She almost reached up and caressed his cheek. Instead, she dug her nails into her palm. “Oh, Raine, you know I would never miss this. Your triumph.”
His gaze shifted beyond her, to the castle’s dark-red walls, and a taut, hard look came over his face. In that way he hadn’t changed at all. The fires of ambition that had consumed him as a boy burned brighter than ever. At times, the fierce intensity that drove him had frightened her. She had known that he would sacrifice anything to get what he wanted, anything. Even her.
“Aye, my triumph,” he said.
“You will have everything you ever wanted. Land, a title … everything.”
His eyes focused back onto her face and she could read nothing in them now, neither pain, nor joy, not even satisfaction. It hurt her that he felt the need to hide his feelings from her. When had he learned to do it so well?
“Aye,” he said. “I will have everything I ever wanted.”
Except you. She waited for him to say those words, but he did not. She realized then, looking into his hard, inscrutable face, that he never would. She had forfeited his love the day she married his brother, and she would never get it back.
But she had done it to save him. No, she had done it to save herself.
To entertain the crowd while it waited for the tourney to start, a bearbaiting was being enacted in front of the stands. In that moment the bear’s claws caught in the throat of a mangy gray wolfhound, ripping it open. The dog screamed and the spectators roared their approval.
Sybil and Raine both turned to see what the excitement was about. Sybil’s attention was caught immediately by the girl who sat in the front row, next to the canopied high-backed chair, or faldstool, that the king would soon occupy. Unlike the Norman ladies around her, whose heads were covered by coifs and veils, she wore her hair loose and flowing down her back with only a wreath of yellow woodbine to keep it in place. The sunlight glinted off strands of gold and red that were threaded through the darker sable-brown. She was dressed simply in a pleated bliaut the color of bluebells and her only other ornament, besides the flowers in her hair, was a pagan-looking neckband. From this distance the circlet gave the illusion that a pair of snakes were wrapped around her throat.
For a moment Sybil pitied the Welsh girl. She knew how it felt to have one’s life directed by the whims of nations and kings, with no more will than a piece of straw blown about by the wind. Sybil turned her head, and she saw that Raine, too, looked at the girl and the expression in his sooty eyes filled her with a hot, sick jealousy. The hard, taut look was back on his face. The look he wore when he wanted something.
“I have yet to meet this Welsh princess you are to marry. What is she like?”
For a moment she didn’t think he would answer her. But then his gaze left the girl and came back to her, and a strange smile twisted his lips, though his face was set with anger. “That wench is either the bravest I have ever encountered or the most witless.”
Sybil knew that above all else Raine admired courage in a woman, courage and a sense of honor, and so her smile was strained. “And I suppose you have already tried your manly best to terrorize the poor little thing.”
Raine made a noise that was closer to a grunt than a laugh. “Quite the contrary. The poor little thing has done her best to terrorize me.” A strange, baffled look came over his face, before it tautened again. “The first time I saw the wench, she tried to stab me in the back with a dagger. The second time she near took off my head with my own sword. She has spat at me and clawed me and damned me to hell and back. She even had the audacity to muddy my boots.”
Sybil’s laughter sounded harsh as it came out her constricted throat. “Oh, Raine. It seems as if you have truly met your match.”
He didn’t laugh with her, and his gaze went to the girl who was to be his wife. “Nay. But the Lady Arianna has met hers.”
Arianna knew they watched her, these fine Norman lords and ladies. They watched her with the same avid and bloodthirsty enjoyment with which they watched the bearbaiting. It was all an enormous jest to them, that the daughter of a Welsh prince would be given away as a trophy in a joust, like the prize ram at a village fair.
Her shoulders began to bow beneath the weight of the watching eyes and she stiffened her spine. They are nothing to me, she told herself. I am the Prince of Gwynedd’s daughter.
The king’s faldstool waited empty beside her. On the other side of her sat a willowy girl with butter-yellow hair and contrasting doe-brown eyes. She looked vaguely familiar, and after a few distracted moments, Arianna finally placed her. She had met the girl at Rhuddlan’s weekly market day during the month she had spent here with Ceidro. She couldn’t recall the girl’s name, but Arianna remembered now that she was the only child of the town draper, who had died over a year ago.
Arianna had been impressed at the time—and, in truth, a bit envious—to learn that the girl had inherited and was running her dead father’s business all on her own. As she thought back to the conversation they had had, Arianna remembered something else about her as well. The draper’s daughter was of pure Saxon blood, and she hated the Normans almost as much as the Welsh did.
Arianna cast another glance in the girl’s direction and was surprised by the offer of a warm, encouraging smile. But then Arianna’s attention was caught by the sight of the black knight. He stood within the lists, deep in conversation with a woman with hair so blond, it was more silver than gold. A woman who was everything Arianna was not, fair and pale and so very dainty, the epitome of the feminine ideal. As she watched them the knight threw back his dark head and laughed.
A strange tightness squeezed Arianna’s chest. She felt swamped with an overwhelming sadness and a sense of failure, and she couldn’t understand where it was coming from.
Then, over the pounding of the blood in her ears, she became aware of a loud, three-way conversation going on behind her. She caught an echo of her name and the words Black Dragon and wife. The women spoke French, but slowly, for they intended her to hear every word.
“I knew it wouldn’t take long for Lady Sybil to seek him out,” one said. She had a grating, strident voice, like a fishmonger’s.
“I myself do wonder why she came,” a pleasant, lilting voice chimed in. “How can she bear to watch the Black Dragon wed another? And do you think they’re lovers still?” She tsked. “The shame of it. His brother’s wife.”
“Half brother,” said a third. Her voice, soft as cream, was laced with a poisonous malice. “Nay, I doubt they’re lovers now, if ever they were, for he hasn’t been back to Chester for at least six years. Since the wedding. Though ’Tis said she loves him and always has, even though she wed his brother, and if such is true … Poor Sybil, she won’t enjoy having to share Raine’s ardent favors with another, even if that other is only his wife.”
“But surely she doesn’t fear Raine will grow to love his new bride? Jesu, the girl is Welsh!”
“Aye. But Welsh or no, she’ll share Raine’s bed. Something the Lady Sybil would most dearly love to do.”
“ ’Tis my thought she’s done so already. It’s why she’s been barren these six years of her marriage to Earl Hugh. ’Tis God’s just punishment for her sin.”
“I, for one, pity this poor Welsh girl who must marry Sir Raine. If she’s like the others of her race, then she’s plain and dark and hairy. Such a one could never turn a man’s eyes away from Sybil’s dainty fairness.”
“Aye, the poor girl. She’ll have the Black Dragon in her bed but long enough to beget an heir. Then she’ll see little of him, I trow. Not with Chester and Sybil but a day’s ride away.”
The women burst into peels of laughter, and Arianna’s fists clenched to control her trembling. But she hadn’t once taken her eyes off the black knight, who smiled and laughed still with the small, blond woman. As she watched, he lifted his hand and tucked a wisp of sun-gilt hair back into her coif.
His brother’s wife … ’Tis said she loves him and always has�
�.
A swift, fierce anger seized her, replacing the taut ache that had filled her chest. She didn’t expect him to care for her, yet he could at least have respected her enough not to flaunt his indifference before all of England. She wished there was some way to show those cackling hens behind her just how little it mattered to her that the man she was about to wed loved another. Then it occurred to her that she could play their own game.
She turned and addressed the girl beside her, pitching her voice loud enough for the women in back to hear. She regretted not having been more diligent in her French lessons as she searched for the unfamiliar words.
“You are the draper’s daughter, are you not?” she asked the girl.
“Aye … I am called Christina, milady.”
“Christina.” Arianna gave her a brilliant smile. “And you are English, too, are you not?” She heaved a melodramatic sigh. “It seems I have been doomed by fate and my father to share your pitiable existence of living among the Normans.” Arianna leaned closer to the girl, but her voice rose higher. “Have you noticed how they all have such rapacious eyes? Tell me, is what they say true, are the Normans so greedy they would steal the last crust of bread out a widow’s mouth?”
Christina’s lips twitched with a repressed smile. Arianna felt a rush of affection for the draper’s daughter, for the girl had quickly caught on to the game. “Well, I know they do often try to cheat me, milady. By not offering fair price for my cloth.”
Arianna nodded wisely, aware of the rigid silence behind her. “It’s as I suspected. And their manners are most foul, have you not remarked it? The way they clean their teeth with the point of a knife and spit bones into the rushes.”
“Perhaps they know no better, milady.”
“Perhaps …” Arianna sighed again. “It is particularly sad though, how the men must all feel the need to wrap themselves up like snails in their coats of mail before they go off to fight.” She shrugged. “Perhaps it is a weakness in their constitution, this lack of courage.”
“Now that you do mention it, milady, I believe I knew of a Norman gentleman once, who swooned at the sight of blood.”
Arianna shook her head sadly, then went on, her voice growing even louder. “But it’s their womenfolk I truly pity the most. For they say a Norman’s privy member is much like a willow switch … too limp and skinny to satisfy a woman properly.”
Perhaps I’ve gone too far, Arianna thought, for Christina’s face seemed suddenly to drain of all color. She swallowed so hard her throat clicked, and her eyes grew huge, shifting to focus on something over Arianna’s shoulder. Slowly, Arianna turned …
To be pinned by a pair of flint-gray eyes.
7
He loomed above her, a knight in black armor. His gaze moved over her insolently, and there was such a look of utter disdain etched on his long, hard mouth she was in no doubt that he had heard every single one of her damning words.
Arianna felt the heat of blood rushing to her face and knew that it had turned wine-red. She thrust out her chin. “We were just discussing the trials and tribulations of living among the Normans,” she said, in a voice that to her dismay betrayed a slight quiver.
“So I heard.”
He flicked a glance at Christina, and Arianna felt the girl shudder. She could almost envy the man’s ability to slay a person with one look. But just then a squire approached the English girl, bearing a gift on behalf of a shy but amorous knight, and Christina turned aside with obvious relief, leaving Arianna at the Black Dragon’s mercy. Not that Arianna blamed her; she longed to flee that cold, disdainful presence herself.
His gaze moved back to her, and his lips curled into a smile of such scathing mockery she wanted to tear it off his face. “I particularly found your opinion of Norman manhood most interesting,” he said. “Do you speak from personal experience?”
He’d as much as called her a whore again, and Arianna was getting tired of it. “Take care, sir bastard knight. For your manners are betraying the base origins of your birth.”
Something dangerous flickered in his eyes. He stepped forward until his thighs brushed her knees, and leaned into her until she could feel their hardness. And their heat.
“And your tongue, my lady Arianna, is betraying a regrettable lack of discipline,” he said in a silky voice. “Obviously your father should long ago have thrown you across his lap, tossed up your skirts and flogged your naked backside until you learned differently. Fortunately it is an oversight that I, as your husband, shall soon be able to rectify …” He leaned closer still and his voice deepened into a soft growl. “With my willow switch, perhaps?”
The hair on Arianna’s arms rose up as if from a sudden chill, though she knew her face was damp and flushed. His eyes smoldered at her now with a fire that seemed to scorch the very air she was trying to breathe.
It was too hot to bear. Her gaze fell to the hands she had clenched in her lap. Her cheeks burned and her throat constricted tightly. She wanted to run away, except there was no where to run to.
She lifted her head. That burning intensity had left his eyes; they were cold and flat again. She felt her courage return.
A silence settled between them, charged with tension. She wondered why he had approached her in the first place. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Christina unravel a silk ribbon from her sleeve and give it to the squire to take back to his shy master, and a thought occurred to her. Perhaps the knight had come to pay court to her because he thought it was expected of him.
She gave him a condescending smile. “Surely you don’t harbor a hope that I will give you a token of my favor to carry into battle on the end of your lance? For if I pray for anything, sir knight, it is that your brother the earl will knock you flat on your arrogant face.”
His laughter was sudden and harsh. “I don’t want your favor, madam. Or your prayers. I’d rather take the castle without the bride.”
“And I’d rather suffer the torments of hell than wed a Norman bastard!”
“Then you, my lady, are about to discover that hell and a Norman bastard are one and the same.”
With that parting remark, he pivoted on his heel and left her. She stared after him, so furious she wanted to burst into tears. “God’s death! He is the most insufferably arrogant, despicable, hateful, vile, contemptible—”
“Poor Raine … he seems to have misplaced his charm somewhere.”
Startled, Arianna’s head whipped around, and she looked up into a fair and startlingly handsome face. A spasm of fear twisted her stomach, for this was the man who had tried to rape her in Rhuddlan’s cellars. She sucked in a deep breath, telling herself he could do nothing to her here among all these people, not with her under the protection of his king.
Sunlight shimmered off his dazzling silver hauberk. The helm he had tucked beneath his arm sported a panache of white egret feathers on its crown. His hair shone almost as brightly as his armor, and she wondered if he had curled the locks in a press, to get them to coil so precisely over his shoulders. He looked the epitome of a brave and glorious knight.
His gaze, blue as a mountain lake, moved over her with obvious appreciation. “I fear we have yet to be formally introduced. You behold before you Hugh, Earl of Chester.” He flashed a smile full of charm and teeth. “Your other champion.”
Arianna stared up at him, so stunned that she forgot to breathe. This was the Earl of Chester, this man who had tried to rape her. If the black knight lost the joust it would be this man to whom she would go as the prize.
“I couldn’t help remarking,” he drawled, “that you do not seem overly fond of my brother. Come now, is he really all that terrible?”
She found her voice. “Aye. And you, my lord earl, are not much better.”
He did not appear to be insulted. Instead his smile deepened. “You refer to that little incident in the wine vault.” He spread his hands in a supplicating gesture. “You must acquit me, my lady. I thought you naught but a villein girl.”
“And thus fair game for your lechery?”
He laughed, tossing back his golden curls. “Something like that. Can you imagine then my dismay, my utter horror, when I discovered who you really were?” His smile faded and his voice turned earnest and imploring, though shadows lurked beneath the placid surface of his lake-blue eyes. “Can you ever forgive me?”
“I think not.”
He sighed deeply. “You behold before you then a man in abject misery, a man despairing that he will ever be restored to grace in his fair lady’s heart.”
“Since you were never in my heart in the first place, my lord earl, you can hardly be restored there.”
“But surely I’ve been punished enough for my dreadful misdeed. You gave me a frightful blow to the head, and I shall bear the scar for the rest of my life. Fortunately for us both, you were not so successful with your other assault upon my person. Though I confess for a moment there I feared you had truly unmanned me.”
“Pity then I did not succeed, and thus spared the women of Wales future assaults from your person.” She bared her teeth in a false smile. “My lord.”
There was a lull in the noise from the crowd, and the earl’s laughter carried across the field. “Damn me, but I like your spirit. It’s a pity my brother is so skilled with the lance. For though I cannot marry you myself, if I won you, my Lady Arianna, you would find me a most kind and generous liege lord. I would settle you on a gentle husband, one that would make you happy.”
And who would look the other way when you crawled into my bed, Arianna thought, though for once she held her tongue.
A blast from a host of trumpets cut across Earl Hugh’s next words, drowning them out. The King of England came striding toward them, an entourage of nobles and servants trailing in his wake. A sudden silence fell over the loges, followed by a lot of crackling and rustling as everyone came swiftly to their feet.
The king slapped Hugh on the back with such hearty force the earl staggered. “What are you doing still dangling after the ladies, my lord earl? The tourney is about to start.”
Keeper of the Dream Page 10