Chapter 21
Perhaps their marriage should be annulled. Alyson would then be safe. Alyson would be able to pursue her true vocation. She loved learning.
The nuns of St Foys had thought they were safe, until the Fleming had attacked. There is no safety in this world. Perhaps Alyson would not be like the women in her family. Perhaps she would have an easy pregnancy and birth.
If they ever joined in love….
Brooding, horrified by what Sister Ursula had told him, Guillelm went about Hardspen that night without any sense of hope or joy. Fearing his own temper, he avoided Sericus and never sent for the man. After supper, he hunkered down in a stairwell and watched Alyson leave the solar for the garderobe, dreading that a page or maid might spot him, or a knight find him, or worse, Alyson herself see him, and ask what he was doing.
What am I doing? Guillelm thought. He was a coward not to approach Alyson, unkind in leaving her to wonder how matters stood between them. He had ordered her to the solar, now he should seek her out. What could he say? ’I will release you from our vows’? Was that what she wanted?
‘I do not believe it is,’ he said aloud, ’but perhaps I am mistaken.’
For now he waited, his body stiffening in its cramped, huddled stance, his ears straining for the sound of his wife’s returning steps.
Why? Alyson thought, as she sped, head down, away from the garderobe, half-fearful, half-longing that she would encounter Guillelm. Why had he been so loving, so attentive through her fever and injury and why now was he changed? Anger she could understand—he had been in a righteous temper over her wolf-hunt, but as the day had dragged on and he had not come once to the solar, she began to fear that he had really abandoned her.
Please let him be furious with me but not cooling, not indifferent, she prayed. Please let him come, if only to say goodnight.
I am wishing so hard to see Guillelm that I am imagining him in the strangest places: as a shadow in the corner of the stairwell, below that unlit torch.
She stopped and listened intently, hearing no sound but distant clattering from the kitchen and great hall, a page playing on his new whistle somewhere within the keep, plus her own increasing heart-beat. She had to take a breath and then she sensed it: a difference in the space and air between herself and the stone walls and steps. Alyson squinted: there was something on the stairs, a darker block, solid and unyielding.
‘My lord?’ She scarcely dare hope. ’Guillelm?’
The shadow moved, growing larger and blacker for an instant before Guillelm threw back the hood of his dark cloak.
As if drawn on invisible strings he stepped towards her.
‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘You are wholly excellent and good, but I cannot live with anyone. How we are —’ he spread the fingers of both hands, lifting them to her—‘is wrong. I was wrong to think I could live with anyone, even you.’
Something broke within Alyson but she dared not sag. Pierced beyond tears, she thought only of Guillelm, how hard this must be for him. ’Dragon, is this what you truly desire?’
He lurched closer, eyes blazing, then whirled aside, striking the wall with his fist. Alyson cried out as she heard his hand slam into the stones but Guillelm never made a sound. He put both hands behind his back.
‘It must be,’ he said. ’You must be safe.’ A spasm crossed his haggard face. ‘It is the will of God.’ He lowered his head.
‘Do you believe that?’
Guillelm stared at her, unblinking, as if he would fix her forever within the orbit of his eyes. He said nothing.
Alyson walked softly along the corridor to join him in the shadows, dreading that every step she took might see him break from her and stride away, leaving without a backward glance. Hope and fear warred in her but she had to know, she had to risk the question that was pounding in her head.
‘Why do you believe it?’
He shook his head. ’You should leave. This place is full of chills and darkness. Bad air.’
‘I will leave after you.’
Neither of them moved.
After a moment, Alyson shivered, and Guillelm swept off his cloak and handed it across. ’Please, take it. You are cold.’
‘Thank you.’ Dare she suggest they share it? ’I will sit. My feet are cold.’
‘Here.’ Guillelm knelt and rapidly unlaced his boots. ’Slip these on, over your own shoes and stockings.’
He did not want to leave! As he sat beside her in the corner, with his shoulder against one wall and his back to the other, Alyson almost broke down in sheer relief. As it was, she could not manage to place his boots over her feet; her fingers were trembling so much they would not work.
‘Let me help.’ Deftly, Guillelm eased the boots onto her feet and tucked the ends of his cloak about her shoulders. Crouched close, she noticed that one of the heels of his own leggings was threadbare.
‘I should darn your hose,’ she remarked, ’that is, if you will allow it.’
To her horror, the thought of not darning Guillelm’s clothes herself, of the dread possibility of never darning his hose, spilled tears from her eyes.
‘Hush, sweetheart. Please do not cry.’ Kneeling, he rocked her in his arms. ‘Hush.’ He kissed her forehead and the top of her head. ‘Mother of God, I never meant to cause you such grief, Alyson. I want you to be happy. Happy and safe, like your sister.’
‘Tilda?’ Alyson called her elder sibling by her old, secular name but in a flash she understood. ‘She has spoken to you!’
‘Hush.’ Guillelm squeezed her waist and drew back. ‘All that matters is that you are safe.’ From his lips it sounded like an urgent prayer. He reached towards her, to brush a wisp of a curl away from her ear, then froze. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘Perhaps, in the circumstances…’ He coiled his fingers into a loose fist and lowered his arm, moving as slowly as a starving man. ‘I am sorry to have disturbed your peace.’
‘Peace is not what I want,’ Alyson whispered, mopping the last tears from her face. She felt like a tight-rope walker at a fair, buoyed by hope, edging her way to the truth but with danger on every side. ‘Safety—if it is the barren safety of a nunnery—is not what I want.’
Amazement broke through the rigid mask of Guillelm’s features and his eyes became alive again. ‘But your sister and your father; both of them at different times told me that learning and the cloister were your dearest desires!’ He clasped her hands, raised them to his lips. ‘When we did so badly together, when you froze, each time I came near, I thought they were right. That I was being selfish, keeping you here.’
Alyson said nothing but her expression must have told him what she felt because he gathered her close again, with a befuddled look of wonder playing across his strong face that almost made her laugh.
‘Truly, you are happy with me?’ he asked.
Alyson cupped his chin in her hand, her whole body thrilling at the contact. ’If I freeze, dragon, it is with rapture,’ she murmured, blushing to be admitting this, but determined to free her husband once and for all from his demons of self-doubt. And from Heloise…
‘What a fool I have been.’ Guillelm kissed the tip of her nose and, when she smiled, brought his mouth down on hers in the kind of embrace that Alyson had been longing for and dreaming of for weeks.
‘We should move from here,’ she remarked, alerted to the world again by the spitting of a torch that was almost burnt out.
Guillelm smiled and wound his arms more tightly around her middle. ‘Move all you wish,’ he said. ‘You can squirm as much as you please for me. You are as light as a crane fly, even with my boots.’
‘A daddy-long-legs?’ Alyson queried, giving the common name. ‘If you think that, I can do this with impunity.’
She tickled him under the arms until he grunted with laughter, seizing her wrists and bringing her eager hands onto his chest.
‘You know well how to divert me, dragon,’ she said, her fingers combing through the springy golden fuzz as she traced the outline of h
is collar bones.
‘You also,’ Guillelm answered, closing his eyes a moment and groaning something softly in Arabic.
Spread-eagled on top of him, their bodies separated by no more than a few threads of cloth, she could feel the heat and muscular power of him. More intimate things, too.
‘Someone may find us at any moment,’ she said.
‘So roll off me,’ Guillelm suggested, lowering his arms and closing his eyes again. ‘Or shall we sleep here? Give Fulk something new to grumble about.’
Alyson smiled.
They did not of course bed down on the stairs but neither did they retire to the main bedchamber. No sooner had they slowly disentangled themselves and dusted off their clothes than Fulk found them.
‘My lord! I did not think to find you here.’ He gave Alyson a brief nod, both greeting and dismissal and returned his attention to Guillelm, now pulling on his boots. ‘My lord, a troop of men have been sighted on the downs, riding to Hardspen. They bear the standard of the Knights Templar!’
‘An excellent company,’ Guillelm remarked, cool where Fulk was visibly excited. ‘I shall ride out to meet them. Have my horse made ready.’
‘Already done, lord,’ said Fulk, smirking at Alyson. ‘This way —’ He stepped before her, preventing any words of parting she and Guillelm might have shared.
Alyson returned to the solar. It was perhaps a discourtesy, not going back to the great hall to wait for and to greet these knights, but, from what she knew of them, her company would scarcely be welcome. The Templars were warrior-monks, who eschewed women. What had brought a company of their order to Hardspen? She suspected Fulk had sent one of the knights a message. Fulk would be delighted: to him, she and Guillelm were already estranged and now, with the appearance of men who were pledged to fight in Outremer, what better way to remind his lord of their former time together in the Holy Land? These strangers would drink with Guillelm and his men, and reminisce on the old battles fought and won, and all the while Fulk would be watching, hoping to draw Guillelm back into that world.
Knowing this, it was hard for Alyson to remain with her maids, trying to work on a piece of embroidery by a dim, flickering candle while shouts of carousing drifted through the keep. It was a great risk, she knew, but tonight would be a test: would Guillelm miss her?
He did send word, requesting her presence in the great hall, an invitation Alyson politely declined. For the next hour she sat half in dread, half in hope, listening for Guillelm’s rapid step outside her chamber and imagining his face as he burst into the cramped solar to fetch her himself, but no man came near.
The maids around her worked quietly at spinning or their own embroidery, their heads bowed. The silence became unnerving and Alyson asked for a song.
Sitting on a stool with her back against the wall warmed most directly by the room’s small brazier, Gytha looked up from rubbing at a comb with a piece of rag. ‘I have done better than that, my lady,’ she said, rubbing at her knees instead. ‘The local wise-woman is here. Eva is taking a bite to eat in the kitchen and will be with us directly.’
Glad of any change, the maids broke into a muted chatter, but Alyson was more suspicious. ’Eva is a recluse, living in the woods, and she just happened to walk into Hardspen this evening?’
‘That is so,’ answered Gytha firmly, her ready blush betraying more.
‘After you sent for her?’
‘Perhaps,’ Gytha admitted, adding in a softer voice, for Alyson’s ears alone, ’After seeing you and your lord together on the stairs, before moon-rise, I should think you will be glad of her skills. She has philtres and spells to guarantee a male child.’
‘You spied on me, Gytha?’
‘Only for a moment, my bird,’ replied her old nurse imperturbably. ’And I kept these others away. To be sure, you do not spend your private times with your husband in ways or in places that most wives would call productive, but it was a start.’
‘Gytha! No more.’ Alyson’s face was burning as the door to the solar opened and Eva the wise-woman was admitted, shedding her bulging pack before the tumbling flames of the brazier and the keen faces of the maids.
Chapter 22
Eva was a tall, sinewy woman of two and thirty, veiled and gowned as modestly as a nun. With quick, brown eyes, a ready smile and red, worked-roughened hands, she looked like a laundress or a kitchen maid. There was nothing unusual in her appearance except for a faint red birthmark under her right ear, shaped almost like a pair of lips.
Alyson tried not to stare at this mark as Eva explained the various uses of her potions and sweet-smelling unguents. Too distracted by what Guillelm was or was not doing to concentrate on the wise-woman’s smooth, soothing patter, she agreed with all of Gytha’s suggestions as to what she should buy. When wine appeared in her hand, she drank it to the dregs, although she knew by her first smell and sip that her drink had been laced with a sleeping draught. Anything, including an evening of oblivion, was better than wondering if Guillelm would leave his fellow campaigners and join her.
In the morning, learning that Guillelm had come to the solar but had been turned away by the other woman, who told him roundly that their lady was soundly sleeping, Alyson felt a little easier. He had intended to spend the night, not with the Templars, but with her.
‘He wanted to carry you back to the main bedchamber,’ Gytha went on, pausing as she teased out a knot in Alyson’s hair with her comb, ‘but I told him you had given strict instructions not to be disturbed by anyone.’
Alyson sat up straighter on her couch, her head suddenly, appallingly clear. ‘You had no right. He will think —’
She broke off, aware of the maids listening and of Eva, deftly lifting her pack onto her shoulders, giving her a cool, careful look.
‘Thank you, my lady, for allowing me to stay the night,’ the wise-woman said, as the silence stretched on. ‘It is good for me to come away from my man and the little ones. He appreciates me more on my return.’
She bid the other women farewell, leaving the door to the solar open to admit the fresh morning air. Crossing the threshold, she turned back. ‘There is a festival in the village of Setton Minor this day. I know this because my man comes from there and he has prevailed upon me to join him in their merry-making.’ She smiled, softening the plain contours of her face, then continued, ‘The people there have heard of your rescue of the cottar’s child. You and your lord would be welcomed and greatly honoured. Will you come?’
Alyson’s first instinct was to say yes, but would Guillelm agree? As she hesitated, Eva added gently, ’I hope you will, my lady. It is a time when all may forget their cares and the busiest of men and women may remember each other.’
And their vows, Alyson thought, and she smiled. ’We will come,’ she said.
Perhaps I have done a very foolish thing, but I cannot help it, Alyson told herself. Part of her wanted to dance and clap her hands, seize the first clean gown she could find and rush to Guillelm. It was a wonderful chance for them to be alone together, for an entire day. No Hardspen. No Templars. No Fulk. She and Guillelm could be like any other young couple at a festival. The freedom of that idea made her giddy.
The clever, careful potion-maker in her urged caution. Patience and persuasion were the keys: if Guillelm thought that he was being ordered to attend this event, he could easily refuse.
Leaving Gytha and the other maids to air and tidy the solar, Alyson slipped into the empty main bedchamber where she dressed with particular care. A pale blue gown, to compliment her eyes and colouring. Her hair bound tidily but not too severely into a single plait, and her head covered by the beautiful silk veil her husband had given her. The whistle he had made for her, hung from her belt. A gold necklace and a silver coronet. Her most comfortable shoes, because she intended that she and Guillelm would walk to Setton Minor. If they rode, Caliph and Jezebel could prove too alluring to thieves, and Guillelm might be tempted to bring the merlin on a saddle perch. She was determined that al
l of his attention would be on her.
Guillelm woke, clear-headed, in the great hall. It was still very early: no others were stirring, not even the servants or the nuns in the chapel. When would that little community be moving on, he wondered. He knew the Prioress was awaiting word from her own superiors, but he was surprised at the tardiness of her order. As Sister Ursula had pointed out, the nuns were in a castle full of fighting men.
It was a mistake to think of Alyson’s sister, and what else she had said. All thoughts inevitably led to Alyson. He had missed her so much last night. Every moment, as he sat amongst his own men and the Templars, speaking of Outremer and the endless bloodshed spilt in the name of God, had driven home how alien that world had become to him. He no longer lusted for glory, or fellowship in arms. He was sickened and, yes, bored by the talk of killing. He longed for Alyson’s quirky, mettlesome conversation. Her missed her laughter, her smile, the way her eyes darkened to a more brilliant blue when she was interested in something. He missed the smell of her hair, the touch of her hand on his, the feel of her flawless skin. He missed everything about her. He was mad to be separated from her.
Leaving the soldiers and squires rolled into their cloaks, the Knights Templar snoring to a man, Guillelm rose and strode from the hall.
He wanted to return to the solar at once and carry Alyson off with him, but forced himself to wash first and comb his hair. Returning to the main bedchamber for a fresh under-shirt, he met Alyson coming the other way.
The sight of her robbed him of words. Without any conscious choice, he opened his arms and she ran into them. They clung to each other.
‘I never want to be in a nunnery,’ Alyson was saying, and Guillelm answered, ‘I know. I understand that now. I do.’
She drew back a little to look at him. ‘Truly, dragon?’
‘Truly, my most excellent girl.’
He kissed her: lips, eyes, nose, throat, ears. The taste of her was sweeter and more heady to him than mead and she kept pressing her lithe form tight against his, whispering his name over and over.
Love and Chivalry: Four Medieval Historical Romances Page 23