by Judith Tarr
He caught himself rubbing his cheek where the stag’s hoof had scored it. He lowered his hand and rubbed it on his thigh. “You had no difficulty, then. Considering two sons, and the third on the way.”
Walter Tirel shrugged without embarrassment—and without cockiness, either. “She’s a good wife: better than I have any right to. But there it is. God has blessed me.”
“You almost tempt me to try it myself,” William said.
Walter Tirel smiled. “Heirs are useful. They silence the preachers rather conclusively.”
“My people are pushing a marriage at me,” said William.
“She’s a child—well, not so young now; she must be eighteen, give or take a year. Raised in a convent. God knows what good she’d be.”
“She might surprise you,” Walter Tirel said.
William peered into his cup. Somehow it had emptied itself. The page had fallen over among the dogs. They were all snoring in unison.
Walter Tirel rose lightly and plucked the winejar from the page’s oblivious grasp, bending to fill William’s cup. William felt the heat of him, and caught the scent of clean young male, that was better than flowers. Flowers were a woman’s vanity.
It was perfectly natural and inevitable that they should kiss. William always had his guard up—he never let it down. But here, with this man, he felt no fear at all, and no mistrust.
The kiss lingered. Just as it began to fade, William lifted them both to their feet. They picked their way through hounds and sleeping page, through the door that led to the top of the tower.
No lamp was lit in the lord’s chamber, but the high window was open, and the moon shining through. Things were dancing in the light: gauzy beings, all but transparent. William told himself they were harmless.
He let himself fall to the bed, taking the young lord with him. Walter Tirel was as limber as a boy, but strong as a grown man should be. He fit wonderfully into William’s spaces.
William woke in the dark. There was warmth beside him, breathing gently. His hand brushed thick curling hair and smooth plane of shoulder. Walter Tirel murmured and burrowed into his side.
William sighed. His body was still singing. His cheek stung. He would have to find a salve for that, come morning.
The moon had set, but the stars were bright. The spirits that had crowded the moonlight were gone. But something was there, watching.
Whatever it was, William could not see it clearly at all, but he felt it keenly: a deep chill. Almost he thought he saw a skeletal body and a stag’s skull with a corpse-light in the sockets of its eyes, hovering in the air above the tower.
It was waiting. Watching. Against his will, he remembered Robin’s warning. Any friend you make on this journey, he’ll bring you ill luck.
William shook off both the memory and the bony apparition. It was an attack of night terrors, no more. This beautiful and perfect creature, whom God Himself had cast into William’s lap, had no stink of ill omen about him. He was born as lucky as William. They were meant for this; for what William knew, thoroughly beyond doubt, was love.
CHAPTER 38
It’s begun.”
Edith looked up from kneading bread. The puca was perched on a stool in his least-favored, most nearly human form.
“The last dance,” he said. “It’s begun.”
“What—” Edith said.
The puca shrank into his much more familiar and beloved cat-shape and sprang down from the stool, trotting off toward Brigid the cook, who always had a bit of fish for a cat who seduced her properly.
Edith stared after him. It was like a puca to utter something incomprehensible, then leave her to baffle herself with it.
Of course when he spoke of a dance, she would think of Beltane—and flush hot down to her center, though that dance and its aftermath were close on half a year past. She had spoken to no one of that night, and no one had asked. It was her secret, cherished close, to remember and dream about through the whole of that spring and summer and into the autumn.
Henry did not even know her name. She wanted it that way. What had been between them was a great magic, Beltane magic. It did not even matter if he remembered her—and chances were he did not. Henry was a lord in the old way; very old. He sowed his seed far and wide.
Mostly she accepted that. In ancient days she would have taken many lovers, too, and a king every year, to be sacrificed when the old year died. Now the world was different. Christians had a dream of fidelity, of one man and one woman, through life until death.
It was a dream more often honored in the breach than in the observance. Kings were worse sinners than any, and priests of the Church were not known for chastity, either, regardless of what their law might say.
Still there were times when Edith was ferociously jealous of any and all women who might have shared Henry’s bed since Beltane night. She wanted him to remember her; to think only of her. To—
What? Come riding to the Isle and sweep her away? That would be all well and good, but he was a mere count. She was meant for a king.
He was the year-king—her year-king. Maybe she should sacrifice him on the Day of the Dead, or wait until Beltane came round again. Then he would be hers utterly, and no one else would ever have him.
She was a little crazed. No doubt of that. And now the puca had spoken his words that made very little sense at all.
She was supposed to remember them. She finished what she was doing, slid the finished loaves into the oven to bake, and went on to the next of her duties. Whatever was coming, people still needed to eat.
“There now,” said the blue-eyed girl. She was not laughing, which was merciful of her. “Don’t look so shocked. It happens to everyone.”
“Not to me,” Henry snarled. “It never happens to me.”
“I’m sure,” the girl said. She might not be laughing, but neither was she trying very hard to pretend she believed him.
It happened to be true. Henry rolled out of bed and snatched up his clothes, pulling them on so sharply the seams bade fair to give way.
They were well sewn. They held. The girl lay where he had left her, pale gold hair tumbled over her shoulders, taut breasts mocking him with their impudence. Her face was hardly more than a child’s, but her eyes were old. “You’ll get it back,” she said. “You’ll forget her—or she’ll come back to you. Maybe both.”
Henry stopped short. “I don’t even know her name,” he said.
“That matters?”
He stared at her. His eye had fallen on her because—God help him—she looked like her. He had not had a woman since that night in the hedgerow—the longest he had gone without since he was a beardless boy. He should have been a rampant bull, not this useless, cursed thing.
“I know a charm,” the girl said. “Give me a penny and I’ll get one for you.”
“What, you’re a witch now?” Henry said. “You have a charm to make me a man again?”
“That’s not what you want,” she said. “You want her. I’ll get you something to bring you back to her.”
“If that could be done,” Henry said bitterly, “I would have done it.”
She looked hard at him. Her eyes widened slightly. “Ah,” she said. “So. Still—men don’t have the art, not this kind. Either it’s beneath them, or it’s too high for them to see.”
She held out her hand. Henry was a fool, but he thrust a silver penny into it. She tested the penny with her sharp white teeth, and made it disappear—though where, since she was naked, he could not imagine. “You wait here,” she said.
She pulled on her shift and gown, plaited her hair quickly, and slipped out of the room.
Henry had no intention of waiting for her, but he had to admit he was curious. If she came back with an army of bravos intent on robbing him of the rest of his silver, well, he had defenses against that.
He sat on the bed. It was clean, which was not always the case in such places. It smelled of herbs and a faint, sharp tang of magic. Outside he hea
rd people passing on the street, going to and from the market of Gloucester. The tavern downstairs was almost quiet. It was an odd time of day for drinkers: too early to carouse, too late to sleep.
He had found the girl in the market. Whatever she had gone there for, she had seemed pleased to forget it in return for a brisk hour with a charming knight. The owner of this tavern was a friend of hers; she had slanted a glance at the woman as she led Henry up the stair, but nothing more had passed between them. And here was the room, clean and swept, ready for trade.
He suspected it was her room. The chest at the bed’s foot was full of women’s things, gowns and shifts and ribbons and, deep down, a purse that clanked when he lifted it. There was a fair amount of copper inside, and a piece or two of silver.
He slipped a handful of pennies into it, on impulse—rare with him; he was careful of his money, since he had to make it last. But she had not laughed at him when the hour of dalliance turned into two hours of straining frustration. He could consider it a contribution to charity, and take the credit for it in the Christians’ heaven.
When he returned the purse to the chest, his fingers caught at the dark cloth on the bottom. He drew it out. It smelled of mildew and something musty—candles? Incense?
It was a nun’s habit. A novice’s, he would guess: homespun brown rather than black, and the veil was small, hardly more than a kerchief. There was a wooden cross with it, and a pair of sandals, the soles almost worn through, as was the hem of the habit. Whoever had worn it had traveled far, through mud and briar.
He laid it carefully back where it had been, and the rest on top of it in as good order as he could, then shut the chest carefully and went back to sitting on the bed.
He was just in time. Her step sounded on the stair; she slipped through the curtain into the room. She seemed slightly surprised and not too displeased to find him still there.
“Here,” she said. “Take this.”
She held out a small bag on a string. It smelled of herbs and pungent spices. He recognized rosemary and rue, ginger and cloves, and something faint but sweet—rose petals?
If there was magic in it, maybe what she had said before was true: it was below the threshold of his senses, even as finely honed as they were. He put it on nonetheless, because she asked it. “My thanks,” he said.
She shrugged. “Maybe it will work. Maybe it won’t. It can’t hurt.”
“You’re very kind,” he said.
That made her wriggle like an awkward child. “I’m not kind, no. Things that are out of order—they make me itch. You’ll find her, or she’ll find you. Then I’ll stop feeling that part of my left shoulder blade is too far out of reach to scratch.”
His brows went up. “That is a very . . . unusual talent.”
“Isn’t it.” It was not a question. “You had better go. Whoever she is, I doubt she’ll be looking for you here.”
Henry was more than ready to go. But once he had risen, he paused. “Tell me your name,” he said.
Her head tilted slightly. She knew why he asked. And whatever she might say, she knew how to be kind. She answered, “Ethelfleda. My name is Ethelfleda.”
“Ethelfleda,” Henry said carefully. “I thank you for your help and patience.” He bowed as if she had been a great lady, and left her standing there, looking much bemused.
As soon as Henry came back to the castle, he took off the bag, which was rather too pungent for his comfort. But he could not bring himself to cast it away. He thrust it into his purse instead, far down on the bottom, where it could do what good it might, without making him want to sneeze.
Then he forgot it. He would have liked to forget Ethelfleda, too, and the reason why he had left her, but there was no escaping that. The nameless woman from the dance had cursed him, knowingly or not. He would not be whole until he found her again.
He had no name or possession of hers to lay a wishing on. He had only the memory of her face. With that he conjured as best he could, willing her to be found.
That was all he could do, short of abandoning his brother’s court and his duties there and riding out on errantry. He was not the kind of man who could do such a thing—unfortunate for his peace of mind and body at the moment, but there it was.
Word came in that very day, that the king was coming back; there was much to do to make his kingdom ready for him. Henry threw himself into it. It was not necessarily true that work made a man forget his troubles, but it did make them seem a little less daunting.
CHAPTER 39
William came back to Britain as he had left it: running ahead of a storm. The sea was quiet enough for the crossing; the wind and rain held off, mostly, until he was safe in harbor.
“That’s always the way of it,” he said to Walter Tirel that night as they lay warm and dry together, listening to the wind and the rain. “Whenever I want to cross the sea, if there’s a storm, it stops. Then after I’m across, it starts up again.”
“God has laid a blessing on you,” Walter Tirel said between nibbles of his ear. “Who was the English king who couldn’t command the sea? Canute? He’d have gone mad with jealousy.”
William grinned at the ceiling, while Walter Tirel worked his way down William’s body, tracing it in shivers of pleasure. “I do love to be king,” he said.
“And I love my king,” said Walter Tirel, and set out to prove it.
It had been a golden autumn in Normandy, but England was thick with rain and fog. Nor did it let up, except to turn bitter, locking in the land with ice and snow well before All Hallows. By the time William caught up with his court in Gloucester, he was ready to settle in for a while where he could be assured of warmth and dry feet.
Robin was not in Gloucester when William first came there. He was in Somerset, looking after matters there. William doubted many people knew just what those matters were.
William was sorry not to see him, but guiltily glad, too. It had never bothered him before that there were others in his bed, and it had never seemed to trouble Robin, but this was different. It was not a few days’ dalliance.
Robin would not mind, he told himself. They had been lovers seldom enough in recent years. Duty kept them apart as often as not; when they were in the same place, there always seemed to be some reason why they managed not to share a bed. Robin had married—like Walter Tirel, he had found a wealthy and advantageous match and an understanding wife. And of course he was a Guardian of Britain.
The eve of All Hallows brought with it a storm that would have been better suited to the depths of winter: bitter cold, fierce blasts of wind, and sleet that turned, as the day went on, to blinding snow. The great hall of Gloucester castle was a haven of warmth and light. The fires burned high, and William had ordered all the lamps and candles lit. Guests who might have left days ago were crowded into every cranny, kept there by days of rain and rivers running high, washing out roads and bridges.
“God help us if this goes on all winter,” Henry said. He had been in a dour mood for as long as William had been back; at least now he had a reason, what with having been hall-bound for the better part of a week.
“If it tries,” William said lightly enough, “I’ll have a word with God.”
“Take care, sire,” said one of the numerous clerks and priests who were a necessary evil of courts. William could never remember which was which. This one was middle-aged as they all seemed to be, with ink-stained fingers and a tightly pursed mouth. “God takes poorly to such jests, however innocently meant.”
William stared him down. It took a while. When the man finally lowered his eyes, William mustered a smile. “Well, Brother,” he said, “we’re all sick of one another’s company. Why don’t you give us a psalm—an invocation to patience.”
The tight mouth tightened even further. William did not get what he had asked for. He had not expected to. He turned away from the clerk and called to the musicians who had been playing their fingers raw for days now. “Are you rested? Can you play again? Someon
e, give us a song!”
Someone with a loud and moderately tuneful voice was happy to oblige. William went back to his high seat and contemplated escaping altogether. His head had begun to ache.
A stir at the door caught his eye. People were coming in. They must have arrived only a little while ago: their clothes were dry but showed the marks of having been folded tightly not long before, and their hair and beards were damp. Some bore the marks of travel in cruel weather: cracked and blistered lips, windburned cheeks.
Most of them were knights whom William was pleased to see. The last to come in, he knew very well indeed. Robin FitzHaimo had come back to court.
William forgot guilt, confusion, even his pounding head. He rose, grinning like a fool. “Robin! Damn your eyes. Are you out of your mind? What were you doing, traveling in a blizzard?”
Robin had made his way through the crowd with an ease that had always seemed vaguely supernatural. He stood just below the dais, unsmiling, looking closely into William’s face. “It wasn’t so bad on the roads I took,” he said.
“Bad enough, from the look of you all,” William said. “You could have waited a day or two.”
Robin’s head shook. “Not this day.”
William held out a hand. Robin sprang to the dais without it, but he clasped it once he was up, brief and hard.
“What’s wrong?” William asked. “What happened?”
“To me,” said Robin, “nothing. It was cold, that was all. The wind was fierce. We’re glad to be out of it.”
“I’m glad to have you here,” William said.
He felt that other presence before he saw it, the warmth drawing closer, Walter Tirel’s arm brushing his as the young lord came to stand beside him. It was innocent, William thought: a friend and familiar coming to see who had braved the storm.
And yet in Robin’s eyes he saw the coldness, the closing of doors that had never been closed to him before. Robin was jealous after all—blackly, icily jealous.