"I didn't mean that we should go alone," Kivrin said, hoping she wasn't making it worse. "Agnes told me that she rode out with one of your husband's men to guard her."
"Aye," Agnes piped up. "Gawyn can ride with us, and my hound Blackie."
"Gawyne is not here," Imeyne said, and then turned quickly back to the women scrubbing the table in the silence that followed.
"Where has he gone?" Eliwys said, quietly enough, but her cheeks had flushed bright red.
Imeyne took Maisry's rag away from her and began scrubbing at a spot on the table. "He has undertaken an errand for me."
"You have sent him to Courcy," Eliwys said, and it was a statement, not a question.
Imeyne turned back to face her. "It is not meet for us to be so close to Courcy, and yet send no greeting. He will say we have cast him off, and we can ill afford in these times to anger such a man as powerful as — "
"My husband bade us tell no one we were here," Eliwys cut in.
"My son did not bid us slight Sir Bloet, and lose him his good will, now when it may be sorely needed."
"What did you bid him say to Sir Bloet?"
"I bade him deliver kind greetings," Imeyne said, twisting the rag in her hands. "I bade him say we would be glad to receive them for Christmas." She lifted her chin defiantly. "We could do aught else, with our two families to be joined so soon in marriage. They will bring provisions for the Christmas feast, and servants — "
"And Lady Yvolde's chaplain to say the mass?" Eliwys asked coldly.
"Do they come here?" Rosemund asked. She had stood up again, and her sewing had slid off her knees and onto the floor.
Eliwys and Imeyne looked at her blankly, as if they had forgotten there was anyone else in the hall, and then Eliwys turned on Kivrin. "Lady Katherine," she snapped, "were you not taking the children to gather greens for the hall?"
"We cannot go without Gawyn," Agnes said.
"Father Roche can ride with you," Eliwys said.
"Yes, good lady," Kivrin said. She took Agnes's hand to lead her from the room.
"Do they come here?" Rosemund asked again, and her cheeks were nearly as red as her mother's.
"I know not," Eliwys said. "Go with your sister and Lady Katherine."
"I am to ride Saracen," Agnes said, and tore free of Kivrin's hand and ran out of the hall.
Rosemund looked as if she were going to say something and then went to get her cloak from the passage behind the screens.
"Maisry," Eliwys said. "The table looks well enough. Go and fetch the saltcellar and the silver platter from the chest in the loft."
The woman with the scrofula scars scurried out of the room and even Maisry didn't dawdle going up the ladder. Kivrin pulled her cloak on and tied it hastily, afraid Lady Imeyne would say something else about her being attacked, but neither of the women said anything. They stood, Imeyne still twisting the rag between her hands, obviously waiting for Kivrin and Rosemund to be gone.
"Does — " Rosemund said, and then ran off after Agnes.
Kivrin hurried after them. Gawyn was gone, but she had permission to go into the woods and transportation. And the priest to go with them. Rosemund had said Gawyn had met him on the road when he was bringing her to the manor. Perhaps Gawyn had taken him to the clearing.
She practically ran across the courtyard to the stable, afraid that at the last minute Eliwys would call across the courtyard to her that she had changed her mind, Kivrin was not well enough, and the woods were too dangerous.
The girls had apparently had the same idea. Agnes was already on her pony, and Rosemund was cinching the girth on her mare's saddle. The pony wasn't a pony at all; it was a sturdy sorrel scarcely smaller than Rosemund's mare and Agnes looked impossibly high up on the high-backed saddle. The boy who had told Eliwys about the mare's foot was holding the reins.
"Do not stand gawking, Cob!" Rosemund snapped at him. "Saddle the roan for Lady Katherine!"
He obediently let go of the reins. Agnes leaned far forward to grab them.
"Not Mother's mare!" Rosemund said. "The roncin!"
"We will ride to the church, Saracen," Agnes said, "and tell Father Roche we would go with him, and then we will go riding. Saracen loves to go riding." She leaned much too far forward to pat the pony's cropped mane, and Kivrin had to keep herself from grabbing for her.
She was obviously perfectly able to ride — neither Rosemund nor the boy saddling Kivrin's horse gave her a glance — but she looked so tiny perched up there in the saddle with her soft-soled boot in the jerked-up stirrup, and she was no more capable of riding carefully than she was of walking slowly.
Cob saddled the roan, led it out, and then stood there, waiting.
"Cob!" Rosemund said rudely. He bent down and made a step out of his linked hands. Rosemund stepped up on it and swung into the saddle. "Do not stand there like a witless fool. Help Lady Katherine."
He hurried awkwardly over to give Kivrin a hand up. She hesitated, wondering what was wrong with Rosemund. She had obviously been upset by the news that Gawyn had gone to Sir Bloet's. Rosemund hadn't seemed to know anything about her father's trial, but perhaps she was aware of more than Kivrin, or her mother and grandmother, thought.
"A man as powerful as Sir Bloet," Imeyne had said, and "his good will may be sorely needed." Perhaps Imeyne's invitation was not as self-serving as it seemed. Perhaps it meant Lord Guillaume was in even more trouble than Eliwys imagined, and Rosemund, sitting quietly at her sewing, had figured that out.
"Cob!" Rosemund snapped, though he was clearly waiting for Kivrin to mount. "Your dawdling will make us miss Father Roche!"
Kivrin smiled reassuringly at Cob, and put her hands on the boy's shoulder. One of the first things Mr. Dunworthy had insisted on was riding lessons, and she had managed fairly well. The side-saddle hadn't been introduced until the 1390's, which was a blessing, and mediaeval saddles had a high saddle-bow and cantle. This saddle was even higher in the back than the one she'd learned on.
But I'll probably be the one to fall off, not Agnes, she thought, looking at Agnes perched confidently on her pony. She wasn't even holding on but was twisted around messing with something in the saddlebag behind her.
"Let us be gone!" Rosemund said impatiently.
"Sir Bloet says he will bring me a silver bridle-chain for Saracen," she said, still fussing with the saddlebag.
"Agnes! Stop dawdling and come," Rosemund said.
"Sir Bloet says he will bring it when he comes at Easter."
"Agnes!" Rosemund said. "Come! It is like to rain."
"Nay, it will not," Agnes said unconcernedly. "Sir Bloet — "
Rosemund turned furiously on her sister. "Oh, and can you now sooth the weather? You are naught but a babe! A mewling babe!"
"Rosemund!" Kivrin said. "Don't speak that way to your sister." She stepped up to Rosemund's mare and took hold of the loosely looped reins. "What's the matter, Rosemund? Is something troubling you?"
Rosemund pulled the reins sharply taut. "Only that we dawdle here while the babe prattles!"
Kivrin let go of the reins, frowning, and let Cob make a step of his laced fingers for her foot so she could mount. She had never seen Rosemund act like this.
They rode out of the courtyard past the now empty pigpens and out onto the green. It was a leaden day, with a low blanketing layer of heavy clouds and no wind at all. Rosemund was right about it being "like to rain." There was a damp, misty feeling to the cold air. She kicked her horse into a faster walk.
The village was obviously getting ready for Christmas. Smoke was coming from every hut, and two men were at the far end of the green, chopping wood and throwing it onto an already huge pile. A large, blackened chunk of meat — the goat?-was roasting over a spit beside the steward's house. The steward's wife was in front, milking the bony cow Kivrin had leaned against the day she tried to find the drop. She and Mr. Dunworthy had had a fight over whether she needed to learn to milk. She had told him no cows were milked in winter in the 1300's, that the contemps let them go dry and used goat's milk for cheese. She had also told him goats were not meat animals.