by Lisa Hendrix
It was as though she’d reached out to take him in her hand, so quickly did he harden. Supper was going to be a very long meal.
CHAPTER 8
“I CANNOT GRASP it. Three knights, one of them a baron, and all without squires.” Alaida contemplated the two men before her over folded hands. “You do not dance, sing, or hawk. Next you will tell me you do not play chess.”
Ivo laughed. “Not enough to be good at it.”
Aladia looked to Brand. “And you, messire?”
“Not at all, my lady,” he said, reaching for his cup of ale. With the wedding behind them, he had taken his place at Ivo’s right hand. By custom, Sir Ari should have been at the high table as well, next to Alaida, but he seemed to have vanished again shortly before supper, and Father Theobald sat in his place. It was Alaida’s comment on the missing seneschal, and on Oswald carving again, which had started this conversation and exposed the sad lack of graces among her husband and his knights. Why, even Neville and his pitiful friends had squires—and even their squires played chess. These two seemed to have been fostered by wolves.
“And what of Sir Ari?” she asked. “Does he play?”
Ivo looked to Brand, who shrugged. “I don’t think so.”
Alaida frowned. “What sort of land do you two come from, messire, that its noble knights do not play chess?”
Ivo shot Brand a glance as if in warning, but when he met Alaida’s eyes, his expression was bland. “What do you mean?”
“Sir Ari said he and Sir Brand are not Norman, and it is clear they are not English,” she said. She leaned forward so she could see Brand better. “But he did not say from where you do hail.”
“Uh …”
“Guelders,” said Ivo easily.
“Aye, Guelders,” echoed Brand.
Ivo took Alaida’s hand and began tracing lines down each finger, one at a time, in a way that sent shivers racing up her arm. “How did you come to ask Ari where he’s from?”
“We were talking of you, that first day, and he called you Ivar,” she said. His touch was distracting, but not so much so that she failed to notice the glances that passed between him and Brand again. Something about the topic made these two wary. She watched their faces carefully as she recounted the rest of her conversation with the seneschal.
Brand’s face grew more shuttered as she spoke, then suddenly brightened. “I remember Ivar! He was a good man—the kind you want by your side in battle—but a devil with the maids.”
“Really?” Alaida cocked an eyebrow. “Sir Ari said he was old.”
“Oh. Well, he probably seemed so to Ari. He’s much younger than I.” The corners of his eyes crinkled with good humor. “But I knew Ivar when he was still in his prime, and the women loved him as much as he loved them, and that was a great deal. He would find a willing wench near every night and—”
“Brand,” Ivo cut him off. “This is not a proper tale for my wife.”
“No. I suppose not,” Brand agreed even as his grin grew wider. “’Tis no wonder Ari thought of him, though. Ivar looked a lot like Father Theobald here.”
Alaida turned to eye the priest, with his belly like an ale-pot and his thinning hair the color of damp straw—not the sort she would have thought of as wenching his way through a village, even if he were not a priest. Her doubt must have shown on her face, for Father Theobald suddenly flushed, and Ivo and Brand burst out laughing. She felt her color rise, but then their laughter caught her and she fell into a fit of giggles.
“I am sorry, Father. It is just …” She realized she couldn’t explain without making things worse and succumbed to a full laugh. Father Theobald, bless him, simply looked down, patted his belly, and joined in.
When the laughter had died away, Brand addressed Alaida again. “So, my lady, you say that if I am to be a knight, I must learn to play chess.”
“The sooner, the better.” A few brisk orders sent two men upstairs for the chessboard and set other servants to clearing the tables.
As Alaida directed the placement of the board and chairs, Ivo stepped up behind her and rested his hands lightly on her shoulders. “What are you doing, wife?”
“Preparing to teach your man chess, my lord.”
He leaned forward to put his mouth next to her ear. “You are due for lessons of your own, if you will recall. Learning to say my name?”
If he had spread her legs right there, he could hardly have caused more havoc in her mind or her body. Desire swamped her, as it had earlier in the solar, when Lucifer himself had whispered into her ear that it might be pleasant to skip supper in favor of her husband’s lessons. She teetered on the edge of that wantonness as she answered, “I only try to do as you asked, my lord. Come to know you better.”
“By teaching Brand chess?”
“A man’s men are a reflection of his character,” she said neatly, but he only ground out a profanity that showed how much he disliked her argument. A few steps away, Father Theobald studied them with open curiosity, likely watching for any sign of intemperance to address the next time he had her at Mass. His concern was clearly warranted. Alaida affixed a neutral smile to her lips. “I cannot leave now, my lord. It would be ill mannered.” Not to mention obvious.
“Show him the pieces and how they move,” said Ivo. “Then ask someone else to take over and excuse yourself.”
A part of her bridled at his high-handed order, but that other part of her, the part he had already taught to crave his touch, made her nod. “Yes, my lord.”
He squeezed her shoulders gently, and she heard the smile in his voice as he said, “Ivo.”
Then he was gone as Brand drew him aside for some conversation, and she was left wondering just how quickly she could explain the basics of the game and whether Father Theobald would be willing to help, considering how Sir Brand goaded him.
“WHERE THE DEVIL is Guelders?” demanded Brand in a low voice as soon as they reached a corner out of earshot of the others.
“Between Flanders and Saxony, I think. We can’t say we’re Norse. Memories are too fresh along these coasts.”
“And what do I do if I meet a man who really is from Guelders and he wants to talk of home?”
“Tell him you fostered elsewhere. Did Ari have any news?”
“I never got to his message. Oswald wanted to talk about getting him, er, you, more fighting men—it seems your king has all your knights in prison—and I found some other small distractions.” His gaze wandered, and Ivo followed it to a pair of golden-haired women who were stripping down a table. Their breasts bobbled merrily beneath their gowns as they shook out the cloth, and Brand sighed. “To my mind, all that Danish seed has improved the English.”
“They would not agree.” Ivo glanced around the hall. He’d barely taken note of any of the servants he hadn’t had to deal with directly, but Brand made a point. “Pick one out if you want. That one with the wide hips has a friendly look to her.”
“I just may do that.” Grinning, Brand pulled the parchment from his sleeve and smoothed it against his thigh. He tilted it to catch the best light from the torches and began to read. “It looks like this is mostly about boundaries, motte building, Wat—and of course, Ari uses three words where one would do. This will take me a little. Go bedevil your wife, and I will tell you if there is anything you need to know tonight.”
Bedevil his wife. Now there was a pleasant idea.
Ivo left Brand to Ari’s scratchings and wandered back to where Alaida and Geoffrey were setting the chessmen on the board. He motioned the steward away and took over the black, watching Alaida to make certain he placed his men correctly. He had played enough with the monks who had taught him French thirty years before to know the general outlines of the game, but he tended to reverse the bishops and castles. In his mind, it made little sense to place church-men closer to the throne than knights and castellans, but that was the game. The world was changing.
“’Tis a handsome set,” he said as he settled the last
of the black pawns into the front rank.
“It was my grandfather’s.” She picked up one of the knights and traced the simple bend across the plain shield, Tyson’s sign. Her face, so full of light a moment before, faded into sadness.
Ivo walked around the table, gently uncurled her fingers, and put the knight in its place. “If he repents his treason and is accepted back into the king’s good graces, he may have it back.” It was an easy promise to make: when word reached London of how the new lord of Alnwick had vanished under strange circumstances, the king would likely find himself more forgiving of Tyson’s poor judgment and restore him to his lands. “In fact, it may pass that you can return it to him yourself.”
“I fear that will never happen. If the king were willing to forgive a second time, you would not be here.”
He still held her hand, and when he lifted it to place a kiss where the knight had been, her palm smelled faintly of the cedar that lined the chess box. “Then I hope you are more merciful than the king, my lady, for I need your forgiveness.”
“Why?”
“Because I find myself glad for the king’s intolerance. It has given me you.”
He could tell by the way she squeezed her eyes shut that he had confused her again, and that pleased him, as did the battle evident on her face. He placed another kiss in her palm, and then one on her wrist, this time raking his teeth gently over the sensitive skin. The tiny curves that appeared at the corners of her mouth told him when the battle turned in his favor. He wondered if she ached the way he did, if she would be ready for him or if he would have to woo her a little more.
She sighed deeply and opened her eyes. “I am ready, my lord.”
He couldn’t help grinning. “Are you now?”
Fierce color spotted her cheeks as she realized what she’d said. “I didn’t mean … That is …” She took a deep breath and started over. “The board is ready, my lord, if you will tell Sir Brand.”
He liked her flustered, he decided. He might try to fluster her again later, when she was naked, just to see how low he could make that rosy bloom spread. Still grinning, he turned to motion Brand over.
Brand was staring at him, Ari’s message hanging loosely between two fingers and an expression on his face that made Ivo’s stomach twist. Smile fading, he released Alaida’s hand and started across the room. “What?”
The question startled Brand out of his daze. He shook himself, then strode past Ivo with a curt, “Not here.”
“Is there trouble, messire?” asked Alaida as Brand passed her and started up the stairs. He didn’t answer.
“We will be a moment,” said Ivo grimly, following him.
When they reached the solar, Brand pushed the door shut and held the message out to Ivo. “Near the bottom. There.” He indicated the spot with his thumb.
It took Ivo a moment to work through the runes. Ari had received a vision, it seemed. No, two—and he had called the second of them. That explained the raven’s injured wing. Ivo had seen Ari slice his hand open before, pouring blood from his palm as though it were a laut-bowl as he tried to persuade the gods to talk to him. Sometimes it worked; often it did not.
Today, apparently, it had. He had seen the same images in both visions, he claimed: Alaida, a bird, a babe. A babe. That last made Ivo smile. It would be good to bring a son into the world, even if he could not be present to raise him. But the next words tore the smile off his lips and made the gorge rise in his throat, for in the second vision, Ari had seen an eagle rise from the infant’s cradle and fly out the open window of the solar. He had seen Alaida screaming. And he had seen Cwen smile in triumph.
He crumpled the parchment without finishing. “This is absurd. Even as an eagle, I would not harm my own child.”
“That is not what he sees, Ivar. Read the last of it.” Brand laid a steadying hand on his shoulder. “He says it was the babe itself who changed. He says … It seems the curse passes to our children.”
“No.” Ivo grated out the word between jaws locked to keep from heaving his supper onto the floor. “No.”
“I am sorry, my friend.”
“No,” repeated Ivo. He jerked away from Brand, paced a few steps away and back in agitation. “This cannot be right. Ari must not have seen clearly.”
“Clear enough for him to write of it.”
“He writes to write, you know that,” Ivo countered. His mind, his being, rejected this abomination. “He is wrong about this, just as he is wrong about Cwen.”
“She is alive.”
“She is not, and since she is not, he cannot have seen her, and this vision cannot be true.” Ivo grew more confident of his argument. “Ari is wrong. Again.”
“Ivar …”
“He is wrong! Why do you even want to believe him?”
“Want? You think I want this to be true?” The words exploded out of Brand in a howl of fury and anguish. “This is on my head. I led us into Cwen’s grasp. I killed her son. To know I brought this on us, on my men, was bad enough, but now to find that our children—” Choking on the words, he stood there shaking as he struggled to bring himself back under control. “These two days had given me more hope than I have had since it happened. To see you in your own hall, with a wife …You have a life, Ivar, the first of us to get one. I don’t want Ari to be right any more than you do. But he has seen it.”
“He’s seen something,” conceded Ivo. “Perhaps he reads it wrong, or … or perhaps the gods play games with him.”
“Perhaps you play games with yourself.” Brand shook his head heavily. “You must not lie with her again.”
“Not lie … ? I have had one night with her, man. One night! And she …” Ivo could not find the words to explain what that one night had meant, or how much he needed more like it. How he had needed nights like that for year after cursed year without ever realizing it. For Brand it was simple; he had not had a woman in his bed since they sailed from home. Suddenly, Ivo knew the words. “Would one night have been enough with Ylfa?”
Brand sucked in his breath as though he’d been struck. Calling up the memory of his long-dead wife was a gut blow, Ivo knew, but he wanted to remind him. Brand’s ardor for his young bride had been the talk of Vass—they had barely left the bed for the first month. When Brand finally spoke, his voice was tight with emotion. “No. But it must be for you.”
“It isn’t.”
“It must be,” repeated Brand more firmly. “Think, Ivar. If there is even a small chance that Ari is right, you cannot risk getting her with child.”
Ivo’s building certainty shattered on that simple argument and left him hollow and sick. “She could already be.”
Brand considered a moment, but dismissed the idea. “It has only been the one night, and the moon is wrong. Few women breed so quickly when the moon is not with them.”
Few, but enough, thought Ivo.
“We must leave,” Brand continued quietly. “Now. Tonight. It will be easier for her and for you. Ari can stay behind, watch over her from nearby. He will let you know if she’s—”
“No.”
“But he can—”
“No!” How could he leave her? Leave all that heat before he got his fill of it. Leave that skin, that hair, that scent. To Ari. “She is my wife. If anyone watches over her, it will be me.”
“If you stay, you will want her.”
There was nothing Ivo could say to that. It was true. He already wanted her. He turned away and went to stand before the fire, where he didn’t have to look Brand in the eye. “There are ways to enjoy a woman without making a child. Frey knows, I’ve used them often enough.”
“Spilling into the sheets doesn’t always work,” said Brand bluntly.
“Then I’ll teach her to use her hands and mouth.”
“And how long before that palls? Before you’re on top of her, thinking just once won’t hurt?”
“That won’t happen.”
“Listen to yourself! It will. It’s in your voice alr
eady. This is mad.”
“It’s been mad from the beginning. Our entire lives are mad.” An ember popped off a log and rolled toward Ivo’s foot. He ground it out on the hearthstone, leaving a smudge of ash the color of a raven’s wing. “I didn’t ask for a wife, but the gods gave her to me. There must be some reason beyond one night’s pleasure.”
“Take the one night and walk away. She’s just a woman, after all, and you knew this would be a short venture.”
“Not this short. No. I intend to keep her and this hall for as long as I can. If you cannot support me in it, then go.”
“I go nowhere ’til you do. But as your friend and your war-leader, I must counsel you against this. You cannot lie with her.”
Ivo drew himself up and turned to meet Brand’s eyes with a level gaze. “You have counseled me; your duty is done. Now go downstairs. My wife waits to teach you chess. Tell her I will join you shortly.”
Brand’s eyes narrowed angrily at Ivo’s tone. He yanked the door open, pausing in the frame just long enough to make one final, terse warning. “Do not do this.”
Ivo stood in the empty solar, the blood pounding in his head as he fought down the urge to put an arrow through that damnable raven. Curse Ari and his visions. He couldn’t be right. The gods would never permit an infant to be cursed just to torture a few unimportant warriors—even Ran and Loki were not that malicious. This had to be false.
He was still wrestling with his anger when Alaida’s voice drifted up from below. She had started to explain the pieces and their movements. In a little while she would do as he’d asked, come up to the bed, shed her gown and kirtle, and lie back, ready to gift him with her body, and then … he would tell her what? That he could never accept that gift again? It was his due. He was her husband.
With a snarl, he turned and drove a fist into the wall. The thin plaster cracked, and dust swirled around him like smoke from the priest’s censer. The pain cleared his mind, gave him something to hold on to beyond the rage. After a time, he pulled himself together, slapped off the film of white that had settled on his clothes, and headed downstairs, avoiding so much as a glance toward the perch where the raven sat.