as the horse trotted sideways and the stringed instrument bounced against Duncan’s chest.
‘Hold on, Little John. Fall and you can walk the rest of the way.’
She patted the horse as the beast started down the road, then grabbed the man around the waist, reluctant to press too close. Her breasts were bound, but would he feel a softness against his back? Her legs, splayed wide and tucked against his hips, seemed to expose her most intimate secret. Would he notice what was missing there?
Talk. Talk would distract him. And her. ‘You had a skirmish with the Scots, you say?’
‘Skirmish? Aye, if you want to call it that. Three thousand swooped into the valley and were halfway to Appleby before I left.’
‘You left?’ Astonished, she could not stop the words. Men did not shirk battle.
‘I was sent to ask, nay, to plead for help from our illustrious King and Council.’ The sentence held a sneer.
‘You’ve seen the King?’ Her mother, the old King’s mistress, had fled the court at his death. Jane had been five then and remembered little, but Solay had returned to Court last year and her sister had listened to her every tale.
‘Seen him? I’ve spoken to him. He knows me name.’ The return of his accent hinted at his pride.
She was dumbstruck. The relationship was muddled in her mind, but the new King was some sort of half-nephew of hers, although he was older than she by a few years. Yet she had never even seen him.
It seemed that even a commoner from the north had more stature than a lowly woman. ‘So what did they say, the King and Council?’
‘Next year.’ His words were harsh. ‘They said next year.’
Invaders would not wait on the Council’s convenience. She wondered how far away Appleby was. ‘Why not now?’
‘Because they’ve no money, winter is a miserable season for a campaign, and a few more excuses I can’t remember.’
Neither her sister nor her sister’s husband held the current government in high regard, but they held their tongues. When one was the illegitimate daughter of a dead king, it was dangerous to demean a live one, even if he was devious and less than trustworthy.
‘Then why go to Cambridge?’ Wouldn’t a man return home to fight?’
‘Among other reasons, because Parliament is meeting there.’
His tone implied that she was an idiot who should have got all the information she needed from that simple statement.
‘Well, I can’t divine your thoughts.’ In her family’s experience, Parliament was worse than King and Council, but it wouldn’t be wise to say so. ‘You sit in the Commons, then?’ Minstrel? Representative? Who was this man?
‘Nay, but I must speak to those who do.’
‘And the King? He’ll be there, too?’
‘Within a fortnight,’ Duncan answered.
‘I hear he’s fair and well favoured.’
‘You must have heard that from the lasses. But he looks the part, all pomp and gilt. He makes certain you know who he is.’
She would know him if she saw him, she was certain of that. And if the King was coming to Cambridge, she would make sure she did.
As they rode in silence, there was nothing to distract her from the breadth and strength of his back. He blocked the wind, but the heat that filled her came from some place inside. She had never been so close to any man, certainly not to one from the border lands.
Questions itched her tongue. Northerners were half-beasts, or so she’d been told. Yet he looked little different from other men.
‘Tell me about it,’ she said, finally, ‘where you’re from.’ She would not have another chance to ask.
He did not speak at first.
‘Full a’ mountains,’ he said, finally. ‘I’d lay a wager you’ve never seen a mountain.’
She shook her head, then realised he couldn’t see her. ‘No.’
‘Well, there’s fells and crags and becks—all of earth a man could ever want.’
This did not sound like the cold and gloomy Lucifer’s land she expected. ‘You like it, then?’
‘The soil speaks to me.’
‘That sounds like poesy.’ She bit her lip, afraid he would take insult, but he nodded.
‘The land is poem enough.’ He said the words without shame.
The pleasant phrase was more than she would have expected from a bumpkin. Still, God had given man dominion over the earth so he could control its fearsome power. Only a savage would choose to live in the wilderness.
Then he shook his shoulders, as if sloughing off a thought. ‘But it’s not home any longer. And where’s yours, lad? Answer me now. It’s not a fighting question.’
She chewed her lip, trying to think.
‘Is it?’ He looked over his shoulder.
The truth first. The lie second. ‘I’m from Essex, but I’ve been living near Bedford. With my uncle.’ She could say it safely. This man would not know the region. ‘Since my parents died.’
A family would prove inconvenient, so she orphaned herself without a qualm and braced for expressions of sympathy. She could answer with the appropriate emotion. After all, her father was dead.
But instead of clucking and compassion, she heard only a mumbled grunt that could have been ‘sorry’.
There was another stretch of silence. It seemed a man had much less to say than a woman.
‘I’m going to Cambridge to study law so I can serve the King,’ she said, finally. That was sure to impress him. He could probably not even read.
‘Oh, are you?’ He did not sound impressed. ‘And where did you school, then?’ He asked as if he knew something of schooling.
Too late, she realised she might have made a dangerous boast. ‘Uh, at home. With the priest.’ Schools were for boys.
‘And how old are you?’ Something more than a northern accent lurked in his tone. ‘Fifteen? You can’t be much past that. You’re still talking treble.’
She gulped, glad her voice had always been low for a woman. To pass as a boy, she was willing to lose a few years. ‘I’ll be fifteen after Candlemas.’ Only half a year away.
‘And this is your first time at University.’
‘Yes,’ she answered, before she realised it was not a question.
‘How much Latin do you have?’ His questions were coming thick and fast.
‘Some.’
‘Ubi ius incertum, ibi ius nullum,’ he said, with nary an accent.
It was something insulting about the law, that much she recognised.
‘Varus et mutabile semper femina,’ she answered, haltingly. An insult to women was always a good rejoinder.
‘Varium, not varus. “Woman is an ever fickle and changeable thing” not a bow-legged one.’
Her cheeks burned. The man was not the country simpleton she had thought. ‘I read better than I speak.’
‘I hope so. And you’re set on being a man of law?’ Amusement and disgust twisted in his tone.
She sighed. ‘Mostly, I wanted to get away from home.’
Another laugh. She was beginning to like the sound. ‘You’ll be in good