Amazingly, as if he sensed her concern, Guillelm turned to her. “I checked the blow,” he said. “Aside from bruises tomorrow, the lad will be whole.”
Before she could answer he swung the mace again, catching another assailant in the stomach. The man doubled over, gasping, and his squire darted onto the field to drag him out of harm’s way. Another unarmed squire lunged at Guillelm, hands clawing for one of the favors pinned to his strapping body. Guillelm cursed and swatted the boy away.
And then Alyson saw the new threat emerge from the shadows of the stand, using the futile attacks of the younger knights as cover. No youth this, but a veteran, with strong boots, dull but well-maintained chain mail and his shield arm more muscled than his sword arm. He moved as deftly as a prowling spider and covered the ground between the stand and the earth steps in a series of well judged sprints, winding in his track so as to keep out of Guillelm’s immediate sight.
He is going to reach the stairs, Alyson thought, as Guillelm fought five more knights at once, using the flat of his sword. Inexplicably she felt a chill. The veteran knight was a stranger to her but behind his visor his eyes were hard.
He is coming after me! Alyson remained frozen in her seat, her limbs locked in horror as the older man clubbed down a yawning man-at-arms close to the stairs with the hilt of his sword and leaped through the gap before any of the other soldiers could react. His act was against the rules of the joust, but this quick-moving, agile warrior had forgotten or ignored the idea that the joust was a contest, not war. He was snarling as he slammed his blade home into its sheath, climbing the bank on hands and knees and still invisible to Guillelm, who was boxing the ears of a young knight who had tried to bite him.
“Do that again, lad, and you will have no teeth!” he bellowed, missing Alyson’s shout of “Behind you!” altogether. Two knights leaped upon his back and started to throttle him with their maces.
“Stop!” Now Alyson found she could move, but her way to Guillelm was blocked by the older knight, who rose up beside her chair.
“You will cut yourself with that, pretty,” he said, and ignoring Guillelm’s specific command that no man touch her he ripped her new dagger from her belt.
“No!” She flew out of the seat after it, grappling with the laughing warrior.
“Alyson!” The yell ripped from Guillelm’s lungs, echoing round the ground as he shook off the two and launched himself at the stairs. There was a rush of light, cool and shade, and a jolting crash. His shoulder barged into the stranger knight’s, snapping the man’s shield arm and knocking him down.
He swung his sword and the veteran’s sword shattered, fragments of metal hurtling over the ground. Alyson heard the man shriek as Guillelm hauled him away from her, tossing him down the man-made hill.
Guillelm sank to his knees beside Alyson. Battle-hot and burning, he took her in his arms. “Are you hurt?”
“No” Alyson swallowed, and her pale, narrow head, translucent in the sunlight, found Guillelm’s battle-battered features. He flinched against a look of judgment and yet there was none, only a clear, tear-bright gaze. “He was so determined to win.”
Bile rose in Guillelm’s throat. He swallowed the bitter mouthful, conscious of a throbbing in his arm, of the twittering of the crowd, of the bruised knights groaning. One of his men-Fulk or Sir Tom, probably-had ensured the older knight had been removed from the ground.
“You will not hurt him more?” Alyson shuddered and clung closer. “Please promise me you will not”
“Why? Why should he matter to you?”
“He does not” Alyson smiled bleakly. “But you do” She touched the ragged parchment favor over his heart. “I would not that you have his … injury on your conscience.”
It would not be on my mind at all, Guillelm thought, too wise to admit that. “Very well,” he said. “For you” He would tell Tom to get the fellow out of Hardspen, without horse, without armor, without sword. “I am sorry, sweetheart”
She smiled again, a more genuine smile this time. “For being so reckless in your fighting that you make my heart race fit to burst for worry of you?”
“No, for being too careless of your safety. That was reckless, and wrong.”
He ignored the rules, not you, Alyson thought. She reached up and planted a gentle kiss on his cheek.
I forgive you,” she said.
Chapter 20
The joust at Hardspen had lasted three more days. Long days to Alyson, who, since her near-disastrous encounter with the older knight had sat more conventionally with the other ladies in the stand, where Petronilla had regaled her with gossip. How she had ever been this woman’s friend was a mystery, but not so much of a mystery as where Guillelm spent his nights. He had told her the merlin was sick and fretted if left alone.
What about me? Alyson had thought, too humiliated to ask her question aloud. Besides, without even being asked, Guillelm had given an answer: “Whenever we come to sunset and the end of the day, you are more than half-asleep. So far I have carried you to our chamber every night and you have snored on my shoulder.”
“Why must you sit with the merlin?” she had asked once.
“She feels at ease with me,” Guillelm had said, and Alyson had forced herself to be satisfied with that.
Now, sitting with her in their high rooftop garden, Guillelm looked up from whittling a small wooden flute with his knife-he was in the habit of fashioning such toys whenever he had a quiet moment; he said he did not like to be idle. So far, she had a whistle, as did most of the pages in the castle. It was, in Petronilla’s words, a new fashion.
Petronilla had left that morning, her wagon creaking under the weight of her luggage. The men entering the jousts were already gone and Sir Tom was talking about leaving, although now he was in the mews, fussing over the merlin. Alyson had considered asking Sir Tom if Guillelm really was in the mews all night but had decided she did not want to know.
“How is your shoulder?” Guillelm blew some sawdust away from the half-finished pipe and threw it down in his lap. “Would you like more salve on it?”
Alyson squirmed slightly in her chair. Her shoulder was itching less than it had done but any contact between Guillelm and herself was to be savored. Or was that desire only on her part? Had he asked simply from courtesy? Sometimes she was certain he loved her and wanted nothing more than to be with her, to touch and kiss and more. Was she right?
As she said nothing, made no move, Guillelm cleared his throat and tapped the key on his belt. “I still have your favors from the joust. Perhaps we should use this one and retire downstairs.” He smiled. “We would be more private there, and more comfortable.”
“If it please you” Fool! Alyson castigated herself. Smile at him, let him know you welcome this chance to be alone. At least nod your agreement.
But already she was too late. Sericus and Fulk invaded the roof-garden at a furious pace, Fulk first.
“Lord! You must come! Messengers from King Stephen and the empress are at this moment within your great hall, both demanding urgent speech with you, and their pages are fistfighting on the floor!”
“Mother of God, man!” Guillelm jumped to his feet. “Two boys scrapping and you do not stop it-no one has sense to part them? What is everyone doing in the great hall, lounging about with their thumbs in their mouths?”
“Placing bets and egging each boy on, no doubt,” Alyson remarked, also climbing to her feet. “Throw a pail of water on the pair and tell them it is with my compliments; the envoys will accept that a lady is mistress in her own house and take no slight from it. I will tell them the same and say the brawling disturbs the nuns who are staying with us, if need be ””
“A double warning, then,” Guillelm grunted, irritation giving way to amusement as he stood at the stop of the staircase and bawled down an order involving water, buckets and a good aim, but Fulk was not finished.
“The king’s messenger was a knight at this joust only yesterday. He still wears the
favor of the lady Petronilla.”
A sly jibe from Fulk that no knights except Guillelm had worn hers, Alyson recognized, but she answered calmly, “Then that knight will know that a lady’s wishes are always to be followed. Should you not go with your lord?” she added, as Guillelm disappeared down the spiral steps after a single lingering look at her that spoke eloquently of his frustration. She, too, was disappointed and she especially had no wish to go down to meet the envoys and their disheveled pages on the arm of her least favorite seneschal.
Without a farewell, Fulk turned and stalked downstairs, leaving Alyson and the wheezing Sericus. “Take my arm, Sericus, if you will,” she said, intending to support him as discreetly as possible down the long treads of stairs. “What is it?” she asked, as the old man made no move except to rub his rheumy eyes and then his lame leg. “Sericus?”
He looked at her then. “The wolf has returned”
Alyson felt as if all the breath had been punched from her lungs, but there was worse.
“A cottar’s child is missing, a little girl. Stop, my lady!” Sericus put an arm out to prevent her hurrying after Guillelm. “I told Fulk and he said both wolf and child must wait until after the lord of Hardspen has seen the messengers of the king and the empress. To do otherwise would be an insult which neither Stephen nor Maud would forgive or forget”
“But a child is gone, Sericus!”
“I know.”
“For how long?”
“Two days”
“Two days!”
“The cottar did not dare to interrupt the joust”
Alyson wanted to put her head in her hands and weep, but that would help no one. “Can you gather a hunting party?” she asked. “Beaters for the woods, men or boys who can shoot a bow? The family of the cottar-can they bring any weapons? I will ensure that if they are due to do any work on my lord’s fields or in my lord’s holdings, then they will not suffer for missing today and joining us ””
Sericus mouthed “Us?” in sheer horrified astonishment, but before he could protest, Alyson passed by him.
“I remember well being a little girl. I know I can guess better than any man where a girl-child might run and hide. I know the woods well here,” she went on, taking the steps two at a time. “I know the land hereabouts as well as any man. If the cottar can show us where the child went missing we can start from there. Come!”
Guillelm watched the envoys of the king and the empress leave and smiled. There had been some tricky negotiations over the past hour but he had managed to promise nothing too great to either side. He stretched in his chair, cracking his shoulders, and wondered where Alyson had got to. Perhaps she was with the sisters of St. Foy’s in the chapel, talking to her own blood-sister.
“I hope so,” he said aloud, thinking he must tell her how the bucket of water had worked at once and the whole incident had ended in laughter, even for the hotheaded pages. Stretching again, he realized he was hungry. Was it too soon to nag the cooks?
A shadow moved at the back of the hall, solidifying into a familiar figure. “Thomas!” Guillelm bawled out in sheer good humor. “How is the merlin?” In truth, he hoped the bird was now eating well and regrowing some of its shed feathers; he wanted to spend his nights with Alyson. If they were at least in the same chamber; that would be a start
One clear look at his companion’s face had Guillelm out of his chair and striding from the dais. “Thomas? What news?”
Let this not touch upon Alyson, he prayed, but surely that was impossible. His wife was safe and healing, snug on her roof-garden at the very top of the keep. How then could Sir Tom’s grim face be connected with her? “Speak!” he commanded, a coil of dread winding tight about his guts.
“The lady Alyson has gone hunting a wolf that made off with a child,” Sir Tom said bluntly. “Fulk has just learned that she and a ragtag party of old men and boys have been gone this past hour.”
Rushing off to save another without thought for her own recent injury-that was Alyson all over. Guillelm longed to box her ears but even more find her, hold her tight, make her safe.
“Saddle my horse,” he said through bloodless lips.
“Already done. Fulk has gathered our best trackers”
Guillelm nodded. “Then we ride,” he said.
The child of the cottar had done what Alyson would have done at the same age if chased by a wolf. She had scrambled into the tallest tree she could find and, when Alyson and her party of archers and villagers spotted her, close to the track she had used to gather firewood, she waved and shouted to them gleefully, her tears of fright forgotten.
Soon the wiry eight-year-old was tight in her mother’s arms, gabbling tales of her adventure as her mother rocked her on her lap, the pair of them sitting on a fallen tree trunk while the archers prowled through the undergrowth, seeking tracks. The wolf had been scared off by their approach, but the child said it had emerged from the middle of the woodland, where she herself had been forbidden to venture. “I keep to the track at the edge of the wood, as I am told,” the child piped, receiving a kiss from her mother as the woman tried to untangle burrs and leaves from her daughter’s grubby yellow-brown hair.
The thanks of the cottar to Alyson were heartfelt. “You have given us back our lives, my lady, with this our youngest, our only daughter,” he said. “If there is anything we may do for you, please call upon us ””
“Any help we can give, it is yours,” the wife of the cottar agreed, glancing at Alyson’s slim shape.
Guessing what help she meant, Alyson asked, “How many children have you?”
“Five, your lady, and all living, thanks be to God,” said the cottar, squeezing his wife’s shoulder. Standing beside her, one could see the love between them, warm as the summer’s day.
“I will remember your kind offer, Harland, Elfgiva.” With a nod to both, Alyson spurred Jezebel forward before these two handsome, sinewy, rose-complexioned and above all loving parents noticed the tears in her eyes. To Harland and Elfgiva, a daughter was not a disappointment, but a treasure.
“My lady!” One of the squires clutched at her saddle. “What must I eat for a headache?”
“Drink less beer!” called back another squire, to general laughter.
Alyson chuckled too and was about to lean down and suggest another “cure” when the squire released her saddle and straightened, like a man on sentry duty. She heard it as well, the galloping of many heavy horses.
“Sericus! Gather everyone about in a circle, archers to the front!” she ordered, shielding the costar’s family with Jezebel’s broad flanks. Who was this, breaking through the stands of elders and hazel at so furious a rate? Please, God, not Etienne the Fleming, returning again to wreak more havoc.
She saw Guillelm’s fluttering standard and breathed out in relief. A shout of joy broke from her lips as Caliph burst into view through the trees and Guillelm hurtled toward her, ahead of all his men. He was bareheaded and she could see his face.
He was not smiling.
They returned to Hardspen in silence, where Guillelm issued swift orders that the wolf be hunted down by what he called a “proper” party of men and dogs. Lunch was yesterday’s bread and soft new cheese: a snack since the cook had not known at what hour any of them would be dining.
“My lady will be spending the afternoon in the solar, at her needlework,” Guillelm announced to the astonished company in the great hall-none more surprised than Alyson herself.
Leaving her bread, she leaned across her seat to murmur, “You know there is no solar here at Hardspen .”
Guillelm shook his head. “I had your previous bedchamber cleared out while we were eating, and tables and chairs taken in. That will be your solar. It is large enough for you and your maids.”
“But I thought-” Alyson stopped, disappointed that she and Guillelm would not be spending time together on the roof-garden. “I have stills and potions to work on,” she remarked, shocked when Guillelm took her hand in his
and said softly but firmly, “No.”
“What are you saying?” Alyson felt a chill of alarm. Farther along the table, Fulk was openly grinning.
“I have decided, wife, that in future you shall be best employed inside this castle. Hardspen is a bare place-” Ignoring the sword and shield of his famous ancestor on one wall, Guillelm swept an arm up to the high rafters as if to illustrate his point. “Other ladies do embroidery and tapestry to add warmth and color to the rooms of their menfolk. I have decided that it will be more fitting if you follow their example.”
Do not argue with him before Fulk and his men, Alyson scolded herself. “As you wish, my lord,” she agreed, while her stomach coiled itself into knots of rage. “For this afternoon.”
“All afternoons”
How had he arrived at this folly? Of course she knew-she could hear Fulk’s insinuations in Guillelm’s every boorish idea. Alyson put a hand to her mouth, as if stifling a yawn. “I had no notion you were so ordinary in your expectations, my lord.”
Next moment, Alyson felt a heavy hand upon her back. She moaned, the pain of her injured shoulder jolting through her nerves, and would have tumbled from her seat, had Guillelm not been there, tugging her none too gently off her own chair onto his lap.
Ever the jester, Thierry called out some ribald comment in French but Alyson had ears only for Guillelm’s searing whisper.
“I barely touched you then, Alyson, and see how you flinched! Your shoulder is not even half-healed and yet you shame me by cavorting around the countryside on a wolf chase! When I found you this morning, were you about to dig a wolf pit yourself, too?”
“That is not fair!” Alyson hissed back, stung by the truth of his words and even more by the hurt shining in his eyes. She wanted to give an account of herself, not to win but to give him a reason for her actions so he would understand she’d had no choice. “I never meant to shame you-“
She stopped, overcome for an instant by a burning sensation in her throat, the prelude to tears. Digging her fingernails tightly into her palm she regained some composure and continued. “I knew you could not set out yourself because of the envoys and yet with a child missing there was no time to be lost.”
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