by Stuart, Anne
“If the horse is gone, then so is your sister,” he said. “I knew something was amiss.” He spun around and headed out into the courtyard, with Alys scampering along behind him, trying to keep up.
“You’ll go after her?” she pleaded. “You’ll try to find her?”
“I will find her,” he said sharply, and she believed him. She had no other choice. He paused and looked down at her, taking her small hand in his large, gloved ones. “Your sister will be safe with me, I promise. I will bring her back to you safely.”
Alys found treacherous tears filling her eyes. “I know you will,” she said, and flung her arms around him, planting a grateful kiss on his cheek.
She stayed where she was, alone in the storm swept courtyard, watching him as he disappeared into the stables. The wind was tossing the heavy skirts of her gown about her ankles, whipping her long, wet hair against her face, and she pushed it back with an absent hand. There was nothing she could do now but wait.
She turned, and froze. Simon of Navarre stood there in the courtyard, dressed in black, watching her, his face cool and distant.
“How long have you been there?” She wondered at the calmness in her voice.
“Long enough to watch your touching farewell to your brave champion. You forgot to give him a love token to wear into battle.”
She ignored his taunt. “My sister has run away.”
Simon nodded. “I assumed it was something like that. And du Rhaymer is going in search of her?”
“Yes.”
“Then I suppose he deserves your kisses,” the wizard said idly.
She moved closer to him, flinching as lightning sizzled in the sky. “My lord, you have no cause for jealousy.”
“My lady, I am not jealous.” He said it with simple honesty, and she should have felt relief.
She didn’t. She felt a slow building rage, curdling deep in her belly, she who had always avoided anger and passion. She came up to him, close enough that his long black robes caught and mingled with her gown in the swirling wind. She pushed the hair from her face to glare up at him, and her last ounce of proper behavior fled in the wash of emotion.
“Of course,” she said bitterly. “You have to care about someone in order to feel jealousy. And you’ve already given me leave to take a lover. I would think Sir Thomas would do very well. As a matter of fact, that’s what we were doing before we reached the courtyard. We had an assignation in my room, and he… and he…”
He smiled down at her, very gently. “Sir Thomas is besotted with your sister, and even if he weren’t, he’s far too noble and stalwart a knight to seduce a married woman. Not to mention that he’s far too wise a man to make an enemy of one such as I.”
“Why would it make an enemy of you?” she said in a hushed voice, her anger vanishing as quickly as it came, replaced instead by anticipation.
He put his hand to her face, and lightning sizzled in the air. She shivered, but she didn’t pull back.
“What do you remember of last night?” he countered.
“Very little.”
“Then come upstairs with me now,” he said, “and I’ll remind you.”
Chapter Twenty
She ran from him. She ran from his touch, suddenly terrified. She ran across the courtyard, and he made no move to follow her, stop her. She knew if she looked back Simon of Navarre would be watching her out of his still, golden eyes. But she didn’t dare look back.
If she did, she might stop running.
What had happened last night? What had he done to her? Why couldn’t she remember? She was supposed to be unnaturally wise for a woman, learned and thoughtful. How could she have forgotten the loss of her maidenhead?
Her mind had forgotten, but her body remembered. His touch on her skin had sent waves of sensation washing over her. Her stomach had knotted, her breasts had tingled, and between her legs she felt hot and wet.
What had he done to her?
The lightning sizzled behind her, and she let out a terrified shriek as she stumbled up the short flight of stairs to the Great Hall.
“Marriage has turned you into a slattern, sister dear.”
Richard stood there, a dark, unreadable expression on his ruddy face, staring down at her, and she knew a sudden, unreasoning fear.
She touched her damp, tousled hair, unrestrained by circlet or wimple. She wore no jewels, and her feet were bare. “I… was in a hurry, brother dear,” she said. Belatedly she came up to him and pressed a dutiful kiss on his bearded cheek.
“And why were you rushing about, sweet Alys? Were you in search of your sister? I’ve yet to see her today, and I confess, I miss her pretty face.” It was said with great innocence, but Alys wasn’t fooled.
“She’s sick,” Alys said abruptly. “She has the stomach grippe. Madlen has been holding a basin, and you think there’d be an end to what she can get rid of, but she keeps spewing. I don’t think you’d want to see her. Her face isn’t the slightest bit pretty when it’s green.”
Richard was looking slightly green himself at the picture she’d conjured up. “A reasonable excuse,” he said, nodding. “Then if you’ve just been with her, where were you running to? Your husband’s side? I wouldn’t have thought Grendel would be the sort to kindle that strong affection. Or were you, perhaps, running away from him?”
Curse the man and his father as well, Alys thought, not caring that it was a father they shared. She’d never even seen old Lord Roger of Summersedge, but he sounded like a womanizing, unprincipled bastard, and his lecherous son took after him.
“I am a most dutiful wife,” she said meekly, hoping she looked it.
“Of course you are, my dear,” Richard said. “I would expect no less of you. And I’m certain you don’t want to spend your days being ogled by the servants while they guess exactly what kind of member your husband has. I’ll see that you’re taken back to his solar for privacy.”
“No! That is, I’m ready for company…” she began, but it was already too late. Richard had signaled for two of his menservants to approach.
“Which reminds me, dear Alys. I’m as curious as the next man. What kind of member does Simon of Navarre have? Does it work? Is it forked like the tongue of a snake?”
The two men had taken her arms and were leading her away. She could have struggled, but she suspected it would have been useless. They would take her back to Grendel’s lair, throw her in, and fetch her broken bones in the morning. She made one last attempt.
“I need to speak with Lady Hedwiga again,” she said, squirming in their tight grip. “I need her wise counsel…”
“My lady wife is indisposed,” Richard said with a doleful expression on his face. “She hopes that the posset you brought her will help, but we can only pray.”
“Posset?” Alys echoed, but she was already being dragged toward the stairs of the tower, and it would have been useless and undignified to fight.
At least the tower rooms were empty. A fire blazed brightly in the fireplace, and the room smelled of spices and dried roses. The bed hangings were drawn back, the coverlets neatened, the rushes on the floor were fresh and strewn with dried flowers. She looked at the bed with dismay, trying to will her memory to return.
She was rewarded with a crack of thunder, and she moved away from the window in sudden panic, taking a seat by the fire. Lightning storms were bad enough on the ground—up high in a tower they were well-nigh unbearable.
Her sister was out on a night like this, with only a high strung horse for company. A horse who hated thunderstorms as well. Alys could hear the rain pelting against the heavy stone walls of the tower, mixed with the intermittent sound of thunder, and she forced herself to calm down. Claire wasn’t afraid of storms. Claire wasn’t afraid of anything at all, and even on a stormy night like this she would somehow manage to find shelter, keep herself safe until she was found.
There was nothing more Alys could do for her. If she went out searching for her she would get lost herself. S
he had done her best—lied to her brother to keep his suspicions calm, and sent the one man she could trust to find Claire. If Thomas couldn’t find her, no one could. And Thomas wouldn’t rest until he did.
The thunder cracked again, and Alys shivered. Her stomach was empty, her nerves were stretched tight, her whole body felt tense and strained and abnormally sensitive to everything around her, heat and light and sound. But she was safe within the thick walls of the tower, safe at least from the storm. Only if she were fool enough to climb the final flight of winding stairs to the parapet would she be in any danger from the lightning, and she had no reason to do such a foolhardy thing.
She would stay by the fire and await the coming of her husband. There was no escaping him, much as she wanted to. She was afraid of him as she had never admitted before. Afraid of the dangerous depths of his golden eyes, the touch of his hands on her skin. Afraid of his mouth, touching hers. Afraid of everything.
She would lose herself. Just as she had lost part of her memory of the night before, if she came to his bed the rest of her would simply disappear. She had begun to think of him as a Grendel monster after all. He wouldn’t devour her body and drink her blood—he would eat her soul.
She slumped in sudden despair as the door opened, but it was only Godfrey, Simon’s mute servant, carrying a tray. Dinner, she realized with a longing sniff. Warm pheasant and baked eels and cakes, sweet white bread and cheese and a ewer of wine as well.
He set it in front of her, and she saw with relief that there was only enough food for one. Only one goblet. She would have a peaceful last supper, at least.
She looked up at Godfrey’s sober face, smiling her thanks. “Will my… will Lord Simon be joining me?”
Godfrey shook his head.
“Will he be coming later?” Stupid question, Alys chided herself, picking at the bread. Where else would he go?
But Godfrey shrugged, expressing uncertainty, and for some reason Alys’s nervous stomach knotted even more tightly. She didn’t want him there. But she didn’t want him gone either.
“Where is he, Godfrey?” she asked, knowing he couldn’t answer.
Few men could write. Fewer women could read. Godfrey moved to the tall desk and made a few laborious marks, then handed the paper to Alys. “On the parapet,” it said. And for emphasis Godfrey jerked his head upward.
Overhead, in the storm. Alys crushed the paper in her hand, forcing a tremulous smile to her lips. “Thank you, Godfrey,” she murmured.
She almost called him back when the door closed behind him. What in God’s name was Simon doing up there on the battlements? No one was storming the castle, and in this kind of weather he wouldn’t be able to see anything at all. Did he have a sudden longing to be struck by lightning? Or was he really empowered - could he control the elements, thunder, lightning, and rain? There were times when she almost believed it to be so.
But to believe that, she would have to believe that he worked with the powers of darkness, for there was no doubt whatsoever that Simon of Navarre was a far cry from a godly man.
He’d managed to wipe clean her memory from the night before. He managed to draw her to him so that she dreamed of his touch like a wanton, she who was frightened of men, she who should have been a celibate nun. He’d bewitched her, enchanted her, and she had no idea whether it was magic, witchcraft, or something far more elemental.
She forced herself to eat, though she had little appetite. She sat in the curved chair and stared into the fire, hypnotized by the dancing flames. She could hear the intermittent thunder, the lashing of the rain against the stone of the keep, and from the Great Hall she could hear echoes of raucous laughter. All would be well, she told herself, more a prayer than a certainty. Claire would be found, and protected.
Could he really be up on the battlements? What possible reason could Simon of Navarre have for walking along the parapet above his tower? The storm was fierce and deadly, the lightning coming so close at times she could smell the odd scent of it on the air. If he stayed up there he would die.
And she would be a widow. Free, perhaps, to enter the convent that had once seemed the only possible happiness for her. If she had any sense at all she would go lie down on the bed and sleep, praying for his death.
But she seemed to have lost all her sense. The wise, careful young woman had vanished, and she knew she was going up into the maw of danger, the gaping mouth of death, to find Simon of Navarre. To find her love.
Her feet were icy cold on the tower steps. She clung tightly to the twined rope that served as a handrail, and her gown trailed behind her on the stairs. By the first half turn the stone steps were wet from the rain dripping down from the opening, and she wished she’d worn shoes. But her shoes were in the east tower, with the rest of her few possessions and those belonging to her sister. It was an appealing thought—to race back across the rain-drenched courtyard and take shelter in the bed she had shared with Claire.
But there was no shelter to be found. The noise from the Great Hall faded away as she climbed, and she felt as if she were climbing into the sky, into the very heart of the storm itself. The past and safety lay behind her, Simon of Navarre lay ahead of her, and she had made her choice. She would stop fighting it, when it was what she wanted, and needed.
She was afraid of horses and storms and men. She was afraid of heights as well, and this was the first time she had ever climbed to the top of one of the four towers that surrounded Summersedge Keep. It was dark, and the pennons flapped wetly in the wind. She paused in the opening, cowering and hating herself for it as she tried to accustom her eyes to the darkness.
There was no other access to the turret. They were alone. He could throw her over the side with no one to witness it, and the only one who would mourn was Claire, who might already be dead in the forest.
She could see him now, standing with his back to her, facing into the pitch black night. Lightning sizzled all around him like a tapestry of stars and she watched in awe as it danced in the air about him. It sizzled downward, crashing onto the north tower, but he didn’t flinch, even as Alys cowered in the opening to the parapet. He was dangerous, god-like, elemental, part of the night and the storm, as terrifying and powerful as a bolt of lightning.
He must have felt her eyes on him. He turned, slowly, to look at her huddled in the entryway. He’d discarded his formal robes. His thin cambric shirt was drenched, clinging to his body, and his hose were wet as well. He leaned against the parapet, watching her, not even blinking as the rain washed down his bleak face. Watching her, as the thunder echoed around them. Watching her.
She wanted to turn and run, as she’d wanted to ever since she first set eyes on the creature. The man, for that was what he was. But the fear and the longing fought against each other, bringing her closer, ever closer. Bringing her up a twisted flight of stairs in the dark of night, to face her nemesis across a wind-swept expanse of stone. She hadn’t come this far just to run away.
She needed a sign from him, a word, but he’d given her none. She couldn’t even remember what had gone on between them in the dark hours of the night before, but she knew it had been monumental. She was finally ready to surrender, body and soul, but she needed to know he would accept the sacrifice.
The rain had let up, turning into a thick, soft drizzle. “What do you want, Alys?” he asked in a cool, weary voice.
You. The answer was clear in her head, but she was afraid to say it. “It’s raining,” she said.
“Very observant.” He pushed his long wet hair away from his face, sluicing some of the water away as well. “Did you come up to inform me of this?”
“There’s lightning. It’s dangerous.”
“I know that as well. I’m not afraid of thunder and lightning, sweet Alys. I’m not afraid of horses or men or death or even the wrath of God. I’m not afraid of anything.”
A faint ribbon of memory danced through her mind, and she spoke before she could think twice. “Except me,” she said.
He froze, a statue in the dark, rain-swept night. “I have no reason to be afraid of you, Alys. Your own terrors will keep you well away from me.” He moved his arm, and the lightning sizzled, followed by a loud clap of thunder.
Alys stumbled back onto the steps, and he laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. “You see,” he said. “You don’t know what you want, and even if you did, your fears won’t let you reach for it. Go to bed, Alys. I won’t touch you again.”
Again. There was the word, proof that what she had forgotten had really happened. “Did you bed me last night?”
He smiled faintly. “Indeed. You weren’t sure whether you liked it or not, but in the end you were quite… amenable.”
“Why don’t I remember? Is it witchcraft? A spell of some sort?”
“Drugs,” he said succinctly. “You drank wine that was not meant for you, and the effect was calamitous. You were quite demanding, my love. A virgin bed was no longer an option you chose to accept.”
She could feel her cheeks flame red, the only warm part in her frozen body. He seemed oblivious to the cold and the wet, standing out there in the light rain. “Is that why I forgot?”
“Either because of the drug, or the shame of remembering that you wanted me.”
His eyes were cold. She didn’t think golden eyes would ever be cold, but his were. Colder than the rain.
“Why have you come here, Alys?” he asked again. “What do you want?”
She had no answers, and he turned his back on her, staring out into the stormy night once more.
She took a step upward, bare foot on icy wet stone, and a streak of lightning sizzled nearby. She took another as the thunder followed it, and the rain began to increase.
She was being tested, and she wasn’t sure who was doing it—a cantankerous wizard or a mischievous God. In the end it didn’t matter. She took another step, out into the opening of the turret, certain that something or someone would strike her dead.