A Knight's Vow (20 page)

The baker of Hardspen was recovered of his fever and hard at
work. Guillelm had heard no complaints of him, but now another
local baker, accused of selling short-weight loaves, had been
brought to the castle from the nearby village of Setton Minor.
The four men and one woman-who had dragged the fellow
into Hardspen and pitched him onto the rushes in the great hall
had been vocal in demanding justice. Guillelm, fresh from disarming Thierry and wanting to spend more time with the former
crusader to make certain all was calm and well with him, was
forced to listen to the disgruntled villagers’ complaints.

Sitting on the dais, keeping a wary eye on Thierry, who
was crouched by the central ash-covered fireplace playing
dice with a worried-looking Tom, Guillelm gripped the arms
of his carver chair and tried to follow a rambling tale of bad
flour, moldy loaves sold as best and bread not fit even to be
used as trenchers. The woman, whom Guillelm was surprised
did not bake her own bread, was the most vocal of the five,
but her quick patter and the baker’s rasping answers seemed
to make no sense. Some matter of pies and rats and a brown
bread that crumbled into … was the word dust? Guillelm
wondered. It did not help him that their local dialect was so thick as to be almost incomprehensible. After seven years
abroad, away from these habits of speech, he had a struggle
to understand more than two words in ten.

Listening, Guillelm felt a renewed surge of irritation
against Fulk. His seneschal might have dealt with this, had
Fulk’s command of English been better. But Fulk had retreated to the stables and then to the tilting ground, claiming
he could not understand “these mewling peasants,” and Sericus was off tending the merlin-a task Guillelm had expected Fulk to undertake whenever he himself could not.

The woman had asked him a question. As Guillelm resigned
himself to ask her to repeat it and risk enduring the whole rigmarole again, Gytha and then Alyson walked into the hall.

Habituated by war to watching movement even at the edge
of his vision, Guillelm realized that Gytha was offering
Thierry a vessel-doubtless one of her mistress’s potions. A
calming draught, perhaps. It was a good thought, and for the
first time in the great hall that day he smiled, allowing himself the pleasure of gazing upon Alyson herself.

He could do so at length, for she had brought four pages
with her, each lad carrying cups and jugs of ale. As they proceeded to serve everyone in the hall, including the villagers,
Alyson approached the dais, bearing a silver chalice. A maid,
scurrying a few steps behind her, clutched a large pottery jug.
The maid would not look at him directly and her pinched,
pox-scarred face had that blank look of fright that Guillelm
was only too familiar with from the women who had crossed
his path in Outremer, but Alyson met his eyes.

“I have brought you a tisane, my lord.” Her clear, low voice
broke into his reverie. “For your refreshment” Beside the dais,
she lifted the chalice toward his reaching arms, raising her
head and adding swiftly and softly, “I beg mercy for the baker,
Stephen Crok. He is losing his wits before his old age and cannot help what he does. The widow Isabella who accuses
him most sharply has a younger son who would be a baker.”

“Would the widow want her son to be taken on as Crok’s
apprentice?” Guillelm murmured, masking their conversation
by making a play of sampling the tisane. The elderflower cosseted his nose with too cloying a scent, and he prayed that he
hid his dislike of the draught. Alyson deserved better.

Shame at his cowardly behavior last night tore into him
again, but he forced himself to attend to her rapid, whispered
answer.

“Stephen Crok’s wife has been bedridden these past two
years but she knows how to bake bread. Isabella would be
glad for her son to learn from such a teacher, but she cannot
pay any ‘prentice fees” Alyson bit her lower lip. “I would do
so for her, if it please you”

“I will pay,” Guillelm said flatly. “But what can I offer to
the others?”

“A week of dining in your hall my lord?”

Guillelm nodded. “So be it. Will you translate for me?”
he added, rising to his feet.

“With pleasure!” Her eyes sparkled and her joy pierced
him. So simple a mercy to give her so much delight. What had
her life been like with his father? Guillelm wondered again.

He was still wondering as he dispensed justice-if Alyson’s
suggestion could be called such. It seemed so, especially as his
new wife smoothly switched to the local dialect and repeated
what he said. The manner of the widow Isabella changed in
moments from thin-lipped scowls to effusive thanks, the men
with her licked their lips and held out their cups to the pages
for more ale and the baker tugged on Alyson’s gown.

“Can I go home now?” he asked, his slow, heart-wrenchingly simple request comprehensible even to Guillelm, who
answered, “You may.”

He swallowed the elderflower draught and came down from the dais as the villagers prepared to leave, sorry for the tisane
but glad that Alyson had been with him. She knew many
people here and, more important, understood them: their
needs and irritations and hurts. Even in this she was a healer.

“My thanks for your potion for Thierry,” he said quietly,
and for the rest” His smile deepened; it was so easy to smile
at her. “You have the sense of King Solomon. I would not
have thought a woman “

“Capable?” Alyson finished archly. “You do me too much
honor.”

He had been about to say something quite different, but her
mettlesome answer demanded a more physical response. He
reached for her but she nimbly stepped back.

“The chalice, my lord?” She pointed past him to the high
table. “I would return it to our chamber.”

At the word “our,” a faint rose stained her cheeks and Guillelm was snarled anew like a fly caught in fresh resin, he
thought, aggrieved. But although he was ever wary of her
possible rejection and she in turn clearly careful of him, he
was more than glad of her presence.

“A moment, wife.” He said that to make Alyson blush more
deeply, and to his mischievous delight she did. “I am for the
tilting ground soon, and will I have your company?”

Alyson’s face was now as scarlet as the embroidered hems
on her sleeves, but she answered readily, “If it please you.”
Her eyes glittered. “Then when you take a tumble, I shall be
there to tend your hurts”

“Provoking weasel,” he said affectionately, adding as she
made to move off, “Is the way you wear your hair the English
style? I am out of touch with such fashions.”

“Such country fashions?” she suggested, clearly taking his
question as a criticism, where none was intended, where he
had only wanted to keep her by him. “It is my own style,
but no matter. I will change it to suit your wishes. You need only instruct me, though I beg not here, in the hall, with your
men hard by.”

“Alyson-“

“I know I am only a simple creature to you, my lord, nothing
like the grand ladies of the court. I will do as you command”

Exasperated, Guillelm told the truth. “You need change
nothing, little idiot! Shall I tell you of these grand ladies? The
women of my uncle’s court in Poitiers had bad teeth from too
many sweets and hair as brittle as straw from spreading their
sparse locks in the strongest sunlight to bleach them”

Instantly, he regretted this ungallantly, but it was too late.
Alyson closed her sagging mouth with an audible snap.
“Women torture themselves to change their locks to gold because men ever prefer them so”

“Not this man,” Guillelm said steadily.

She shot him a strange, bright glance but said nothing. Did
she know anything of Heloise of Outremer? The notion she
did grazed his heart but his feelings did not matter nowAlyson was turning from him, motioning some silent instruction to Gytha and her other maids.

“Alyson?”

She looked at him, her face stricken.

“Mother of God” He could not leave her thus. “I am sorry.
I spoke badly. Let me make amends” Desperate for something to bridge the sudden yawning gap between them, he
said quickly, “Wear my favor at the tilting ground. Please?”

Solemn as when she had been a child, she nodded and he
breathed afresh. “Will you walk with me to the ground?”
he asked.

She fell into step with him. Strolling together, down the
stone stairways and out past the stables, he studied her again.
Alyson was a lesson he never grew tired of, and his. If only
he might make her truly his.

Her gown was new to him, he thought, or perhaps he was seeing it clearly for the first time. It was that green-blue color
favored by many ladies and marvelously snug about her
bosom, waist and hips. Her long sleeves were trimmed in
scarlet and, as she pointed to a dove strutting by the stables,
muttering, “The dovecote here needs some repair, my lord,”
he was distracted from her highly practical observation by a
glimpse of her wrist, smooth and burnished and white as a
pearl. Quickly, to try to stop the inevitable stirring below his
belt, he followed her pointing finger to the dove. Its feathers
were as milky as the flesh on her wrist. Did she know how the
scarlet embroidering set off her hands? Her gliding, higharched feet, too, for now he caught a flash of her trim ankles
as she lifted the scarlet hem of her gown to negotiate past a
pile of trodden sheep dung.

“Do you think, my lord?” she was asking, “that the emperor of Germany is really a woman?” and he said hazily,
“Yes,” starting as she laughed.

“You have not been paying attention, Guillelm, and now I
have proved it!”

“Attention, eh? Then I must give you some” Inspired by
her teasing, he went further. Ignoring her choked-off giggles,
he flung her over his shoulder and twirled them both about.
“Is this enough attention for you?”

“Let me down!” She hammered her palms against his back
but he felt the blows as if they were the lightest of embraces,
overwhelmed already by the scent of her, the taut, firm bow
of her body on his. Her long braids swung against his calves,
a piquant series of strikes that made him want her even more.

Enough! Do you want her terrified again? You have seen
women raped in Outremer will you be no better? Are you a
Viking who seizes what he pleases? Slowly, reluctantly, he
lowered her to the ground.

“More of that and no doubt I should undo some streamer from your hair and be nagged all the way to the gallops,” he
said gruffly. “We should get on; ‘tis past noon already.”

She snapped her fingers at him. “I am no scold, dragon, as
well you know, but I will race you-now we are fairly
matched since you are clearly exhausted by your lifting.”

Giving him no time to answer, she sped ahead, her dark
plaits flying out behind her. He let her go, amazed at her fleetness, then started after her, aware he was chasing and happy
to chase, for Alyson did not mind if she was caught.

They had a tranquil afternoon at the tilting ground-which
was odd, Alyson thought, because Guillelm and the other
knights there were in training for war. Content merely to be
close to him, she watched him on Caliph, galloping at targets,
practicing with spear, sword and shield and working himself,
his men and their horses into great steaming sweats.

Halfway through the afternoon, Alyson sent a messenger
to the castle to have the bathhouse readied again and instructed pages to bring ale to the men. Ducking under a tourney target, she walked across the churned-up ground, waving
to Sir Tom and stroking one of his panting hounds, avoiding
Fulk, whose bay stallion had already bitten another horse, to
hand Guillelm a drink.

“My thanks, sweet” He took it with a tiny brush of his callused thumb against her palm, a gentle touch that told more
of his gratitude than any number of words. He wore one of
her hair ribbons pinned to his shoulder, a bright blue favor.
She in turn had asked for and been given one of Guillelm’s
small brooches as a favor. She flicked it with a finger.

“The dragon on this brooch looks to have indigestion,” she
remarked, which earned her a guffaw from Guillelm. He
leaned down from Caliph, hooking his free hand under her belt and lifting her off her feet again any excuse to carry her
was good enough, it seemed, and that was fine to Alyson.

“It is a pretty brooch, all the same,” she said, balancing on
his stirrup and giving the rather portly gold dragon design a
cleaning rub with one of her ribbons.

“How many ribbons are there in your hair?” Guillelm muttered.

Alyson smiled. She had spent more than an hour arranging
her coiffure; it was gratifying to behold her husband’s faintly
stunned look whenever he saw it that and the many quicksilver glances he sent her. In truth, she had no idea if what she
had done was fashionable, but she had tried to tread a narrow
path between modesty and instinct.

Although it was a bitter truth that all in Hardspen doubtless knew of the wretched wedding night between Guillelm
and herself, she saw no reason to proclaim the tale. Modesty
and self-protection-protection for Guillelm, too, against
possible sly jibes-had prompted her to place her silk veil on
the crown of her head, as befitted a married woman. Instinct,
though, had suggested she fold the veil into no more than a
small square, held by a narrow copper coronet.

Below this delicate, narrow head rail she had divided her
hair into four plaits, each spiraled about with ribbons. Lord
Robert, Guillelm’s scarce-lamented father and her former
“protector,” had taken her hair ornaments from her, along
with her jewels. She had made more by sacrificing two
scarves and cutting them into ribbons.

Quickly, Guillelm brushed his lips against one of her plaits
and then, almost as if that contact would be too much for her,
swung her gently to the ground. “I must continue,” he said. “I
would see Thierry soon, make certain he is still sure of where
he is, and who he is with.”