In The Master's Bed. Blythe Gifford
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fresh air into her lungs, she battled her guilty thoughts. Solay would not miss her. The others were there, women who knew how to do those things—her mother, her sister-in-law, the midwife—any one of them would be more help than Jane.
She didn’t belong in that world of women, full of responsibilities she didn’t want and expectations she could never meet. She wanted what a man had—to go where she wanted, to do what she wanted, without a woman’s limits.
She squeezed her eyes against the sadness of losing her family, squared her shoulders and faced the future.
She could never pass as a fighting man, but she knew something of clerking from listening to her sister’s husband. As a learned man, surely she could live among men undetected.
And as a clerk, she might find a place in the king’s court. Not the place she should have had, but still one in which she could represent the king in important affairs of state in Paris or Rome.
She hoisted her sack.
Free as a man. Dependent on no one but herself.
If she had calculated correctly, Cambridge would take her three days.
Two days later, Jane woke, broke her fast on berries and headed again for the sunrise, squinting towards the horizon for a glimpse of Cambridge.
On the road heading east, the birds chirped and a placid, dappled cow turned to look, chewing her cud.
You ran away from your sister when she needed you, the cow seemed to say.
She turned her back on the accusing eyes. There was nothing she could have done that one of the others couldn’t have done better.
Her stomach moaned. She should have stuffed more bread and cheese in the sack, but she was not accustomed to making plans for her own food.
Two days on the road already felt like ten.
After two nights of sleeping by the side of the road, she looked and smelled nothing like a lady. She had lost the walking stick in a tumble into a stream on the first day, walked in damp clothes for two, and then been stung by a wasp.
She itched her swollen hand, wondering how far it was to Cambridge.
Behind her, she heard a horse at a trot and turned, too tired to run. If it was a thief, he’d get little enough.
Unless he realised she was a woman. Then the threat would be much greater than losing her meagre purse.
She put on her most manly stance as the black horse and rider came closer. Good shoulders on them, both the steed and the man.
The man looked as rough as an outlaw. Perhaps in his mid-twenties, his face was all angles, the nose broken and mended, black hair and beard shaggy. The stringed gittern slung over his back was small comfort. Travelling entertainers were the personification of all vices.
He pulled up the horse and looked down at her. ‘Where’s t’ gaan?’
She eyed him warily, puzzling over the words, run together in an unfamiliar accent. Yet his eyes, grey like clouds bearing rain, were not unkind. ‘What do you say?’
He sighed and spoke more slowly as if in a foreign tongue. ‘Where are you going?’
She cleared her throat. ‘Cambridge.’ She hoped she had pitched her voice low enough.
He smiled. ‘And I. You’re a student, then?’
She nodded, afraid to risk her voice again.
He studied her, running his eyes from crown to toes. She shifted, feeling something like lightning in his glance.
‘Students dinna travel alone,’ he said, finally.
‘Neither do jongleurs.’
He laughed, a musical sound. ‘I play for meself alone.’
She felt a moment’s envy of his stringed instrument. To live as a man, she would have to abandon song, the only womanly thing about her.
‘What’s your name, boy?’
Boy. She bit back a grin. ‘Ja—’ She coughed. ‘John. What are you called?’
‘Duncan.’ He held out a hand. ‘Where’s t’ frae?’
Frae? He must mean from. She swallowed, trying to think. She had planned to say Essex, where she’d lived until spring, but she was on the wrong side of Cambridge to tell that tale. ‘What does it matter?’
Looking down at her from his horse, he didn’t bother to answer. It always mattered where a man was from. ‘You’re not Welsh, are you? The Welsh are no friends of mine.’
She shook her head.
‘Nor Irish?’
‘Do I look Irish?’
‘You look as if you have a drop of the Norse blood in you.’
She bit her tongue and shook her head. Her fair hair came from her father, the late King, one more thing she must hide. ‘Where’s your home?’ she countered.
‘The Eden Valley,’ he answered. The words softened his face, just for a moment. ‘Where Cumberland meets Westmoreland.’
That explained his strange tongue. He had raked her with his eyes and now she returned the favour. ‘You eat your meat uncooked?’
She had never seen someone from the north lands. Everyone knew the people from there were coarse, uncouth creatures and he looked the part, except for that moment his eyes had been gentle.
They looked gentle no more. ‘You’ve heard the stories, have you?’ He growled, leaning down to bare his teeth at her. ‘Aye, we do. We tear into the raw flesh like wolves.’
She stumbled backwards, as if blasted by the wind, and ended up sitting in the dirt.
When he laughed, she realised she’d been played with.
She waited for him to offer his hand to help her up, then remembered she was a lad and could rise on her own. ‘Well, that’s what they say,’ she answered, brushing the dirt from her seat as she stood.
He shook his head. ‘You’re a south lander, that’s certain. While you spent the summer growing pretty gardens and spouting poesy, we’ve been keeping the Scots from cutting across England like a scythe through wheat.’
Ah, yes. She would have to learn to relish talk of war. ‘And you’re a long way from having to face the French.’
‘You think so, do you? And are you so ignorant you’ve forgotten that the last time the French set foot on English soil it was a Scot who opened the door?’ His expression was grim. ‘While you stand here fluttering like a woman, the Scots have delved our borders and burned our crops.’
Like a woman. The Scots were a less immediate threat than discovery. She lifted her hands and spread her feet. ‘Come down from that horse and face my fists and we’ll decide who’s a better man.’
His grimace turned to laughter, a wonderful sound, and he leaned over the horse’s neck to clap her on the shoulder. ‘Well, Little John, I see you’ve much to learn, but I’ll spare you a brayin’ today.’
She tried not to look relieved.
‘Come.’ He held out his hand. ‘Share my horse. You’ll see Cambridge afore day’s end.’
Caked with the dirt of her days on the road, she slouched and shrugged as if it didn’t matter. Men, in her experience, were not good at welcoming help. ‘Well, if you insist. I can take care of myself, you know.’
Unlike a woman, dependent on a man for the food that filled her belly and the air that filled her lungs.
‘Oh, yes, and a fine job you’re doing, too,’ he said, raising his eyebrows at her bedraggled state. ‘Now accept a hand