Though Alyson had no doubt that Fulk disapproved, Guillelm often sought her out to ask about the background to the various complaints from the local people. ’You will know who is rumoured to steal from the fish ponds and who gives light weight to their measures,’ he remarked, a comment she hugged to herself. Guillelm’s father had never involved her in any way in such disputes.
Her only cloud was her nights, where she had bad dreams. She begged her nurse Gytha to say nothing of her nightmares of blood and screams. They would pass, she thought. They must, or Fulk’s malice with that vile parcel he had left in her bed at Sir Tom’s would leave too great a shadow.
She was also no closer to learning about Heloise. She had promised Sir Tom that she would not ask Guillelm direct and she had kept that vow. More oblique questions to him—Had he known many ladies in Outremer? What fashions did the women of the east wear? Were there any female crusaders?—had yielded only one-word answers or, in the last case, a grunt of laughter.
But perhaps she was being foolish. On the evening of the day they had swum in the river, Guillelm had asked her to join him in the chapel at Hardspen.
There, with the last of the evening sunlight casting shadows on his face and hair he had knelt before her on the stone flags so that their eyes were almost level.
‘This is for you. I meant to give it you earlier.’
He had handed her a scrap of cloth. His eyes gleamed with the same suppressed excitement that she had seen in them when he was a youth, when he was about some quest or mischief, and she heard the tendons of his neck crack as he lowered his head to watch her fingers.
‘I hope you like it,’ he murmured.
Wondering what it could be, she opened the roughly-tied parcel. Inside the cloth had been a delicate web of something, thin as the wings of a butterfly. Alyson blew on it, watching the filmy stuff billow.
‘Silk?’ she asked.
Guillelm nodded. ’Bartered from a trader in Jerusalem with a stall close to the spice market.’
‘It is a gorgeous colour. Like a fall sky at twilight.’ Almost afraid to handle the purple-blue haze, she unwrapped it fully. ’It is beautiful. So smooth and light.’
‘The only thing I thought worthy of covering your hair,’ Guillelm said quickly. ’It is a veil,’ he added unnecessarily.
‘Thank you.’ She touched his cheek with the silk, feeling the rough grain of his tanned flesh through the rare fabric. ‘I shall wear it at our wedding,’ she continued, catching her breath as Guillelm had turned his head and kissed her hand close to the wrist.
Thinking back, Alyson smiled. Whatever memories Guillelm had of Heloise, he had given the silk to her. And proud, blonde Heloise was in Outremer: it was she who was marrying the lord of Hardspen.
Tomorrow.
But what if she could not make him happy? What if her sister was right and God was angry with her for not entering convent life? What if she died in childbirth, like her mother? What if at some fatal moment, Guillelm did something that reminded her too closely of his father? What if he saw the scars on her body? What if they repelled him?
The questions had driven her back to the castle chapel. She had been on her knees here since the midday meal, telling Guillelm that she was keeping a vigil.
‘That is what a squire does, before he is knighted,’ Guillelm had said. ’He spends the night at prayer and fasting. Do you think our marriage will be such a battlefield?’
His question had seemed innocent enough, a tease, but she had sensed his disquiet and answered seriously, ’I will pray for those things a good knight prays for: faithfulness, fellowship, generosity of spirit.’ Then she had grinned. ’A good defence.’
‘Off with you, horror,’ Guillelm had said, tugging her plait as she mounted the stairs.
She had been praying before the simple stone altar for several hours. Beyond the chapel door the day-time bustle of the castle had given way to the scurry of the evening meal in the great hall, then quiet. Guillelm was not drinking tonight and neither were his men. Presumably he did not wish to appear at his wedding thick-headed, she thought, but the lack of merry-making made her wonder if he was having second thoughts. Where was he tonight? With some woman? His final bedding as a free man?
Alyson tried to quell the thought, ashamed of her own jealousy. And in church, too!
There was a knock on the chapel door. Alyson rose, rubbing her numb, cold knees, as Fulk entered.
‘I have brought you some mulled wine, my lady.’
The wine smelt good and looked harmless. More surprising still was Fulk himself, very fine in a gold and silver mantle, smelling of fresh soap, and smiling.
‘Thank you, sir.’ Alyson could think of no legitimate reason to refuse his apparent kindness and could only delay. ’Would you leave the wine outside the chapel for me? To drink here does not seem quite appropriate.’
‘Yet we will take communion wine in here tomorrow, my lady.’ He proffered the goblet again. ’Please, for the sake of my lord. He would not have you catch your death of cold.’
Guillelm had sent the wine? Perhaps he had, but then why had Fulk brought it and not a page or squire? Or even one of the maids—there were plenty about the castle now, for all had thrown off the summer sickness.
‘My lord is ever kind,’ Alyson responded stiffly. ‘As are you, sir, for carrying it to me yourself.’ She took the goblet from him, making great play of inhaling the steaming beverage. ‘I love the smell of warm spices.’ Which was true, although the reason she sniffed so heartily was to catch any trace of something unwholesome in the mixture. Alyson had not forgotten Fulk’s accusation of poison against Gytha.
Nor it seemed had Fulk. He took a step closer to her. ‘I swear that it is safe.’
The very fact he did not add ‘my lady’ convinced Alyson, that and the flush that tided up into his gaunt face, submerging the angry red spots on his sallow cheeks beneath a rush of shame.
‘I have wronged you.’
His words were almost indistinct, yet his gesture was plain. Much to Alyson’s embarrassment he fell on his knees before her, his hands reaching in supplication for the hem of her gown. ‘Forgive me. For my pride, my arrogance, my malice. I have sinned against a purely virtuous lady and now I see my error. Forgive!’
He was clutching at her skirts, his hard blue eyes wide in seeming distress. But why the change of heart? Had Guillelm spoken to the man?
Almost as if he had divined her thought, Fulk prattled on. ‘Please, my lord knows nothing of my trick against you at the house of Thomas of Beresford. I beg you not to speak of it to him.’
Sickened by his admission, Alyson yanked her gown from his clasping fingers. ‘I am no tell-tale.’
‘No, you are a mate worthy of my lord. I understand that.’
Alyson sniffed the wine again and tasted it. ‘I think less cinnamon next time.’ She rippled her fingers at Fulk. ’Rise, sir, or you will be the one to catch your death of cold.
‘Tell me,’ she said, when Fulk was on his feet. ‘How did you arrive at your revised conclusion?’
‘You speak like a master of logic, my lady —’
‘And you put pig’s guts into my bed. Answer the question.’
Fulk scowled, clearly put out by her directness. ‘I was not myself that night,’ he muttered. ‘Too much wine.’
It was the nearest, Alyson sensed, that he would come to an explanation or apology. ‘Go on,’ she said, sipping her wine.
Fulk stared at the altar candles. ‘Guillelm is happy.’
‘Your lord’s joy is important to you, then? Even if it means a different destiny from the one you wanted for him?’ Waiting for Fulk’s reply, Alyson found herself looking at the altar, with its bare white cloth and small, roughly carved, garishly painted wooden crucifix. Gytha and Osmoda had promised her many flowers for her wedding day but so far the chapel was as plain as it had ever been.
‘Perhaps it is the will of God,’ Fulk conceded.
‘Yet you told me Gu
illelm’s fancies did not last, so why should you think differently of me?’
‘He is marrying you. You have no family, no important friends to force your case with him had he chosen to keep you as his leman, instead.’ Fulk shrugged—it seemed that begging her forgiveness and his earlier grovelling had depleted his small store of courtesy as he now added, ‘It is certainly nothing to do with honouring your own lands or title, neither of which can be described as significant.’
‘It is well for you, Fulk, that our lord is not here, or you would suffer for that ungentle remark.’ Alyson’s mind turned cold, her body clammy. Guillelm’s mistress. She had not considered that possibility, although in truth, considering what had so nearly happened between her and Guillelm’s father Lord Robert, she should have done. For an instant her own vulnerability weighed on her, then she rallied.
‘What of your vow to me, to win places for yourself and Guillelm on a further crusade to Outremer? Do you still hold to that promise?’
‘It seems I cannot.’
‘Do you give up that vow?’ Alyson persisted. ‘Do you?’
‘It seems I must.’
‘Not the most extravagant of new promises, Fulk.’
‘I know I must do better.’ Fulk clasped his shaggy grey head briefly between his hands and then began to pace about the chapel. ‘I cannot easily praise women.’
‘Not even the delicious Heloise of Outremer?’
That stopped him dead, in mid-stride. ‘You know of her?’
‘Of course.’ Alyson waited: this was more teasing than the most delicate of potion making. If Fulk guessed how badly she wanted to know more of Heloise he might deny her. ‘She was blonde and beautiful and she injured my lord.’
‘That is true—I know nothing of what passed between them, but Heloise was the very devil.’
‘To you we women are all the snares of the devil.’ Alyson did not smile at Fulk’s startled expression: it gave her no pleasure to admit this. She knew that to him there was nothing about her of value. To him, she was simply a dark Heloise. Heloise, who remained mysterious…
‘If you get Guillelm a son it will be enough.’ His previous, fulsome speech had entirely deserted him. ‘If you have the courage for such work.’
So he had overheard her talking to Guillelm and knew the tragic history of her mother! Yet there was no sympathy in his look or words. To Fulk she was a vessel for a man‘s seed, nothing more. ’And my people and I will I be safe from you?’
A trace of white spittle appeared at the corner of Fulk’s mouth as he whipped round to face her. ’What do you think me? You are my lord’s!’
‘Perhaps worth even as much as his merlin,’ Alyson agreed.
That wrung a grudging smile from Fulk. ‘I swear I will make no move against you.’ He signed the cross in the air.
‘Nor against my people?’ Alyson demanded, remembering Gytha.
‘Nor against your people.’
‘You will serve me faithfully, as a true knight to her lady?’
He sighed. ‘Even that.’
Should she demand an act of fealty from him, Alyson wondered, but the idea of Fulk kneeling before her a second time, of her hands clasping his while he swore an oath of allegiance was abhorrent to her. He had sworn and signed the cross: that should be sufficient.
‘I would serve you now, my lady,’ Fulk’s attempt at gallantry was back and Alyson chose to take the wish for the deed.
‘How so?’ she asked, finishing her wine. It had indeed been excellent—she and Fulk might yet muddle along, she thought, praying that she was not being too optimistic in her assessment. Yet she had to try, if only for Guillelm’s sake. ’What would you do for me?’
Fulk walked away. For an instant, Alyson thought he was leaving and was uncertain if she was relieved or annoyed but then he crouched in the shadow of one of the chapel’s stone pillars, plucking something from the floor. He returned to her, holding it aloft between his hands. ‘I would tell you of this diadem, which the chatelaines of Hardspen have ever worn on festal days. My lord thought it lost, but I have sought and found it and now I offer it to you.’
He held out the diadem. ’It was in one of the store rooms, thrust into a sack in a corner. I think the previous steward of the castle must have brought it there for some reason of his own and then died of the fever before telling anyone where he had put it, or why, but no matter: it is recovered.’
‘A prodigal diadem,’ Alyson observed, but her small joke, at which Guillelm would have laughed, earned her no smile from Fulk.
‘It is an ancient thing, my lady.’ He spoke as if she had said nothing. ’My lord has spoken of it to me, with sorrow at its disappearance. He did not mention it to you,’ Fulk went on, turning the diadem in his hands, ’Because he did not wish to cause you distress.’
Alyson waited and after a pause, during which the unearthly shriek of a night-jar filtered through the only window in the chapel—a simple three-lancet affair but with rare coloured glass—he picked up his tale.
‘There is a story attached to this jewel. It is said that if the lady of the castle does not wear it on her wedding day, the marriage will be barren.’
‘Guillelm told you this?’
‘On the first night we returned to Hardspen, my lady.’ Fulk inclined his grey head, his fierce blue eyes narrowed into slits as he considered the diadem. ’He looked for it himself after he had made his suit to you, and when he did not find it he sought to laugh off the story, saying it was naught but superstition. But I could tell he was disquieted.’ Fulk flung her a cool, assessing glance. ‘When Guillelm was in his cups, the night before we rode to St Foy‘s —’
‘The evening of our betrothal,’ Alyson dropped in coolly.
‘— he spoke of it a second time. He said it was an evil loss. I do not think he would have spoken so had he not been made unguarded with drink, but it is certain that it has preyed upon his mind, do you not agree?’
‘Perhaps. Is there more to the legend?’ Alyson thought it sounded bald and a thread of suspicion wound about her mind. She was little reassured when Fulk shrugged.
‘Something of two crossed lovers—a womanish fancy, I forget.’
Reluctantly, Alyson put her empty goblet on the stone flags and held out her hands. ’May I?’
Fulk gave her the diadem and stood back a pace with legs apart and arms folded: a curious stance for a pious man in a holy place. She would certainly not take just Fulk’s word on this. She would ask Gytha to question the old servants of Hardspen, see if this ’legend’ was more than a product of Fulk’s devious head. Yet if that were so, for what purpose?
The diadem could not be poisoned: he had handled it too freely. It was a plain, heavy device in gold, very much like her betrothal ring. The gold was as yellow as the yolk of an egg. There were no markings on it yet she guessed that Fulk was correct. It seemed old, an heirloom.
‘Thank you, Fulk,’ she said.
He bowed, recovered the goblet and took his leave without asking if she would wear it on the morrow. Alyson waited until she was certain he was gone on the dim stairway, then slipped out of the chapel to find Gytha.
Later that evening, in the modest chamber that after tonight would no longer be hers, her nurse was reassuring. The diadem was indeed a family heirloom, from the maternal line. Guillelm’s mother had worn it at her wedding. It was claimed by all the old retainers of the castle that any Hardspen bride who wore it would have a supremely fortunate marriage and bring forth many living sons.
Her lord dragon, with his great size and strength, was surely the equivalent of many sons, Alyson thought, and she smiled. ‘And the story of the lovers?’ she asked.
Gytha patted the bed that she and Alyson were sharing for the last time, encouraging her former charge to snuggle down beneath the sheets to listen.
Somewhere in a story of a young Norman prince and a Saxon lady, who had met on pilgrimage to Rome and then been parted by fate, with the lady kidnapped by a wicked uncle
and the prince searching for her, undergoing travails through marshes and being guided to his true love by miraculous speaking birds, Alyson fell asleep. She stirred once, when Gytha reached the climax of her tale, saying that although the lady had been bewitched into the likeness of an old hag by her uncle, the prince recognized her by her golden diadem and kissed her, breaking the spell.
‘So they were wed, my bird, and very merry. The lady wore a gown of cloth of gold and a veil of gold and shoes of …’
Alyson slept again and heard no more.
Chapter 10
For what felt to be the thousandth time, Guillelm stared at his bride. Where had she found it? He had thought it well hidden, but here she was in her best gown and her silk veil and that. Someone must have gone looking for it. Was it in innocence that she wore the diadem, or did she know? Had she heard some whisper? Yet if she had heard and she knew the full history of his mother’s jewel, how could she appear before him, wearing it? Sporting it, even? How dare she?
It was always a favourite of his father’s, Guillelm remembered. Did she wear it for him, in memory of him? Did she miss Lord Robert? Did she wish she was marrying the father instead of the son?
Round and round, like a child’s spinning top, the thoughts tormented Guillelm through his marriage vows. He watched Alyson at their wedding feast, haunted by the fact that she ate little and said less. Nerves or more?
Soon they would be together, once her maids had finished preparing the main bedchamber. Guillelm had never used it, preferring to sleep with his men in the great hall, below the great long sword and round gold-embossed shield of his famous Viking ancestor, Thorkill of Orkney. To him, main bedchamber still felt like his father’s, rather than his.
Tom said something and Guillelm answered, thinking that although his friend had made a special effort to attend their marriage, his own sister had not, sending instead a modest gift of bedding and the excuse, delivered by the shame-faced messenger, that she could not come because of ‘women’s troubles’—whatever those were. None of Juliana’s family had attended, either, which saddened but did not surprise Guillelm. He and his elder sibling had never been close.
Love and Chivalry: Four Medieval Historical Romances Page 11