A Knight’s Enchantment by Lindsay Townsend

young woman to be wandering alone.”
    Her eyes narrowed. “You brought me here. You allowed the world to believe that I am your prize.”
    “And I will take you away again, as soon as I may,” Hugh replied. “Though that will not be—”
    A single piercing horn blast sounded over the hilltop, the signal, Hugh knew, that the jousts would soon begin. He almost said as much to Joanna when he noticed one of the gold tassels on her girdle was missing. His heart racing, he looked her over, head to heel.
    “She was unharmed, unmolested?” he demanded in French to his men.
    “No one accosted me,” Joanna answered in the same language. “And you can ask me.”
    Then where is the end of your girdle?
    Hugh bit down hard on his tongue. She might have lost it on the field somewhere, or in a bush. What did it matter? It was a piece of womanly foolishness, the kind of decoration that holier clerics than Bishop Thomas were fond of railing against.
    He pointed at the remaining golden tassel. “Will you give me that as a favor? I know you do not have your gloves with you,” he added quickly, before she could remind him of that fact.
    “Take my headrail,” she said steadily, cool and smooth as the blue silk veil she wore as she unpinned it with nimble fingers. “It is yours to begin with.”
    She held it out, giving a nod and a fleeting smile as he took the long streamer of cloth and knotted it round his surcoat.
    “Take her to sit with the womenfolk—the ladies, not the others.” Hugh snapped his fingers at the wolfhound. “Guard her, Beowulf.”
    As the dog attached himself close to Joanna’s heel, Hugh slammed the helmet back over his head, making his skull ring as his face settled into a grim frown. Joanna’s tiny smile had convinced him—she was up to something. What, he was not certain of yet, but he had his suspicions and he would be on the lookout.
    Certain that the hound at least would not let him down, Hugh mounted his horse and rode off to the lists without looking back.
     
     
    There were five noblewomen who had followed their lords to this tourney, all seated in a covered wagon close to where the knights would joust and surrounded by hounds and lapdogs and men-at-arms. The five had a look of each other, Joanna decided, as she climbed the wagon steps. Grudgingly they admitted her to sit upon a cushion but did not offer wine or honey-cakes. All were tall, narrow-featured, pale-skinned, and richly dressed, and all stared at her hands as if her fingers were stained in blood, not sulphurs. Joanna sat on her palms and watched the ladies make more of a fuss of the wolfhound than her. She longed to explain that she scrubbed her hands daily, but the stains remained; that she must work for her bread and her fingers showed the badge of her craft. She wanted to ask these long-nosed, haughty females if they were any knight’s prize.
    When Hugh galloped onto the field, the noblewomen praised his horse, his riding, the weight and grip of his lance and the length and power of his long, lean legs. Joanna was tempted to point to the blue gossamer streaming across his brawny shoulders but as he drew rein, waiting for his first opponent to emerge clearly from the mass of horses and knights already gathered on the field, her favor had already been noticed.
    “Destroyer is wearing a favor, but I do not recognize the lady’s colors. Did you give it to him, Eleanor?”
    “Never in this millennium. I would not dare, though as God is my judge, I have often wished for the courage to do so. Did you, Matilde? He has smiled at you before.”
    “I would not give that handsome devil a token in case he challenged my husband, and then I would not know which of them to cheer.”
    “It would not matter, Matilde. We know who would win.”
    “And my husband left weaponless and horseless.”
    “How many chargers has he won now?”
    “Too many to count…. Was it you, Berengaria?”
    “No, but I wish I had. He is, as you say, so very