A Tapestry of Dreams (37 page)

As Lionel fell away, Hugh heard him scream and took another desperate chance—rolling over so he could get to his knees. Hugh knew he should have died in that instant. Encumbered by his sword and shield, he could not roll fast enough to get out of reach. Lionel should have swung his sword at Hugh’s back or at his unprotected head. But the stroke did not come, and Hugh did not take time to wonder how he had escaped or even to look for Lionel. He only scrambled to his feet gasping for breath and spun around, swinging his sword in a wild arc.

He hit Lionel before he saw him, heard him cry, “No! Kenorn, Kenorn! No!” and struck again before the words or the passive stance could penetrate to his battle-dazed mind. Both strikes were deadly, the first shearing through Lionel’s mail to cut deeply into his back and sword arm, the second also cutting deeply, this time into the left shoulder, breaking the collarbone.

Lionel’s sword dropped from his hand, and his shield hung limply down, but he did not fall. He stood staring at Hugh as if he were looking into the mouth of hell, sobbing, “Kenorn? Kenorn?”

Hugh had already lifted his sword high for the killing stroke, but he could not bring it down. He had not yet made any sense of the word Lionel was repeating; he simply could not kill a man who stood helplessly before him with tears pouring down his face, not even lifting his shield to protect himself. Now he heard the crowd again, a rhythmic ululation demanding the death stroke; he smelled the muddy earth, churned up by the battle, overlaid with the stink of blood and sweat. Slowly he brought his sword down, mesmerized by the utter terror in his enemy’s eyes—a terror he did not understand because it did not change when he lowered his weapon.

Had Hugh been certain this was not another sly trick aimed at snatching victory out of the jaws of defeat, he would simply have walked away. But he did not dare leave the field while his opponent was still standing, lest later Sir Lionel claim he had forfeited the battle. He hardly dared look away from his enemy. In desperation he began to lift his sword again, but in that moment Lionel sighed, uttered “Kenorn,” one last time, and toppled to the ground.

Puzzled about what next to do, Hugh dropped his useless shield to the ground and picked up Sir Lionel’s sword. He lifted both weapons in the air, and cried aloud, “I claim the victory! Sir Lionel cannot yield, but I scorn to kill a man who cannot protect himself any longer.”

***

Hugh never remembered the next period of time very clearly. Events seemed to mingle and run into each other. One moment de Merley was kneeling beside Sir Lionel and shouting; the next the field seemed to be full of people. Hugh braced himself to repel what he feared might be either de Merley’s treachery or a mob outraged because he had not given it what it craved, but they did not approach him. It was not until much later that he realized he had been half dazed and the “crowd” was only retainers come to carry Sir Lionel away. He would have understood that sooner, except that Ralph reached him before the others lifted Sir Lionel, and embraced him, kissing him and weeping.

He tried to think of words to reassure his uncle, but no words would form in his mind, and then he saw a strange thing—he saw Audris, lifting up and embracing the broken shield he had dropped. She turned her head toward him, and her lips formed words that he could not hear or read. Then a man loomed up and took the shield from her. Hugh was about to call out to her—her name sprang readily to his lips, although he still could not think in words—when de Merley passed between them, blocking Audris from his sight, and tried to take Sir Lionel’s sword from him. Hugh snarled, closed his hand on it tighter, and pulled it away with a force that sent the castellan of Morpeth staggering back—and words came to him, suddenly and clearly.

“Bear witness all!” he cried, lifting the weapon again. “In mercy I did not kill Sir Lionel of Heugh, but I have vanquished him in judicial combat. His claim is false. Ralph, Lord Ruthsson, is by God judged the true holder of Ruthsson and Trewick, and I am judged his true heir. Sir Lionel’s sword and shield are my battle prizes—proof of my victory. Will you cry
fiat
?”

And the noblemen stood and shouted,
“Fiat! Fiat!”

Behind Hugh, de Merley made an irritated moue. He had nothing against Hugh, but his first loyalty was to King Stephen, and for a few minutes he thought he would be able to produce a more ambiguous outcome to the trial by combat—one that would give the king more freedom to act as he saw fit in the matter of Ruthsson. He had chosen judicial combat in preference to a private war, however, and he could not offend all the local magnates by denying the clear result, so he nodded and grunted, “
Fiat!
So be it.”

Then he clapped Hugh on the shoulder and smiled. “It was a good fight, and I am glad I was judge and did not wager on it, for I would have lost my money. Will you take part in the melee?”

Five minutes earlier, Hugh would have rejected the suggestion out of hand, but now he was filled with an urge to fight for the joy of it, to clean his heart of the sight of Lionel’s horror-filled eyes. Horse and armor ransom meant nothing to many of the men who would be on the field, and the money—or stock and produce—would help revitalize Ruthsson.

“If I can find another shield, I think I will,” Hugh answered, grinning.

“Hugh!” Ralph protested. “You are hurt.”

“Hurt?” Hugh repeated, and then, reminded, he felt the ache and looked down at his hip, but the blood was already dried brown. “It cannot be more than a scratch,” he said.

“Go to the leech’s tent and let him look,” de Merley suggested, gesturing toward a cloth roof that could be seen behind the area where the commoners stood. “And I will see that your horse and a shield are sent to you.”

“Hugh—” Ralph began.

But Hugh shook his head at his uncle, who seemed to him in his exalted mood too much like a mother hen. “Do not fear for me. There will be time for me to rest before I ride out again, and no man I will meet will wish me harm. Here, take Heugh’s sword and be sure his shield is brought to you also.” Then, to soften what seemed like a rejection and a harsh order, he put his arm around Ralph and hugged him.

“Very well, but—” Ralph said, but Hugh had already turned away, and his uncle shrugged and walked off toward a herald to ask about Sir Lionel’s shield. He had a message for Hugh, but it would not matter if delivery was delayed until the melee was finished.

When Audris ran out on to the tourney field, her emotions were so tangled she could not have said what she felt. She knew she had been fortunate, for Sir Oliver’s unexpected arrival, just after Hugh had overthrown his opponent, had startled her so much that the terrifying events of the sword battle, which followed Sir Lionel’s fall, were blunted. On the other hand, her great joy when she saw Hugh rise and triumph was dimmed by the knowledge that she dared not allow Hugh and her uncle to meet and would have to find a way to induce Oliver to leave before the tourney was over. Hugh had said he would not ask for her until Ruthsson was in a better condition, but she was not certain he would keep to that decision, flushed as he was with his victory. And would not that triumph make him less patient with her uncle’s refusal? Would he not challenge Oliver—and kill him too? She must take her uncle and leave at once, before Hugh could speak to him.

Sir Oliver had scolded her for going to Morpeth alone. Why, he had asked, had she not said she wished to attend the tournament? He would have taken her to one, although he really thought a melee was too dangerous for her to attend and an unfitting sight for a gently reared demoiselle to witness, too. Worse, he pointed out, she had also exposed herself to a different kind of danger; once word got out that the heiress of Jernaeve was present, virtually unprotected, a number of impecunious gentlemen—or even rich, high lords—might feel that to abduct her, marry her out of hand, and hide her away until she was with child would be an easy way to obtain Jernaeve.

The need to listen and respond had distracted Audris just enough that she did not scream or faint when Hugh went down or when he rose up again. And the cries and gasps she could not restrain, and the loss of her train of thought, could be accounted for by her friendship for Hugh. But when she saw Hugh’s shield broken and discarded, the thought
the unicorn is dead
rushed into her mind. And though she now recognized a separation between Hugh and the symbol she had used for him, a compulsion seized her to have the shield. She needed to cherish the symbol that had brought them together and was now no longer necessary.

After she had taken up the shield, she could not help caressing it as if it were a living creature that had been killed. But when she saw Hugh’s eyes on her, she remembered that she must go without even speaking to him again, and she murmured, “Farewell, beloved. Farewell,” although she knew he could not hear her. Perhaps he would be able to read her lips and understand.

She was so intent on the shield and Hugh’s face, marred by a red bruise that stretched from his forehead all down across one cheek to his jawbone, that she jumped with shock when her uncle’s hand fell on her shoulder. There was no way to tell whether Oliver had heard her; Audris thought not, for it was very noisy with the crowd crying out, de Merley giving orders, the men lifting Sir Lionel cautioning each other, and the heralds calling to one another as they prepared to clear the field for the melee.

Nonetheless, there was a shocked and thoughtful expression on Oliver’s face when he took the shield from her and pulled her away, and he seemed to be thinking of something quite different when he told her what a fool she was to run out on a tourney field among busy men. And when she said, shuddering, that she had seen blood enough and did not wish to watch the melee, her uncle did not say she should have thought of that earlier or even send her back to her lodging to wait until he had enjoyed the spectacle. He gave her one intent stare, then agreed that she should be taken back to Uhtred’s house to pack up her possessions while he gathered up their men so that they could depart at once.

Nor, when her mare was brought, did her uncle protest by more than a wry twist of the lips when she demanded firmly that he give her the shield he had laid down. She wondered at that, and because he uttered no warnings about the unsuitability of her favorite until, days after they had returned to Jernaeve, she realized that Oliver probably did not really object to her fixing her affections on a totally unlikely suitor. No doubt it had occurred to him that if she loved Hugh, she was even less likely to accept any other proposal for marriage.

Audris had wondered, too, how Oliver knew where to find her, but her uncle explained that during the ride home. The merchant to whom she had offered her tapestry had been so eager to obtain it that he had brought the price to her lodging in Newcastle the day after she left for Morpeth. There her men had freely discussed their pleasure in an unaccustomed treat so that, when the merchant asked for her, he had been told her destination. Since the merchant’s desire for Audris’s work was undiminished, he had gone on to Jernaeve, where he had innocently passed on the information.

The knowledge that her uncle almost certainly had guessed that she loved Hugh relieved Audris of any need to pretend cheerfulness, and for several days she kept mostly to her chamber. At the end of the week, Fritha came up from an errand on which Audris had sent her with a letter from Hugh concealed in her bosom. Its contents both infuriated Audris and almost reconciled her to her early departure, for Hugh wrote lyrically of his success in the melee. Had she still been at Morpeth, she would have been frightened out of her wits to see him fight again, but the letter itself proved that he had come to no harm. What worried her most was the eagerness with which he wrote of how he would use the ransoms he collected to restore his estate so that he might the sooner propose marriage.

Fearing to deny the possibility of their union so soon after his triumph, Audris confined herself, in her reply, to praise of his prowess, pleas that he would consider her terror and not use that method again to enrich himself, and recapitulations of her fond memories of the time they had spent together. Even so, after she had sent the letter off—a regular system had been established in which Morel’s daughter-by-marriage brought Hugh’s letters to the keep and waited until she saw Fritha, and Fritha carried Audris’s replies to Morel’s cottage—Audris felt sad and guilty. Soon, very soon, she would have to tell Hugh that she could not marry him; she could not let him go on believing that she would become his wife. The sons of earls had proposed and been refused; Oliver would never agree to a suitor with so much less rank and property.

Audris fell to weeping because she might never see Hugh again. One result of her uncle’s guessing where her affections lay was that he probably would not allow her to travel alone in the future. And she could not, no matter how much she racked her brain, think of any reason—aside from the true one, which she would not use for fear of endangering her uncle—for telling Hugh that he must not propose marriage. She cried herself to sleep that night and woke terribly sick in the morning, frightening Fritha half to death by vomiting and refusing breakfast. By midday she had recovered, but though she went to the mews to oversee the training of the young hawks, she found herself near to weeping several times, even though she had not been thinking about Hugh.

She woke sick in the morning twice more that week and began to worry about her health, which, despite her delicate looks, had always been extremely robust. She dosed herself with betony, chamomile, and pennyroyal, and the symptoms disappeared, but oddly the worry did not. All through November the unreasonable sadness would sweep over her periodically, and she found herself irritably cross with the world so that she could barely keep from angry retorts to innocent questions or conversations.

To be bitter and irritable was so far from natural for Audris that she was frightened by the change in her nature, which only made matters worse. By the third week in November, another letter had come from Hugh, but she had not answered it. She was afraid that the emotional storm inside her would spill out into her reply—and this was the wrong time for a letter full of grief and rage, because her guilt would not allow her to deceive him any longer, and she still had found no reason for refusing to marry him. And to make matters worse, Fritha was acting very strange, pleading by gesture for her to eat more than she wanted and peering at her mistress while pretending to be busy at some piece of work. That, too, added to Audris’s guilt because she knew she had been sharp and unreasonable with her maid.

In the end she had ridden down to Morel’s cottage herself to tell him to return without an answer. A bitter wind was blowing up the river valley from the east, and Audris had been feeling colder than usual for her, too, so she did not ask Morel to come out but braved the rather fetid interior of the cottage and went in. It was, in fact, smoky from the fire that burned in the middle of the floor, but neater and better furnished than most yeomen’s homes. There was a real bed toward the back wall, where a door closed off the shed that protected the animals, and in the opposite corner two smaller beds and a pallet on the floor. Near the fire there were several stools, as well as a chair, from which Morel leapt to his feet when she pushed open the door.

A minute or two was spent in Morel’s stammering welcome, and before Audris could give the lame explanation she had devised, a baby, perhaps wakened from his sleep by the voices, wailed lustily from behind the bed. Mary hurried from the fire, where she had been stirring a pot, to quiet the child, taking him into her arms and baring a breast as the best pacifier.

“My grandson,” Morel said, pride making him bold enough to volunteer information for which Audris had not asked.

“God keep him as hale and hearty as he sounds to be now,” Audris replied, and then, remembering that she had offered to help with the birthing, she turned to Mary and said, “I am glad you had no trouble bearing him. May I look at him?”

Mary crossed the room to display her treasure, who had stopped crying as soon as his mother lifted him, and she glowed with delight when Audris gently touched the infant’s cheek. “It be no trouble at all,” Mary said, much emboldened by Audris’s interest in herself and her child. “And it be right, too, for him to be giving me an easy time. In the beginning he made me that cross while I be carrying him—and that sick!—it be a great wonder that my man and Da here did not beat him out of me.”

It was fortunate that Audris was looking at the child, who was crowing softly and reaching toward one of her glittering earrings, which had caught the firelight, for the swift change in her expression—the widening of her eyes and the lips that opened and closed without sound—would have alarmed Mary. In the next instant Audris had burst out laughing and leaned forward to kiss the little boy and cry, “Bless you, baby. Bless you.”

The joy in Audris’s voice and in her face made Mary happy too, for she misunderstood them totally, believing that Audris had seen a wonderful future for her son. What Audris had seen was her own stupidity; sick in the morning and weeping and irritable, she had seen those symptoms often enough to know them, but had never stopped to think. She was with child!

Having smiled once more at Mary and her child, Audris turned to Morel and said, “I have no letter for your master, but I wish you to return to him lest he fear for you—or for me—because you have been away so long. Tell him that I have not written because the hope of a great joy fills my heart, but I cannot tell him what it is until I am more sure that it will come to pass.”

She left quickly, not waiting for Morel’s reply because she knew he would ask what his master would want to know—when he was to return. To answer that question might answer another, prematurely, although as she rode back to the keep she became more and more sure that she had not bled since the second week in October, just before she started for Newcastle. Fritha confirmed this memory by holding up her fingers to show how long it had been since she had washed Audris’s bleeding cloths, and Audris caught her breath with joy and knelt to give thanks to God and more especially to Hugh’s favorite saint, the Virgin.

When the thanksgiving was over and Audris was settled in her favorite chair close beside the small hearth where a bright fire snapped and crackled, occasionally gusting smoke with a rich, piney scent into the room, it was a natural connection to think that
her
conception was not holy and that it would be necessary to explain it to her uncle. Somehow this seemed much less simple now than when she had discussed the matter with Hugh in the early summer.

Nor did she feel as lighthearted now as she had then when she considered the bastardy of her child. Her uncle, she knew, would acknowledge her babe and protect it, but her uncle was growing old—and she did not have the same faith in her cousins that she had in Oliver. His sons had always envied and resented her. When she was a child, until they were sent away for fostering, they had made her life miserable—and might have done worse if Bruno had not protected her.

As Audris considered all the ramifications of being a bastard, she grew more and more uneasy. True, she could summon Bruno if she saw her uncle was failing, and he would come—but could she be sure Bruno would survive the king’s wars? Was it fair to draw him out of the king’s service and possibly deprive him of the opportunity for advancement that might just be ripening into fruitfulness? And there was an even more dangerous aspect to consider. What if she herself died before her daughter was married or her son reached manhood? Would her cousins respect her will that her child inherit Jernaeve despite its bastardy? Audris doubted that strongly.

Audris was reasonably sure that her cousins had come to terms with the knowledge that Jernaeve was hers and that she would doubtless marry and bear sons who would hold the keep, but a bastard would be too great a temptation. Surely they would run to the king with petitions that the “two bastards”—her child and Bruno—be disseised and driven out and the true, legitimate heirs of the line be seisened of Jernaeve.

Perhaps Bruno’s service with the king would protect them… perhaps not. And worse yet might befall, Audris thought. What if she died in bearing the child? There would be no time then for her to summon Bruno, and her babe might only live as long as her uncle. Audris knew that all her worries might be in vain, because only about half the children born survived. But to die of natural causes was the will of God and not a fate from which she could protect her child; being murdered by her cousins was another matter entirely.