When he started to back away, Alyson understood. He thought she was sleeping here, in her old room, without him!
‘No, dragon,’ she said quickly. ‘I was about to go to the great hall.’
‘I looked for you there first: I wish us to dine in private this evening, within our room. I know it is not the custom in England, but for one night, where would be the harm?’
He smiled, but seemed ill at ease.
‘What was Fulk saying to you just now?’
That I was a barren useless female on whom you would never get an heir. Alyson bit back on the answer, clinging to the marvellous idea that Guillelm wanted them to eat in private. Slowly, she drew out one of her ribbons, hoping Guillelm’s fascination with her hair would distract him. ‘Is Gytha outside?’ she asked in turn.
‘No. Shall I summon her? Do you wish her to attend you?’
‘No!’ She had asked because she did not relish the idea of her nurse overhearing anything. ‘You could attend me—only if you have the time,’ she added.
Was her question a test, or mockery, as it would have been with Heloise? The last time he had been in a woman’s bedchamber it had entered in disaster. Scorning his own cowardice, Guillelm saw the ribbon in her hand tremble: she was shaking, ever so slightly. Nervous of him, or of her own perceived boldness? Pity warred with desire in him but he was guarded: he wanted neither to force his attentions on her, nor to make a mistake. The thought of last night scalded him with humiliation: he had no desire to repeat that experience.
‘Fulk and Sericus are sitting in our places in hall tonight,’ he explained.
‘Fulk and Sericus?’ She gave him a teasing look, her face full of mischief but no fear. ‘Think that they will be peaceful together? And who will be the lord and who the lady?’
Guillelm laughed, his fancy caught by that droll idea. ‘They will need to sort that between them, but ‘tis only for one night. So there is no need for us to stir from our chamber. Or indeed from here, if you wish.’ When Alyson did not seem panic-stricken at the prospect, his hopes revived further. ‘What say you?’
‘That pleases me,’ she said quietly. ‘I would be pleased to stay here with you, Guillelm.’
‘Excellent!’ He need only put his head out of the door and shout for a page, summon servers, and their supper would be brought to them. It had been his plan: an intimate meal between them, at ease within their own chamber, but now he found his breath stuck in his throat. He did not want to speak to anyone else, or move even a finger-width further apart from her.
‘Mother of God, you are beautiful.’
She wound the ribbon around his wrist and, using it, gently pulled him closer. ‘I have made a vow, too.’ She blew softly across his bare forearm, warmly stirring each and every hair, the contact-that-was-not-contact making him shudder.
‘I have vowed to win you.’
She stood on tip-toe and kissed him, her mouth tasting of strawberries.
Desire rammed through him, stronger than a siege engine. Stronger still was the marvellous delight that Alyson cared—she truly did. He wrapped his arms about her, embracing her, his lips finding the rapid pulse at her throat, the soft crease behind her ears.
There were running feet on the stairs outside. ‘My lord!’ A breathless page was shouting, ‘My lord Guillelm!’
The lad pounded on past the room, racing in error for the main bedchamber.
‘My lady!’ A maid hammered on the door. ‘My lady, you must come!’
As one, Guillelm and Alyson lunged for the door and the maid tumbled in, teary-eyed and shivering.
‘What, girl?’ Guillelm barked, and now she did burst into tears, sobbing into her hands.
‘You must come!’ she cried, cringing away from Guillelm’s towering figure. ‘The news! Such terrible news —’
Alyson pushed past Guillelm and took the maid by the shoulders. ‘Hush, there, Mary, catch your breath.’
‘What news?’ Guillelm demanded.
The maid gulped and raised her head. ‘The Fleming has returned, my lord. The convent of St Foy is under attack.’
Chapter 15
Guillelm sprinted from the chamber, shouting for his sword and Armour, leaving Alyson with the shivering maid.
‘What has happened?’ Alyson asked, desperate to know more, but Mary could only cry against her shoulder.
‘Terrible thing, my lady. Dreadful!’ Mary wailed, leaning so hard against her smaller slighter mistress that Alyson almost lost her footing. She hooked a stool with her foot and dragged it closer, encouraged Mary to sit, put her head down, take deep breaths.
‘Easy, easy,’ she soothed, ruffling the girl’s thin brown curls, trying to calm her while her own imagination was bursting with horrors. Mercenaries attacking a holy place: it was unthinkable, unspeakable. Unbearable, that her own sister should be there. What was England coming to, if a woman’s convent could be attacked? Was Tilda alive? Was she safe, undespoiled?
Alyson dropped to her knees, praying, the Latin words freezing on her tongue as the maid moaned and blubbered, her nose running. Rising to her feet again, Alyson tore a wide ribbon from her own hair and pressed it into Mary’s cold fingers.
’Here, Mary, blow your nose,’ she said, gentle as if the maid was her daughter. ’All will be well. Your lord is a great fighter; he will see the convent safe.’
She swiftly bound her hair, still with its many ribbons, into a single plait. ‘Pray, Mary, but be not so afraid. The convent is close: it will be saved.’ She looked about for her cloak. ’Have you people at St Foy’s?’ she asked, wondering if that was the reason why Mary seemed so undone. She slipped a cloak belonging to Gytha, short on her and with its narrow trimming of rabbit fur riddled with moth, over her shoulders and tied the throat strings.
Mary shook her head. She was quietening and less pale, regaining some of her native wit, too, for now she whispered, ‘I am sorry, mistress. I know your own dearly-missed sister is there—would that she were not! But I have seen the handiwork of Flemish troops before.’
‘We all have these days,’ replied Alyson bleakly. Forcing some kind of smile to her lips, she said gently, ’Stay here tonight, if you wish: I will send Gytha and Osmoda to join you.’
‘But where are you going, my lady?’ Mary asked, holding out the sodden ribbon, which Alyson gently refused.
‘To join my husband,’ she almost said, but stopped herself. ‘To pray,’ she answered, which was also true, but not the whole truth.
Alyson did not look to find Guillelm in the keep. Pulling Gytha’s sparse hood over her head, she sped out to the stables. All there was a riot of comings and goings in a flicker of torches: men saddling horses, checking girths and gear, pulling on arm-guards, squires scampering for Armour, helping their knightly masters onto their mounts.
Lingering in the shadows of her lean-to, Alyson noticed the lad she had spoken with earlier that day. Sadly, he also noticed her.
‘My lady!’ He darted across to her. ’You should not be here!’
‘I have a token for my lord, for his good fortune,’ Alyson lied quickly. ’Will you give it to him and wish him God speed? We had not time to say goodbye.’
She knew that sounded too plaintive and was ashamed of her own need, but the stable boy’s face softened. ’I will.’ He received the hair pin from her as graciously as a courtier, bowing his head. ’He will be safe, my lady. He is a great warrior.’
This was so close to what she had said to comfort the maid that Alyson smiled. She thanked the lad and watched him weave back into the press of men and horses, then sagged, the smile dropping from her lips. She knew Guillelm was a fighter, of course she knew, but war was war. A stray arrow, a sword thrust and her dragon’s fire and dazzle might be extinguished. And he was so bright, so obvious a target…
She could not bear to be parted from him in this way. Whatever the danger, however foolish or selfish her action, she had to go with him. Why not? Other women went in war trains; camp followers and t
he wives of soldiers. She was a healer: she could be useful. There was her sister, too, and the other nuns; women who might appreciate her care, if she could saddle her horse and ride out unnoticed in this battle horde.
Alyson was lucky—her mount was stabled at the very end of the block, with a stall full of straw and feed between her and the other horses. Keeping to the shadows, she reached Jezebel without raising any alarm and was slipping a bridle over the mare’s narrow head when she heard Guillelm’s blood-curdling war-cry. Even as she froze, chilled by the almost demonic shout, her husband rode past the stable, raising his sword-arm and yelling, ’Ride to St Foy’s! Ride!’
‘We ride!’ the answer rumbled from two score and more throats and they were off, thundering out of Hardspen at full gallop.
Alyson had no time to saddle her horse: she cast herself onto the mare’s back and pounded out of the stable yard, her borrowed cloak and hood pulled low over her head to hide her face and hair. Glad there was no moon to light her clothes or show off her shape, she urged Jezebel on and joined the cloaked and hooded squires at the rear of the column.
Guillelm spurred Caliph to greater speed, leaning forward in the saddle to give the massive war horse his head. Aware of the dark ground rushing under his heels, he was merciless in his riding, never slowing down, careless of obstacles. Reckless as he was, the stallion drove through shadows on the track, leaping over fallen branches and churning up a miasma of dust. A fox darted across the road, the white tip of its tail a banner amongst the dark green and black of the wayside hazel and hawthorn, but Guillelm was not to be diverted. ’Forward!’ he yelled, running Caliph straight at a sapling growing in the middle of the road. He felt its leaves slap against his foot and heard the wheeze of horses and men, falling behind, but he did not draw rein.
Women were in danger. Nuns were under attack by a creature he had spared. He knew from the sweating, exhausted messenger who had ridden out from the village close to St Foy’s that the men there had sworn to defend the convent if need arose, but what could an aging, ill-armed militia do against mercenaries? If any died, man, boy or woman, Guillelm knew he would be to blame. Whatever excuses a confessor might make for him, he had allowed the Fleming to leave Hardspen with his men and weapons. He had made a serious misjudgement in trusting the word of Étienne the so-called Bold: the man had broken his knightly promise. If Étienne had ever joined the forces of King Stephen or the Empress, the venture had clearly not worked and so he was back in the area he had terrorized so readily before, looking for easy plunder. And if one had the stomach for it, a convent was the easiest target of all.
Alyson’s sister was at St Foy’s.
Cursing, Guillelm rode harder still.
Numb with grief and the pounding ride, Alyson saw the flames and heard the sickening roar of burning timbers through the trees, before the column reached the convent. Breasting the rise in the rutted road, she groaned and almost lost her reins, instinct alone saving her from being pitched headlong from Jezebel’s back. Around her she heard shouting from the squires, saw their pallid, sweating faces.
Below them, stretched before them in the down land valley, was a scene from hell. The church of St Foy’s was wholly ablaze, spiralling plumes of fire and smoke spilling from the roof of the nave and leaping out of its shattered windows. There were prone bodies, suspiciously still, lying like broken toys in the garden where only a few weeks earlier she and her sister had walked in peace. Of the mercenaries there seemed no sign, except for one stray riderless horse, careering round and round in the road outside.
‘Have any survived?’ hissed a squire and Alyson, not trusting her voice, pointed back to the church, where a few limping figures seemed to be trying to beat out the flames at the base of the building, without success. The convent wall had a massive breach in its eastern side and as Alyson watched, willing herself to nudge her horse to a final effort but unable to force her frozen limbs to move, she saw the roof of the nun’s dormitory cave in with a splintering crash.
‘Tilda!’ she shrieked. Flinging herself off the shuddering, rolling-eyed Jezebel, she ran down the hill, not caring if the Fleming’s men were there or not.
Suddenly ahead of her she saw Guillelm appear in the gap in the convent wall, carrying a trembling figure in his arms and leading a dazed old man by the shoulder.
Even as she rejoiced that he was safe, that the mercenaries had truly fled from her lord’s strength and righteous anger, she realized her mistake. Catching a flurry of movement in the corner of her eye, she turned about, swerving just in time to avoid the rushing mount of one of the squires who passed so close to her that she felt her cheek grazed by the lad’s stirrup. But it was not his headlong dash she had sensed, or even heard above the general din of the fire and shouting and galloping horses. Instinct guided her to look further back, up the hill towards the trees crowning the top of the ridge, and yes! There it was: a figure, stepping out of the woodland. As he emerged from the shadows of the trees, he was sky-lined a moment, his wiry, mail-clad shape clear against the summer stars. It was too dark to see the knightly device on his Armour or cloak, but he was no ally—his war-helm was closed and he carried a sword in one hand and a crossbow in the other.
Alyson began to run again, to Guillelm, aware she only had seconds, instants before the enemy raised his helm and wound up his deadly crossbow.
He would shoot at Guillelm—
‘Down! Get down! Get away!’ Yelling warnings, she ran straight at Guillelm, her one thought to save him, her only wild plan that if she could not make him hear her warnings, she might spoil the aim of the enemy archer.
Ignoring the growing pain of her heat-seared lungs and her fading, tiring limbs, she screamed again, ’Get down!’ and now Guillelm heard and saw her, shock and horror warring in his face, his mouth forming the question, ’How?’
‘Down!’ Alyson cried, but she was too late. She felt a punch slam into her shoulder, spinning her round so that she fell backwards, the breath knocked out of her. She tried to move, to reach Guillelm, shield him, but as she raised her head a jolt of agony drove through her body and she blacked out.
Guillelm reacted without conscious thought. He lowered the shocked, sobbing Prioress gently onto the ground and seized the quivering arrow shaft buried so sickeningly in Alyson’s shoulder, determined to draw it out before she came round from her faint.
Even as he worked, images flashed constantly before his eyes. Alyson running towards him, arms outstretched, making herself a target. Over and over, he saw the bolt thud into her slender body, saw her feet actually leave the ground as she was flung around by the force of the impact. She had been shot in the back and he had done nothing to save her; worse he had not even known she had joined the war-band. He had been so keen to lay sword against sword with Étienne the Bold, who, cur that he was, had turned tail the instant he saw him, riding through the smoke and soot of the burning convent.
‘Ah!’ Although he tried to be steady and careful and the crossbow bolt came out cleanly, the sharp decisive tug hurt her—Alyson came out of her swoon with a shriek of agony.
‘Sssh, sweetheart, it is done.’ Guillelm wanted to cradle her but dare not: he could not bear to hurt her again. Kneeling by her, he packed his cloak around her body, terrified at how cold she was. Her shoulder was bleeding freely and that must be good, for the ill-humours would be washed out.
What if the crossbow bolt was poisoned?
What if she died?
‘Live, Alyson,’ he whispered, too afraid to be angry at her. He should have known she would attempt something like this: she was never one to sit still when those she loved were under threat. Where was that sister of hers? The Flemings had herded the nuns into the courtyard while they torched the buildings. None had been harmed so where was she?
Blinking away tears, he raised his head and met the pasty faces of the squires. The lads had dismounted and gathered round, forming a shield with their horses. Too late, Guillelm thought bleakly.
&
nbsp; ‘My lord, we did not know…’
‘Truly we never suspected…’
‘She moved so swiftly, ran right amongst the horses…’
‘We could not stop her!’
Their excuses died away and they hung their heads.
‘What can we do?’ asked one.
Guillelm raked them with furious eyes. His knights were still searching for survivors in the wrecked convent—friends or foe—but these useless, lumpen youths should be good for something.
‘Get me that archer,’ he spat.
‘I will do so, my lord.’ Fulk stepped into the circle, glanced at Alyson’s still body, and then turned, shouting for his horse.
‘Sir —’
At first Guillelm thought it one of the squires, or the half-blind old militia-man he had led away to safety from the burning church.
‘Do not scold them, sir. I rode in disguise.’ The small, breathy voice was Alyson’s. She was looking at him, her eyes dark with pain and fear.
‘Peace!’ Guillelm took her icy hand in his, trying to will his own heat into her. ‘We shall have you home safe, soon enough.’
‘I am sorry to be so much trouble.’ Alyson tried to raise herself on her elbow, gasped and fell back.
‘Alyson!’ For a dreadful moment, he thought she had died, but then saw the quick rise of her chest and realized she had passed out again. He should lift her from this burnt, wrecked ground as soon as possible, but what way would be best? In his arms, on horseback? On a litter?
‘Give me your cloaks!’ he snapped at the hapless squires. ‘Cover her with them. You! Bring me the infirmarer! You! Make a fire here! You! Find Sir Thomas.’ He almost said Sir Fulk, his natural second-in-command, but Fulk was off on another necessary task and one he longed to accomplish himself, though revenge on the archer would not save Alyson.
Live, please live, he thought. It was a prayer and wish in one.
Love and Chivalry: Four Medieval Historical Romances Page 16