Personal Crusades

2

Robert was temporarily stunned from being swung against the counter, whispered to, and from seeing . . . her. "Hortense, what in heaven's name are you doing here?" Why aren't you at the convent? He wanted to say.
"Oh, Robby, Robby - it is Robby, isn't it? - that convent was such a dreadful place, I couldn't stay there! Not enough cake. And you know I love cake!"
Robert couldn't help glancing at the wide waist of her pink dress. "I remember."
"Tell me, Robby, what are you doing here? I know you didn't come for the drinks. They're not worth the money." Hortense glanced around, hoping Milah hadn't heard.

Robert cleared his throat. The past had slammed him full in the face, and he had to confront it somehow. "Listen, Hortense, things have changed. We have changed."
He didn't need to say more, they both understood. It had been ten years ago: Robert was given his first job, by a wealthy gentleman who wanted a portrait of his plump, jumpy, sixteen-year-old daughter. "Make her look like a woman," The father instructed. "Maybe seeing what she could be like will convince her to become that person."
So Robert did. As much as he struggled with landscapes, portraits were his forte; and he had made Hortense Snodgrass into a figure a queen would envy. Perhaps because that was how he saw her at the time, overtaken by an enormous boyhood crush . . .

"Oh, Robby, Robby!" Her voice brought him back to the present. Yes, everything had changed. And that crush was left behind . . . FAR behind. "Robby, I LOVE change! It's so exciting and wonderful. Now I'm a woman, and you're a wonderful painter-man . . . Ooo! Isn't it romantic! We can have such fun! Now, what did you want?"
Robert wanted to crawl beneath the floor and hide. But the floor remained strong. "Nothing, Hortense. I'm only looking for a model."
"A MODEL?"

Robert grimaced. But before Hortense could suggest anything, he was distracted by a shriek from outside. "Excuse me, I'll see what's going on . . ."

He slipped away from the bar and outside, glad for an excuse to get away. Oh, but things had changed!

Donnchad stooped under an oak roof beam, then stood to tower above the woman's table. He smiled as he bent to take her offered hand and put it to his lips, allowing it to linger there. "Donnchad, I be named." He sat beside her and looked into her green eyes. "And you?"

My friends call me Gigi."

"May I?"

"May thou what?" She gave him an impish grin.

"Call ye Gigi."

"Only while you're friendly."

"Fine, then, 'tis forever. I've been eyeing ye. Difficult nay ta."

"And I've been eyeing ye eyeing me." She turned a long curly red tress around her finger, watching it as she did. "Ye seemed so swǣr, so dour in thine corner, but from the way ye looked at me, I thought ye to come nigh much sooner."

"I hae much on my mind. Many images that distract... So many." He closed his eyes tight, then shook his head. "But, ye? What is such a bonny lassie as ye doing in a place such as this?"

"I await a lady known as Donna. Tall with long, wavy red hair. She is to be in a dark tunic. Perchance ye have seen her."

"Nay, not the two evenings I be here." He ran his eyes slowly over her. "You be the only tall red lassie ta bless my eyes, and what a fair bonny one ye be."

Gigi looked at him and smiled as she shifted in her seat. "Ye be alone here in London?"

"My page, Samir awaits outside. Strange book he follows. Dun allow him near strang drink. Huge fealty since I saved his life. Says he must always follow me to ward my safety now that I carry his soul."

"How did ye save his life?"

"After the battle we set the harem free. Saladin was so angered he gathered his eunuch guards for beheading. I was able to save only Samir."

"Battle? Harem? Saladin? Eunuch?"

"In Jaffa, the days following our siege of Arsuf."

"Thou speakest of many strange places, strange people, strange words." She looked at him with wonder in her eyes and a growing warmth in her loins. "And where are these?"

"In the Holy Lands. I have been with your King Richard fighting the Saracens. Here now to raise more men for the battles. Sailed into the Thames three weeks ago and have been in Court trying to find interest. Strange place, that. Puffed buffoons. Talk big, act small." He shook his head and his long orange-red hair swept across his shoulders with each turn.

She shivered as she watched. "Have ye had success?" She looked at his shoulders again. "With your fine looks and bold presence, I could not see otherwise."

"I hae gathered a following for the cause. Others are adding more." He looked down at his finger doing circles on the rim of his tankard. "I had word two days past that my father needs me ta home."

"Home?" She tilted her head and licked her lips. "And where is that?"

"In Scotland. I now await the man who will take me north. We are to meet here. Might be ye hae seen him. Tall, braw mien. Lang curly red hair." He picked up one of her tresses and turned it around his finger as he had seen her do.

She tensed, then leaned to whisper, "Out beyond the shutters." They both looked up. A scream pierced the clamour of the room.