One Winter Knight Read online

  She had given him a light woolen shift to cover his nudity and he moved about the stone tower quite nimbly now, having grown accustomed to its covering. The beaten earth floor was chill beneath his bare feet but clean and nicely swept.

  The building itself had been a surprise, though he understood what his little rescuer had done to it. With the stone-lined, roofed pit for rabbits, two hearths for warmth, hurdles for penning beasts, pails for water, hooks hammered into the walls for storing forage sacks, a long bench to drag out of doors in summer or set beside a fire in winter and, finally, a plump straw mattress and bedding out of the way of the draft of the door, Ruth had made a sturdy home. The smoke rose up into the greater shadows of the tower, where he could see a worn step-ladder vanishing into the darkness.

  “It was like this, largely, when I discovered it,” Ruth admitted, catching his curious glances. “Please, chop the wild garlic finely.”

  Tom nodded. He was standing by a table made of two rough planks lashed to a wobbly trestle base—a Ruth repair, he guessed, as he sharpened his dagger on his whetstone.

  This cozy domestic scene had rapidly become a custom between them. He and Ruth had worked companionably together for two weeks, preparing food, feeding rabbits, steeping herbs and bark for the tisanes Ruth swore were healing him and which Tom stolidly forced down his throat. Perhaps they were helping, and if not, he would get them taken anyway, since it pleased her.

  She had not offered to salve his wound again, which Tom found both a relief and a disappointment.

  For all that they had done well together. In the long evenings she mentioned the small, striking things she had spotted during the day—a rainbow reflected in a pail of water, a wild pony browsing on hawthorn, a flock of swans flying high in the blue air. Tom relished all sightings and details for the way Ruth made them real to him through her words. She reminded him of the everyday wonders of the world, a wonder he had once had as a small boy and then somehow lost.

  In answer, wanting to repay her unknowing bounty, he told her of the woods-and-water lands close to Tissaton, places of secret, sacred springs where people would leave flowers as offerings. Savoring the way her eyes widened and her nimble fingers would still in their tasks as he spoke, he told her stories of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, of dragons and giants, of quests won and lost.

  One night, seeing him weary from a day spent chopping firewood, she did not mock him as a knight would have done. She sang Christmas carols to him instead, high and sweet and heartening, with him growling out the refrains. It had been a peaceful, contented time. Even if we have eaten onion and rabbit stew for all of it.

  “How long have you lived here?” he asked. He had not ventured questions before now, but sensed that today, he might. After all, she had smiled at him without any reason.

  He heard her swift inhaling and then her slow answer. “Two winters.”

  Tom resumed his accustomed chopping, careful not to look at his companion. He knew his questions were sharp to her and he wanted to give her privacy in her expressions and responses, since she was no rock-faced warrior. And since when have I been concerned for a little wood-wench’s comfort? He mentally shrugged. For Ruth, he was. “How did you find this place?”

  He heard her second quick drawing of breath and knew his guess was right. “I do not dispute your claim,” he added, blinking as the sting of the garlic hit his nose and eyes. “In two years, if no others have come forth to say this place is theirs, then good fortune to you, I—”

  “No man, you mean?” Ruth interrupted.

  He looked up, finding her stiff in front of her heap of cut onions, the previous ease between them of the past two weeks all but shattered. “No one,” he correctly mildly. “You dwell alone?”

  A terse nod was her only response.

  “How do you know dates and festivals? And do you not miss company, especially in winter?” He had almost asked if she longed for family, but instinct warned him that this was a painful subject.

  “I can count moon-rises, and mark the holy days as well as I may,” came the sullen reply. “As for the rest, no.”

  She did not flinch as he put down his knife and trod lightly across to her but her eyes tracked him as if he was a grumpy boar.

  “Ruth.” He spoke her name to calm her. Reaching out, he softly ran his thumb along the line of her jaw, letting her feel the faint tremble of his own anxiety at approaching her this way. “What happened? Why are you alone in the wild-wood?”

  ****

  His gentle questions—and even more, his touch—undid her. It is time, she decided, relief blossoming in her as she chose to speak. This man, this knight, Sir Tom, would understand. His eyes glowed with concern, more warming than the fire. She opened her lips to begin...

  A crazed baying of dogs stopped her. Ruth scrambled to the step-ladder and raced up the tower to the tiny lancet. Setting her face to the icy stone, she looked out, her eyes dazzled for an instant by the glitter of the rising moon on the snow.

  “Get down!” Tom ordered, tugging on her skirts. Ruth kicked back, hissing, “They must not come here!”

  She peered a second time through the lancet, seeing the seething bodies of tumbling hounds, their shifting bodies like black leaves against the drifts. Behind the dogs would be men, hunters, out for a day’s sport.

  Tom plucked a mace from his luggage, strode to the door and heaved it open.

  “Do not bring them here!” she warned, torn between panic at discovery and fear for him.

  He nodded sharply and was gone, bare-footed, clad in linen like a penitent and altogether deadly. Once glance at his stark face convinced Ruth not to delay Tom.

  Besides, I have my own ways to see off intruders.

  Ruth leaped down from the ladder to gather her special things.

  ****

  It was hard running away. Tom’s every fibre wanted to stay, to fight, to roar challenges like a mighty forest boar and charge these wretched incomers, but he clamped hard on his wishes—including the persistent, nagging desire to kiss his feisty, deliciously aggravating companion—and jinked through the trees. For this part of his plan, his thin linen shift was useful, camouflaging him in the snow, and he ran swiftly, aware that if he lost this battle-heat he would soon freeze.

  The dogs blundered after him, slowed by the trees and the sloping ground, which fell away sharply. Tom skidded, dived and at one point rolled, the hounds yapping in frustration as the hunters bellowed out opposing orders.

  Already, the stone tower was no more than a smudge amidst holly and bare ash trees and Tom grinned, glad to be leading these intruders away. I have been in her company little more than two weeks and yet we have made a world to each other, Ruth and me. A rush of pleasure shot through him, keen as victory, and he laughed. If not with my natural father, perhaps I will yet have a family Christmas-time, with my angry wood-maid.

  Abruptly, all dreams of kissing her under mistletoe and gathering holly boughs together shattered under a rising shriek. Cold he had not felt before stung through Tom, fixing him to the spot. Ruth! Where is she? Snug and safe inside, pray God, for if she is not—

  “Be not near to that thing!” he snarled, whatever it is. His wish became a prayer as he scrambled about, seeking his companion in case Ruth had done the unthinkable and left the tower. Surely, she would not be so foolish—

  To his horror, he spotted a patter of dainty tracks almost at once, off close to a stand of elder bushes. They were fresh and crisp in the snow, leading inexorably back toward where he had just come from.

  After spitting at him not to draw the strangers to the tower, the little fool had come out herself. And, for what? Does she think I cannot fight off a few fellows on foot, armed with nets and spears? For an instant anger bested dread, but the rush of rage burned through and only a sucking fear for the wench who had surely saved his life remained. Where is she?

  The unearthly call came again, moaning like wind in a cave, writhing like a flame, pitching higher and
higher.

  “Troll!” One of the hunters yelled behind him, a cry distorted by fear and distance. Instantly the warning was taken up by the others. “’Tis the Snow Troll!”

  Tom saw it then. A swaying figure looming in front of a holly tree, swathed in dangling moss and streamers of ivy. At a distance of half a long-ship, he could not see its ugly face, but shrunken heads bobbed like deadly foam on its wide chest and the dark gloss of blood shone on its fur. As the hunters broke ranks and fled, Tom took a tighter grip on his mace.

  “Away!” he ordered, not caring if the thing charged him, as long as he could find Ruth. “Where are you, girl?” he burst out. Utterly ignoring the approaching Snow Troll he scanned the snow and sprinted to the nearest oak to climb up to see more. “Ruth!” His yell mingled with the shouts of the receding huntsmen. He swung down from the tree, unheeding of the snow and ice the swirling branch dumped down his back. “Ruth!”

  “Here,” said the snow troll, lumbering closer. “I am right here.”

  The creature dropped its hood and flapping cloak, the wicker stand that added a sword’s length to its height and breadth to its shoulders, and shrugged off the skins and the bobbing rabbit heads. “Here, Sir Tom.”

  Standing in a puddle of furs, small and red-cheeked from effort, Ruth opened her arms.

  Lurching forward he scooped her up, straight off her feet and, when she looked ready to protest, gagged her mouth with his lips.

  He had not truly kissed before. His mam was no kisser, and as a knight, he had fought more than embraced. This heat and burning softness was new to Tom, as was the taste of another. So sweet, he thought, touching her chin and cheek with his fingertips as he kissed Ruth again. He felt to be dusted in gold and expanded, opened out. There was wonder here, and at the same time, a sense of coming home.

  Gently, he mapped her lips with his tongue, smiling as he felt her mouth turn up at the corners. “I did not hurt you?” he whispered. It seemed right to be quiet.

  “Kiss me more,” she answered, very soft, keeping her face very still as he lowered his head.

  This time, it was even better, a plenty of summer and sunshine in the heart of this snowy winter. She breathed against him and filled his arms until, with a small, stifled cry, she twisted her head away.

  “We should not do this,” she said.

  He had ached with passion before; now, he ached with sympathy. “Why?”

  “It—it is wrong.”

  He wanted to kiss her for her stammer. He longed to dismiss her warning, but in truth, could not. “You fear the world outside would drive us apart,” he admitted.

  “Do you not?” she demanded, with a flare of her swift temper.

  Tom cradled her higher, close to his heart. He had many things he wanted to say to her, he realized in that instant, but they would keep. “Let us go back to your home,” he said softly.

  “Aye, before the frost bites your feet!”

  He chuckled at her sharpness, recognising the concern underneath, and moved off with her. The fear she had of the wider world remained between them.

  How can I quench her dread?

  Almost without conscious choice, Tom began to plot.

  Chapter Four

  Her lips tingled where she had been kissed. Where Sir Tom kissed me, Ruth corrected, before ruefully confessing to herself, and I kissed him.

  Argus had slobbered on her, before she ran away. Tom kissed her with a sparkling reverence that was both gratifying and astonishing. Ruth did not think herself so pretty, but Tom clearly considered her to be beautiful, and meant his kisses. Even after I appeared as the Snow Troll.

  He had insisted on dragging in her furs and wicker stand and the cumbersome cloak with its awful rabbit heads. Wishing to repay him and no longer worried about that particular feeing, Ruth heated pebbles in the fire, found a crock to pile with snow and stoke up with the hot rocks so she had a bowlful of steaming water ready for Tom’s feet.

  “Ah!” He settled on the bench she had dragged by the larger fire and sank his toes into the milky water, wincing as no doubt returning feelings blazed pins and needles up and down his legs.

  “Good?” she grinned.

  He waved aside her impudent question. “In a bad way,” he said, and leaned back against the wall with a sigh. “Those fellows will not venture here again?”

  Ruth shook her head. “I do not think so.”

  Tom opened an eye to glint at her. “They are not knights, then. Knights would be challenged and intrigued. Knights would want to trap a snow troll.”

  “No doubt to make sport with it,” replied Ruth tartly.

  “I have said before, you have a less than sanguine opinion of my kind.”

  Feeling a blush rising in her face Ruth tucked her plaits into her sash and refused to shrug her shoulders. She was not exactly ashamed of her dry response, but she did change the subject slightly. “I know huntsmen are not knights, but for your everyday traveller and sneak-in-the-woods, my device serves.”

  “Impressive it is, too,” her companion conceded, and closed his eyes. For several moments they remained quiet, Ruth listening to the fire, the scuffling living rabbits, the breathing horse.

  “Will he need exercise?” She thumbed at the black stallion, but Sir Tom merely wriggled his feet in the bowl.

  “When he gets the chance, Darkie is a lazy creature. I know you are smiling at his name,” he went on, still without opening his eyes, “but I was a youngster when my father gave him to me and allowed me to choose his name. Now, Darkie answers to no other.”

  Ruth smiled at the whimsy and stared at Tom’s long, shapely feet. She had not considered a foot as a thing of beauty, but that arching mass of tendons, sinew, and flesh was handsome, she decided.

  “There is room in this bowl for two.”

  Her head whipped up and Tom was looking at her, a challenge in his whole face. Prudence and custom prompted her to say no, but her aching toes demanded an honest action. In moments, she had shrugged off her boots and dipped her feet into the bowl.

  She intended to settle beside Tom, but he snaked an arm deftly about her middle and drew her onto the bench between his legs. She felt his knees, snug her against her bottom. His warm thighs were heavy and comforting against her flesh. I will not be flustered, I will not blush again.

  She shivered as his breath blew on her ear. “Tell me,” he coaxed, his voice as beguiling as the serpent in Eden.

  She stroked his right arm, his sword arm that was slightly more sinewy than his left. A tremor ran through him and she was satisfied the taut balance between them was restored. She had witnessed her parents mock-fighting but had not guessed, before meeting Sir Tom, how thrilling it could be.

  “If you will share your past, also,” she teased, before wondering suddenly, coldly, if she asked too much. “All you feel content to share,” she added. I do not want my Sir Tom to be discomforted, not on matters close to his heart.

  A kiss dropped like warm rain onto the back of her neck. “Gladly,” Tom rumbled, and she twisted about to embrace him fully.

  It is time, Ruth acknowledged, when their kiss finally ended and he stared down at her as an alchemist might at gold. She leaned back into his arms to explain.

  “My father was a plowman, my mother a maker of cheese. I have five brothers, but I have not spoken to them properly for years.”

  In truth, she was forgetting their names, and even their faces. The five had always excluded and ignored her. When she was small, she had been hurt and angry, but no longer—not when my rage has a greater target.

  “My parents died when I was ten. I was sold by one of my brothers—I cannot remember which one, though to be sure, they would have all agreed on it—to Argus, the village reeve.”

  Ruth felt herself tense and heard her breathing quicken. Thinking of Sir Tom and his steady presence, all around her, she forced herself to relax.

  “I was a maid of all work for Argus. He treated me badly.” Beatings, little sleep, less food
and no rights. “My brothers and the other villagers saw this and did nothing. The priest told me I must endure, because it was custom, and I was clearly made to serve.”

  “God in heaven, that is evil!”

  She clung to Tom’s arm for a moment, glad of his fury, the indignation that had been missing from everyone else she had known. She felt him stroke her hair, her head, whispering something softly she could not catch, but appreciating it. “You understand.”

  “How could they not? Your own brothers!”

  As a knight, he would see it as a betrayal; as a kind of treason, and bad faith. For an instant, Ruth was tempted to explain that morals and faith become harder when food is scarce and overlords indifferent and cruel. She shook her head, recognizing that this was one gulf between them she could never bridge. “It did not matter,” she went on lightly. “I escaped.”

  “What made you flee?”

  She grimaced, glad he could not see her face. This was a question she had hoped to avoid, especially with the sludge of memories it inspired. The fat reeve, sweating over her, and his sticky, grasping fingers, his bellowing about rights and duties and her being “but a maid.”

  She said nothing, but Tom was more insightful than she liked.

  “He tried to rape you.”

  “He would have done, had I stayed,” Ruth admitted. Worse, and a thing she would never admit, was that she might have endured even that, had she not witnessed what happened to another poor maid, how the girl was shamed in church and called a slattern when it was the girl’s master who had forced himself on her and made her pregnant.

  “I ran away at Christmas, when everyone else was feasting.”

  She had taken nothing but the rags on her back. Choosing a day when the rain drummed off the thatch and no one would see more than an arm’s length in the murk, she had slipped off between her chores and made for the forest, using the old Roman road where she could. At that point, wild with anger and fear, she had not cared if she lived or died, only that Argus would touch her no more.