“We are not in Outremer now, Thierry.”
“No? But my lord came down into the dungeon of Hasim to lift me out. I had been there for three months and Guillelm broke my fetters and carried me out in his arms like a child, carried me out into the sunlight and the fresh free air.”
Alyson gasped, understanding now why the Norman should be so disturbed. Of all punishments that men could inflict on each other, imprisonment in the windowless, airless dungeons of their castles was surely the worst. She had heard of men driven mad in such places; it was no wonder that, deep in his cups, Thierry might remember his long confinement and confuse past and present.
“Come with me now, Thierry,” Guillelm said, adding more in a French dialect that Alyson did not understand.
Thierry dropped his dagger. It skidded onto the battlements and bounced on the stones. Fulk made a grab for it, which Thierry interpreted as a fresh threat, regripping his sword and pitching forward at Guillelm, his face twisted into a terrible snarl of fear and anger.
“No!” Sir Tom yelled, as Guillelm twisted swiftly and harmlessly away and Thierry blundered on, ever closer to the four-man-high drop over the battlements into the inner courtyard. As Guillelm spun round, his hands reaching and grabbing, trying for the second time to stop his man falling, Alyson launched herself from the dark stairway and darted at Thierry. She had no plan, simply the wild desire to stop him.
“Thierry!”
At her high, clear voice, Thierry slewed awkwardly, his feet scrabbling on the stones. Finally and with a roar he slipped and sat down heavily. “A girl!” he bawled in French.
The distraction was enough for Guillelm. Seizing the moment that Thierry’s attention was on Alyson, he wrested the man’s sword out of his hand and pinned him to the battlements. Thierry flailed about for an instant and then lay back, panting and repeating in French, “A girl, a girl.”
Guillelm clapped Thierry on the back and pushed him toward the waiting Fulk and Sir Tom. “Sleep it off, man, and think no more of it.”
He turned to Alyson as the subdued Thierry and the rest of the men filed silently down the stairs. “Are you all right?” he asked her.
“Perfectly,” Alyson lied. Now that her initial jubilation that Guillelm and Thierry were both safe had passed, she felt clammy. “Are you hurt?” She countered question with question.
“Unharmed, save for the fright you gave me when you hurled yourself out of the stairwell!” He chuckled. “That was a brave act, if foolish.”
“No more than your own,” Alyson began, but reaction caught up with her and she quickly turned her head, clutching her stomach. “I feel sick.”
To her mortification she was sick, straight over the battlements. As she spat and shuddered, she felt Guillelm’s hands on her shoulders.
“Here, little one” He uncorked a leather flask for her, holding it as she rinsed out her mouth and took a drink of the weak ale. “It can take you like this after a fight, or danger. Coming alive again is a shock” He patted her shoulder. “Thank you for saving me”
Expecting a scolding, Alyson stammered, “But I did not do so much, dragon, and if you had not been so quick, things may have gone amiss.”
“Aye, they may.” Guillelm gave her ear a gentle tweak. “You are running up a mighty debt to me: waspish answers, disobedience “
“Disobedience!”
not to mention the bullying of my servants. We agreed that Sericus is my servant, too, did we not? And yet you have that lame old man galloping about the bailey as if he were a warhorse. No, you are greatly in debt.” He overrode her protest. “Nothing else will do in repayment except that you bathe me as you promised. Or are you one who reneges on vows?”
“You will have to test me and see,” Alyson quipped. She smiled up at her new husband, her sickness replaced by a lightheaded joy. Her strategy was working; Guillelm was becoming less wary of her, less guarded in his replies. Surely he must realize how much she loved him, how much she desired him. If he so much as clicked his fingers she would cast herself into his arms right here on the battlements and smother him with kisses; she did not care who might be watching.
The wanton thought made her blush and laugh, which was a pity, for Guillelm had been lowering his head to her and now he stopped.
“I see you are still affected by this morning’s misadventure,” he said abruptly. He turned on his heel. “Forgive me, I know I must give you time. I will be down in the great hall, whenever you wish to join me. Now I must make certain Thierry is settled.”
Listening to his rapidly descending feet Alyson snorted and uttered an unladylike curse under her breath. Things between them had been going so sweetly … but it was not all lost. Guillelm had said “whenever you wish to join me ”” He desired her company and that was an excellent beginning, was it not? She could only hope so!
Patience, Alyson counseled, determinedly telling herself that this way she could slip into her new marital bedchamber, change her gown and restyle her hair before she reencountered Guillelm.
Fulk, who had sent his own page to spy on Alyson, drew the boy off to the stables and listened impassively to the lad’s latest report. The lady, cloistered in her chamber with that aged, crabbed nurse of hers. Womanish scents. Whispers and laughter. The lady emerging in a new gown and with ribbons in her hair …
Women really were the devil’s work, Fulk concluded, sending the page off to watch some more. He had sworn to the lowbred Alyson of Olverton that he would not act against her. Nor would he, but for his lord to break a solemn vow of abstinence after only one day would be unseemly; he would remind Guillelm of that. And I must also ensure that when he goes to his chamber to rest, he is not disturbed by anyone, he thought, and smiled.
Chapter 13
The baker of Hardspen was recovered of his fever and hard at work. Guillelm had heard no complaints of him, but now another local baker, accused of selling short-weight loaves, had been brought to the castle from the nearby village of Setton Minor. The four men and one woman-who had dragged the fellow into Hardspen and pitched him onto the rushes in the great hall had been vocal in demanding justice. Guillelm, fresh from disarming Thierry and wanting to spend more time with the former crusader to make certain all was calm and well with him, was forced to listen to the disgruntled villagers’ complaints.
Sitting on the dais, keeping a wary eye on Thierry, who was crouched by the central ash-covered fireplace playing dice with a worried-looking Tom, Guillelm gripped the arms of his carver chair and tried to follow a rambling tale of bad flour, moldy loaves sold as best and bread not fit even to be used as trenchers. The woman, whom Guillelm was surprised did not bake her own bread, was the most vocal of the five, but her quick patter and the baker’s rasping answers seemed to make no sense. Some matter of pies and rats and a brown bread that crumbled into … was the word dust? Guillelm wondered. It did not help him that their local dialect was so thick as to be almost incomprehensible. After seven years abroad, away from these habits of speech, he had a struggle to understand more than two words in ten.
Listening, Guillelm felt a renewed surge of irritation against Fulk. His seneschal might have dealt with this, had Fulk’s command of English been better. But Fulk had retreated to the stables and then to the tilting ground, claiming he could not understand “these mewling peasants,” and Sericus was off tending the merlin-a task Guillelm had expected Fulk to undertake whenever he himself could not.
The woman had asked him a question. As Guillelm resigned himself to ask her to repeat it and risk enduring the whole rigmarole again, Gytha and then Alyson walked into the hall.
Habituated by war to watching movement even at the edge of his vision, Guillelm realized that Gytha was offering Thierry a vessel-doubtless one of her mistress’s potions. A calming draught, perhaps. It was a good thought, and for the first time in the great hall that day he smiled, allowing himself the pleasure of gazing upon Alyson herself.
He could do so at length, for she had brought fo
ur pages with her, each lad carrying cups and jugs of ale. As they proceeded to serve everyone in the hall, including the villagers, Alyson approached the dais, bearing a silver chalice. A maid, scurrying a few steps behind her, clutched a large pottery jug. The maid would not look at him directly and her pinched, pox-scarred face had that blank look of fright that Guillelm was only too familiar with from the women who had crossed his path in Outremer, but Alyson met his eyes.
“I have brought you a tisane, my lord.” Her clear, low voice broke into his reverie. “For your refreshment” Beside the dais, she lifted the chalice toward his reaching arms, raising her head and adding swiftly and softly, “I beg mercy for the baker, Stephen Crok. He is losing his wits before his old age and cannot help what he does. The widow Isabella who accuses him most sharply has a younger son who would be a baker.”
“Would the widow want her son to be taken on as Crok’s apprentice?” Guillelm murmured, masking their conversation by making a play of sampling the tisane. The elderflower cosseted his nose with too cloying a scent, and he prayed that he hid his dislike of the draught. Alyson deserved better.
Shame at his cowardly behavior last night tore into him again, but he forced himself to attend to her rapid, whispered answer.
“Stephen Crok’s wife has been bedridden these past two years but she knows how to bake bread. Isabella would be glad for her son to learn from such a teacher, but she cannot pay any ‘prentice fees” Alyson bit her lower lip. “I would do so for her, if it please you”
“I will pay,” Guillelm said flatly. “But what can I offer to the others?”
“A week of dining in your hall my lord?”
Guillelm nodded. “So be it. Will you translate for me?” he added, rising to his feet.
“With pleasure!” Her eyes sparkled and her joy pierced him. So simple a mercy to give her so much delight. What had her life been like with his father? Guillelm wondered again.
He was still wondering as he dispensed justice-if Alyson’s suggestion could be called such. It seemed so, especially as his new wife smoothly switched to the local dialect and repeated what he said. The manner of the widow Isabella changed in moments from thin-lipped scowls to effusive thanks, the men with her licked their lips and held out their cups to the pages for more ale and the baker tugged on Alyson’s gown.
“Can I go home now?” he asked, his slow, heart-wrenchingly simple request comprehensible even to Guillelm, who answered, “You may.”
He swallowed the elderflower draught and came down from the dais as the villagers prepared to leave, sorry for the tisane but glad that Alyson had been with him. She knew many people here and, more important, understood them: their needs and irritations and hurts. Even in this she was a healer.
“My thanks for your potion for Thierry,” he said quietly, and for the rest” His smile deepened; it was so easy to smile at her. “You have the sense of King Solomon. I would not have thought a woman “
“Capable?” Alyson finished archly. “You do me too much honor.”
He had been about to say something quite different, but her mettlesome answer demanded a more physical response. He reached for her but she nimbly stepped back.
“The chalice, my lord?” She pointed past him to the high table. “I would return it to our chamber.”
At the word “our,” a faint rose stained her cheeks and Guillelm was snarled anew like a fly caught in fresh resin, he thought, aggrieved. But although he was ever wary of her possible rejection and she in turn clearly careful of him, he was more than glad of her presence.
“A moment, wife.” He said that to make Alyson blush more deeply, and to his mischievous delight she did. “I am for the tilting ground soon, and will I have your company?”
Alyson’s face was now as scarlet as the embroidered hems on her sleeves, but she answered readily, “If it please you.” Her eyes glittered. “Then when you take a tumble, I shall be there to tend your hurts”
“Provoking weasel,” he said affectionately, adding as she made to move off, “Is the way you wear your hair the English style? I am out of touch with such fashions.”
“Such country fashions?” she suggested, clearly taking his question as a criticism, where none was intended, where he had only wanted to keep her by him. “It is my own style, but no matter. I will change it to suit your wishes. You need only instruct me, though I beg not here, in the hall, with your men hard by.”
“Alyson-“
“I know I am only a simple creature to you, my lord, nothing like the grand ladies of the court. I will do as you command”
Exasperated, Guillelm told the truth. “You need change nothing, little idiot! Shall I tell you of these grand ladies? The women of my uncle’s court in Poitiers had bad teeth from too many sweets and hair as brittle as straw from spreading their sparse locks in the strongest sunlight to bleach them”
Instantly, he regretted this ungallantly, but it was too late. Alyson closed her sagging mouth with an audible snap. “Women torture themselves to change their locks to gold because men ever prefer them so”
“Not this man,” Guillelm said steadily.
She shot him a strange, bright glance but said nothing. Did she know anything of Heloise of Outremer? The notion she did grazed his heart but his feelings did not matter nowAlyson was turning from him, motioning some silent instruction to Gytha and her other maids.
“Alyson?”
She looked at him, her face stricken.
“Mother of God” He could not leave her thus. “I am sorry. I spoke badly. Let me make amends” Desperate for something to bridge the sudden yawning gap between them, he said quickly, “Wear my favor at the tilting ground. Please?”
Solemn as when she had been a child, she nodded and he breathed afresh. “Will you walk with me to the ground?” he asked.
She fell into step with him. Strolling together, down the stone stairways and out past the stables, he studied her again. Alyson was a lesson he never grew tired of, and his. If only he might make her truly his.
Her gown was new to him, he thought, or perhaps he was seeing it clearly for the first time. It was that green-blue color favored by many ladies and marvelously snug about her bosom, waist and hips. Her long sleeves were trimmed in scarlet and, as she pointed to a dove strutting by the stables, muttering, “The dovecote here needs some repair, my lord,” he was distracted from her highly practical observation by a glimpse of her wrist, smooth and burnished and white as a pearl. Quickly, to try to stop the inevitable stirring below his belt, he followed her pointing finger to the dove. Its feathers were as milky as the flesh on her wrist. Did she know how the scarlet embroidering set off her hands? Her gliding, higharched feet, too, for now he caught a flash of her trim ankles as she lifted the scarlet hem of her gown to negotiate past a pile of trodden sheep dung.
“Do you think, my lord?” she was asking, “that the emperor of Germany is really a woman?” and he said hazily, “Yes,” starting as she laughed.
“You have not been paying attention, Guillelm, and now I have proved it!”
“Attention, eh? Then I must give you some” Inspired by her teasing, he went further. Ignoring her choked-off giggles, he flung her over his shoulder and twirled them both about. “Is this enough attention for you?”
“Let me down!” She hammered her palms against his back but he felt the blows as if they were the lightest of embraces, overwhelmed already by the scent of her, the taut, firm bow of her body on his. Her long braids swung against his calves, a piquant series of strikes that made him want her even more.
Enough! Do you want her terrified again? You have seen women raped in Outremer will you be no better? Are you a Viking who seizes what he pleases? Slowly, reluctantly, he lowered her to the ground.
“More of that and no doubt I should undo some streamer from your hair and be nagged all the way to the gallops,” he said gruffly. “We should get on; ‘tis past noon already.”
She snapped her fingers at him. “I am no s
cold, dragon, as well you know, but I will race you-now we are fairly matched since you are clearly exhausted by your lifting.”
Giving him no time to answer, she sped ahead, her dark plaits flying out behind her. He let her go, amazed at her fleetness, then started after her, aware he was chasing and happy to chase, for Alyson did not mind if she was caught.
They had a tranquil afternoon at the tilting ground-which was odd, Alyson thought, because Guillelm and the other knights there were in training for war. Content merely to be close to him, she watched him on Caliph, galloping at targets, practicing with spear, sword and shield and working himself, his men and their horses into great steaming sweats.
Halfway through the afternoon, Alyson sent a messenger to the castle to have the bathhouse readied again and instructed pages to bring ale to the men. Ducking under a tourney target, she walked across the churned-up ground, waving to Sir Tom and stroking one of his panting hounds, avoiding Fulk, whose bay stallion had already bitten another horse, to hand Guillelm a drink.
“My thanks, sweet” He took it with a tiny brush of his callused thumb against her palm, a gentle touch that told more of his gratitude than any number of words. He wore one of her hair ribbons pinned to his shoulder, a bright blue favor. She in turn had asked for and been given one of Guillelm’s small brooches as a favor. She flicked it with a finger.
“The dragon on this brooch looks to have indigestion,” she remarked, which earned her a guffaw from Guillelm. He leaned down from Caliph, hooking his free hand under her belt and lifting her off her feet again any excuse to carry her was good enough, it seemed, and that was fine to Alyson.
“It is a pretty brooch, all the same,” she said, balancing on his stirrup and giving the rather portly gold dragon design a cleaning rub with one of her ribbons.
“How many ribbons are there in your hair?” Guillelm muttered.
Alyson smiled. She had spent more than an hour arranging her coiffure; it was gratifying to behold her husband’s faintly stunned look whenever he saw it that and the many quicksilver glances he sent her. In truth, she had no idea if what she had done was fashionable, but she had tried to tread a narrow path between modesty and instinct.
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