Bells pealed from the church across the meadow, telling the people of Blackthorne Keep that it was time to gather for the nuptials. Before the last bell was rung, Dominic had walked from his rooms and was mounting a horse in the bailey.
The bride was not nearly so eager for the wedding to begin.
“Eadith, do quit hovering like a sparrow hawk questing for a meal,” Meg said.
Despite the words, Meg’s voice was gentle. For once she enjoyed the handmaiden’s chatter and constant motion; it kept Meg’s mind from what lay ahead.
Duncan, be as clever as you are brave. See what must be. Accept it.
Forgive me.
“You heard the bells,” Eadith said. “’Tis time. Hurry, mistress.”
Meg glanced at her mother’s water clock. The hammered silver bowl with its ebony support and catch basin had been handed down from mother to daughter for years without name or number. With the bowl had come the knowledge of how to use it in marking off the proper time for medicines to steep.
It seemed to Meg but a moment ago that she had filled the keeper to its utmost, water brimming and shining like primeval moonlight in the sunless room. Yet less than a finger’s width of water remained in the upper bowl.
“Not quite,” Meg said. “There is more water, see?”
“You and your Glendruid ways,” Eadith said, shaking her head. “I will mark the passage of the sun with the church’s bells.”
As though to emphasize the handmaiden’s words, the bells pealed again. Meg bowed her head and touched the silver cross that lay between her bare breasts.
“M’lady?”
Eadith waited for Meg’s attention. The handmaiden’s arms were overflowing with the unusual silver garment that Old Gwyn had brought out the day the king had decreed that Lady Margaret of Blackthorne would marry Dominic le Sabre. The dress wasn’t new. Lady Anna had been married in it, and Anna’s mother as well. Like the water remaining within the silver Glendruid bowl, the cloth shimmered subtly, as though infused with ancient moonlight.
Meg looked at the dress and remembered what Gwyn had said: May you give birth to a son.
Now Meg wondered if the wedding dress, like the clock, had been passed down from mother to daughter through all the years, and if each daughter had donned it hoping that she would be the one to give birth to a Glendruid son.
Dearest God, grant us peace.
“Lady Margaret, we really must hurry.”
Reluctantly Meg turned from watching the measured dripping of water from silver bowl to ebony basin.
“The priest is always slow,” she said absently. “He dresses more carefully than any bride.”
“More carefully than you, ’tis certain!”
“Dominic le Sabre is marrying Blackthorne Keep, not me. He would marry me if I arrived wearing sackcloth and ashes.”
“Even so, you must look finer than that Norman whore.”
Meg tore her mind away from the remorseless glide of water from silver to black, drops sliding into darkness as surely as Blackthorne Keep into war.
“What?” she asked.
“La Marie,” Eadith muttered, giving the woman the nickname she had earned from the servants who were constantly attending her needs. “The men can’t look away from her, whether they be Norman swine or Saxon nobles.”
“If the men are like crows, captivated by all that flashes brightly, then let them go to the leman’s well.”
“They are dogs, not crows,” Eadith said bitterly. “A red-lipped smile, a wink, perfumed breath, a leg shown and then hidden as she climbs a stair…they follow her like dogs after a bitch in heat. And Duncan is at the head of the pack.”
“If he sickens from her much-used well,” Meg said calmly, “I have a tonic that will put him right once more.”
Eadith said nothing.
When Meg saw the unhappiness in her handmaiden’s face, she realized how deeply Eadith had counted on attracting Duncan’s eye.
“’Tis for the best,” Meg said, touching her handmaiden’s arm. “Your father was a thane. So was your husband. You deserve better in life than to be Duncan’s leman.”
The sour curve of Eadith’s lips said she disagreed. With quick, strong hands she shook out the silver cloth.
“Were it not for Duncan’s ambition, I would have been his wife,” Eadith said bitterly. “But he was ever longing for land and I have neither wealth nor land to give him. So I will be a poor man’s wife. Pah. Better to be a rich man’s leman!”
“Better to be an untamed falcon, free of men and wealth alike.”
“Easy for you to say,” Eadith retorted. “In yonder church stands a knight whose wealth in gems and gold is thrice your weight when you stand fully dressed. Before the bells ring the end of day, you will be one of the richest wives in all of England.”
“’Tis the first kind word I’ve heard leave your lips about Dominic le Sabre.”
“If one must be a Norman swine, then one should at least be a rich Norman swine. Then the priests will be well paid for the lies they will intone over Dominic le Sabre’s corpse. May it be an early grave and as deep as Hell itself.”
The hate in Eadith’s voice made Meg flinch. Eadith had never forgiven the Normans who had slain her husband, father, brothers, and uncles, and taken their estates.
Into the uncomfortable silence came the slow dripping of water. The sound made gooseflesh rise on Meg’s arms. She found herself holding her breath, counting, wanting to stem the relentless drops.
Silence came.
The silver bowl was dry.
“Quickly,” Meg said, holding out her arms. “Let us get it done with.”
Within moments Meg was wearing folds of cloth that fooled the eye like moonlight on a river. Eadith pulled laces at the back, making the fabric snug against Meg’s body. As light as mist, the garment clung and swirled in silver stirrings that outlined the supple feminine form beneath.
When Eadith was finished, Meg turned a full circle. The cloth lifted and then flowed into place as though made for her rather than for her mother before her.
“Are you certain you won’t wear the brooch Lord Dominic sent you?” Eadith asked.
“Before her marriage, a Glendruid girl wears only silver. After it, she wears only gold. I will wear the brooch soon enough.”
If I live.
“Foolishness,” Eadith muttered. “You will look a drab creature next to the Norman whore.”
Eadith held out a very long, intricately made chain of silver and clear crystal. Like the clock, the chain had been passed down through generations. No wider than Meg’s smallest finger, almost as flexible as water itself, the chain circled her waist, crossed behind at her hips, and returned to her front in a shining girdle.
The ends of the chain reached to the hem like silent, slender waterfalls. And like water, the crystals in the chain transformed light into elusive flashes of color, fragments of rainbows caught and held for an instant of time.
Meg lifted hands naked of rings and pulled the combs from the hair piled on her head. Her hair tumbled down around her shoulders, over her breasts, falling to her hips and beyond. Against the ethereal silver of the dress, her hair burned with all the passions she had never felt.
“Well,” Eadith said grudgingly, “it does make your hair look bright.”
The handmaiden held out the plain silver circlet that was all Meg would wear to hold her hair from her face. Incised on the inside of the band were ancient runes.
“I could fasten the brooch to—” Eadith began, only to be cut off.
“No.”
Meg gathered her hair into a single long fall down her back. Without a word she held out her hand for the hooded silver mantle that fastened to the dress at the back of her shoulders with two silver clasps. The fluid weight of the cloth swept down her back to the floor and beyond in a rippling silver train.
A quick motion of Meg’s hands lifted the hood into place, covering her hair. Eadith put the circlet on her mistress and lo
oked disapprovingly at the results.
“You’ll not outshine the whore,” she said bluntly.
“Still your tongue,” Old Gwyn said from the doorway. “You know nothing of what is at risk today.”
When Meg spun toward the door, subtle currents of silver ran the length of her dress and crystals flashed fragments of rainbows, but it was her eyes that drew Gwyn’s attention. Within the silver cloud of Meg’s mantle, her eyes burned like green flames.
Gwyn’s breath came in with an audible hiss. She touched her forehead in silent obeisance to the Glendruid girl who smoldered before her, wrapped in rituals and hopes as old as time.
Before Gwyn could speak, church bells rang, summoning Meg to marriage.
And war.
7
INCENSE AND PERFUME PERMEATED the wooden building’s sacred hush. Pews shone with recently applied beeswax. Myriad tongues of light rose from massed candles. Costly brooches, necklaces, circlets, girdles, and rings flashed like distant stars throughout the church, reflecting the dance of candle flames.
Scots thanes, Saxon nobles, Norman aristocracy, and knights of all kinds mixed together with the wariness of wild animals forced into unaccustomed closeness by a spring flood.
Dominic’s wintry gray eyes catalogued the gathering. As he had expected, there was an abundance of swords evident beneath the men’s mantles. Some of the sword hilts were set with gems, signifying that the weapon was intended for ceremonial rather than military purposes. Other swords were like Dominic’s, gleaming with war’s steel blush rather than with decorative silver.
Despite the crush of people in the church, no one stood close to Dominic, including the black-haired woman whose flowing scarlet dress and costly jewels had drawn many glances. Not even the dark-eyed temptress dared approach Dominic now. There was the look of an eagle about him, a predatory readiness that radiated as surely from him as heat from fire.
Only Simon had the courage to approach his brother. Only Simon knew that intelligence held sway over Dominic’s passions rather than vice versa.
“All is ready, save for the bride,” Simon murmured, stepping up close behind Dominic so that no one could overhear.
Dominic nodded. “Did the priest object?”
“He complained of crowding in the choir. I pointed out that there was little choice. I could hardly seat my men with the nobility, could I?”
Simon’s bland summation made Dominic smile.
“Duncan’s men are armed to the teeth,” Simon said.
“Yes.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“The Reevers are a ragged lot.”
“Their steel is well cared for,” Simon retorted.
Dominic grunted. “When Duncan appears, stay very near him. Be like his heartbeat. Close.”
“What of John?” Simon objected, looking at the first pew, where the lord of Blackthorne lay wrapped in costly robes. “Any trouble would begin with him.”
“He has the will to cleave me in two with a sword, but not the strength,” Dominic said dryly. “Duncan has both. He was once betrothed to Lady Margaret.”
Simon’s dark eyes narrowed. He said something under his breath that would have made the priest flinch, had the good man heard it.
“You will do penance for that,” Dominic said, smiling slightly. “But I find myself in agreement with your sentiments concerning a man who would marry his daughter to his bastard son.”
“Perhaps she isn’t his daughter?”
“Then why hasn’t he set her aside and named Duncan his heir?” Dominic countered. “No man wants to see his lands pass to his daughter’s husband while his own name and line dies for want of sons.”
A stir went through the church, for the bride had just appeared in the wide doorway. In the shifting illumination of the church, Meg appeared to be wrapped in silver mist from head to heels, a girl as ethereal as moonlight. A large man loomed behind her, all but blocking out the light from the cloudy day.
“Go,” Dominic said softly.
Without another word, Simon eased back into the throng clustered around the first pews.
Because the heir to Blackthorne had no male blood relatives capable of standing with her and giving her shoe to Dominic as a symbol of passage from her father’s domain to her husband’s, Duncan of Maxwell accompanied Lady Margaret in John’s place.
The sight of the Scots thane walking with Meg clinging to his arm made something very like rage turn deep within Dominic. Its ferocity surprised him, for he had never been a possessive man. Yet he knew deep in his soul that he must be the only man standing close to Meg, breathing in the faint spicy fragrance of her breath and skin, feeling her warmth so near, touching him even as he touched her.
Then Dominic saw Meg’s eyes and forgot Duncan’s presence, forgot the priest waiting, forgot the swords buried in their sheaths, waiting for a word that might or might not be spoken. Dominic could only watch his future wife approach, beginning to understand why the common people of Blackthorne Keep looked to their mistress with expressions of agonized hope transforming their weathered faces.
If spring wore flesh and walked among mortals at winter’s end, she would have eyes that color; and they would burn just like that, twin green flames radiant with the hope all men lay at spring’s feet.
Silence followed Meg’s slow progress down the aisle. She didn’t notice it. Her glance had fallen on the foreign woman whose lush body and costly clothing announced how well Dominic had paid to lie with her. Marie didn’t notice the look she got from Meg, for the leman was watching Dominic hungrily.
The bride followed the leman’s eyes. Meg’s breath came in and stayed. Dominic was watching her approach, his body at ease yet obviously powerful. Motionless, he waited at the front of the church, following her progress with the intense stare of an eagle or a god. He was clothed like night, and like night there came from his darkness small splinters of light as chain mail glittered in place of stars.
With a distant sense of shock, Meg realized that Dominic wore a hauberk beneath his black cloak. The tension that radiated up through Duncan’s arm where her hand rested told her that he, too, had noted Dominic’s unusual wedding attire.
A wedding or a war, Meg thought. Which will it be?
The question consumed her so that she could barely follow the ceremony. As though in a dream, she moved through the kneeling and rising and kneeling, letting the plainsong chants of the concealed choir wash through her until the priest looked at her sharply.
“I say again, Lady Margaret,” the priest intoned, “it is your right to refuse this marriage if you so desire, for wedlock is a holy state entered into freely. Do you accept Dominic le Sabre as your true husband in the eyes of God and man?”
Meg swallowed dryly, trying to force a word past the constriction in her throat.
Behind her rose an agitation that began with Duncan and rippled through the crowd. In its wake were muted whisperings as though of steel being drawn. She turned and looked at the dark Norman knight who was watching her as though his will alone could force agreement from her lips.
But he could not. Nothing could.
Dominic knew it as well as Meg did. This was the one time in a woman’s life when her desires could make or break the plans of men.
Marriage or war?
Suddenly it was easy for Meg to speak.
“Yes,” she said huskily. “I accept this man as my husband in the eyes of God and man.”
A surprised cry from Duncan was cut short.
Her father’s cry of outrage was not. But before he could speak coherently, one of Simon’s men materialized by John’s side. Only one person saw the knife in the knight’s hand, but that one person was John. He made no more objection to the progress of the ceremony.
Nor did Duncan. He had felt cold steel slide through the back slit in his hauberk to lie between his legs, pressing in silent threat against a man’s most vulnerable flesh. Clammy sweat broke over his body. To die in honorabl
e battle was one thing; to be castrated like a capon was quite another.
“Don’t move,” Simon said very softly to Duncan.
Duncan didn’t move.
“Unless you wish to disappoint Marie tonight,” Simon continued, “and every night hereafter, you will say nothing. Nod your head if you understand me.”
Duncan nodded his head very carefully.
“Hand Lady Margaret’s shoe to my brother as tradition requires,” Simon ordered. “Slowly.”
With great care, Duncan gave Dominic a delicate shoe embroidered in silver thread. Afterward Duncan didn’t move again, not even to check on the odd sounds issuing from the gathering behind him. He suspected that his men were having the same difficulty he was, and for the same reason—a knife between their thighs.
Thirty men-at-arms stepped out from behind the partition that had set apart the men who chanted the wedding mass. Though not one of the men raised the crossbow he carried, it was clear that the weapons were fully wound and ready to fire.
Meg looked at Dominic’s men, sensed the currents of stifled rage and fear that swirled through the room, and knew that Dominic had foreseen the possibility of an ambush in the church.
Foreseen and countered.
Ice condensed beneath her skin as she waited in dread for the bloodletting that would surely follow such treachery. Trembling with fear for her people, she watched Dominic with haunted eyes.
Dominic’s cold gaze swept over the church like a winter wind. No one moved. Many of the Saxons and Scots stood stiffly, as though afraid that any motion might be their last. And it would have been, for Norman steel lay against their vulnerable flesh.
“Well done, Simon,” Dominic said.
“It was my pleasure.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
Then Dominic turned his back on everyone and looked only at Meg.
“As my betrothal gift of gold didn’t please you,” Dominic said coolly, “I offer a different kind of gift today: I will slay no man for his part in this treachery. Do you accept this gift?”
Unable to speak, Meg nodded.
“A wise man will understand that his lord is merciful rather than weak,” Dominic continued. “A foolish man will try my patience again. And die.”
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