Free Stealing Heaven by Marion Meade

"You mean, Uncle wants me to meet normal girls who don't pester their elders about school."
    "I didn't say that," Agnes answered lamely. "But you can't study all the time, sweet. It won't hurt to have fun once in a while."
    Fulbert had Agnes make her two spectacular gowns, and he personally escorted Heloise to a furrier on the Rue de la Draperie, where he picked out a new cloak, raspberry velvet lined with marten. If there were ulterior motives behind this largess, for the cloak was extremely dear, his machinations met with overwhelming success. Obliging, for a time at least, Heloise dropped the subject of school. She had a curious feeling that something special, even important, lay in wait for her, and in this premonition she was right. At Saint-Gervais she met Jourdain for the first time.
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    The domain of Saint-Gervais lay on the fringe of the forest, an hour's ride west of Melun. The snow in the streets of the town had been whipped into beds of slush, but among the open hills, isolated and still, the woods were mantled with an unwrinkled layer of white powder. The sky hung heavy with snow falling steadily in a thin curtain, and crows flapped their wings above the frozen branches. Every few yards, Heloise flexed her mittened fingers, but the stiffness remained. When Fulbert offered her a handful of walnuts, she shook her head.
    "How much farther?"
    "Not much. Over the rise."
    Twenty years earlier, when her grandfather, Rainard the Bald, had been castellan here, the place had glowed with an air of well-tended prosperity. But that had been before the great crusade, and now the accumulated wealth of generations lay strewn from the plains of Hungary to Jerusalem. It was not merely the horses, the fine leather saddles and costly armor that had rotted in the infidel soil, but the men of Saint-Gervais as well: old Rainard himself, who died of fever outside the walls of Antioch; his heir, Garnier the Young, and his wild-headed second son, William, both of whom had perished in the first assault on Jerusalem. True, those who had taken the cross were martyrs now and sat on God's left hand in paradise, but the living at the castle of Saint-Gervais were vouchsafed no such protection, and gradually most of the fiefs southerly tracts had been mortgaged to the usurers of Melun. In the year of Our Lord 1115, the palisade had fallen into disrepair, and the keep could have used a coat of whitewash.
    Over a creaky bridge spanning a snow-filled moat, they slowed to a walk and racketed into the ward. Everyone was waiting—the lord of Saint-Gervais, Lady Anne and Lady Marie, a half dozen cousins, knights and squires in service at the castle, varlets and servingwomen who had left their smithies and kitchens, all of them babbling at once. Heloise dismounted into a cluster of pages and grooms and barking dogs. The yard smelled powerfully of manure. A girl with flaxen braids made a dive for her hand. "Fair, cousin . . ." Heloise heard her stutter, but the rest was lost in the thrum of voices.
    Upstairs in the dark, smoky hall, formal introductions were made and acknowledged. Uncomfortable under the stares, Heloise glanced about uncertainly and tried to match faces with names, but they kept metamorphosing into smiling blobs. Everything about the castle confused her. After the peaceful house on the Rue des Chantres, where even the noise was noiseless, the castle presented a mosaic of barely controlled bedlam. Dozens of people milled around aimlessly; on the straw-covered floor, dogs and quarrelsome children yipped in shrieky voices, and in the flagstone fireplace whole sheep were roasting on the spit. Lady Anne, watery-eyed and looking constantly befuddled, gasped a torrent of orders to the squires.
    Thibaut led Fulbert to a high-backed armchair near the hearth and seated him under the shield of Saint-Gervais. "Permit me to attend you, fair brother," he said. "You must be tired."
    "Thank you, brother." Fulbert leaned back regally and stretched