Alinor

by Roberta Gellis

  Simon’s daughter, Ian de Vipont thought, struggling to control himself. She is as like him as if she had no mother.

  “Did you only just hear of it?” the boy asked. “It was in June. It is a shame you could not come to the funeral feast. Everyone enjoyed it greatly.”

  The boy stood quietly, his arms around Ian’s neck, one small hand patting the knight’s shoulder consolingly. His voice, however, was cheerful, irrepressible. In the midst of his tears, Ian choked on laughter. Alinor’s son. Kind enough to wish to offer comfort but with a spirit that could not be quenched. He squeezed the children to him tightly once more, then stood upright and wiped his face with the leather inside of his steel-sewn gauntlet.

  “No, no more bad news,” he said to Joanna, and then, smiling on Adam, “I heard in July, but I was with the king in France besieging Montauban, and I could not get leave to come.”

  “Tell about the siege—tell!” the boy cried.

  “Oh, yes, Ian, please tell,” the girl begged.

  The sun came out from behind a cloud, lighting green and gold flecks in the boy’s hazel eyes and turning the girl’s hair to flame. They were totally unlike in appearance, as if the mother’s and father’s strains were each so strong they could not be mixed, but that was only in coloring. Adam’s hair was straight and black, his skin startlingly white, like his mother Alinor’s, but his frame was sturdy and already very large for his age. That was his heritage from Simon, and a good heritage it was. It might be needful, Ian thought sadly, in the bitter times that loomed ahead, if King John did not mend his ways.

  Ian had not known Simon when his hair was as red as Joanna’s, but her eyes, a misty gray sometimes touched with blue, had cleared and brightened just as Simon’s did when he was angry, eager, or happy. She was slighter than her brother but still sturdily made, no frail flower. No frail spirit, either. The eager expression on Joanna’s face mirrored that on Adam’s.

  “Did you scale the walls?” she asked.

  “Did you burst through the gates?” Adam echoed.

  “Master Adam! Lady Joanna!” the grizzled man-at-arms protested, “can you not see Lord Ian is dirty and tired? You shame our hospitality. A guest is bidden to wash and take his ease before being battered with questions.”

  “Beoth hal, Beorn,” Ian said in English.

  “Beoth hal, eaorling,” Beorn responded, “wilcume, wilcume. Cummeth thu withinne.”

  Adam’s eyes grew large. Beorn was an important man in his life. He taught the boy the fundamentals of sword and mace fighting. Adam could dimly remember that his father had started his lessons, but in the last year Simon had barely been able to come down to the bailey to watch and offer breathless and halting advice. Adam knew Beorn spoke a special language of his own. Adam could even understand some words, but Beorn would never address him in that tongue and would never permit him to speak it.

  “Ian, Beorn answered you,” the boy said.

  The man-at-arms flushed slightly, and a faint frown appeared on Ian’s brow. He made no comment, however, merely saying that it was time he went in and greeted their mother. After refusing the children’s offer to accompany him and assuring them he would see them later, he strode into the forebuilding and mounted the stairs to the great hall, unlacing his mail hood and stripping off his gauntlets as he went. He looked up at the stair that led to the women’s quarters, but he did not pause. Lady Alinor was as likely to be anywhere else in the keep as there, and he was sure someone had run ahead to announce his arrival.

  In that supposition he was quite correct. Before he had crossed the hall to the great hearth, Lady Alinor came running from a wall chamber. She seized the hands he held out toward her and gripped them hard.

  “Ian, Ian, I am glad at heart to see you.”

  “I could not come when I first heard. I begged the king to let me go, but he would not.”

  “You do not need to tell me that.”

  Suddenly her eyes were full of tears. She stepped forward and laid her head against his breast. Ian’s hands came up to embrace her and then dropped. He fought another upsurge of his own grief. Alinor uttered a deep sigh and stepped back to look up at him.

  “It is good to have you here,” she said, only a trifle unsteadily. “How long can you stay?”

  “I do not know,” he replied, not meeting her eyes. “It depends on—”

  “At least the night,” she cried.

  “Yes, of course, but—”

  “Never mind the buts now. Oh, Ian, you look so tired.”

  “Our ship was blown off course. I meant to land at Roselynde, but we were blown all the way to Dover. We were attacked three times on the road. I could not believe it. In the worst days of Longchamp, things had not come to such a pass. I rode through the night. I had to—”

  “You have bad news?” But Alinor did not pause for him to answer. “Do not tell me now,” she said, half laughing but with a tremor in her voice. “Have you eaten?” He nodded. “Come, let me unarm you and bathe you.” It was customary for the lady of the manor to bathe her guests, although Alinor had not usually done so for Ian.

  “My squires are with the troop,” he protested. “I rode ahead.”

  At that Alinor laughed more naturally. “I have not yet grown so feeble that I cannot lift a hauberk. Come.” She drew him toward the wall chamber from which she had emerged. “The bath is ready. It will grow cold.”

  For one instant it seemed as if Ian would resist, and Alinor stopped to look at him questioningly. However, there was no particular expression on his face, and he was already following, so she said nothing. Something was wrong, Alinor knew. Ian had been her husband’s squire before they were married. After their return from the Crusade, Simon had so successfully advanced his protégé’s interests that Ian had been granted a defunct baronage that went with the estates Ian had inherited from his mother. He had been a close friend all through the years and a frequent visitor, particularly attached to the children. His fondness for them, coupled with his resistance to marriage had once made Alinor ask her husband whether Ian was tainted with King Richard’s perversion. Simon had assured her that it was not so, that Ian was a fine young stallion, and he had warned her seriously not to tease the young man.

  Alinor had been careful, because, despite being thirty years her senior—or, perhaps, because of it—Simon was no jealous husband. Indeed, until his illness, he had no cause to be jealous; he had kept Alinor fully occupied. Thus, when Simon warned her against flirting playfully with Ian, it was for Ian’s sake. Alinor acknowledged the justice of that. It would be dreadful to attach Ian to her, dangerous, too. There was violence lurking behind the young man’s hot brown eyes and, although Alinor had loved Simon and been content with him, she had never denied that Ian was a magnificent male animal who could be very attractive to her. Ian had been careful too, seldom touching Alinor, even to kiss her hand in courtesy.

  Nonetheless, they had been good friends. Alinor knew when Ian was carrying a burden of trouble. Ordinarily, she would have pressed him with questions until he opened the evil package for her inspection. Alinor had never feared trouble. Simon had said sourly more than once that she ran with eager feet to meet it. That was because she had never found a trouble for which she or Simon or both of them together could not discover a solution. Trouble had been a challenge to be met head-on, trampled over, or slyly circumvented—until Simon died. Now, all at once, there were too many troubles. Alinor could not, for the moment, muster the courage to ask for another.

  The afternoon light flooded the antechamber with brightness, but the inner wall chamber was dim. Ian hesitated, and Alinor tugged at his hand, leading him safely around the large wooden tub that sat before the hearth. To the side was a low stool. Alinor pushed Ian toward it, grasping the tails of his hauberk as he passed her and lifting them so he would not sit on them. She unbelted his sword before he had even reached toward it, slipped off his surcoat, and laid it carefully on a chest at the side of the room. Ian gave up tryi
ng to be helpful and abandoned himself to Alinor’s practiced ministrations, docilely doing as he was told and no more.

  In a single skillful motion, Alinor pulled the hauberk over his head, turned it this way and that to see whether it needed the attention of the castle armorer, and laid it on the chest with the sword. Then she came around in front of him and unlaced his tunic and shirt. These were stiff with sweat and dirt, and she threw them on the floor. Next, she knelt to unfasten his shoes and cross garters, drew them off, untied his chausses, and bid him stand.

  Again Ian hesitated. Alinor thought how tired he was and was about to assure him he would feel better after he had bathed, but he stood before she could speak. Still kneeling, she pulled the chausses down and slipped them off his feet. When she raised her eyes to tell him to step into the tub, she saw the reason for his hesitation.

  There could be no doubt now that Simon had been right. Ian was a fine young stallion, and he was displaying the fact with startling effect. Alinor’s first impulse was to laugh and make a bawdy jest. A flickering glance at Ian’s face checked her. He was certainly well aware of the condition he was in, but he did not think it was funny. Briefly, Alinor was hurt.

  During the many years she had bathed high-born visitors to her keep, the reaction Ian was having occurred with other men once in a while. Sometimes it was deliberately produced by men who thought Alinor had to be dissatisfied with her husband because he was so much older than she. They had underestimated Simon, and from Alinor had received such icy courtesy that the deliberate provocation did not occur a second time. With those in whom it was an innocent accident engendered by too long a period of continence or an inadvertent physical contact, it was best to make a jest, laugh, and forget.

  It was usually best, but Alinor somehow knew she must not laugh at Ian’s stony-faced refusal to acknowledge his condition. She rose from her knees and stepped back, and for the first time the full impact of his beauty hit her. The black curls that usually tumbled silkily over his forehead were lank and flattened, but that did nothing to reduce the luminous quality of his large, dark eyes. The nose was fine, the lips both sensitive and sensuous. He was very tall for a man, head and shoulders both topped Alinor, and he was surprisingly hairless—just a shadow of dark down at the end of his breastbone and a narrow line from the navel to the pubic bush. His skin was very dark, very smooth, where it was not bleached and knotted by scars of battle.

  In the year that Simon had been ill, Alinor was too tired and too worried to think of herself as a woman. After his death, the fatigue and worry had only intensified. Now, without warning, she became aware of her long starvation. The blood rushed from her face to her loins. She put a hand on the tub to steady herself, and thanked God that Ian was staring past her into nothing.

  “Get in.”

  Had Ian been in any condition to notice, Alinor’s voice would have given her away. However, he was having his own problems and was grateful that they would be hidden if not solved so easily. He stepped into the tub and eased himself slowly into the water, which was rather hot. Alinor moved quickly to stand behind him. She wondered whether she could bear to touch him, and decided it would be simpler and safer to run away and send a maid to wash him. She could always say she had remembered something overlooked in the excitement of his arrival. Even as Alinor tried to steady her voice to excuse herself, her eyes were drawn back to Ian. They rested briefly on the strong column of his neck, dropped to his broad shoulders.

  “Ian! Holy Mother Mary, what befell you?”

  Right across the shoulder blades, a large section of skin looked as if patches had been torn away. The wounds were not deadly, but they were horridly ugly, and gave evidence of having been reopened and rubbed raw more than once. Ian twisted his head, saw where her eyes were fixed, and laughed.

  “Oh, that. A barrel of burning pitch blew apart. I was like to be a torch. My men doused me with water, but when it came to taking off my clothes, some of me went with them.” His voice was normal, light, laughing at a stupid mishap. “I was ill enough pleased at it because we had taken the keep the day before, and I had not a mark on me from all the fighting. No one noticed that the barrel was afire, I suppose.”

  “But that was in August,” Alinor exclaimed, also completely back to normal. “You idiot! Did you not have anyone look to you?”

  “There were no physicians. The leeches treated me—for all the good they did. To whom should I have gone?” Ian snapped irritably. “To Queen Isabella?”

  Alinor made a contemptuous noise. “At least she is not so bad as the first queen. Isabella might refuse to soil her hands on such a common slave as a mere baron, but Isobel of Gloucester would have rubbed poison into your hurts. Oh, never mind, I will attend to that later. A warm soaking will do the sores good. First I want to wash your hair. Wait, you fool, do not lean back yet. Let me get a cushion to ease you. You will scrape your back against the tub.”

  “You will ruin the cushion if you put it in the bath.”

  “It can be dried. The maids are too idle anyway.”

  She went out. Ian closed his eyes and sighed. An expression of indecision so intense as to amount to fear crossed his face, changed to a rather grim determination. Alinor returned with a maid at her heels. She slipped the cushion behind Ian, and he slid down against it and tipped his head back. He could hear the maid laying out fresh clothing and gathering up his soiled garments. Alinor reached over him to scoop up a ladleful of water, poured it over his head, and began to soap his hair.

  “Tell me something pleasant,” she said.

  “Well, we took Montauban,” Ian responded a little doubtfully, but at a loss for anything to say that Alinor would consider pleasant. “And a truce between Philip and John is being arranged.”

  “What is pleasant about that?” Alinor asked disgustedly. “It means the king will return here. Oh, curse all the Angevins. Richard loved England too little, and John—” She gave Ian’s hair a rough toweling so it would not drip in his face. “Sit up and lean forward.”

  “Yes, Alinor, but John does love England.” Ian elevated his knees, crossed his arms on them, and rested his forehead on his arms.

  “Most assuredly. Like a wolf loves little children. He could eat three a day.”

  Alinor began to wash Ian’s back very gently. She felt him wince under her hands, but his voice was steady.

  “That is his nature. Like a wolf, he is dangerous only when running loose.”

  “And who will cage him?”

  There was a long pause. Ian jerked as Alinor touched a particularly painful spot and then said, a trifle breathlessly, “I have much to say about that, but not here and now. To speak the truth, Alinor, I am tired and sore, and that is no condition for me to match words with you.”

  “With me? What have I— No, never mind. I see you are about to engage in some harebrained enterprise, but I will not fret you when you are so tired. There, I have done with you for the moment. Sit up. Do you wash the rest while I go and get my salves.”

  Alinor handed Ian the cloth and soap. She could, of course, have told the maid to bring the medicinal salves she needed, but she was afraid to wash the rest of Ian’s body. There was too much chance of arousing him and herself again. By the time she returned, he was out of the tub and had drawn on a pair of Simon’s chausses. Alinor was surprised they fitted so well. She knew Ian and her late husband were much of a height, but Simon had always seemed to be a much heavier man. Perhaps it is the coloring, she thought, and the lack of body hair.

  “Sit,” Alinor directed, and then, “no, go lie on the bed on your face. This will be a long piece of work, and there is no need for my knees to be sore from kneeling.”

  “Do comfort me,” Ian said, laughing. “Torturer.”

  “You will feel much better when I am done,” Alinor remarked without the slightest sympathy. “Now, what other news is there?”

  “None I care to tell—oh, yes, one thing. There is a rumor that the queen is at last with ch
ild.”

  “Poor thing,” Alinor commented. “With such a father and mother, I wonder what it will be.”

  Ian laughed again. “Do you expect horns and a tail? Do not be so harsh. There is good blood on both sides. The child need not be exactly like to the parents, although God knows yours are like enough. And now I think on it, there was something I wanted to ask about. Did you forbid Beorn to teach Adam English?”

  “Forbid it? No.”

  “Did Simon?”

  It was the first time Ian had said his name. It had slipped out quite naturally, but he tensed, fearing Alinor’s reaction. There was none.

  “I cannot imagine why he should. Why do you ask?”

  “Because I think—ouch! Alinor, leave me what little skin I have. Give over a minute. Let me rest.” He turned to the side so he could see her. “I think Adam wishes to learn, and it is no bad thing to understand what those beneath you say.”

  “Of course not. It is most necessary. I understand English myself, although I cannot speak it. Thank you for telling me. I will speak to Beorn. Sometimes he is overcareful.”

  “There is something else. Beorn is a good man, but—” Ian’s voice checked as the sound of childish laughter came in the doorway.

  “Oh, you are here, are you?” Alinor called. “Come in then. You might as well be of some use. Ian, lie flat again. Adam, hold this pot so I do not need to bend for it each time. Joanna, look you here. See how I clean this. It is not proudflesh, which must be cut away, as I showed you aforetime. When the wound is of the skin, rather than of the flesh, wide and not deep, it must close all at once rather than from the inside. It is needful to be most gentle or the new, tender growth will be torn. See, here, where the shield strap rubbed? There is no mending this. It will heal hard and shiny—and belike tear again.”

  “Were you wounded in the siege?” Adam asked excitedly. ‘Tell, Ian. You promised to tell.”

  “Mother, look here. What is this?” Joanna asked.

  “Pox take it! That is an old scar torn open. That will need to be cleaned deeper.”