by Ann Lawrence
It was Gilles’ turn to snort in derision. “Loves me? Aye, loves the benefits of whore to the lord of the manor.” He punctuated his pain with another fist to the table.
“You just called her a whore.” Roland frowned. “Am I the only one to whom you’ve called Emma a whore? I tell you, I like the wench, and do not approve of what you would make her.”
Gilles paced the chamber. “I was angry. I called her my leman when only she was there, but…I was shouting. It is possible others heard. I made her out to be nothing. when she is everything to me.”
“So…we have the heart of the matter. She took exception, justly so, and shuns you.”
“Shuns me?” Gilles began to laugh. It was an ugly sound. “She despises me. Yet I know if I command her to me, she will come.” He again turned away from his friend and stared into the fire. It burned as they had burned, but now he had naught but ashes. “I summoned her once. ‘Twas an agony to have her…nay, she was not there. She inhabited my bed, but her soul was not there. What use is that—to know she comes only in obedience, or worse, fear?”
“Gilles. Decide how you feel for the wench and act upon it. It is unlike you to equivocate on any subject.” Roland crossed the chamber and placed his hand on his friend’s arm. “An apology may be just what is needed. I apologize for much—whether I am to blame or not. It soothes the womanly spirit. And, for what it is worth, my Sarah and I believe that Emma feels naught but contempt for Belfour.”
“Contempt?” Gilles asked doubtfully.
“Aye. The man is relentless. There is more than one maid in this keep who has cause to despise him for his heartless rutting. Believe your Emma. If she says that naught is between them…then it is so. She has confided in my Sarah that ‘tis you she loves. I believe she said some ridiculous nonsense about you being the very air she breathes, or some such jongleur’s words fit only for wenches and the jakes.”
Gilles began to pace. “I must speak to her. ‘Tis difficult—”
“Aye—especially since she is no longer here.” Roland stepped back from his friend’s ire, hands raised. “I only bear the tale.”
“Where is she?” Gilles asked. “I assumed, when I did not see her about the hall, that she was avoiding me.”
Roland shook his head.
Gilles had thought he had felt the limits of his pain, but Roland’s words took him to a dark place he did not want to visit.
Emma had left him.
“Sarah says the wench has returned to what she was—whatever that means.” Roland’s words were lost as Gilles stormed from the chamber and clattered down the stairs. Men scattered as he ran across the cobbles of the bailey. He burst into the chatter of the weavers. “Sarah,” he roared. “Where is she?”
Sarah rose from her place and laid aside her handwork. “Now you wish to know!” She spoke loudly, near as ever a person might be to impertinent without the punishment of a whipping. Both ignored the interested stares of the other weavers. “‘Tis four days, my lord, since she left this place. Four days. Much harm may befall such a sweet and guileless woman as Emma in four days, especially in a village half-burned and in turmoil. She said that by going she made more room for those in need. ‘Twas just an excuse. How could you have let this come to pass?”
“Consider me suitably chastised,” Gilles thundered. “I thought I was practicing patience and forbearance. Where is she?”
“You will treat her with care, my lord?”
Sarah’s audacity went unnoticed. Gilles was in a fever. “Aye. Where?”
“Against the wall. Go east.”
Gilles went to his chamber and snatched up a mantle. He sought her on foot, thrusting past everyone in his path, unseeing. Snow filled the air, swirling about him, laying a white blanket over the scars of the fire.
It took him no more than three-quarters of an hour to find her place. The loom betrayed her to him, though she was not there.
He could pace her hut in two strides. The space was cold. He touched his fingertips to the stone wall and shivered. In moments, he’d lighted her brazier. Its scant heat did little to warm him. The thought of her sleeping here, of Angelique, made him pause. As he fed her small store of sticks to the meager flames, he sensed she’d returned.
He rose and faced her. She studied him in silence and then gestured to the gray world outside. Snowflakes clung to her mantle.
“Please step without, my lord.” Her words were calmly spoken, but were as cold as the winter wind.
“I do not want to talk with you before the whole village, Emma.” He stood silently by her loom until she shrugged in resignation, entered, and seated herself on her stool. The space was barely warmed by the small brazier.
“Your presence will merely confirm what all suspect of me.”
“Then we shall leave the door open so the curious will have their questions answered.” He flung the door back. A gust of wind threatened the weak flames of the fire. “Where is Angelique?” He dropped into a crouch before her, pulling his dagger from its sheath and playing its point over the beaten earth floor, tracing random designs.
“Is the knife some means of intimidating me to tell you where she is, my lord?” Emma asked.
“Forgive me, Emma, it is just a habit of mine,” Gilles said, rising and sheathing the knife. “Where is she?” He hid his real purpose behind his concern for Angelique. Just being in Emma’s presence robbed him of his ability to articulate, robbed him of his composure. He felt raw and exposed.
“Safe.”
“Safe? What danger has her lodged somewhere far from her mother?” Gilles was astounded. “What do you fear?”
“She is safe from your anger.” Emma knotted her hands.
“My anger?” Incredulity streaked across his face. “I mean no harm to Angelique. How could you think I would harm her, an innocent child? I have only affection and concern for her. Nay—I would never hurt her!”
“I thought you would never hurt me, my lord. I was very wrong. There is ofttimes as much harm in words as in a fist.”
A deep flush heated his cheeks as she stared at him. “It is hardly the same thing,” he said.
“I beg to differ—it is the same thing. When you are angry, you lash out. Angelique is mine…and as you said, the only thing I have in this world. I’ll protect her from you and anyone else that may harm her. Promise you’ll never come here again, never speak to her, and I’ll bring her home. She will have a safe and contented life here with me, and I with her.”
Only the sound of their breathing pierced the silence that followed her words.
Never to see Emma or Angelique again.
Gilles cleared his throat and looked away first. “Emma, I was wrong to lash out as I did. It was a grievous error in judgment. I would have your forgiveness.”
“Nay, Gilles. I’ll never forgive you. All knew what was between us. All knew you had me at your leisure.” Emma’s voice broke. “I was a fool twice. The first time the foolishness was of my own making. Yet I have Angelique to compensate me for that error. She is my sign from God that surely He forgave me my foolishness. But I erred again. Only this mistake has no compensation—only pain and more pain.” Her eyes glinted with tears. “How foolish I was to degrade myself to be with you, to lie with you without vows. I had no pride. I pretended to myself that I could put aside the words I’d said to William, could pretend I did not make my child a bastard in the doing. You brought me most brutally to my senses.”
Never to be forgiven. The pain was enormous, a stone in his throat, a burning conflagration in his belly.
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “There is no forgiveness necessary. Did you know that I’m referred to at the well as Lord Gilles’ cast-out whore? I do not need to forgive you, my lord, for treating me as one treats his whore. Your behavior was appropriate in every way. I was beneath contempt and you treated me thusly. Do not seek forgiveness for acting on the truth. Just go away and let me be. Never come back. Ever.”
“I can’t promis
e. I can’t stay away,” Gilles said softly. His guts burned. How efficiently he’d destroyed her. How efficiently he’d made his own future a hell.
Emma sank back to the stool and began to cry. She held her hands stiffly in her lap and let the tears roll down her cheeks. She didn’t care if he watched. She was defeated. How could she have imagined that a baron would heed any wish of a weaver? How could she have imagined that a baron would heed any wish of a weaver? How could she have imagined how bleak life would be without him, without his love?
“Emma.” Gilles went down on one knee before her. He touched her bowed head with a tentative hand. “Don’t cry. I never meant to hurt you, but I must see you.”
All the days of upset congealed into a ball of fury within her. Each day, just drawing water was an exercise in her defeat. Each walk through the warren of hovels and stalls that crouched at the castle’s base was a torture of proposition and lewd suggestions.
Each day was a lesson in a woman’s place beneath the heel of man. She shot to her feet, the tears gleamed on her cheeks. “You must see me?” She yanked at the lacing of her gown. “Are you willing to pay me? I could get tuppence from the mercer for a look at my breasts. Sixpence to lie on my back for the alehouse customers,” she taunted.
He stumbled back as she jerked open her woolen gown and kirtle, baring her breasts to him. “See me, my lord. See me.” Her naked breasts heaved as she gulped in air. “Have me, have me if that is your will. But, first, let me close the door.” She slammed it with all her strength. “The village harlots hang a rag on the latch as a signal they are occupied. Have you a piece of cloth? Mayhap your belt will do!”
Gilles held his hands palm out. He could not bear the words she spoke. “Catch hold of yourself, Emma. Stop this.”
“Haven’t you sixpence, my lord?”
“Stop it!” He grasped her wrists and pinned her to the rough stone wall. She fought wildly against his strength, bent and bit his hands, kicked his shins. He wrapped his arms about her, held her tightly against his chest, ignored any pain she inflicted, until she went still in his arms, sobbing and heaving gasps of breath. He lifted her and carried her to the straw-stuffed pallet and placed her gently there. He stretched out beside her, his arms still tightly holding her in case she flew out of control again.
She lay stiff as an iron pike in his arms. Tears ran over her cheeks. There was a streak of blood from his hand on her cheek. Every muscle in her body quivered against him. Her eyes gleamed dark blue, filled with her shame.
As if a bolt of lightning had struck him, he felt what she felt, knew what it had cost her to come to him as a lover. A tremor ran along his arms to his hands where they held her. There must be an answer that would allow them to be together.
Darkness fell and still he held her. He stroked her hair and held her loosely against his chest. He did not speak, and eventually her head fell against him.
He rose once and went out to the side of her hut to relieve himself. ‘Twas then he noticed the stench of refuse that lay on the misty night air and the stink of charred wood. That she must daily take in these scents added to his guilt.
When he returned, he gathered her back into his arms and held her close, stroking her hair that smelled of a soap he knew was poor stuff. She was clean, but no essence of flowers scented the soaps she used. He did not like the thought of harsh soaps against her skin.
He dozed and woke finding that dawn had broken. He eased from her arms and shut the door, closed them into the small space. When he returned to the pallet, he saw that she was awake. He stretched beside her and began to speak. “I am no longer young, Emma.”
“How does youth enter this?” She was calm now, had been awake a long time, listening to his heart beat. She was no more sure of what to do now than when she’d attacked him. Her whole being flooded with humiliation at how she’d lost control. Just as he had…and how she’d blamed him, held it against him.
“He is but a score of years.” He fisted his hand and smacked the earth beside them. “I have lines on my face, scars on my body. I cannot compete with such youth.”
“You have no need to compete.” She rose on her elbow and looked down at the stark honesty on his face. How could this have escaped her? He envied William in a way she couldn’t understand. “I see the power in you, the many facets of your character. Aye, I also see the smoothness of William’s youth, the facile nature of his being. Were he three score he would not have your wisdom or caring. I don’t compare you, Gilles. Please believe me.” She pressed her palm to his chest, felt the rapid, agitated beat of his heart. “I care not for your age.”
“I feel like the old men of jests who are helped to climb on their wives. I may not be there now, but in a few years…”
“Nay. I will not have it!”
“If you still love him—”
“I love you. I want nothing more than to be with you. I believe you interpreted my ardor as experience—experience I gained with William, but I never found passion with him,” she whispered. “He took me but once, and ‘twas over before I knew what had happened. What I had with you cannot compare.
“Only you have made me feel passion. Anything William told you is a man’s bragging—swelling his prowess before one more powerful than he. You are all that is powerful to me, Gilles. It is an intangible that all in your presence feel. When you saved me in the forest, I thought ‘twas the devil come to claim me. I wanted only to be swept into hell with you. And I have been to hell, Gilles, the hell of wanting you, needing you, and knowing I’m but a vessel for your lust.”
“How can I take those words back into my throat?” Gilles’ hand was unsteady as he stroked her cheek with his knuckles.
“You can’t take them back; they will always be there.”
“Always?” He could barely say the word.
“I don’t know.” And she didn’t.
“You were never just a leman to me. I love you, Emma. I have been racked with jealousy at William’s knowledge of you. Rracked with guilt that I had the power to make him acknowledge you and Angelique—and yet I did not. Did I know even at the judging that I would one day want you for myself?
“When I saw you at the stairs with him, I thought you had lain with him, but I should have listened, and believed in you. To do anything else was to deny what it is I love about you—your sweetness, your caring, your inner beauty.” He looked away. “I thought you wanted him in your bed. I was the fool, not you.”
Emma rose above him, bent down to him, and stroked his cheek. “I want only you. I see you in my dreams. I see you in my mind’s eye as I weave, the shuttle flying in patterns it knows by heart, weaving you into the cloth of my life.”
When he did not respond she hurried on. “I met William and saw only his beauty. Nay, ‘twas his words—his songs that lured me in. I was so lonely, and he offered what I had lost when my mother died. I thought I loved him, when, in truth, I knew nothing about him. When I met you—at the judging—I felt struck by some disease, a fever to be near you, to know you. I beg you to understand—you are like the warp of my fabric, woven into my life. The cloth is not whole if you draw those threads. It falls apart. When I’m with you—flesh to flesh—I am like a person possessed.”
“I cannot live without you,” he said, his hand slipping into her hair.
“I promised before God I would be with no other.”
His black eyes roamed her face. “But you are not really free.” He touched her breast. “Not here, not within your heart.”
Silence stretched between them. Finally, he rose on one knee, pulled her to sit before him. He lifted her hand and spread it open, palm up on his right hand. With his left, he touched each finger, traced the calluses there at the tips, stroked the lines of her palm. When her fingers curled about his, captured his caressing hand, he lifted their joined hands to his mouth.
“Forgive me,” he breathed against her skin. “There is naught to my life without you—free or not.”
She
fisted her hands in his hair, yanked his head back, and studied his face. “Even if I were free, a weaver may not wed a lord.”
“She may if the lord wishes it.”
Her hand trembled as she traced the shape of his brow. “You would say vows with me, at the church?”
“Aye. If we can free you, will you wed me?”
“Free me?” Her voice trembled.
“I have been thinking all night. We could see the Abbot. Seek a dispensation from the archbishop, if necessary. It would benefit everyone.” He smiled and captured her hand. “I could purchase a great window for the abbey, with the Abbot’s face as St. Peter or some such.”
She could not prevent a smile, but then just as quickly as it had appeared, it died. “And if freedom is not possible?”
“It is possible. I feel it in my bones; I believe it.” His voice became rough with emotion. “I promised you I would be with no other.”
Peace flooded through her. The dawn no longer looked a dull gray, but silver—precious, foretelling a day worth living. “I, too, promised to be with no other.”
Their lips touched in a gentle caress, his tentative and fearful of frightening her with the sheer power of his need. Her fingers traced the shape of his face, skimmed his throat, his chest, and flattened over his groin. Her caresses there set him to groaning, and he cupped her face as his mouth grew hungry and urgent. She met his ardor, degree by fevered degree, stoking the flames to a conflagration. Painstakingly, Emma unlaced and removed his clothing until he was naked.
On her knees at his side, she kissed him as lightly as a butterfly sips nectar, from his shoulder to his knee. She visited her favorite places, the sharp male nipples, the black wings of hair across his chest, the sleek muscles of his arms and thighs that shuddered with leashed power beneath her touch. She examined his bandages and kissed the tips of his injured fingers.
Every place she touched, burned. The golden skeins of her hair slipped across his shoulders and arms. He shivered with anticipation. He pulled her into his arms and atop him.
Together, they slid sword into sheath, and then were swept away. His hands snatched her down, breast to breast as their hips and mouths met in a clash. She took him and he took her. They burned at the same moment, and quickly, like a spark to dry straw. Emma tore her mouth from his just as the incredible heat of her release swept her. Her cries of ecstasy were her gift to him. He pulled her mouth back to his, his kisses gentle now, to soothe her lips. He touched her soul; she possessed his.