The Mistress Of Normandy by Susan Wiggs

bumpkin.”
    Wearing her best gown and her haughtiest look, she found the man in the hall. He was sucking prodigiously at a wine flask. Then he gaped at her, his mouth slack as a simpleton’s.
    She refused to ease his task. Flicking her eyes over his ruddy hair, oiled and mercilessly furrowed by a comb, she asked, “What business have you here?”
    “I am Jack Cade. I bear a message for the Demoiselle de Bois-Long.” His crude French assaulted her ears.
    “I am the demoiselle,” she said in English. The language, schooled into her by tutors sent by her uncle, tasted bitter on her tongue.
    He gave her a sealed vellum letter. Distractedly she noticed his right hand was missing three fingers. A cripple, she thought uncharitably. What must the master be like?
    The seal bore the hated leopard device. Breaking it savagely, she scanned the message. Though long and arrogantly worded, the grandiloquent phrases could not sweeten the outrageous proclamation. King Henry, self-styled sovereign of England and France, ordered her to receive one Enguerrand Fitzmarc, Baron of Longwood, along with the customary bride-price of the uncustomary sum of ten thousand gold crowns.
    Momentarily dazzled by the amount, she glanced up. Bonne had entered, bearing cups of mulled wine. The herald stared at the maid. His eyes bulged, and mangled phrases of admiration burst from him. To Lianna’s disgust, Bonne accepted the tribute with smiling grace and gave him a cup of wine.
    Furious, Lianna said, “Move aside, Bonne. I want him to see exactly what I think of his message.” She rent the vellum into tiny bits and scattered them among the rushes with her foot. “Your king is a pretender! I reject his edict, and I reject the spineless lackey he has sent to wed me, along with the pittance he mistakenly thinks will make him palatable. Tell your master that he can take his foul carcass back to England.”
    Red-faced, the man stammered, “But...but my lady—”
    “I wouldn’t marry that English god-don if the moon fell out of the sky. And if he thinks to force me, tell him to think again. I am already married to Lazare Mondragon.”
    Cade’s jaw dropped. He grabbed a second cup of wine and drained it. “Married?”
    She nodded. “I’ve had a copy of the marriage contract drawn up, so there can be no question as to its validity.” Drawing the document from the folds of her gown, she thrust it under Cade’s nose.
    She couldn’t resist a slow smile of dark satisfaction. Today she would dispense with the Englishman; now she could turn her mind to the problem of Lazare. “There is nothing your master can do. Even King Henry cannot undo what has been wrought before God. Begone, now. The sooner you and that god-don you serve leave our shores, the better!”
    With jerky motions he pocketed the contract, sent a look of longing at Bonne, took the last of the wine, and left the hall.
    “You were a bit hard on the poor fellow,” said Bonne, staring after him. “He’s only a messenger, after all.”
    “He’s an English god-don. ”
    An impulse of wicked mischief seized Lianna. She ran to the armory, put on her gunner’s smock, and climbed to the battlements. The new culverin, on its rotating emplacement, was small enough to be discharged by a single gunner. She loaded a ball and a modest charge into the chamber, lit a piece of tow, and waited until the Englishman passed under the gatehouse and crossed the causeway. She aimed the gun well away from him; the firing would be just for show.
    The charge crackled, then rent the morning air with a powerful report. The ball passed wide of the rider and came down harmlessly in the woods. The horse reared; Cade spurred him and disappeared down the road.
    The shot brought half the residents of the keep running out into the bailey, stumbling over milling chickens and squealing pigs. Wrapped in a hastily donned robe, Gervais appeared below, red-faced, shaking his fist.
    Lianna didn’t care. Like potent wine,