by Speer, Flora
Reynaud left the next noonday, well guarded by as many men as Guy could spare.
“The trouble is,” Guy said to Brian as they stood at the main gate watching Reynaud ride away, “Walter knows all too well how few men I have here. And he knows the weak points in Afoncaer’s defenses.”
“If Reynaud can talk and negotiate and delay until the new men from Adderbury can arrive, we’ll be in better condition, my friend.” Brian wrapped his dark grey cloak more closely about his shoulders for protection against the early autumn drizzle. “I’ll go to the cave now. Branwen and Meredith must be told what has happened.”
When Brian returned later that day, Meredith and Branwen both were with him.
“We will stay here until Thomas is safely returned,” Meredith said. Studying the signs of strain in Guy’s face and seeing the pain in his eyes, she knew she had been right to come, and when his somber expression relaxed into a smile as he told her she was welcome, she felt she had come home.
They found Joan in the women’s quarters, and to Meredith’s surprise Joan and Branwen were soon on the most cordial terms. A little later, after the evening meal, while Branwen stood talking quietly with Brian at one side of the great hall, Joan cast an approving eye at the couple.
“Your aunt is a sensible woman,” Joan said. “I like her, and I see that Sir Brian does, too. It’s a good thing. I think he is a lonely soul. And speaking of lonely, will you take this pitcher of ale to Sir Guy? He has gone to his chamber in the keep. I’ll be glad when the new great hall is built and we are all close together again. It will be very inconvenient running back and forth across the bailey this winter in the cold and wet.”
It was neither cold nor wet on this September evening. The rain had stopped and it was so warm that Meredith did not need a shawl. She met Geoffrey just coming out of the lord’s chamber. He let her in, then went bounding down the steps two at a time, leaving her alone with Guy. Meredith closed the door softly and put the ale on the table.
Guy stood by the fireplace. It was one of the new kind, built into the stone wall and with a chimney to carry off the smoke instead of an old-fashioned firepit in the center of the room. Meredith thought he was unaware of her presence, so intent was he on the dancing flames before him. She looked around the room.
The last time she had stood in this place it had been a stone shell with a temporary roof. Now the keep was all but completed. The fireproof lead roof was in place, and Guy’s room had been made into a comfortable refuge for the master of the castle. On the east and west walls the long, narrow double windows, as yet unglazed, were shuttered against the night. This high up in the keep, where the arrows of besiegers were less likely to find their mark, windows could be a little larger than on lower floors. They were built into alcoves, with cushioned stone ledges forming seats on either side of each pair of windows.
A rug of intricate design was hung like a tapestry on one plastered and deep blue-painted wall. The brilliant colors of the rug warmed the room, as did the similar hues of its near mate on the floor. Meredith had seen both rugs before, when Lady Isabel was planning the decoration of the new living quarters. Guy had brought the carpets back from faraway Byzantium, along with the three tiny, ornately inlaid tables set about the room.
The bed, of heavy carved wood with red wool curtains around it to keep out drafts, occupied most of the floor space. The same man who had made the bed had also carved the big wooden arm chair by the fire, and Joan had made and stuffed the blue silk cushion that padded its seat.
“Do you like it?” Guy turned from his contemplation of the burning logs to watch her.
“Yes. It’s beautiful.” She removed her attention from the room to its occupant. She recognized in his face the sadness that had been there the first time she had ever seen him. To sadness was now added worry, fear, even despair. She put out both hands and he took them.
“This waiting must be driving you mad,” she said. “I wish I could help in some way.”
“You help by being here,” he told her. “I am glad you came with Branwen. But you are right, it is hard to wait. I am trained to action, to warfare. My every instinct says attack, yet I can do nothing, for Thomas’s sake. I must stay here quietly until Reynaud comes back.” He dropped her hands, turning again to the fire, and Meredith saw his jaw clench.
She had her instincts, too, and now she followed them. She went to him and put her arms around his waist and laid her head on his shoulder. He hesitated only an instant before his arms encircled her. She felt his lips brush across her forehead.
This was where she belonged, beside him, in his arms. She knew he needed her. She could not heal his present pain, but she could alleviate it a little, comfort him, give him ease with her presence and with her love, of which she dared not speak to him, but she would freely give that, too.
She lifted her face and saw he was still staring into the fire as if he could read the future in the flames. She reached upward and kissed the bottom of his chin and then stretched a little higher and kissed the lower part of his cheek.
He made a small sound, part gasp, part chuckle, and tightened his arms. She tried again, this time reaching the corner of his mouth. She saw his blue eyes gleaming as he looked hard at her, and then his mouth descended. She loved him so well, so completely, that she could hold nothing back from him. She welcomed his kiss, returning it with eager warmth.
“Meredith.” His voice was a soft sigh in her ear as his lips tenderly caressed her throat and his strong, square hands pushed off her linen headdress. When she caught at the cloth, he protested. “Let me look at your hair. How it shines in the firelight, like dark copper. It is too beautiful to cover.”
Slowly, very slowly, she raised her hands, and unfastened the two thick braids she wore wound about her head, and then, keeping her eyes fixed on his all the time, she unbraided them both, combing through the heavy waves with her fingers until her hair hung loose to her waist, a soft curtain of molten fire.
“Now you may look at it, my lord. And touch it if you wish.”
He caught her hard against him, his hands winding through the sweet-scented tresses, catching great handfuls and letting them stream through his fingers, pulling them over her shoulders and around her throat, then letting them go to take her face between his hands while he kissed her again and again as though he was starving for her lips.
“Leave me. You must go. Go now.” He groaned, even as he pulled her nearer, covering her face with kisses. “Please, Meredith, go.”
“No, Guy.” She said his name to him for the first time without title, for none was needed here. For this brief night he was hers alone and they were equals, Guy and Meredith, man and woman. “I will stay here tonight. With you.”
“I don’t want to harm you, or bring you shame.”
“You can do neither. You are too good and too kind.” She saw his struggle. He tried to push her away, and yet he bent toward her, seeking one more kiss, and then another. She slid her arms around his neck, locked her hands behind his head, and smiled at him. “I will stay,” she said again, and put her mouth on his, opening her lips, inviting him.
He made one more protest.
“Meredith, no,” he moaned, his lips against hers, and then he gave in to the warmth and the tender passion now welling up in them both.
She was crushed against him; she could hardly breathe; his arms were like a vise and his mouth was hot and sweet on hers. He kissed her face, her ears, her hair, her throat, and she cried out in wonder at her body’s answer to the marvelous things he was doing with his hands. She felt his harder, more thrusting reaction to her, and gloried in the realization that she could do that to him, make him need her with so little effort, and make him so happy with her eager response. That he was happy she could tell by the look on his face. He was totally, completely concentrated on her. He had forgotten everything that troubled him, and Meredith, bedazzled by his tender caresses and his constant kisses, was soon in a condition remarkably simi
lar to his.
When he had lured her into a rapturous, trembling state of boneless limbs and aching desire, he swept her into his arms and carried her to his bed. He laid her down, and somehow, she wasn’t sure how, because she could not have been much help to him with her fingers so clumsy and all that stopping to stroke and caress and kiss and look, but somehow he got her clothes off and then his own, and she was lying on herb-scented linen sheets, and he was above her, golden-haired and strong, his body gleaming with gold reflections from the firelight. She sensed the whole firm, warm length of him against her body, and it was like the joining of two long-parted halves, at last made one and whole. She had been told there would be pain the first time, but it was a minor thing compared to everything else she was feeling, and it only lasted an instant and was soon forgotten in the flood of new sensations she was experiencing. Guy was her heart, her life’s blood, her very breath, and now he was part of her, filling her, completing her, and she knew, for he told her in murmured half-phrases, and showed her by his gentleness with her, and then at last proved in the sudden, driving urgency of his passion, that she completed and filled him in the same way. And there was more, there was glory beyond all imagining, there was brilliant, ecstatic, rapturous fire, bursting over her, over them both, and she answered her love’s exultant cry with her own, and knew they were one in this radiant wonder, too. Forged together by alchemical magic they clung, two golden, fire-touched creatures, still one body, one being, and she raised her love-bruised lips for a final kiss in that blissful state before they returned to their mortal forms and were forced to separate.
They had no need for words. They lay in each other’s arms, separate but still together in heart and spirit, and her head was on his chest, over his heart, his hands smoothing her hair.
“How lovely you are,” he whispered. She felt his mouth brush the top of her head. “You smell of lavender.”
She ran her fingers through the golden hair on his chest, and began nibbling at him. She heard his contented chuckle. Then he tensed, and she knew he had come back to the world and all the problems he faced. She thought he would speak of Thomas, but his next words showed her he was still deeply concerned for her.
“Ah, Meredith,” he said, “I did not mean this to happen. I would have stopped, you know that, but I needed you. How I needed you, and now—”
“Hush.” She silenced his concern with her lips. “Nothing was done to me against my will. It was I who urged you. And now I am very happy.” She was. She had no regrets at all.
“I would not bring shame to you.” When she tried to stop him in the same way again, with her lips, he took her by the shoulders and held her, looking up at her while he spoke with great seriousness. “This is an evil time, Meredith, until we bring Thomas home. If I get you with child, and then I am killed fighting Walter, there will be no one to care for you. No, don’t try to turn away, my sweet, listen to me. We cannot continue this way.”
She tore herself out of his restraining hands and flung herself upon his chest, clinging to him,
“Nothing must happen to you,” she cried. “Nothing. I couldn’t bear it.”
“When a man rides into battle there is always that possibility,” he said gravely. “I live with that knowledge, and had you grown up in some lord’s household, or in a village where men and boys are called upon to serve their master during wartime, you would not have to be told this.”
“I hate Walter fitz Alan,” she declared. “He has Thomas, and now he would take your life if he could.”
“I will do my best to prevent that,” Guy said, smiling wryly, “but you and I must agree not to lie together again. I once promised Rhys to keep you safe.”
“But that was two years ago, when I was Isabel’s maid. The promise ended when I left Afoncaer. It doesn’t count now,” she said. Even as she spoke, she marveled that he included her in the decision as an equal partner. He was master here at Afoncaer, he could simply command her, but he had not done that. It was more proof of his real affection for her, and she cherished it.
“We will agree on this, my … Meredith.” He was so serious, his blue eyes so full of concern, that she bowed her head.
“Could we just stay together tonight?” she asked. Seeing he was about to refuse, she added hastily, “The night is half spent already, and everyone will notice should I stumble or bump into something while creeping into the women’s quarters in the dark. I’m sure I would. I can be awfully clumsy at times.”
“Meredith, sweet.” He sighed, between laughter and anger, and relented, pulling her back into his embrace. “Only tonight. That is all. I insist.”
“I agree, my lord. My dear lord. My dearest.”
Chapter 28
“Joan tells me,” Branwen said when her niece hurried into the great hall just as the morning meal was beginning, “That you were not on your pallet in the women’s quarters last night.”
“No.” Meredith could feel herself blushing. There was no excuse to be made. Joan must also have told Branwen of the errand on which Meredith had been sent and from which she had not returned. Branwen knew that she had spent the night with Guy, and was probably going to scold her for it. Meredith was not the least bit ashamed. She was about to tell Branwen just that when a thought struck her. “What do you mean, Joan told you? Where were you last night that you could not see for yourself?”
Branwen did not answer, but her dark eyes were dancing with laughter and the scolding never came. At that moment Brian came in the door and looked around the hall until his gaze lighted on Branwen. He started toward them.
Branwen moved to one of the tables and began to slice brown bread for Brian, who came to stand so close beside her that they were nearly touching. There was an aura about the two, a softness that enclosed them in a private world, even in the center of Afoncaer’s busy great hall. No one, seeing them, could possibly doubt their feelings for each other.
The tender and humorous mood of that morning did not last long. The infrequent letters coming from Reynaud over the next few days all said the same thing: the negotiations with Walter were proceeding slowly. They must be patient.
“I suspect Father Herbert is reading Reynaud’s letters before they leave Tynant, and Reynaud knows it,” Brian said one night. “Why else would he give us no more information? He hasn’t even mentioned Thomas.”
“We can only trust to Reynaud’s good sense,” Guy replied. “He will do all he can.”
The days of waiting passed with tortuous slowness. Guy kept carefully away from Meredith, scrupulously observing their agreement not to be alone together. He looked haggard, and she saw that he ate almost nothing. The waiting was telling on him, on them all. Just when everyone’s nerves were stretched nearly to breaking, Reynaud returned.
“Walter will not negotiate,” he announced, dropping onto a bench near the fire. He was pale and his eyes were ringed with dark circles. Meredith, taking pity on him, ran to find food. She set ale, cold sliced meat, cheese, and some bread before him, receiving his distracted, startled thanks in return.
“I am sorry my letters gave the impression we were talking seriously, my lord, but it seemed best to send you noncommittal notes and wait until I could see you in person to tell you the truth.
“I have tried every means of persuasion I know,” Reynaud went on. “Walter played with me, promising to consider my propositions, telling me to remain at Tÿnant while he did so, then days later saying no. I think the tactic was meant to torment you, by making you wait so long, and thus assure that you will grow impatient and accede to his demands in order to end the uncertainty. He refuses to change his original terms. He offers Thomas’s life in exchange for Afoncaer. He will consider nothing else.”
“Surely,” Meredith broke in, “Lady Isabel will use her influence with Sir Walter to protect her son.”
Reynaud gave her a long, hard look, then took in Branwen’s presence as well.
“I thought you would return to Afoncaer, Meredith,” h
e said.
“I could not stay away with Thomas in such danger,” she replied, blushing a little. “Won’t Lady Isabel protect Thomas?” she asked then, returning to her original question. She felt a chill along her spine as Reynaud laughed.
“It was at Lady Isabel’s instigation that Sir Walter devised this infamous plan of his,” Reynaud told her. “She is determined that Walter shall be Baron of Afoncaer, and herself its lady.”
“Even at the cost of her son’s life.” This was Guy, his face set in stone. Meredith could imagine the pain he was feeling, and her heart went out to him in love and pity. “So now we know for a fact that this was Isabel’s doing,” Guy added.
“The Lady Isabel believes you will save Thomas,” Reynaud said to Guy. “She is delighted to have this sharp needle of an unhappy decision to prick you with, and she is completely certain that after suffering much pain over your choice, you will give up Afoncaer for Thomas’s sake.”
“I cannot. God help me, I cannot.” Guy’s voice broke. With obvious great effort he controlled himself. He moved to the door, speaking over his shoulder as he did so, in a way that kept his face hidden, “I am going to the chapel.”
“Shall I come with you, my lord?” asked Reynaud, making as if to rise.
“No, my friend. You are weary from your ride and from that hopeless embassy I sent you on. Rest there.” Gesturing for Reynaud to remain seated, Guy went out the door.
Meredith, filled with anguish for both Guy and Thomas, would have followed him to offer what comfort he would allow from her, but Branwen’s hand on her arm stopped her. Branwen pulled Meredith back toward the fire, where Reynaud still sat with Brian nearby.
“It seems to me,” Branwen said to Reynaud, “That the only sensible thing to do, the only way to help Thomas, is to secretly remove him from his mother’s care.”
“Lady, if you can find a way to do that I’ll not hesitate to call it a miracle,” Reynaud responded. Then he looked more closely at Branwen. “I think by your face that you have an idea. Tell it to me at once.”