Velvet Song Read online

  Slipping on knee-high boots, lacing them at the sides of her ankles, she lifted her gold belt from the heap of her dress and hid the belt about her waist, under doublet and wool shirt. Ready at last, tying an embroidered sash about her waist, she went out to where the earl’s servant waited for her.

  “Good!” he said, turning her about, inspecting her, frowning at her legs, which were just a little too fine looking for a boy’s. “Now for your hair.” He took a pair of shears from a pouch at her side.

  Alyx took a step backwards, her hand on her long, straight hair. It had never been cut in her life.

  “Come on,” the man urged. “It’s getting late. It’s only hair, girl. It will grow again. Better to cut your hair than have it burned, with your head, in a witch’s fire.”

  With fortitude, Alyx turned her back to the man and let him have access to her hair. Surprisingly, as it fell away, her head felt strangely light and not at all unpleasant.

  “Look at it curl,” the man said, trying to please her, to make light of her horrible situation. When he’d finished, he turned her around, nodding in approval at the curls and waves that clouded about her puckish little face. He thought to himself that the short hair and the boy’s clothes suited her better than the ugly dress she’d worn.

  “Why?” she asked, looking at him. “You work for the man who killed my father, so why are you helping me?”

  “I’ve been with the lad”—she knew he meant Pagnell—“since he was a babe. He’s always had all he wanted, and his father’s taught him to take what he should not have. I have tried at times to make amends for the boy’s misdeeds. Are you ready?” He obviously didn’t want to discuss the subject anymore.

  Alyx rode behind the man on the gentle horse and they set off, staying at the edge of the forest, toward the north. All through the ride the servant lectured her on how she must act to keep her secret. She must walk as a boy, shoulders back, taking long strides. She mustn’t cry or laugh in a silly way, must swear, mustn’t bathe overmuch, must scratch and spit and not be afraid to work, to lift and tote, or turn up her nose at dirt and spiders. On and on he went until Alyx nearly fell asleep, which cost her another lecture on the softness of girls.

  When they arrived at the edge of the forest where the outlaws hid, he gave her a dagger to wear at her side to protect herself and told her to practice the use of it.

  Once they entered the dark, forbidding forest, he stopped talking and Alyx could feel the tension run through his body. She found that her hands, gripping the edge of the saddle, were white knuckled.

  The call of a night bird came softly to them and the servant answered it. Farther into the forest another call and answer were exchanged, and the servant stopped, setting Alyx down and dismounting. “We will wait here until morning,” he said in a voice that was almost a whisper. “They will want to find out who we are before they let us enter their camp. Come, boy,” he said louder. “Let’s sleep.”

  Alyx found she could not sleep but instead lay still under the blanket the servant gave her and went over in her mind all that had happened, that because of some nobleman’s whim she was here alone in this cold, frightful forest while her dear father’s life had been cut short. As she thought, anger began to replace her fear as well as her grief. She would overcome this problem and someday, somehow, she’d revenge herself on Pagnell and all of his kind.

  At first light, they were back on the horse and slowly made their way deeper and deeper into the maze of the forest.

  Chapter Three

  AFTER A VERY long time of tiptoeing through the tangle of trees and undergrowth, following no path that Alyx could see, she began to hear voices, quiet voices, mostly male. “I hear the men talking,” she whispered.

  The servant gave her a look of disbelief over his shoulder, for he heard nothing but the wind. It was quite some time before he, too, heard the voices.

  Suddenly, surprisingly, a deep tangle of growth parted and before them was a small village of tents and crude shelters. A gray-haired man, a deep, old scar running from his temple, down his cheek, his neck and disappearing into his collar, caught the reins of the horse.

  “You had no trouble, brother?” the scarred man asked, and when his brother nodded, he looked at Alyx. “This the lad?”

  She held her breath under his scrutiny, fearing he’d see her for female, but he dismissed her as not of importance.

  “Raine is waiting for you,” the scarred man said to his brother. “Leave the boy with him and I’ll ride out with you and you can give me the news.”

  With a nod, the servant reined his horse toward the direction in which his brother pointed.

  “He didn’t think I wasn’t a boy,” Alyx whispered, half pleased, half insulted. “And who is Raine?”

  “He’s the leader of this motley group. He’s only been here a couple of weeks, but he’s been able to whip some order into the men. If you plan to stay here you must obey him at all times or he’ll have you out on your ear.”

  “The king of the outlaws,” she said somewhat dreamily. “He must be very fierce. He isn’t a . . . a murderer, is he?” she gasped.

  The servant looked back at her, laughing at her girlish changes in mood, but when he saw her face, he stopped and followed her mesmerized gaze straight ahead of them.

  Sitting on a low stool, his shirt off, sharpening his sword, was the man who was unmistakably the leader of any group of men in his presence. He was a big man, very large, with great bulging muscles, a deep thick chest, thighs straining against the black knit hose he wore. That he should be shirtless in January in the cold, sunless forest was astonishing, but even this far away Alyx could see that he was covered with a fine sheen of sweat.

  His profile was handsome: a fine nose, black, black hair, sweat dampened into curls along his neck, deep set serious eyes under heavy black brows, a mouth set into a firm line as he concentrated on the whetstone before him and the sharpening of the sword.

  Alyx’s first impression was that her heart might stop beating. She’d never seen a man like this one, from whom power came as if it were the sweat glistening on his body. People often said she had power in her voice, and she wondered if it was like the power of this man, an aura surrounding all of his enormous, magnificent body.

  “Close your mouth, girl,” the servant chuckled, “or you’ll give yourself away. His lordship won’t take to a lad drooling on his knees.”

  “Lordship?” Alyx asked, coming up for air. “Lordship!” she gasped and reason came back to her. It wasn’t power she saw coming from this man, it was his sense that all the world belonged to him. Generations of men like Pagnell had reproduced themselves to create men like the one before her—arrogant, prideful, sure that everyone was destined to be their personal servant, taking what they wanted, even an old, ailing lawyer who got in their way. Alyx was in this cold forest and not at home practicing her music where she belonged because of men like this one who sat on a stool and waited for others to come to him.

  The man turned, looking up at them with blue eyes, serious eyes that missed little of what he saw. As if he were a king on a throne, Alyx thought, and indeed he made the rough stool look like a throne, waiting for his lowly subjects to approach. So this was why she had to dress as a boy! This man with his lordly, superior ways, demanding that everyone bow and scrape before him, bend down so he could place his jeweled shoes on their behinds. He was the leader of this group of outlaws and murderers, and how had he gotten that dubious honor? No doubt from all of them believing in the natural superiority of the nobility; that this man, because of his birth, had the right to command them and they, as stupid as criminals must be, did not question his authority, merely asked how low they should grovel before his lordship.

  “That’s Raine Montgomery,” the servant said, not seeing the way Alyx’s eyes hardened, a great change from her original softness. “The king has declared him a traitor.”

  “And no doubt he well deserves the title,” she spat, still watch