Love and Chivalry: Four Medieval Historical Romances

by Lindsay Townsend

The stares of his men irked Guillelm. He wanted Alyson all to himself, wanted her alone. He strode across, deliberately heavy-footed so all would know he was coming.

  ‘I will take her now, Tom,’ he said, closing fast.

  ‘Aye, no doubt you will.’ The former crusader stepped back without breaking off from feasting a pair of very busy eyes on Alyson. He wore a look on his mangled face that could only be described as foolish. The man is besotted, thought Guillelm, jealous afresh.

  He turned on his men. ’Have you no tasks to be doing?’ he barked at the astonished company. ’Must I order everything?’ He snatched at Alyson’s hand, almost dragging her away from Tom. ’Come, mistress, I would have a word.’

  He walked her behind the screens separating the great hall from the pantry and buttery, where a glower at a dice-throwing page had the boy scurrying off. Checking there was no one lingering in the buttery or pantry, he threaded his thumbs into his belt, taking pleasure just in looking at her. He had his second betrothal gift ready; he had wanted to give it her earlier in the day, when they were alone in the woodland, but Fulk’s battle-roar had interrupted him. Now he and Alyson had a moment and he intended to make best use of it.

  ‘Yes, my lord?’ Alyson asked. ‘It is ever your custom to call me mistress when I have displeased you, so in what way have I offended now? I would know.’

  Quite apart from the justness of her mild reproof, the weariness in her voice startled him. Clasping her by the shoulders, he swivelled her towards the greater light streaming into the pantry and saw how bleached-out she was about the eyes. Her face had a suspiciously scrubbed look and her lips were pale.

  ‘Your meeting with your sister?’ he prompted, utterly changing what he was about to say. His gift would keep, but Alyson’s distress would not. ‘Was she not pleased to see you?’

  It was a shrewd guess. He felt her tremble, saw the sinews in her neck stiffen as she clenched her jaw. ’She saw me.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We spoke for a while.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Family matters. Very little, really.’

  ‘You have less in common than you thought?’

  Alyson rubbed at her eyes. ’Our lives are very different.’

  She moved to go past him and return to the hall but he stopped her. ’Please, tell me what happened. I cannot bear to see you so… so beaten down.’

  She stared at him for so long that Guillelm wondered if he had changed into a hippogriff, or unicorn, or some other strange beast. ’Please, sweeting,’ he said, the endearment feeling as if it had been wrung from him.

  Out it came in a low tumble of words: her sister’s anger that Alyson had not also joined the convent, that her sister saw marriage as a sin.

  ‘Why should she think that?’ Guillelm knotted his forehead, trying to remember Alyson’s sister, Matilda. A fleeing shadow in a dark dress was all that came to him and now he was all attention because Alyson was speaking.

  ‘Our mother died in childbirth.’

  ‘Ah.’ Inwardly, Guillelm cursed his own memory: he should have remembered why Sir Henry had been a widower when he met him. ’I am sorry.’

  ‘It frightened my sister greatly. She was older; she saw and understood more than I did. I was only four.’

  Old enough to be petrified, thought Guillelm grimly, sensing her taut as a harp string, while a small selfish part whispered that he was glad to be a man. He cleared his throat, embarrassed and yet wanting to offer some comfort. ‘In Outremer there are many skilled doctors who understand such things.’

  Alyson smiled. ‘We are not in Outremer.’ With that simple reply she drew away from him, adding, ‘Do you not think we should rejoin our host? Or he will perhaps consider the excellence of his welcome is lacking.’

  ‘You are right.’ As ever. Taking only a small pleasure from the fact she had used one of his own habitual phrases, Guillelm offered her his arm and they walked out from behind the screens.

  Preoccupied, he did not notice Fulk emerge from behind a barrel of wine in the buttery and slip off to the chambers upstairs.

  Chapter 7

  Alyson pushed open the door to her night’s lodgings, relieved that she was upstairs, beyond the tumult of the men. Below her, the noise in the great hall abated slightly as another dish of roast pig was carried in from the kitchen and the drunken diners fell on it with much hacking of knives and belches of satisfaction. Barring her chamber, Alyson unlaced her gown with a sigh, glad she was nimble enough to do this on her own.

  No doubt Guillelm would have helped and played the part of lady’s maid, if she had asked. Throughout the evening, with its noisy toasts and loud reminiscences of old campaigns, she had sensed his dark eyes ever straying to her. Had he watched the mysterious Heloise in the same way?

  At least Fulk had been civil, Alyson reflected, shrugging off her shoes. He had been sitting beside her on the dais at dinner and had passed her several platters. He had even asked if she was warm enough.

  Perhaps he is coming to accept me, she thought, glancing round the bare room for a comb or brush. She did not want to waste the candle in closer search, or lose the heat of the chamber by opening the shutters. Besides, the midsummer night was almost light enough to see by.

  Finding nothing to do her hair with she left it in its usual thick plait and sat on the edge of the bed, still considering Fulk. He had been almost suave tonight and certainly less hostile. If she could have devised a way of asking him about Heloise without Guillelm overhearing, she might have done.

  She lifted back the woollen blanket—

  And was off the bed in an instant, lunging for the shutters. Through her own shocked, harsh breathing she heard the catch give and pushed, admitting a spill of moonlight into this sudden chamber of horrors.

  I could have climbed into bed with that. Her stomach rolled at the thought and she gagged, turning towards the window to gulp down the fresh night air. What was it?

  Setting her back to the window, she forced herself to look again. Shudders ran through her and her mind snatched at one piece of comfort: she had not touched the thing.

  Below her the rafters shook as Guillelm bested two men at once in a wrestling match. She heard the shouts of congratulations with only a brief fizz of pleasure. She had her own contest here, with an unknown enemy. What had been left for her in the bed?

  Alyson crouched and tugged slowly at the nearest blanket. With a queer sucking sound the mound of flesh hidden beneath the coarse wool shifted, as if alive, and then was still.

  ‘Imagine it is the ingredients for a potion,’ she said aloud, but still she could not take any steps closer. She peered at the ruin of sheets.

  It was offal, she decided. Lung, heart, liver. All washed. Filched from the kitchen and brought up here as what? A warning to her? A spiteful joke?

  What had Fulk hoped to achieve? Even as Alyson’s reason pointed out that she had no proof that it was Guillelm’s seneschal who had done this, her instincts all agreed that it would be no other man. But why?

  Working swiftly, Alyson bundled up the parcel of lights into a blanket and tossed it out of the open shutters. She would have to explain tomorrow how she had lost a sheet but she would think of something.

  Or should she go down now and confront Fulk?

  ‘With what?’ Alyson scoffed. ’You have just hurled the evidence out of the window!’ And to judge from the chanting and foot-stamping that was now going on in the hall, the men there were deep in drink. What if they merely laughed at her? What if Guillelm laughed?

  He would never do that, she thought, but it would be a bad business, to accuse his most loyal follower of such a low trick. Fulk would deny it and she had no proof. Worse, Fulk could even blame others, perhaps even Sir Thomas.

  The thought of that kind, good-hearted man realizing that his home and hospitality had been so abused stopped Alyson on her way to the door. She could not do it.

  Better perhaps to act as if she had found nothing amiss. That
would annoy Fulk. And she could tell Guillelm in the morning.

  But she would bed down on the floor tonight.

  Although she was spent with the long ride and the emotions of the day Alyson did not expect to sleep. It was with shock that she was awakened, early the next morning, by a greenfinch fluttering around her room in a panic. The poor bird had flown in through the open shutters and kept beating itself against the roof thatch in its efforts to escape.

  Alyson tossed her veil over the finch and gathered it gently, setting it flying free into the dawn. She wished she could rescue herself as easily: her rest had been troubled, plagued with dark dreams of blood and her dead mother.

  Had Fulk somehow overheard what she had told Guillelm? Had he left the offal as some kind of grisly token of childbirth—a future warning to her?

  ‘It may not have been Fulk,’ Alyson told herself, but she could conceive of no other doing such a thing. Still, it shamed her. Her nightmares shamed her. Telling Guillelm would only spread the pain, she thought. She must deal with this herself, in her own way.

  Once she had made that decision she felt a little easier and unbarred her door with more confidence than she might otherwise have had. Which was good—Guillelm was sleeping across her threshold, snoring and twitching like a great golden shaggy guard dog.

  He stirred the instant she opened her door, flinging up an arm to prevent any entering her room from the stairs and blinking a baleful eye. ’What?’

  ‘You have no need to defend me from me, Guillelm.’ Somehow calling him my lord seemed inappropriate, especially now, with him yawning and rubbing at his bristling jaw.

  ‘Excellent girl —’

  ‘You want something.’

  ‘A cup of water or weak ale, if you have it.’

  ‘Not here: we must go downstairs.’ Alyson shook her head, astonished at how indulgent she felt towards this large oaf. It could not have been comfortable for him last night, napping on the stairs, and yet he did so in order that she would be safe. The thought touched her in spite of her disapproval of his carousing. ‘Did you win all your wrestling last night?’ she asked.

  He grinned and lifted an arm, showing off several cloak-pins skewered through his sleeve. ‘All fairly won. The others can show you their bruises.’ He blinked and knuckled his eyes. ‘Mother of God, it was quite a night.’

  ‘You should have drunk less,’ Alyson said, nudging him with her foot. ’You will feel better outside.’ She held out a hand.

  ‘You will not pull me up,’ he protested, using the wall instead as a brace as he swayed to his feet. ’No, I am fine. I will be.’

  ‘Let us go, then.’ Alyson challenged. ’Your breath is not so sweet this morning.’

  ‘Saucy wench!’ Guillelm grumbled, but he was moving, picking up his feet lightly enough so as not to disturb the other twitching sleepers sprawled over the trestles in the great hall. Alyson passed by their slumbering forms as she sped from the stairs to the main doorway set in the middle of the hall, opposite the fireplace. There a few ash-covered fire-dogs, discarded cups and empty earthenware jugs, plus an overturned small cauldron leaking a spill of stew showed that it had been a very rowdy evening indeed. She glanced at Guillelm with raised eyebrows and he had the grace to colour slightly and hurriedly push open the door for her.

  ‘There were many toasts to our betrothal,’ he said sheepishly. ’I could not deny or gainsay them.’

  ‘No?’ About to tease more, Alyson noticed Fulk sleeping on the floor close to the stairs. He was sullen and frowning even in sleep and the sight of him, coiled into a tight, unyielding ball, made her shiver. What if he had attempted to do more in her room last night, when the rest of the company were making merry? If Guillelm had not lain by her door, would Fulk have tried to harm her?

  I need to find absolute proof that he is my enemy, and quickly, she thought, but for now she was glad to step out of the beer-fumed hall into the early morning sunshine.

  To her surprise, she and Guillelm were not alone. Thomas of Beresford was already outside, chopping wood.

  ‘Guido!’ Tom buried the axe in the thick trunk of oak wood that he was trimming. ‘Come work off that hangover by cutting some of this timber into manageable logs and I will fetch us breakfast. You, too, sweet Alyson. I trust you slept well?’

  ‘Very, thank you,’ Alyson lied, watching the man hurry away to the kitchen block with a jaunty strut to his step.

  ‘I know not how he does it, but Tom is ever good-tempered on a morning.’ Beside her Guillelm took up the axe and tested the blade with his thumb. ‘“Sweet Alyson,” eh?’

  Without waiting for an answer he peeled down his tunic, stripping to the waist, and resumed the task Tom had started.

  Alyson blushed: she could not help it. How often had she wondered in day-dreams what Guillelm might look like? Not naked—she had never been so bold as to imagine that—but as he was now?

  He had his back to her and she had a good view of him before a shout from the returning Tom made him twist round for an instant. The flesh across his back and shoulder blades shone in the ruddy dawn. He was beautiful as a wolf or wildcat is beautiful; a marriage of spirit and sinews and animating grace. Light flashed from the metal head of the axe as he swung it back for another blow. The cry of splintered wood sang in her ears and she stumbled forward.

  Guillelm spun about, axe automatically raised to attack. Seeing her, remembering she was there again, he laughed and returned to his work. The curved bough he was working on groaned and fell clear; he tossed the log casually onto the growing pile of others and examined the rest of the tree trunk before laying aside his axe.

  Alyson went to him, brushing shavings from his downy beard. His eyes were red with sawdust, but he grinned at her.

  'The oak is my favourite: handsome in leaf and laden in the fall with sweet, full acorns. It grows strong wood.' Guillelm's fingers spread across the tree bark and Alyson grinned at his obvious delight—she was happy again, her doubts dismissed. Arm in arm, they walked back to Tom, Guillelm shaking wood chips from his hair and talking.

  'There will be a great tree harvest this season, I think, and apple-wood to burn, bark for your poultices, timber to shape.' He patted Alyson's rump as he had patted the oak trunk. 'Maybe a crib for a young one, and toys. What is it? Your cheek is as fiery as the barberry. Have I spoken too soon?'

  He had stopped walking and transferred the axe to his right hand to clasp her shoulder. He smelt of sweat and musk and a familiar ache stirred in Alyson, but she answered clearly.

  'I wish it was that, Guillelm. Your words—I thought then of my sister.'

  ’Ah. Of course.’ Guillelm withdrew his hand. ’Forgive me.’ He smacked his palm onto his forehead. ’How could I forget what you told me only yesterday? I am such a fool!’

  ‘No —’ Alyson began, but Tom interrupted, proffering two cups of ale and saying in an over-hearty voice, ‘There is bread and meat ready in the kitchen; we should go there before the scullions eat it for us.’

  ‘My thanks, but I must visit the stable first.’ Guillelm downed his ale in a single swallow and strode off, tugging his shirt and mantle back over his head and leaving Tom and Alyson to follow.

  ‘I think he means the latrine,’ Tom remarked, catching Alyson‘s disconcerted look. ‘Guillelm is shy when it comes to women.’

  He offered her his arm, adding, ’I am glad we have this moment, Alyson. I have a question for your ears alone. Early this morning I found two of my hounds eating something beneath the window of your chamber. Do you know what it could be?’

  Alyson, heart thudding in her chest, looked into Tom’s guileless, kind eyes. She could not lie, but how could she speak?

  ‘No matter,’ Tom continued. ’The dogs will scavenge anything. But if —’ He glanced ahead to ensure that Guillelm was still out of hearing and dropped his voice—’if ever you require help, you need only ask. It will be given without question. And now you need say nothing; it is enough that we both know.’
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  Tom moved ahead, pushing open the door to the kitchen and allowing Alyson to enter first.

  After breakfast, Guillelm spoke to his friend. ’I would take Alyson and be gone from here soon, before the others. Her palfrey needs more rest than my men’s horses.’

  ‘That would make sense,’ Tom agreed, while he thought: you hide your true feelings even from yourself! It is a thousand pities you ever met Heloise.

  ’Stay here in the yard a moment first,’ he said. ‘There is something I want you to see, you and your lady. Wait—I will bring it to you.’

  ‘This is my betrothal gift to you both,’ Tom said.

  Alyson heard Guillelm’s whispered, ‘Mother of God,’ and understood his amazement. He slowly put out his hand and gently stroked the breast of the creature. ‘It is so fine,’ he murmured.

  ‘To replace the hawk you had in the east,’ Tom said. ’At first, I was to give you a pair of hounds, but knowing how hard you took the loss of your last dog on our homeward voyage from Outremer, I thought this better.’

  Alyson had wondered why he had no dogs with him and now she approved his constancy. ‘Is it a merlin?’ she asked softly, as Guillelm donned a glove and took the hooded bird from Tom’s fist.

  ‘A very beautiful one,’ Guillelm answered, smiling at the little hawk’s soft cry. ’Her plumage is wonderful, such a rich mosaic of browns and creams!’ His widening eyes found Alyson’s and he smiled at her. ’If Tom will have her back a moment, you may have my glove —’

  ‘No need.’ Tom handed Alyson a finely tooled glove.

  ‘Fulk must ride ahead, ensure the hawk-house is made ready,’ Guillelm went on. ‘Is David of Jeston still at Hardspen?’

  ‘He died of this year’s sickness,’ Alyson said, reluctant to pierce Guillelm’s moment of giddy joy, but remembering the falconer’s fevered end all too well.

  ‘Fulk knows something of the care of hawks,’ Tom said, covering the awkward moment of silence.

  ‘I know, too.’ Guillelm remarked. He thrust out his free hand and caught Tom’s fingers in an enthusiastic, whitening grip. ‘My thanks to you. Tom.’