As he passed her, Alyson caught his sword arm and clung on, praying her strength into her hands.
With a squeal of rage, Fulk tossed her off and lunged with the sword. The blade sang past Alyson's head and struck one of the logs intended to be used for her burning. Sir Tom was yelling but Guillelm, coming at a sprint, shouted, 'Mine!' and, seeing Fulk's movement to stab with the sword again, threw back his arm.
There was a flash of light and Fulk tumbled away, a knife glancing off his shoulder. In shadow, Guillelm knelt by Alyson, unfastening his cloak. She spoke to him. 'You came for me.'
‘Little idiot. Of course I came for you.‘ Guillelm shook his head. As he leaned across and his hands wrapped her gently in warmth, Alyson felt the touch of water on her face. It surprised her, his weeping.
‘How? Why?’ she began, but when she moved her arm—which was only just beginning to return to life as the blood pulsed painfully back into her wrists and fingers—and tried to touch Guillelm’s hair, he drew back.
‘Are you hurt?’ he asked. He was running a hand over her head, neck, throat, arms, flanks—all over her, as if to check she was whole. Even as she was, stunned with everything that had happened, Alyson felt a spiralling tingle of desire.
‘No, no,’ she answered hastily, catching his fingers in hers before she forgot herself completely and launched into his arms. Then she saw the red staining through his sleeve. ’You are bleeding!’
‘’Tis nothing, a scratch.’ Guillelm turned quickly, to hide the injury from her. ‘But what are these marks, upon your wrists?’ Abruptly, he scanned the bundles of wood and kindling, the broken branches in the elder and birch trees. His face darkened. ‘That evil, treacherous bastard—
‘Fulk!’ he roared, still crouching over her. ‘I challenge you! Fight me, damn you!’
She could feel the heat of his rage and yet he clasped her gently, rocking her to and fro as if she were a babe in arms.
She had yet to tell him about their child, if child it was. ’Guillelm —’
‘No, sweet, explanations as to why you are out of the convent must keep.’ He glanced at Sir Tom, who had dismounted and approached. ‘Tom.’
‘I know, Guido. I will take care of her for you.’ With a tiny grunt of discomfort, Tom sat on the ground beside Guillelm and cradled Alyson off Guillelm’s knees onto his own. When Alyson started to protest, that she needed no one to ’take care of her,’ Tom tightened his arms about her and brought his mouth to her ear.
‘This is the only time, wench, that I will ever have you anywhere near my lap without your ever-anxious husband gutting me. Now be still and let me savour the moment.’ He was smiling as he said it, though his eyes were strained. He gave her more water to drink, muttering ’Steady,’ as she tried to take a huge gulp of water to soothe her parched throat.
Tom tried to block her view of the clearing with his own large head, but Alyson tugged at his cloak.
‘Must see,’ she choked, for she knew Guillelm had risen and left her side.
‘For sure you must,’ Tom sighed and he positioned her so she was sitting half on the ground with her back resting against his broad chest.
‘He is hurt!’ Alyson murmured, seeing a trickle of blood falling from Guillelm’s arm onto the grass and ferns. ’I must go tend him.’
Tom wound one of his legs across hers, pinning her. ’Let him be. I have seen him fight with worse.’
Fight? Alyson tried to warn Guillelm: that he should not do this; that he had already attacked and driven off most of Fulk’s straggling group of soldiers; that Fulk no longer mattered; that it was over. She could not find the breath to shout, and as she struggled, Guillelm spoke.
‘Wherever you are, Fulk, whatever tree you are hiding behind, come out! Fight me, one against one. Whatever happens, your men may go free. Face me! Fight me!’
He began to chant something in a strange mixture of French and Arabic.
‘What is he saying?’ Alyson asked Tom. Tom shook his head. Exasperated, she snapped her fingers. ‘How did you find me? Tell me that, at least.’
Sir Tom cleared his throat, his tone amused. ‘Guido said you did that trick with your fingers. I did not quite believe him. You are a fiery creature, mistress Alyson.’
‘How?’ Alyson repeated, her eyes fixed on Guillelm as he stalked across the clearing, the evening sun throwing his tall shadow still further. ‘Oh, God, he will be killed. His arm is bright with blood!’
‘Someone may be killed, certainly,’ Sir Tom grunted. ‘No, you stay still. You cannot help him now. Listen! Listen, Alyson, show that good sense that Guido praises you for so much. We found you because your man wanted to see you, because he rode over to the convent in desperate hope of seeing you.’
‘Truly?’ Alyson hugged that knowledge to herself. ‘Really and truly?’
‘Truly, Alyson, and if you keep interrupting me I shall never be done. So we rode to the convent, and what we found was a full hue and cry over your going missing, but Guido guessed you had taken the road back to Hardspen. “Whatever we do, whatever we plan, we are one,” he told the Abbess. “I know what she will be doing. She must have cut across country, and that is how we have missed each other.” He was right, too—we had not ridden a half-mile away from the convent when his trackers spotted Eustace of Normandy in the woods off the road. He was not easy to miss, since he was sprinting towards the road, waving his arms.’
‘Is Eustace a tall, weather-beaten man with red curling hair?’
‘How did you know that? No, matter, you are right. It was Eustace, who had gone off with Fulk when Guido told Fulk to leave his service.’ Sir Tom’s battle-scared face coloured with embarrassment. ‘The fellow must have had a change of heart.’
‘Fulk would say I had bewitched him.’
’If any are bewitched, it is Fulk himself. The man was always wild with ambition, but now he has become obsessed.’
At the edge of Alyson’s vision, she saw Sir Tom make the sign to ward off the evil eye. ‘What he did here, what he was about to do, was madness,’ he said.
‘Fulk was convinced he was right.’
‘In that he has not changed,’ Sir Tom replied. ‘He was ever one to judge harshly and narrowly. Once in Outremer —’
Alyson waved her hand to silence him. ‘What is Guillelm doing?’ she asked.
Throughout her hasty, whispered conversation, her eyes had not left her husband. Guillelm had been walking up and down the clearing, nodding to his own men who had ridden out of the woods. Those loyal to Fulk had already fled—Alyson could hear them, dimly, pounding along the road—or were sitting or lying at the edge of the clearing. Some were clearly wounded, others looked as dazed as she was. She noticed them because Guillelm had noticed them and had called to his own troops to tend them. Of Fulk there was no sign.
Now Guillelm had completed four full circuits of the clearing, scanning this way and that, into the trees and undergrowth and beyond, when he picked a pebble from the earth. Still in mid-stride, he hurled it at an elder bush. In a snapping of twigs the bush seemed to explode; the dark purple juice and pulp of the elderberries splashed against the nearby trees like blood. As Alyson shivered, Guillelm feinted a throw at a low canopy of scrubby brambles, then jerked round and tossed another stone into a squat, dense holly tree.
‘He is trying to shock Fulk into breaking cover,’ Alyson said.
‘Yes,’ Sir Tom agreed. ’But he will not do it. Fulk’s an old hand at this.’
Guillelm stopped, scooped up a handful of dried grass and struck the edge of his sword with something Alyson could not see. Sparks flew and the grass caught fire, smoke and bright orange flames rolling from Guillelm’s outstretched hand into the sky.
‘Meet my challenge or burn!’ he roared. ‘Mother of God, I will burn all these woods from here to Hardspen, but you shall not escape me!’
‘He would, too,’ said Sir Tom, half-admiring, half-remonstrating. ‘That is my wild, mad dragon.’
‘Mine, too,’
said Alyson, coughing as the smoke coiled into her lungs. ‘I can sit and watch no more.’
In a spurt of her old familiar speed, she evaded Sir Tom and, before he could prevent it, pushed herself to her feet.
‘Fulk, fight me!’ she cried. ‘If I am witch as you say, you need have no qualms in warring with a woman. I challenge you!’
‘No!’ Guillelm shouted, skidding round to her, flinging his flaming torch aside. ‘Never!’
As one of his men scrambled out of the woods to stamp out the torch, Guillelm was running to her. At the sight of his stark, set face, Sir Tom backed away, but Alyson held her ground. She was almost too weary to move. Summoning the last of her fading energy, she called out, ’Are you a coward, Fulk? Or afraid that you are wrong?’
Fulk stepped out from the cover of two rowans, growing so close to each other their branches interweaved. He walked around a patch of dogs’ mercury and nettles, his sword and helm blackened with smeared mud, a long dark cloak wrapped around his Armour and trailing over the grass. His face was, if possible, even more gaunt.
‘I am not wrong,’ he said.
At the sound of his voice the muted speech of Guillelm’s men as they scoured the woods was cut off sharply, like a musician placing his hand upon the harp strings to kill the sound. Faces appeared at the edges of the clearing as the men came to listen.
This was the moment, Alyson knew. She touched the cross the abbess had given her. ’I swear that I am innocent. I did not flee the convent. I chose to leave it.’
‘Why?’ Fulk demanded.
Alyson knew she should not hesitate, but she hated the idea of telling her very personal news to everyone in this clearing. ’That is between my husband and myself.’
Fulk could not contain his dislike. ‘We all heard the vow your husband took at Hardspen, Madam, on your wedding night. Shall I remind you of it? We may share the same bed, but we shall never lie together in love.’
‘Stop —’ Tears pooled into Alyson’s eyes as she remembered. ‘Why say such things now?’
‘Because he knows he is a dead man,’ muttered Sir Tom somewhere behind her.
‘He would make himself a dead man,’ said Guillelm, coming beside Alyson and putting himself between her and Fulk. ‘But I am not sure that he is worthy of being killed.’
Fulk backed up several paces, his face panic-stricken as Guillelm cast his sword onto the ground and opened his arms. ‘See me, Fulk. I am wounded and unarmed. We would be a match. Come at me, not my wife. For Alyson is my true wife, to have and to hold until the end of my life, and I put my faith in her.’
Alyson gasped at his use of the words of the marriage ceremony, at the reminder of the sacred promises they had made to each other. She understood them as never before, and in speaking of them, Guillelm was showing her that he felt the same.
‘For Alyson I would face any ordeal,’ he said. ‘Any trial. I know she is innocent, although in truth I would defend her even if she were guilty, she is so excellent to me. I love her. Do you hear, Fulk? I love her!’
Fulk gave a low cry and moved away, but no one was watching him. All eyes were on Guillelm as he turned, emotion brimming in his face, his forehead, cheeks and chin red with feeling, sweat darkening the blond hair plastered to his temples. He was as weary as she was, Alyson realized, as worn down with worry. Almost of its own will, her hand rose and she touched his ear where a branch had scraped across it, drawing a speckle of blood. She wiped the blood away.
‘Your arm,’ she whispered. It was still bleeding, though less than before.
‘It is of no matter,’ he said softly. ‘Nothing matters, but that we understand each other.’
He took her hand and kissed her fingers one by one. ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘Can you not see this? I have always loved you.’
For the second time he opened his arms and Alyson fell into them.
Sometime after, when Guillelm left her a moment to fetch his horse, Alyson remembered the others, and Fulk.
‘Gone,’ Sir Tom said bluntly, when she asked. ‘Ran off the instant Guido said he loved you. The fellow can run back to Outremer for all I care. We are well rid of him.’
‘Yes,’ said Alyson, though she was thinking of Guillelm again and those marvellous words, ‘I have always loved you.’
It was her deepest wish come true.
Chapter 29
They returned to the convent. This time, Alyson slept in the guest house, with Guillelm beside her. There were things to discuss: the return of Eva to her woodland cottage, and Gytha to Hardspen, but first Alyson told him her own news.
Sitting side by side on their bed, he heard her out gravely, in silence. ‘You are sure of this?’ he said at last.
Alyson sensed him watching her as she fed their small brazier fire with twigs. ‘As sure as I can be,’ she answered. Was he pleased? she wondered, a little of her earlier jubilation and confidence draining away. ‘You did say that you would not annul our marriage because I could be with child,’ she went on, her voice becoming higher and faster. ‘You were right, Guillelm.’
‘Mother of God, girl, I said that to Fulk! I spoke the only language he would understand, but if you think I meant it, you have less wit than our merlin.’ He wrapped his arms about her, tossed the rest of her twigs onto the fire and kissed her deeply. ‘I would never give you up. Unless you wished it, and even then —’ He kissed her again. ’No, I do not think I could do it. You will have to put up with me forever, sweetheart.’
‘And you me!’ Alyson said quickly, kicking teasingly against him to feel his hard, masculine strength. To her surprise he released her at once, his face contrite.
‘I have hurt you?’ he asked. ‘The baby?’
‘We are fine.’ Alyson took his large hand and placed it on her stomach. ‘We shall be well. All will be well, Guillelm. I know it.’
‘You do?’ His features buckled in relief. ‘Oh, that is excellent!’
He swept her against himself, kissing her over and over, telling her how much he loved her. Suddenly, he stopped again. ‘You are sure?’
Alyson nodded. She was sure. Her sister’s dark predictions and her own tragic family history had no more power over her. She did not know why or how, but she knew she would be safe.
Now, taking this knowledge as a gift, she sought to reassure Guillelm further. ‘The Abbess says I will have a safe pregnancy. So does Eva the wise-woman.’
He believed her, although the Abbess and Eva had said no such thing. But then, Alyson thought, snuggling down in the wide bed with its wolfskin furs and soft pillows, a wife did not have to tell her husband the truth all the time.
Chapter 30—Epilogue.
It was spring, season of new lambs, as it had been in her dream. Guillelm was with her, as in the dream, much to Gytha’s red-cheeked chagrin.
‘It is wrong, my lady! A man at a birthing! It is not seemly!’
‘Peace,’ Alyson gasped, clutching her husband’s hand more tightly as another pain crested within her. He was knelt by her bed, mopping her hair, giving her weak ale whenever she thirsted and above all, holding her hand. He had come to the main bedchamber the moments her pains had begun, sensing what was happening even before the wise woman Eva had been summoned.
Eva now packed more rushes under Alyson’s hips, remarking, ’In the village, the men folk often stay. Someone must tend the other children and the fire and keep the animals away. The other wives help when they can, but that is not always possible. I think it a good thing the husband sees how brave his woman is, bringing his children into the world.’
‘So does this husband,’ growled Guillelm, saying to Alyson. ’You are doing well, sweetheart. I am so proud of you.’
‘Push, Alyson,’ Eva broke in. ’Push hard.’
Sweat stood on Alyson’s forehead as she obeyed. For an instant she felt to be splitting in half and then, dimly, she heard a cry and Eva’s glad shout, ’An heir for Hardspen! My lord, here is your son!’
‘Let me —’ A
lyson craned forward to see, her arms outstretched, just as another fierce pain flattened her back onto the bed.
‘Alyson!’ Guillelm hugged her, hiding his face. ’Breathe, little one. Excellent! Keep on.’
He spoke calmly but she felt the strong tremor through his body as watched her struggle. She was glad he was there but sorry, too: grateful for his support but sorry he should be cast in so helpless a position. He was the one who usually did the fighting!
She tried to smile, to reassure him, but then sneezed instead, a sudden spasm that sent a whiplash of swift slithering pain through her body.
‘My lady, there is another child!’ Eva exclaimed, and within an instant a second high, wailing cry filled the chamber.
‘Alyson, we have a daughter,’ Guillelm said, kissing her cheek. ’Twins! Boy and girl and both healthy! See them, they are beautiful…’
Through blurring vision, Alyson saw Guillelm, his bronzed, scarred hands cradling two tiny bundles.
‘An easy birth, especially for twins,’ Eva was saying. ‘The lady has been blessed.’
‘Such, tiny, perfect fingernails,’ Guillelm marvelled and Alyson smiled, sinking into a delicious, pain-free slumber.
As sleep took her, she heard Guillelm say softly, ’I love you, Alyson.’
I love you, my lord dragon, she thought in return, resting safe and secure in his arms, with their babies, their children, between them.
A KNIGHT’S CAPTIVE
Chapter 1
Northern England, September 1066
"Uncle Marc! Is she not as beautiful as the sun? That is what her name means. She is Sunniva, Sun-Gift. Do you not think she is like the sun?"
"Steady, little one. You will wake your sisters. But yes, you are right. She is most comely."
Ignoring the powerful temptation to look where Alde was pointing, Marc tucked the ends of his big traveling cloak around his excited niece and encouraged the child to lie down again by doing so himself. A swift, anxious glance confirmed that Judith and Isabella were sleeping, sprawled under his cloak, their small faces sunburned with weeks of travel. Isabella was sucking her thumb. The day had been long, the riding hard and tiring. He prayed she would sleep through, free of nightmares.
Love and Chivalry: Four Medieval Historical Romances Page 29