A Knight's Vow (36 page)

This dislike was confirmed by what he said.

“This morning my men arrested a local female, a so-called
wisewoman, Eva”

“You had no right,” Guillelm ground out, his tanned face
flooding with rapid color. “The Templars may be a powerful
order, but even their writ does not run in the borders of another lord’s lands. Justice is for the ruler of England, and for
me, who holds these lands in the name of the sovereign.”

“Which ruler, though?” Sir Michael asked mildly. “King
Stephen or the empress?”

“You still had no right,” Guillelm persisted.

“In matters concerning religion and the church I have more
rights than you,” Sir Michael replied. “The pope will uphold
my claim of jurisdiction”

A spasm of scorn crossed Guillelm’s face. “You would
send petitions to Rome because of one local woman? What
did she do, forget to bow as you passed?”

“She is a witch, my lord. There is the very sign of evil upon
her flesh: two red marks close to her ear, the place where
Satan kissed her. She has been arrested and shown the necessary instruments of inquiry-“

By which he meant instruments of torture, thought Alyson,
with a shudder.

“She has confessed to her witchcraft and has named two
more of her coven. Freewoman Gytha, a former nurse, and-“

“Folly!” Guillelm bawled. “The women are no more
witches than I am!”

Sir Michael shook his shaven head, steepling his fingers
together on the smooth wood of the dais table. He was sitting
at the high table, almost in Guillelm’s place, and he spoke
with unconscious arrogance.

“In your present condition, my lord, I find your assertion
unconvincing. You clearly have been bewitched and by none
other than that woman who sits beside you, staring at me as
brazenly as any man”

Sir Michael lifted something from his lap and placed it on
the table with an audible snap. “This potion was procured by
your wife from the witch Eva to use against you. It was found
amongst the possessions of the nurse Gytha, who is the confidante and gossip of your wife. Gytha confessed freely that
the potion is witchcraft.”

Alyson freed her dry tongue and forced herself to speak. “A
love potion, no more” She knew Gytha. Her poor old nurse
would not have been able to resist the idea of a charm to help
Alyson and Guillelm in bed. “Such things are harmless.”

“Witchcraft,” Sir Michael repeated with relish. “And evidence to be used at your trial.”

“Think, Guillelm!” Fulk broke in. “If she is found guilty of
witchcraft, your own reputation will suffer unless you put her
aside and annul this marriage. You may lose Hardspen!”

Alyson trembled at the threat, but not because of Fulk.
Now surely was the moment where Guillelm would declare
his love, where he would openly pledge himself to her. She
looked up at her husband-after last night, her true husband-and willed him to answer.

“I do nothing on your say-so, Fulk,” Guillelm responded,
without even glancing at her. “Alyson and I were wed in
church. She is mine, my wife.”

Alyson gasped as, still glaring at Fulk and Sir Michael, he
reached down and spread his hand across her stomach.

“She is carrying my heir.”

That was it. No words of love. No public declaration of his
feelings. Hard, practical reasons; she was his, and his broodmare.

A tear rolled down her cheek and before she could prevent
it or hide her distress from the corpse-pale, grinning head of
the Templars, there came a thunder of knocking on the door
and Thierry shouting, “Guillelm!”

“Here and whole!” Guillelm yelled, straightening to confront Sir Michael. “I am not so old nor so young as to fall into
any trap,” he said. “I saw dust by the jousting ground and sent
a message”

“How?” Fulk asked, flinching as he realized how far he
had revealed his part in the Templar’s conspiracy.

Now Guillelm smiled, although to Alyson it seemed his
face was no more than a mask. She sensed the dragon anger
boiling beneath his grim exterior and, despite her own bitter
disappointment and her renewed revulsion for Fulk, she trembled for the man. His punishment would be far worse than
riding in full armor for a day.

But Guillelm was answering Fulk. Alyson scrambled to
attend.

“The lad who delivered me a message yesterday was shadowing us today. I spotted him almost at once, but for the sake of
my lady’s gentle heart I let him be. When I saw the rising dust
on the practice ground and realized just how many men would
have to be there to make it, I disliked it. So I nodded to the boy,
jerked my head. He is a quick study; he was off for the jousting
ground in a moment. I cannot guess what he told my men, what
plea he made on my behalf, but it was enough. They are here”

“We have reached a stalemate, Lord Guillelm,” Sir Michael
remarked, grasping the new situation at once. “What do you
suggest? An ordeal? Champion against champion?”

No! She would defend her own honor, Alyson thought. She
pushed herself off the chair. “I will prove my innocence and
sanctity,” she declared, her voice ringing clear to the rafters. “I and my nurse Gytha and the woman Eva will go live with
the nuns of the former convent of St. Foy’s. We shall join
them at the convent of Warren Applewick. We shall pray with
them, and God and the Holy Virgin will protect us. We are no
wrongdoers ””

“Well said, my lady,” came a new voice, as Sericus, with
Thierry covering his scrawny body with a shield and men
loyal to Guillelm streaming past them, now tottered into the
great hall.

Guillelm said nothing.

“You have been wise.” Sister Ursula paused in brushing her
sister’s hair, an intimacy Alyson had been glad of, until she
realized that her sibling was taking their moment alone together as another chance to drive home her argument.

“As you say,” Alyson demurred. Having walked all day,
leaving Gytha and the wisewoman Eva to ride on Jezebel, she
had reached the new convent of the former sisters of St. Foy’s
with her legs aching and her whole body weary. That had
partly been her intention, to tire herself so she would sleep
quickly and not lie awake fretting, but she was too exhausted
to dispute with her sister. “Is my lord well?” she asked.

“He is dining with the abbess and the prioress in the guest
house,” replied Sister Ursula stiffly. “Why were you walking
with him today, Alyson? You should have treated your journey here as a pilgrimage and eschewed his company.”

“Peace!” said Alyson, using Guillelm’s own oath. She had
walked with Guillelm in the company of his men because not
to do so would have caused her almost unendurable pain. As it
was, to be separated from him at all and especially in these circumstances, with the threat of witchcraft hanging over her, was vile. She found that the space beneath her breastbone actually
ached, that there seemed an absence in the very center of her.

She glanced about the bare whitewashed cell that would be
her sleeping place for this and for how many other lonely
nights, seeing the tiny posy of flowers in the wall nook by her
thin, narrow bed without any real pleasure. She could not
even take the trouble to discover what the flowers were.

Am I going to be like this forever? she thought, panicking at
the idea. Everything seemed dulled, purposeless. She told herself it was shock, horror at Fulk’s treachery and the Templar
leader’s malice, but she knew it was more simple and terrible.

Walking with Guillelm, she had hoped he might say the
words she ached to hear from him. But though in parting by
the convent gate he had clasped her so tightly to him she
could hear his racing heart, though he had whispered,
“Sweetheart, take care. This will not be for long-I swear I
will challenge the pope if I need to so that you are safely restored to me!” he had not said, “I love you.”

“When he leaves tomorrow, I will not see him for many
days,” she said, finding it some relief to speak of him, however obliquely. “Do they serve roasted fruit at the abbess’s
table here? Guillelm enjoys those. And mulled wine.” She had
been planning many variations with spices and the rare sugar
to try on him, especially as the winter months drew on. “I
trust they do not oversalt the fish. I know he dislikes that”

I neither know nor care,” was her sister’s bald response,
accompanied by a fierce pull of her brush that tugged at the
roots of Alyson’s hair. “Such worldly concerns are not for me,
and they should not be any part of your life.”

Sister Ursula banged the brush down on the edge of the
bed. “Yes, you flinch now!” she spat, her green-gray eyes
flashing dislike, her thin face one long grimace of reproach.
“Why did you not flinch away from him? You know the fate
of the women in our family! I have heard him, braying his manhood in the very church of this holy place, asking the
abbess to pray for his unborn son!”

Not for me. Alyson was glad to be sitting on the edge of
the bed. As her left foot went into an agonized cramp she
almost cried aloud, although not with her body’s pain. I have
not been rejected. Guillelm respects my decision and sees the
logic of it. It is the safest way for Gytha and Eva. Being here
saves them from the questions of Sir Michael and possibly
even torture. Guillelm’s mother died in childbirth and he
knows too well the history of the women in my family. Perhaps
he is right to ask for prayers. What else can he do? It is women
who bear children. I am not being abandoned. Trying to be
resolute, she limped to the door of her cell and opened it.

“Thank you” She could scarcely look at her much-loved
sister, buried in her black piety, her thin fingers stroking the
cross at her neck as if to wipe away the contagion of any
human contact. “I wish you good night.”

“Pray God protects you from the consequences of your
own sin and desire,” Sister Ursula retorted, determined as she
had been in childhood to have the final word. She glided past
Alyson, leaving without once looking back.

Life in the convent settled for Alyson into a bland, colorless existence. Gytha and Eva were put to work in the gardens
but Alyson was told that digging was not seemly for one of
her status. “It could also injure your child,” the abbess continued, smiling at her charge and glancing at the fine silver
altar crucifix that Guillelm had left as a gift.

“Then allow me to work in the infirmary,” Alyson pleaded,
but again she was denied.

“No. For you, I think that your innocence is best proved here,
in our church” The abbess brushed some stray pollen from a
vase of drooping lilies off the altar cloth, looking round the convent church in the same satisfied, managing way that a
house-proud wife might check over her stores. “Remain in
church from your time of waking to your time of retiring and
pray. God and the world will then see your purity.”

“May I have a little parchment, so I may write to my lord?”
Alyson asked.

The abbess, still brushing pollen, shook her head. She was a
small yet angular woman, seemingly fashioned of straight lines,
so that in her plain gown she seemed like a black cube. Her wide
face, with its heavy jaw and narrow brown eyes, radiated nothing but honest good nature. “You have no need to write, my
child,” she replied. “He knows where you are. You are safe here
and at peace. You must direct your thoughts to God”

Alyson prayed in the convent church. She joined the nuns
in all their services. She swept and cleaned the church, taking
care not to disturb the nuns who entered for their own quiet
contemplation, or those who changed the flowers. She asked
for nothing for herself and learned not to approach her own
sister, who resented being singled out, or to ask for news of
Guillelm. Kind but implacable in her own sanctity, the abbess
believed that talk of husbands in a nunnery was inappropriate. She never answered Alyson’s questions.

The days drew on. Speech was not encouraged in the convent and Alyson saw Gytha or the wisewoman Eva only with
the width of the church nave between them. At night she
prayed on her knees in her cell, longing to speak to Guillelm,
to share with him the snippets of news she gleaned from the
nuns about the civil strife between King Stephen and the Empress Maud, and to hear about him in return. Was he safe?
What had happened to Fulk and the Templars? More selfishly
perhaps, did he miss her as greatly as she missed him?

When she first began to feel sick, Alyson thought it was because she was pining. In the refectory at meals she avoided
the game and poultry dishes that the convent were allowed to
serve in addition to fish and vegetables, telling herself she did
not fancy the rich roast duck. Even a liking for hot blackberry
tisane was nothing new. It was only when her breasts began
to feel tender and her monthly course did not come that she
began to wonder.

Was Guillelm right? Was she with child?

That night she dreamed of Guillelm. She dreamed they
were together again in the barn, only this time the night was
fine and dry, spring rather than high summer.

“I ache here” In her dream, Alyson placed a hand on her
breasts. She was so tender there that she could no longer sleep
upon her front, and the fabric of her tunic felt tight and harsh.

It was a warm, breezy night and they had lit no fire. Guillelm lifted the wooden whistle from Alyson’s lap and laid it
aside. “Untie your tunic, sweetheart. Let me see”

He crouched so that the moon could shine upon her breast
and laid hands on her, his firm touch surprisingly comforting.
“Look up” He stared at the prominent veins below Alyson’s
collarbone. A smothered laugh escaped him. “We should be
in the lambing field ourselves.”

Guillelm touched her throat on the big life-vein. “You
know what it is, Alyson. Part of you knows. The part that has
caused your mind to give me these words within your dream”

Alyson looked down at herself. She put a hand on her taut
stomach and sucked it in. So tiny, it could not be felt as yet.
She felt old, mortal, her own childhood gone forever. She
thought of the women in her family, fated to die in childbirth.
She lifted her head. “What should I feel?”