Lingering.
Corisande suspected that he wanted to say something to her, to tell her how much he disapproved of her going along with the army but, to his credit, he didn’t make the attempt to actually speak. He pretended to be busy, too, but in his case, he really was. His father had arrived from Pelinom Castle and he spent a good deal of time with his father as they helped William Marshal in the duties leading to the departure of the armies for Berwick.
But the truth was that Corisande was watching out for him, too.
Every time she went outside with an armload of boiled linen or the sewing kits that she used to stitch up the wounded, she would look around for him. Mostly, she had seen him with his father and she didn’t want to interrupt, so she put her head down and continued to go about her own business, although she was acutely aware of his.
She hadn’t talked to Cole since their rendezvous in the buttery and what he had told her then held true – his duties took him away from her and there was no time to speak. There was a great chaos going on at The Keld with multiple armies and multiple commanders, and although Corisande didn’t know the exact details, she had caught wind a few things from her brothers in passing. Anteaus had told her that the Northmen were already at Berwick and they were taking a massive army to essentially chase them away, so she knew whatever battle they were facing was going to be a serious one.
The anticipation in the air was a palpable thing.
But there was something else on her mind as she went about her business.
She wondered if Cole had asked her father for permission to marry. When he had left her in the buttery, it had been with the intention of going straight to her father and speaking with him. There was a large part of her that had been waiting for him to tell her what had transpired, but because of the arrival of The Marshal’s armies, all of that seemed to have become a lesser priority.
She understood, but it was still disappointing.
An entire night of preparations and little sleep had translated into a completely assembled army just after sunrise. Corisande had been exhausted from being up all night, but the surgeon’s wagon was ready and it pulled out of the stable yard along with the quartermaster’s wagons and the provisions wagons about two hours after dawn. Because there were so many men to move, the army from The Keld was the last one to move out at the rear of The Marshal’s procession.
And just like that, they were going to war.
There was some added drama before they left, however. Because Corisande was going, Alastor forced Gaia to go as well. There was a tradition of women surgeons in the House of de Bourne, so tearful Gaia was forced into the surgeon’s wagon, too.
Corisande sat in the rear of the wagon with her sister as it lumbered along the road, driven by one of her father’s soldiers. Behind them was a division of her father’s army to protect their rear, and Corisande remained awake and alert throughout the morning, but by the time the nooning hour passed, she was becoming drowsy for lack of sleep and the constant roll of the wagon. She ended up curling up underneath the wagon bench and falling asleep to the sound of Gaia’s unhappy sniffles.
She didn’t awaken until sunset, when the army halted so that the men could be fed. Because they had spent all night preparing to depart, many of the men had not slept, either, so a complete halt was called so that the men could eat and sleep for a couple of hours. They were traveling during a full moon, so there was plenty of light at night to travel by.
It was clear to Corisande that the army was desperate to get to Berwick because there was very little rest for the men. The knights were pushing the foot soldiers, and her brothers would charge up and down the column, shouting encouragement to the men to keep them moving. That tension she had felt back at The Keld followed them, driving the army north. Corisande may have had it easy sitting in the back of the wagon and sleeping on occasion like she was, but she knew that would end as soon as they entered into the battle.
She would be lucky to have any rest at all after that.
Because there were so many men and the army was so big, travel was somewhat slow, which is why they chose to travel most of the night to make up for lost time. On the second night of travel, they stopped out of pure necessity on the outskirts of a small village and set up camp on a meadow to the southeast. A brook ran through the camp and men washed their faces and rested while the cooks from the different armies prepared meals for their men. Tomorrow, they would be in Berwick and the madness of war would begin in earnest.
It was a final night of peace before the chaos.
With nothing much to do, Corisande helped the cooks with the de Bourne army. There were four cooks, in fact, and they pulled out a side of pork and began to boil it with beans and celery, creating a rich and inviting stew. Bread was baked in portable ovens, which were nothing more than clay kilns set on the edge of the fire. As Gaia remained in the surgeon’s wagon, unwilling to help in a domestic chore and feeling sorry for herself, Corisande was busy helping the cooks by stirring the enormous pots of boiling beans and pork when she heard a voice behind her.
“My lady, you have been summoned.”
Corisande stopped stirring, turning to see Cole standing behind her. He was armed to the teeth, dressed for battle, and sporting a growth of beard on his chin from travel and no rest.
“Who has summoned me?” she asked.
Cole simply beckoned her with a crooked finger and, frustrated that he wouldn’t even answer a simple question, she turned back to the stew.
“Whoever it is, you may tell them that I am busy,” she said. “I’ve no time for your foolery, Cole.”
“It is not foolery, I assure you,” he said. “Please stop what you are doing and come with me. Your father has asked me to bring him to you.”
She stopped stirring, then, and wiped her hands off on the apron she was wearing. She was wearing a brown broadcloth garment, durable, with long sleeves and a heavy skirt. The apron was part of the outfit and although she had washed it, there were faded bloodstains on it. She always swore it when she went to battle with her father’s army. Leaving the bubbling pots, she brushed a stray piece of hair from her forehead with the back of her hand and followed Cole.
Clouds had drifted in from the sea to the east, scattered across the sky beneath the moonlight. Every once in a while, one would cross in front of the moon and darken the landscape. As Corisande walked next to Cole, feeling his silence to the bone, a cloud passed in front of the moon and she missed a small hole that was right in front of her. As she tripped over it, Cole reached out to keep her from falling, but she yanked her arm away angrily.
“Stop it,” she said. “Leave me alone. If you cannot be civil enough to speak to me, then you need not worry over my health.”
She heard him sigh sharply. “I am not being uncivil,” he said. “I simply haven’t had the opportunity to speak with you. We have been traveling for two days.”
She hissed at him. “That is a lie and you know it,” she said. “I have been sitting in the surgeon’s wagon ever since we left The Keld. There has been ample opportunity to speak to me, but you will not do it because you are punishing me for obeying my father’s order and coming on the battle march. Well, I will not tolerate your behavior. If you want to be angry, be angry at my father. Better still, be angry at the Scots for starting this stupid mess. But instead, you’d rather be angry at me for doing my duty. It is a shallow man who would do such a thing.”