The reminder of her religious name and purpose, the sober habit, which accentuated Matilda-Ursula’s natural pallor, throwing her handsome, somewhat sharp-featured face into even more desolate relief, and most of all that final, cruel instruction brought home to Alyson how distant her birth-sister had become after only a few months’ separation. Her kindness and slow smile were gone-or did she share these only with her sisters in Christ? Whatever the truth, this sudden blow was like a second bereavement: First she had lost her father and now this.
“Are you happy here?” she stammered, at a loss for conversation.
Sister Ursula inclined her head. “It is what I always wanted” She walked through a wattle arched gate into another part of the garden, calling over her shoulder, “Come, look at our vine walk. It provides us with welcome shade on warm days such as these”
Alyson had little choice but to follow, passing the elderly convent infirmarer who was weeding the beds of leeks, celery and parsley. The scent of coriander was heavy in the still air and she was acutely conscious of her own footfalls on the beaten earth paths.
“You could have been a part of this,” her sister remarked as she drew near. “You once wanted to be a great healer, a scholar-as I am.” Sister Ursula held out her right hand, showing her thumb and forefinger, stained with the inks of the scriptorium. “Why did you break your vow?”
“What vow?” Alyson did not understand the question.
“You swore to join the nuns. Why did you break that promise?”
“I never-” Aware from the infirmarer’s puzzled glance that she had raised her voice, Alyson forced herself to speak more quietly. “As a girl, yes, I wished to be part of convent life, but I made no formal vow.”
“You were seduced by secular pleasures.” Sister Ursula gave her gown a look of undisguised scorn. “Pretty clothes!”
Just in time, Alyson stopped herself from saying that the gown was once Tilda’s; that would be a most unwelcome reminder. Instead she tried reason. “It pleased our father for me to take another path in life.”
“I agree our father was morally weak, as are all men, but do not blame him for your own forswearing.”
“I do not,” sighed Alyson, staring at the patch of poppies in the physic garden and trying to remain as calm as if she had swallowed a draught of poppy juice. By her own choice she had made it possible for Sir Henry to allow Matilda to enter the convent in some style, but she did not say that. She knew there were other, darker and more urgent reasons why her elder sister had been so desperate to remain unmarried.
“Our mother died in childbirth. Have you forgotten?”
Tears stood in Alyson’s eyes at the unjust accusation. She shook her head, but her sister was deep in the past, reliving those terrible three days.
“She screamed so loud and she was pleading with God and all the saints for the pain to stop. Our father was out hunting, taking his ease as do all men, and mother was shrieking in their chamber, with no one to help her but a few twittering old women”
“Please, Tilda,” Alyson begged, the memory that forever haunted the dark spaces of her mind rising up and striking her afresh.
She had been just four years old. To know those pitiful cries had been made by her mother, to see the pallid, sweating faces of the helpless nurses and midwives, to be shut out of her mother’s chamber had been truly terrifying. It must have been worse for Matilda, the older by five years and so more aware of what was happening. They had clung to each other, hiding out of sight under a trestle in a corner in the great hall while in the small, narrow room off from the hall their mother labored and suffered. Alyson remembered Matilda weeping; she was weeping now, tears coursing down her thin, sallow cheeks.
“It is a judgment of God upon women. The only way to escape it is to avoid the contaminating sin of marriage and to take the veil, as I have. As you should have done!”
“Sister-” Alyson tried to enfold the slim, sobbing figure in her arms, but although they were a height and similar in build, if not in looks, her sister tore herself away with the strength of desperation.
“Do not touch me! You did not see our mother when she was dead! I did and she was white with loss of blood! Her bed and chamber reeked of it! Even now, I can smell it.” Distracted, Sister Ursula thrust past Alyson and fled back to the main church of the convent, ignoring Alyson’s calls for her to return.
Some time later, after she was forced to admit that her sister would not emerge to bid her farewell, Alyson took her leave of the prioress of St. Foy’s. Feeling battered and rather degraded by Tilda-Ursula’s accusations, she responded as briefly as possible to Guillelm’s greeting, aware of Fulk’s avid interest.
Guillelm took in her sunless demeanor in a single piercing glance and lifted her onto her horse without comment. He asked no questions on the journey to the manor of his friend, but spurred on his piebald so that his men had to gallop to keep with him. Alyson was grateful for his tact and glad of the hard ride; concentrating on that blotted out some of her grief.
Soon enough-too soon for Alyson-the party had reached the home of Thomas of Beresford. The former crusader was as Guillelm had described, with many ragged scars blazoned upon his forehead, the tip of his nose missing and a deep groove hacked from his jawbone, where the rest of his curly black beard would not grow. He stumbled down the manor steps to clap Guillelm on the shoulder and roar out a “Well-met!” wielding a stump of a right arm and a peg leg for his right foot, but Alyson sensed a warm and genuine welcome beneath the fierce, battle-hewn countenance. She liked him at once, even before Guillelm drew the man across to her horse, so that she would have the advantage of looking down on them, two hulking, seasoned warriors with skins the color and texture of polished beechwood.
“My betrothed, the lady Alyson of Olverton,” Guillelm said formally, smiling at her while Alyson prayed that her face was not filthy with the dusty ride. She put out her hand to her lord’s stocky, barrel-chested companion.
“Thank you for allowing us to stay at your house, Sir Thomas,” she said.
Guillelm laughed at the look of mingled awe and shyness on his friend’s rough-hewn face. “Mother of God, Tom, make some answer or my excellent wife-to-be will think you dumb as well as ugly!”
“No more brute than you, my lord,” Alyson flashed at him, an answer that had several of the nearby men-at-arms who were still riding round the manor yard, cooling their foamspeckled horses, glance at her with some astonishment. Fulk even scowled but not Thomas.
“Excellent indeed!” He clasped her hand in his left and stamped his peg leg in sheer good humor. “She is a match for you, Guido, and more! Welcome to my home, my lady!”
“Thank you, sir,” Alyson responded, wondering afresh if Guillelm really did consider her his equal, given the difference of their lands and titles. But she had no time to consider the question before she was swept off her mount by Guillelm and set down beside Thomas with the growled warning from her lord dragon, “There shall be a reckoning later for that pert answer, mistress. Now go in with Tom and try to be good, eh?” He sent her on her way with a teasing pat and turned to bellow instructions to his men.
Staying at the manor of Thomas of Beresford was a bittersweet occasion for Alyson. Still grieving after the painful encounter with her sister, she found the manor contained many echoes of her old home at Olverton. It was the same kind of house, with a great hall and solar, a small pantry and buttery, a staircase to a series of small upper rooms and the kitchens and bakehouse across the yard. The furnishings were those that reminded her of her childhood: sturdy oak tables and trestles, earthenware crocks, a few faded wall hangings. She missed the flowers that she had spread about Olverton hall, and the scents of her old still room, but otherwise she could have wandered through this place blindfolded and known where she was.
In one way, however, it was strange-very strange. There were no womenfolk, no maids, no lady of the manor, no laundresses or spinsters.
Her host remarked on i
t as he showed her to the narrow chamber that would be hers for the night. “I had my steward put you in here, my lady, you being a lone lass among men. It was my mother’s sewing room”
“Thank you, sir.” Alyson glanced about, taking in the fresh thatch over the window shutters, the recently redaubed wall by the bed, the stout bar to place across the door. There was even a candle for her and a small brazier, in case the summer night turned cold. “You have made me most welcome.”
“No, ‘tis nothing for the woman who can look at me without flinching. That is a rare skill, and one none of the village maids have mastered” He scratched uneasily at his patchy beard, ducking his head under the low roof beams. “I would have women here, but they do not stay. The last washerwoman to work here told me straight out before she left that I had the evil eye and would sour milk.” “
“How cruel!” Indignant on his behalf, Alyson crossed the floor in two steps to lay a hand on his arm. “That is folly, utter superstition. You must never think it true”
“I am used to it. Do not let it trouble you” Thomas grinned, the scars on his forehead seeming to crack open afresh once more. “But you are as fiery as the dragon himself! Tell me, are you the wee maid who gave him that title?”
Startled, Alyson dropped her cloak on the bed. “I did not realize he had mentioned it.”
“Once only, my lady, in Outremer, when he was a lad of twenty and we were making camp before our first siege. The talk round the fire fell to those remaining at home. The other men spoke half in jest as they bragged of women bedded and left, but not Guillelm. `If I could have the girl of my liking, she would be a small, dark elf, a clever girl, with eyes the color of a rising storm. She knew and recognized me before any other,’ he told us then, and he tapped the dragon on his shield.” Thomas of Beresford regarded her closely, his battered head on one side. “I thought then Guillelm spoke of his ideal, but here you are, in the flesh”
“Please, sir-” Alyson knew she was blushing and fumbled with her riding gloves. She was stopped by her companion.
I am glad you are real, my lady.”
“Please, call me Alyson.”
“Then you must call me Tom, as Guillelm does”
“Sir Tom,” Alyson faltered.
“Sir Tom will do very well.” He peered at her in the dim light of the chamber and nodded. “The good thing is that you are so different from the other one”
Alyson felt the scrape of a sudden chill across the back of her neck. “What other?” she whispered.
“Never mind, it is years past and best forgotten” Sir Tom squeezed her arm, his eyes very kind behind their mesh of angry scars. “Now we should return to the hall, or Guillelm or his miserable shadow Fulk will have something to say.”
They walked downstairs, Alyson beset with a new fear. Who was the other one? What woman had Guillelm known in Outremer that she should cast so long a shadow? “Who was she?” she demanded.
“Her name was Heloise.”
“What was she like?”
“Proud and blond-but I will say no more, so do not ask”
“Then I will ask Guillelm.”
“No!” Sir Tom stopped her on the stairs. “Swear to me now you will say nothing to him! He was so mauled by her, it would do him no good even to remember!” His earnestness was painful. “Promise me, Alyson. This is no idle thing I ask. I beg you to believe me when I say it would do great harm”
“But surely for him to speak would bring relief?”
“So women ever think. It is not the same for men. Guillelm needs to forget. Promise me, please.” A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead, running past his ruined nose.
In the teeth of his distress Alyson felt the worst kind of gossip. “I promise,” she answered swiftly. “I will not ask him direct. If he wishes to tell me .. ” She spread her hands.
“He will not!” Sir Tom spoke in heartfelt accents that pained and alarmed her.
I must know more, she thought. Somehow I must find out. Or I will have no peace.
Although it would be painful, she knew whom she could ask and get some answers-perhaps not all true, but certainly full. Guillelm’s miserable shadow and her own nemesis, Fulk.
Guillelm watched Alyson enter the great hall on Tom’s arm and cursed again his lack of foresight in providing her with no maids. He should have remembered the masculine nature of his friend’s household; as it was, Alyson was the only female present. Even the wolfhounds slinking round the great unlit fireplace were male.
He was jealous, Guillelm realized and was ashamed of the emotion, for Alyson gave him no cause. In this situation, a single woman in a melee of menfolk, Heloise would have reveled in the attention, would have ensured that all eyes were on her. Quiet and grave, concentrating on what was being told her, Alyson strolled about with Tom, utterly unaware of the stir she made.
The stares of his men irked Guillelm. He wanted Alyson all to himself, wanted her alone. He strode across, deliberately heavy-footed so all would know he was coming.
“I will take her now, Tom,” he said, closing fast.
“Aye, no doubt you will.” The former crusader stepped back without breaking off from feasting a pair of very busy eyes on Alyson. He wore a look on his mangled face that could only be described as foolish. The man is besotted, thought Guillelm, jealous afresh.
He turned on his men. “Have you no tasks to be doing?” he barked at the astonished company. “Must I order everything?” He snatched at Alyson’s hand, almost dragging her away from Tom. “Come, mistress, I would have a word.”
He walked her behind the screens separating the great hall from the pantry and buttery, where a glower at a dice-throwing page had the boy scurrying off. Checking there was no one lingering in the buttery or pantry, he threaded his thumbs into his belt, taking pleasure just in looking at her. He had his second betrothal gift ready; he had wanted to give it to her earlier in the day, when they were alone in the woodland, but Fulk’s battle roar had interrupted him. Now he and Alyson had a moment and he intended to make best use of it.
“Yes, my lord?” Alyson asked. “It is ever your custom to call me mistress when I have displeased you, so in what way have I offended now? I would know.”
Quite apart from the justness of her mild reproof, the weariness in her voice startled him. Clasping her by the shoulders, he swiveled her toward the greater light streaming into the pantry and saw how bleached-out she was about the eyes. Her face had a suspiciously scrubbed look and her lips were pale.
“Your meeting with your sister?” he prompted, utterly changing what he was about to say. His gift would keep, but Alyson’s distress would not. “Was she not pleased to see you?”
It was a shrewd guess. He felt her tremble, saw the sinews in her neck stiffen as she clenched her jaw. “She saw me”
“And?”
“We spoke for a while.”
“What about?”
“Family matters. Very little, really.”
“You have less in common than you thought?”
Alyson rubbed at her eyes. “Our lives are very different.”
She moved to go past him and return to the hall but he stopped her. “Please, tell me what happened. I cannot bear to see you so … so beaten down”
She stared at him for so long that Guillelm wondered if he had changed into a hippogriff, or unicorn, or some other strange beast. “Please, sweeting,” he said, the endearment feeling as if it had been wrung from him.
Out it came in a low tumble of words: her sister’s anger that Alyson had not also joined the convent, that her sister saw marriage as a sin.
“Why should she think that?” Guillelm knotted his forehead, trying to remember Alyson’s sister, Matilda. A fleeing shadow in a dark dress was all that came to him and now he was all attention because Alyson was speaking.
“Our mother died in childbirth.”
“Ah” Inwardly, Guillelm cursed his own memory; he should have remembered why Sir Henry had been a widower wh
en he met him. “I am sorry.”
“It frightened my sister greatly. She was older; she saw and understood more than I did. I was only four.”
Old enough to be petrified, thought Guillelm grimly, sensing her taut as a harp string, while a small selfish part whispered that he was glad to be a man. He cleared his throat, embarrassed and yet wanting to offer some comfort. “In Outremer there are many skilled doctors who understand such things.”
Alyson smiled. “We are not in Outremer.” With that simple reply she drew away from him, adding, “Do you not think we should rejoin our host? Or he will perhaps consider the excellence of his welcome is lacking.”
“You are right.” As ever. Taking only a small pleasure from the fact she had used one of his own habitual phrases, Guillelm offered her his arm and they walked out from behind the screens.
Preoccupied, he did not notice Fulk emerge from behind a barrel of wine in the buttery and slip off to the chambers upstairs.
Chapter 7
Alyson pushed open the door to her night’s lodgings, relieved that she was upstairs, beyond the tumult of the men. Below her, the noise in the great hall abated slightly as another dish of roast pig was carried in from the kitchen and the drunken diners fell on it with much hacking of knives and belches of satisfaction. Barring her chamber, Alyson unlaced her gown with a sigh, glad she was nimble enough to do this on her own.
No doubt Guillelm would have helped and played the part of lady’s maid, if she had asked. Throughout the evening, with its noisy toasts and loud reminiscences of old campaigns, she had sensed his dark eyes ever straying to her. Had he watched the mysterious Heloise in the same way?
At least Fulk had been civil, Alyson reflected, shrugging off her shoes. He had been sitting beside her on the dais at dinner and had passed her several platters. He had even asked if she was warm enough.
Perhaps he is coming to accept me, she thought, glancing round the bare room for a comb or brush. She did not want to waste the candle in closer search, or lose the heat of the chamber by opening the shutters. Besides, the midsummer night was almost light enough to see by.
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