Alinor (33 page)

"Quick," she said as she opened a chest, "take that gold chain set with topaz and put it on. It will finish you nicely. Wait. See also if you can find some rings in there that will go on your hands."

"Whose are these?" Ian asked.

What little he had left in the way of gems and gold were in his northern stronghold. All the remainder had been sacrificed to pay for Alinor's pearls.

"Who knows," Alinor replied. "Mine, I suppose, if you mean who owns them. I guess they were my father's. My grandfather never wore such things at all, and Simon either. He was quite right of course; they would have befitted him like a silk panache befits an ass. I always thought it a great waste, though, that they should lie unused. It is a pleasure to see them on you, Ian. You do them honor."

"But Alinor," Ian protested, "to dress me in borrowed plumes―"

"Borrowed from whom? As long as you and I live, they are yours. When we die, they will be divided among our children."

Ian opened his mouth to protest further, but was interrupted by Joanna's voice craving admittance from the outer chamber. "Yes, come," he said, and then, "Holy Mary, Joanna, how beautiful you are!"

Even all unformed as she was, one could see the woman that would ripen. She was dressed in the same dark red as her mother, and it was a surprise to Ian how well the color suited them both. Of course, Alinor's dark hair was hidden under her gold wimple, and mother and daughter both had the same very white skin, but the dark red seemed to make Alinor's eyes glow gold and deepen the gray of Joanna's to a blazing blue. Impulsively, the child ran to Ian, and he embraced her and kissed her, suffering as he held her a total reversal of his eagerness to make contract for her marriage. It did not seem to Ian that any man would ever be good enough to deserve Joanna.

He was saved from voicing any such idiocy by Adam's indignant demand for attention. Ian released Joanna, who went to her mother to have her dress twitched and patted into more perfect folds. Adam, except for the jewels that bedecked Ian, was a small version of his stepfather. In fact, with his dark hair and changeable eyes, he could more easily have been taken for Ian's son than for Simon's. With Adam, Ian wasted no time on praise. The boy was as fine as a cockatoo and knew it.

"Stand," Ian ordered. "Now turn. Yes. Hitch that sword more forward so the hilt is readier to your hand. Let me see you take it. Quicker. Grab the scabbard with the left. Higher. So. Draw. So. Now let me see―"

"Ian," Alinor warned, "do not you dare kneel."

He laughed. "You see how much better it is. I had forgot for the moment. Owain, you are the taller. Kneel to him for me. Yes. Let me see you touch him with the point, Adam. Gently! Very well. Sheath. Thank you, Owain. You and Geoffrey had better go and dress and be quick about it. I Want to see you before you start to serve. Adam, come here."

"Do not bother to go down," Alinor said to the squires. "There are new garments for you both in the chamber opposite and Gertrude and Ethelburga will help you dress. Tell Gertrude where your arms are, and she will send a manservant for them."

Ian turned away from showing Adam how to adjust the hang of his cloak so that it would not impede his sword hilt. "My squires, too?" he said uneasily.

"They must stand behind you. I would have all meet and fitting. You did not leave the boys' baggage with me, and even if the clothes were once fine enough, I can imagine the condition of dirt and raggedness they are in now. It was easier to make all new than to think of cleaning and mending what they had in the midst of the guests."

"Very well, but their fathers are well able to afford new finery for them. I will charge them with the expense."

"Oh, Ian, let me gift them. They are so kind to Adam —are they not, Adam?"

"Yes," Adam the irrepressible replied, "but if you want to gift them, Mama, I know what they want more than clothes."

"Do you, love? How clever. Tell me."

"Owain wants a jeweled eating knife, like the one Ian used the night he wore the green gown. And Geoffrey is crazy to have a lute. He has been borrowing the minstrels' when they would lend them. He plays very well." Adam lowered his voice. "The queen took his away. She said it was not fitting. Ian, is it not fitting to play the lute? Mama has told me that King Richard played and sang, too."

"That silly boy!" Ian exclaimed. "Why did he not tell me?" Then to Adam. "Of course it is fitting. If I had the smallest ability, I would play and sing myself. Perhaps Geoffrey did not understand just what Queen Isabella meant. Perhaps he played at the wrong time or place."

But Ian's eyes were furious when they met Alinor's over Adam's head, and she knew he had excused the queen only so that Adam would not hear something he was too young to estimate wisely.

"Can you keep a secret, Adam?" Alinor whispered. The boy nodded excitedly. "Very well. Perhaps Owain will have his knife and Geoffrey his lute for Twelfth Day presents. Now, do not tell or you will spoil their pleasure, and that is a bad way to repay their kindness to you. Ah, here are our attendant gentlemen. Well, Ian? How do they look?"

Ian grunted approval, more interested in correcting the carriage of weapons than in appearance. Alinor straightened the folds of the tunic at Owain's back and pulled at Geoffrey's to even the hemline. Ian promptly undid Alinor's work by resettling both sword belts, but eventually he was satisfied and stood back. Owain was tastefully attired in two shades of soft blue; Geoffrey in shades of green. Both looked well and would neither conflict with nor outshine the principal actors.

"Thank you, lord," Geoffrey said, going to his knee to kiss Ian's hand.

Owain echoed the gesture and the words.

"No thanks to me," Ian remarked, tousling both heads gently. "To my shame, I did not even think of having your clothes sent back to the keep to be cleaned. Thank Lady Alinor for both thought and labor."

Both went to kneel, but Alinor forestalled them by drawing them into her arms. "I am very happy to welcome you into my family and into my heart. I know you are too old to need a mother, yet there are some things a man wishes to tell or to ask a woman, and a mother is a safe person to listen to tales and troubles. If I can help you, remember I am most willing."

Ian gathered the group with his eyes. "You go first, Adam. Then Joanna and Alinor. Owain, lend me your shoulder. I can stand but I am not sure of the stairs. Geoffrey, do you follow, and be ready to grab my belt if my knee should fail. I do not desire to enter the hall on my face."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

It was a marvelous ceremony, marred only for Alinor, who had to struggle frantically to control her tears when Adam took the vows of his men. He was so very small, his tiny hands engulfed in the large ones of the men who knelt to him. A pain stabbed from Alinor's throat down into her breast until she felt literally that her heart would break. Simon, her painful heart wailed, Simon. But there was no answer, not even the vision of him that, in the past, used to rise in her mind's eye to calm her when she was frightened or sad. There was only Ian's voice, following Adam's treble affirmation of the vows of fealty, Ian's voice, sure and strong, repeating again and again, "I, Ian, Lord de Vipont, do warrant and stand surety for my son by marriage."

Fortunately, Alinor had taken the fealty of her dependents so often that the words and gestures flowed from her without need for thought, and however forgetful Ian had been in the matter of his squires' dress, he had obviously not failed to instruct them in their duties. As each vassal or castellan swore, Owain or Geoffrey, by turns, came forward to receive and carry to safety the token of homage. Sir John of Mersea's offering of five fish, three eels, and two oysters; Sir Giles of Iford's two couple of hunting dogs; Sir Henry of Kingsclere's tall lance; and Sir Walter of the Forstal's sparrow hawk had been accepted before Alinor really was conscious of anything beside her own misery. She had not even heard the roars of
"Fiat! Fiat!"
that shook the rafters after each swearing.

She came to herself swiftly enough, however, when she detected an odd note in the voice of her castellan from Clyro Hill. In the moment, she was aware of Ian, who stood just at her left shoulder. Although his right hand did not move, his left slid down to grasp the scabbard of his sword as if to ready it for drawing. Even Joanna, who Alinor saw had remembered her part and came to stand at her mother's right hand, noticed something amiss and stiffened. Alinor said her say, leaned forward and gave the man the kiss of peace, but it made her no easier that he would not meet her eyes. He waved his squire forward with his token, a clutch of pheasants' eggs and five leeks, and Alinor accepted them with the formal words. The witnesses shouted
"Fiat!"
Sir Peter stepped down from the dais, but Alinor's eyes followed him speculatively until she had to give her attention to Sir Alfred of Ealand.

Then she was free to step back. It was Ian's turn. This taking of homage was, of course, totally unnecessary in the sense that nothing had changed Ian's social position or his relationship with his vassals. However, it was a good idea to renew oaths of fealty as often as possible on general principles; the repetition seemed to increase loyalty. Moreover, renewing the oath at. this time would obviate the complaint that Ian would be busy with his wife's lands and might neglect his own without warning his vassals of his new responsibilities. Alinor paid little attention. Although technically she was Ian's heir, because he had no other family, she was not yet concerned with the idea of holding his lands if anything happened to him.

Midway in the swearing, there was a disturbance at the back of the hall. Alinor's head lifted sharply, but apparently the men-at-arms crowded into that section had either explained what was going forward or had otherwise silenced the intruder. Completely freed from her earlier oppression, Alinor's heart leapt with expectation. If this was the king's messenger, God had favored her in a most singular way. There could not be a better time for his arrival.

Alinor had, of course, hoped it would happen this way, but there had been no way to arrange it surely. She knew her huntsmen would not leave the man in the forest until it was light, for fear the beasts that roamed there would harm him, but after that all was conjecture. How long would he take to free himself? How long would it take him to find Roselynde? How long would be needed to convince the castle guards to let him enter, all ragged and dirty as he must now appear? Alinor's eyes rested on Ian a little ahead of her and to her left. If this was the king's messenger, God had truly given his blessing to this marriage. Ian would be shielded by the evidence of strong witnesses from having had any desire to flout the king's wishes. After all, how could he know that the king had other plans for the lady he had married if the messenger carrying the information had not arrived until after the wedding.

A quick survey of other possibilities for the disturbance left Alinor with little doubt as to how she must act. As soon as the last
"Fiat!"
died away, she stepped forward.

"Who broke the peace of this swearing?" she called sharply. "Let him be brought forward."

Ian, who had been looking at his vassal, had not noticed the brief swirl of activity at the end of the hall. From the surprised looks and random head turnings, Ian judged that few others had noticed either. He put a hand on Alinor's arm.

"Be gentle," he warned her. "This is not a day for severity."

"I am not angry," she declared, not loud, but in a clear voice that would definitely carry to the important witnesses who stood just in front of the dais—the three bishops, the earls, and Lord Llewelyn. "I am concerned. Yesterday, during the entertainment after dinner, one of my foresters brought me the king's seal and a demand for ransom for a king's messenger. He said a man he did not know had caught him from behind and, at knife point, had bid him carry the seal to me and ask two marks for the man and the message that went with the seal."

"What?"

The startled word was no indication that Ian had not heard her, only that he did not believe his ears. Alinor could only hurry on, hoping that Ian would have sense enough not to contest anything she said in public.

"I gave him the money, and a guard to see that he did lay it where he said he was told to leave it. I did not tell you. I—I did not wish to look a fool, if I had been choused out of my money."

Ian's eyes opened as wide as they could go, and he swallowed convulsively. The idea of Alinor doing or thinking anything so simple-minded and passive was inconceivable. It was plain as a clear day to Ian that she was up to some deviltry, but he dared not say or do anything to mark his suspicion. In any case, the man had already been brought forward. Ian listened, silent and totally incredulous, to the tale that poured out of him.

He had been seized by outlaws. What outlaws? Ian knew he had cleaned out the only nest of men in the area and had cleaned it out before the messenger had been taken. Of course, it was possible that there was a small group living in the forest off game and the few pence they could wrest from low-born travelers who were afraid to complain of their experiences at the castle. It was possible, but not likely. The idea that Alinor's huntsmen or foresters would miss such a group was very farfetched. The idea that they would deliberately betray their mistress, as King John's foresters in Bere had done, was laughable. King John was far away and very unapproachable; he might come to Bere once in a year, if so often. His men were in little danger that the king would discover their dishonest doings. Alinor was close at hand, a good mistress who listened to her people's complaints readily; she had many faithful servants who would run to her with news of another servant's cheating.

He had been stripped of his clothes, his money, his horse and arms, the messenger cried passionately. Even the message had been defaced, the seal torn from it. Alinor interrupted to confirm this last and to say for all to hear this time that the seal had been brought to her as a token and she had paid the ransom required, not daring to refuse when the king's messenger and the king's orders were at stake. She received tearful thanks. They would have killed him to conceal their crime if she had not paid, the messenger said. The large ransom, they had told him, was to enable them to flee the country. They had laughed at him when he told them they would be hunted high and low for interfering with a king's messenger. Not in France, they said contemptuously; King John's power did not stretch to France.