip the Fair dawned on her at last. "He may already have heard. We know not which of your newest knights are loyal to the king."
His gray eyes were gentle as they moved over her face, scanning from her brow to her lips and chin and back to her eyes. He cupped her cheek. "You are brave as only a woman can be," he said softly.
Jennie fought the urge to lean into that strong hand, and lost. His touch was a comfort like nothing she had ever known, and it startled her even as it soothed her. "I am not brave at all. I'm so frightened, and I ... I want to go home." Tears fell, and she heard his heavy sigh. When her forehead leaned against his shoulder, he didn't stop her or try to make her sit upright away from him. Instead, his hand moved to stroke over the back of her head and down her shoulder, as if she were a fractious horse requiring a soothing touch to settle her.
She drew up her knees, still leaning her head against him, and whispered, "Tell me more. Tell me about a sunny day when you were happy. Tell me about when you learned to read and write. Tell me---"
Jennie heard the smile in his voice when he spoke. "What? Shall I tell you of my farmhouse childhood? Stealing eggs to throw at my cousins? Or blocking the pond so the water flooded the paddock where my father's warhorse dozed, switching flies with his tail?"
"Yes. Those things."
"You think these will keep the fear at bay."
"Yes." And maybe this desperate loneliness. She twisted to look up at him. His face was filled with gentle indulgence. This close, she could see the individual hairs of his eyebrows and beard, the creases in his lips, the fringe of lashes, a small scar on his forehead. Her cheeks grew warm as she continued to stare. Her thoughts drifted to places they should not---he was so near that she could have kissed his mouth with little effort.
And oh, she wanted to kiss Tibald. His mouth drove her mad with the desire to trap it with her own, explore its strong curves, feel the rush of his breath. Shake his ironclad composure to its roots. She imagined herself twined in his arms, clutched close in the urgency of passion, and her eyelids grew heavy. Could he sense what she wanted?
She thought perhaps he could. He focused on her mouth, and the tip of his tongue slid out to wet his lips. Jennie's stomach clenched and then melted in a sweet rush. Tibald's arm came around her and she was certain he would kiss her. She had even tilted up her face and closed her eyes, but instead he settled her against him, pressing her arms hard against her sides so she could hardly move them. He began to speak, and this time she knew for certain she had affected him. He cleared his throat more than once, and stared resolutely at the wall across from them as he told her of stealing eggs and hiding them until they were weightless and rotten with age, then throwing them at his cousins.
She missed most of the details, lost in her disappointed thoughts. The tale ended with Tibald's somewhat forced laugh, and she laughed with him, still disconcerted. Her feelings and desires had been quite evident, hadn't they? Yet he hadn't succumbed in the least. Embarrassed now, she tried to concentrate on his stories.
They talked until the torch guttered low, past the hour when Tibald mentioned he should wake Napier for his turn at the watch, and still they talked. Jennie left her discomfort behind, caught up in the fascination of Tibald's life---indeed, the facts of medieval life altogether---and shared her own stories of growing up. Learning to drive a car---what a car even was. Getting stitches at the hospital after a minor accident. Dancing with boys. Airplanes. Toilets and running water. Being snuffled by the soft, wet nose of a circus elephant. Tibald listened, like a wide-eyed child, asking questions or shaking his head in disbelief, until finally they ran down, two clocks whose windings were spent. The torch sputtered and went out, but Jennie did not see it. She slept at last, her head pillowed on Tibald's shoulder, wrapped in her blanket with her feet tucked under her. The Paris night had grown a little friendlier, a little kinder, if no less dark.
Morning found Jennie back on her pallet, covered with both blankets and far too warm. She had not put herself to bed a second time.
Tibald carried me, and I never even woke. The thought both thrilled and terrified her. She scrambled from the bed and crept to the door, opening it softly.
Napier looked at her from where he stood leaning against the wall. "Your breakfast awaits you, madame. Commander de Payraud felt it would be best if you didn't dine with the men again during your stay, so I have brought it here."
"I did nothing untoward at the meal."
Napier's lips pursed. "Perhaps not. But too many eyes noticed you. Perhaps even the wrong ones, if you spoke the truth about the king's agent."
"You mean, too many eyes noticed me with Tibald."
Napier's lips shifted to an unabashed smirk. He bent and lifted a tray from the floor. "Perhaps a little time dining alone will prompt your memory for the name of the king's agent." He handed her the tray, and when she took it to her little table, closed the door firmly behind her. She glared at the door, hot with embarrassment and anger, knowing herself innocent, but feeling guilty all the same.
You've got to get over this infatuation, Jen. It's stupid. Tibald was just being kind; he's not really attracted to you.
Stupid, yes, but painfully real nonetheless.
With a muttered "harrumph," she plunked the tray down and ate in sullen silence. Try as she might, she could not summon the name of King Philip's agent in the Paris Temple. Had she ever read it, or was she just remembering a more general fact? She knew the king had sent an agent to each of the twelve preceptories in France. But what were their names?
Young Boudin brought her supper. It was stew again, with more ale. Jennie already had a headache from the ale at breakfast, and the wine Napier provided at midday. Boudin was easily cajoled into sharing her supper and chatting. He ate like any teenager, shoveling quickly, hardly chewing, talking around each mouthful. From him, Jennie learned her guard rotation would be fairly standard---Tibald from late in the evening until dawn, Napier from dawn until afternoon, Boudin after that. He, too, admitted Payraud was concerned they had already revealed too much.
"But it may be that the king's agent was at the commandery meeting the night I ... arrived. The damage may have been done immediately. Or even before I arrived."
Boudin shrugged, chewing with vigor and mopping up the last of the juice in her trencher with a crust. "Still, keeping you here is safer."
"Not to mention easier."
He flushed at her tone, but did not deny the truth of her comment. "You do not expect us to jeopardize the Temple for one woman, do you?"
Her eyes flicked to his earnest, pimply face. "No," she admitted slowly. But inside, she thought, Yes. Listen to me! Take action ... do something to save yourselves! But perhaps they had listened. Immured here in the tower, how would she know?
At least Tibald would have the night watch. He would allow her the light of the torch, but best of all he would talk with her and help pass the miserably long night. And maybe he would put his arm around her again. It was such a small thing to hope for, but suddenly it seemed the most important thing in her world.
On the fifth morning, Tibald at last assented to Jennie's desperate pleas to leave her room for the fresh air of the preceptory grounds, if she would remain completely covered by the hooded mantle and speak to no one. He agreed to escort her, ignoring Napier's surly derision while they changed the guard in the early morning. Once out of the tower, Tibald sauntered alongside to match her shorter stride, clasping his hands behind him. Jennie relinquished her silly fantasy of the knight escorting his lady, arm held out before him with just the tips of her fingers resting on his arm. Instead she asked innumerable questions, which she could tell first took him aback, but he warmed quickly to his subject, pointing out what she knew, from her studies, to be the charnel house. They passed the chapel and hospital, turning to walk along the cemetery. There Tibald paused, drawing his sword to salute those buried in the hallowed ground, and bowed his head in a brief prayer.
Jennie, never religious at the best of times, blinked but respected his silence. As they walked, she noticed the trees on the preceptory grounds showing patches of fall color. One was a bright, clear yellow on its uppermost branches. Birch? Her tongue roamed across her teeth, as clean as she could make them with a rag she had moistened, but she had read of people cleaning their teeth by gnawing on the brushy ends of twigs. She broke from their path to head for the tree, only to find her wrist captured by Tibald.
"Where are you going?"
She gestured with her chin. "Isn't that a birch tree?"
His gaze moved slowly from her face to the tree and back. He nodded.
"I have a fondness for ... uh, chewing birch twigs. They are sweet. May I gather a few?"
His brows drew together in confusion. "Twigs? Jeanne, what foolishness is this?"
Her shoulders drooped. "I need a toothbrush. You don't have those here."
"A toothbrush? Such as you might use on your hair?" His gaze went to where her long braid dangled out from the hem of her kerchief.
"If I had such a brush, yes."
"Very well. I will fetch one for you." He moved toward the tree, his hand still linked around her wrist. Captive, but hardly objecting, Jennie moved with him, stupidly pleased when his grip shifted and he caught her hand. It was easy and pleasant to close her fingers around his and feel that unconscious grip returned. I am such a schoolgirl. What a stupid crush, to be so taken by holding hands. But the quickened beat of her heart was enough. She wondered if he could feel it and decided she wanted him to feel it, wanted him to know he could make her pulse race. She wanted him to see her as more than someone to be kept sequestered and under guard.
Tibald plucked a whippy twig and presented it to her with a slight bow, as if he had given her a rose. With a smile, she bowed in return. She nibbled the severed end to crush the wood into a fibrous brush. It felt wonderful to clean her teeth with something besides her washcloth. The birch twig had a faint sweetness to it, something like sassafras or root beer. Tibald watched her, bemused, then broke a twig for himself to gnaw.
"Humph," was all he said, but he didn't toss the twig away.
They resumed their rambling, crossing the remains of old trenches leading away from the center of the preceptory, where the Templars had long ago drained the marshy land granted them by King Louis VII nearly two hundred years before.
Across an expanse of grazing land loomed what Tibald called the Dungeon, a massive tower that dwarfed the one where her room was. Four stories pointed skyward, flanked at each corner by turrets capped with pointed roofs that made them look like freshly dipped candles. Jennie had read about the Dungeon, where, at one point, the treasury of the Templars had been stored. Was it there now? Excitement widened her eyes and she caught at Tibald's sleeve.
"Is that where you store your treasure?"
His mouth quirked up, and it took only that to instantly derail Jennie from more coherent, scholarly thought. The real treasure of the Templars was standing in front of her: a man whose sandy hair glittered like gold in the sun; carnelian-red mouth smiling at her from its gilt-bearded nest; strong shoulders squared and straight; a ready, graceful hand at his hilt. Here was a man who believed in the ideals of the order and sought to make himself, already a good man, better.
If only she could think of something besides coaxing him to toss away that one particular oath of chastity...
"That depends what you mean by treasure, Jeanne." He looked down at her and once again she was struck by the relative nearness of their heights. She was not a tall woman, but Tibald stood only about five-eight, she guessed. That brings his mouth into easy reach. I am an idiot. I should be thinking about getting myself home, not getting myself into bed or forming attachments. He's probably got fleas anyway. Her hand was still on his arm and now he urged her over the grass. "It is where we store some of the funds and assets of the Temple. It is well-guarded. Not even the monarch comes there unescorted."
"The order has more money than King Philip. It's one reason he seeks to bring you down."
Tibald nodded, frowning slightly. "I do fear what you say is true, Jeanne." He bent his arm and pulled her hand through the crook of his elbow. "The footing here is uneven. The sheep keep the grass short, but sometimes the pigs root."
Jennie bit her lip to hide her smile. The footing was beautifully flat---Tibald simply liked having her near. Her stomach fluttered a little and inside she laughed at her girlish excitement.
Their walk took them past the Dungeon tower and the knights standing guard at its doors. As they rounded the southeastern corner, Tibald turned west. He nodded his head at the long, low U-shaped building before them, built of stone and wood with a large courtyard. "The master's house."
At last Jennie's good sense kicked in. Perhaps here was a chance to retrieve her journal. "Commander de Payraud? Is he in residence? I have not seen him since I first arrived."
"The property belongs to Jacques de Molay as the master of all France, but since Molay prefers his home on Cyprus, Payraud is its custodian."
"Could we visit him, Tibald? I would like to speak with him again."
Tibald shook his head. "He is away from Paris on business." From the firm, tight line of his mouth, Jennie guessed she would get nothing more about Payraud from Tibald at the moment, and wondered if the master of the Paris Commandery was truly away on business---or engaged in some secret work to prove or disprove the truth of her allegations.
"The courtyard looks lovely. Could we have a closer look?"
He hesitated, and Jennie feared he would refuse, but he nodded and agreed.
The courtyard did not host any of the preceptory's livestock, though there was a grassy lawn sharing space with flagstones. Fruit trees shaded the yard, some with late apples still glowing among the slow-turning leaves. Jennie heard the drone of wasps, sleepy in the afternoon warmth and half-drunk with the cider in the overripe fruit.
"I could spend hours here, reading." She nodded to a stone bench that collared the oldest of the fruit trees. "If I had any books, that is." She felt a pang when she thought of the shelves upon shelves of books in her apartment in Minneapolis. Would she ever read them again?
Tibald leaned against one of the walls and watched, arms folded, as she moved about the courtyard. Jennie was conscious of his gaze upon her, a sensation somewhere between warm honey and electricity. She glanced through the wavy, thick glass of a window, but the gloom inside showed little detail. A furring of lichen and moss grew in a few of the chinks of the stone of the walls, soft to her fingers as she trailed them over the stone.
"Warden de Bergère! There you are."
Jennie turned at the new voice, seeing Tibald straighten from the wall with a jerk, as if woken from a dream. She bit her lip, realizing his entire attention had been focused upon her. It was Maillet, whom she remembered seeing in the dining hall. Tibald met him and the two spoke in low voices. She turned back to the window, cupping her hands around her eyes to shut out the glare of day.
The room inside was a study of some sort. Through the distorting glass, she could see a few books lying on a long, heavy table, along with bottles that might hold ink and quills in a shallow wooden box.
Payraud's office, perhaps?
My journal! Her heart raced. She looked over her shoulder. Tibald and Maillet were deep in conversation, their backs to her. And only a few feet away was a doorway. Quickly she sidled into its shadow, trying the latch.
It lifted.
Jennie closed her eyes, gathering courage. This might be her only chance. She pressed gently at the door, willing it not to screech like a trodden-upon cat, and slipped inside the moment the gap was wide enough. Closing the door, she waited, listening for signs of someone else in the house. When her vision adjusted to the dimness, she saw that the books on the table were bound and latched vellum, thick and cumbrous. In the courtyard, Tibald was still occupied.
It's not stealing if I'm retrieving my own property, she told herself. Her search was necessarily hasty, but she did her best not to disarrange the contents of the room. The journal was not on any of the shelves, nor in the two cupboards she opened, though she found a number of other books that cried to her scholar's soul to be opened. Illuminated manuscripts ... new ones! She shoved her longings aside and continued her search.
Nothing. Nothing! She was afraid to open one of the two doors that led to other rooms---she would surely be caught. Jennie turned wild eyes on the table. Perhaps one of the books piled there was a diary, holding clues. Her fingers fumbled with the latch that held a bound vellum book closed, and it sprang half open like a live thing, sudden and pale as a mushroom in the grass after rain.
It wasn't a diary, but neither was it entirely useless. The random page she opened was like a shout from Fate, for there was the series of letters she had run through her inside-out cipher to Hebrew and thence to Greek. Her mouth went dry. With the exception of her journal, this was the single most useful piece of information she could have found. Would unscrambling the letters yet again take her back to her own time and place? Or did the swirling currents of time require a particular confluence of events---like the ones that had brought her here?
She flipped quickly through more pages, but found only geometry and biblical references. "God forgive me this desecration," she whispered, turning back to the page she needed, and tearing it from the book. The vellum parted from its stitching with a series of pops, leaving chips behind. She folded it in half before slipping it up her left sleeve to lie along her forearm like the long cuff of a gauntlet. She was struggling to press the book closed when the door banged open and Tibald came rushing in, his dagger drawn.
With a gasp, she froze. Caught, utterly, in the act.
After realizing the room was empty save for the two of them, Tibald stood there, his face a dark glower. With a glance into the courtyard behind him, he closed the door. He strode across the stone floor and spun the book to face him, taking in the symbol on the front in a glance. He jammed his dagger into its sheath and quickly closed and latched the book.
Jennie slid aside to keep the table between them. She could see his anger, and was that worry furrowing his brow and tightening his lips?
"What do you think you're doing, Jeanne? Women aren't allowed here. This is our library." As he spoke, he moved around the table toward her. She watched his hands, seeing they weren't clenching in anger, and moved away, though slowly, allowing him to close the gap. Something in his purposeful movements made her pulse gallop madly---it wasn't all anger, there was something more there, something darker but sweeter, something forbidden to him. She wanted to be caught by him, was excited by the excess of emotion she saw on his face. Her actions had broken through his eternal courtesy and restraint.
"I only want to help. I swear, Tibald! I need my journal, and I thought---"
"You need to return to your room." Tibald rounded the corner of the table and took her by the shoulders, turning her to face him. Her light woolen mantle, carelessly draped around her and not fastened at its neck, slid from her shoulders and spilled over his hands. Beneath, she was wearing the ill-fitting sack dress, with her cotton nightie under it to save her skin somewhat from the prickles of the wool. Tibald's gaze went to the gaping neck of the dress and the low-necked cotton with its delicate frilled edging. Jennie heard him snatch his breath and was suddenly desperate to catch his gaze, even though she was fearful of what she would see there.
"I only wanted to look for my journal---I thought perhaps Master de Payraud had stored it here. I know I shouldn't have crept in like a thief, but I can't stay in this century. Don't you see?" Now she did look up and meet Tibald's gray gaze.
His hands tightened, then slid up her arms, bringing the mantle with them. He fumbled for a moment at her neck, unsuccessful at closing the brooch of the cloak. This close, she saw the muscles of his throat work in a convulsive swallow. She thought he might speak, but no words came. He was uncharacteristically clumsy and silent. To fill the uncomfortable silence, she babbled on.
"I know you think I'm mad, that I'm imagining being from the future, from somewhere else, but I'm not. It's real. I'm real. You're real. The danger to your order is real. All I want to do is help! There aren't many days left." She took a deep breath and instantly realized her mistake when his gaze went to her rising cleavage and then leapt back to her eyes with a guilty flick. Jennie couldn't be sure he was blushing, but there was a strange tightness near his eyes and lips.
"I don't think you're mad. Mistaken, perhaps, or misled by some wicked demon. It's I who am mad." Once again he tugged her cloak closed, but since he didn't fasten it, the moment he released the cloth to take hold of her shoulders again, it gaped open.
"You?" She shook her head.
"You don't understand, Jeanne. I am a knight of my order. I have taken oaths. I have made promises. But every time I see you I struggle to remember them." His hands bit deep at her shoulders and a long, slow breath to control his emotions whistled out his nostrils.
Jennie didn't pretend to misunderstand his words. She knew he fought with his instincts when she was near---he had done so since the moment she appeared in the midst of their commandery.
"Then help me find my journal, and I'll try my best to return home. You have heard everything I can tell you about the doom laid upon the Templars by your king. It's warning enough, so if I can go home again I must try."
Tibald's hands clenched convulsively on her shoulders and jerked her a half-step closer. "But don't you see, Jeanne? That is precisely what I don't want. I shouldn't feel this way. My will should be stronger than my flesh. But I don't want you to leave, and I don't know what to do about this except---except---"
Clearly there were no more words for either of them. Jennie found herself speechless, but also unable to speak, for Tibald bent his head and his mouth crushed hers with a pressure that revealed his frustration, anger, and despairing defeat. Part of her exulted in his fracturing control. His grip kept her from moving her arms, though every instinct told her to touch him, offer comfort, sweetness, pleasure ... As the kiss went on and she felt the hardness of his teeth behind his mostly-closed lips, Jennie realized, to her surprise, that though Tibald was ferociously pressing his mouth to hers, he had no real idea how to kiss. Only impulse drove him, and it was the same impulse that pushed couples to deeper and deeper penetration in sex: the urge to be close, and closer still, for each to be inside the other, experiencing every sensation to its fullest.
I could teach him what I think he wants to know. I could show him what it means to kiss, and be kissed, and touched. The knowledge shocked her, along with the depth of her sudden wish to be the woman who cleaved this sternly chaste man from his vows.
In the same moment she felt herself gaining control of her surprise at his obvious inexperience, Tibald pushed her away with a harsh growl that sounded more bestial than human. She blinked, startled anew by the cessation of the violent kiss, and staggered. His grip kept her from falling.
"I cannot." He shook his head. "I will not. I am sworn." He stared at her, lines of tragedy marking his brow and cheeks. He released her, wiping his hands on his tunic as though touching her had soiled them.
Jennie fought down her fury at his reaction---she was neither unclean nor sinful, just a woman who wanted a man who wanted her in return.
She heard her own bitter laugh. "Is this where you call me a foul temptress, as Napier would do?"
Tibald stared at her. "Jeanne!"
"I am not evil. Just ... modern. And female. But look how you wipe your hands after touching me, as if I'm unclean."
He turned his hands palm up and looked at them, then looked at Jennie. "It is not that. Not you. Me. I am the unclean one. And I do not trust myself."
She looked at him for a long moment before stepping close to him. Wariness flared in his eyes as her hands lifted toward his face and cupped his bearded jaw. "It should be enough that I trust you, Tibald." She knew what a crystal glass might feel like, vibrating at such a pitch that without proper care, she would shatter. If only Tibald would give her two minutes---even one, perhaps---she could change the dynamic of their relationship forever.
"You should not trust me, Jeanne." His voice shook. She saw his pupils, already large in the relatively low light in the study, slowly widening as she stroked her palm along his jaw line, feeling the wiry hairs of his beard. He wore his beard shorter than many of the older Templars she had seen. It lay sleek against his skin. She had felt its prickle as he kissed her and flushed to think what it might feel like touching her elsewhere.
"Shhh." She laid a finger across his lips to silence more objections, meeting his liquid stare. "Like this..."
Jennie did not quite have to tiptoe to touch her mouth to Tibald's, though he was resolute and did not bend his head to meet her. Her finger brushed to the side and her lips replaced it with the gentlest of pressures. A rush of air met her as Tibald exhaled, immediately afterward taking a sharp breath. She tilted her head and kissed him more firmly, eyelids half-mast. With the increase of pressure, Tibald's hands clutched at her. The troublesome mantle slid down from her shoulders again and with a frustrated mutter he fought free of it and hurled it aside before he caught her ribs in a painful grasp. He took control of the kiss, mouth pressing roughly against hers, and Jennie shook her head and spoke with her lips still on his.
"Stop, Tibald. Let me."
He drew back to look at her once more, consternation clear on his face. Men did not permit women such liberties, such outrageous, sensual leadership. Yet he waited. Jennie stroked her right thumb over his lower lip, tugging it down, and left her thumb there when she kissed him once more, her own lips warmly parted. The tip of her tongue slipped out to explore the sinful, sharp-cut arches of his upper lip.
Tibald shuddered and jerked as though she had touched his naked cock. His breath came short, hissing past his teeth and lips. Jennie could feel the restraint required to hold himself still while her mouth and tongue and the pad of her thumb controlled his mouth, opening it as she desired, guiding him.
Tibald was not the only one profoundly shaken by the experience of lips pressing sweetly together in a slow and tender exploration. Jennie had expected to find herself pleasantly excited by the novelty of kissing this knight, whose sensuality was deeply buried. Part of her had continued to believe she was caught in a long, elaborate dream of the past and would waken, but never in her dreams had she experienced such sensory overload. She felt his bearded cheeks in her palms, the softness of his sandy hair woven between her fingertips, the thrum of his body as he strove for control and fought with his own instincts. She wondered if he could feel her racing pulse in her fingers.
Could she really be in Paris of 1307, seducing a Templar in his own preceptory? The thought raced further. Was seduction truly her aim? And was she more attracted to the man himself, or the idea that she might be the cause of Tibald's breaking faith with his oaths and his order?
Sometimes it was hell being an intellectual. Here she was, unable to stop her clockwork brain from ticking over all the possibilities when, by rights, she should be enjoying the moments in Tibald's arms, riding the flood of passion that swelled like an incoming tide. With a murmur at her own didactic tendencies, Jennie settled closer to Tibald and slid her arms around his neck, uncaring about the vellum tucked in her sleeve. As she did so, the tip of Tibald's tongue touched her own and froze at that intimate contact.
Jennie took advantage of the moment to slide her tongue alongside Tibald's and was rewarded with another convulsive twitch of his body and a renewed clenching of his hands at her ribs. Yet he did his best to allow her to instruct him, waiting for her next move as though he were under a spell. Jennie repeated the slow, wet silk glide and waited. He tasted of ale and bread, and the faint sweetness of the birch twig he had chewed.
He still hadn't quite grasped the idea. Jennie darted her tongue further into his mouth as a prelude to a soft, rhythmic suction, drawing him forward playfully. Tibald's tongue brushed over her lips and she opened them further, inviting him in.
From the instant his tongue was drawn into her mouth, Jennie could feel his body's violent trembling. She thought he had separated his feet for better balance, but instead he suddenly leaned heavily against her and the next thing she knew he was falling to his knees, taking her with him. His legs had simply failed him in the onslaught of sensation. Jennie marveled to think her relatively tame kisses had stricken him so.
Their new position kneeling on the stone floor left her off-balance, clinging to Tibald. His hands began to roam, learning the curve of rib and waist and hip. She made a quiet, encouraging sound of pleasure into his mouth, and when his left hand slid downward and cupped her buttock through the rough gown and nightie, made another. He needed no other invitation, nor any further lessons. His movements nestled her closer at last, until they were body-to-body and Jennie could feel his arousal, rigid and swollen, against her abdomen.
Oh.
Oh.
She gasped and twined closer. Tibald shuddered, his arms tightened around her and he groaned. "Jesu. Jesu Christe, Jeanne!" He lifted his head away from hers and stared down at her.
Jennie saw the wetness their mouths had shared glistening on his lips in the watery light from the courtyard window. The sight made her weak and she closed her eyes, her head falling back. Tibald cupped the back of her head and returned her mouth to easy reach.
He was a quick study, and eager.
Tibald's hand slid upward and came trembling forward to cup her breast in his palm. Her nipple hardened as his thumb brushed across it. His thumb returned for a second exploration of her burgeoning nipple through the cloth, ringing it. Jennie returned the favors, caressing his firm buttocks and considering cupping his erection in her hand. That seemed so forward, though the socio-sexual mores of the twenty-first century could in no way be applied to the fourteenth. Moments later she didn't need to make a decision, for Tibald clutched her snugly against him with all his formidable strength and began to bend her backward over his arm. It seemed he meant to lower her to the floor, and an image of this knight parfait gentil, his body above hers, their cloaks forming a tangled bed, his reluctant but overwhelming passion, blinded her.
Tibald moved his mouth from hers, once again taking control of the embrace, and trailed hot, open-mouthed kisses over the skin of her neck and into the sagging neckline of her dress. He tugged the neck aside to give access to the smooth skin of her breast, gazing down at the soft curve that shuddered gently with each hammer blow of her heart.
Jennie saw the desire plain in his eyes and felt it in the way his pelvis pressed hard to hers, moving ever so slightly, seeking the friction they both longed for. Tibald met her gaze.
Just like that, the embrace was over.
Tibald released her after ensuring she had her balance, then he rose and staggered away from her, walking stiffly, to press his face against a cupboard door.
"Tibald?" Shaken, wanting so much more, yet frightened that she had pushed too far and ruined the fragile trust between them, Jennie got to her feet with care not to trip on the dress's trailing hem. "Tibald?"
The palm of his hand shot toward her, blocking her approach. "Do not," he warned her, his voice thick with intense emotion. "Do not. I am sorry, Jeanne. I should not have touched you."
"It was my fault." Jennie could hardly believe she was fighting back tears.
"You are but a woman, a weak and frail thing. I am responsible for this debacle."
"Debacle?" Tears changed in a flash to anger. "Debacle?" Ignoring his outthrust hand, she grasped his wrist and pulled to make him face her. "I don't know about you, but---but that was one of the best kisses ever, and---and---I didn't want it to stop."
Now he did turn, and with a simple twist freed his arm from her grip. He did it with grace and economy, as if she were not holding him at all, though she had held as tightly as she could. Jennie realized anew that his strength was real. Tibald was a trained man of war. He kept himself fit and toned and strong as a Templar should, and in comparison she was indeed weak and frail. Had he chosen to take her there on the rough stone floor, she would have had no defenses. Instead, this deeply passionate man was bound by something even stronger than his flesh---his integrity. Though he had protested that his flesh and his will were at war, she knew that his head ruled his body. It wasn't what she had expected to find in a fourteenth-century man.
"I'm sorry, Tibald," she whispered. "It won't happen again. I'll ... I'll go back to my room."
"I will escort you." He reached out to straighten the neck of her gown where her breast was still exposed, and she saw with bitter pleasure that his hand shook. "Get your things."
As she reached for the fallen cloak, the corner of the vellum peeped from the cuff of her sleeve. She flushed darkly at her own treachery, swallowing hard, hiding her emotions by swirling the cloak around her and fastening it properly. Tibald moved to the door to await her, and she betrayed his trust a second time, snatching a quill from the table and concealing it in the folds of her mantle. Hopefully one quill would not be missed.
She followed him through the preceptory grounds, moving quickly to keep up with his agitated strides. He did not speak again. Back in her room, she watched from a seat on the bed as Tibald prodded at her fire and added three short logs. The day was warm and she did not require the extra heat from the fire, but she understood his need for action.
"I am truly sorry," she said at last, unable to bear the tense silence.
Tibald looked at her from where he crouched on the flat hearth. His gaze moved slowly over her, starting with her feet, then drifted toward the pillows. His mouth tightened. He rose without a word and went from the room, for once closing the door completely.
Jennie gazed after him for a long moment before she extracted the page of vellum and carried it to the window seat where there was light. It was indeed the series of letters she had translated once before.
She wished she'd been brazen enough to steal the ink from the study as well. Moving to the table, she fetched the ewer to the hearth, where she scraped soot from the ashes into a small pile and moistened it. She mixed it thoroughly, then daubed the quill in the black puddle. With tight lips she began the laborious process of recreating the Atbash cipher and her Greek and Hebrew alphabets on the back of the page, continually blowing on the wet sooty marks to dry them, ready at any moment to shove the vellum into hiding.
There was no way to know whether recreating "I am the door" would return her to Minneapolis. But in truth, she wasn't certain she wanted it to work. Her thoughts kept returning to those forbidden minutes in Tibald's arms, when she felt him throwing restraint aside. A tear ran along her nose and smudged her untidy work, and she scowled. At last she closed her eyes and surrendered herself to sensation, however thinly recreated by her own imagination. She could have him, in her thoughts and wishes, regardless of how shameful he might think them were he able to peer into her mind.
Four days later, Jennie lay on her bed, staring up at the ceiling, defeated, tired, bored and angry.
If I had my journal, this is the entry I would make. September 26, still in fucking Paris, God damn it. There must be more to time travel than simply perverting an alphabet or two. Imagine that.
Tibald won't speak to me, not even late at night when there is no one to hear. Napier is pleased by that development. I take my meals in my room like any good prisoner. I am half drunk all the time, too much wine and ale.
I miss the radio. I miss potato chips. I would kill thirty men for one bite of dark chocolate. Forty for a cup of bad coffee. Fifty for a bath in a real tub, with soap. One hundred for a single squirt of shampoo.
The noise of men drilling again drew her to the window. She opened the closed shutters and leaned out, surprised by the strength of the breeze rushing past the tower. Below, the knights were mock-dueling, striking in a rehearsed rhythm, in strokes called by a burly knight who stood on a mounting block where he could watch the men before him. It was a strange ballet, a violent contra dance. Pairs of men hacked away at each other, most with wooden staves, but a few with their swords.
Even as she marveled at the brutal grace of their movements, her eyes were seeking Tibald's form amongst the two dozen men below. She leaned out for a better view, then gasped as the wind tugged away the kerchief from where she had draped it like a shawl around her shoulders. The streamer of cloth fluttered downward, twisting and contorting, catching the eyes of those below.
Jennie cursed, too late to reach out for it. One of the men looked past the escaped kerchief to her window, meeting her eyes.
Tibald.
He was shirtless, sweating, his hair bound back from his face in a club. Even from where she stood three stories up, she could see the smooth, clenching curves of his muscled arms and torso. Things she had only felt through his clothing when they embraced a few days ago. She had seen the grace of his movements before, in his walk and when he interposed himself between her and Napier, but his drilling showed a fluidity and tethered ferocity she had not even imagined.
What would such a trained body, such strength and singleness of focus, make Tibald like in bed? His kisses had been inexperienced at best and that probably would translate to similar inexperience with sex itself, but he'd been a quick and earnest learner, honest and attentive in his passion, and in her own experience it was that attention to detail that mattered most in bed. A hot throb of purely sexual need speared her abdomen as she stared, and he stared back.
Too late he saw his dueling partner's---Jennie's overheated brain registered Napier's dark hair and whippy build---sword slip past his guard, and even though Napier struggled to pull his stroke, the edge of his sword slid along Tibald's ribs, opening a cut that immediately streamed red. Napier's sword clattered to the ground and Tibald looked down at himself in astonishment.
Terror and dread ripped a hole in Jennie's soul. She spun from the window and pelted for the door, startling Boudin who was drowsily tossing his dice again. She slipped his grasp as he reached for the flying tail of her dress and raced down the stairs. At the bottom of the tower, she had to stop to struggle with the heavy door. Boudin was only a half second behind her, and he put his hand over hers on the latch.
"What do you think you are doing, lady?"
"Tibald has been wounded! I must see that he is well. It was my fault that Napier's sword---"
Boudin looked at her wild-eyed face with amusement. "Tibald? Wounded by his companion? I think not. They are too evenly matched. The finest knights in this commandery."
Jennie yanked at the door, succeeding in opening it only a few inches before he leaned on it and pushed it closed again. "I saw the blood myself. I saw the sword, it cut him just here!" She drew a line on her own ribcage, breasts thrusting forward, and Boudin blushed darkly and looked away from her.
"Lady, you should return to your room---"
She had no patience for his boyish sensibilities and embarrassment. "Boudin, I must see to Tibald! The barbarities you call medical treatment---he will die from that if not properly cared for."
At last her panic seemed to penetrate his brain. "Wait here. I'll see if what you say is true." He left her alone in the anteroom, but soon returned. "There was an accident indeed. But all will be well---Napier is tending his companion's wound at the hospital."
"Forgive me if I do not trust---" She bit her tongue to stop herself from slandering Napier. Much as she disliked him, she had no reason to think he would harm Tibald out of spite or anger. She affected a more demure look and tone, casting her glance downward, and put soft hands on Boudin's arm. "Please, sir. It was my head covering blowing from my window that distracted Tibald from the practice duel. It is my fault he was wounded. Please take me to see that he is being properly cared for. I must apologize to him."
Boudin was clearly overwhelmed by her nearness. She pressed the advantage, leaning closer and looking sweetly sorrowful.
"Lady..."
"Please, Boudin. I'm so very worried." It wasn't a lie---she was nearly possessed by fear for Tibald. From where she had stood at her window, she couldn't tell if the wound was deep, just that it had bled profusely. "Please."
The youth hesitated, but acquiesced. "I suppose it will do no harm to prove to you he will be well. I will take you to the hospital, but you must promise me that afterward you will return to your room without argument."
"I promise," she breathed. "Thank you. Thank you!"
Jennie dogged his heels as he led her through the door and along the north wall of the tower. He led her into a cool, low building where she could see very little in the dimness. Ahead of her there was a commotion, low voices and the clattering of utensils. Boudin peered into two or three small rooms along the hallway and kept going. She crowded him, bumping into him as he paused at last, and trying to see past him.
From the room came Napier's voice, low and rasping. "I say to you it is a fault, Tibald, a fault near to oath-breaking. You think too much on her. A man so distracted is naught but fodder on the battle field."
Jennie was not fooled by Napier's accusative tone. Beneath it ran true concern and regret, a ripple of emotion that startled her coming from the sarcastic knight.
"We battle more in the court of the king these days than we do on the fields of faith."
"You are not listening. I tell you it is a fault, and must be corrected."
"She is like the sun, Alain---it burns me to be near, but it destroys me to be far. I cannot help myself."
"Calf-love. Naught but foolishness. The trick of a sorceress."
Jennie sensed Boudin's nervousness at overhearing this conversation, so intimate in its way, and so incriminating to Tibald and herself. She could almost hear Boudin's hero-worship of Tibald clattering to the floor like so much broken crockery. The warden of a commandery should be beyond reproach, honorable and true, a pillar of strength, able to counsel others against submitting to the sins of the body.
For her own part, the words thrilled her and frightened her at the same time. They had shared so much intimacy in their nighttime chats and the soul-stealing kisses when Tibald caught her rummaging through the commandery's library. Yet in the most basic of ways they knew nothing about each other. Centuries of time and change separated them.
Boudin shuffled his feet on the stone flags and spoke. "Sirs---she would come to assure herself the wound is being properly tended."
Jennie peered over Boudin's shoulder to where Tibald sat on a high bench, his arm lifted from his injured side and gripping the stone wall at his back. Napier was bent before him, dabbing with a cloth at Tibald's ribs. She had eyes only for Tibald, moving steadily past Boudin, though he reached out to stop her.
"I'm so sorry. Tibald, I beg your pardon! Is the wound very deep?"
Napier straightened and turned to stare at her, and in an instant everything she had ever thought about him changed. In the dark, tormented gaze of his eyes was the same horror she herself felt at the sight of Tibald's blood. A horror born of deep affection and grief at harming someone beloved. What she had not understood, until this moment, was that Napier loved Tibald in the same way that she herself was coming to love him. Her heart wrenched for the slim, dark-haired man. Together Jennie and Napier had wounded the man they both loved and wanted.
"Get out," hissed Napier. "You are the cause of this. Had Tibald not seen you, he could easily have parried my thrust."
"I know, and I'm sorry." The words were simple and plain, and they sapped the heat from Napier's gaze. "Please, let me help."
"I will care for my companion." Napier's voice nearly broke on the last word, but it seemed only Jennie was sensitive enough to hear it. Tibald gave an exaggerated sigh.
"Let her observe. What can it hurt? Her words about healing where she comes from have merit."
Napier's lips folded tight on whatever he might have said and he turned back to his task. Jennie moved to stand beside him, quizzing unrepentantly.
"Has this water been boiled? Is the rag a clean one?"
"I do not know." Napier dabbed at the bloody wound, which was already slowing to an ooze. "The rag seemed clean enough. There are more just there." His head tilted toward a wicker basket in the corner. Jennie bent to examine them. Satisfied, she turned to Boudin, still standing uneasily in the doorway.
"Go and fetch wine. Strong wine. Brandy would be better."
"Lady---"
"All is well," interrupted Tibald. "Do as Jeanne bids you. See if the cellarer will part with a little brandy."
"There is a cellarer here?" Jennie heard herself asking. "Of course there must be, a preceptory this large, and in France..." She peered at the wound and saw that while the skin was parted and gaping, the muscle sheath beneath appeared intact. It took everything she had not to turn away in shock.
I will not be sick. I will not be sick. I can handle this. They need me to handle this.
She reached for the wound, her first impulse to soothe, to comfort. But she remembered she had not washed her hands and drew back. There was a basin and ewer on a nearby table and she washed as best she could without soap, sighing for its lack. She was not a moment too soon, for immediately afterward Napier plunged the bloody rag into the basin to rinse it. Jennie stared in horror, realizing he had every intention of reapplying the rag to the wound. She snatched it out of his hand.
"Use a clean one, for the love of God!"
Both men stared at her and she knew she had offended them with her volume and near-blasphemy. Mumbling her apologies, she tried to explain about infectious bacteria, only to falter into silence as they continued to stare at her in confusion.
Get a grip, Jen. This is where all the books in the world won't help you.
She carried the basin down the hallway to the outer door, where she pitched the pink water onto the grass before returning and refilling the basin.
Boudin panted into the room, holding a corked, dark brown bottle out to her. Jennie worked the cork loose and took a sniff. The pungent scent of fermented apricots made her nod.
Tibald reached out for the bottle, obviously intending to take a swig. Jennie shook her head.
"For the wound."
"Fie," said Napier. He snatched the bottle from her and handed it to his companion. "I must stitch this. He'll need the dulling."
Jennie could not look away as the muscles of Tibald's throat worked. Several swallows went down before he drew in a gasping breath and bared his teeth in satisfaction. Napier took the bottle and lifted it to his own lips, but Jennie stopped him. "Indulge me for once, Napier. Your hand will be steadier if you're not half drunk. And Tibald will be all the better for the cut having a splash of brandy, too."
Napier stared at her yet again, this time in anger. "You dare speak so to me?"
"I do!" She stood as tall as she was able, her hands on her hips, glaring. "These ideas of cleanliness and proper medical care are ridiculous. No wonder so many people die from the complications of simple wounds. No, Napier---you'll do as I say this time, and Tibald will be well and heal as he should."
The two men exchanged glances. Tibald shrugged, and Napier let out a gusting breath of pure aggravation. Boudin shuffled his feet nervously, which broke the silence.
"Go and find her head covering, Boudin," said Tibald. "She cannot roam about like this for long."
"Sirs---"
"Go!" Napier added his voice to the command.
Reluctantly the youth obeyed, and the three remaining shared another look. Tibald's gaze locked with Jennie's, and he groped for the brandy in Napier's hand once again. More long swallows, his cheekbones reddening with the heat of the liquor, before he thrust the bottle at her. "Do what you must," he told her.
"Lie back then. It will be easier if I can pour directly onto the cut." She looked at Napier. "This will sting. Hold him down."
"I do not need to be restrained like a calf being castrated."
Jennie rolled her eyes. "I have never seen so much machismo in one place," she muttered to herself in English. To the knights, she said, "As you will."
Tibald lay down, and Jennie fetched another cloth from the basket, tucking it under his ribs and back where it would catch most of the drips. She wanted to be sparing with the brandy, especially after Tibald had been so profligate with the bottle's contents, for she planned to use it again after the wound was stitched. Her stomach churned. She swallowed hard and put a hand on Tibald's bare, muscular belly to stabilize both him and her. His stomach was warm beneath her palm, and his skin twitched at her touch like a ticklish horse. Behind her, Napier exhaled noisily. Judge me all you like, sir knight. I know you'd rather be touching him yourself.
Jennie tried to ignore the dark-haired knight and moved closer to the bench. She fixed Tibald with a serious look, only to find that his eyes were already focused on hers. His gray-eyed gaze made her stomach flip again, this time with emotion. Unconsciously she stroked her left hand over his belly, keeping away from the wound, thinking only of soothing him before she poured the alcohol over the cut.
It was the wrong thing to do. There was an unmistakable movement from the crotch of his breeches. Tibald flushed wildly, the redness spreading rapidly from his hairline to his neck and chest. She watched with something like fascination until she noted the rapidly rising bulge at the top of his thighs.
Napier will certainly have something to say about that. Jennie lifted the bottle over the wound and poured. In her nervousness over Tibald's burgeoning erection, she splashed more brandy than she intended. He hissed through his teeth and reached to stay her hand. The pain had an immediate quelling effect on his arousal, much to her relief.
"Lie still a moment," she told him quietly. "Let the brandy do its work."
"I am not near drunk enough for this."
"The wound must yet be stitched."
"I can manage stitches. This burns like fire!"
"That means it is doing its work." She leaned across him, pouring the brandy in the thinnest stream she was able, watching as it rinsed away more blood down his side. At last she stopped, satisfied for the moment. "I'm sorry it hurts you, Tibald. Truly. As I am truly sorry to have been the cause of your wound."
"The fault is partly mine."
Napier grunted disgust. "While you doves coo, I will find needle and thread. We must close the skin. The cut is not deep, but it will not heal properly if left open like this."
Jennie ignored him as he left. She set down the bottle of brandy and moved where she could look into Tibald's face. "Truly, I am sorry."
He met her gaze again, dark pupils expanding. His hand lifted and unconsciously she took it, folding it between her breasts as she moved closer. He pitched his voice very low when he spoke. "I can still taste you in my mouth. It has been four days, and still I taste you."
Now it was Jennie's turn to flush. Heat swarmed over her skin like a cloud of stinging bees, but she did not look away. Her hand clenched convulsively on Tibald's. She, too, was haunted by their embrace in the commander's quarters. Even now, though he was wounded, she was perversely pleased by the effect she had upon his flesh. She was tempted to stroke the sweaty hair back from his brow and brush a kiss on his compressed mouth, but she knew Napier would return any moment. It was all she could do not to grit her teeth at the thought.
She tried not to hate Napier, especially given the stunning new knowledge of his deeper feelings, but it was difficult. He was so adamant in his opposition to her presence or her suggestions. She knew his words carried weight with Tibald.
I can still taste you in my mouth. The words fizzed through her brain like champagne. It has been four days and still I taste you. Jennie was still mesmerized when Napier returned, bearing coarse thread and a needle so large it gave her pause. The thought of the thing tugging what amounted to string through Tibald's flesh made her physically flinch, and redirected her thoughts to the task at hand.
"Let's soak the thread and needle in the brandy as well." She splashed a small amount in the basin and held out her hand. Napier's eyebrows climbed into his hairline, but he handed over the supplies after a nod from Tibald.
"I suppose you are also a surgeon?" Napier drawled, leaning hipshot against the bench where Tibald craned his neck to watch Jennie.
"No. Just a ... I suppose you might consider me something of a wise woman."
"I believe my word was witch."
Oh, such vicious spite. Jennie turned back from the basin, stifling a brilliant flare of fury. "I don't know why I keep hoping for better treatment from you, Napier, but I do. I respect Tibald's good opinion of you, even if I don't share it. Is it possible you could do as much for me? Could we have a truce, just this once, while we tend a hurt friend?"
Her words were quiet and as controlled as she could make them, but still a dark flush rose on Napier's face. He was silent, looking from Tibald to Jennie and back again. Her heart pounded a little. Can medieval women speak their minds this way? Is the basic relationship between men and women still the same, even centuries later? Do I risk a blow for my impertinence?
At last Napier bowed stiffly from the waist. "Then with your permission, madame, I will stitch my companion's wound."
"Yes," said Tibald. "And Jeanne will tell me more stories of the wonders of her land while you do so."
She heard a faint slurring in his voice that told her the large quantity of brandy was taking effect. It had lowered his inhibitions as well for Tibald stretched out a hand to her.
Without looking at Napier, but still feeling his stare as if it were his dagger in her back, she took Tibald's hand between both of hers. His fingers folded warmly over the back of her palm and gripped strongly. "Squeeze as hard as you must," she told him. "I won't mind."
In the end, Napier had to pull the bench away from the wall so they could stand one on either side. Napier stitched and knotted, sweating and gritting his teeth, and Jennie used Napier's wicked little rat-killing dagger---dipped in the brandy to his annoyance---to snip the thread. From time to time she paused in her stories of the fat Labrador retriever puppy of her childhood to hold Tibald down when Napier's work hurt him. She tried not to look when the thread dragged roughly through his skin, and most particularly not as Napier pierced with the needle, but she had to look when she cut the thread. She swallowed hard more than once, glad breakfast had been hours ago.
When the stitches were done, tidy but harsh-looking where they punctuated the lips of the cut, Jennie poured more brandy over Tibald's wound, pressing him down with her left hand when he hissed in renewed pain. Her hand lifted the bottle clear of his body and Napier snatched it, downing the last of the brandy himself. His dark eyes dared her to challenge him.
Jennie said simply, "You do good work, Napier," as she helped Tibald to sit so she could press a pad of rags to his side and strap it in place with strips of cloth. Napier narrowed his eyes at her, but said nothing, watching her finish the work of dressing the wound. "I could not have stomached stitching him up myself."
Napier shrugged, lowering the bottle. "I do what I must. He is my companion."
"Why were you not fighting with staves, like the rest of the men?"
The two of them looked at her as if she had lost her mind. Napier spoke first, his words a low murmur, careful of who might be listening. "With a traitor in our midst, you would have us deliberately weaken ourselves?" He turned a wondering gaze to Tibald, who curled his lip and scoffed at her as well.
"Staves are for learning. Swords are for fighting. All the practice in the world does no good if you cannot wield your blade when battle calls." He leaned forward and looped his arm drunkenly around Napier's neck, jerking him close. Tibald pressed his forehead to Napier's, looking him in the eye. "Thank you, my brother."
Napier stiffened and glanced her way. She couldn't tell if his look was one of triumph or one of acute embarrassment, but his voice was shaky when he spoke. "I regret you came to grief at my hands."
"Bah. Nothing!" Tibald slid off the bench and gave an experimental stretch. Jennie and Napier made abortive motions to stop him, but he grinned and shrugged. "I will mend, thanks to you both and that fine brandy. Now, where is that benighted apprentice with Jeanne's head covering?"
After the accident, Jennie did not see Tibald for six days. Napier and Boudin split the watches between them, Napier taking the nights and Boudin the days. No one else came near, and questioning Napier only got a mocking laugh for her trouble, except for the comment Tibald seemed to be healing. She was grateful Napier granted her that much grace, but the boredom of her incarceration began to wear on her. She spent her days dicing on the landing with Boudin when he would permit it, and making useless tiny scratches on the vellum when he would not.
It was from Boudin she learned Tibald had left Paris on a journey with Commander de Payraud. Boudin seemed to know nothing more about it, not even when bribed with half her meals for two days. He ate with a will and a grin, and let her play dice, but admitted to knowing nothing more.
One afternoon they were dicing---Jennie's score lagging, and Boudin laughing---when he suddenly cocked his head toward the stairs. Jennie listened too, her heart racing excitedly. Could it be Tibald, back from his journey? She got to her feet, as did Boudin, but the hand he extended toward her was cautionary.
"Go in and close the door. They have not given the sign." His voice was very low indeed, and Jennie whispered in return.
"But---"
"Do as I say." He drew his sword slowly, stifling its noise with his hand. Alarm crested inside her. It isn't October thirteenth yet. But what if all the history books didn't tell the whole story? Or what if I've actually altered history myself by being here...
"Go within!" This time there was no sign of the pimply, gawky youth Boudin had always seemed. Jennie saw the birth of a warrior in his stance and the determined set of his mouth. She obeyed, pressing the door nearly closed, leaving just a gap through which to peer and listen as Boudin eased silently down the staircase. Once he was out of sight, she had only her ears to report what was happening.
The sound of a scuffle rose up the echoing staircase, a brief clang of metal, and Boudin's voice shouting, "Beware!"
Then there was a meaty thud and silence. Jennie shoved the door closed with her heart in her throat.
Not Tibald then. The king's man? She groped uselessly for a way to lock or latch the door, realizing the mechanism was on the other side, meant to keep her in, not to keep someone out. Panting in fright she hastened to the table and dragged it across the floor, tipping it over and turning it on end, crockery shattering on the floor. She angled the edge of the table top against the metalwork of the door and wedged the other end against the raised lip of one of the flagstones, the way she might prop a chair under a hotel room door.
"Boudin," she whispered, "please be all right."
The door began to gape open and Jennie lunged to add her weight to the table. The movement ceased and a man spoke outside. "Madame, open the door."
Jennie was silent, trying to recall the voice. Hadn't she heard it before?
"You must let me in, madame." The door moved again. Jennie slammed hard against the table and succeeded in pushing the door closed, but only momentarily before the gap began to widen again.
"You have not given the sign," she panted.
The movement stopped and there was silence.
There was no password that they had told Jennie, but she hoped he had no way of knowing that. She stooped, groping for a broad shard of broken crockery---it looked like the rim of the ewer---and hefted it in her right hand, while she held the table hard against the door with her left and all her weight.
"Sophia," he said softly.
"Wrong." Someone come, someone please come ... Tibald, Napier, I don't care, someone!
"Madame, open the door. I must take you to safety. Commander de Payraud has sent me."
"What have you done with Boudin? I will not leave without him."
"I have relieved him. His days have been long of late." The door moved again, and this time she saw his fingers sliding around the edge of the door as soon as the gap was large enough. She lurched forward, but her weight was not enough to close the door on his fingers now that he had gained leverage.
With a frightened, sobbing gasp, she slashed at the fingers with her broken crockery and was gratified, though horrified, when blood began to flow and he let go of the door with a curse. Jennie shoved it closed again, holding her weapon at the ready.
She wasn't sure how much time passed before she finally heard a noise outside her door. She had been leaning against the table all that time, ready at any moment to fight again. Maybe it hadn't been necessary, maybe the knight had been sent by Payraud, but she couldn't believe it, not when Boudin had not returned. Jennie wanted desperately to open the door and hurry down to him, but she could not for fear the man was still out there.
"Open the door!"
Napier. She tipped the table upright again and nearly pulled the door off its hinges getting it open. "Napier! Quickly, quickly, I think he hurt Boudin!" She had never been so glad to see anyone in her life. She tried to get past him to find Boudin for herself, but Napier took hold of her shoulders and held her in place.
"Tibald has taken Boudin to the hospital."
"Then he is alive? Oh, Napier, Boudin had time to warn me, but I was so afraid someone---someone h-hurt him---"
"Did you see who it was?"
She shook her head, gulping, only moments from sobbing, and actually glad of Napier's grip on her. "I only heard him. It's a voice I heard before. But I..." She held up the bit of crockery and was startled to see blood on it. "I cut his hand to make him let go of the door."
Napier's peaky eyebrows went even higher with wicked delight. "Then we shall be able to find him. Well done."
Jennie was unpleasantly startled to feel warmed by Napier's praise of her wounding the miscreant. But before she had time to examine that feeling, from the stairs came a hasty stamping---someone running up them. Napier drew his sword and pushed Jennie behind him. The sword made not a single whisper as he drew it, which chilled Jennie to the marrow. She had not a shred of doubt that Napier would kill---and soundlessly, without a grimace of regret---if he felt he must. Boudin had drawn quietly, too, but he'd had to do it slowly and with his hand to muffle the noise. Napier's skill was nothing short of dreadful.
"Alain?" came the voice from without.
Jennie's knees went weak. Tibald was coming up those stairs. Tibald, Tibald. Napier was already on the move, and the two knights met on the landing.
"She wounded his hand. I shall find him. We will have him at last."
"Go carefully, my brother. Boudin is under guard---when he rouses, he will confirm his assailant."
Then Napier was gone, and Tibald was striding through her door, his gray eyes blazing, looking nowhere but at Jennie. His right hand shot out to slam the door behind him and then she was in his arms, crushed and crimped by the chain mail he wore, and his mouth was on hers, hard, so hard, desperate and consuming. The kiss hurt, but she would have it no other way. She had to fight to free her arms to wind around his neck, but once they were there, she held so tight he lifted her off her feet when he straightened.
When they broke for air, he lowered her to the floor again and shifted to catch her face between his hands and stare down at her with the most intense gaze she had ever seen. "Are you well, Jeanne? Were you hurt?" His voice was urgent, his speech rapid.
"I was not---but what of Boudin?"
"He will live." Tibald's mouth hovered above hers. "I spent the longest minutes of my life just now, not knowing if you were hurt or killed or captured---" His hands roamed over her, as if confirming for themselves that she was whole. There was an instant where his fingers clenched in the slubby wool of her dress and it was clear he fought his instincts, then he gathered the fabric in his hands and bunched it over her hips so he could spread his fingers over her skin. "Christe, Jeanne, tell me to stop."
Shuddering with heat and the last of the adrenaline rush from her struggle with the intruder, Jennie linked her hands behind his neck and pulled his head down. He leaned against the table, which skidded away until it crashed against the door, Tibald staggering after helplessly and towing her with him. He leaned there, his hands fighting her clothing, finding the soft fabric of her panties and shoving it aside. Jennie cried out urgently when she felt the rough skin of his muscular fingers pushing between her legs. She knew he could feel for himself how aroused she was, how wet, how hair-trigger ready. The eagerness she felt astonished her. She was hungry for him, hungry to feel more than just his fingers pushing into her, wanting to ride him or be ridden, to feel his body going so deep she would be branded by its touch.
"Stop me," he groaned.
"No." She crowded against him where his legs separated to keep his balance, lifting her knee to wrap her calf around his thigh. Her hands were free to struggle with the mail and fabric covering his crotch, and beneath the layers she could feel his penis leaping, fighting the constraints. "You want me."
"God help me, yes." He caught her mouth with his, his tongue shoving roughly past her lips. As her frantic hands at last found the fastenings that concealed his erection and brushed over the turgid flesh, he groaned into her mouth. "Jeanne, stop me."
"No," she said again. He hitched himself up onto the table, dragging her body between his legs. She pulled away just long enough to strip off her panties---marveling briefly that Tibald had not shredded them in his eager, inexperienced roughness, and stepped close again, cupping his erection in both her hands. "Don't ask me to be your conscience when I have wanted you every day I've known you."
His head fell back at her touch, and when he lifted it again to stare at her, his eyes were nothing but pupil, bottomless and blind with desire.
He reached for her, his hands sliding under the dress and her soft cotton nightie to catch her beneath her buttocks, and lifted her onto the table with him. She scrambled awkwardly, bending her legs to kneel astride his hips, her dress a pool in their laps. His hand fumbled between them, grasping his penis and groping for her moist, too-warm opening. She tried to help, but the angle was awkward for them both. She could feel the tip of his penis, like the new growth of a spring plant pushing from its frilled sheath, where she was hottest, wettest, most aroused. She shifted and that seemed to be all he needed for he brought both his hands to her hips and seated her firmly over his erection. Tibald stared into her eyes and worked her pelvis over him once, twice, a third time, and then he arched and she could feel his penis convulsing like something swallowing. His eyes closed in his bliss, but even as Jennie continued to move, seeking her own satisfaction with friction against his body, she knew his erection was quickly flagging.
He had come, and it was over.
Jennie nearly sobbed in frustration. His semen, what felt like copious quantities of it, drained slowly from where they were joined.
"Just a little longer," she pleaded. "Tibald. Please. Help me---" She saw the pleasure ebb from his face to be replaced by consternation when he opened his eyes to look at her.
And guilt. Don't forget the guilt, Jennie. You've had him---or rather, he's had you---and now he's guilty, guilty, guilty for you are a wicked woman, and he is but a breath away from being a priest.
As easily as he had lifted her into his lap, now he unseated her, his penis sliding from her wetly. She stood shaken and sick with unsatisfied desire in front of him as he hastily tucked himself out of sight in his clothes and then stood up.
"Tibald." She couldn't help it---his name came tumbling out of her, filled with desperation and unhappiness. The joy she had felt in seeing him, in being held, kissed, taken, vanished like fog before the sun. "Don't look at me like that. I only wanted to take my pleasure, as you took yours."
He stared at her, desire and confusion mingled on his features. "A decent woman does not take her pleasure from the flesh."
Of course. Back to the demonization of women. I'm a temptress. Fury flashed over her like the blue flames of gasoline fumes, hot and intense, and her French came out spotted with English. "What? Are you so inexperienced that you think women don't feel pleasure during sex? Do you think we endure---that---because it's our sacred duty?"
Tibald's cheeks pinkened. "I am not inexperienced."
"You could have fooled me." She didn't care how much she wounded him now. He was a chauvinistic idiot. "Where I come from, the man strives to pleasure the woman as much as she strives to pleasure him." She looked him up and down. "Clearly you took your pleasure." She paused. "Or perhaps you truly share Napier's low opinion of me, despite all your protests to the contrary."
"I have broken my oath for you."
"Yes, your sacred oath as a Templar, a man among men who hoard treasure and deny they take pleasure with women where they will. What hypocrites you all are. How many squires running around this preceptory are bastards and not apprentices by choice?"
She had gone too far, and she knew it. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, but she refused to take a step back out of range.
"You know nothing about us."
"I know enough, it seems. Enough for someone to try to take me away from here. Enough for your commander to put me under guard."
"'Tis true there are some who profane the name of Templar, but until now I was not one of them." His head swung away from her. "What have I done?" He was no longer speaking to her. He was denigrating himself.
"You can tell yourself all you like that you've profaned your order, that most sacred order. Just by fucking me." Tibald flinched when she used the harsh word, but said nothing. "What you've really done is profane me, and profane yourself by denying what you truly feel and what you truly want. Get out. I want nothing more to do with you if you cannot face that tiny bit of truth about yourself."
Jennie turned her back on Tibald and walked to the window, where she stared unseeing at the rags of white clouds that scudded on the late summer wind. It wasn't until she heard the door close---quietly this time---that she allowed the tears to flow, hot and stinging.
Hours later, her door opened again. She was sitting on the bed, staring at nothing, thinking of nothing except how she had once again ruined her chances with Tibald. Instantly she was on her feet, groping for something, anything, to use as a weapon, when Napier spoke and her heart slowed its frantic pace.
"It is only I. But it is good to see you are learning not to trust everyone." He bent and lifted the usual dinner tray and brought it inside. "I will be your evening guard. Tibald is with our commander." Napier's dark eyes searched her stricken face. "He appears distraught, as do you."
Jennie said nothing. Tibald is doubtless confessing all to his master. It won't be long before they come for me, scarlet woman, witch, demon. She could imagine him on his knees in the preceptory chapel, saying his rosary, babbling his infatuation and their mutual sin earlier that day.
"We have found the king's agent and locked him away." Napier put the tray on her table and saw where the wine jug lay broken and spilled near the door. "I had forgotten your crockery---shortly I will fetch replacements. It was Maillet's hand that gave him away. He had wrapped it and feigned a cut in the practice drill today."
"Maillet!" Jennie exclaimed, startled out of her silence. "I know him. He accosted you my first night here and spoke with Tibald days ago." She sat at the table, hungry despite her anguish. "Has he been questioned? Does he admit he is a spy?"
"Commander de Payraud and Warden de Bergère are speaking with him now. What will happen next, I do not know."
"If he is truly King Philip's agent, we must proceed with caution." At her response, Napier's mouth quirked in a knowing smile, and she stifled her huff of annoyance. Of course they're being cautious, you idiot! They are military men. At least now they'll have confirmation that what I've been saying all along is true, and can begin to plan. "What of Boudin?"
"Awake now, and very angry and concerned about you. Though why he should bother, I don't understand."
"You don't understand because Boudin is a friend." Jennie ripped a chunk from the bread and sopped it in the stew. Stew. Always and ever, stew. If I ever get home again, it's going to be steak six nights a week, and chocolate cream pie the seventh.
Napier tilted his head. "And I am not?" He held out his empty hands, palms up. "I come to you with news, I fetch your meal, and I am unarmed. Am I not a friend?"
"You do as you're bidden, not because you want to."
"'Tis true, what you say. You are a danger here."
"Why should we lie to each other? You hate me, Napier, because of Tibald."
"Nay---hate is too strong a word." He looked at her for a long moment, and Jennie was surprised by the conflicting emotions that crossed his face. Perhaps he truly didn't hate her after all. "You make me fear for Tibald."
"For his immortal soul." Jennie was tempted to copy his trademark snort or his Gallic shrug, that supremely insulting and yet courteously indifferent jerk of his shoulders that Frenchmen had made famous for centuries. She settled for stabbing a bit of stringy meat in her trencher instead. When he didn't answer, she spoke more quietly. "I love him, if that matters." Despite his medieval viewpoints. Ha-ha-ha. We can weep for each other, Napier, we who love an honorable man.
The words came easily to her lips and were all the more stunning in their impact because of their simple truth.
Napier turned sharply back to the door. "That is why I fear for him." With a screech, the door closed behind him.
It was still Napier on guard duty the next morning, though Jennie opened the door cautiously, hoping to catch a glimpse of Tibald, or perhaps even Boudin, should he have improved so quickly. Napier was toying with his dagger, balancing it on his index finger. At her look of disappointment, he smirked, but tiredly.
Jennie determined she would not allow his animosity to taint her day and settled herself on the topmost stair the way she might have done with Boudin. "You need someone to relieve you. The circles grow beneath your eyes and the hours crawl by, Napier. What have you learned from Maillet?"
"I should let you writhe in curiosity, but instead I will tell you what was told to me after compline, long after you were abed." The dagger lay sleek and flat across his finger.
Jennie was impressed, despite herself, when he gave it a slight toss and caught it between two fingers by the blade, tossed it a second time and caught it by the hilt, hardly watching. The dagger was an integral part of him.
"Maillet has been sending weekly missives to the king. I wondered where he was the night you appeared, why he was not at our convocation after the disturbance."
"No doubt he was meeting a courier somewhere outside the preceptory, informing the king of---"
"Walls have ears," interrupted Napier. "But you are correct."
"Then Commander de Payraud will take action!" In her excitement, her whisper nearly became a shout. There was hope for the Templars, but most especially Tibald, Napier and Boudin.
Napier was silent, but a moment later, he nodded. "Go within. I will fetch your meal, but I will have your solemn promise that you will open that door only to admit me, or I will not go at all. I well know your penchant for going where you should not."
Jennie nodded, rising.
"Your promise." Napier met her gaze firmly.
"I promise." She closed the door, wondering what Payraud had in mind, and whether it included her. She couldn't help but be frightened for herself, even as she was relieved for the men she had met in this century.
With darkness, at last, came the guard change. Through her partially opened door, Jennie heard Napier descend the stairs and exchange words with Tibald below. Her heart raced painfully. What could she say to him? She had spent the day worrying over their last meeting, wondering if she should apologize for her behavior, and yet feeling that her reaction had been perfectly justified.
With Harrison, the discussion would never have arisen because the situation was so different. Not to mention she wasn't in love with Harrison. She knew that now, after imagining for the past year that their comfortable camaraderie would eventually develop into love. Another sword-stroke to her academic's soul, dividing books from reality, demanding she participate in life instead of watching it flow past her. Harrison belonged to that other life, the life of books and observation, but real life---and love---belonged here with Tibald. Real life, with all its uncertainty and rough edges.
Heart pounding, she hastened to the landing, where she could watch Tibald coming up the stairs in the dimness and see his mood for herself. Would he be cold, distant? Would he speak to her at all? Chide her or apologize? Neither?
The torchlight preceded him, flickering redly on the stone. He climbed the stairs slowly, and the moment she was in sight, he paused, one foot up, one down.
I can't read your face in this poor light. She bit her lip, near tears.
The last few steps took a millennium. He looked at her, and something in her heart clenched fierce and hot, a cloud struck by lightning, yet releasing no rain. Her own breathing sounded loud in her ears. The look on his face took away her voice.
Without a word, he held out his hand, and without a word, Jennie took it. He led her down the winding stairs and left the torch in the sconce at the bottom before opening the door.
Outside the night was as black as she had come to expect. Tibald walked confidently across the grass, leading her between the chapel and the hospital building where Boudin still lay recovering. They headed northwest toward a long, low building across the grazing grounds. Jennie thought he might prefer to walk alone and relaxed her grip on his hand, only to feel his fingers closing more tightly upon hers.
As they neared the building, Jennie could smell the warm, salty odor of horses and grain. A breeze lifted and died. Tibald opened a door at the end of the stable building and led her into its warm, fusty blackness. It smelled of straw and manure and animals, reminding her of nothing so much as a trip to the circus as a child. He released her and closed the door behind them. Jennie stood motionless, hearing him fussing with something, and horses shifting and breathing in their stalls. After a short time, he made a quiet sound of satisfaction and the dim, erratic flicker of a rushlight lit the gloom.
"This way." He held the shallow bowl in front of him and walked down the center aisle of the stable. On either side of them horses blinked in the light, whickering softly. Near the end of the aisle, Tibald halted and put the rushlight into Jennie's palms. He moved into the darkness and returned with a ladder, which he propped against a rafter above them. "Wait here, Jeanne. I will be only a moment."
He ascended with the light and Jennie heard rustling and scuffling. When he appeared at the top of the ladder, the rush light lit his face from below. It gave him a demonic cast, except Jennie recognized the slightly shy smile he wore. "Can you climb up, or should I come to fetch you?"
Jennie gave a small snort, as quietly as she could manage. She knew there was no one here in the stable to hear them, but still she was sure she should be circumspect. She had not the least doubt that Napier would strongly disapprove of their behavior. Tibald's smile made her stomach tremble in fevered excitement, no matter how much she tried not to get her hopes up.
"I can manage." She climbed one-handed, the other gathering her skirt out of her way. As she neared the top of the ladder, Tibald caught her around the waist to steady her step to the loft.
The rushlight rested on a small barrel to her left. In front of her was a tall heap of hay, partially covered by Tibald's mantle. His sword belt lay near the barrel, carefully placed. His tabard was folded, the red cross uppermost. He stood dressed in a light woolen tunic and his breeches and boots.
Tibald pulled up the ladder after her and set it aside. Jennie looked at him, bemused by the finality of this action. Tibald had assured no one could enter the loft without their knowledge.
"You have planned this," she said quietly.
Tibald nodded and held out his hands. She did not take them, looking instead at the makeshift bed in the hay as he spoke. "This is all we may ever have, for tomorrow night we leave this place, you and I. We know not who will be watching. Payraud says he cannot hold Maillet for much longer. Maillet claims he must meet a courier outside the preceptory, and Payraud fears the alarm will be raised if the meeting does not happen. There is little time for preparation, and still less time for---for---" Tibald faltered into silence, his hands still outstretched.
Her lips parted and she stared at him. Her heart raced with a mixture of fear and thrill. "Leave? Tomorrow? Where will we go?"
He shook his head. "I will not tell you---it is better so, for you cannot tell what you do not know. We think Maillet is the king's only agent, but there's no way to be certain."
"And I am to go with you? I don't understand."
He looked aside. "Payraud has seen into my heart, farther than I myself dared to look. He has not told me everything, though I am his warden, but I believe your words only confirmed that which he already knew. These past months, he has taken fewer and fewer apprentices into the order, and he has urged those of us with sufficient reason to leave it ourselves."
Jennie's stomach clenched. "And have you sufficient reason?"
"I have," he whispered, and this time, when his hands urged her, she reached out to lay her hands in his. "I have been thinking about your words the last time we were alone together---truly alone." He did not try to hide his chagrin, meeting her gaze with the fearless honesty she prized in him. "And I would be the man who strives to bring you pleasure, Jeanne."
Jennie would not have thought such words could strike her down, but her legs suddenly would not support her. She went to her knees in the hay, still holding Tibald's hands. Part of her brain was whirling---they would be leaving Paris, and if her history was correct, they would likely be headed to the coast, to La Rochelle, where the Templar fleet was said to have escaped before the king's decree was enforced. Perhaps she would even get a glimpse of the famous Templar treasure. But the greater part of her brain was bound up in trembling fantasies of making love with Tibald.
"Is this agreeable to you? Will you teach me what is to be done?"
Jennie sought for humor to lighten the depth of emotion she felt. "You told me you were experienced."
Tibald looked down at her, his mouth crooking in a slow smile. "As I said, she was a milkmaid."
"And you said she was Napier's sister." She smiled back. Equanimity was restoring itself.
"That was a taunt for Alain ... she was from a farm near my family's. And we lay together only twice." He tugged at her hands and helped her to her feet. "I have an idea that love should be slow. Yes?"
"Well ... yes, sometimes."
"As now?" His fingers shifted and plucked at the neckline of her dress.
"Yes."
"I would like to begin by looking at you, if I may."
"That seems ... reasonable." She fought the urge to cross her arms over her body.
Tibald's gaze was darkly sensual, yet boyishly eager, despite the beard that concealed so much of his cheeks and jaw. He stepped slowly around her. The wide boards of the loft creaked a little under his weight, and in the darkness beyond the small glow of the rushlight, horses shifted sleepily. When he completed the circuit, he stopped in front of her again.
"Perhaps what is next is to undress you. Or---should I kiss you?"
"Either ... either would be agreeable. Tibald, this isn't a ritual. You needn't worry so much about following it exactly---"
"Oh, but it is, Jeanne. It is only by practice that we become proficient. I think your dress would be happier if it joined my tabard and my sword." He stooped to reach for the hem.
Slow was the operative word of the evening. Tibald lifted the dress from the bottom, gathering the fabric slowly into his big hands, watching each inch of her body as it was revealed to his eyes. Her feet, still in boots. Bare calves. Bare knees, which he brushed with a feather touch, checking her face for her reaction. The hem of her cotton nightie. Its low-necked bodice with the edging of lace that was, even in its simplicity, more intricate than any decoration he had ever seen. The angles of her clavicles and the tender hollows they formed. When the dress was gone, he bent and breathed her scent there, making her shiver.
It wasn't what she would have chosen for a seduction---the cliché of a hay loft, surrounded by the smells and sounds of a stable, herself unbathed, except for what small bath she could manage each morning with her basin and the rough cloths. The down on her legs and under her arms had returned. Tibald, though relatively clean of person for a medieval man because the Templars had brought such customs back from the East where they had dwelled so long, still smelled strongly of sweaty male and the oils he used on his sword and leathers.
Yet when he sought her eyes for permission to remove her cotton gown, every bone in her body warmed and melted. Nothing existed outside the dim glow from the lamp. He lifted the fabric over her head and brought it to his nose, burying his face in the softness. Her scent seemed to intoxicate him. He peered at her over the bunching of cloth in his hands, and in an instant it was forgotten. She stood in her panties and shoes, gooseflesh risen in her excitement and the slight chill of the autumn night. Her nightie fell to the floor and his hands came forward to cup her breasts.
"These are wondrous soft and heavier than they look." His thumbs caressed each nipple into painful tightness.
Jennie's body arched helplessly forward into his touch and her breathing quickened.
"This pleases you?"
She had to swallow before she could speak. "Very much. Though it would also please me if you were similarly undressed." She reached out to help him with his clothing, but he was as eager as a lad and skinned out of his tunic and breeches, dragging his boots from his feet without unlacing them fully.
Jennie had seen his torso before when she and Napier tended his wound, but now there was a difference. The low light gilded him, making him something smooth and carved of marble, except where sandy hairs glinted on his chest, arms and legs. His penis pointed at her like a questioning, beckoning finger, bobbing slightly with each rapid beat of his heart, a passionate metronome. He lacked the steroidal over-development of modern body-builders, but his muscles were firm and defined, veins prominent beneath the skin of his arms and hands. The harsh line of stitches on his ribcage made her catch her breath and reach out with gentle fingers.
"Will you be all right?"
He flattened her hand on his body with his own. "I was all right last time. Don't worry so, Jeanne."
"Last time we weren't ... it wasn't ... this time will be very different, I think."
His eyes glinted down at her. "Will you do me an injury?"
"Don't jest, Tibald. I want to know you'll be well."
He knelt and unlaced her boots in answer. She stepped out of them, gasping when he leaned forward to press his face against her abdomen, his bearded cheek tickling unbearably, his breath hot through the silky fabric of her panties, the last barrier between them. "Tell me what to do, Jeanne---for I want to throw you on your back and ease my suffering."
In a way she wanted nothing less than that herself---in the urgency of the moment it seemed like a desirable solution to the heat they both must feel---but if this were to be the only time they had together, she wanted to make the most of it. Who knew what the next day would bring?
She cupped his face in her hands, looking down at him. How beautiful he was, in his stern, frank way. "I suppose we should try the bed you have made for us." She moved away and settled on his cloak. The hay rustled, but did not poke through the tight weave of the wool. She wriggled slightly, settling back at full length as she slithered out of her panties and set them aside. She dared not let him do those honors---in his eagerness he would doubtless ruin the soft fabric.
Tibald licked his lips as he watched her laid bare at last.
"It is softer than my tower bed, and for that I must thank you with a kiss. Come to me, Tibald." Jennie held out her arms and with a rush, he settled next to her, twining close, bringing his mouth to hers. His tongue pushed at her roughly, but Jennie kept her lips closed until his mouth softened.
It was like finding water in the desert to feel skin on skin at last. Tibald's left hand moved down her back, pulling her tight against him. His right worked beneath her neck to cup the back of her head and move it in sync with the sweet exploration of his mouth. He lay with one of his legs between her thighs, his erection pressed hard against the flesh that clothed her hipbone. She could feel how their closeness excited him, feel the slight thrusting movements of his pelvis.
Jennie reached down and gently closed her fingers around his cock. Tibald froze as if she had just laid a blade to his throat. She spoke against his lips. "If you continue to move like that, it will again be over too quickly."
He groaned. "Dear God. I ... I will try, Jeanne, but oh---how I long to sheathe myself in you."
"I long for that, too, but did you not say you wanted me to teach you?"
"I did." He moved just a little in her hand, as if urging her to teach him quickly.
Jennie smiled against his mouth before licking at the arch of his upper lip. His breathing had quickened, and she could feel his heartbeat in her hand. She released him, her fingers following his arm down to his hand, curved at the base of her buttock as though to separate her thighs from behind. She had to close her eyes briefly to savor the vision of him above her, thrusting, her legs locked at the small of his back. If she were not careful and didn't slow herself, she would ruin this encounter with her own haste.
She laced her fingers in his and slowly moved his hand along the back of her thigh in a caress. Tibald, still a fast learner, explored her flesh, gently pressing, massaging. Jennie brought his hand around front, her own heartbeat quickening in anticipation. Together their hands slid upward to her mons. Tibald's breath rasped in his throat. Jennie swallowed hard, trying to speak clearly through her own intense arousal.
"There is a place women like to be touched." She used her own index finger to find her clitoris, distended and swollen, fairly pouting out from her labia. "It's much like your own..." Jennie had to pause, realizing she knew very few ancient French terms for the sexual equipment of men and women. Not to mention it was difficult to think beyond the sensations she was experiencing, and the thrill of teaching Tibald exactly how to please her. "Your own staff."
"My staff." He chuckled and his mouth trapped hers. "My staff wishes very much to find a place in which to lodge itself." His fingers followed hers and circled her clitoris. "Your staff is small. And slippery as a snail. Will it yet grow, do you think? With careful attention?"
Jennie heard her own laughter turning into a breathless squeak of pleasure as he pinched the soft, tender bud of nerves. Her legs trembled open, allowing him more access for his large, work-roughened hand.
"You like this." His comment was a statement, not a query, as he stroked downward, exploring on his own. She quivered. "And this." The barest tip of his finger ringed the opening to her vagina, rough skin against the slick flesh, a contrast that made her squirm and close her legs on his hand to increase the stimulation. She could not control the movement of her hips, and when his fingertip circled once more, she lifted her pelvis so his finger slipped inside her for a moment.
Tibald stopped, surprised. Then he pressed inward with that finger, exploring the hot, wet passage. She moved against his hand, reaching to guide his thumb to her clitoris, while his middle finger slid inside her.
"Like this." She showed him what she liked best, the gliding circle and the press, the pinch, the slow thrust of his hand. His breath was harsh and hot against her neck, ragged as if he had run miles.
"I could do this with my cock, and then we would both take our pleasure---"
"Yes---yes, in a moment---I promise. For now---oh, oh." A tremulous heat boiled heartward from where his fingers labored sweetly. Her legs trembled and fell slowly apart, and she lay open, exposed to his gaze and his touch. "Just a little longer, Tibald---just a little rougher---please." She was helpless to stop the heaving of her pelvis, clutching at his wrist with a grip of iron while she ground her flesh against his hand. She turned her head to look at him and saw he was observing their two hands where they disappeared between her legs. His teeth were bared and gritted as if he were striving to contain his own passion.
The orgasm spread from her clitoris where his thumb pressed ever harder, rocking against her tissues. Her arms fell away from him, her head tilting back in the abandon of pleasure, fierce and hot. She heard herself calling his name, cradled in his arm, and then tasted herself on his fingers as his hand moved to cover her mouth.
"Someone will hear you, neighing like that. You have wakened the horses." His laugh was soft, and as soon as she had mastered her cries, his hand returned to its duties, pressing, thrusting, rubbing, sending her upward again. This time she threw her own forearm over her mouth, biting at it when his touch pushed her to the convulsed thrashing of a renewed orgasm. His pelvis moved against hers, his cock trapped between their bodies, and she felt him coming as well, hot spurts of semen spreading over her belly, slickening them both. He groaned quietly, burying his sweaty face in her neck. Gradually they stilled, panting.
"I have spent myself and for naught. You will laugh at me, Jeanne. I am a callow boy, a yearling buck, with the restraint of a babe."
Jennie threaded her fingers through his hair and kissed him, her mouth open, breath rushing past her lips. "You have pleased me beyond measure," she whispered. "And now we will begin again." Her fingers slid between their bodies to where his penis was slowly retracting and squeezed the sensitive tip of his glans. Tibald gave a startled jerk and a grunt. "Your staff will yet find a sweet place to lodge."
"Begin again?"
"Trust me. I find it"---she struggled for a suitable word---"delicious that you found pleasure while generously giving me mine." She shifted, separating her legs. "Come and lie here, and when your ... staff ... is ready once more, send it home." She kissed him again, helping him settle his lean hips between her thighs.
Tibald was no teenaged boy, to be firm again only minutes after an orgasm, but neither was he old. Years of self-imposed chastity left him eager for sensation, and by the time he had kissed and caressed her into yet another small climax, he was ready. She reached between them to guide him into her wet-silk softness.
Jennie watched his face as he entered her. Every inch of his slow passage seemed to blind him with pleasure, and she knew his early spending meant this time he would last and last.
"Yes, there." She clutched at his buttocks, pulling him tight against her. "Ah, God." He felt so good inside her body, his girth stretching her vagina so he fit with the snugness of a sword inside a scabbard made only for it. She nearly came from the look on his face alone. When he had entered her fully, he began to move with slow deliberation, staring down at her with a look of confusion on his face. She reached up to frame his face in her cupped palms. "Don't think. Just feel."
"I know now why we are bidden to chastity." His mouth dropped and he kissed her deep and searchingly, while his lower back flexed in his thrusts. "This is pleasure so profound it makes the profane sacred. Jeanne!"
Minutes passed while Tibald fucked her slow and deep, his weight held from her on his straightened arms. He watched her breasts shudder with each thrust, his eyes half closed. When he still had not come, Jennie put a hand on each of his hipbones and held him away from her. He grunted and pushed her hard into the bed of hay.
"Did you not say I was to teach you?" she teased, slithering away from him. He followed, with his penis groping blindly to sheathe itself again.
"I did, but teach, not torment. Lie still, temptress---"
"Wait. Like this." She twisted away, laughing, and turned onto her belly so she could crouch on hands and knees. "Come into me again, my knight."
"What, like a dog in the street?"
She laughed again. "Not a dog. Like a ram to his ewes, or a bull to his cows---"
"Or a warhorse covering a mare." Tibald lunged behind her, catching her around the hip with one arm and pulling her back against him. In only a single groping push he was inside her again, and this time she could feel that the new posture---illicit, to his way of thinking---excited him even more, for he hardened more fully inside her. The position left a hand free, and it roamed her body, cupping her breasts, tugging and pulling at nipples, stroking sensitive places, and dwelling relentlessly upon her clitoris. He seemed to delight in her cries and trembling, in the flex and arch of her back against him. He pushed deep and deeper still, and at last, when she convulsed around him, her head tossing and her breath harsh in her passion, she felt his own climax in the stuttering pump of his hips and the painful grip of his hands.
Sleep was sweet in the fragrant nest of hay, the wondrous, perfect sleep after love, cupped close in the bend of Tibald's body. Jennie slept more deeply than she had since arriving in Paris. He awakened her much later, turning her on her back so he could kiss her breasts and throat before he urged her thighs apart. With a smile she wrapped her legs around his hips, earning his gasping grunt of delight, her wet opening welcoming and deep. While they panted and thrust, the rushlight guttered out at last, leaving them in the soft darkness, with only hands and lips to guide them both to pleasure, urgent, delicious and drowning.
Jennie yawned as Tibald pushed open her door. He ushered her inside, and the two of them went directly to the table where the wine flask waited. They drank deeply, turnabout, sharing the wine as intimately as they had shared their bodies. The first gray light of morning lightened the window and the room enough that Jennie could watch the strong muscles of his throat as he swallowed. It was a sight she would never tire of. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, meeting her gaze.
"You should rest, Jeanne. Tonight I will come for you again, after compline. It will be long, hard travel for many hours, and I will not be able to spare you that."
"I will do as you ask."
He bent to kiss her, a kiss tasting of harsh wine. Jennie's pulse increased, even though she felt deliciously weary and worn between her thighs. Tibald broke the kiss to press his forehead against hers. Unbidden, an image of Napier came to her mind, as he had looked when Tibald's belly had just been stitched. Ah, Tibald. If only you knew how we love you, Napier and I.
"It is nearly dawn." She whispered because it was right to whisper.
"Napier will come soon to relieve me. But for him, I would join you on that bed, Jeanne."
"Again?" She couldn't help her smile when he caught her around the waist and pulled her against him to leave her in no doubt of his wishes.
"Aye. Again, and again, and yet again."
"It is a very narrow bed," she pointed out.
"Upon which we two would be one."
Heady words, such heady words. Jennie stroked his bearded cheek, knowing her heart was shining in her eyes. He pressed a kiss in her palm and was gone.
Despite believing her excitement would keep her awake, Jennie slept until afternoon warmed her room. After dinner the wait for the compline bells was interminable, but at long last she heard them ring from the chapel tower, the same as they had rung every night. No special activity showed the knights had been alerted to any danger. She wondered how many of them knew about Maillet's treachery, or if the commandery's leaders were keeping most of the knights in the dark.
At last she heard Tibald's familiar step on the stair, and Napier's quiet greeting. She hastened to the door and flung it wide, only just stopping herself from rushing into Tibald's arms. A sack dangled from one of his hands, and a glimpse of his expression before he guarded it reassured her that he did not regret their fall from grace.
"I will go ahead of you," Napier said. His look was clear. He knew what they had done, Jennie was certain. She wondered whether Tibald had told him, or whether he simply understood the unsubtle difference in their behavior.
"Commander de Payraud has caused a hay wain to be placed in the stable. We are to take it, a horse, and the wagon's contents."
"I will choose a horse for you then." Napier took a torch and was gone.
Suddenly shy, Jennie watched him vanish down the stairs, afraid to look at Tibald. There was no need for trepidation, however---he caught her by the hand and tugged her into her room, closing the door behind them. The devouring kiss that followed reassured her completely and took her last breath. She had never been held so tightly, nor had her mouth so sweetly ravaged. Tibald only released her lips when she was gasping for breath and clinging to him so she would not fall. He buried his face in the bend of her neck and shoulder, where his ragged breathing filled her ears.
"We cannot linger here, though it is what I desire beyond all else." Tibald's hands bit at her waist and he shook her gently. "Napier will need assistance in his tasks."
The sack bumped the back of her legs and she twisted to look down at it. "What do you carry?"
"Some of Boudin's clothing. We will disguise you as a boy."
"You are not wearing your mantle and tabard either. You go disguised as well?"
"If what you have foretold comes to pass, it will not be safe to be recognized as a member of the order." He let her go completely. "Gather whatever you want to take with you." With a chuckle, he glanced around the nearly bare room. "Though it will doubtless be little."
Jennie bundled the two blankets from the bed and gathered the wine flask. Her gaze slid to the pillow, beneath which lay the page of vellum and the quill stolen from Payraud's study. She decided she did not need it---after days of fruitless struggles with the letters encoded there, they were graven upon the inside of her eyelids. She thought briefly of burning both at the fire, but that would mean revealing her crime, however minor, to Tibald. She turned with a bitten-lipped smile. "I am ready."
"Not quite." He swung her mantle around her and pulled up the hood, sealing the motion with two light kisses. "Now you are ready."
Jennie looked around the room for the last time. This was the adventure of a lifetime, embarking on a flight for their lives with the man she loved. She was glad to leave the small, stony cell, and yet terrified at the same time. Tibald watched her, then held out his hand, palm up, just as he had the night before, and with a fluttering heart, Jennie took it.
In the stable, Napier was talking softly to a tethered horse while he stroked dirt and mud into its glossy coat to disguise it as well. Jennie was no connoisseur of horseflesh, but even she saw the hopelessness of trying to make the magnificent animal into something resembling a carthorse. Tibald pushed the sack of clothing into her hands and gestured her into an empty stall where there was relative privacy, while he assisted Napier.
Jennie emerged from the stall wearing Boudin's trousers tucked into the soft tops of her boots, and the rough woolen shirt belted with a length of rope. It felt good to be back in trousers instead of the too-long dress, and her movements were freer because of it. As she came into the glow of the torch, Napier was shaking his head.
"She will never pass as a youth. Look at her, Tibald."
"We will cut her hair---"
"My hair!" Jennie put her hand to her braid. Somehow she'd thought it could be stuffed inside a cap or helmet. Cut the chestnut strands that Tibald had buried his hands and face in as he made love to her only a day ago? The cloud of hair he had so gloried in?
"Not her hair. Certainly we will cut that. It's her teats we must conceal. Look at them, bouncing like coneys in the grass."
Jennie looked down to where her breasts thrust out the shirt, and her nipples, erect from the irritation of the fabric. She crossed her arms over them. "They are what they are." She scowled.
"I will bind them." Tibald reached for the old dress where she'd flung it over the stall divider. Two nicks with his dagger and the fabric tore in a long strip. He approached her with the cloth in his hands and tugged loose her rope belt.
"For heaven's sake, let me do it. You'll tear something."
"You cannot bind yourself tightly enough alone." He skinned the shirt over her head as if she were a toddler, and with a gasp she turned to conceal herself from Napier's view. Tibald gave a soft chuckle and wrapped her chest tightly, tying the cloth in a flat knot between her shoulder blades.
"I cannot breathe."
Napier snorted. "You have breath enough to speak. You cannot be discovered a woman---you will draw too much attention on the road and endanger my companion."
Tibald settled the shirt over her head, and while she was struggling to put her arms through the sleeves, Napier grasped her braid in one hand. She heard his blade slitting through every strand, it seemed, and then her head bobbed free. Light---too light. The familiar weight of her hair was gone, and she spun to face the knights, groping at the back of her head for what was no longer there. "Butcher!" she hissed at Napier, who merely laughed at her and sheathed his dagger.
"Now you look a suitable squire for Tibald." He tossed the unraveling braid to Tibald, who caught it one-handed and stared down at it, disconcerted. "It will grow back, so why are the two of you behaving like babes with a lost toy? Tibald, help me get the chest in the wagon and the horse harnessed. Your squire here can shift some of the hay from the loft."
Jennie, still in blinking shock, opened her mouth to argue before closing it again. It was necessary, all of it. Except perhaps Napier's hatefulness, but he doesn't seem to be able to help that. She ascended the ladder into the loft, looking around her in the dimness. Aside from the cask still sitting plumply near the loft's edge, nothing remained of the bed of love she and Tibald had shared. With a flush she remembered their passion, especially being mounted from behind, pleasured by his hands, mouth and hard, passion-silked cock. Her body began to throb at the thought, so she turned to the hay to distract herself. A wooden pitchfork stood at the side of the pile. With a will she bent to transferring hay over the edge of the loft into the wain standing beneath.
Maillet came from nowhere as Tibald and Napier were settling the box in the wain and covering it with hay Jennie tossed down from the loft. It seemed to Jennie the shadows in the stable, outside the ring of torchlight, exhaled him from the stall below.
"Warden de Bergère. And Napier, your eternal shadow. What task has Payraud set you this fine evening?"
From her vantage point in the loft above, Jennie saw both knights straighten in the back of the wagon. In front, the warhorse they had hitched to the wagon backed its ears, champing at its bit and shifting restlessly.
"Good eve, Maillet." Napier gave a long stretch that fooled no one, not even Jennie. In the torchlight she saw Maillet's hand go to his sword hilt. He took a wider stance. She faded back into the shadows of the loft, intending to hide, but Maillet was not the king's man for nothing it seemed. His eyes flicked up to her, and she fought the urge to touch her head where the missing braid had left her neck feeling coldly exposed. At his gaze, she felt the hairs on her arms and nape prickle beyond wariness into outright fear.
"A new apprentice?" Maillet asked silkily, looking at Tibald.
"Naught but a new stable hand." Tibald dropped from the bed of the wagon, dusting his hands on his breeches. "I thought you tightly locked away."
Maillet shrugged. "No longer, as you see. Where is your warden's insignia? And your tabard?"
Napier dropped from the wagon as well, with that indolent grace Jennie had come to expect. He might look like a wand-slim youth, but the guise hid a core of deeply muscled steel. Jennie could not see his dagger, and she knew his sword leaned against a post nearly twenty feet away. Tibald's sword had already been stowed in the front of the wain near the driver's seat.
Tibald shrugged, with an easy smile. "'Tis dusty work, and I've no wish to soil my tabard."
"Yet your companion is not so fastidious."
Nor is he disguised for clandestine traveling. Jennie froze, a large bundle of hay in her hands. Maillet was catching on far too quickly, and she suspected he had confirmed the bulk of his suspicions the day he struck down Boudin and came for her in the tower.
Tibald shrugged again. "What care I if Alain fouls his whites? He will do his own wash."
"Or, perhaps, that maid in yon loft will do it for him." With that single word Maillet made it clear he knew who Jennie was.
Now, subtly, the stances of both knights shifted. Jennie could not have said how, but in the lines of their bodies she read a new alertness, a menace, that she had seen only once before in Napier and never in Tibald.
Napier took an aggressive step forward. "What do you here, Maillet? Begone. We'll have no truck with the man who struck down our brother Boudin."
Jennie moved to the loft's ladder, still clutching the hay on a reflex. An impulse of dread urged her to be near her two protectors.
"I? Strike Boudin?" Maillet put a disbelieving hand to his heart.
Napier and Tibald exchanged a single look that made Jennie gasp and put a foot on the ladder.
"Attend to your duties, knave!" bellowed Tibald, sparing her but a flicker of a glance. "I set you a task. Now finish it!"
Jennie found herself stammering as she struggled to stay in character. "Sir---I---"
Now Tibald did turn to look at her, and as he turned, Maillet drew his sword. It was not the sleek ballet move of Napier, but it was effective. All eyes were upon him and the blade, glinting gold in the torchlight.
"Warden, I charge you by your sacred oath to speak the truth. What is secreted in that chest, and where are you taking it?"
Tibald said nothing, staring at Maillet. The silence went on so long that Jennie heard the sputter of the torch as the loudest sound in the stable. Even the horses seemed cowed by the tension.
"You and Payraud have been hiding this woman for many days, and I will know why. By the will of the king, I order you to tell me."
"We bow to no man save the pope." Tibald's tone brooked no dissent.
"You will bow to the king or forfeit your lives."
Napier laughed outright and Jennie saw Maillet's look shift from slyness to fury.
"You forget that we have drilled with you many a time. You will not succeed in turning us from our task. Have a care for your skin, Maillet."
Maillet laughed in disbelief. "Do you threaten me?"
Napier showed his empty hands. "With what weapon? I but tell you what you already know."
Maillet lifted his sword and pointed it at Tibald. "Warden de Bergère, I will charge you with treason if you do not reveal that maid"---the sword gestured toward the loft---"for that is no boy---and what she knows. She is a spy."
"No." Tibald's refusal was bald and absolute, and as Maillet's expression grew dark, he continued, "I am the Warden here, as you say, and in Payraud's absence, master of this commandery. I bid you leave this place and trouble us no more. We do our commander's bidding, not yours." He looked up at the loft as he spoke, meeting Jennie's frightened gaze. "This youth is of no import. The truth is that the king seeks to destroy our order. You are the spy here, Maillet, and well you know it, as do we. Alain, since he chooses not to depart, bind him."
With Napier's first step, Maillet spun into action. He lunged with his sword at Tibald, a feint intended to mislead, for as Tibald dodged, Maillet turned again and managed to nick Napier's forearm when he tried to duck under Maillet's guard. Jennie heard Napier hiss as he stumbled backward and was startled by her own furious reaction. How dared Maillet injure yet another of the men she had come to think of as hers? With a dreadful screech, she flung down the armload of hay she had been holding.
As a weapon, it was surprisingly effective. Maillet looked up at the sound of her shriek, and the flurry of dry grass blinded him for a second.
Time enough for Napier to yank his wicked, trusted dagger from its hiding place---where, Jennie never saw---and flick it at Maillet.
Time enough, indeed. The moment stretched forever, yet, in the uncertain light, she was not sure what she was seeing. His rat-skewering dagger flew swift and true and buried itself in the side of Maillet's neck. Maillet dropped his sword to clutch at the dagger, and Tibald half-dived like a football player saving a home-team fumble, scooping Maillet's sword from the ground and thrusting---just once---at Maillet's midsection from below.
"Excellent throw," grunted Tibald from where he was slowly lowering Maillet's twitching body to the floor.
"And in bad light, too." Napier's grim humor was lit with the flash of his teeth.
Jennie swallowed hard. Later she was never sure which was worse---the fountain of blood from Maillet's neck, or the appalling sound of chain mail, cloth and flesh being pierced by a sword, but either would have been sufficient to cause her next reactions---the stagger to the side, all of her dinner coming up, and a swarming darkness filling her vision.
When she came to herself, it was to find Tibald kneeling at her side in the loft and Napier standing over them, a slow trickle of blood dripping from his fingertips.
"You're bleeding," she said thickly. Her stomach heaved again and she clamped her palm over her mouth.
"It is nothing," said Napier.
"Get up, Jeanne. We must leave, and quickly."
"You just killed a man."
"Yes, we did. You were admirable---an inspired battle move, to blind him with the hay. We may make an apprentice of you yet, maid or not." Tibald rose and mostly lifted her to her feet.
"He's dead---down there, he's dead."
"Yes." Tibald walked her to the ladder. "Climb."
"He's down there."
"Yes, and as you say, he's dead. Jeanne---quickly now."
Napier, true to form, snorted. "This is the woman you risk your life for? Discard your oaths for? This puling, whining---"
Tibald interrupted Napier's rant before it could fully blossom. When he spoke, it wasn't with the ire she expected to hear. It was with a softness she had never heard him use. "I worship her with my body and my soul, Alain, and I would give my life to secure her own."
The words, and the tone in which they were delivered, shocked her nearly as much as the murder of Maillet. But if they were a terrible, beautiful blow to Jennie, they pole-axed Napier, who staggered back a step and would have fallen from the loft, if not for Tibald's quick hand around his wrist.
"You're leaving the order." Napier spoke in tones of horrified realization.
Tibald nodded, his arm around Jennie's waist, and tugged Napier forward. As he had done after she and Napier had stitched up his side, he caught Napier at the back of his neck and rested his forehead against his companion's. "You know what our master has charged me with. I am to take the chest, and Jeanne, out of France."
"And her." Napier's brows drew together and he looped an arm around Tibald's neck.
But not me ... Jennie could almost hear Napier's thoughts. How was he managing to hold in his feelings so rigidly? She wondered just how much of Payraud's plans Napier knew and found herself frightened for the dark knight. Much as she disliked him personally, she shared Tibald's absolute trust in the man, and because she was in love with Tibald herself, recognized the utter desolation on Napier's face. His beloved was leaving, not only the order, but Napier himself. She stood in the loop of Tibald's arm, feeling the body heat of both men through the wool of her shirt.
"And Jeanne," Tibald agreed. "My brother, I---"
"I will see you safe upon your way." Napier's thickened tone revealed his feelings.
Jennie looked down to where Maillet lay in the mess of straw on the stable floor, not far from the wagon. Dead, so very dead.
Murdered. Or so the king will see it. Her stomach clenched again, and she moved closer to the two men. One arm went around Tibald's trim waist, and the other circled Napier's.
"Unhand me," Napier said, flinching.
"You must listen to me, both of you. We will all leave France."
Tibald drew back and stared at her. "Payraud has charged---"
"Payraud never foresaw the murder of the king's agent. If we leave Napier behind, he will be executed for what has happened here." She could tell her words struck home when Tibald's arm dropped from around her. While she had their attention, she pressed on. "Payraud has not given sufficient thought to our departure. You need Napier's skill more than you need mine. I ... I will throw hay at our enemies, but Napier will dispatch them."
"I am to stay behind---" began Napier.
"That has all changed with that man lying there." She pointed. "We must hide his body to buy time. Come and help me." Trembling and sick, she stepped onto the ladder, made her way down to where Maillet lay, and took hold of an arm. She had to turn her head aside when her stomach threatened to empty itself again. How sterile her life had been until now. She had seen dead bodies before, lying prim and tidy in their caskets, but never death itself, and certainly not a killing. Yet her only goal now was to get herself and her knights safely away. No question of trying to return to Minneapolis now---she had a responsibility to attend to. She had gotten them into this mess, and she would do everything in her power to get them out.
Not to mention, the thought of leaving Tibald behind forever made her feel dizzy and dark inside. Her scholar's brain flicked forward through the events she knew were to come---the Templars chased down, arrested, imprisoned and tortured, most killed. Forty years hence, the start of the Black Death that would rage through Europe and kill half its population.
Maybe, just maybe, if they were still together, still alive at that time, she could use her knowledge to save them from that, too. A grim smile curved her lips at the thought of the three of them, quarantined together in some chill Scottish stone cottage, with Napier's wicked rat-killing dagger in demand yet again, along with her nagging to bathe frequently. How much moldy bread must one eat to be immune? How complicated was it to extract penicillin?
Thus her mind raced as she began to drag Maillet into the darkened stall from which he had emerged in the first place. He was heavy, but she was managing to move him, then Tibald and Napier joined her and the process went much more quickly.
"More hay," she panted, and scrambled back up the ladder to toss down enough to cover the body. It was disorienting to think of the hay upon which she and Tibald had made such sweet love now covering the evidence of their newest mutual sin---of murder.
Tibald argued with her, even as he scooped up what she pitched over the edge. "We have our orders, Jeanne."
"Everything has changed, and you know it."
"You will do as I say."
"I will not. If Napier does not come with us, I will not get in that wagon."
At this, both men stared up at her. She put her hands on her hips and glared back. "I know Napier despises me, but I will not give you any choice in this matter. He will just have to hate me."
"We can't delay. The ships won't wait. If we're not there..."
"Napier will not delay us. You know he won't. Besides, Napier---"
"Jeanne..." Napier interrupted, appearing to understand the bomb she was about to drop. For the first time he used her name. She met his eyes.
"Napier loves you. And for that alone I cherish him." She gestured at the body. "Is Maillet camouflaged sufficiently?" With her words, she had told Napier, as best she could, that she understood his secret love. Napier walked away to the darkened door of the stable, breathing deeply.
Jennie climbed down from the loft and waited for Tibald to come to her. She slid her arms around his neck and felt him clutch her reflexively, if awkwardly. "He loves you, in the way that I do." Her voice was quiet and she waited to see how he reacted.
He shocked her with his next words. "I ... I know he does. But I can't love him back, Jeanne. Not the way he wants me to." He spoke urgently, his voice ragged with grief. He would not look at Napier, and Jennie saw what a difference seven hundred years of human experience had made---and yet, had not.
"Do you think he doesn't know that already? He's lived with that for years, Tibald. Years."
"Jeanne..."
"Just because you've finally figured it out doesn't change anything. For my sake, and for his life, let us all go away together."
"I would be glad of his sword, I admit. But the rest of it..." He shook his head. "I can't think about it now." His hands roamed over her back and Jennie could all but feel the shift of topic clanging in his brain. "I miss your hair." He bent close and murmured in her ear, "Is it wrong of me to want you for myself, even now, even this moment, with Maillet lying dead in yon stall and Napier at our backs?"
"It is not wrong," she whispered, and when his mouth came down, she met it eagerly, and he kissed her until she was breathless and clinging to him. "I promise you---soon. For I want you also. I have a fondness for the hay in that wagon." And the hay covering that body in yon stall, as you say.
"Jesu." He trembled, pressing her hips hard against him, and she felt his growing excitement.
"This would indeed delay us," she breathed against his mouth.
"True." He kissed her fiercely one last time and then lifted her into the wagon. "Take the reins. I will lead the horse from in front until we are well away."
"I do not know how to drive a wagon."
"You will learn." He gave a soft laugh. "Alain---"
Napier turned, his expression hawkish and wary.
"You must hide. Come, under the hay. Jeanne will cover you."
Napier met his gaze. "You will not want such as me with you."
Tibald led the wagon to the doorway and stopped an awkward few feet from Napier. "I need you, Alain."
"You are governed by a woman."
"She has been proved right thus far. And she is yet right that nothing has changed between us. We ... feel as we always have."
"Get in the wagon, Napier. Please." Jennie added her plea to Tibald's. "We will not leave without you."
Jennie did not know how long they had been traveling along the black road, trusting to the good sense of the mud-smeared warhorse drawing their wagon, but the moon was late rising. Its beams shone at an angle, throwing their nest in the hay into shadows and light. When Tibald fumbled in the pouch slung at his belt, Jennie watched, half-asleep, and only somewhat curious. Tibald was at her side, seated upright, watching the road behind the wagon.
When his hand emerged from the mouth of the pouch, she gasped.
He held her journal, which she had thought lost forever, taken by Payraud.
"I am to return this to you now we are safely away from the preceptory."
"Tibald." Jennie didn't know what to feel---joy and relief at the sight of her journal, or distressed that she must yet again make the decision to stay in this century. "I thought never to see that again." She held out a shaky hand to take it from him, but he held it at his side, just out of her reach.
"I would exact a promise from you. All those long hours we spoke outside your room ... the tales of your land. They have fired my soul as nothing has since I first took my oaths as a knight of the order. Jeanne---"
Napier cleared his throat, making himself known from the front seat of the wagon. Jennie squared her shoulders in irritation, hearing the hay rustle beneath her. Would the man forever interrupt any worthwhile interaction with Tibald? I'm surprised he didn't follow us to the stable last night. Or perhaps Tibald threatened him at sword point.
Tibald glanced behind them with a small smile. "I know you are listening, brother. That is well, for this involves you now. Since this maid would not leave Paris without you."
"I watch our way for ruffians and king's men. I care not for your infatuated mumblings. Nor your snoring."
"I have not slept, as well you know. I watch our back trail."
Jennie craned her neck to see Napier sitting stiffly on the bench, his garments turned inside out to hide the crimson cross on the breast. He let the reins lie slack along the horse's back, and the animal slowed its pace slightly. Jennie thought how tired it must be, pulling the wagon through the dark night, and wondered when they would be far enough away to sleep safely. How did one conceal a hay wain, awkward thing that it was?
"What promise would you have from me, Tibald?"
Napier snorted again and Jennie compressed her lips.
"You have said that, with your book, you could return to your own place. Is that true?"
Jennie hesitated, looking up at him from where she lay. As she gazed, his look changed, melting into an expression somewhere between desire and dread. She reached up and touched his cheek. "I do not know. I have tried to return home, but it didn't work."
"But perhaps with your book, it may."
"Perhaps. And perhaps not. There may have been more things at work that night than just what is written in this journal. Without trying, we will never know." She rested her fingertips lightly on his lips until he responded with a kiss against them. Her arm drifted back to her side. So much emotion roiled in her heart and mind that she could hardly bear to look at him, but because he would not look away from her, she held his gaze. Honor first, always. It's why I love him, and I think maybe it's why he loves me. I never knew myself to be honorable before, but in his eyes I am.
"Jeanne, I..." Tibald stopped, shifting in the hay until he was stretched beside her. The gentle spring of the dried grass jostled them together sweetly. He laid her journal upon her belly and ran his hand down her side to her hip. "Will you try to return home?"
She whispered, because she did not trust her voice. "I am no longer sure I want to, Tibald. The meaning of home is different now."
He nodded, finding her hand in the hay and threading his fingers between hers. "Yes. Different, as is the meaning behind my oaths as a knight. You have changed everything."
For once, Napier was blessedly silent. There was only the sound of wood on wood, and wooden wheels turning slowly over the dust and pebble of the road, and the breaths and slow strides of the patient horse.
"If you go, Jeanne---"
Jennie waited, holding her breath. She thought she knew what he wanted to ask, but for him to unbend enough to ask a mere woman for something so immense was surely the hardest thing he had ever done.
"If you go, take me with you. I will not speak for my brother---it is for him to speak his wishes---but I would be with you."
He didn't say, "I want to see the wonders you spoke of." Me ... he wants to be with me. Her heart pounded, and she didn't try to stop the tears of joy that filled her eyes and ran down the sides of her face into her shorn, tousled hair. She cupped his jaw and pulled his head down to hers, where she could kiss his mouth until he seemed to believe she'd been forward enough for too long, and took control of the kiss for himself. He must have felt her smiling as he kissed her for he lifted his head and looked down at her. His index finger traced the uptilted corner of her mouth.
"You should sleep," stated Napier from the driver's bench. "Soon enough 'twill be your watch. I'll not forgo my own rest because you could not leave your wench alone." He cleared his throat, and Jennie and Tibald both waited, smiling into each other's eyes, for him to speak again. Despite his efforts, his voice shook. "We are together, we three, are we not? Whatever fate brings to us?"
Jennie nodded. But it was for Tibald to speak, and not her, though she had ultimately made the decision.
"Aye. We three, together." Tibald spoke for Napier to hear, but had eyes only for Jennie. He kissed her once more, softly, lingeringly, with that leashed passion she remembered so well, before whispering in her ear, "Together."
With the laugh she had come to know, that fond, indulgent chuckle he saved for Napier and his stunts, he shifted her in the hay so he could pillow his head against her snugly bound breasts and lie in the bend of her arm. "I will sleep now, brother. Try not to bounce through too many mud holes."
Jennie lay still, one hand curved over Tibald's back, the other lying on her journal. The stars were thick above her, winking and brilliant and white. The same stars that shone---or rather, would shine---on Minneapolis centuries hence. She smiled up at the stars, thinking of a book on her apartment bookshelf that would go unread---and unwritten---for centuries. All for one, and one for all. Dumas and his musketeers had been wrong about a number of things, but not about honor and loyalty, friendship and love.
She nuzzled her face into Tibald's hair, breathed deep of the scent that meant all those things and more to her, and slept.
Nina Merrill started writing stories in elementary school and wrote her first full-length novel in a spiral-bound notebook at age thirteen, followed by several practice novels. Her favorite Christmas present was a typewriter and a ream of paper. After college, she took a job with a large international corporation, programming computers and writing technical documentation. A few years ago, she rediscovered writing during a prolonged period of insomnia and began to indulge her passion with a vengeance. Nina is currently making the leap from corporate drone to mild-mannered bookseller in an independent bookstore in Washington, where she can feed her addiction to fiction. Nina currently lives with her computer geek husband in a quiet happy house full of books, animals, and dust.
You can learn more about Nina by visiting her web site:
ninamerrill.livejournal.com
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A story blazing with reluctant passion, bitter betrayal, ghostly retribution and the battle for a man's very soul...
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Visit www.amberquill.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.

