Chapter 1
Cheshire, England
November 1403
"In winter's snow, at umber hour,
he came most silent to my bower.
Stark in his need, he built the fire
with honor's ash for love's desire."
"My lady, this knight is dishonorable?" Clare's scribe lifted her quill from the parchment, dribbling black ink upon the ivory expanse.
"On the contrary, he is his liege lord's right arm."
"But he intrudes upon his beloved's bedchamber? A lady whom he should respect from afar? He even arrives in the middle of the night, and clearly, he should not be there? My lady, I do not think this will sell -- !"
"This is one of those stories of chivalry, Mary." Clare smiled tolerantly at the young woman whose skill for writing extended only to her dexterous hands, not yet to her heart.
"We have created heroic adventures before, but never tales of love."
"I know, but that does not mean we can't."
"Nay." Mary shook her head, adamant. "But I thought you said we would next produce the life of our late King Richard."
"We'll begin that soon." In a better place. Where I may write with a freer hand. "I wanted to record this new idea of mine quickly. We'll warm ourselves on these cold winter nights with this fiction about devotion. Fear not, the hero will uphold his honor and hers."
"I am glad to hear it, my lady, for I do not want to write about men whom others cannot respect."
"Nor I. So, let us continue. We've introduced him and now we must meet him, see him as the reader does, and then enjoy him." Does a man exist who can meet a woman, see her, and enjoy her for her mind? Clare laughed at that one!
Mary looked at her as if she were losing her sanity again. Poor Mary. Being a scribe, she knew little about this imagination process and her tolerance for Clare's mental escapades was short.
Clare cleared her throat and pretended seriousness. "Ah, well...we must have a few lines about his appearance, shouldn't we? His hair and his eyes."
"Oh, my lady, that's a simple task. We give him the usual mien for these fables. Golden hair. Gray or pale blue eyes."
"I think not. This man is larger -- " Clare spread her hands the width she'd wish his chest might span and knew no mortal man could match it. "Much larger than myth. Mayhaps, he is dark. Quite ruddy. With sturdy arms and thighs like -- "
"Oak. The usual, I know." Mary was bored by this.
"Trunks of oak!" Clare corrected her.
"But if you give him black hair and eyes, no one will believe he is to be the hero. That is traditional coloring for an evil lord."
"Aye, but when he first comes to the heroine's castle, he is her foe. The darkness suits him, Mary."
"Well, I will try to like him...." The girl shook her head, unconvinced, but applied her goose feather quill to parchment again. "What happens next?"
Mary was drumming her fingers on her tabletop by the time Clare spoke again. "I would like him to walk to her. When he stands before her, he should say something similar to
Bid me stay or make me go,
but tell me quick what I must know.
Can you love me? Will you have me
For one hour of bliss?"
"Oh, that's lovely." Mary was scribbling madly.
"You like this now?"
"Not his looks, I don't. He doesn't have scars or an eye missing, does he?" The scribe donned that look Clare called Ever-wary Mary.
"Only one scar that she can see. We'll put it across his brow, I think. But he lacks nothing. Save the ability to love."
"That's not courtly!"
"Mary," she chuckled, "he learns it here with the lady of the story, though he hates to acknowledge it. She has problems, too. We hear about them when she responds to his invasion of her bedchamber. This should be a sad summary. She should think to herself...something akin to
I rose, a rebel to sire, king.
Future gone with betrothal ring."
"Hmmm, I like the ideas. But the rhythm's wrong."
"We'll refine the meter before you must put it in good calligraphy on the vellum." Clare strode to her frosted window, looked out upon the falling snow, and fingered the loathsome paper that inspired this soothing shower of creativity -- the latest of King Henry's orders to her father and, most pointedly, to her. "Mayhaps, that last line should read, 'Future cast off with gown and ring.'"
"She's naked?" Ever-wary Mary could certainly screech.
"Well, of course."
"My lady!" Mary plunked her quill upon her table. "This sounds too much like those scandalous French lais where passion overrules common sense."
"Don't you think that is what happens when one craves another?"
"I don't know, my lady." The servant stared at her, defiant as if she asked, How do you know?
Clare didn't. Among the suitors whom her father had paraded before her, none had ever attracted her eye and her head at the same time. No man had ever appealed to her heart, either. So whether or not she had the ability to love any man was a question that begged an answer. But just as she had not married one of her father's candidates, she could not allow herself to be dragged into a loveless union planned for her by the king.
She peered down at the document she had received less than an hour ago from Henry. She held her future between her fingers, decreed with a monarch's signature and sealed by his ring against her will. His sentence became hers. Marriage to a man -- a younger man -- reputed to be as lusty as her father.
Her sire's past certainly proved to her that desire for worldly pleasures could warp reason. Destroy others' lives. Make children, like her brother, John, and her sister, Blanchette, curse the man who ignored them as they watched their father sate his three hungers.
The first was for women, beginning with three heiresses whom he had married -- and buried. Continued with two mistresses whom he had ensconced in this castle -- until he turned them out for infidelity. Then played out with the procession of whores who spread across his bed for a night and scattered bastards into the countryside proving that he merited his reputation as a tyrant with a satyr's appetite.
His second greed was for regal favor, which swayed his loyalty with every breeze and shifted toward whatever army occupied his lands.
Whenever the soldiers planned to march on, Aymer de Wallys, fourth earl of Trent, would exhibit his third avarice. His devotion to Henry of Lancaster or his predecessor, Richard II, could be counted upon -- aye, weighed -- by the gold each royal lord dropped into Aymer's purse.
Clare shivered in the cool November air. Never having witnessed love or even loyalty among noble men or women, she felt the irrational need to assume its existence and explore its nature by the only means at her disposal -- in fiction. Her little troupe of women would help her produce this tale just as they had her other books. Her tiny band of six depended upon her for their livelihoods, their treasured independence and their shelter from the cruel world beyond the cozy tower workshop of Castle Trent.
Clare turned to answer Mary more fully. How could she encourage the young woman to use her imagination if she were not free with her own thoughts and reasonings? "We will imagine we know what passion is, Mary. We'll write of how extraordinary this hero is. Of his
Fierce eyes, firm lips,
moist flesh of rippling muscle
Long shanks and longer -- "
"My lady, you cannot write that!"
Clare sighed. "Now, Mary...." He's my hero and I'll create him as I want him.
"'Tis not seemly, madam. The Nightingale has a reputation to uphold!" The apprentice cast wide her hands. "The Nightingale is a man -- or so the world believes."
"Because more men are literate than women, and because we
