Power of Darkness

by Doris Sutcliffe Adams

  'I would I might thank her also.'

  But the ring was much too loose to stay on any finger of hers, and he had to take it back. She said abruptly, 'I would rather be married this way than with pomp and show, and a host of silly wine-fuddled fools to bed us with all the lewd jokes that have worn stale time out of mind.'

  'I would rather cheat them than you, Durande. But you must regret at least that that was your wedding-dress?'

  She glanced down at the disreputable garment in surprise. ‘I never thought of it.' Her dimple flickered. 'And bridal scarlet would become me almost as ill.’

  They were still laughing as they crossed the plank bridge over the shallow ditch and passed through the open gateway. Hélie swung down and caught his wife as she slid from the saddle, a courtesy to which she was plainly unaccustomed, and turned to the man who had opened the gate and who now stood bowing in a frenzy of abasement, a wizened fellow with an incongruous pot-belly balanced on stick-thin shanks.

  ' 'Save you, man. My father's bailiff?' he asked briskly.

  The man doubled again over his paunch. 'God save you, me lord. Your—your father, God rest him, set me cousin Anlaf on, b-but he died last Candlemas.' He bowed again. 'Y-your servant Osbern, me lord.' His voice was a peevish whine.

  'We will spend the night here, Osbern. Stand up and stop bowing, man!'

  He straightened and wrung his hands, which Hélie observed with distaste were ingrained with ancient grime, the chipped and untrimmed nails rimmed with it. He uttered a wail. 'Oh, good me lord, I never had no warning! I'd ha' had all set to rights proper, if so be as you'd give me warning!'

  At those ominous words Hélie's thick fair brows twitched together in dire foreboding. He glanced quickly at Durande, wondering just what horrors this place offered for her wedding-night, but her composed face gave nothing away. He turned back to Osbern, still wringing his hands and bowing, and surveyed him with increasing disfavour. His last bath must have been at the midwife's hands, and no water but rain and sweat had ever encountered his garments in all their lengthy existence. He was even more rankly offensive to the nose than to the eye, and he motioned him to keep his distance.

  'Show my servant the stables,' he ordered curtly, and nodded to Gino, who was holding the horses' bridles and awaiting orders, since he understood scarcely any English.

  'Yes, me lord—at once, me lord—I asks your pardon, me lord, if things be not as you'd wish, but I never had no warning!'

  The stable was near the gate. As Gino started towards it a slim long-legged cur, in whose ancestry gazehound predominated, slipped from behind it and stood prick-eared and eager. A hasty gesture from Osbern sent it fleeting like a grey shadow, its speed proclaiming that it had not been lamed in the claws of its forefeet as the law ordained of all dogs within the forest's precincts—a crime which would sorely penalize Osbern in a Forest Court. Hélie tightened his mouth and stalked across the littered, weed-grown courtyard to the hall.

  He flung back the door on the murk within, and the stench hit him. 'Merciful God!' he said prayerfully, and peered flinchingly. Last year's rotting rushes, clotted with filth and decaying food; a sulky fire befogging the gloom with acrid smoke; a malodorous pottage bubbling in a large earthen vessel at the fire’s edge, mingled with the wild-beast stink of unclean peasant to outdo a fox’s earth. His eyes discerned an unscrubbed table black with grease, a clutter of unscoured trenchers and mugs, hangings soiled and torn and pulled loose from their fastenings, and in a corner a lean bitch suckling a litter of squeaking whelps, that raised her head to snarl at him. A couple of bedraggled hens were scratching in the appalling rubbish.

  Osbern was at his heels again, still witlessly yammering that he had had no warning, that all would have been set to rights had he but had warning.

  ‘Warning?’ Hélie exploded. ‘Lord of Heaven, warning to perform your plain duty? Set yourself here as bailiff, and turn a decent hall into a den unfit to house swine!’

  ‘Good m-me lord, if I had but known—’

  ‘Is my bride to spend her wedding-night in this sty?'

  He uttered an inarticulate wail, his knobby knees shaking in their baggy hose. Hélie observed, amid the clutter on the table, two blackened wooden bowls set side by side, though their state would have turned the inwards of any normally sensitive man set to eat from them.

  ‘Have you a wife?’ he demanded harshly.

  ‘Aye, me lord, and indeed she’d be here to serve you, but me married daughter be layin’-in wi’ her first and her man fetched her not an hour gone, me lord!’

  ‘Have the slut who wrought this serve me? Get you to your married daughter or the devil before I kick you there! Go!’

  He scuttled for his life, squawking and flapping like a demented hen, and the unlawed dog flashed lithely after him. Hélie swore disgustedly, and turned in appalled compunction to his bride, composed and silent beside him. Their eyes met. Her composure melted into mirth. She rocked with unfeigned laughter, tears starting in her eyes, and his own anger began to slide from his grasp.

  ‘Oh, merciful Saints, we are married!’ she spluttered. ‘I had thought it a dream I must wake from, but this is beyond all dreams!’

  ‘If domestic disaster were needed to convince you, we have it.’ He began to laugh despite his outrage. ‘I shall prove it shortly in pleasanter fashion.’

  She chuckled. 'My lord-'

  'Hélie.'

  'But a wife owes respect—'

  'A wife owes obedience before all else. You will call me by name,’ he said severely, and sealed his first command with a swift kiss. Then he gazed rather helplessly into the noisome hall. 'What under Heaven do we do?'

  'Burn it down.’

  'Nothing less will serve to purify it, but lodging for this night we must have.’

  The hall's monumental squalor presented a challenge they could not refuse. They went at it in a kind of fury. Gino and Stephen, armed with rakes, evicted hens, cur and pups, and dragged forth the festering mass of foul rushes, decomposing remnants, droppings and nests of mice, scraping the floor to honest earth. Hélie fired the heap lest its multitudinous inhabitants walk it away piecemeal, and regretted it as billows of nauseous smoke hunted them to windward. Durande, her skirts hitched high above shameless ankles, ripped down wall-hangings, assailed cobwebs, flung back shutters and rooted in corners with the ferocious zest of an outraged housewife, treating her husband's suggestion that she leave the labour to the men with the scorn it deserved. Hélie accepted the evident fact that he would receive just as much obedience as his wife found convenient, pitched the revolting pottage crock and all into the pigsty, and drew pail after pail of water from the fine spring-fed well.

  His researches in a dubious pantry disclosed nothing better than a slab of last Martinmas's bacon that would have turned the stomach of a January wolf, and a meal-barrel a-crawl with weevils, but Gino, whose bandit's nose for concealed valuables had survived reformation unimpaired, came grinning from the outbuildings with hanging evidence, a shoulder of venison. Hunger would not wait on its roasting; he sliced collops from it and set them to broiling over a quick fire outdoors. Hélie slung the cauldron over the hearth and filled it with water. Durande mercilessly scoured metal utensils. Stephen returned to the stables to bed down the horses.

  Hélie mopped his brow, massaged shoulders unused to the bucket-yoke, and wondered if ever a tenant-in-chief before him had known such a wedding-day. He was hot and tired and filthy and labouring like a scullion; he was ravenous and his supper promised to be less than adequate; he had not ventured his nose within the bower but he could guess at the lodging it would offer, and yet he was aware of immense enjoyment. He caught Durande's mirthful eye, and they grinned at each other like brats in mischief. He thought of all they had missed; his mother's cousin the Bishop to marry them in a blaze of candles, vestments and altar-plate; the dazzle of silks and brocades and embroidery; the formal feast with guests by the score and speeches droning; the tipsy, hilarious procession t
o the bed and the stale jests and ribald laughter as bride and groom were undressed and laid together. This was better by far.

  The last platter clattered on the pile and Durande straightened. Hélie, who had seen enough of her hands in servants' work, swooped and bore her off to the bower. She came into his arms as naturally as a child. Oddly enough, it was he who knew shyness, remembering shamefully Osanne de Périval, small and slight and tantalizing, and the arts of harlotry she had taught him. Then he forgot her and all else but the tall and generous body in his hold, the warmth and eagerness that sent his spirit mounting triumphantly as a flame. His lips moved down from her mouth to her throat, where a pulse throbbed under his kisses. Her strong arms tightened about him, and she breathed his name against his ear.

  Gasping and shaken, they drew apart at last, and he held both her hands to his thumping heart. Her face was a pale wonder in the gloom, between the dusky braids of heavy hair, as he had first seen her. 'I did not know love was so beautiful,' she whispered.

  Suddenly the bower's sordid ugliness pierced him the more keenly. He would have set her amid all the luxuries of a queen's chamber and reckoned them little enough, and he looked round on dirt and dilapidation, the frowsty bed covered with filthy matted sheepskins, the blankets riddled to corruption by moths.

  'And I brought you here for our marriage-night!' he burst out in remorse.

  'What matter? Your love is enough,' she answered serenely.

  'You set too little value on yourself!' he said harshly, scalded with self-loathing. 'God knows I am not worthy—you know I wasted love on an adulterous whoring—’

  She said simply, 'That is past.'

  He drew breath sharply. 'It is your right to know, Durande. She dazzled and deceived me; she used my folly to conceal her intrigue with a greater paramour; she lied my best friend to death, and at the last her husband slew her. And tonight I would give Trevaine itself to come to you as my first love!’

  'It will content me to be your last.’

  'That I swear to be.’ He lifted her hands to his lips, shamed and yet purged of that dead folly, and she gripped his fingers tightly. Then he drew her out into the fading daylight.

  The toasted collops of venison pleasantly tickled their discomfited nostrils. Supper was shortly augmented by two small girls, toiling up from the village with a great bowl of frumenty, new wheat boiled with milk and honey, and a basket of eggs, despatched by the reeve’s wife, who had doubtless made a sound guess at the state of Osbern’s pantry. To the famished company this transformed the meal to a veritable wedding-feast, and the venison being ready long before the bath-water, they washed hands and fell to, outside under the flaring sunset around the cooking-fire. As they finished Gino rose and slipped inside, emerging after some time to grin and wink at Hélie.

  'We will sleep in the stable, my lord, on sweet straw.’

  'Should we not set a guard, Lord Hélie?’ asked Stephen.

  'A guard? What need?’

  ‘Them witches saw to it you’d not get home this night, my lord. Who’s to guess what mischief they mean you?’

  ‘Lord of Heaven, what harm can come to us in my own lodge? You think too long on witches, Stephen.’

  He subsided a little sullenly. An aptitude to know better than others must run in the Trevaine blood, Hélie reflected with rueful amusement. Then his half-brother heaved himself to his feet, a reluctant smile on his mouth, and said formally, 'God grant you joy of each other, my lord, my lady.’ He swung the heavy gate shut, heaved the great wooden bar into its sockets on either post, and entered the stable without glancing back.

  There was a small bath-tub in the bower, warped and leaking from disuse, and Hélie carried in hot water for his bride. Himself he stripped in the courtyard and scrubbed himself from a wooden bucket. One day he would teach her the pleasure of bathing together, but one dealt gently with a virgin’s modesty. His heart turned Stephen’s wish to a prayer, that Durande might find joy in his arms. The fire had died to hot coals, pulsing scarlet in the wind with little blue flames flickering across them; the glow was hot on his flesh and flushed his fair skin with reflected light. Dusk was filling the corners and settling under the palisade, creeping out like mist over the open bailey, but the blue-green sky held light above the first stars pricking the east.

  Gino stood by smiling, and when he was done sluiced a bucketful of fresh water over him and passed him a clean but musty-smelling towel unearthed from some chest in the bower. Competent in all he set hand to, Gino had made of himself the finest body-servant heart could desire.

  'And when do you start for Italy?' Hélie asked him, between jest and apprehensive earnest.

  'When you dismiss me, Lord Hélie.'

  'I would rather not spend my days belting the tails of addleheaded pages.' He briskly towelled his broad chest and lean belly, grinning at his one-time brigand with the comradeship that was never mentioned between them.

  'I will not say that you have chosen wisely,' pronounced Gino benevolently, 'for your head is too full of moonshine for wisdom to enter it. It must be the good God led you by the hand to your lady.'

  Hélie retreated behind the towel and mercilessly rubbed his hair, spluttering laughter and flushing scarlet together. The accusation was neither new nor unjust, and he did not dispute its accuracy. He had entered this entanglement in chivalrous indignation for an ill-used girl, and found a prize beyond his expectation or desert. 'With two of you to utter wisdom in either ear, I have put myself between the upper and nether millstones,' he said resignedly. Gino chuckled. He took the damp towel and swung Hélie's cloak about his bare shoulders. They grinned at each other in perfect understanding. Hélie kicked his feet into his shoes, gathered up his clothes and sword-belt and strode towards the hall door, his heart beating oddly and his breath coming short.

  Durande stood white and straight by candlelight, tugging a comb through the fall of hair that veiled her to the thighs. He dropped his bundle, the sword clattering unheeded, let fall his cloak and reached her in three strides. He caught up two great handfuls of that heavy mane that clung to his fingers and brushed tingling against his breast, and buried his face in its softness. Her hands gripped his shoulders, trembling a little. 'Do not fear me, Durande,' he murmured, lifting his head to meet her wide dark eyes. Softly he smoothed back her hair from shoulders and breasts. 'Dear girl, you are beauty's self!' She whispered his name. He fastened his mouth on her parted lips, and their bodies melted together like two flames.

  He drew her gently to the bed. The final bathetic disenchantment of that incredible wedding-night met them. Gino had pitched sheepskins and frowsty blankets into the furthest corner and made up the bed with incorruptible linen sheets, but as Hélie twitched back the uppermost the advance skirmishers of a hostile host scuttled from the candlelight. Hélie stiffened furiously, his arm tensing about his bride's shoulders, and she uttered a shaken chuckle. He exploded.

  'God's Glory! I will not share our marriage-bed with vermin whose name is legion!'

  He wrapped his cloak round her, scooped up her clothes and his own, and tucked his sword firmly under his arm. 'Will you venture new hay in a shed with me, Durande?'

  She flung her arms about him and choked on laughter. 'Or the grass under the stars—anything! Holy Saints, what manner of wedding-night we have!'

  Laughter struck him like a club. They clung together, sobbing and helpless, until they could reel from the bower hand in hand, half-blind with tears and crowing like inebriated roosters. Gasping with mirth, they crossed the courtyard. Together they tore apart stacked hay, and weeping with laughter spread it for a bed. Between passion and laughter they lay down under Hélie's cloak, and found their joy together.

  11

  Hélie woke in darkness, the sweetness of hay in his nostrils. Durande's head was warm upon his shoulder, her arm across his body, her hair spread over his breast. He smiled with drowsy content and lay listening to her steady, gentle breathing. The dear weight of her was heavy against
his side, dearer than ever for the half-shy, half-eager love she had given him. God had surely led him by the hand; sleepily he acknowledged his debt.

  In far Provence, between foemen and husbands a man learned to sleep lightly and rouse alert. Old habit pricked him. The smile quitted his lips, and he lifted his head a little, wondering what had wakened him. Some sound or stir outside had pierced his sleep, but who or what should be afoot in the bailey before dawn? Then a thin flicker of reddish light glanced through a chink in the shed's flimsy door, and to his nostrils was borne a faint drift of smoke. Yet the cooking-fire had sunk to embers by sundown, and the brief fierce flare of the foul rushes had consumed them to ashes long before that.

  Durande's hand gripped his arm, and her head lifted. Her body tensed in his hold, and her hair brushed his skin. She too woke with all her senses in her, wary and still as he. He breathed a warning hiss that would have reached no further than her ears, gently freed himself and reached for his clothes. A faint but strengthening light was probing every gap in the rickety shed. He scrambled into tunic and shoes and belted on his sword. Durande, a dim shadow beside him, was flapping into smock and gown. A thin, unmistakable crackle brought him to the door. He opened it far enough to put forth his nose, alarm making him cautious.

  The courtyard was full of red light and flickering shadows. The hall's thatch was ablaze in half a dozen places, and as he peered, fire streaked from the sky and struck with a solid thud near the ridge. Crackling flame clutched dry straw, and smoke plumed up. Hélie's heart jumped. Fire-arrows! A scrape and a scuffle jerked his head towards the gate. The fire picked out pale hands and faces; two men inside the palisade, already running for the hall; a third astride the gate and swinging over. He scrabbled at its darkness with both hands. The bar grunted in its sockets.

  Hélie ran at him. The Devil only knew how many of his minions awaited the gate's opening outside. The thud of Hélie's soft shoes or some eye-corner glimpse whipped the fellow about, a long knife glinting red. He dodged nimbly aside with a warning yelp. Hélie swung about, his back to the threatened gate, and slashed back-handed. The man was light and quick; he dropped to one knee under the blow and lunged at Hélie's midriff. The other two had reached the hall door; now one came running back with uplifted spear, while the other nocked an arrow to bowstring. He drew. Over his assailant's head Hélie caught the tiny twinkle as he shifted aim, trying for a clear shot. From the stables sounded a shout of alarm, a squeal and a crashing of hooves.