Innocence Unveiled. Blythe Gifford

lifted the cloth swaddling her hair to let a breeze tickle the top of her head. Then, hair-hidden again, eyes down, she walked with controlled, deferential steps towards home.

       You bargain like a man.

      Even a stranger could see her failings.

      She did not act as a woman should. Now that her father was gone, her uncle told her that often enough. Woman was born weak and sinful. Only by obedience and submission could she attain perfection—leaving home only to go to church, keeping her distance from all men except her kin—

      Katrine sighed, suddenly aware that her steps had lengthened to a stride and she had looked the silversmith directly in the eye and said good day.

      Starting again with a measured tread, she looked at the ground to avoid meeting any other man’s eye.

      It was the world outside her shop that confined her. Within the walls of the weaving room, she was free. But now, a man had invaded her sanctuary and created doubt in the only place she had ever felt certain.

      Yet she prayed he would still be there when she returned.

      Twenty gold livres, Renard thought, as he watched Katrine walk towards Fish Market Square. He should have forced her to thirty.

      Her first steps were small and mincing, but before he lost sight of her, she was striding down the street so confidently that he wondered whether she really did have another source for the wool.

      He kneaded the tight muscles between his neck and shoulders and shrugged off his chagrin at the bargain he had struck. What did he care about the price of wool he would never deliver? He could have bested her, had he chosen.

      He was the expert negotiator. Always in control, he could hear the nearly indiscernible hesitation in his opponent’s voice that meant he had pushed his rival to the edge, found his weakness, identified what he—or she—most feared to lose. With the power of that knowledge, Renard could complete any bargain on his own terms.

      It was a talent the King had used freely over the years.

      And she was no challenge at all. A wisp of a thing, breasts and hips, if any, disguised by a shapeless shroud of wool. Not the kind of woman to tempt a man.

      If he were a man to be tempted.

      Startled to find himself gazing down a street now empty of her, Renard turned from the window to climb the stairs, noting the creak in the third step so he could avoid it later. The house was as quiet as he had anticipated after watching it for three days. In fact, it seemed as if no one lived here at all.

      He peered into a sleeping room at the top of the first flight, dusty with disuse, wondering idly where she slept. He would not be here long enough for that to matter.

      On the third floor, he ducked as his shoulders threatened to brush the steeply sloping ceiling and dropped his small sack under the eaves. It held little. A fresh tunic. A cloak. A scrap of red silk and a well-worn piece of wool safely hidden at the bottom.

      Cistercian wool. What the devil was the difference?

      Taking care not be seen, he peered out of the small window overlooking the back garden and gauged the distance to the cherry tree. It was a slender escape route, but it was hidden from public view. He picked up his sack, grabbed a branch of the tree, and eased himself to the ground.

      Be here, she had ordered, as if he would wait on a weaving woman’s convenience.

      She cared too much, almost burned with it. Soft brown eyes glowing with need, body rigid with fear he would refuse, she acted as if a few sacks of wool were the difference between life and death.

      Such feelings led to dangerous mistakes. He should have had the advantage. He should have been able to get fifty livres.

      Instead, he had let her win with a fabrication about another source. Well, he got what he wanted. Let her think she would be seeing wool at twenty livres a sack.

      By the time she returned, he would be gone, leaving one little Flemish draper waiting a very long time for her wool.

      The smell of fish stew greeted Katrine as she opened the door to the snug town house. Until her uncle had usurped her father’s house and the income that paid for it, Katrine had loved its whitewashed walls and tiled fireplaces. Now, since the Baron preferred it to the dank stone corridors of his own castle, the house no longer felt like her home.

      The servant girl, Merkin, looked up from laying the plates out on the high table and wiggled her fingers in greeting. ‘Did you hear, milady? An English bishop is coming to make peace with the Count.’

      Peace. The very word made her breathless with hope.

      The English King and the French King were snarling over the throne of France like dogs over a bone. Each had spent months trying to force Flanders to his side. First, the English King stopped wool shipments. The Flemish Count had retaliated by jailing the English in Flanders. Then King Edward imprisoned all Flemings unfortunate enough to be in London.

      Including her father.

      Now, Count and commoners were at an impasse. The Count remained loyal to French Philip. The people, dependent on English wool, preferred English Edward.

      An agreement with England would end the struggle and bring her father home. ‘When does he arrive?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ Merkin said, ‘but I heard there’s forty- nine English bachelor knights with him.’

      ‘Forty-nine?’ An odd number. ‘Why not fifty?’

      ‘I don’t know, milady, but every blessed one is wearing a red silk eyepatch day and night.’

      Katrine shook her head. ‘How can a knight fight with only one eye?’

      ‘Not only can’t they see, but they don’t talk.’ Merkin’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘I heard they vowed to their ladies that they would wear the eyepatches and speak to no one until they had performed some deeds of arms against the French.’ A sigh escaped her grin. ‘Isn’t that romantic?’

      ‘Romantic?’ Katrine sank on to the bench, cradling her forehead in her hand. At sixteen, Merkin still had dreamy notions in her usually level head. ‘My father is in prison, my coffers are empty, England and France are near war, and the English have nothing better to do than gallop the countryside wearing real eyepatches and imaginary gags?’ Unseemly laughter spilled over her anger. ‘And my uncle harps on the lunacy of women!’

      ‘Ah, there you are.’ Her aunt Matilda squinted in the direction of Katrine’s laughter as she entered the room. Matilda’s weak eyes could barely see what was before her nose. Her pale forehead was lined from years of trying to focus on things beyond her scope. ‘We were worried. How many times have we told you not to be on the streets without an escort?’

      Every day for nine months, Katrine thought, sending yet another silent prayer to Saint Catherine for forgiveness. At least her name saint had always listened to a motherless child. ‘Without apprentices, it is all for me to do.’

      Let her aunt think she left the house only from necessity. The woman would hear no ill spoken of her husband.

      ‘Well, I’m glad you’re back, Catherine.’ Her aunt spoke the French of the nobility and always called her ‘Catherine’ instead of the Flemish ‘Katrine’. ‘I need you to tell the girl that the Baron did not like the wine she bought yesterday and she must always buy Gascon wine in the future.’

      ‘The girl’s name is Merkin,’ Katrine said, before she translated, softening the rebuff as she did. Her aunt spoke the Flemish of the workers as little as possible, a blessing, since she did not speak it well. Merkin rolled her eyes heavenwards, muttering something that sounded like ‘no wool means no wine’.

      Katrine’s lips twitched towards a smile. ‘What was that, Merkin?’

      The front door swung open and hit the wall