“You did not think to send me a message? I would have sent Fulk and a troop of men out immediately.”
And would Fulk have acted promptly, for the child of a peasant? I think not. Alyson stared at her hands. “I did not think I should disturb you,” she said, as much as she dared admit. “I realize I acted impulsively.” She forced herself to raise her head and look him in the face. “I am sorry. Truly, I thought you would be pleased.”
She hoped to see forgiveness in her husband’s compelling eyes, a gentling of his lips. To her inward dread, his harsh features remained locked in a frown. “Pleased that my injured wife is putting herself in peril? There cannot be any more of this, Alyson, even if a child is in mortal danger.” Guillelm’s right hand tightened about her narrow waist. “Promise me there will be no more, or I shall have no peace”
“My lord!” Fulk had no qualms in interrupting their conversation. He clearly felt himself in the ascendant; now he pushed himself away from the table and the dais and walked toward Alyson and Guillelm, glowering at a hunting dog that had crept into the hall until it slunk off to the lower tables. “My lord, be not harsh to your lady. She is young and unschooled in the ways of a large household.”
He smiled at Alyson-that is, he showed his teeth and added, “Will you see Sericus now, my lord?”
Now you have said enough words to act as fat on the fire of Guillelm’s anger, Alyson thought, but said quickly, “I would send Sericus on an errand”
“You have done enough,” Guillelm said. “Now I will have my say.”
Alyson met his steely glance, inwardly sending a prayer to Christ that she had not made matters worse. “What business have you with my seneschal?” she asked, fearing the answer.
“Bring him inside,” Guillelm said to Fulk. He tipped Alyson off his knee. “Call her women”
“Talk to me,” Alyson said, hating the pleading note in her voice. “Guillelm, you cannot fault the loyalty of Sericus-“
“Not to you, perhaps, but where was his sense?” Guillelm’s large hand captured both of hers and he dragged her close again. “If I choose to punish that old man for his folly, then I shall, and that will also be your chastisement. Get to your solar, madam, or I will have your women carry you there”
Hot speech flooded Alyson’s mind but she was mute, shocked. She had not seen Guillelm this coldly stubborn before. Seated beside him, Sir Tom was shaking his head. On the tables below the dais, men were suddenly busy with their drinks or dice. I have no allies here, she thought. They all think I was wrong. “Dragon, please-“
“No more” Guillelm released her and Alyson forced herself to walk away from him, her footsteps crackling on the freshly strewn rushes and meadowsweet.
“Excellent, Guido,” remarked Tom, clapping a flea on the back of his neck. “I have seen you deal with lepers with more care”
“It is not Alyson whom I blame.” Guillelm could not drag his eyes from the straight-backed, retreating figure. He longed to rush after her and somehow make everything right between them. He wished she would look back, just a glance over her shoulder. Then he would not have to live with the dread that she was as angry with him as he had been with her-an anger on his part that he suspected was unwarranted, in spite of Fulk’s snide comments.
But if she had been injured on the wolf hunt, or worse-his mind shied from the final thought, his thoughts leaping back as if from the jaws of the wolf itself. He could not stand to think of Alyson hurt. She had been hurt so often at Hardspen. What kind of man of husband-was he that he could not protect her from her own fierce charity? He should have remembered about the wolf himself, sent out hunters days ago, before the joust, and not trusted to that old fool Sericus, who had told him the beast had vanished.
Alyson had also vanished. He watched the shadowy entrance for several more moments, hoping against hope that she would return. Even to have her quarrel with him would be a relief because it would be contact. She was gone now and he felt bereft: stupid, arrogant, unreasonable and, more than anything, alone.
“Where is Sericus?” he demanded. He and Fulk had not yet entered the great hall. What was keeping them?
“That old man did the best he could.” Tom again, an unwelcome conscience. “You should not vent your spleen on him. It is unfair, as your lady says and-“
“When I need your advice, Thomas, I shall ask for it.” Guillelm glowered at the entrance but still the two seneschals did not appear. Instead a page scampered over the rushes, missing his footing once on a discarded meat bone. Before sprawling full-length amongst the milling dogs, he righted himself in time and gabbled his message.
“Lord! The holy Sister Ursula is outside the hall this very moment, with Sir Fulk and Master Sericus. She begs leave to speak with you”
As Guillelm cursed under his breath and rose, braced for another chilly encounter with Alyson’s sister, Tom put down his cup.
“Will you tell her anything?” he goaded, in a low, carrying voice. “I for one wish that you would share with Alyson’s sister the real reason why Alyson was asked for no favors at the joust. Did you not notice how that blond piece Petronilla preened over the many trinkets she gave out? Women care about such matters. If you told Sister Ursula the truth, she would tell Alyson.”
“I think that unlikely; they are not close. Besides, the joust is over.” A fiery jealousy was burning in the pit of Guillelm’s belly. He wanted to slam Tom’s head into the trestle for even raising the subject. “I admit I was wrong, Tom-I did so at the time and I do so again.”
“Yet you say nothing to Alyson herself. Do you wish her to feel entirely friendless, wondering why no knight approached her?”
Feelings, thoughts, guesses-Guillelm felt to be in a trap of his own devising, and the knowledge that he had created this current bad blood between Alyson and himself made another burden. “She has me. She needs no other defender.”
“And do you think Alyson remains convinced she has you now, this moment? Guido! How can you be so thickheaded?”
Very easily, Guillelm admitted bleakly. He knew he was being stubborn. He knew he should have spoken to Alyson earlier about her favors and the joust; he knew
“Enough!” Guillelm slammed back his chair, saying to the page, “Lead on, boy.” The sooner he could be finished with the nun and seek out his wife to forge some kind of peace with her, the better.
Sister Ursula was waiting on the stairwell where, if Guillelm had known it, Alyson had waited a few months earlier, on the night he had returned to Hardspen. Standing beside her, Fulk wore the bright look of a fellow conspirator.
“Where is Sericus?” Guillelm asked him.
“I suggested that my sister’s seneschal leave, to give us some privacy,” Sister Ursula answered and, before Guillelm could protest, “Sericus was ever … partial to my sister, and this gentle knight tells me that you and Alyson are estranged.”
Guillelm stared at Fulk with raised brows. “You have been busy.”
“I speak only the truth, my lord.”
“Leave us ”” Guillelm spoke as curtly as he had done to the page.
“You doubt his loyalty,” Sister Ursula remarked when she and Guillelm were alone.
IfI do, it is no concern of yours, Guillelm thought, though he said nothing. Again, he was ashamed of Fulk, and of his own misjudgment. He had been almost willfully blind, reluctant to admit to the man’s glaring faults because of his excellent fighting skills. Habit and old companionship could not easily be set aside, but Fulk had made no effort to outgrow his prejudices. Guillelm’s own small hope that his seneschal would mellow in time toward Alyson was revealed as futile.
Putting that thorny matter aside for the moment, Guillelm studied the svelte, black-robed figure before him. He chose to be blunt.
“You are pleased to think that Alyson and I have fallen out”
Sister Ursula clasped her bony hands together, as if in prayer.
“Why?” Guillelm persisted.
The nun shook her hea
d. “I am here, as a mark of penance, to speak for my order,” she said through pursed lips.
Guillelm put his right hand behind his back and made a fist of it. He could sense Sister Ursula’s distaste of him, revealed in her rigid stance and in the way she would not look at him directly. Yet she had been speaking to Fulk and the pair had looked easy together.
Heloise too had laughed and joked with Fulk in Outremer … Swiftly, before the old bitterness overwhelmed him, Guil lelm tried again. “First answer me this. Do you not wish Alyson to be happy?”
“I wish her to be alive.” Now Sister Ursula raised her face to his, her narrow features schooled into a mask of loathing. “You men! All you think of is war and killing! The prioress wants me to beg you that you allow us to stay on at Hardspen for a little longer, when I-“
“Gladly,” Guillelm intervened, but Sister Ursula would not be denied.
“In a castle full of the same brutes who would have cut us down in our convent without a qualm!” she retorted. “It is madness! Evil.” She raised a quivering hand toward Guillelm, her index finger thrust out like a dagger. “You are evil, my lord de La Rochelle, for you have murdered others and will do so again including my sister!”
“Stop!” Guillelm sprinted ahead of the nun as she turned to go back to the chapel, using his own body to block the stairs. “Do you think that habit gives you the right to say anything you please? What do you mean? I would never, never harm Alyson!”
“You want a son, do you not? An heir? Men always do!”
She has gone mad, Guillelm thought, as Sister Ursula leaned closer, her eyes wild as she prodded his chest with her finger. A cascade of words broke from her mouth, and from sheer shock he sat down on the stone steps, listening in appalled fascination to her rave.
“You took Alyson when you must have known that the womenfolk in our family are fated to die in childbirth, so do not speak of never harming to me! You knew she wanted to be a nun! You might say you know differently, but Alyson would say the moon was made of gold because of you! I think she is either bewitched or terrified. She does not know her own mind.”
“And you do”
“No! But Christ knows! God knows!” Sister Ursula straightened, tucking the simple wooden crucifix that hung around her neck out of sight as she smoothed down her habit. The action seemed to calm her; when she spoke, her words were more measured.
“Every woman in our family, without exception, has died in childbirth. My mother, her mother, the sisters of my mother, my great-grandmother. If you care for Alyson as you claim, then you will allow my sister to depart with my order when the time comes, to spend a period of contemplation and prayer with us. Allow her that space and peace so she may come to know what God desires for her.”
Sister Ursula withdrew by another way, leaving Guillelm sitting on the stairs, staring at the soot-encrusted walls and seeing nothing.
He was still there when a boy came later, to light the torches.
Chapter 21
Perhaps their marriage should be annulled. Alyson would then be safe. Alyson would be able to pursue her true vocation. She loved learning.
The nuns of St. Foy’s had thought they were safe, until the Fleming had attacked. There was no safety in this world. Perhaps Alyson would not be like the women in her family. Perhaps she would have an easy pregnancy and birth.
If they ever joined in love …
Brooding, horrified by what Sister Ursula had told him, Guillelm went about Hardspen that night without any sense of hope or joy. Fearing his own temper, he avoided Sericus and never sent for the man. After supper, he hunkered down in a stairwell and watched Alyson leave the solar for the garderobe, dreading that a page or maid might spot him, or a knight find him, or worse, Alyson herself see him and ask what he was doing.
What am I doing? Guillelm thought. He was a coward not to approach Alyson, unkind in leaving her to wonder how matters stood between them. He had ordered her to the solar; now he should seek her out. What could he say? “I will release you from our vows”? Was that what she wanted?
“I do not believe it is,” he said aloud, “but perhaps I am mistaken.”
For now he waited, his body stiffening in its cramped, huddled stance, his ears straining for the sound of his wife’s returning steps.
Why? Alyson thought as she sped, head down, away from the garderobe, half-fearful, half-longing that she would encounter Guillelm. Why had he been so loving, so attentive through her fever and injury, and why now was he changed? Anger she could understand-he had been in a righteous temper over her wolf hunt, but as the day had dragged on and he had not come once to the solar, she began to fear that he had really abandoned her.
Please let him be furious with me but not cooling, not indifferent, she prayed. Please let him come, if only to say goodnight.
I am wishing so hard to see Guillelm that I am imagining him in the strangest places: as a shadow in the corner of the stairwell, below that unlit torch.
She stopped and listened intently, hearing no sound but distant clattering from the kitchen and great hall, a page playing on his new whistle somewhere within the keep, plus her own increasing heartbeat. She had to take a breath and then she sensed it: a difference in the space and air between herself and the stone walls and steps. Alyson squinted; there was something on the stairs, a darker block, solid and unyielding.
“My lord?” She scarcely dared hope. “Guillelm?”
The shadow moved, growing larger and blacker for an instant before Guillelm threw back the hood of his dark cloak.
As if drawn on invisible strings, he stepped toward her.
“I am sorry,” he said. “You are wholly excellent and good, but I cannot live with anyone. How we are” he spread the fingers of both hands, lifting them to her-“is wrong. I was wrong to think I could live with anyone, even you”
Something broke within Alyson but she dared not sag. Pierced beyond tears, she thought only of Guillelm, how hard this must be for him. “Dragon, is this what you truly desire?”
He lurched closer, eyes blazing, then whirled aside, striking the wall with his fist. Alyson cried out as she heard his hand slam into the stones but Guillelm never made a sound. He put both hands behind his back.
“It must be,” he said. “You must be safe” A spasm crossed his haggard face. “It is the will of God” He lowered his head.
“Do you believe that?”
Guillelm stared at her, unblinking, as if he would fix her forever within the orbit of his eyes. He said nothing.
Alyson walked softly along the corridor to join him in the shadows, dreading that every step she took might see him break from her and stride away, leaving without a backward glance. Hope and fear warred in her but she had to know, she had to risk the question that was pounding in her head.
“Why do you believe it?”
He shook his head. “You should leave. This place is full of chills and darkness. Bad air.”
I will leave after you.”
Neither of them moved.
After a moment, Alyson shivered, and Guillelm swept off his cloak and handed it across. “Please, take it. You are cold.”
“Thank you” Dare she suggest they share it? “I will sit. My feet are cold.”
“Here” Guillelm knelt and rapidly unlaced his boots. “Slip these on, over your own shoes and stockings.” “
He did not want to leave! As he sat beside her in the corner, with his shoulder against one wall and his back to the other, Alyson almost broke down in sheer relief. As it was, she could not manage to place his boots over her feet; her fingers were trembling so much they would not work.
“Let me help.” Deftly, Guillelm eased the boots onto her feet and tucked the ends of his cloak about her shoulders. Crouched close, she noticed that one of the heels of his own leggings was threadbare.
“I should darn your hose,” she remarked, “that is, if you will allow it.”
To her horror, the thought of not darning Guillelm’s cloth
es herself, of the dread possibility of never darning his hose, spilled tears from her eyes.
“Hush, sweetheart. Please do not cry.” Kneeling, he rocked her in his arms. “Hush.” He kissed her forehead and the top of her head. “Mother of God, I never meant to cause you such grief, Alyson. I want you to be happy. Happy and safe, like your sister.”
“Tilda?” Alyson called her elder sibling by her old, secular name but in a flash she understood. “She has spoken to you!”
“Hush” Guillelm squeezed her waist and drew back. “All that matters is that you are safe” From his lips it sounded like an urgent prayer. He reached toward her to brush a wisp of a curl away from her ear, then froze. “I am sorry,” he said. “Perhaps, in the circumstances …” He coiled his fingers into a loose fist and lowered his arm, moving as slowly as a starving man. “I am sorry to have disturbed your peace”
“Peace is not what I want,” Alyson whispered, mopping the last tears from her face. She felt like a tightrope walker at a fair, buoyed by hope, edging her way to the truth but with danger on every side. “Safety if it is the barren safety of a nunnery-is not what I want”
Amazement broke through the rigid mask of Guillelm’s features and his eyes became alive again. “But your sister and your father-both of them at different times told me that learning was your dearest desire!” He clasped her hands, raised them to his lips. “When we did so badly together, when you froze, each time I came near, I thought they were right. That I was being selfish, keeping you here”
Alyson said nothing but her expression must have told him what she felt because he gathered her close again, with a befuddled look of wonder playing across his strong face that almost made her laugh.
“Truly, you are happy with me?” he asked.
Alyson cupped his chin in her hand, her whole body thrilling at the contact. “If I freeze, dragon, it is with rapture,” she murmured, blushing to be admitting this but determined to free her husband once and for all from his demons of selfdoubt. And from Heloise …
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