The White Cross Read Online Free Page A

I, Maman.’ (Which isn’t strictly true because they’re worse in London.) In fact this crowd at Lewes Port seems wonderfully lively – fishwives in clogs with herring baskets, naughty women with their hair all anyhow and breasts exposed. Hucksters selling everything from tripe to Holy Virgins carved in chalk… and see over there a mummers’ show with a fantastically plumed Saint George and baggy-trousered Turk, whacking at each other with their wooden swords. The Christian and the Moslem.
    ‘And I wonder, can we guess which one of them will win?’ Sir Hugh says drily as we pass.
    The tents look older from this distance, patched and seamed from years of lying folded I suppose, the ways between them mired and stinking of horse piss…
    But we’ve arrived and I am unprepared!
    A freckled boy with a snub nose and bright red hair has Nesta’s head. Sir Hugh’s already off his horse and at my stirrup offering to lift me down. (Don’t look at him, Elise!)
    ‘May I assist you to descend, My Lady, as Hades asked Persephone before he ravished her?’
    The red smile in the hairy beard so horridly suggestive. The very devil in that smile! It makes you want to slap him (and I hope to heaven Maman didn’t hear). I can’t respond in any case without seeming ill-bred.
    And thank you very much, I think I can vacate a saddle without your sort of help, Sir!
    But his hands are there already, gripping me too hard, too close – a strong man’s hands with heavy veins and black hair on their knuckles, and taking much too long to set me on my feet. Oh God, aren’t men impossible! But there it’s done, and I am free to turn my back upon the wrong man and step forward to the right one.
    I’m chewing at my lips to make them red (and calm, Elise – keep calm and do this properly).
    ‘Take heed, my love. A graceful sway, a lifted hip and slightly outthrust belly to suggest fecundity and other qualities I need not name,’ hissed in a whisper that Sir Hugh can hardly fail to hear. Maman’s convinced that my appearance at first sight will make a difference through the years ahead. ‘For recollect, my dear, we’re dealing with a young man who very likely hasn’t the first notion of what a wife brings to marriage.’
    I am presentable, I checked in my steel mirror at the fortress. Attractive modesty is what we’re aiming for, but without seeming aloof – and silence, because I’m apt to speak before I think, as Mother’s all too fond of pointing out.
    The tent flap’s up and the sergeant is announcing our arrival, speaking loudly (something pompous. I can’t listen while I’m concentrating on the graceful sway.) Now then – a quick glance underneath the lashes…
    His mother, Lady Constance, is tall and angular in a sage gown (and looking rather stern). A little whey-faced girl of six or seven summers presses to her skirts. Another vacant-looking woman in the shadows, probably a nurse. He’s tall as well, I saw that instantly, and something in his favour, taller than Sir Hugh by half a head – straight-limbed, rawboned and standing stiffly like a soldier – long legs, a horseman’s breadth of shoulder underneath the shabby jerkin, large hands (although in keeping with the rest of him, which is more than can be said of his enormous feet!).
    He does look strong, and healthy absolutely. But unfinished somehow, not so much more than a boy – short hair, unwashed and a coarse tanner’s brown cut level with his ears… Look, someone’s darned a moth hole in his sleeve.
    I feel… I don’t know what I feel, or what I’d hoped for in the first place. (Well yes I do, and it was stupid!)
    I am not disappointed in the slightest, not at all. He’s as God made him; not uncomely not at all – face shaven, taut and tanned, one ear that’s lost its lobe – a neck that’s long and muscular (Garda would approve). You really couldn’t call him second best. Looks aren’t the only measure of a man.
    As for him, he’s looking at