Gowen was brilliant and had a mind for numbers, and Christopher was grateful to have him. True, he had accepted Gowen much faster than was usual with him, for he was a man whose loyalties and friendships were long cultivated. He honestly did not know why he had let Gowen come to know him as rapidly as he had. Mayhap it was because he felt guilty for the actions that led to the marriage of Deborah and Gowen, and then the subsequent attempted suicide of Deborah. In a sense he felt as if he were making up for what he had inadvertently caused, but he would rather cut off his head than admit it to anyone, especially to himself.
By mid-September, the weather had turned bitterly cold and the rain was almost constant. The midwife had confined Dustin to bed because she had grown so enormous and had begun to indicate to Christopher that she was considering inducing her pains in the near future. Terrified for his wife, Christopher avoided the midwife, as if not seeing her would somehow erase the problem. Foolish, he knew, but he did it just the same.
’Twas the twentieth day of September when he entered the castle from the bailey, a bluster of icy wind following close behind him. He let out a grunt as the chill swept over him, shaking himself like a dog. Cold did not usually bother him, but the day was particularly bitter as he shirked his helmet and portions of armor into Darren’s waiting hands. Instructing the boy to clean his armor and then report to Leeton for sword practice, he was intending to seek his bedchamber to see his wife when Gowen stopped him.
“Chris, this missive came in not an hour ago. We tried to find you.” Gowen handed over a scrolled piece of vellum.
Christopher eyed the parchment, reading the seal. “It is from Longchamp,” he murmured as he broke it. “I was out behind the keep, in the clearing where David and I plan to build a troop house and practice arena.”
Gowen watched Christopher’s face as he read the missive, but could see no particular emotion. After a few minutes, Christopher rolled the parchment back up.
“How much money do we have in the coffers?” he asked.
Gowen blinked. “A substantial amount,” he replied. “Are you interested in coinage or overall wealth?”
Christopher chewed his lip thoughtfully, looking at the rolled vellum. “Longchamp demands money for Richard’s ransom. Henry and Leopold have demanded one hundred thousand marks of gold for his release.”
Gowen’s eyes widened. “My God, Chris, even we do not have that much. Surely the justices aren’t demanding…?”
Christopher cut him off. “Nay, they are not looking for me to pay all of it.” He shook his head, leading them both into Gowen’s small office which used to be Lady Mary’s solar. “Damnation, with everything I have done for them, they should be paying me. Nay, they simply want to know how much I can donate.”
Gowen pondered the question a moment, moving around his cluttered desk. “Dustin’s dowry is fairly hefty, Chris. You could donate that to Richard’s cause and leave the rest untouched, including your own individual wealth acquired from the quest.”
Christopher looked at him. “She came with two thousand marks of gold plus an assortment of heirlooms and jewels. What is the total worth?”
Gowen shrugged. “Offhand, I would say ten thousand marks if the jewels were sold on the market. An extremely hefty donation.”
Christopher nodded, tossing the vellum onto Gowen’s desk. “Sizable enough for their needs,” he said. “I shall ask that you prepare the donation, then, and I shall send my men to London with it.”
Gowen looked at him, then chuckled. “How can you so easily part with that amount of money? I realize, of course, that it is for Richard’s release, but ten thousand marks is more money than most people see in a lifetime.”
Christopher nodded. “I realize that, and I also realize that I am depleting my wealth by one-third, but the king must be ransomed for the sake of England,” he said, scratching under his coarse mail. “I must make sure there is a future for my family, and for yours.”
Gowen raised his eyebrows in agreement as his liege quit the room.
As Christopher mounted the stairs, he found himself remembering a time when all he cared about was money and material wealth. Within a year his priorities had changed so drastically that it was almost as if he did not know the Christopher before Dustin; the almost-mercenary warrior committed to only himself and Richard.
He was still the same man, but he had acquired many new characteristics that he had considered himself incapable of at one time, and the person responsible for that change was a petite blond woman with the unlikely name of Dustin. Fact was that he did not care if he had grown the least bit soft and sentimental, as long as she and his close friends were the only ones who knew it.
He opened the bedchamber door fully expecting to be greeted by her smiling face and was concerned to find the bed empty. He called her name, searching a small adjoining solar but finding no trace of his wife. His concern turning to irritation and his bellows for Dustin lifted the roof off the castle.
The entire place was in an uproar searching for the errant wife when the kitchen servants told their master that his wife had passed by them on her way to the small bailey outside of the kitchen. Enraged, he stormed outside, knowing exactly where she had gone.
Wrapped in a heavy cloak and swathed in yards of heavy material, Dustin stood next to the rabbit hutch, clutching two of the fuzzy creatures as her husband marched up beside her. He was fully prepared to ream her for her disobedience and foolishness, but when he saw her sweetly holding the rabbits and changing their bedding, he felt himself go soft. He knew she had been concerned about her bunnies, and even though she had a peasant boy caring for them, she still fretted. Beside her, Hal and Alex sat wagging their tails, looking for handouts.
“What are you doing?” He sounded almost calm, certainly not like the man who had nearly torn the castle apart just moments before.
Startling her, he could read the guilt in her eyes. “I came to make sure they were warm enough,” she said quickly. “With the weather so bad, I was concerned.”
He gazed at her sternly, his hands on his hips. “Dustin, the boy is doing a fine job with these rabbits. I see him out here daily.”
Her lips molded into a pout. “If he’s doing such a fine job, then how come I am missing three of them?” she demanded. “Three of my biggest.”
He peered inside the hutches. “Are you sure? How can you tell? There must be thirty or forty rabbits in there.”
“Only thirty-eight,” she said with a pout. “I had forty-one.”
“Forty-one,” he repeated, shaking his head with some exasperation. “Mayhap they escaped, sweetheart. ’Tis not unusual for rabbits to slip out of tiny holes.”
She frowned sadly, replacing the rabbits she were holding and securing the cage. “I think the boy is stealing my rabbits. I want you to find someone else to tend them.”
He eyed her, crossing his arms. “If you are positive he is stealing them, then I will cut his hand off. And then I will find someone else to tend them.”
Dustin gasped, her wide gray eyes the exact color of the storm clouds above. “I do not want you to cut his hand off. I simply want you to find someone else to tend them.”
“Stealing in my baronetcy will not go unpunished, Dustin,” he said sternly. “If the boy has stolen your rabbits, then he shall pay the price.”
She eyed him, glancing back at the hutch again. “Mayhap I miscounted,” she said after a moment. “They do look to be all here, don’t they?”
“You shall not count them again,” he said. “You must return to bed immediately.”
“But my legs ache from lying about all day,” she whined, taking a step back from him. “I need to walk about, Chris. I simply cannot lie still all of the time.”
He scowled. “You can and you will until this child is born,” he said firmly, his fists on his hips. “I shall sit on you if I have to, Dustin. Your health and the health of my son mean everything to me.”
“But I am bored out of my mind,”
she insisted. “I can only sew so much, and Caesar and George offer minimal entertainment. I hate it. I want to be out and about.”
He was not unsympathetic and his manner softened.
“I know, sweet, but it will only be for a little longer,” he assured her. “After the babe is born, you can run your head off if it pleases you. Now, come upstairs and I shall read to you from Beowulf.”
“Nay,” she said petulantly, seeing his gaze turn hard and suddenly receiving a mental picture of herself slung over his shoulder as he carried her to bed. “I….I want to see my garden first. Please?”
He pursed his lips in frustration. “Blatant disobedience one moment and sweet pleading the next,” he grunted. “Dustin, surely you are going to drive me right out of my mind. I shall be glad when this child is born if nothing else than to rid you of these mood swings. Well? If it is your garden you wish to see, then see it you will or else I shall never get you out of this hellish cold.”
She smiled sweetly at him and took his arm as he rolled his eyes at her with exasperation. “You are making me daft,” he murmured sternly.
“I love you, husband,” she said, laying her head on his arm affectionately.
Her garden was dead, as she knew it would be, but she took great delight in planning the flowers she was going to plant for spring. Christopher listened, gave her his opinions when she asked, and spent the majority of his time watching her pace from plot to plot, explaining to him in great detail what she had in mind.
Now and again, he would glance to the sky above, for he could smell the rain and he knew they were in for a hell of a storm. He was eager to get his wife inside, but she was happier than he had seen her in weeks fluttering about in the dead garden, and so he allowed her a bit of freedom.
The cold had turned her beautiful face a healthy rosy shade and the pregnancy had filled her cheeks out, making her appear like a round little cherub. Christopher was entranced by her glow, her beauty, and her spirit as she made her way back over to him, all smiles. He held his arms out to her and she fell into him, still chatting happily about her flowers.
He hustled her up to their bedchamber, helping her with her cloak and heavy overdress she had put on. The closer he came to view the true figure of his wife, the more he suddenly realized that Griselda was right; she was absolutely enormous and he felt a bolt of fear shoot through him. She certainly could not go another six weeks. He silently vowed to seek the old woman out when he left his wife, to begrudgingly comply with whatever she wanted to do with Dustin.
“Sit down,” he told her and she lowered herself onto the bed, holding up her feet so he could remove her boots.
It had been weeks since she had been able to put her own shoes on. This morning before she went outside, she had had to lie on her back on the bed and hold her legs up in the air so that she might struggle to pull her boots on.
“Now lie down, sweetheart,” he said, pulling the coverlet up around her. “I shall return in a moment with some mead and the book.”
“I have already read Beowulf,” she told him, unhappy.
“I see,” he blinked thoughtfully. “Have you read Song of Roland?”
She nodded. “The Iliad, too.”
He pretended to give her a stern, pondering look. “Hmm,” he rubbed his chin. “I see that I shall have to make up my own stories to keep you abed.”
Her eyes lit up. “Tell me of your adventures in the Holy Land.”
That will keep her busy for days, he thought as he sat on the bed next to her and drew her into the curve of his torso.
“So you want to hear of the Holy Land, do you?” he said thoughtfully. “Well, now, where shall I begin?”
“At the very beginning,” she insisted, cuddling up against him and waiting expectantly. “Tell me of when Richard first recruited you. Where were you serving?”
He obliged her. He’d barely gotten to the part where he was placed in command of a division before they sailed for Turkey when he felt Dustin go limp beside him. When she began to snore, he smiled and wrapped his free arm around her, his mind relaxing from its remembrance, and his eyes drifting to the window where freezing rain was spattering the sill.
He eventually left Dustin sleeping in the early afternoon and went downstairs to partake of the nooning meal. Even before he entered the great dining hall he could hear his sister’s bad temper as she turned her nose up at everything Gowen was offering her. Deborah had such an even temper that it was surprising to hear her get upset at anything at all. He and Gowen passed glances as he took his seat.
“Deborah, with all of that complaining, you are surely going to wake the dead,” Christopher told her as he reached for a well-done knuckle of beef.
Deborah turned a pouting face to him. “I am not complaining,” she insisted unhappily. “I simply do not like beef and Gowen is trying to force it down my throat.”
“You had better eat something, else that child will be born grossly underfed,” Christopher said sternly. “Griselda has warned you.”
“I know she has warned me,” Deborah snapped, immediately contrite. She forced herself to calm. “I am sorry, Chris, I try to eat, truly I do. But nothing appeals to me.”
“Then find something that does and eat only that,” Christopher said with a mouthful of beef. “Surely there is something that takes your fancy?”
“There is,” Gowen announced loudly. “She’d eat honeyed fruits all day long, the kind the cook makes with cinnamon and nutmeg.”
“Fine,” Christopher said decisively. “Then I shall order the cook to make platefuls of the stuff and Deborah can eat until she explodes.”
Deborah made a face, letting them know exactly what she thought of the both of them. Christopher snorted into his cup, wondering if all women turned into such banshees when they were with child. He never thought it possible of his mild-mannered sister.
David, Edward, Leeton, and most of the other knights save Jeffrey and Sir Nicholas entered the dining hall loudly, dropping weapons and armor and bellowing loudly for food and ale.
“Christ, shut up, would you?” Christopher waved at them irritably. “You make more noise than a heard of stampeding cattle.”
“Look who’s calling us loud,” Edward said, sniffing as he sat. “The man that bellows orders so loudly that Philip Augustus can hear him over in France. Ah, what is on the menu this day?”
The knights dug into their meal with the usual enthusiasm, licking fingers and throwing the bones to the floor. Harold and Alexander had a feast cleaning up their droppings. Outside, the weather worsened and they could hear the thunder deep into the dining hall.
“Jesus, this climate is terrible,” David exclaimed. “I would take the searing sands of Jerusalem over this mess.”
“This ‘mess,’ as you call it is nothing you have not dealt with before,” Christopher said dryly. “I think you are growing soft in your old age, little brother.”
David eyed his brother menacingly at the insult but said nothing because his mouth was too full. “Where’s Dustin?” he asked after he swallowed.
“Sleeping,” Christopher answered. “That’s all she does anymore. She’s almost stopped eating, too.”
“You see?” Deborah chimed in. “I am not the only one.”
Christopher was patient with her. “Aye, sweet, but you are not as far along as my wife,” he said. “Our child is already huge and grown and if she eats anymore, she will probably explode. Your babe needs nourishment yet.”
Properly put in her place, Deborah lowered her head and picked at her boiled vegetables.
The meal finished and the knights took the opportunity to enjoy some fine wine that Gowen had purchased in Gloucester. David and Max announced it was too sweet and promptly deemed it a woman’s drink, but Edward thought it delightful. Christopher raised his eyebrows at the lot of his boisterous knights, thinking to take some of the drink up to his wife when she awoke.
Jeffrey and Sir Nicholas burst in through the front doors with
a violent slam, the elements howling and whistling around them. They looked like huge, mythical beasts in their soaked armor and tunics and the knights inside immediately yelled at them to close the doors.
“My lord!” Jeffrey ignored the demands of the others. “Raiders!”
The knights were up, bellowing for their armor, as Christopher rounded the table even as Darren was rushing at him.
“How many?” Christopher asked.
“A large party, as large as I have ever seen.” Jeffrey actually sounded concerned and that, in turn, concerned Christopher.
“Raiding for winter supplies, no less,” Christopher said as Darren competently pulled on his hauberk. “I was wondering how long it would be before we had trouble.”
“This winter promises to be fierce,” Jeffrey agreed. “The Welsh are panicking early.”
“Where will they go first?” Christopher asked as his breastplate was latched.
“Most likely the harvest stores at the edge of the village,” Jeffrey replied as David, fully armored, dashed past him outside and began shouting for the warhorses. “And the sheep. They love to target the sheep.”
“Waste no time, then.” Christopher motioned to his men, strapping on his sword. “They will not raid my village.”
As the knights blew out of the hall, Gowen and Deborah were left sitting at the massive table, flabbergasted with the speed in which the men had mobilized and moved out. They looked at each other, a bit dazed, before Gowen picked up a honey-crystalized raisin and placed it in his wife’s mouth, smiling weakly.
The rain was fierce as the knights rode out of Lioncross with about fifty men-at-arms, armed to the teeth with crossbows and swords. Christopher, too, carried a crossbow on the back of his saddle. The raiders were not much for confrontations and he doubted he would have the chance to use his sword, so most of the defending would be done from a distance.
Jeffrey led the way to the southwestern portion of the village, where the church stood. Even as they arrived, the Welsh raiders were intently attacking the place of worship. Christopher grabbed his crossbow, taking aim at the five or six bandits who were charging the front door. A well-aimed arrow from him and from Leeton took down two of the villains while the rest fled in terror.
The de Lohr Dynasty: Medieval Legends: A Medieval Romance Collection Page 71