The woman was thin with age, and she cowered back against a wall covered with drying batches of herbs. "I do not lie. Please, my lord, I do not yet want to die."
Suddenly Tearle's rage left him, and he sat down on the only stool in the hut, his body deflated. It was not the old woman's fault that his wife had wanted to get rid of her child. Perhaps Tearle should be glad that Zared wanted to do away with the child rather than keep it. Considering how she felt about Colbrand, it was a wonder that she did not want to put the child on the throne of England.
"What did my wife want?" Tearle asked sadly.
"A love potion."
Tearle's head came up. "A what?"
"Your lady wife asked for a love potion. A potion to drive a man insane with lust."
"Who?" was the only word he could get out. He had thought that he had given her little time in the last weeks to form an attachment to another man. But perhaps she planned to see Colbrand later, and—
"You, my lord. She wanted the potion for her husband."
Tearle blinked a few times, not understanding.
The old woman saw the way Tearle relaxed, and she began to gain some courage. She stood up straighter, not slouching against the wall. "The Lady Zared asked me to make her a potion that she could give to her husband so that when he drank it he would be so overcome with lust that he could not resist her."
Tearle stared at the old woman for some minutes. "You are sure of this?" he asked softly. "She said it was for her husband?"
The woman managed a bit of a smile. "I did not get this old by being a fool. I was not going to give a potion to the wife of a powerful man who planned to use it on a man other than her husband. Were she a farmer's wife I might have done so, but not her. I told her that, should she lie to me and use the potion on a man other than her husband, she would suffer ill luck all the rest of her life. She said…"
"Yes, out with it. What did she say?"
"She said that her husband—you, my lord— looked upon her as a child, and a boyish one at that. She wanted to give you something to drink that would make you see her as a woman."
Tearle got off the stool and took two steps so that he was standing at the far side of the hut. His head grazed the underside of the thatched roof. With his back to the woman he allowed himself a smile. She thought he did not desire her, did she? And all the while he had thought she was pining for that fool Colbrand. She had certainly changed her affections easily, hadn't she? But he wasn't going to quibble about that. If he could get her to go to bed with him willingly, that was the first step toward making her return the love he bore for her.
He looked back at the woman. "What did you give her?"
The woman could see that Tearle was amused. She had seen him since he was a boy and suspected he was not a violent man. She straightened. "My potions are a secret known only to me." When Tearle frowned she continued. "I told her to invite you to supper in her room. There was to be a fire and candles, and she was to boil water with sweet-scented herbs in it, and she was to wear her lowest-cut gown. She was to put the herbs in her husband's ale, and when he drank it he would be unable to control himself."
Tearle could no longer repress his smile. "It is to strike me as a bolt of lightning?"
The woman was offended by his tone. "I do not cheat my customers. The potion will work."
"I can guarantee that," Tearle said with good humor. "I shall be the most thunderstruck of lovers." He reached under his tunic and withdrew a small bag of coins. He started to open it and give the old woman a coin or two, but on second thought he gave her the whole bag. It was doubtless more money than she had earned in all her lifetime together.
The old woman was speechless as she held out a trembling hand and took the bag.
When Tearle left the hut he was whistling.
Zared had had some trouble getting Margaret to do what she wanted her to do. For the first time since she arrived the woman seemed to be snubbing her. She answered all Zared's questions curtly and supplied little or no information beyond what she had to.
Zared wanted a special gown, and she had to ask repeatedly where Tearle's mother's gowns were kept. Margaret evaded her as best she could until Zared was ready to take a knife to the woman's throat. At last Zared was taken to a storeroom, and there, amid bolts of fabric that were waiting to be cut and sewn, was a
large wooden box. Reluctantly, with a look of great distaste on her long face, Margaret opened the box to reveal a dress that, even in the dark room, glowed. It was made of cloth of gold.
Zared had never seen such fabric. She took the gown, still in its box, to the doorway and held it to the light. "What is it?" she whispered.
Reluctantly Margaret told her that the fabric had come from Italy. Solid gold was drawn out into extremely thin wires, then wrapped about a strong fiber of silk. A loom was then warped with silk, and the gold thread was woven into it. Margaret also informed her that the fabric cost over thirty-eight pounds a yard.
Gingerly Zared lifted the gown from its box. There was much cloth in the gown. She had no idea how to add, but she knew that the gown cost almost as much as her brothers' castle was worth.
Zared took a deep breath and tried to look as though she wasn't frightened as she lifted the gown from its box. She was doing it to save her family from going to war, she told herself. Perhaps her husband had been right and they could create a child together, and that child would inherit the lands that the Howards held. It wouldn't be right, of course, because the lands should go to her oldest brother, but at least there would be Peregrine blood in the owner of the estate.
"I will wear it," Zared said. The gown was very heavy, and it was stiff. She smiled as she draped it over her arms. Men thought women were weak. Her brothers said that no woman could ever wear a suit of armor, but the stiff, heavy gown was another type of armor. Zared smiled, for she was, in a way, waging a war, a war that she meant to win, and the golden dress was the armor she needed.