by Jennie Reid
And with a complete stranger, as well! She prayed silently for the strength to endure the days and the weeks ahead. Not to mention the years.
Whether in answer to her prayer or in denial of it, the morning breeze brought the sound of harness jingling, men singing raucously, and horses’ hooves pounding the dirt road to the castle gate.
He was nearly here.
They poured between the gates like wine from a spigot; young men and old, knights and retainers, great war horses, pack ponies and carts, with banners flying, pennons flapping, a riot of color and men and horses. Where a few minutes before there’d been peace, now there was tumult.
Berenice searched the seething throng with her eyes. Which one was he? Huon de Fortescue, twenty four years old, tall and well-built, dark haired and handsome too, she’d been told. Youngest son of a northern count, favorite of the king, come to collect his prize.
She felt like a doll she’d seen at the summer fair last year, perched high on the top shelf of the peddler’s stall, looking down at the crowds. She’d been dressed in silks and brocade, and Berenice had been sure her hair was real. Even her finely carved features had been life-like.
“Throw the three wooden balls into the slot, little lady,” the peddler had said, “and the dolls’ yours!”
She’d missed, of course, and the doll would have been carefully packed away for the next fair. She suspected the peddler had made certain she missed, although she didn’t know how he’d done it.
Now she was the doll. Huon de Fortescue had thrown his three balls for the king, and had won a sixteen year old heiress, with one brother dead, another in holy orders, and a father with one foot in the grave. She wondered what he’d done to deserve not only her, but the valley, with its villages, a castle, a Roman bridge, and a forest to hunt in.
The seething, shouting mass in the courtyard was coalescing into some sort of order. Her father and William were talking to two older men, the king and the duke she guessed. The baggage train was being directed out of the gates to the field where they would erect the pavilions. Near the kitchen door, a group of well dressed young nobles were dismounting, laughing amongst themselves, and passing around a wine skin. There were several tall, dark young men in the group. One of them had to be him.
As though hearing her thoughts, they all turned towards her. Almost as one body, they swept off their various hats and caps, and bowed. She nodded, acknowledging them, blushing furiously.
She didn’t go down to greet them. Just this once, it was up to him to come to her. For the rest of her life, it would be her duty to obey him in all things.
The significance of her small gesture of defiance was not lost on them. One of their number was singled out. The laughter and half-heard, ribald jokes resumed. One man was dusted down, his clothing rearranged, and his hat placed firmly upon his head. Then the group united, and propelled him towards her.
She watched him swagger across the courtyard, hurriedly removing his velvet hat. His footsteps, she suspected, were not quite as steady as they could have been.
His garments, compared to those of his companions, were of good quality but sober. His dark, straight hair was neatly trimmed to just below his ears, and he was undeniably handsome; a fine, straight nose, a square jaw with a trace of a cleft.
He was also huge. Berenice though he must be the tallest man she’d ever seen, and he was broad, with the mighty arms and chest of one who regularly wields the sword and lance. He was full fleshed too; this man clearly ate his fill at every meal.
He drew closer, and with each step, more vast in her eyes. One of his friends called out a comment, and he laughed, showing perfect rows of gleaming teeth.
Berenice’s pulse was racing. Her blood was pounding in her ears. This could not be him. It just couldn’t be! The thought of this giant of a man doing unnamed things to her body brought the bile to the back of her throat.
He reached the foot of the steps. He began to recite a love poem to her, and hesitated, whereupon all his friends laughed, and shouted advice. Shamefaced, he began again, but gave up when his friends offered more suggestive comments.
Berenice looked from them to him, and wondered how much worse this day could get.
He stood at the foot of the steps, his hat mangled by his great hands, and did his best version of a courtly bow. He was clearly more at home in a tournament than the ladies bower. He measured his length on the steps, his head only inches from her slippered feet.
Berenice squeaked, her mother gasped, and Esme stifled a giggle. The fear of his being hurt made Berenice conquer her fear of him, and she knelt on the step beside him. The sickly smell of stale wine nearly made her gag.
So he was a drunkard as well as a buffoon. She looked down at his unconscious form with mingled loathing and disgust.
“I will not marry him, mother,” she stated clearly, for all to hear, “I will never marry him.”
Then, turning on her heel, she walked back into the tower.
CHAPTER FOUR
She had married him, of course, in the village church on the day following the next Sabbath.
Being a married woman had its advantages. She was someone’s possession now, which kept the other wolves at bay. Most of the time. And in her husband’s absence, since her father’s death, she ran things, and put up with the wagging tongues and the whispers about the rightful place of women.
She had Sir William for support, after all.
Berenice looked at the dress, and wondered if it were a feast day she’d forgotten about. She was sure it wasn’t. It was just one more strange thing since he’d arrived.
She wore the dress, seeing no harm in it, and went down to the hall.
As usual, everyone stood and waited in silence until she reached her seat. Sir William held out her chair for her. Once she’d seated herself, they all sat again, and the murmur of conversation resumed.
There were just four chairs at the table on the dais. Berenice sat to one side of her husband’s vacant seat, Sir William on the other. That empty chair served as a reminder to everyone in the hall of her status as wife, ruling while her husband was away. Esme, more friend and companion than servant, was next to Berenice.
From the dais, she could hear the velvet timbre of the troubadour’s voice, even though he was too far away for her to understand the words. She could tell there was a pool of silence around him as he spun his story.
What spell did he cast on people, she wondered. This morning she’d thought him an angel; now she thought he might be a warlock, come to lead her people astray. It was a silly fantasy, she knew, as silly as this morning’s had been. There could be no harm in his tales of battle and adventure. There’s been no-one here to talk of such things since…
Berenice sighed, and picked at the crumbs of her roll.
Her husband and his friends had told sagas of the glories of war, and everyone had loved to listen. The whole population of the castle had turned out to say goodbye to them. The people from the villages had lined the road, all the way to the bridge.
Huon de Freycinet et de Fortescue, and his seven brave comrades in arms, glorious in battle dress, plumes waving, pennons flying, bright armor gleaming in the spring sunshine. Eight brave young men, off to fight the Saracen hoards, to deliver the Holy Land from unbelievers.
How grand they’d seemed, how wonderful their dreams.
Berenice had stood on the tower steps again, just as she had six weeks before, with her mother and Esme behind her, and waved goodbye. Her mother and Esme had wept with the beauty of it all. She’d felt nothing more than a profound sense of relief.
She pushed herself away from the table, her broth untouched, the roll she’d baked that morning a crumbled mess next to her bowl. Everyone stood again, and waited in respectful silence while she left the room. As she closed the door behind her, she heard the conversations resume.
Wearily she climbed the cold, stone steps to her chamber. She felt a sudden tension, like an ache, a longing for som
ething she couldn’t name. She envied the people in the hall their easy companionship. Even Esme and William had each other, despite their relationship being the worst kept secret in the valley.
Her hand brushed the fine fabric of the deep blue gown. Suddenly it was a symbol of everything that kept her alone and lonely. She longed to take it off, and running up the last few steps to her room, she flung open the door. It was high summer, and there was still plenty of light in the sky. The shutters had been left wide open, to welcome the evening breeze.
Without bothering to light a taper, she struggled out of the dress, and threw it on the bed. Clad only in her headdress and shift, she leaned out of the casement. The breeze tugged at her garments like a lover’s hands would - tender, patient, gentle.
Leaving the window, she paced the room, filled with a sudden, nervous energy. From the hall below came echoes of laughter, cheering and applause, and then music. She could hear a tabor, a lute, and a whistle or a flute, and a man’s rich baritone voice, followed by other voices joining in a well-known chorus.
The singer and the lute player would be him. The troubadour. No-one else owned a lute, or would know how to play it. Only his voice would caress her as though he were with her, in this room.
There must be something magical about him. He brought sagas of adventure, and stories to amuse. He brought music. He brought joy.
She had to see if she were right, if he really was the singer. She tossed her loose work dress over her shift, slid her feet into old, frayed slippers, and tiptoed back down the stairs.
She would just look, very quickly, around the hall door. She wouldn’t stay. Her presence wouldn’t even be welcomed, as everyone would have to remember their manners with her there.
Just one quick peek which no-one would notice. They’d all be having too much fun anyway. She felt as though she were eight or nine years old again, spying on her parents’ friends.
She lifted the latch, and pulled the heavy door of the hall towards her. The old, neglected hinges let out a shriek like an enraged rooster. She froze. The door kept on swinging open, leaving her framed in the entrance.
Everyone in the room turned to look at her.
They were all there. Robert the cook and his apprentices. Reginald, the huge dark silent smith, for once without his leather apron and hammers, standing with Marie the laundress, surrounded by their many children. Esme and William, sitting side by side on the edge of the dais. The kitchen hands, the ostler and the stable boys, William’s men and their women.
Berenice felt like a child at an adult’s feast. She was the interloper, the stranger, in her own castle. She turned to flee.
“My Lady, wait!”
The troubadour’s deep, warm voice broke the dreadful silence, as surely as a footstep in an icy puddle shattered the frozen surface. Conversations resumed; musicians continued their tunes. He strode across the room towards her.
“What do you want?” she answered.
He stopped before her, and bending one knee, made a courtly bow.
“One dance, my Lady, I beg of you, just one dance.”
She felt awkward and embarrassed in her improperly laced work dress and thin slippers. Before she could voice her protest, he’d taken her hand in his, and led her into the vacant space in the centre of the hall.
The music resumed, a whistle or two, the flute, then the tabor. The tune was an old one, known to them all. Voices joined in, a word or two, a hum. Hands clapped, feet tapped.
The troubadour led the Lady, their hands raised, their fingers barely touching. They bowed to each other, straightened and circled. In the elaborate and ancient rhythms of the dance, they came together, touched palm to palm, and separated again.
A cocoon of music enclosed the two dancers. The audience, the very building around them, ceased to exist. Their only reality was the music and themselves, eternally circling each other, like the moon and the earth.
Each time they grew closer, Berenice felt her pulse race. Every nerve was tuned to his nearness. Each separation was like a bereavement.
Still the dance continued, building tempo. He touched her more often now, a hand on an arm to guide her, his other hand holding hers, turning her in a circle, weaving complex patterns with their bodies. She breathed harshly, mesmerized by the experience, never wanting it to end, begging silently for it to stop before she collapsed.
Round and around, through and over and under again. Her heart was pounding. Her eyes sparkled. The soft fabric of her skirts brushed her bare legs.
The music came to an abrupt, crashing end.
They stood for a moment, their hands still clasped, their eyes locked, their chests heaving, their breaths mingling. Applause washed over them - they didn’t hear it. Their world was each other, united in the music.
Berenice looked up at Gareth. His misty grey eyes were darker, deeper than they’d appeared that morning. She felt herself being drawn into their smoky depths. It would be so easy to lose herself there, to forget all the cares and woes of her daily existence.
“No!” she breathed.
She would not do it. She would not respond in the way he demanded of her.
Wrenching her hands from his grasp, she ran.
CHAPTER FIVE
The heat rose from the stony road like a tangible thing, a beast it was necessary to battle in order to breathe. This day promised to be the same as all the days of the previous weeks – hot, dry and cloudless. No-one could remember a June like it.
The carpenter’s cart swayed from side to side, bouncing along the rough track like a ship in a storm-tossed sea. Each lurch threatened to dislodge the load of lumber it carried. Six strong patient oxen pulled it, stirring up a cloud of dust as they went.
The two women riding on the cart wore their shawls over their faces to keep out the dust and the flies, and roughly made straw hats to keep the sun off their faces.
“Don’t let your skin get brown,” Jessamine’s mother had drummed into her since she was a small child. It was one admonition she took to heart. Martha hadn’t taken her own advice, and her skin was as weather-beaten as any gypsy’s.
Jessamine thought again about walking. Her brother and father led the beasts, and it would be safe enough with them. The choice was difficult – sore feet or a sore rear, her mother’s inane chatter or her brother Albert’s sly taunts.
She chose to tolerate her mother’s company for a while longer. They’d entered a forest, and the shade made a welcome change. The towers and turrets of a grand castle came into view above the trees. Red and gold banners bearing a coat of arms in black flapped in the meager breeze.
Perhaps this time her father had found work with someone who deserved his talents. He was, after all, a master carpenter.
“What’s that place?” she asked her mother.
“That’s Betizac,” answered Martha, crossing herself.
“Is that where we’re going?”
“No, thank God. Your father would do no work for the Count. My Georges would be lucky to be paid, and the Count’s an evil man, it’s said. We wouldn’t be taking you there, petal.”
A Count, thought Jessamine, how interesting. Was he young? Was he handsome? Was he wealthy? From the size of the castle, he had to be.
Martha’s version of evil didn’t worry Jessamine. Evil, to her mother, meant not going to Mass. Jessamine, on the other hand, had known a number of men in her nineteen years who would undoubtedly meet her mother’s definition of evil. Many pleasant memories started her squirming with desire on the hard bench seat.
“Where are we going then? I’m tired of this road. We seem to have been on it forever.”
“Now then, petal, it won’t be much longer. It’s taken us days longer than it needed to already, because the travelling’s upset you so. You used to be a much better traveler when you were a baby.
“We’re going to Freycinet. The Lady there pays fairly, we’ve been told. She admired some of your father’s work at the duke’s palace last summer,
and she’s asked him to come up here and do this job for her.”
Jessamine registered the fact that a woman ran this part of the valley.
“Where’s the Lord then?”
“It’s not a question the likes of us can ask, child. We mind our own business, and get on with the job.”
Martha’s lecture continued along the same lines. Jessamine had heard it many times before. She was only a master carpenter’s daughter, and she must remember her place.
Why, she’d like to know. She knew she was pretty. Men liked her, all sorts of men, from stable boys to dukes’ sons. She didn’t see why she shouldn’t use her very obvious assets to their best advantage. Her mother wanted her to marry another carpenter and help him in his trade as she had always helped Jessamine’s father, but Jessamine had ideas of her own.
She vowed her life was going to be different, far, far different from the drudgery her mother endured without question.
The road took them over an old stone bridge, through a village and another, more open, forest. Then fields spread out around them, and in the distance, another, much smaller castle could be seen.
Compared to Betizac, the castle at Freycinet barely deserved the name. Its builders had placed it on a bend in the river, to give it some protection, no doubt. A couple of towers, a hall, kitchens, stables, a few small cottages, and a smithy were enclosed within its walls. Built as much of timber as stone, it looked as though it was cobbled together from whatever materials they’d been able to find.
Not much of a place at all, thought Jessamine in disgust. Her father and Albert led the first pair of oxen through the gates, into the courtyard, where a small crowd awaited their arrival.
And then she saw him.
A man was leaning on the gatepost, watching the carpenter’s arrival. He held a heavy hammer in his hand, and a collection of tools lay at his feet. He’d tied his long hair back off his face, but dark tendrils had escaped and clung to the sweat on his forehead.