Fires of Winter

by Roberta Gellis

  “Edna, if you cannot be still—” I began to say irritably, and realized the bump was on the other side. Edna was gone, and I sat up and glared at Bruno, who had knocked against the bedpost.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I just doused the candles and I’m still light blind.”

  “Well, you can just light them again and find somewhere else to sleep,” I snapped. “How dare you send your whore to wait on me.”

  He stopped where he was, naked, one hand still on the bedpost to guide himself around the corner of the bed. The previous night I had seen only the power of his body; tonight I was able to pick out details—the triangle of black hair on his chest, pale scars on shoulder, arm, and hip that contrasted with skin that was dark even in the dim light. I could see such details because the wick on the night candle was high, and wakened from sleep as I was, my eyes were already adjusted. Gazing at him, I felt again the strange terror that had gripped me earlier when I thought of him undressing me, but it was like no fear I had ever known before. I was not cold and clammy but too warm, and my insides shook in a strange way.

  “So you did know what Edna was,” Bruno said, coming forward again. “I thought when I came in the morning and found her still here that you had not bothered to ask.”

  He got into the bed as if I had not just bade him to find a place elsewhere, and I could not speak because I knew my voice would break.

  “It is useless to pretend to be angry with me after being so kind to her,” he went on, turning toward me and grinning.

  “Why should I be unkind to the girl?” I got out, although I could not keep my voice completely steady. “She cannot help what she is. She scarcely looks to be happy in her work or able to deny any order given her. It was you who insulted me by setting your leman to wait on me, not her.”

  “No!” Bruno exclaimed, putting his hand out to take mine. I shuddered, and he withdrew it, his face creased with anxiety. “I swear I meant no insult to you, Melusine. I swear I did not. Good God, Edna is not my woman. I may have lain with her once, but I had forgotten all about it until you said it.”

  I looked at the hand Bruno had been reaching for and saw that it was turned palm up to clasp his. “Then why did you send her?” I asked, staring down at my hand and wondering if it had been lying that way all the time. But that was impossible; it was too uncomfortable. I must have responded without knowing it when he reached toward me.

  “If that is not the silliest question I have ever heard it comes near it,” Bruno said irritably. “You know I must be in attendance on the king at dawn. Where the devil did you think I was going to find a woman who knew something of maid’s work, was reasonably clean, and spoke French an hour before dawn? Did you expect me to wake the queen or one of her ladies to ask to borrow a maid at that hour? And do not tell me that I should have thought of it before,” he snarled, his voice growing louder. “I had more to think of than who would help you dress yesterday.”

  It was a logical answer and delivered with no attempt to charm me. I could not doubt that the reasons Bruno had given me for thinking of a whore were true, after all an unmarried man would not often have been attended by a woman in other circumstances. “But why Edna?” I asked. “Why your whore rather than another?” I could have bit my tongue as soon as the words were out of my mouth. He would think I was jealous.

  “I have said already that she is not my woman.” Bruno merely sounded bored, perhaps slightly annoyed. “I assure you that however ill you think of me, I would never permit any woman in my keeping to be starved or to dress in rags. I went to that house because it is the best in this town and the women are all clean and know French. I took Edna because when she opened the door to me she begged me for something to eat. I was sorry for her, and I also thought she would not be likely to missay you or walk out on you.”

  “Missay me?” I repeated. “Would such a woman dare?”

  Bruno smiled. “From that house, it is possible. Some of those women have powerful protectors. They judge me a poor knight—which I am—and do not regard me with much awe. So my wife might be given scant courtesy.” Then he sighed. “I thought when Edna told me what had happened to her, that she might continue to serve as your maid. Of course, if you do not like her, I will have to find another woman, but—”

  “I do not dislike Edna,” I interrupted, feeling quite exasperated, “but I cannot have a practicing whore as my maid—even you must see that.”

  “But Edna cannot ply that trade any longer,” Bruno stated. “That is why she is starving and in rags. Did she not tell you that? The girl is a half-wit. No wonder you were so angry with me.”

  My hand flew to hide my mouth, and then, realizing that the gesture had betrayed me I said the words it had instinctively held back. “She did tell me. I just did not think of it until now.”

  “It was too much fun being furious, I suppose.” The mischievous grin that had made me smile back earlier did not have the same effect now, and Bruno shook his head as I opened my mouth to protest. “I will leave it to you to settle with Edna whether you wish to keep her or not, but I hope you will. You see, I do not want any royal servants waiting on you. A servant loyal to someone other than her own mistress can twist what is perfectly innocent into something else to win pay or praise. I want no twisted tales of you carried back to the queen. Perhaps your maid will be questioned, but if she answers with the truth we will have nothing to fear.”

  “If Edna truly can be chaste—or at least as chaste as any other maid—I will keep her.”

  “Settle it with her,” he repeated. “I bade her sleep in the hall outside and come to you again in the morning. Now I have something much more important to talk about than maids. The king has ordered me to carry certain messages north for him and has given me leave to take you with me.”

  For a moment I looked at him, probably open-mouthed with surprise, then swallowed and croaked, “Go with you? But why?”

  Bruno looked back at me, trying, I think, to make out my expression in the dim light of the night candle. “Do you not wish to go?” he asked, his voice carefully flat.

  “Oh, yes,” I cried. “Indeed I do, and it cannot be soon enough for me, but I do not understand why—”

  “I warn you,” he said, “that if you try to escape me and run home as you did before—”

  “No, no,” I gasped. “I—” I was about to say that I was not such a fool, but what he said implied that I had tried to get away before, and I knew he would not believe my denials. “I have come to understand that that would be a very foolish thing to do, that it could only make trouble for my people.”

  “I hope you are speaking the truth, but you seem so very eager—”

  “Only because I wish to get away from the queen’s ladies.” I explained how I was caught between increasing Maud’s suspicion of me and making the other women look foolish and dislike me. “If I am gone from them for some time, it will be easier to change my ways. I—I am tired of being thought a half-wit.” That was true, even if I had only endured it for a few days rather than many months.

  Bruno laughed, but I thought, though I could not truly see, that his eyes still watched me warily. All he said was, “I am not surprised.”

  “But I still do not understand why the king should allow a messenger to take a woman with him,” I said hurriedly. I needed no more lectures on why it was unwise to play sly games.

  “It is a special case,” Bruno told me, pulling up a pillow behind him and relaxing against it. “There is no need for special haste in delivering these messages, so the speed at which I travel is not important. Moreover the journey will take us close to Jernaeve, where I was born and bred. The king was kind enough to yield to my desire to introduce you to the people there who have been very kind to me and cared for me.”

  “But I thought…” I hesitated, not knowing how to ask a question without hurting him.

  “You thought
a whore’s bastard was born and raised in a ditch? How do you think I came by my skills and accoutrements?”

  “I thought nothing of the sort,” I riposted sharply, angry that he thought the worst when I had been trying to spare him. “I thought you had quarreled with your family and were not welcome among them.”

  “There has been no quarrel, and I am sure I will be welcome in Jernaeve now.” He paused as if to weed out of his future words certain matters, then said, “Sir Oliver—and I must tell you that I am not Sir Oliver’s get, no matter that we resemble each other—who was warden of Jernaeve for many years, holding the right of his niece, Lady Audris…” He paused again, wondering I think whether to add something, but continued with what was clearly the main thread of his story. “Sir Oliver sent me away from Jernaeve because he was afraid the holders of smaller estates sworn to Jernaeve would prefer me to Lady Audris. I went willingly, for I love Audris above my life, above the salvation of my soul. But she is married now, to Sir Hugh Licorne—”

  “Licorne—a unicorn?” I interrupted, not caring but driven to say anything to hear no more about his love for this Lady Audris. Despite the fact that our union had been forced upon him, how dared he lament to his wife another woman’s marriage.

  He chuckled and I realized at once what a fool I was. If Sir Oliver was Lady Audris’s uncle and Bruno was not his son but yet resembled him, Audris must be at least Bruno’s first cousin—if not his half sister. The easy chuckle told me there was no deep hurt connected with Lady Audris’s marriage, and no anger at my interruption, but I suspected that Bruno was not given to telling this story and I wanted very much to hear it.

  I touched his hand. “Forgive me, I did not mean to interrupt you. You must believe that I am deeply interested in this matter.”

  Still smiling, he patted with his other hand, mine, which had remained resting on his. That senseless fear started up in me again, but this time I fought it, ignoring the crazy trembling inside me and fighting to keep my breathing from going short. I would not withdraw my hand and anger him for a senseless fear. In God’s name, what had I to fear from Bruno?

  “Everyone is startled by Hugh’s surname,” he said, “but Archbishop Thurstan is the one who named him and he must have had a reason. I do not think the archbishop is a fanciful man. Nor can I remember that Hugh told me the reason. Perhaps he did not know. I cannot imagine myself questioning Archbishop Thurstan about why he did anything. But the point is that Hugh is perfectly fitted in every way to hold Jernaeve and has the full right of husband of the holder, so I cannot be a threat to Lady Audris’s right and I am sure I will be a welcome guest.”

  “Naturally, I will be very happy to meet your f-friends, but—”

  I faltered a bit over the word, unsure of whether to say family but very aware that Bruno had been specially careful to make no such claim. And I was angered for him, believing that he was despised among the people in Jernaeve and that he was taking me to them to show that he now had importance in the world and had been given a noblewoman to wife. That made me ashamed of him for the first time, and I was about to urge him to have more pride when he interrupted me.

  “I can see that you are wondering at my desire to drag you hundreds of miles into the wilderness of Northumbria over lands devastated by war,” he said, smiling again. “I am not mad. I have a good reason, and one that will please you, I think, for taking you north. The king has given me two months leave, which I have permission to stretch to three at need. There will be time enough for us to visit Ulle.”

  “Ulle?” I gasped. “You will take me to Ulle?”

  “If you make yourself pleasant to those at Jernaeve and give me no reason to think that you will do anything to spite the king or lessen his power over your lands…”

  I knew Bruno went on speaking and my eyes were fixed on his face, but I neither saw nor heard. A cold horror had overtaken me. Could I go back to Ulle, to those halls and chambers haunted by my brothers and father? Bruno had spoken about getting back the lands, but that had been a thing in the distant future. I suppose I had believed that it would be years before I need see another man seated in my father’s chair, other hands than those of my brothers’ holding cups at a high table. I heard a strange sound, like the whimpering of a small lost beast, and suddenly there were warm arms around me and a man’s smell in my nostrils as I was pressed against his chest, and a deep voice crying, “Melusine, Melusine, what is wrong?”

  All my life I had been comforted by men. My mother loved me, but she felt I got petting enough, and when I was hurt or frightened, it was always Papa or my brothers who held me and begged me to tell them what was wrong and kissed away my tears. I clung to that broad warm chest, to the man-smell that meant safety and comfort, and sobbed out my hurt.

  Chapter 11

  Bruno

  I had good reason to believe, as did the queen, that Melusine had been pretending to be half-witted for some purpose of her own. After all, she had almost succeeded in sticking my own hunting knife into me. But as I sat looking down at her after she had at long last cried herself to sleep, I began to wonder if perhaps she had not intended to deceive anyone but had been living in some world of her own because she could no longer bear her grief in this one. I was shaken to my core with pity for the child within the grown woman, who still believed she had murdered a good part of her family just because they had come to celebrate her birthday. And that clinging memory of the ice crystals whitening her murdered brother’s eyes—I shuddered at it myself.

  Had I known the burden Melusine carried, I would have been more careful in introducing the subject of taking her home. I had thought that she would be overjoyed and my only problem would be keeping her at Jernaeve until I had finished the king’s errands. Now I did not know what to do. I had told her that there was no need to go to Ulle, but I do not think she heard or understood me. And if we did not go now, I was not sure when I would be able to get leave again and I was eager to look over what had been Melusine’s property.

  I had been totally indifferent to everything except the immediate problem of taking the manor when I was there with the king’s army. I had no idea I would ever have any special interest in Cumbria. When I thought of the grant of lands I might someday receive as a reward for loyal service, I always thought of lands in Northumbria. And it was always a thing very far in the future so I did not, like many of those who expected favors from the king, look at every keep and manor he took with an eye to asking for it. Thus, Ulle and the area in which it lay were only dimly remembered. I had intended, with Melusine as a guide, to examine her lands to see if there was some great source of wealth in them. I did not think there would be, nor that I would discover any strategic reason I had missed when we passed through for the king to hold those lands in his own hand. But I had to be sure before I approached the subject of reclaiming Melusine’s estate.

  She was still sobbing in her sleep, so I stroked her hair and she grew quieter. One good thing about her tears and terror was that they had cooled my lust. When she had accused me of setting my whore to serve her as an insult, I had barely held myself back from proving that I was as hungry for her as for any whore—and perhaps a little more. She might be too big and too dark with features too strongly marked for my taste, but she had been a sweet-smelling armful when I held her in the queen’s hall, and the way she laughed when I teased her had sent waves of heat through me. I had to let go of her and step away lest my rising lust show openly.

  Even though I felt no desire now—poor Melusine was too much like a hurt child to think of coupling this night—I wished I had not so lightly given my oath not to demand my marital rights. Tomorrow it would not be easy to lie in this bed with her without some relief, and the next day would be harder yet. Perhaps I could find some reason to leave before the week the king had set for our departure. Once on the road, separate pallets or camp beds would keep us well apart and I might have time to slake my thirs
t on some girl without Melusine’s knowledge. Or, would it be better if she suspected? Had her anger about Edna been more than that of a dog who keeps an ox from his manger out of pure spite? She had been angry when I showed myself indifferent to her charms even soon after she had tried to kill me.

  A wicked notion came to me then. Perhaps I would ask her permission. I could flatter her at the same time by saying she was so beautiful and desirable that I was finding it hard to keep my promise not to couple with her. I considered that as I slid down to lie flat, enjoying my memory of how her dark eyes seemed almost to show a flicker of red when she was angry at me in the queen’s hall, and how laughter had overcome her anger. A quick temper, but not a sour or stubborn one, thank God. The king and queen might not have done so ill for me as I thought at first—unless Melusine, who I was now sure did not remember that I had been the man who “took” Ulle, suddenly recalled it.

  That brought my mind back to Melusine’s violent reaction to my offer to take her home. I turned my head but could not see her face, which was nearly buried in the pillow. Her breathing was quiet now, not troubled even by the little hiccups that follow prolonged weeping. I sighed and closed my eyes. I would not force her if every mention of the place drove her into a frenzy of grief and fear—if it did, what would be the use of trying to reclaim the property? But only time would tell. If she did not broach the subject herself, I would try again in a day or two after she had time to grow accustomed to the idea.

  Since Melusine was still asleep when I had to leave, my duty requiring me to be in the king’s outer chamber before he woke, I could do no more than tell Edna that Melusine should ask the queen to send for me if she needed me. I hope she did not need me, because I was away from Winchester soon after the king broke his fast. Stephen’s spirits had been so elated by the defeat of the Scots that he cast aside all business and took those of his court that favored the sport off on a great hunt. Being in attendance as Knight of the Body, I had no choice but to go.