A Knight's Vow (29 page)

“Do that again, lad, and you will have no teeth!” he bellowed, missing Alyson’s shout of “Behind you!” altogether.
Two knights leaped upon his back and started to throttle him
with their maces.

“Stop!” Now Alyson found she could move, but her way to
Guillelm was blocked by the older knight, who rose up beside
her chair.

“You will cut yourself with that, pretty,” he said, and ignoring Guillelm’s specific command that no man touch her he
ripped her new dagger from her belt.

“No!” She flew out of the seat after it, grappling with the
laughing warrior.

“Alyson!” The yell ripped from Guillelm’s lungs, echoing
round the ground as he shook off the two and launched himself at the stairs. There was a rush of light, cool and shade, and
a jolting crash. His shoulder barged into the stranger knight’s,
snapping the man’s shield arm and knocking him down.

He swung his sword and the veteran’s sword shattered,
fragments of metal hurtling over the ground. Alyson heard the
man shriek as Guillelm hauled him away from her, tossing
him down the man-made hill.

Guillelm sank to his knees beside Alyson. Battle-hot and
burning, he took her in his arms. “Are you hurt?”

“No” Alyson swallowed, and her pale, narrow head, translucent in the sunlight, found Guillelm’s battle-battered features.
He flinched against a look of judgment and yet there was none,
only a clear, tear-bright gaze. “He was so determined to win.”

Bile rose in Guillelm’s throat. He swallowed the bitter
mouthful, conscious of a throbbing in his arm, of the twittering of the crowd, of the bruised knights groaning. One of
his men-Fulk or Sir Tom, probably-had ensured the older
knight had been removed from the ground.

“You will not hurt him more?” Alyson shuddered and
clung closer. “Please promise me you will not”

“Why? Why should he matter to you?”

“He does not” Alyson smiled bleakly. “But you do” She
touched the ragged parchment favor over his heart. “I would
not that you have his … injury on your conscience.”

It would not be on my mind at all, Guillelm thought, too
wise to admit that. “Very well,” he said. “For you” He would
tell Tom to get the fellow out of Hardspen, without horse,
without armor, without sword. “I am sorry, sweetheart”

She smiled again, a more genuine smile this time. “For
being so reckless in your fighting that you make my heart
race fit to burst for worry of you?”

“No, for being too careless of your safety. That was reckless, and wrong.”

He ignored the rules, not you, Alyson thought. She reached
up and planted a gentle kiss on his cheek.

I forgive you,” she said.

The joust at Hardspen had lasted three more days. Long days
to Alyson, who, since her near-disastrous encounter with the older
knight had sat more conventionally with the other ladies in the
stand, where Petronilla had regaled her with gossip. How she had
ever been this woman’s friend was a mystery, but not so much of
a mystery as where Guillelm spent his nights. He had told her the
merlin was sick and fretted if left alone.

What about me? Alyson had thought, too humiliated to ask
her question aloud. Besides, without even being asked, Guillelm had given an answer: “Whenever we come to sunset and
the end of the day, you are more than half-asleep. So far I
have carried you to our chamber every night and you have
snored on my shoulder.”

“Why must you sit with the merlin?” she had asked once.

“She feels at ease with me,” Guillelm had said, and Alyson
had forced herself to be satisfied with that.

Now, sitting with her in their high rooftop garden, Guillelm
looked up from whittling a small wooden flute with his
knife-he was in the habit of fashioning such toys whenever
he had a quiet moment; he said he did not like to be idle. So far, she had a whistle, as did most of the pages in the castle.
It was, in Petronilla’s words, a new fashion.

Petronilla had left that morning, her wagon creaking under
the weight of her luggage. The men entering the jousts were
already gone and Sir Tom was talking about leaving, although
now he was in the mews, fussing over the merlin. Alyson had
considered asking Sir Tom if Guillelm really was in the mews
all night but had decided she did not want to know.

“How is your shoulder?” Guillelm blew some sawdust
away from the half-finished pipe and threw it down in his lap.
“Would you like more salve on it?”

Alyson squirmed slightly in her chair. Her shoulder was
itching less than it had done but any contact between Guillelm and herself was to be savored. Or was that desire only on
her part? Had he asked simply from courtesy? Sometimes she
was certain he loved her and wanted nothing more than to be
with her, to touch and kiss and more. Was she right?

As she said nothing, made no move, Guillelm cleared his
throat and tapped the key on his belt. “I still have your favors
from the joust. Perhaps we should use this one and retire
downstairs.” He smiled. “We would be more private there,
and more comfortable.”

“If it please you” Fool! Alyson castigated herself. Smile at
him, let him know you welcome this chance to be alone. At
least nod your agreement.

But already she was too late. Sericus and Fulk invaded the
roof-garden at a furious pace, Fulk first.

“Lord! You must come! Messengers from King Stephen
and the empress are at this moment within your great hall,
both demanding urgent speech with you, and their pages are
fistfighting on the floor!”

“Mother of God, man!” Guillelm jumped to his feet. “Two
boys scrapping and you do not stop it-no one has sense to part them? What is everyone doing in the great hall, lounging
about with their thumbs in their mouths?”

“Placing bets and egging each boy on, no doubt,” Alyson remarked, also climbing to her feet. “Throw a pail of water on
the pair and tell them it is with my compliments; the envoys
will accept that a lady is mistress in her own house and take no
slight from it. I will tell them the same and say the brawling
disturbs the nuns who are staying with us, if need be ””

“A double warning, then,” Guillelm grunted, irritation
giving way to amusement as he stood at the stop of the staircase and bawled down an order involving water, buckets and
a good aim, but Fulk was not finished.

“The king’s messenger was a knight at this joust only yesterday. He still wears the favor of the lady Petronilla.”

A sly jibe from Fulk that no knights except Guillelm had
worn hers, Alyson recognized, but she answered calmly,
“Then that knight will know that a lady’s wishes are always
to be followed. Should you not go with your lord?” she
added, as Guillelm disappeared down the spiral steps after a
single lingering look at her that spoke eloquently of his frustration. She, too, was disappointed and she especially had no
wish to go down to meet the envoys and their disheveled
pages on the arm of her least favorite seneschal.

Without a farewell, Fulk turned and stalked downstairs,
leaving Alyson and the wheezing Sericus. “Take my arm, Sericus, if you will,” she said, intending to support him as discreetly as possible down the long treads of stairs. “What is
it?” she asked, as the old man made no move except to rub his
rheumy eyes and then his lame leg. “Sericus?”

He looked at her then. “The wolf has returned”

Alyson felt as if all the breath had been punched from her
lungs, but there was worse.

“A cottar’s child is missing, a little girl. Stop, my lady!”
Sericus put an arm out to prevent her hurrying after Guillelm. “I told Fulk and he said both wolf and child must wait until
after the lord of Hardspen has seen the messengers of the king
and the empress. To do otherwise would be an insult which
neither Stephen nor Maud would forgive or forget”

“But a child is gone, Sericus!”

“I know.”

“For how long?”

“Two days”

“Two days!”

“The cottar did not dare to interrupt the joust”

Alyson wanted to put her head in her hands and weep, but
that would help no one. “Can you gather a hunting party?”
she asked. “Beaters for the woods, men or boys who can
shoot a bow? The family of the cottar-can they bring any
weapons? I will ensure that if they are due to do any work on
my lord’s fields or in my lord’s holdings, then they will not
suffer for missing today and joining us ””

Sericus mouthed “Us?” in sheer horrified astonishment,
but before he could protest, Alyson passed by him.

“I remember well being a little girl. I know I can guess
better than any man where a girl-child might run and hide. I
know the woods well here,” she went on, taking the steps two
at a time. “I know the land hereabouts as well as any man. If
the cottar can show us where the child went missing we can
start from there. Come!”

Guillelm watched the envoys of the king and the empress
leave and smiled. There had been some tricky negotiations
over the past hour but he had managed to promise nothing too
great to either side. He stretched in his chair, cracking his
shoulders, and wondered where Alyson had got to. Perhaps
she was with the sisters of St. Foy’s in the chapel, talking to
her own blood-sister.

“I hope so,” he said aloud, thinking he must tell her how
the bucket of water had worked at once and the whole incident had ended in laughter, even for the hotheaded pages.
Stretching again, he realized he was hungry. Was it too soon
to nag the cooks?

A shadow moved at the back of the hall, solidifying into a
familiar figure. “Thomas!” Guillelm bawled out in sheer
good humor. “How is the merlin?” In truth, he hoped the bird
was now eating well and regrowing some of its shed feathers;
he wanted to spend his nights with Alyson. If they were at
least in the same chamber; that would be a start

One clear look at his companion’s face had Guillelm out of
his chair and striding from the dais. “Thomas? What news?”

Let this not touch upon Alyson, he prayed, but surely that
was impossible. His wife was safe and healing, snug on her
roof-garden at the very top of the keep. How then could Sir
Tom’s grim face be connected with her? “Speak!” he commanded, a coil of dread winding tight about his guts.

“The lady Alyson has gone hunting a wolf that made off
with a child,” Sir Tom said bluntly. “Fulk has just learned
that she and a ragtag party of old men and boys have been
gone this past hour.”

Rushing off to save another without thought for her own
recent injury-that was Alyson all over. Guillelm longed to box
her ears but even more find her, hold her tight, make her safe.

“Saddle my horse,” he said through bloodless lips.

“Already done. Fulk has gathered our best trackers”

Guillelm nodded. “Then we ride,” he said.

The child of the cottar had done what Alyson would have
done at the same age if chased by a wolf. She had scrambled
into the tallest tree she could find and, when Alyson and her
party of archers and villagers spotted her, close to the track she had used to gather firewood, she waved and shouted to
them gleefully, her tears of fright forgotten.

Soon the wiry eight-year-old was tight in her mother’s arms,
gabbling tales of her adventure as her mother rocked her on
her lap, the pair of them sitting on a fallen tree trunk while the
archers prowled through the undergrowth, seeking tracks. The
wolf had been scared off by their approach, but the child said
it had emerged from the middle of the woodland, where she
herself had been forbidden to venture. “I keep to the track at
the edge of the wood, as I am told,” the child piped, receiving
a kiss from her mother as the woman tried to untangle burrs
and leaves from her daughter’s grubby yellow-brown hair.

The thanks of the cottar to Alyson were heartfelt. “You
have given us back our lives, my lady, with this our youngest,
our only daughter,” he said. “If there is anything we may do
for you, please call upon us ””

“Any help we can give, it is yours,” the wife of the cottar
agreed, glancing at Alyson’s slim shape.

Guessing what help she meant, Alyson asked, “How many
children have you?”

“Five, your lady, and all living, thanks be to God,” said the
cottar, squeezing his wife’s shoulder. Standing beside her, one
could see the love between them, warm as the summer’s day.

“I will remember your kind offer, Harland, Elfgiva.” With
a nod to both, Alyson spurred Jezebel forward before these
two handsome, sinewy, rose-complexioned and above all
loving parents noticed the tears in her eyes. To Harland and
Elfgiva, a daughter was not a disappointment, but a treasure.

“My lady!” One of the squires clutched at her saddle.
“What must I eat for a headache?”

“Drink less beer!” called back another squire, to general
laughter.

Alyson chuckled too and was about to lean down and suggest another “cure” when the squire released her saddle and straightened, like a man on sentry duty. She heard it as well,
the galloping of many heavy horses.