Red Adam's Lady: Volume 32 (Rediscovered Classics) - Softcover

Ingram, Grace

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1613739672 ISBN 13: 9781613739679

Verlag: CHICAGO REVIEW PR, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

The fair Lady Julitta has a problem. She is not wealthy. She prizes her virginity. And her liege, whom she despises, is intent on rape. Red Adam is the lord of Brentborough castle'young, impetuous, scandalous, a twelfth-century hell raiser. On one of his nights of drunken revelry he abducts Julitta. Though she fends him off, keeping her virginity, he has sullied her honor. Then, to the astonishment of all, he marries her. Red Adam's Lady is a boisterous, bawdy tale of wild adventure, set against the constant dangers of medieval England. It is a story of civil war and border raids, scheming aristorcrats and brawling villagers, daring escapes across the moors and thundering descents down steep cliffs to the ocean. Its vivid details give the reader a fascinating and realistic view of life in a medieval castle and village. And the love story in it is an unusual one, since Julitta won't let Adam get closer than the length of her stiletto. Long out of print though highly acclaimed, Red Adam's Lady is a true classic of historical fiction along the lines of Anya Seton's Katherine and Sharon Kay Penman's Here Be Dragons.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Grace Ingram was the pseudonym of Doris Sutcliffe Adams (1920'2015). She wrote six novels: Desert Leopard, Price of Blood, Power of Darkness, and No Man's Son under her own name, and Red Adam's Lady and Gilded Spurs under the name Grace Ingram.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Red Adam's Lady

By Grace Ingram

Chicago Review Press Incorporated

Copyright © 1973 Grace Ingram
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-61373-967-9

CHAPTER 1

Within sight of Brentborough village and the castle lowering over it, and five miles from home, the lady's palfrey cast a shoe. Pronouncing maledictions on the cross-eyed sot who had shod her, the groom swung down, set his mistress in his own saddle, recovered the shoe and started to lead the limping mare.

"Could ha' been worse, Lady Julitta. Handy enough to a forge, and if t' smith's not sober he soon will be."

"A little early for him to be incapable," she replied drily.

"Who's to say these days, wi' t' new lord setting such a rare fine fashion in tippling? And mind you, m' lady, while I deals wi' t' smith, you sets mum as a mouse in t' priest's house outa sight."

The lady grinned. "So desperate a ravisher?"

"Best put no temptation in his road, m' lady," the groom answered austerely, and as they squelched into Brentborough through the drizzle he steered her firmly for the church on their right hand. A man standing in the doorway of the alehouse, whose green bush proclaimed a fresh brewing, recognized their plight and called over his shoulder. One fellow came running to take the nervous mare, and the smith appeared, no more than amiably moistened, and ambled towards his forge. Then the alewife herself emerged and trotted heavily across the miry green, her bosom surging with the effort, and dropped a curtsey.

"If you seeks Father Simon, m' lady, he's up at t' castle shriving some poor sinner, God rest him," she panted, crossing herself. "'Twouldn't be seemly, for sure, for you to set foot beyond t' gate, and a stiffish climb too. But if you're wishful to rest out o' t' rain while Edgar shoes your mare, Lady Julitta, I'd be honored, though 'tisn't fitting I knows —"

"Right gladly, and I thank you," The lady accepted, dismounted and shook out the damp-spangled skirts of her shabby riding dress. On so wet an evening she was grateful for any shelter. Ignoring her groom's disapproving eye, she accompanied her hostess to the alehouse, where the customers were summarily shooed out.

"Off home, ye slummocky gawks — off ye gets to your wives, trying to keep your suppers from scorching while you swills! Mend your manners, goggling like codfish at the noble lady!" She flapped her apron at them, and they scuttled, laughing, all save one old woman sharply regarding them over a wooden piggin. Her wizened face disappeared behind it, and she swallowed like a veteran. "Aye, you too, gran'mother! Time all honest women was inside their own doors!"

The old woman smacked the piggin down on the bench with a jar that demonstrated its emptiness. "If I was your gran'dam you'd ha' been born wi' more wit nor you've got now, Gunhild," she declared belligerently, "an' as for honest, I'm past being owt else an' so are you!" She bounced from the bench, a bundle of bones in withered skin, and past them to the door. Outside, she poked her head round its frame. "Put less water to your malt if you'd have a brew worth drinking," she recommended, winked alarmingly at the girl, and vanished.

"Tippling owd besom — never heed her! Come sit you down, my pretty dear — m' lady. A horn o' new ale, now? And what's your fancy? There's green cheese, and eggs, and fresh-baked bread, or shall I toss you up a fry o' bacon? You'll be sharp-set riding from t' nunnery, and likely not much to your dinner, the Reverend Abbess being too holy-minded to set much thought on folk's bellies."

Holy was not the word the girl would have applied to the Reverend Abbess' mind, but she laughed, accepted the horn of ale, coarse bread warm from the hearth and soft cheese, declining all else the widow's bounty pressed on her. She warmed to a kindness seldom hers, even though she knew that Brentborough would be wearied for weeks to come by the honor done Gunhild's house by young Lady Julitta of Chivingham. She looked about her in the twilight that came through the open door. The single log, flat on its bed of ash, smouldered sullenly, eddying a blue haze about the blackened side of bacon, the half mutton-ham, the dried fish, strings of onions, and bunches of herbs that hung from the rafters. In a corner a shaggy bitch suckled a tumble of pups, and the earthen floor, smooth and hard as polished wood, had been newly swept and strewn with green rushes. The air reeked of the sweet-sour scent of brewing.

"Let me fill up, m' lady. Dismal riding today, and your gown all mired. A rough road for a lady, and on a bootless errand too, for o' course you're about Lord William's business, and everyone knows as t' holy Abbess isn't t' lady to abate a scrap o' her house's rights, and all Holy Church to her back. But 'tis your uncle's affair." She cocked a knowing brown eye at the girl, who retired prudently behind the ale-horn, marveling afresh that the peasants knew every secret of hall and bower. Not that her uncle had any secrets, since he loudly proclaimed his mind on all matters that engaged it.

The alewife bustled about the hearth, pulling the iron firedogs closer, setting a couple of fresh logs against them, sweeping in the ashes. The girl munched with healthy hunger, reflecting on an unpleasant errand whose fruitless outcome she would have to explain to her uncle, though why he should expect her to prevail when his lawyer, his chaplain, and he himself had failed to budge the Abbess a hair's breadth from her stand, was past her comprehension. Whatever flaws his lawyer had discovered in his grandsire's charter making over the disputed acres, the nunnery had been in possession these thirty years, and his suggested compromise that it restore half, to avoid the mutually ruinous costs of a lawsuit, had been rejected with the contempt it merited. Nor was it easy to plead a hopeless cause with a detestable woman. The girl shrugged incautiously, and regretted it; her shoulders still ached from the beating her protests had brought her.

A steady ring of hammer on iron proclaimed the smith's industry. She had not a penny on her for payment, and her uncle, applied to, would blame her again. She would not be back before dark, incurring further censure. She swallowed the last morsels, drained the horn, and thanked her hostess. She moved to the door. The sky was darkening fast. The castle's black bulk was already pricked out with lights, gathering strength as the night thickened. A raucous yowling, rapidly approaching, jerked her head round.

Four men were trampling up the track on lathered stallions, affronting the evening with their variant versions of a lewd song. They reeled every way as they rode, reins loose and heads thrown back, but their high-peaked saddles and horseman's instinct kept them astride their mounts. The girl stepped back from the doorway with a snort of mingled amusement and disgust, knowing them for the new lord of Brentborough and his pot comrades, returned a fortnight ago to scandalize the neighborhood, this rainy harvest-time of 1173. Opposite the alehouse the leader suddenly flung up a hand and wrenched on the reins, halting song and mount together in a splatter of mud and foam.

"Come, you gallant — hey, the bush! New ale!" The other three overshot him and swung plunging horses about. "New ale!" Moved by that stimulus, they pounded across, tumbled from their saddles, and surged for the doorway.

The alewife already blocked it, hissing over her shoulder, "T' back room, m' lady!"

The lady had needed no telling, but by mischance she was on the wrong side of the doorway. The men's rush spun even Gunhild's bulk...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: CHICAGO REVIEW PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1613739672
• ISBN 13: 9781613739679
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Chicago Review Press; https://www.chicagoreviewpress.com/; ; 814 North Franklin Street; Chicago; IL; 60610; USA
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar