So far, the troubles, which would eventually lead to the conflicts collectively known as the Hundred Years’ War, were staying up in the French territories. There were other dangers to watch out for, though. Banditry was always a potential problem even on well-travelled roads such as this one. Feral livestock was another. One of James’s previous trips had involved a wild bull. He had been quick to praise the Englishmen on that trip, who had dispatched the beast while he himself had done his best to dodge the bull’s horns. Anne couldn’t help but think of the curly-haired knight as a matador whenever she thought of that tale, though it was hard to picture him in a matador’s “suit of lights” instead of his dusty, tabard-draped armour.
They reached the well, which stood between the road and the little cluster of stone and plaster huts that passed for a village – or maybe a hamlet at best, since there were no more than five houses. Children headed their way, ready to gawk at the return of the foreign pilgrims. Their parents, used to such travellers, kept their attention on their chores.
By the time Anne reached James, everyone else had already drunk from the bucket, emptying it. He lowered it and winched it up again, giving her time to pull her drinking cup from her makeshift pack. He filled her cup, then fetched out his own. Both were simple wooden vessels, the sort which wouldn’t break ifdropped on the ground, and which wouldn’t cost much to replace if lost. He satisfied his own thirst, then eyed her with his green eyes and smiled.
“And how fare you, Mistress Anne? Was Compostela everything you imagined?”
“I fare well enough,” she murmured. Field anthropologists weren’t supposed to interact much with their subjects, but James insisted on being friendly. Particularly with her. She was supposedly portraying the part of a freeholder’s widow, undertaking this pilgrimage to commemorate the anniversary of her husband’s death.
“And?” he prompted her.
“And it was all I imagined. And more,” honesty prompted her to add. Her previous assignment had been in Germany, and had involved a similar pilgrimage, but the land and the people of the Black Forest were very different from this corner of Europe. That trip also hadn’t had a Sir James in it.
He leaned in a little closer and murmured, “Ithink you’ll be utterly bored when you return home. Presuming you want to return home. You take to this life on the road with great ease. You’re no milksop maiden. Nor, I think, would you enjoy being under your brother-in-law’s thumb.”
“What makes you think that?” Anne asked, bemused by his claim.
“You told Sister Muriel you couldn’t donate any land to the Church in your late husband’s name, since his brother inherited everything but for a bit of coin and your personal things. And that it was a relief to be away from his family for so long, despite the hardships and dangers of taking a pilgrimage,” he said.
“Your ears are sharp, to have picked up so much,” she countered without directly agreeing with him.
“Anything involving an angel would hold my attention. Doubly so, when that angel is you,” he murmured, leaning in close enough that she could feel his breath against her cheek and ear. Unlike some of the others, he took care daily to freshen his breath, usually with a bit of some herb plucked along the road. Today, it was mint. Yesterday, it had been parsley.
He had also picked up the habit of bathing relatively frequently. Clad in his armour, he did smell of metal, rust, oil, dirt and sweat,but she had seen him carefully washing himself on more than one occasion. He had also brought a second set of clothes, fresh hosen and thigh-length cote-hardie as clean as could be kept while travelling, and a fine, embroidered tabard. James had donned them just before reaching the cathedral, and had taken care to wipe down his armour with an oiled rag before their arrival so that it would gleam. Her own gown, a simple linen cote-hardie which barely touched the ground, suitable for her station, was rather dusty by comparison.
“I am no angel, Sir Knight, nor a creature to be venerated and adored,” she demurred. Protocol demanded she turn down any such offers. Inside, however, she felt very flattered by his attentions. She kept her gaze on the nuns, who along with the others were taking the opportunity to disappear into the bushes across the road from the well, attending to the needs of nature. “You should not say such things on a pilgrimage.”
“We travel on pilgrimage to know and honour the miracles of the Creator. It is well known that God made man in His image, and then made woman to be the companion of man,” James reminded her.
Anne started to roll her eyes. She had been exposed to too much equality between the genders after becoming a temporal anthropologist to put up with such chauvinism. At least not in her personal life.
“And, as any artisan will tell you,” the curly-haired knight continued smoothly, “the first attempt in crafting something is always the worst, while the second is always the better. If I am a good man – and I think I am – why then you as a woman must surely be better. Every evidence of my eyes, ears and mind support this idea . . . so why should I not venerate and adore you? To do otherwise would be a sin of denial against the sheer craftsmanship of God.”
She blushed. The weeks spent in his company had proven him a reasonably pious man; she knew he believed what he was saying. She also knew it was the courtship style of the day, the courtly manners and florid flirting which had tamed and tempered the brutal force of the warrior caste in medieval Europe. “If you seek to place me upon a pedestal, you must know I am not a lady of noble birth.”
“You are a lady in all the ways that matter: courteous, kind and competent. You have an innate nobility that no measure of birth-rank can match.” Shifting so that he could look into her eyes, James touched her hand. “I chose this life because I wanted to study all manner of ranks and births, of educations and crafts. I have seen men and women of the highest birth behave with the poorest of concern for their fellow beings, and the lowliest of ranks sharing what little they have with the compassion of the saints they venerate.
“I have trod this road with women of all ages and persuasions, and no one I have found has felt so much like a . . . like a kindred spirit as you. You understand people. Like I do,” he finished, cupping her fingers beneath his. His skin was calloused from his many daily practices with his blade at dawn and dusk whenever they camped, but his touch was gentle. “I care not that you come with no lands and no name of note – I am a third-born son, myself; my portion is small at best – but I care aboutyou.
“When you return to your home, Mistress Anne . . . or what is left of it . . . I would ask leave to court you. I doubt I am liable to find another woman quite like you.”
Involuntarily, the corner of her mouth quirked up. James smiled back.
“I amuse you? Good. A manshouldbe amusing and genial,” he asserted smugly.
She laughed. “You are not likely to find another woman quite like me, no.” Beyond his green eyes and blond curls, she saw the merchant, Phinneas, grunting and groaning his way into the bushes. Her smile faded. “Ugh. He’s making those noises again, the ones he makes whenever he’s about to spend far too much time in the bushes.”
“What, the merchant? Yes, I can hear it, too. I fear between his crumbling sandal and his rumbling gut, he’ll keep us from reaching the raftsman before sunset.” Lifting his gaze from her face, he looked off to the west. “Fill your stomach and your waterskin while you can. Hot weather makes for thirsty pilgrimages, but rain and mud are far more miserable to endure. At least the weather looks like it’ll hold. For now.”
Nodding, aware he had been escorting pilgrimages for at least five years, Anne let him haul up another bucketful while she drained the dregs of her waterskin into her wooden cup. She didn’t say it,but she did think the thoughts uppermost in both her heart and her mind.I’d love to accept, Sir James. You’re remarkably enlightened for your day and age, and I think I’d enjoy being courted by you, wherever it might or might not lead . . . but I come from the distant future, one which does not involve you. A pity, but for the sake of temporal continuity . . . I have to leave you.
Don’t look back . . . don’t look back . . .
“Anne?”
She almost jumped out of her skin. Whirling, she faced the shadowed silhouette of her confronter. The campfire the others had built was just visible through the trees behind him. “Oh! James . . . uh . . .”
He moved with remarkable quietness. It wasn’t until he was close enough to touch that she realized he wasn’t wearing his armour. He must have taken it off while she had been gathering wood for the fire.
