Fires of Winter

by Roberta Gellis

  The laugh and the voice in which Melusine spoke made my skin crawl, and it did worse no doubt to the constable’s wife, who cried out that Melusine should take the chair. In another moment two stout womenservants entered carrying it and set it down near the bed. Until they went out, Melusine stood by the door looking out. That, I thought, was the face of the woman who had thrust a knife at my throat on the second night of our married life. I had almost forgotten that part of Melusine, but the memory pleased me. It made more loving, more precious, her gentleness to me, the tenderness with which she drew my bedrobe about me and with the barber’s help moved me to the chair.

  My legs trembled like the jelly that surrounds boiled fish, but I stiffened them as best I could and did manage the few steps to the chair. I held my head steady too, although Melusine stood behind me ready to support it. And when I was shaved, I leaned less heavily, not more, on Melusine and the barber as I went back to bed.

  I felt wonderful and was just about to ask Melusine how it happened that at the moment I was hungry there was no sign of her pots and bowls when the king appeared in the doorway with the queen behind him. I suppose with the beard gone, I looked more deathlike than when the thinness and pallor of my face were hidden, for Stephen hesitated and cried, “No, do not move,” when I pushed myself higher so I could at least bow from the waist. Then he came to the bed and took my hand.

  “I have come to bid you farewell, my dear Bruno,” he said. “You have served me more devotedly than I could have asked of any man. I am sorry to leave you here, but I must pick up the reins of my bolting kingdom and bring it to order, and it will be, I fear, many weeks before you are fit for service.”

  “Yes, my lord,” I said. “I am to follow you when I am well?”

  But the queen touched Stephen’s arm and then came forward. Our eyes met. I tried to hide the despair in mine, but Maud had always been able to read me better than most people, and I knew she saw my horror of what was to come. For just an instant I thought I saw a similar horror mirrored in her eyes, but then to my surprise she bent and kissed me and stroked my hair as if I were her child in need of comforting.

  “You will be too busy serving the king in another way for a long time, dear Bruno, but your place will always be held for you. When you are ready you will be most welcome to us. Stephen, he does not understand what we mean. Give him the charter, for goodness sake.”

  The king looked mulish for a moment. I am sure he had been about to extract a promise to follow him before he offered my reward; however, he drew out a roll of thick parchment, heavy with a wax impression of the great seal, and handed it to me.

  “It seems very little for what you have done,” Maud said, “but Melusine insisted that Ulle and the other smaller manors were all you desired even though the lands and people have been misused. I know that is truly what Melusine wants, but if you would like some other, richer lands you can have those also.”

  “No,” I breathed. “Ulle is what I desire. Thank you, sire. Thank you, madam. I have always been poor, so Ulle seems rich to me. I greatly fear power, and Ulle will bring me none. All I need or want is the peace of those great hills with their silver hair of flowing water.”

  “You must love the lands indeed to find words of such beauty to describe them,” Maud said. “I hope someday I will be able to visit you and look on your hills.” She touched my face gently and stepped back.

  Stephen had recovered from his small pique, and he smiled at me and patted the charter that lay on my lap. “I do not expect to need to visit you,” he said, grinning—meaning, of course, that he was sure I would be faithful and he would not need to attack Ulle again. “But you will have to come to me to do homage someday.”

  “I will come whenever you send for me, my lord,” I promised. “I have already sworn my faith to you, and will do so again at any time.”

  He was very pleased with that, and leaned over and kissed me before he and Maud left the room. I stroked the parchment in my lap, hardly believing what I held and looking at Melusine, who held her deep curtsey by the door, I suppose until the king and queen were out of sight. Then she flew to me and embraced me and kissed me and began to weep, whispering, “Free! Bruno, we are free!”

  “I hope so,” I said, “but when the king and queen are gone, we will be fortunate if the constable or his wife do not murder us.”

  “I do not fear for that.” Melusine sat upright. “I have their precious son safe, and if you and I together do not appear before Sir Gerald at a particular time, which I will not say lest there be someone listening at the door, Sir Gerald will send one of the prisoner’s ears. After that, he will send other, more important parts until we come.”

  “Melusine!” I exclaimed, “that is monstrous. What if I am slow to gain strength?”

  “I cannot help that,” she said. “I did not expect to find you half dead owing to their cruel neglect. But if you are worried about what will happen to the young man, you must strive to get well quickly.” And then she winked at me. “Besides,” she went on, “the queen is not leaving with the king. What was arranged was that Stephen would be freed and the queen and Eustace would remain here as hostages. When Stephen arrives safe in London, Robert of Gloucester will be freed, leaving his son, Lord William, as hostage for the queen’s release. When Lord Robert arrives here, the queen and Eustace will go, and when she and her son are with the king, Lord William will be freed.”

  I shook my head. “Once Robert of Gloucester is here, we will need no other assurance of gaining our freedom. He is a very good man.”

  “Well, I had no way to know that,” she said pertly, “and it does no harm to be doubly sure.”

  In spite of her wink, which I took to mean she had never told Sir Gerald to dismember his prisoner and was only using that as a threat, I felt uneasy. I had found that women could be terribly cruel and spiteful. She must have seen that I was troubled, for that night when we were abed and there was no danger of being overheard, she told me that the young knight was safe and sound at Ulle in Sir Gerald’s care. She had seen the constable’s wife listening by the door while the king and queen were with us, which annoyed her, so she decided to give the woman an earful.

  As if one irritation had made her think of another, she then told me that Sir Giles would be gone and Ulle restored by the time we arrived. A copy of our charter and a letter from the queen as well as a full pardon for anything Sir Gerald might have done had gone with him to Ulle, together with permission for Sir Giles to give up his charge of the estate to Sir Gerald.

  “I have promised Sir Gerald that you would invest him with Irthing for his life,” she went on. “I hope you do not mind, Bruno. King David offered him a fine estate in Scotland—”

  “King David!” I echoed. “Do not tell me you induced him to be part of your army. I will not believe that.”

  Melusine giggled. “I will not ask it of you. No, it was Sir Gerald who captured him after the rout at Winchester, and David offered the estate as a bribe to allow him to escape.” She explained the circumstances of deciding not to hand King David to the queen and that Hugh had concealed David among his men and taken him safely to the Scottish border. “But Sir Gerald did not want to go to Scotland. He said he did not wish to begin anew among strangers. You are content for him to have Irthing, are you not?”

  “Good God, of course I am. I would not have cared if you wished to give him the property outright—I will offer that. It would have been dreadful to lose him. I will need him badly, for example, to tell me the manner of giving justice in Cumbria and such things which I suppose your father did not teach you.”

  “There are many things he did not teach me.” I thought I heard resentment in her voice, but it was too dark to see her expression. “He said beautiful women did not need to know…many things.”

  I kissed her. “You are certainly beautiful, but I think a woman needs to know everything she can so t
hat she can protect herself. If I am to be away in service to the king, who will hold Ulle? You must be able to defend it—” My voice faltered when I realized what I had said, and I hurried on, “—and give justice and do all things as I would.”

  “I prefer to be ignorant and have you there,” she said, but her voice was light again and she cuddled closer against me so that I began to think of the main purpose for lying two in a bed.

  Unfortunately my body was not yet ready to follow my thoughts, but I did not mind. The night before, I had not even been able to think about coupling. By then I had forgotten all about the constable’s son, but I would have had no need to worry even if Melusine’s grisly threat had been true because I gained strength far faster than I had expected after my inability to recover when Grolier had cared for me. I suppose the difference in my spirits was the reason; I was very happy, happier each day as that strange terror that seemed to lie behind Melusine’s smiles ebbed.

  Later I learned that the lightness and laughter, the pretense that I was not sick—and the terrible fear that darkened Melusine’s eyes—were all learned over the year it took her mother to die of a wasting sickness. It seems I looked as her mother did toward the end. At first Melusine was sure I would die and all she could do was to ease my way, so she behaved as if my weakness was a game I was playing to amuse her. But I was not dying; I was recovering, and I felt happy with her teasing that I was lazy rather than weak so that it made me much stronger.

  Whatever the cause, in a week I was walking about in my room and two days earlier I had managed to put to its proper use the marital bed in which we lay. First when I began to caress her, Melusine seemed stunned, but a timid exploration soon assured her that Sir Jehan could stand by himself very well, even if Sir Bruno could not. To save my strength if not his, Melusine mounted me, but she rode me so well and so thoroughly that I needed a day’s rest before I tried again. My enthusiasm grew with my ability, and I played much longer the second time, longer still the third, and I needed no rest day between that and our fourth coupling.

  The middle of the second week, I went down on a fine day to walk in the garden. As I came through the bailey, to my joy I was greeted by Merwyn and Fechin. I was quite cross with Melusine for not telling me they were safe and had been with her all along although I grieved that Cormi was dead. Melusine apologized; she had forgotten that I did not know that they had escaped at Lincoln. She told me then how Fechin had put on Gloucester’s colors, but she did not tell the whole story, so when we left the garden and found Fechin waiting with Barbe, whom I had long given up as lost, I wept.

  That was not the last of my surprises. When Robert of Gloucester arrived a few days later—I had already been riding on Barbe and found riding hardly tired me at all, although I needed help to mount—he sent to me my armor and my sword. I did not weep over them, but I was very glad to have them back, not only because they were the best of their kind and would be costly to replace but because Sir Oliver had given them to me and they were dear to me on that account.

  That gesture, however, seemed to me like a polite hint to be gone. I knew from the fact that Lord Robert had not summoned me to give me the armor himself that he must find my presence a painful reminder that his party had lost all the great advantage they had won in the battle of Lincoln—and, from what Melusine had told me, largely because of the pride and stupidity of his sister, which must have been a bitter cud to chew. By his chaplain, I sent Gloucester my humble and heartfelt thanks and the news that my wife and I would depart the next day.

  Melusine was aghast when I told her, but she could not deny me when I pointed out that it was very late in the year and if we did not go within the next few days, at the latest, snow would close the passes near Ulle. I proved stronger than she feared, however. I did not faint with weariness after a day’s riding; I just ate twice what I would have without the exercise. I did not take a chill from the cold air either, not even when we met snow before we reached Rydal.

  Melusine made me laugh by the way she kept brushing the snow off me and the way she plied me with hot ale until I was nearly drunk. But I was surprised and much less pleased when, after the bailiff and his wife had withdrawn so Melusine and I were alone beside the fire, she said suddenly, “Let us stay here for the winter. The way to Ulle will be too hard for you in the snow, too cold.”

  “The snow is not deep,” I replied, surprised. “As for too hard—it is poor Barbe who does all the work. And I do not mind the cold. I can pull a fur around me if it grows colder. We will go to Ulle.”

  Melusine did not answer, only searched my face for a moment and then turned her eyes to the fire—but I had seen again that darkness in her eyes and a dreadful thought came to me. I sat frozen, unable to bring out the words I knew I must say, but our life would truly be together now, no longer a few weeks of play between long partings. We had now what I had promised her I would get when I had taken from her the knife with which she tried to kill me. And in all our years of marriage, there had always been those moments in which she drew back from me. Did she still want me dead?

  “Melusine,” I said, “if you cannot bear to see me sit in your father’s chair or drink from his cup, I will go back to the king and trouble you no more.”

  “Oh no, beloved, no,” she whispered, slipping from the bench on which we sat and kneeling before me, her hands gripping my arms. “No! Not even if it was by your hand Papa died. I know you did not kill him apurpose to get Ulle.”

  “I did not kill him at all!” I exclaimed. “Melusine, in God’s name, have you carried that fear—that you were lying abed with your father’s killer—all these years? My love, dearling, I know I did not harm your father or your brother. I was not even at Wark at the time of the battle. I was with the king, and we came too late. Why did you not ask me?”

  A weak smile trembled on her lips. “I did not want to know.”

  “Is that why you never would say you loved me, dear heart?”

  She put her head down on my knee then and whispered, “No. I am afraid to love. What I love, dies.”

  I pulled her up into my lap and held her tight, remembering all the cruel losses in her life, but it would do her no good to yield to her fears. “All men, and all women too, die,” I said. “Will you withhold joy from me during my life because of that? You once asked me if I thought I was God to make and unmake the fate of kingdoms. Must I ask you the same question? You are only a woman. Whether you love or not, I will live or die as God wills.”

  “But we are so near home, so near safety. I cannot believe my happiness will not be snatched away from me.”

  “That is gross superstition,” I said, laughing at her. “And you are not the only one who feels that way, so do not put on airs.”

  She laughed a little then, although I felt tears on my cheek where hers rested. “Oh, very well,” she said. “We will ride on to Ulle.”

  So we pressed on early the next morning though the horses were fetlock deep in snow. A few times, when the trail seemed to disappear completely, I wished I had not insisted, but Vinaigre knew every foot of the way and led us without once faltering. We arrived safely as dusk was falling to find my dream turned real—a roaring fire of winter blazing on the hearth of a well-lit hall in which a tall polished chair stood empty at the head of a long table from whose filled benches a tumult of greeting rose as Melusine walked in.

  This time I stood in the doorway apurpose, waiting for her to look at me. I could not bear that there be any shadow between us. Well, I no longer feared to lose her even if she did remember. I was sure now that I could soothe her hurt. But when she looked across the room, she smiled. For a moment I thought she did not remember and I would have to tell her in words, but she came to me, held out her hand, and led me to her father’s chair. There she kissed me and said, “Be welcome, beloved invader. Be welcome in your own home.”

  Epilogue

  Melusine

&
nbsp; I heard this afternoon that Queen Maud was dead, and I thought back eleven years to the day I had last seen her when she said she would like to visit Ulle and see its beauty. Although she remained at Bristol keep for nearly two weeks more, I was busy with Bruno and did not go to her. And she never came to Ulle. I wept for her. Poor queen, those eleven years had been as bitter for her as they had been sweet for me. As Bruno had feared, the war continued all that time. Oh, there were truces now and again, but they never lasted long and treachery piled on treachery.

  In Ulle, we lived in peace—at least after Bruno righted the wrong of Magnus’s murder. Mary’s dead husband’s father and brother are dead now, their lands divided between us and Mary, whose sons have been restored to her. Bruno went to the king to swear fealty for Ulle and the new lands and to receive quittance for having done justice without proper warrant. I almost died of fear until he returned, but he begged continued leave because the lands needed his attention and Stephen did not hold him.

  Even so, for the next year, I was terrified that the king would summon him. I was carrying my first son by then and could not have accompanied him even after the boy was born, for we had no one fit to rear a child in our manor. Bruno must have felt the same, although he never said so, and at last, in our fourth year in Ulle after our second son was born, he went to the king to offer his service if he were needed. I quarreled with him bitterly before he left, but he was right. Stephen seemed barely to remember him, thanked him warmly for the offer, accepted his fealty and his homage for Ulle—and released him from his promise, except for the military service any vassal might be called on to perform. But he was never called.