Winter Song

by Roberta Gellis

  With this consideration in mind, Raymond ordered Alys’s troop to come with him, leaving Sir Romeo’s master-at-arms in charge with orders to do his uttermost to prevent anyone from entering Les Baux and promising that help would be sent as soon as he reached Arles. He then insisted they leave immediately, responding alike to Beatrice’s and Margot’s moans and laments that they were too bruised and exhausted, and to Alys’s tearful pleas to bind up his wound, with threats that he would soon give them something real to weep for if they did not obey him instantly.

  The trouble came down behind them as they entered the road that passed the abbey—a troop of men who cried out imprecations at the sight of the arms of d’Aix and charged them. Fortunately the road was narrow so that the larger numbers of the attackers counted for little in the first charge. Then, by a combination of good fortune and ferocity, Raymond wounded the knight who was leading the troop. This recalled that gentleman to the fact that his business was in Les Baux, not in casual encounters on the road, even if d’Aix happened to be an old enemy. Nursing his bleeding arm, he called off the attack.

  They met more trouble just a mile or so from Arles. A group of men, either fleeing from the keep or merely leaving it in haste, clashed with Raymond’s troop. In a way they were more dangerous, although fewer in number, because there were three knights in the party. However, this time Raymond did not stay to fight. He bade three men surround each woman’s horse, spur to a gallop, and charge right through, dealing only such blows as would not slow their speed. Once they were through there could be no pursuit because they were too close to Arles.

  Strangely enough, with each encounter Raymond’s mood improved, and by the time they thundered through the entrance of the keep, the only shadow on Raymond’s bright morning was the question of how to escape the interminable explanations and discussions he saw forthcoming. He did not—at least, not at the present moment—wish to explain how he had got into Les Baux, nor to give any opinion on what, if anything, should be done to punish Beatrice’s abductor, nor to discuss whether there would be any advantage in destroying the des Baux.

  All Raymond wanted was to get Alys to himself. It had finally dawned upon him that it was extremely unnatural for Alys to have been involved in the abduction. Why in the world did she agree to accompany Margot and Beatrice, and why take only four men? He could not believe Alys had ill intent, and yet he could think of no rational excuse for what she had done.

  This irritation of mind, increased by over twenty-four hours without sleep and the nagging pain of the minor flesh wound, expressed itself in anger with his sister and Beatrice. Thus, he seized them both immediately upon dismounting and, dragging each by a wrist, entered the great hall. News of his arrival and of Beatrice’s presence having preceded them, Sir Romeo, Lady Beatrice, and even Lady Jeannette were already running from their chambers, calling questions and making joyful exclamations. Raymond flung his two shrieking captives, one at each mother.

  “Here, have them back,” he roared, “and if you are wise, you will lesson them with a belt for this mischief.”

  “How? How?” Sir Romeo’s bellow rose above the high voices of the women and the wailing of the two girls.

  “I will tell you betimes,” Raymond said, “but there is no time for it now. Des Baux has summoned men, and troops are already on their way. I bade your master-at-arms keep them from entering the keep, but he has only some forty men. Either recall him or send him help.”

  “Let me first thank you,” Sir Romeo cried.

  But Raymond was not interested in thanks. He turned to look behind him, and his lips twitched to refrain from smiling when he saw Alys standing meekly a few feet back as a good wife should. She was filthy and bedraggled, and her eyes lowered when he looked at her. Oddly, that convinced Raymond of her innocence. If Alys had been involved in whatever caused the abduction, she would be defiant. Ignoring his mother’s shriek and Sir Romeo’s oath when his bloodstained back became visible to them, Raymond took two steps and seized Alys’s wrist.

  “If you wish to thank me,” he said, “let it be with a private chamber where I may deal with my wife.”

  Alys bit her lips to keep from crying aloud when she heard. She had descended to a pit of despair from a peak of joy when she first realized it was Raymond on the ladder. From the way he had greeted her and the belief that he had come to Arles in response to her request, she had been sure that all was forgiven. But he had not addressed a word to her after that, except to deny her the right to serve him. And when he had seized Margot and Beatrice and left her behind as they entered Arles, Alys had thought she would die. She had followed because she knew not what else to do.

  Now, when he seized her wrist so unkindly, Alys had all she could do not to wail aloud like Beatrice and Margot. She was too blinded by tears to see Raymond’s face when he slammed the door closed with his heel, so that she was totally surprised to find herself suddenly enveloped in her husband’s embrace with passionate kisses being pressed on her lips and cheeks and eyes.

  More shocked than pleased, Alys pulled her mouth free. “Oh, do not!” she cried. “You cannot be so cruel as to beat me after you kiss me.”

  “Why should you think I wish to beat you?” Raymond asked softly. “Do you deserve a beating?”

  But the shock had dried Alys’s tears, and she stared at him, taking in the quiver at the corner of his mouth, the little lines around his eyes that made them twinkle and indicated not rage, but mirth.

  “Oh, you monster!” she cried, flinging her arms around his neck. “How dare you say to a whole hall full of people that you wished to ‘deal with me’, frightening me to death—”

  “I am dealing with you,” Raymond said severely, and kissed her again. “Would you say I was having naught to do with you?” Then, when their lips parted, he said, “But you have not answered me. Do you deserve a beating?”

  “Yes, indeed,” Alys sighed, but her eyes shone with laughter, “for I accused you unjustly, and refused you your rights as a husband, and—and I struck you with—with my riding whip—”

  “You devil!” he said. But now he could not be angry with Alys, even though the thing itself was outrageous. “That is something you had better not try again,” was all he managed.

  “No, but…” The merriment disappeared from the clear eyes that had been gazing into his. They became shadowed and dropped, and Alys’s grip on him loosened. “I was wrong to deny you,” she whispered, “but when…when you forced me, I-I…”

  “Never again, dear heart, I swear it,” Raymond murmured. “I do not say I will not beat you if you cross me that way, but force you I will not. Nor would I have done so that night, except that I think I was so tired. I had been two days without sleep. That I was not altogether right in my wits.”

  “Beloved, beloved,” Alys cried, her eyes shining anew with joy, “I knew, as soon as you were gone, I knew you were not yourself. I would have followed you, except that I feared you would kill me if I did not let your anger cool. And the next day, when I heard you had taken Lucie away to be married, I vowed I would kiss your hands as you beat me, and so I will, if it will satisfy you to beat me now.”

  “Oh, you clever little witch,” Raymond said, deliberately squeezing her so hard she squeaked with pain, “you know you are safe enough to offer that now when my desire is for a different satisfaction.”

  “No,” Alys said.

  Raymond’s arms dropped away and his face went hard, and Alys burst into laughter.

  “Not until you take off that steel shirt,” she went on pertly before the anger that was gathering in Raymond could burst forth. “I am scratched and scraped enough from being snatched up and flung down and climbing mountains—” The bellow drowned her out, but Alys only put her hands over her ears and finished, “And now you are paid for affrighting me half to death in the hall.”

  Alys then slipped under Raymond’s grasp and bent to take hold of his hauberk. She pulled it about halfway up, but Raymond was so much t
aller than she and the mail so heavy that she could not lift it farther. In fact, she overbalanced and fell against him, and he caught her again, but with the folds of mail between them, his intention was frustrated. Half laughing, half irritated, Raymond swung around, backed toward a stool, and sat down on it so Alys could lift off the hauberk. He grunted with pain when it pulled free the clotted blood around the wound, and Alys gasped at the new, sluggish flow of red. Raymond only stood up and pulled off the remainder of his clothing, fending Alys away and murmuring again, “Do not try my patience.”

  “But Raymond,” Alys protested, “only let me—”

  “Later,” he insisted, seizing her gown at the neck and rending it apart down the center seam.

  He expected Alys to be angry, but she had caught fire in a different way at that, and she only stepped out of the remains and hurriedly took off her shift and underdress. Holding out her hand to him, she went to the bed and pushed him gently so that he sat down on it.

  “Stay yourself, my lord,” she whispered, “or you will be too quick for me.”

  “Then I will amend it a second time,” Raymond said impatiently. “I have been celibate as a walled-in monk since I last had you. If you quarrel with my slaking my thirst with others, then you must accommodate my eagerness.”

  Whereupon Alys threw herself atop him, crying, “If that is my prize, I will accommodate you any way you desire as often as you desire.”

  “As you are then, mount me,” he muttered, pushing himself back so he would not slip off the bed.

  Alys was so inflamed by the idea that she did not even see the smear of blood her husband’s back left on the bed. She raised her knees, straddled him, and impaled herself, sighing with delight as she worked herself down. Raymond groaned, which might have boded ill, betokening he was near bursting, but Alys had the upper hand—or rather, body—and brought them safely home. They both slept afterward, swiftly and deeply, Raymond so deeply that he did not stir when Alys woke and left the bed, nor even later when, having washed and done her hair and obtained fresh clothing, she shifted him and gently cleaned and bandaged the tear on his shoulder.

  There were candles lit when Raymond opened his eyes at last. They fell on Alys, sewing beside the bed and singing softly to herself. Passion spent, anxiety allayed, he watched her for a while, then curiosity stirred in him. He asked softly, “Do you deserve a beating, Alys? How came you to allow Beatrice and Margot to fall into such a trap?”

  She jumped and blushed, but did not answer until she had brought him food and wine. Then, while he ate, she told him the whole tale. “I am so sorry,” she said at last, “not only for the pain I have caused you and the labor to which I have put you, but for Sir Guillaume, also. If only I had not been so selfish, wanting something to do so that I would not think every moment whether you would forgive me and come to me—”

  “I cannot object to that,” Raymond interrupted, smiling.

  “No, but in a way poor Sir Guillaume is the sufferer. And I wonder if he is so guilty, for that treacherous Ernaldus may have planted the idea in his silly head. If I had only looked at Margot and Beatrice and listened to them, I would never have gone or let them go, and Sir Guillaume would not be ruined. Indeed, Raymond, he is only a rather stupid, too-young man.”

  “Oh, very well, I will see what I can do for him,” Raymond conceded. “After all, the fault is really Sir Romeo’s. If he had not bespoke Beatrice in such a foolish way…or if you will, the fault goes back to my grandfather, who spoiled the girl.”

  “But even so,” Alys sighed, “it comes back to me. It is as I said from the very first, my lord. In some ways I am truly not fit to be your wife. No one would have bothered to abduct me, the daughter of a simple knight. It was too far outside my knowledge, from not being highbred enough.”

  “Good God, of all the conceited people!” Raymond exclaimed. “The trouble with you, Alys, is not that you are too lowbred but that you are too proud. You think you make the world go around.” And then he began to laugh at her affronted expression. “Do not dare blame yourself for Beatrice’s and Margot’s mischief,” he said seriously. “You are fit to be a queen.”

  Author’s Note

  I wish to point out the mingling of fact and fiction in the tale of the abduction of Beatrice of Provence. The abduction itself, although not mentioned in any of the modern histories I have consulted, has a medieval source. Matthew de Paris (English History, 1245. Bonn’s Library, London, 1853, vol. II, p. 43.) says:

  …a certain knight of small property, but bold and brave in war, incited by the lady’s beauty, as well as by the rich inheritance which belonged to her, secretly carried her off, and placed her in safety in a castle near, which belonged to him, considering it quite an excusable offense, according to the saying of the poet, Genialis praeda puella est. (Woman is a pleasing prize.)

  It must be noted, however, that the young knight who abducted the lady is not named, nor is he identified in any other medieval source available to me. I have chosen to make him a scion of the family who held the castle called Les Baux, a most remarkable place (now a ruin) set atop a precipitous cliff.

  This identification of the abductor with Les Baux has no historical basis at all, nor has the existence of Sir Guillaume, who is a fictional character associated with Les Baux only for the purposes of this novel. Thus, Sir Guillaume’s actions and his feelings are equally products of the author’s imagination.

  Finally, no mention at all is made of how Beatrice was rescued. The chronicler implies that there was some fighting, but there is no mention of the terms upon which the lady was recovered, nor of any punishment meted out to the young knight. All that is known is that Beatrice was returned unharmed to her mother, was betrothed to Charles of Anjou shortly thereafter, and married Charles in January 1246.

  I must concede that the rescue I described is highly unlikely. Most probably Beatrice was extricated from her too-eager swain’s hold by her mother and guardian, either by besieging the knight’s castle or by paying a ransom and taking oath that no retribution would be exacted for the abduction. I have, therefore, taken a grave liberty with the true facts in order to produce an exciting and amusing denouement.

  In amelioration, I plead that the result, in historical terms, was identical. Beatrice was freed in a condition to marry Charles of Anjou. That is, no marriage contract of which the Church was aware had been made, and she was still a virgin—or, at least not with child. It is the marriage that is of historical significance, because it led eventually to Provence being united with the kingdom of France. How Beatrice was returned to her mother is not relevant in the larger pattern of history, and thus I have felt no great harm would be done by bending the truth to suit my novel.

  About the Author

  Roberta Gellis was driven to start writing her own books some forty years ago by the infuriating inaccuracies of the historical fiction she read. Since then she has worked in varied genres—romance, mystery and fantasy—but always, even in the fantasies, keeping the historical events as near to what actually happened as possible. The dedication to historical time settings is not only a matter of intellectual interest, it is also because she is so out-of-date herself that accuracy in a contemporary novel would be impossible.

  In the forty-some years she has been writing, Gellis has produced more than twenty-five straight historical romances. These have been the recipients of many awards, including the Silver and Gold Medal Porgy for historical novels from the West Coast Review of Books, the Golden Certificate from Affaire de Coeur, the Romantic Times Award for Best Novel in the Medieval Period (several times) and a Lifetime Achievement Award for Historical Fantasy. Last but not least, Gellis was honored with the Romance Writers of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

  The author welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.

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  Also by Roberta Gellis

  A Woman’s Estate

  Fortune’s Bride

  Siren Song

  The Cornish Heiress

  The English Heiress

  The Kent Heiress

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