by Lynn Kurland
“We should sign your name, child,” Gwen said. She realized, with a start, that she had never asked it. She had referred to the child as “Socrates’s granddaughter” to those about her, and used the name “wondrous healer” on the girl herself. “How are you called?”
The child bowed her head. “Berengaria,” she answered softly.
“Berengaria,” Gwen said, laying her hand upon the girl’s head. “A beautiful name. Berengaria of Artane. Will that suit you for the moment?”
“Aye, my lady. It will.”
Gwen suspected the girl would not remain there always, but perhaps for the foreseeable future it would be enough. Gwen carefully gathered up the manuscript pages she had written out that day and handed them to Berengaria.
“Will you not sup with us tonight?”
Berengaria shook her head. “When your hall is built, perhaps, if it pleases my lady.”
“So that then you might be less noticed?” Gwen asked with a dry smile. “Aye, my girl, if that suits you better. I’ll see you have something proper in your tent.”
“You always do, my lady.”
And with that, the girl kissed Gwen’s hand as if she’d been the queen and scampered from the small building that served as great hall at present.
Gwen rose and drew on her cloak. Even though it was almost spring, it was still chilly so near the sea. She winced at the ache in her shoulder. It had been six months since Rollan’s arrow had felled her, and still she had pain when she put on her clothes. At least she lived. It was something she was grateful for each morn she awoke. Montgomery had told her that Rollan had seemed devastated enough by the thought that he might have killed her, but none of them would know the truth now. She wanted to believe that it had been a mistake, but if that were the case, then it meant that he had been attempting to kill Rhys.
It was a puzzle she didn’t dwell on much.
She stepped out into the bailey and shivered. Winter was hard upon them, but still the work went on. Rhys’s gold was building an impressive keep. It hadn’t hurt that his father and grandfather had done their share of contributing as well. It would likely take a pair of years yet to finish the castle completely, but she felt certain ’twould be worth the wait and the expense. Rhys was determined to build something not even John could take by force.
Messages had flown from Artane to London and back, with the king growing less irritated with each one. Finally John had tersely informed Rhys that he had intended all along that Rhys should take Ayre’s widow as his wife. Gwen smiled at the memory of Rhys’s reaction to that. He had, however, quickly agreed with the king that his superior wisdom and foresight had indeed provided Rhys with a fine bride in the end.
A bride and children, that was. Robin, Nicholas, and Amanda had been officially claimed and duly recorded to Gwen’s satisfaction. Robin was determined to live worthily of his newly made sire’s name. Nicholas seemed still to be stunned by the turn of events and spent most of his time trailing after Robin with a dazed look upon his face.
Amanda, however, seemed to think her father had never been other than Rhys, and Gwen understood perfectly. It wasn’t as if Alain had done more than hear the babe was a girl and promptly forget about her. Rhys, on the other hand, was lavish with his affections for all three children, though he would be the first to admit that he held a particularly soft spot for his only girl.
Gwen wondered what Rhys would do when she informed him that in a few months he might just have another babe competing for his affections.
She tucked that tidbit away to share later, tucked her hands under her arms, and went in search of her love.
She found him, unsurprisingly, standing atop his walls, staring out over the sea. She made her way to him, then leaned against the wall and slipped her hand into his.
“Staring into the future again?” she teased.
He squeezed her hand. “For all you know, I might be.”
“More than likely, you’re imagining how it will be to finally have the hall finished where we might retreat to our place before the fire and be warm for a change.”
He put his arm around her and snuggled her close. “There is that as well,” he said with a smile. Then he shook his head and looked back out over the sea. “I was just standing here, marveling over my life and the gifts I’ve been given and wondering what I have done to deserve them.”
“Well, for a start,” she said, “you saved Lord Bertram’s life.”
“A happy bit of luck,” he said modestly.
“Well,” she said, “you rescued me from a piggery.”
“Now that,” he said with a thoughtful nod, “did surely earn me all that I have now.”
“I should think it did. It was a horrible stench you endured to save me.”
His rich laugh washed over her. “Ah, sweet Gwen, the prize was well worth the effort.” He hugged her to him. “It was indeed a most fortuitous bit of chivalry.”
Gwen closed her eyes and sighed in contentment. She could indeed do nothing but agree with him and it amazed her that such a simple thing as wading through pig manure to liberate a child from her prison could have led to such happiness. Rhys once again enjoyed the company of his father from time to time when Etienne, Mary, and Jean ventured northward. Her children were blessed with a father who loved and cared for them. Her own mother had full control of Segrave without worrying that she might lose her home at someone’s whim.
And there Gwen herself stood with the walls of a magnificent keep beneath her feet, her children safe within those walls, and the love of her heart standing next to her with his strong arms about her. She’d imagined so often how it might be, but the truth of it made her realize just what a poor imagination she had.
“I love you,” she whispered, looking up at Rhys.
He smiled down at her. “What brought that on?”
“Just your nearness,” she answered with a smile of her own. “I will never forget how fortunate I am.”
“You?” he asked with a laugh. “Why, lady, I am the fortunate one. I have obtained the dream of my youth.”
As had she, though she didn’t say the like. It would have interrupted one of the most overwhelming kisses of her life and she prided herself on knowing when to speak and when to remain silent.
And so she closed her eyes, held her words, and gave herself up to the magic of her husband’s mouth upon hers. It was a sweet kiss full of love, passion, and promise. Her life had become the stuff of dreams.
She was content.
If I Had You
To Matthew,
who is my comfort, my joy, and my forever home.
And to Elizabeth,
who says the word home with all
the feeling in her baby heart.
Prologue
England, 1215
Artane
The young girl stood at the door of the healer’s quarters and looked out over the courtyard, eyeing the dirt and flat-laid stone that separated her from the great hall. Judging the distance to be not unmanageable, she released the doorframe she had been clinging to and eased herself down the three steps to the dirt. And then she grasped more firmly the stick she leaned upon and slowly and painfully began to make her way across the courtyard.
Sunlight glinted off her pale golden hair and off the gold embroidery on her heavy velvet gown. Though it was much too hot for such a garment, the child had insisted. It hid the unsightly splint that bound her leg from hip to foot.
She looked up and saw that the hall door was closer than it had been. No smile of relief crossed her strained features; she had yet far to go.
“Ugly Anne of Fenwyck!”
“Thorn in Artane’s garden!”
The voices caught her off guard and she stumbled. She caught herself heavily on her injured leg. Biting back a cry of pain, she put her head down and quickened her pace.
They surrounded her, not close enough to hurt her with anything but their words, though those were surely painful enough. Pages they we
re, for the most part, with one notable exception. A young man joined in the torment, a freshly knighted soul who should have known better. They circled her as she hobbled across the smooth stone path leading to the great hall, taunting her mercilessly. The knight folded his arms and laughed as she struggled up the stairs.
“Why the haste, gimp?”
The maid had no time for tears. Safety was but four steps away. She ignored the laughter that followed her and forced herself to continue her climb.
The door opened and the lord of the hall caught her up in his arms and held her close. Her stick clattered down the stairs but she had no stomach for the fetching of it. She clung to her foster father and let his deep voice wash over her soothingly as she was pulled inside the hall. The lord reached out to close the door, paused, then frowned deeply before he pushed the wood to.
Had the girl looked out before the door was closed, she would have seen a dark-haired, gray-eyed lad of ten-and-four standing on the front step of the healer’s house, having come to take his own exercise for the day. And she would have seen the rage on his face and the clenching of his hands at his sides; he had witnessed the last of the tortures she’d endured.
And had she been watching, she would have been privy to the events that followed. The lad shrugged off his brother’s supporting arm and called to the young knight in angry tones. The knight sauntered over, his mocking snort turning into a hearty laugh when he heard the lad’s challenge.
There was no equity in the fight. The boy still recovered from a fever that had kept him abed for half a year. The knight was five years his senior. And the knight had no qualms about humiliating the lord’s son each and every chance he had.
It was over before it had begun. The dark-haired lad went facedown in the mud and muck. The last shreds of his strength deserted him, leaving him wallowing helplessly. His brother stepped forward to defend him and earned a pair of broken fingers for his trouble. The knight sneered at them both, then walked away, the older lads in his entourage snickering behind their hands as they followed him, and the younger ones slinking away full of shame and embarrassment for the lad who had no strength to rise to his feet.
The girl witnessed none of this. She was gently deposited inside the chamber she shared with her foster sisters, and had the luxury of shedding her tears of humiliation in private.
Her young champion shed his tears in the mud.
1
England, 1225
The young woman sat atop her mount and looked down the road that separated her from the castle. She had traversed its length many times over the course of her ten-and-nine years and felt reasonably acquainted with its dips and swellings. She was, however, eager to be free of its confines and, as a result, off her horse, so she viewed it with a keen eye. Judging the distance separating her from her goal to be not unmanageable, she took a firmer grip on her reins and urged her horse forward.
Her destination could not be reached quickly enough, to her mind. Behind her rode her matchmaking father, his head likely full of thoughts of the half dozen men he had left behind him at Fenwyck, men desperate enough for his wealth to take his daughter in the bargain. Before her lay her foster home, the home of her heart, the home she had left almost half a year earlier only because her father had dragged her bodily from it. She had despaired of ever seeing it again.
But now she was released from her father’s hall, if only briefly, and Artane was but a short distance away. That was enough. It would have to be. It might be all she was allowed to have.
“By the saints, I’m eager to be out of this bloody rain,” her sire complained as he pulled up alongside her. “How is it, mistress Anne, that I allowed you to enlist me in this fool’s errand in this blighted weather? My business with you is at Fenwyck, not here!”
Anne looked at her sire. A weak shaft of autumn sunlight fell down upon his fair hair and glinted on the gold embroidery adorning his heavy surcoat.
“You look well, Father,” she said, praying she might distract him and knowing a compliment could not go astray.
“As if it served me to look well, given the circumstances!”
“It was kind of you to bring me to Artane,” she said, keeping to her course. “I very much wished to bid Sir Montgomery a final farewell.”
“It will be too late for that, I should think,” her sire muttered. “He’ll be dead by the time we arrive.”
But Anne could only assume by the way he began to straighten his clothing and comb his hair with his fingers that he was seeking to present the best appearance possible, even if such an appearance was only to be made at a burying.
She turned her mind back to more important matters, namely staying in the saddle until she could reach the castle. Her leg had not borne the rigors of traveling well. Though but four days’ slow travel separated Fenwyck from Artane, she suspected she might have been better served to have walked the distance. She wondered if she would manage to stand once she was released from the tortures of her journey.
Despite that very real concern, Anne felt her heart lift with every jarring clomp of her horse’s hooves. The stark stone of the castle rose up against the gray sky, a bulwark of safety and security. By the saints, she was glad of the sight. Though her sire continued to curse a variety of objects and souls, Anne let his words wash over her and continue on their way to more attentive ears. She was far too lost in her memories to pay him any heed.
She remembered the first time she had come to Artane. The castle had been little more than branches marking the place for the outer walls and twigs outlining the inner buildings. The construction had seemed to take but a short time, likely because she’d been passing her days so happily in the company of the family she’d come to foster with. There had been a sister for her, just her age, and brothers too, though she’d paid them little heed at the time. The lord and lady of the yet-to-be-finished keep had treated her as one of their own and for that she had been very grateful.
And then had come the time when she had first noticed the lord’s eldest son.
He’d been hard to ignore.
He had announced his presence by putting a worm down her dress.
A particularly jarring misstep by her mount almost made her bite off her tongue. Anne gritted her teeth and forced herself to pay heed to her horse. Perhaps her memories did her more disservice than she cared to admit, especially when they went in that particular direction, for indeed there was no purpose in thinking on the lord’s eldest son.
She looked up and realized she was almost in the inner courtyard. She had rarely been more grateful for a sight than she was for the view of the keep before her. She had the captain of Artane’s guard to thank for the like, as the summons to Montgomery of Wyeth’s deathbed had been the only thing which could have freed her from Fenwyck’s suffocating walls.
Anne wended her way carefully through the crowded courtyard. Artane was a busy place with much commerce, many fosterlings, and numerous lordlings continually looking to curry Artane’s favor. She supposed it was pleasing to Lord Rhys to find himself in such demand, but she herself would have been happier had the castle been a little less populated. It certainly would have made the negotiation of her way toward the great hall a good deal easier.
She suppressed a grimace when her horse finally came to a halt. The beast was well trained, thankfully, and spent no more energies moving about. Anne stared down at the ground below her mount’s hooves and wondered how best to reach it without landing ungracefully on her nose. She took a deep breath, twisted herself around so as to keep hold of her saddle, then slid slowly to the ground.
“Anne!” Geoffrey exclaimed with an accompanying curse. “I told you I would aid you.”
“I am well, Father,” she said, forcing herself to remain upright instead of giving in to the urge to lean her head against her horse’s withers and weep. The pain in her leg was blinding, but she supposed she had no one to blame for that but herself. She had been the one to shun the cart her father had w
ished her to ride in. She had also been the one who had declined the numerous halts her father had tried to force upon her.
“I begin to wonder why I ever sent you here,” Geoffrey said curtly. “I vow they bred a stubbornness in you that I surely do not possess. Mayhap you had been better off to remain at Fenwyck.”
Anne had no acceptable answer for that, though her first thought was “the saints be praised you sent me away.” She was too old at ten-and-nine for such childish responses, but there hadn’t been a day she hadn’t been grateful for her fostering at Rhys de Piaget’s keep. She suspected, however, that she had best keep such observations to herself.
“We may as well go inside,” her father said, sounding as if it were the very last thing he wanted to do. “He’ll come to fetch us if we tarry here.”
“The lady Gwennelyn will be glad to see you,” Anne offered.
“Aye, but that objectionable husband of hers will be there as well. What joy is there in that for me? It only serves to remind me that she chose him over me.”
“As you say,” Anne said, wincing at the protests her leg was making as she put weight on it.
“Gwen did want me,” Geoffrey said. “And sorely indeed.”
“Of course, Father,” Anne agreed, but her mind was on other things—namely trying not to sprawl face-first into the dirt.
She looked at the great hall. The distance separating them was greater than she would have liked, but not unmanageable. She took a deep breath, then pushed away from her horse. She carefully crossed the flat stones she’d walked over for the greater part of her life and let the familiarity of them soothe her. By the saints, she had missed this place. How had she survived Fenwyck the previous half year? How would she have endured her childhood there? The saints be praised she had never been forced to have the answer to the latter. She suspected that ’twas only recently that she truly understood how fortunate she had been. Gwennelyn of Artane had lavished love and attention on her that she never would have had at her father’s hall.