by Lara Blunte
Sometimes, as he walked with some member of his council, he would see Isobel with her ladies on the other side of the gallery. Her look would turn from listlessness to scorn as soon as she realized that he was there. He understood, with a sigh, that she would keep presenting him a prickly exterior and yet, in the days during which he had been observing her, he had also been noticing new things.
She walked differently in her southern clothes, with a gracefulness that she had not shown before; strangely the fashion of the day suited her better than it did the sophisticated ladies of Lathia, who preened under the weight of jewels, fans and shawls. It was as if Isobel lent a natural elegance and an understated sensuality to the dresses she wore.
He watched her as they met to preside over a banquet or a dance: her hair was like wheat in summer, lustrous, fragrant, and impossibly golden; her skin glowed and her lashes, darker than her hair, were a striking frame to her eyes.
The king watched all men watching his wife, and saw that their attention gave her no pleasure, and made her no vainer than she had been when she had worn her sad, shapeless gray dress. A slight scowl would form on her face if she caught anyone admiring her, as if she were chastising them for being so foolish. He liked that in her.
At other times he would catch her look of sudden joy at meeting Agnetta, and she would become altogether more beautiful. It was difficult for him to dislike anyone who so loved his sister. He discovered that the princess was teaching the queen how to read, and observed them through a secret angle of the window between their rooms; he saw Isobel's humble dedication, and was moved by her brave stuttering over the written words.
However, Isobel was suffering more than Donnet might have been able to tell her husband.
Everyone had heard that Tameas had returned to Alyon, and all knew that it was a terrible insult to the queen. Furthermore, his neglect of her made the marriage pointless, since if the king did not go to his wife's bed he would never have heirs.
It had all been in vain, Isobel often thought, walking the long sandstone hallways of the castle. She had lost Harry, left her father and brothers behind and forsaken her own country to be a barren queen, disdained by the king.
She wore the clothes she had been given and showed her hair to men who followed her with their eyes and sighed as she passed, to minstrels who wrote songs about her, to servants and strangers ─ and the only person who ought to desire her did not.
Isobel never forgot to frown when she caught her husband looking at her; she would not show him how miserable she was. Yet she had started to watch him too, because he was changing before her very eyes.
She had expected him to be even more dissolute a king than he had been a prince, and instead he had not touched any wine for a while. His manner was still sardonic, especially to sycophants and bothersome petitioners, but she could see that people now feared his intelligence a hundredfold. He was the king, and a king who, against all odds, was very good at ruling over his own council and enforcing visionary policies which she had not expected from him.
Yet Isobel sometimes frowned even harder than usual, because she had caught herself admiring how different he looked, how his height was now complemented by broad shoulders, and how well a face bronzed by the sun became him. She had seen for herself that he was an excellent horseman, just as her brothers had told her; she could admit that.
She could also admit that he was becoming stronger, and she knew that he must be training at arms. He sometimes sported a cut or a bruise, and through her window she had seen him walking with Donnet and Sir Eldon in the fields at dawn.
Perhaps she might admit to herself that she liked to follow his green eyes when they suddenly launched a penetrating look at someone, and see how his lips would twitch in an ironic smile. She would discreetly lean forward to hear how he would outwit the envoys of a greedy pope, or stop any marriage proposals that involved Agnetta, or consolidate Lathia’s influence over a foreign power. In spite of herself she had to concede that she had not seen him bested in any negotiation yet; he was simply more intelligent than the great majority of people.
Was it her vanity that made her want him to notice her, when she had never been a vain woman? Why did his indifference personally irk her? Why did she so hate it when she knew that he had left the castle at night?
Isobel was not accustomed to contradictory feelings, but she found herself thinking far too much of the king, until one day she could not avoid going into town with a groom, her hair and face covered, to spy on Tameas.
She had found him in Mistress Alyon's garden, a space that was open for all the world to see. From her hiding place beyond the shrubs, Isobel saw that her rival was a dark-haired woman, a few years older than her, with a pretty face and fetching black eyes. Her laughter trilled as Tameas talked, and though Isobel could not hear what he was saying, she flushed painfully when Alyon reached out and touched her husband's cheek, leaving her hand there in a caress.
For the whole world to see, Isobel thought as she returned to the castle and ran up the stairs to her room. She was shamed before the kingdom, as Tameas did not even think it necessary to hide that he loved another woman.
Isobel wept that night, with great sobs that sometimes rack people who never cry. She wept with abandon, knowing that her sacrifice had been for nothing, and strangely thinking that it ought to be solely her privilege to touch her husband's cheek as his mistress had done.
The following night Tameas did not leave the castle, and instead joined the court for a musical evening. The minstrels sang the usual love songs which made Isobel want to have them all hanged. Could they not sing of something else? She sat looking ravishing in a sea green silk dress, her hair loosely held in a jeweled clasp and falling to her waist, her crown glowing softly in the candlelight.
Oh maiden fair,
Do not be gall’d
If I do stare
Your beauty will
For minutes more
Bewitch me still
And then be o'er…
Isobel sighed, not knowing that she was being watched: her life had been wasted. She would never now be loved by Harry or by any man. Her youth would end, her beauty would die, and no man would ever see the whole of her; no man would ever look at her with passion again; no man would ever kiss her. She would never put her hand on her husband's cheek and smile at something amusing he had said.
Her life would pass, slowly, and then she would die.
And yet the king, seeing her in her sad, lonely beauty made a decision that night: the decision that his friend had told him he must make.
HUSBAND AND WIFE
Tameas did not see Alyon for twelve days, and he was a different man when he went to her house again. With the fine sense she had for everything that concerned him, she saw it at once.
"What is it, Tom?" she asked him, as soon as he had kissed her on the forehead.
He was looking down at her face as if he were committing it to his memory, and she understood why.
"Is it the end, then?"
It took him a moment to say, "It is, my sweet."
Tears began to run down her face, and she could do nothing to stop them, though she saw that they grieved him.
"I didn't think I would have you forever," she said. "But it still hurts."
Tameas walked to the window so that he would not see her weeping. "I made vows," he said. "I told myself they were false, that if anything my allegiance belonged to you, not to a woman I did not even know.”
"You were forced into a marriage,” Alyon said. "And yet it is a real union. It will bind the two of you forever, whether you like it or not."
"So it will," he agreed. "And that is why I must not see you anymore. You need to live the life of a woman who can be loved, not a woman waiting for a man to visit her for a few hours, and never stay with her as she deserves."
"I was content!" Alyon said. "But I knew it would end. I knew that it ought to end."
"I have been selfish. I no longer
like what I take from you, how little I leave. I no longer like what I do to the queen...She loves another man, and he loves her, but honor is what ought to matter the most." He turned to look at her. "That Sir Harry has more honor than I do, because he doesn't care for anything, except his love. I swore before God to be true, I promised my father to succeed him and ensure peace, and I am making a mess of things."
Alyon moved closer to him, and put her cheek against his chest.
"I am the king now," he said in a low, sad voice. "The oaths I make, the things I do, should mean something. I cannot do to my wife what my father did to my mother."
"I suppose I will never see you, then?" Alyon asked.
"No, my kind Alyon."
He held her again and rocked her a little in his arms, then kissed her forehead again. "Pray for me, and know that I pray for you, and will not forget you."
"Oh, Tom, I shall always wait by some road just to see you ride through it, or by some balcony, if you come out to wave. I wish you such a long life, my love, and all the happiness you can possibly find in it, and none of the grief!"
When Tameas reached the door, he heard Alyon say softly, “Perhaps the queen does deserve your love!”
It was with pain that he rode back to the castle, thinking of the woman he was leaving behind, his companion and mistress for two and a half years: a generous, soft, beautiful lady. He thought of her with a heavy heart, so that when he entered his antechamber and found his wife there in full fighting mode, he felt his blood start to heat.
"Is it then going to be continuous humiliation, night after night, forever?" she asked in her low-pitched voice.
He said nothing as he removed his gloves and cloak.
"I did not ask you to marry you, anymore than you did to marry me. I did not ask Harry to do what he did, but I was glad! Yes, I was glad, because a man would dare anything to show me his affection, while my husband spurns me!"
“Affection…” he scoffed. “Is that what it was?”
She came close to him now, her voice loud in his ears “Then call it love,” she cried. “Something you know nothing about!”
He didn't smile and defeat her with irony as he usually did, he told her with contained rage, "I am in a different kind of mood today, madam. I advise you to go away."
Wanting to put distance between them, because he didn't trust himself, he walked into his room.
She, however, followed him. "I will not be cast aside like a dog!" she grabbed him by the front of his doublet, though she had never touched him before, "You will not keep treating me in this way, you will behave as a husband should!"
He had warned her, and now he took her by the shoulders and put her against the wall. "It's not a day to play with me!" he shouted.
Her eyes widened. He had expected her to keep fighting, to strike, or kick, or claw, but something in him had stopped her.
Tameas backed away from her saying, "Choose another day..."
He began walking towards the door. He would go somewhere else until he had calmed down.
"I don't know what I am doing wrong!"
He stopped at this, the first real thing she had said to him, and it had been said in a soft voice, for once. He turned to look at her, and saw how much it cost a proud woman to say those words. She loved another man, and yet knew that it was her duty to bear the king's children.
"Won't you help me?" she whispered, as if she didn't even want him to hear what she was saying. As he looked at her, she lowered her eyes and asked, "Does it mean nothing that I am your wife?”
He was touched then, because it was the first time he saw her as the girl that Donnet and Agnetta described, lonely and uncertain, and suffering for the things she had lost.
It was solidarity that made him walk towards her, since they had both been placed in the same situation by destiny. They were both lost, and had both struggled against it; but perhaps there was something else they could do. Perhaps they could try to find a path together, like children who come upon each other in the woods, and offer each other solace from monsters.
As he stood before her and she looked up at him, her pride was gone, and so were the disapproval and disdain she always showed him.
"Shall I then be a husband to you?" he asked, putting his hand on her chin.
She took a deep breath and nodded. "Yes."
Isobel had started to tremble under his hand. She turned towards the bed as if she were displaying bravery on her way to the scaffold. He took her arm and kept her back.
"No, lady, not like that," he said. He turned her around to face him again. "There is a time to hasten the pace, like in music, yet it isn't now. It's the first time we touch..."
Tameas took her hand and kissed it. He saw that she was still shivering, but it didn't seem to be in disgust.
"We are very different, you and I, and we have to get used to it for a moment,” he told her.
He took her hand and ran her fingers over her own lips. "You see, your lips are soft..." He put her fingers over his lips. "Mine can be rough."
Then he ran his hand over her arms. "Your skin is...very soft. You are soft here.” He touched her breast with the back of his hand, and opened his shirt to place her hand inside. "I am different."
Isobel touched the muscle on his chest tentatively. Tameas reached out and slowly loosened her hair from the long jeweled braid that fell to her waist. "We are moving slowly," he continued, "but your pulse, here, is beating fast."
He held a thumb over the pulse on her neck, applying slight pressure. When he let go she felt a rush of blood and opened her mouth to gasp, but his lips covered hers before she knew it.
Isobel had always thought that she would not let him kiss her, if they ever slept together, but he had tricked her and now she felt his lips against hers, and his tongue.
Tameas kissed her for a long time and after a while she realized that she was standing on her toes and that her hands were raised as if she had meant to push him away, but couldn't.
He lifted her, still kissing, took her to the bed and set her down. His hands were on the side of her breasts and she found herself, she still didn't know how, twisting a little so that he could caress them.
Her face burned with shame, and yet she did not want him to stop.
"It's all right," he whispered.
Tameas kissed her again and she felt as if she were melting like a candle. There was an ache that was strong at her core but that felt good, and Isobel couldn't separate all the sensations that washed over her: the texture of Tameas' shoulders under her hands, the muscle of his belly against hers, their skin together, his lips.
Isobel wasn't thinking much, he had not let her think at all, but she would reflect later that she could never have imagined that the night would have ended that way. She had expected that she might win, and that he would finally be a husband to her, though her sudden plea had been real and not a ploy.
But he always had a way of turning things around, and she knew that he was the victor that night.
THE MORNING AFTER
Tameas did not feel like a conqueror.
He rather felt, in council, that he might have been conquered. He felt that it was very difficult to concentrate, though matters that were important and interested him were being discussed.
The king and his counselors were talking about the size of the standing army, which Tameas insisted on increasing while Sir Jochim said there wasn't money enough, especially if the king decreased the taxes as he also wanted to do.
There was a fortune when Tameas had looked at the books, and another when he had taken away things which were a lot less important than an army, such as another cathedral and too many festivities that he would be very glad not to attend, or pay for.
"But Your Grace, the clergy..."
"The clergy has just been given a lot of very fruitful land, and I should think they ought to be happy for a little while," Tameas said. "Otherwise, let them pay for a cathedral, we have not even finished the first one
."
"But the grandeur of the city..."
"This city is already greater than any other at the moment."
"Your father wanted another Rome!"
"Before we become another Rome we must first see to things like security, because I am a new king and that always makes people restless. We must see to sewage, because what is the point of a beautiful city that stinks? We must make sure that there is a rising class not strangled by high taxes, because their prosperity means they will want to buy things and merchants, artisans and peasants will profit from it." The king pointed at the book on the table, "The money is all there, there is plenty."
“But a large standing army can be very expensive, Sire,” Sir Jochim continued, almost whimpering. “Food, training, stipends…”
They had gone into a long discussion, with Donnet, who was now part of the council, and Lord Adalbert defending the idea of increasing the army, Sir Paulus mourning the lost festivities, Sir Jochim against everything but what he had previously planned, and Lord Jollan pondering.
And, because Tameas knew he would have his way in the end, during this time he was thinking of his wife.
He had thought that he might find himself in bed with a reluctant virgin, or a porcupine, frowning and showing her distaste for everything, and instead...
Instead, she had been sublime.
He had bedded eager mistresses before, but none had combined Isobel's innocence with her abandon. It had been like a miracle that a girl who had seemed so cold should have lain with him as she had.
Dawn had found them still kissing and making love, and they had fallen asleep with him inside her, their limbs entwined and their faces almost touching.
And her body... all the glimpses she had given through her new fashionable dresses, or through her nightgown when she had knelt against the candle on their wedding night, were nothing compared to her nakedness. By heaven, he had never seen breasts like hers, or thighs like hers, or buttocks like hers. He had never touched a skin as smooth or found such perfume in a woman.