A Knight's Vow (31 page)

“And you do”

“No! But Christ knows! God knows!” Sister Ursula
straightened, tucking the simple wooden crucifix that hung around her neck out of sight as she smoothed down her habit.
The action seemed to calm her; when she spoke, her words
were more measured.

“Every woman in our family, without exception, has died
in childbirth. My mother, her mother, the sisters of my
mother, my great-grandmother. If you care for Alyson as you
claim, then you will allow my sister to depart with my order
when the time comes, to spend a period of contemplation and
prayer with us. Allow her that space and peace so she may
come to know what God desires for her.”

Sister Ursula withdrew by another way, leaving Guillelm
sitting on the stairs, staring at the soot-encrusted walls and
seeing nothing.

He was still there when a boy came later, to light the
torches.

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. Foy’s had thought they were safe, until the
Fleming had attacked. There was 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 heartbeat. 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 dared 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 toward 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 toward 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 tightrope 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
was your dearest desire!” 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 selfdoubt. 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 from me. You are as light as a crane fly,
even with my boots”

“A daddy longlegs?” 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 his collarbones.

“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 warriormonks 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 wisewoman 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 moonrise, I should think you will be glad of
her skills. She has philters 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 wisewoman was admitted,
shedding her bulging pack before the tumbling flames of the
brazier and the keen faces of the maids.

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, work-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 sweetsmelling unguents. Too
distracted by what Guillelm was or was not doing to concentrate on the wisewoman’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.