The Kadin - Bertrice Small [175]
For a moment Anne was enchanted by the charming picture, but then a stab of jealousy went through her. Never since she had come into this house as a bride had the hall rung with merriment like this. Never had her own daughter, or daughter-in-law, or even Fiona, laughed with her as they were doing now with Janet The woman was obviously a witch!
The countess walked to the dais. “If ye dinna come to table, the dinner will be burned,” she said sharply. Angrily she watched as her own son seated Janet to his father’s right in his own place and then sat next to her.
During most of the dinner, Anne remained silent listening as they all plied Janet with questions about the East its peoples, and their ways. Wretched godless infidels, thought Anne Leslie. They ought to be burned to ashes. Lewd, lustful creatures openly debauching innocent Christian virgins, male and female. She had heard stories! They should all be destroyed including her sister-in-law who had lived among them What kind of a woman lived for almost forty years in a non-Catholic land and came back unscathed?
Within a week, Janet was thoroughly at home again. To Anne’s dismay, she even allowed a tribe of gypsies to camp for a few days on the estate, and when they left, Janet was the owner of a large, half-wild black stallion that she took to riding at breakneck speed all over the district He was a magnificent beast and she knew it was considered outrageous that she owned him Women were supposed to ride dull, docile brown creatures named Lady, or Princess, not big, sweating black brutes called Devil Wind. Selim had owned such a horse with the same name, and when she had seen her own Devil Wind, she had known she must have him. She had bought him in late June—a skinny, half-broken two-year-old—from a tribe of passing tinkers. She had known at once that he was pure Arab, and consequently had barely haggled the price with their leader. And despite Anne’s carping, Janet had offered the gypsies the hospitality of Leslie lands. The headman had thanked her.
“Majesty, we are grateful for ourselves, and for the horses.” Falling to his knees he made her obeisance.
Startled, she told him to rise. “I am no queen, man!”
He looked at her, his eyes startlingly clear, and bottomless.
“Ye shouldna left him, my lady. He will be great but had ye stayed, he would hae been greater.”
For a moment she could neither speak, nor breathe.
“I see things, my lady. I canna help myself.”
She nodded and, feeling able now to reply, said, “Bring the horse to the castle tomorrow. I’ll pay then—in gold—and dinna try to cheat me by switching horses.”
He flashed her a smile. “And be hunted through half the world, madame?”
She laughed. “Ye see too much, tinker.”
“I see the truth, madame.”
She turned and walked away.
“Allah go we’ ye,” he called softly.
“And ye also,” she replied as softly, never turning back.
When she went riding, Janet was invariably accompanied by Adam’s bastard, Red Hugh More, who had trained Devil Wind.
Anne, on the other hand, had spent a good part of her married life avoiding Hugh More. Despite the fact that he was Adam’s only byblow and had been born before she even came to Glenkirk as Adam’s wife, Anne hated Hugh, and his mother Jeannie.
Jeannie’s family had lived and worked on Leslie lands for as long as anyone could remember. Jeannie had been a sixteen-year-old milkmaid when she had caught Adam’s eye. She hadn’t been a virgin since she was twelve, but she was no wanton. When she told Adam she was expecting his child, the fifteen-year-old boy knew she spoke the truth. When the child was born at Michaelmas, it was obvious that he was Adam’s son; he had his father’s nose, mouth and birthmark on one buttock and his paternal grandfather’s red