A Knight's Vow

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A Knight's Vow Page 24

by Lindsay Townsend


  “But sometimes you seem to freeze when I approach. I feared then that you were thinking of him, comparing us, reminding yourself that I was his son-‘

  “Never! As I told you, dragon, if I go still, it is with rapture, not fear.” She would not hurt him by confessing to the odd memory-flash of Lord Robert’s cruelty when they themselves were close. Such unwanted remembrances had nothing to do with Guillelm and herself, and she was determined they would throw no more shadows.

  “Pray God you are right.” Guillelm gently touched her head. “How could he strike you? Beat you? He could not have loved you-no man who loves a woman would ever seek to hurt her.”

  “There are other ways of hurt” Alyson knelt up so that their eyes were level. “I can bear it no longer,” she said simply. “I have to know. Who is Heloise? What did she do to you?”

  Guillelm sighed. “Before I tell you of Heloise, I must explain about my older sister.”

  He took her hand in his, comforted and reassured when she gave his fingers a gentle squeeze. Heartened by the gesture and by her steady blue eyes, he took a deep breath.

  “Juliana is trapped in a loveless marriage. I did not recognize it as such, when I served her and my brother-in-law briefly as squire, but even at twelve I thought Juliana cold to her husband, unnecessarily reserved. Once I found her crying in her solar. She told me then that all men are brutes those were her exact words: `Knights or peasants, men are brutes, slaves to their base passions. Soon enough, you will grow up and be like all the rest: the charming, fresh-faced younger brother who runs to bring me my book or cushion will be as sullen and determined of his rights as Oliver.’ Oliver is her husband, a dour, laconic fellow who never praises when he can carp. I did not understand then what Juliana meant about rights, but I learned. I learned especially in Outremer, where some poor women have to sell themselves to put bread in their children’s bellies. They know too much about the rights of men!

  “Soon, I was more than ready to believe my sister’s dismal prediction regarding men. I had seen it too often, played out in alleys when besieging forces broke through. I witnessed how soldiers hurled themselves upon unwilling girls and women. I tried to stop it, but other commanders told me it was the sport of war, that it was the nature of the beast. I remembered what Juliana had told me, and agreed.

  “Of course, Heloise was nothing like a common camp follower or courtesan, forced by circumstances to give her unwilling body to greedy, careless troops. When I met her, I began to entertain the hope that my sister could be mistaken and that not all men were brutes”

  Thunder cracked again, farther away this time. There was more lightning, but Alyson paid it no attention. “I know that she is blond,” she remarked, as if that was of great significance. She flicked at her own plait, a nervous, defensive gesture. “Fulk said she is very beautiful.”

  “Fulk is an idiot.” With his thumb, Guillelm traced the line of Alyson’s veil, marveling at the feel of silk against silk. To him, her flowing black tresses were richer than any gold, but how could he persuade her of that?

  “Heloise bleaches her hair,” he lied. “There is very little of nature in her. She uses many arts to enhance her looks.”

  “She is charming?” Alyson prompted, a question Guillelm wished she had not asked. “Enough,” she added quickly, sitting back on her heels. “If it pains you to speak of it, then let it go. It was many years ago, in another country.”

  “No, sweet, you deserve the truth”

  Guillelm stretched out his arm and drew her close, heartened when she did not stiffen. Burning inwardly at the memory of the entire episode with Heloise, he began to speak.

  “As I say, when I encountered Heloise, I was already convinced that women despised men, especially men like me: the big, clumsy kind.”

  “You are not clumsy, dragon! Not a bit.”

  Guillelm kissed her in thanks, then kissed her again for pleasure.

  “If you keep interrupting, I shall never be done,” he warned.

  “Why should I not interrupt, when I am kissed for my trouble?” Alyson responded pertly, which made him want to embrace her afresh.

  Fighting down his desire, Guillelm resumed his account.

  “I met Heloise at a joust in Outremer. She sent me a favor to wear. I was amazed. Ladies of my uncle’s court in Poitiers had rarely granted me favors and I had grown accustomed to the same and worse treatment in the East.

  “After the joustin which I won Caliph Heloise sought me out. I remember she was dressed all in white. She was radiant on that hot, dusty afternoon. She brought me a covered silver chalice of wine. She called me `my terrible beauty.’ I was flattered”

  Guillelm sighed, looking down at the top of Alyson’s lowered head, wishing he could see into her mind. She was so still, so quiet, he hardly knew how she was receiving this sorry story.

  “She had a rich town house in Jerusalem. From its roof you could see over the grain market to Tancred’s Tower. I fell into the habit of calling there, whenever I could. She always received me. I took her gifts: game, flowers, a poem I had written in mangled Arabic. She smiled at my spelling mistakes.”

  Alyson inhaled a slow, deep breath but said nothing.

  “She would have no other rivals to my affection. Somehow, she heard that I had a liking for small, dark women and she scolded me for days, threatening to deny me her company. At the time I thanked God that she had never learned anything particular of you, Alyson. You were still my ideal, but your father had made it very clear to me that he would never consent to a match between us. I was trying to make some kind of life for myself. All other black-haired, zesty, vivid beauties were too strong a reminder of you, whom I had already lost. Heloise was tall, voluptuous, pale as a winter new moon. I told myself I was smitten with her.

  “She encouraged me. She allowed me to kiss her hands. She teased me into washing and kissing her feet. She spoke of the lands I should be granted in the East. She admired my battle prowess. When she at last admitted me into her inner chamber, with no chaperone present save a Greek maid who knew no French, I took it as a sign and spoke my suit, offering Heloise my hand in marriage.

  “She refused me ”” Guillelm felt his mouth twist downward. “How she refused me! She told me I was altogether too big and brutal, that I would burn any woman to ashes in a wedding bed. I remember her laughter as I stumbled from her house. I remember the Greek maid, laughing and pointing, and Heloise, cool and poised, lounging on cushions, picking the petals of the roses I had brought her and tossing them on the floor.”

  Guillelm fell silent. Around them, he heard the drizzle of the departing rain, the faint alarm call of a blackbird. He waited and felt his companion shudder, but there was no sound from her.

  “After that, I knew it was no use,” he said. “I knew what I was to women. Juliana had warned me, and Heloise confirmed it. I was a brute male, a warrior, nothing more.

  “Then I returned to England, to Hardspen. And I found you again, sweet, brave Alyson, who has never feared me. I thought, I hoped-I prayed things would be different between us. I hoped my love for you would make the difference. I am sorry it has not”

  “But it has,” Alyson said.

  Chapter 23

  She touched his arm, relieved when he did not flinch.

  “You are no brute,” she said softly. “You never were”

  “Truly?” He looked at her, the ashlike, dull dread in his eyes terrible to see.

  “Yes” She took him by the shoulders. “You are too big to shake, or I would do so. Do you think I care what an Eastern harridan says about you?”

  “Truly?”

  Alyson nodded and, utterly exasperated, snapped her fingers. “Of course, you great fool. Do you think-?”

  Her tongue was stilled from the rest of its complaint as Guillelm wrapped his arms about her, his whole being transformed into a fiery glitter and brightness. His eyes gleaming, his stern face glowing, he pressed her close to his heart. The heat of his strong body
made her gasp.

  “Do you love me, sweetheart?” he murmured. “Can you love me, just a little?”

  “Yes!” Alyson whispered. “Yes!”

  She gasped a second time as his lips embraced the curve of her breast. She was intoxicated, but not by wine. By Guillelm. Increasingly daring, she parted the neck drawstrings of his shirt and burrowed her hand inside, reveling in the feel of his solid body. His chest was crisscrossed with curling golden hairs and, on his left side, by a ridge of scar tissue running down the length of two ribs. She drew back the shirt further and kissed the taut, tanned flesh, close to the scar and then on the scar. His ribs moved under her lips as he inhaled sharply, not releasing the breath until she teased her fingers over the powerful band of muscle across his stomach.

  “Mother of God!” she heard him hiss, his big hands circling her breasts in gentle, almost lazy sweeps that made her entire body quiver with need. In that mysterious, secret place between her legs, Alyson felt to be melting into sweetnessshe was lost in his touch and in touching him. She loved his long flanks and his back, so broad that when she wrapped her arms about his shoulders, her hands could scarcely meet. She loved his shaggy golden eyebrows and his long-fingered hands with their pads of callus on the palms and the fingertips that could probe and stroke. She loved his full, sensual mouth and did not care that his heavy runner’s thigh imprisoned both her legs. In the faint yellow glare of the storm, he was like a statue of a pagan god come to life.

  “So beautiful,” she murmured. He was so wonderfully hot, his athletic, robust body both smooth and at the same time rough-skinned. Touching him, Alyson thought of Caliph, recognizing in Guillelm the same compelling vigor.

  She ran her thumb along the length of his nose, giggling as he caught her thumb between his lips and sucked it. His eyes flashed as he watched her, ravishing her with a glance, and his mouth was bent into an indulgent smile.

  She did not want this moment to end, but outside the barn there came a pounding of feet. As she and Guillelm broke apart, a gap-toothed boy almost impaled himself on the plough inside the door.

  “My lord! My lady! I have a message for you!” he yelled, shaking his dripping head and spraying them with water drops.

  Guillelm glanced at Alyson, who was standing poised on the balls of her feet, her hands bunched into fists. “What are you doing?” he snorted.

  “I could say the same of you,” Alyson retorted. In leaping to his feet, Guillelm had swept her behind him, and not all that gently. Each had attempted to shield the other from a possible attacker.

  He smiled, a little grimly, she thought, but his answer was amused. “Peace, wife. I am a soldier. Now let us hear what this fireball has to say. Your message, young man?” he demanded.

  Alyson quickly turned her back to reorder her gown with hands that were far from steady, but the boy was far too excited at the prospect of dealing with a real crusader to pay attention to her, a mere woman.

  “Mistress Eva charges me to tell you that she and the villagers of Setton Minor will await your coming another day, for today is now too wet for the festival. She bid me give you this.”

  He handed over a bundle and then was off again, sprinting across the downs with wild abandon, as agile as a pine marten.

  “How did Eva know where we were?” Guillelm asked.

  “She is a wisewoman, doubtless with her methods of divining,” Alyson answered, kneeling back amidst the hay. She was so deliciously distracted by Guillelm’s declarations and embrace that she could scarcely concentrate; it took her three attempts to untie the bundle.

  Inside was a precious scrap of parchment, on which Eva had scratched the following.

  My lady, consider the barn your castle for today and tonight. Use anything within it as you please. Burn the plough, but not, I pray you, the rakes. If you stay you will have good fortune. The pie is venison.

  “She has sent us some goodly provisions, this Eva,” Guillelm exclaimed, as Alyson spread the bounty before them.

  “Mmm,” Alyson agreed. There was indeed a venison pie, dark maslin bread, dried apples, nuts and soft cheese. In addition to the food, there were two woolen sheets, big enough for two to lie between. Alyson lifted one, brushing its rough warmth against her cheek.

  Eva must have talked to her nurse, she thought, for the last thing she drew from the bundle was a salve. The wisewoman had tied a strip of parchment round the earthenware, roundbellied jar, with the instruction, For my lady’s shoulder. A salve ofgarlic.

  Alyson blushed. The healer in her knew that garlic was a good antiseptic, but she also knew that the bulb was said to be an aphrodisiac.

  She glanced at Guillelm, hoping her desire for him did not show in her face. “If we are to reheat this pie we shall need a fire.”

  Guillelm reached across her to the woodworm-ridden plough. “Then I shall break this up for you” He walked out again into a darkening landscape of rainbows and puddles, whistling as he went.

  Later, after she had cleared away the rakes into a corner and swept an area clear of hay and chaff, Alyson laid the plough-turned-into-firewood on the “hearthstone” of a lowlevel boulder. “This will smoke, I fear,” she said.

  “I do not care,” Guillelm replied.

  In case she sounded too brazen, Alyson stopped herself in time from saying that she did not care at all, either, but that was still true; she was too happy.

  It was a strange intimacy, working companionably and almost silently with the man she loved to prepare a meal and a bed for the night, on the downs where only sheep lingered. While Guillelm went off to refill their water flasks at the spring, she said a prayer to the Virgin, and to Jesus, then busied herself making the fire.

  She had a good blaze going when Guillelm returned. As she saw him crossing the downs, threading surefootedly amongst the grass and heather, Alyson was transfixed by love and then laughter.

  “What have you been doing?” she burst out, unable to contain her giggles. He seemed to have gained an instant gourmet’s stomach; his linen shirt bulged above his belt and pouched in ungainly folds round his normally sleek middle.

  “Kindling for tonight,” he said, patting his heather “stomach” Nodding approval at her fire, he stalked into the empty space of their barn. “If you want to spread Eva’s bedding in our sleeping place”-his face broke into a wolfish grin “you may do it in any way you please, wife.”

  Wife. She was truly his wife. Hugging that marvelous knowledge to herself as Guillelm piled the kindling by their firestone, Alyson made two rough “mattresses” of hay, covering the smaller with her own cloak and Guillelm’s and the second with Eva’s blankets. Presuming nothing-although part of her was scandalously tempted to drag their bedding into one glorious heap-Alyson was already half-regretting her action when a deliberate snapping of twigs made her look up straight into her husband’s face.

  His expression was impossible to interpret but as he fed the fire with more wood, his words were clear enough. “We will freeze that way. We need to bundle together tonight.”

  “But it is summer,” Alyson answered, mentally scolding the rational part of her head for mentioning that fact. What did it matter? Bundling, as Guillelm put it, was what she wanted. Finally, they would be in bed together.

  “It is warm now,” Guillelm replied, moving away from the fire to draw the two rough mattresses together. His amused voice came out of the semidarkness as he respread the sheets and cloaks, making a single bed. “It is clear you have never had to take a watch through from dusk to dawn, my girl.”

  “Why would I? I am a healer.” She was laughing, making a joke, but Alyson grimaced as she said it. A shadow seemed to pass over her and she trembled. Was this how the rest of the evening and the night would be-this muddle of longing and regret because she was not sure who would make the next move between them? I have vowed to seduce him, she thought, defiantly raising her chin.

  “And I am not your girl anymore,” she went on, unsure if she was being pert or merely pe
tulant.

  Amazingly, Guillelm seemed to understand her tumbled feelings, her lack of sureness of how she should act now. His smile filtered to her through the smoke. “No, by God! You are my woman now.”

  He moved back to the open door, pointing to the darkening vault of heaven. “Venus is rising. Can you see her?”

  “I think so ” Alyson padded toward the fire and Guillelm. As she drew near, he caught her gently round the waist and lifted her closer.

  “It is clearing. The skies will be full of stars tonight,” he said, turning away to give her time to regain her breath and smooth her gown. “Look-there is Andromeda, without her dragon”

  He pointed as Alyson stood beside him, close enough to smell the fresh water on his skin. He had washed himself at the spring. Trying to distract herself from his disturbing presence, she followed his pointing arm as he named several stars.

  “I know few stories or legends for these summer stars,” she said softly, ashamed of her admission. Her parents had never been able to share any tales with her, and when she had once asked Gytha, her nurse had claimed she had forgotten. “They are very beautiful,” she added.

  Through the arching roof lintel and above the hissing fire, far above the tops of the tallest tree or hill, the stars slowly filled the sky, brighter than pearls. Some seemed almost bluewhite in their brilliance.

  “I have always loved the night sky,” Guillelm said. “The scents of an eastern garden at night, the call of owls. When I was in Outremer I would lie awake listening to the little owls hooting at each other.”

  He and Alyson listened as two barn owls called again and again, the sounds drifting slowly away on the still air.

  “I used to listen for bats,” Alyson said, smiling at the memory.

  They remained silent together a moment longer, each aware of the other.

  Dropping another twig onto the fire, Guillelm’s hand found both of hers and raised them gently. He cleared his throat, as if about to admit a shameful thing. “As you know, I like to cook, when I can. Shall I treat your shoulder with that salve and then heat up our supper?”

 

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