by Speer, Flora
Thomas could have wept for joy. It was a sweet, slow surrender this time, filled with more tenderness than he had believed her capable of, and her hands on him were gentle, searching for ways to please him rather than to take from him, until near the end, when she suddenly became greedy again. She pulled him into her, demanding more, and still more, but by then it did not matter because Thomas was as avidly desirous as she, they were perfectly matched, and he had never, never been so completely satisfied.
“Thomas was singing,” a laughing Guy told Meredith in the privacy of their own chamber. “Singing to the falcons in the mews.”
“Considering his voice, it’s just as well he wasn’t singing to his wife,” Meredith said dryly. “Selene is better, too, much easier to deal with, and she is beginning to assume at least a share of her rightful duties. That’s a help to both Joan and me. Whatever was wrong between them, they’ve resolved it. She may even learn to love him in time.”
Selene tried. She had a warm feeling in her heart each time she saw Thomas; she knew he was doing his best to help her reconcile her powerful and disputing emotions. It was only during the dark reaches of the night, when she lay beside him as he slept, that she remembered the vow she had made to Lady Isabel, and knew that one day it would have to be fulfilled. No opportunity had presented itself yet, but sooner or later, Isabel had said, a chance would come, and when it did, she must be ready to act. She had sworn a sacred oath to help Isabel. And when she did, Thomas would hate her for it.
Chapter 7
Early spring, A.D. 1116
“Who is Lady Elvira?” Arianna could not read very well yet, but she could make out the name on the packet Selene had just sealed with wax and her signet ring. “And what is this place where you are sending it?”
“Poitou. She lives there. Elvira is a friend from my days in the convent. We promised to write to each other at least twice a year.”
“You have never mentioned her before.”
Selene did not answer. She had gone white, and Arianna could see her forehead was damp.
“Help me.” Selene gestured wildly. “I’m going to be sick.”
Arianna looked around Selene’s bedchamber, grabbing for the first vessel she could find, a wooden bowl. She gave it to Selene, who began to retch violently, and as it turned out, uselessly.
“My poor dear, you’ve nothing left in your stomach. Selene, have you been sick earlier today?”
“Yes.” Selene leaned back in her chair, looking exhausted. “It’s worse when I don’t eat, but I can’t look at food, it makes me queasy.”
“How long have you been like this?” Arianna felt Selene’s forehead, which was cool and damp, tested her steady pulse, examined her clear eyes, and ended puzzled. Except for her extreme pallor, Selene had none of the signs of fever or illness for which Meredith had taught her to search. “Are you dizzy? Have you pain anywhere?”
“No.” Selene shook her head. “Only the sickness, every morning for a week. I believe it’s a punishment for my sins. I am going to die soon, Arianna.”
Arianna was frightened by the statement, and even more by the perfectly calm manner in which Selene made it. She was still very pale, and the retching had been real. Perhaps she was sick, and trying to hide it. That would explain her self-absorption. Poor Selene. She must have been afraid to tell anyone. Arianna felt a surge of pity.
“Stay in that chair, Selene. Don’t try to stand. I’m going to get Meredith.” Arianna left Selene’s room, and made her way along the passage to the opposite side of the keep, knowing she would find Meredith with Reynaud.
“Have you come for another lesson?” Reynaud greeted her cheerfully. There was no longer any doubt that he would live, but he was still largely immobile, confined to his room by the severe weakness that kept him in bed or in the chair only a few steps away. Weak or no, his questing mind was clear and eager for work. Meredith had decreed, over his protests, that he must rest, postponing any possibility of his being carried out of doors to review the castle’s defenses until the weather was warmer and he was stronger. Thus prevented from returning to the work that had engrossed him his entire life, Reynaud had fretted his time away, the boredom of inactivity threatening to slow his healing, until Arianna had devised a plan to occupy his thoughts while allowing his body to recuperate.
She understood that Reynaud’s pride had been injured, too, and that he would feel himself a useless burden to Guy and Meredith until he could work once more. She knew of something Reynaud could do that few others at Afoncaer could. He was, she informed him one snowy afternoon, going to teach her to read and write. She had always wanted to learn, but never had the opportunity. Here she was with a learned cleric at her disposal, and she planned to make good use of him. Meredith had already given her approval.
Reynaud expressed no qualms about educating a woman. He reasoned that women who could read, would read their Psalters, which ought to please the Church. And a literate Arianna would be of greater help to Meredith. That would repay Meredith a little for all she had done, and was still doing, for Reynaud. An hour was appointed for each day’s lessons, and Arianna, bolstered at first by curiosity and determination, and later by delight in learning, was progressing rapidly.
“Good morning, Master Reynaud,” Arianna greeted him now. “It’s not you I came to speak with, but Meredith. Selene is ill.” Arianna described Selene’s symptoms, and what her quick examination had found.
“I’ll come as soon as I have finished with Reynaud,” Meredith said. “Go back and stay with her.”
“You don’t seem very concerned.”
“I’m not. I’ve seen expecting this.”
Meredith repeated those words half an hour later after her own examination of Selene and a few questions.
“You are with child, Selene. Haven’t you guessed? I would say it will be born in October” Meredith counted quickly. “early November at the latest.”
“A child?” Selene looked frightened.
“Of course a child.” Meredith laughed. “It’s the usual consequence of marriage.”
“And to think,” a relieved Arianna said, trying to laugh along with Meredith at Selene’s astonishment, though there was a catch at her heart at the knowledge that Selene would bear Thomas’s child, “I never thought of the most obvious reason for your illness. I still have a lot to learn, Meredith.”
“I didn’t guess, either. I thought I had a wasting sickness,” Selene said. “It mustn’t be a girl. Not like me. I want a boy, just like Thomas.” She brightened a little at the thought.
“Yes, hope for a son,” Meredith told her, “an heir for Thomas. But should it be a girl, I know he will love her as Guy loves Cristin.”
“You look as sick as I feel,” Selene said to Arianna after Meredith had left them alone again.
“I was worried about you.” Arianna put an arm about Selene’s shoulders. “Thomas will be so pleased.”
“It will be a son,” Selene said. “It has to be.”
It was not an easy pregnancy. Selene was violently ill every morning, her nausea eased only a little by the herbal tincture Meredith provided for her. But there finally came a day in late April when Selene was not sick, and then another. A week passed, and she began to eat heartily again. Her face lost its pinched look, and Selene took on a soft glow.
“You’ve cured her,” Guy said to Meredith late one night.
“Not I. Time and nature. And there is still a long road for her to walk. She will be sick again, and most uncomfortable, before this is over.”
“Whatever the reason, for the moment she is a much more pleasant woman than she was at first, and she certainly looks healthy. She is most insistent that the child should be a boy. An heir for Thomas, and for Afoncaer.” Guy put his hands on his beautiful wife. “Somehow, I think I ought to feel older, with the next generation about to be born, but I don’t. I still feel as though I were twenty-three.”
“I know,” Meredith laughed, caressing him. “You
are still a young man, Guy. I can feel it. Come to me, my love. Come here.”
Arianna tried her best to be happy for Thomas and Selene, and told herself she was succeeding. She could see Thomas’s delight in his impending fatherhood, and his deepening affection for Selene was apparent every time he looked at her. As for Arianna, her days were full, she was needed and useful, and had it not been for that last little ache in her heart each time she encountered Thomas, she would have been completely happy.
Reynaud was up and out of his room at last. Every morning Arianna helped him down the stairs and into the great hall, where he sat by the fire for most of the day. The castle carpenter had made him a pair of beautifully carved crutches and had brought them to him while he was still very ill and confined to bed.
“I’ll leave them here, propped against the wall where you can see them whenever your eyes are open, old friend,” the carpenter had said. “Look on them, and tell yourself you will be using them come spring. We’ve missed you, Reynaud, in the years you have been gone. I’m glad you’ve come home to stay.”
As soon as Meredith allowed him to leave his bed, Reynaud had begun learning to use the crutches. They lay on the floor beside his chair, or next to his bed at night. So long as he did not have to climb the keep’s narrow spiral staircase without help, Reynaud could get around well enough. Even that difficult climb, he insisted, he would be able to make alone, given enough time and practice.
The gash across his face had healed, leaving only a faint red scar. The swelling around his injured eye was long since gone, too, and he could open it, though he could see only light and dark from that eye, no more. Meredith continued to hope for a full return of his sight, and bathed it several times a day with a special herbal brew.
Guy wanted the outer wall, the one around the town, built higher and reinforced, and two new watchtowers added to it. Reynaud was well occupied in discussions with Guy and Thomas, and with drawing up the building plans. In his free time there were still Arianna’s lessons. At her suggestion, Reynaud had begun to teach Cristin as well, and the murmur of his quiet voice, punctuated by Cristin’s higher, girlish tones as she stumbled over her Latin grammar, were frequent sounds in the hall.
“It’s satisfying to see him so content,” Meredith told Arianna. “And you. I think you are at peace, are you not? You have done well, my dear.”
“Like Reynaud, I am content,” Arianna replied. It was only later that she wondered if contentment would be enough for the rest of her life. She was almost eighteen. She ought to be thinking of husband and children, would have been had she a dowry. Perhaps if she had been fortunate enough to have a husband of her own she would not have to endure this hopeless love for Thomas. But she quickly rejected such thoughts whenever they came. She refused to let impossible longings spoil the many good things she did have, or cast a blight upon the growing friendships she enjoyed with those who lived at Afoncaer.
Spring came in a sudden burst of greenery and flowers, releasing the castle’s inhabitants from winter’s long confinement. With the days at last warm enough for mortaring, building could begin on the outer wall. A portion of the gold coins from Selene’s dowry would be used to pay the wages of the stonecutters and masons who began to arrive from England for their seasonal work. Their presence swelled the town’s population by half, and the womenfolk and children that some of them brought along filled the few empty rooms and the new houses outside the village wall.
The women of both castle and village indulged in a frenzy of cleaning and laundry, while the villeins began tilling and planting the fields, and the lord of the castle and his knights went hunting for the fresh game that was so welcome after months of salted and dried meats. The first delicate leaves of lettuce were ready for salads, and cress grew plentifully along the edges of the streams that wandered through the forest until they met the river.
“I know where to find the best cress,” Cristin said one morning. “Come with me, Arianna, you haven’t been in the forest yet. Reynaud is busy on the wall. He told me we won’t have our lessons until evening, and my mother and Joan are counting the linens. We won’t be needed for a while.”
“I’d like to go with you.” Arianna followed Cristin to the stables, where a slim, dark-haired lad of about fifteen or so leapt to his feet at their entrance and bowed to them, a clumsy effort that made Cristin laugh.
“Benet,” Cristin commanded, “saddle us two horses.”
“Yes, my lady.” Benet flashed an engaging grin and hurried to do her bidding. “Have you a man-at-arms to go with you? Shall I saddle a horse for him, too?”
“We don’t need anyone,” Cristin replied haughtily. “The Welsh are calm just now. There’s no danger.”
“That depends on where you are going, my lady.” Benet flung the words over his shoulder as he worked. “I’ll go with you. You should never ride out alone.”
Arianna had been admiring the horses while listening idly to the two youngsters. Benet led out a mare for her, and Arianna recognized the gentle animal on which she had ridden to Afoncaer. She patted the sleek head and spoke softly to it.
“That’s right, my lady, introduce yourself to her,” Benet said approvingly. “I’ll have your horse, and mine, ready in a moment, Lady Cristin.”
“A stable boy for protection?” Cristin laughed.
“I ride well,” Benet said quietly, “and I have a dagger I can use if need be.”
Cristin’s protest was cut off by Thomas’s voice.
“The lad has good sense, Cristin.” Thomas moved into the stable, frowning at his young cousin. “You should not go off without a guard.”
“We are only going for cress,” Cristin said. “Don’t make a great pilgrimage out of it. Men-at-arms will only tramp around the stream in their heavy boots, and they’ll squash all the greens while they pretend to look for Welshmen hiding in the bushes.”
“Well, then,” Thomas said, laughing at her, “why don’t I go with you? I promise not to squash a thing.”
“Would you?” Cristin’s grin spread clear across her face. “That would be lovely. You’ve been too busy for me since you came home married. We haven’t done a thing together for months. I’ve missed riding with you.”
“Benet shall come, too,” Thomas said, “in case I need reinforcements.” Benet’s delighted smile was nearly as broad as Cristin’s.
The four of them rode out of the castle, down the main street of the town and through the outer gate, calling out and waving gaily to Reynaud as they went past the spot where he was directing the stonemasons. Once they were on the main road that ran between freshly plowed fields in the direction of England, Cristin impatiently urged her horse into a gallop, and Benet followed her. Thomas and Arianna rode more slowly.
“When I was Cristin’s age I spent a lot of time wandering about that forest,” Thomas remarked, nodding toward the trees they were approaching. “I used to know every path and every rock and stream.”
“Meredith has told me about your youth,” Arianna said. “And hers. I find it hard to believe she actually live in a cave for several years.”
“Many of the Welsh live like that,” Thomas replied. “Caves are all the shelter some of them have left since we Normans came. It was a nice cave, warm and dry. I used to imagine there was a guardian dragon in the inner chamber.”
“A dragon?” Arianna wasn’t quite certain whether he was joking or not.
“This is Wales, after all. The Welsh say there is magic in this land. Look around you.” Thomas gestured with one arm.
They had reached the end of the cultivated fields and, leaving the main road, were riding into the trees at the edge of the forest. Golden shafts of sunlight slanted through the early spring leaves, piercing the soft, drifting mist that swirled along the ground. The light was a fragile pale gold and green, and silvery where the mist lay. Shapes were indistinct except for the dark trunks of trees, oak and birch, rowan and alder, which stood out clearly. It was quiet, Cristin’s laughter a
nd Benet’s lower voice floating back to them only faintly through the mist. Last year’s dead leaves and this spring’s green moss made a thick carpet to muffle the sound of their horses’ hooves, yet there was no disguising the essentially rocky nature of the landscape. Great boulders were strewn about the forest as though by some giant’s hand, some of them sharp and rough-looking grey stone, others softened by moss or ivy, a few with bushes or small trees growing out of cracks. Off to her right, Arianna could hear water rushing over stones. Always water, Meredith had told her, everywhere you go in Wales. There was fragrance, too, the sweet smell of moss and early-season greenery heightened by the moisture in land and air.
Arianna breathed deeply, knowing she was foreign here, yet wanting to link herself to the place. She felt the mood of slumbering mystery that lay over the forest. It seemed to draw her into itself, alluring and always just a little out of her reach, incomprehensible to anyone not born there.
“You are right, Thomas,” she said softly. “There is magic here.”
They were riding side by side, making their way slowly along. Thomas put out a gloved hand and laid it on top of hers. She looked into his luminous deep blue eyes and thought she was drowning.
“I knew you would feel it, too,” he told her. “Meredith said you have the gift.”
“I?” She laughed and shook her head, dark hair curling tightly from the dampness, mist clinging to her eyelashes. She felt oddly free, here with Thomas. “What gift?”
“Of healing. Of learning. Meredith speaks highly of you, Arianna. Reynaud, too. You are a great asset to Afoncaer.”
She felt herself blushing. She had almost never heard herself praised before coming to Afoncaer. When Meredith commended her work in the still-room, or Reynaud told her she was a superior pupil, she had been able to accept their words, knowing she had earned them by her own efforts. But this admiration from Thomas was completely unexpected and unearned. She had thought he scarcely noticed her in his absorbed attention to Selene. Now she learned he had discussed her with both Meredith and Reynaud.