Gilliane (Roselynde Chronicles, Book Four)

by Roberta Gellis

  “Gilliane,” Alinor patted the shaking shoulders, “however Neville died, he is better off dead, poor thing. Forget it. It is past. Look up at me. I have something of import to say to you. Look up now.”

  “I did not, madam,” Gilliane insisted. “I did not.”

  “No? Well, it is not important.”

  Gilliane’s eyes opened wide. It was not important that she might have murdered her helpless husband? Not important that she had violated her vows of wedlock—not that she remembered making any? But then, what was important?

  “What is important,” Alinor continued, “is that you are a silly goose and Adam is a dolt! I know he does intend to marry you.”

  Alinor then related the conversation she had had with her son about Gilliane’s health. Before she was half done, Gilliane had realized Alinor was right. This was important. Her eyes were bright again and her cheeks flushed.

  “Is it true?” she gasped. “You could not be so cruel as to hold out a false hope to me. You would not!”

  “No, I would not, but in fairness, I must point out to you, my love, that you hold yourself too cheap. Not only Adam will desire you. You may pick and choose out of dozens of men if you will. You are not only very beautiful, but a woman of great substance—in fact, a rich widow.”

  An expression of revulsion came into Gilliane’s face and she shook her head and put out a hand to reject and ward off a completely repellent idea. Alinor smiled. Clearly Adam was not grasped at out of fear and hopelessness but a true choice of the heart. The time of testing was over. Now Alinor must prepare her daughter-by-marriage for her role in life. “Child,” she continued, “I hope you will not be offended, but if you are to be Adam’s wife and the estates of Tarring are to be joined to those of Kemp—and since Adam’s brother-by-marriage is the king’s cousin and the Grand Marshal of England is our closest friend—you will be a very great lady. Forgive me if I say to you that you have much to learn.”

  “I am greatly aware,” Gilliane sighed. “I have tried so hard to do what Adam expected of me, but I do not know how.”

  “There is no benefit in too-great modesty,” Alinor reprimanded. “You seem to have managed the men-at-arms and people of Tarring well enough.”

  “But that was easy,” Gilliane replied. “I only had tell Alberic that I wished the punishments and judgments to be the same as those Adam would have delivered, and he told me what to say and I said it. Also, Father Paul told me what the custom was in the manor at Tarring. They did not know I was ignorant because I told them that things were done differently in France. I do not know if that is true, but I did not think they would know, either.”

  “Very clever,” Alinor approved, “but there will be times when Alberic and Father Paul are not by, and you cannot use that device when Adam is with you.”

  “But I will not need—I mean, Adam will give justice if he is there.”

  “No!” Alinor exclaimed. “They are your lands, your people. Adam will stand beside you, and if you need help—if it is a matter of honor between men—he will advise you, but you must remember at all times that you are a great lady. You do have much to learn.” Alinor looked at the wide, frightened eyes. Her voice softened. “It does not all have to be learned today, child. We will go one step at a time.”

  There was very little to do at Wick, until the war machines had performed their work and breached the walls. Adam had time to read every word of Gilliane’s letters and fret himself nervous over her wholly imaginary ill health. Fortunately, there was soon news that occupied Adam’s mind. Ian wrote joyously that, although Berkhampsted had yielded after some hard fighting, Louis had apparently had enough. A truce had been declared and the prince had already withdrawn to London, leaving the army to break up at its own pace.

  “This,” Ian wrote to Alinor, “has not overly pleased Arundel, who has been here twice more and says Louis should have stayed to send the men away so that they would commit no outrage to violate the truce. You know this is unreasonable, but we are well pleased to see that Arundel finds everything the prince does unsatisfactory. Do not be surprised, my dear love, if we have him for a guest soon after Geoffrey and I return.

  “Tell Adam,” he continued, “that he should conclude his business at Wick as quick as he may. Although the truce does not bind an overlord from chastising a rebellious castellan in a general way, Lady Gilliane’s case is a little delicate. Since her late husband was sworn to Louis, by strict law it might be considered that she is Adam’s captive, not his vassal, and thus that Adam is violating the truce by taking Wick.”

  There was near a full sheet more of love and longing and small personal memories that told the tale of Ian’s full heart. Alinor read and sighed with love, but her mind soon prodded her away from that delight. What should she do about Ian’s message to Adam? She could, of course, write to her son herself and send a private messenger to him. That would spare Gilliane much pain, but was it right to spare her? The time for another testing had surely come. Could Gilliane steel herself to transmit a message that would thrust her lover into active battle?

  Alinor bit her lip. Gilliane was a darling, exactly the kind of girl she would have chosen for a daughter-by-marriage had she been asked to choose a wife for Adam. She was as quick of wit as Joanna, not so stubborn, with as strong but a kinder sense of fun. Alinor had come to love her, and it was hard for her to hurt those she loved, especially gentle Gilliane. It was most unlikely that Adam would come to any harm in this action against Wick, but it could happen. If Gilliane had been the one to tell him he must begin the assault and he should by some ill chance be killed… Alinor closed her eyes and took a deep breath to ease the tightness in her chest and throat.

  Life had to be lived. There was no easy path through it. She rose and went down to the hall, where she knew she would find Gilliane alone since Joanna had also had a letter and was in her own chamber savoring her husband’s words.

  “I have a hard task for you, my love,” she said.

  Gilliane looked up from her needlework and smiled. “Do not tell me you still fear for my delicate health,” she giggled.

  “No, it is your tender heart I fear for. Listen to this.” And Alinor read the pertinent section of Ian’s letter to her.

  The joy and teasing died out of Gilliane’s face; her eyes grew large and glittered with tears. “Is it really my duty, madam, to tell Adam he must fight before he is ready?”

  “He will not act before he is ready, sweeting,” Alinor soothed. “Adam is too war-wise to endanger his men and the success of his enterprise by a hasty, ill-prepared assault. He will increase his efforts to be ready.”

  Alinor’s bright hazel eyes met Gilliane’s soft velvety brown ones, and the hazel eyes dropped. The tears spilled over Gilliane’s lids and marked her cheeks. Gilliane knew Alinor was voicing a hope, not a conviction. Neither of them believed there was anything more Adam could do to hasten the readiness for the assault. He had written more than once, “I long for you. It seems to me no wall has ever been so stubborn to be breached.” Gilliane had no doubt Adam was already doing all he could. Alinor came close and stroked Gilliane’s cheek.

  “Poor child,” she sighed, “you need not write of this. I will. Perhaps I should not have told you, but, Gilliane my love, this will be your life. You must know and face it. I can shield you a little this time…” Alinor’s voice checked. Gilliane was shaking her head in a determined way. Alinor’s lips tightened. If that stubborn negation meant that Adam should not be informed of Ian’s warning, Gilliane had learned nothing of political necessity. But Gilliane laid down her needle and wiped her eyes.

  “Adam would expect me to write such things to him, would he not? If I failed in such a thing he…he might love me still, but he would not trust me as Lord Ian trusts you or Lord Geoffrey trusts Joanna. Is that not true?”

  “Yes, child, that is true.”

  “Then I will write at once and…and is it proper for me to ask you to lend me a messenger, or should I…”<
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  “It is perfectly proper, my love. The messenger will be ready when your letter is written.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Cedric Southfold, son of the man who had followed Alinor’s first husband all the way through Wales to carry messages, took Gilliane’s letter to Adam. He broke the seal anxiously, knowing Gilliane would not write before his messenger came to carry her letter unless it was important. Naturally enough, the news delighted him and sent him off to Sir Richard’s tent to pass it on. The other men were summoned to a war council and to hear of the truce and Arundel’s attitude toward Prince Louis.

  It was only after the plans for taking the keep had been settled and Adam returned to his tent and reread Gilliane’s letter that he noticed its peculiarity. The hand was hers. Adam had no doubt about that. However, there was a stiff formality to the words that was not at all like Gilliane’s other letters. Those were written without art, just as Gilliane would speak, words of love interspersed with bits of news and tales of daily happenings. This—there was not a word of affection in the whole thing. That made Adam consider the meat of the letter again, and his eyes went blank and cold.

  Because it was the most natural thing in the world for his mother and sister to relay such information to Adam, he had not at first thought about how unlikely it was that Gilliane should do so. Why should she suddenly be urging him to take Wick when she had been opposed to the idea all along? It was true that the last morning she had said it was only because she did not wish to part from him—she had said that the night before also—but it was not the whole truth. Gilliane had some reason she was not willing to confess for wishing Wick to remain in Sir Matthew’s hands. Then why this letter?

  The muscles around Adam’s jaw bunched as he set his teeth. Gilliane had been forced to write. That was why the words did not sound like her own, and why there was no word of love. Alinor had somehow forced Gilliane to write that letter. Adam’s eyes blazed with rage and he started up as if he would ride home to remonstrate with his mother and protect Gilliane. The motion was abortive, and he sank back. Adam knew Alinor was never cruel without a purpose. Perhaps this was a device to make Gilliane understand she was forever separated from Louis’s party.

  Whatever Alinor’s reason, Adam could not like it. He could not endure the thought of Gilliane being forced to do anything. He could not endure the thought of Gilliane being unhappy at all. He stood up again, restless with the need to go to Gilliane and comfort her, assure her… Good God, assure her of what? That he would not take Wick?

  With an explosive oath and a sinking heart, Adam emerged from his tent and began to stalk around the camp to make sure that all was being readied as swiftly and secretly as possible. Physical occupation eased the worst of his tension but did not reduce his desire to return to Roselynde. He would take Wick tomorrow, he determined. Then it would be too late for his resolve to be shaken, and he could go back to Gilliane with a quiet mind. Several times a cold finger of anxiety touched him when he thought that she, having failed in her purpose of controlling him by love, might receive him coldly. He would not permit himself to dwell on that, but he could not write his usual letter. He tried twice, but could think of nothing to say except angry accusations that if she loved him she would also love his friends and his political purposes. Since he himself realized that the shoe fit his foot also—after all, could she not point out that if he loved her he should also love Louis and the French—he threw the parchment aside and did not write at all.

  After midnight it was easier because there was much to do. Men with faces and armor blackened softly carried the scaling ladders down to the ditch that surrounded the keep. Some of them crept down its sides, feeling their way slowly with great caution. There was no moonlight to help them or to betray them to the guards on the keep walls. Now and again a stone rolled or a man slipped. When that happened, all froze into stillness, scarcely breathing. Once a guard called out and raised a torch high. The flickering light illuminated nothing, certainly not the frozen men who even shut their eyes so that no chance gleam of light should reflect from their glistening eyeballs.

  One by one the long ladders were passed down. Then, with even more care, the men began to climb the sides of the earthen mound that was topped by the stone walls of the keep. Two thirds of the way up they stopped. The foot-ends of the ladders were passed up. Then footings were dug—slowly, carefully the earth was loosened, scooped out a handful at a time, and laid silently aside. It was near four in the morning before all the ladders were set and ready. The men crouched beside them, wrapped in their cloaks, shivering, breathing softly on their hands to warm them, cursing war in winter. No one dared speak; they hardly dared breathe. Each knew that the fate of the man who made a sound that warned the keep would be far worse than a quick, clean death in battle.

  When all was ready, the whole army drifted by twos and threes to the edge of the ditch. Quiet was still the order, but if warning should be given now it would not be so serious. If the guards on the walls should raise the alarm and call out the men in the castle, Adam’s troops were instructed to rush down the ditch, help raise the ladders, and join in the assault at once. No one needed to speak a word. Everything had been explained very clearly the previous day. Adam hurried along the edge, tapping the shoulder of the leader of each group and pointing downward. He knew that the silence could not last more than a few minutes longer. Sooner or later a man would slip and bring those ahead of him down with him, or a man would sneeze or cough.

  All in all, they were luckier than Adam expected. He had almost made his way back to the central group where he was to meet Cuthbert before the alarm was given. It rang out on the opposite side of the keep—Sir Andrew’s men, Adam thought. It would be likely. They were not as well disciplined as the others, being accustomed to getting around their not-too-clever master. It did not bother Adam at all that the warning had been given. He had been growing impatient for the real action to begin.

  “Go! Go!” he shouted, throwing off his cloak and running back toward his own station.

  Noisily and far more rapidly now, the men slid and scrambled down the ditch. As Adam reached his own group and began to climb down the slope, he could hear the men ahead grunting and gasping as they lifted the heavy ladder against the sharp gradient. Crashing down among them, he lent his own enormous strength to the task, first pushing from underneath, then climbing up beside the tall, wavering ladder and pulling at it while others pushed from behind. A step at a time Adam climbed and pulled, his muscles cracking with strain as he balanced the effort of two men on the opposite side.

  Above on the walls there were shouts. Resinous torches were flung over to fall on the slope of the mound and light the places where the men struggled to raise the ladders so that the archers could aim their bows. Adam bellowed for his men to stamp the torches out. It was true that the action would mark their presences, but without light the arrows could only be fired in a general direction. The men who were immobilized by the effort of lifting the scaling ladders into position would otherwise make too-excellent targets.

  At last the ladder was up. Adam began to climb. The faster he made it up the ladder, the less likely it was that the defenders of the keep would be able to push it over. Just behind him he could hear Cuthbert. The man had a little wheeze in his breath when he was exerting himself strongly that betrayed his presence to those familiar with him.

  “Lord,” Cuthbert gasped, “watch your head!”

  Adam ducked aside and, as something swished over his head, twisted his hand to seize the sword that had been hanging from his wrist by a leather thong. He struck out with it carefully, thrusting rather than swinging so that he would not crack the sword against the stone. It was a good sword, his father’s, made of Eastern steel. It would not shatter like the less well-tempered metal of the men-at-arms’ weapons. Nonetheless, slamming its honed edge against a stone wall would do it no good. As the point connected with something soft and shoved it backward, Adam laughed alou
d with joy. They were up!

  After that it was all play to Adam. In fact, no one met much difficulty. The walls were cleared very easily because they had taken the keep so much by surprise that Sir Matthew himself and most of his men were not ready. The gate towers were taken, the drawbridge over the ditch let down. However the taking of the walls was only the first step. The great keep itself was still in Sir Matthew’s hands and could be held far more easily than the walls. There were food supplies in the lowest level and wells for water. If the defenders shut themselves in, they could probably hold out for weeks or months before they began to starve. Adam’s advantage was that eventually they would starve and, since he held the outer portion of the castle, he could make terms with the town so that it would seem as if the action were over and there were no violation of the truce. Moreover, supplies for his men could be brought in by ship from Roselynde so that the end would be sure. Adam would have no need to lift his siege because his men were starving.

  However, Adam did not wish to wait for Sir Matthew to yield or for the war machines or tunneling to open a way into the keep. It was too dark still to see much, but from the battlement he could hear the sounds of many men. Apparently, Sir Matthew had not yet withdrawn into the keep. Adam breathed a prayer of thanks and bellowed for the archers to hold their hands. Although they could not see to aim, they could shoot down at random, hoping to strike targets among the massed men. Then Adam passed the word for Sir Richard to come to him at once. When the vassal arrived, breathing heavily from running and anxiety, Adam told him that Sir Matthew must be kept busy and infuriated.

  “There is an old grudge between you. Do you reawaken it. Insult him. Speak ill of whatever he loves—true or not is no matter.”

  “Gladly, my lord, but why?”