Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1) - Connie Willis Page 0,105
holly.”
“Aye,” Agnes said eagerly. “I could ride Saracen.”
Eliwys started to speak, but Imeyne interrupted her. “Have you no fear of the woods then, though you are only lately healed of your injuries?”
Mistake upon mistake. She was supposed to have been attacked and left for dead, and here she was volunteering to take two little girls into the same woods.
“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.”
“Gawyn 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 to slight Sir Bloet, and lose him his goodwill, 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!”