Bond of Blood (15 page)

"When I am willing to take the chance," Mortimer replied stubbornly, "why should you be concerned? Surely I am old enough to care properly for my own interests. I will give you my eldest son, if it is a daughter, and any girl you wish if it be a boy. If you do not wish me to be bound, give me the right of first refusal without oaths taken on either side."

Out of the comer of his eye, Cain saw the tables were ready set for dinner. In a moment they would be summoned to eat and he permitted himself to laugh heartily. "Well, that is something to make a note of. On my wedding day, I could have married off my eldest born—do you suspect me of dishonoring my wife before we were wed? Nay, Mortimer, I will not permit you to bind me by oaths or oathless. God send me sufficient children to fulfill all the offers and I assure you that you will not have to wait long before we are bound in blood. I am most willing, but this is no time for long or serious talk—there is the call to table."

They ate and ate. They ate in the hall, in pavilions on the field, in the kitchens and passages. Whole deer, boars stuffed with rabbits, swans stuffed with geese, and geese with chickens, the chickens with pheasants, and the pheasants with doves. Myriads of sauces, jellies, and condiments were provided to grace the meats that were less elaborately prepared. Mountains of bread disappeared as did barrel after barrel of wine and beer. In the open spaces between the tables jugglers and acrobats, clad in the pied red and yellow of their trade, performed their feats and their women danced, rattling tambourines.

When the roasts were removed to make place for the ragouts and stews, the jugglers withdrew and the musicians came forward so that the guests could dance. As the wine in the huge casks sank lower, the men grew more quarrelsome; fighting began to break out, personal and political grievances alike being aired and the language that was used showing the truth and directness lent by the wine. The soberer members of the party, including the bridegroom, leapt up to separate the combatants and calm them with the information that the matter could be fought out on the tourney field in the morning.

"Madam," Lord Radnor said to Edwina, "gather your ladies and let the bedding ceremony begin. If we do not rise from the tables soon and give men something else to think about, there will be blood shed in earnest."

Edwina made no protest although she cast an anguished glance at Leah who was toying absently with food she had not eaten. This thing, to her the greatest horror of all, had to be, and delay would change nothing. She collected the highest-born ladies with her eye and they gathered around Leah. The men's attention was immediately withdrawn from their quarrels; each tried to outdo the other in raucous applause and coarse jokes, and much advice decent and indecent followed the women out of the hall.

The bride was led to the tower room where Cain had slept, now furnished with a magnificent bed, Leah's parents' wedding gift to her. The ladies removed Leah's beautiful bliaut, her tunic, her shift, her shoes and stockings; they unbraided her hair and left her naked to await her bridegroom. Radnor, apparently eager and not hiding it, arrived with his guard of honor so quickly that the women could not straighten out her clothing, and in his disrobing ceremony and the accompanying jests the garments were forgotten.

To Leah it seemed as if the crowd of noisy, joking people would never leave. She was frightened by the knowledge that their departure would herald a resumption of her painful experience of the forenoon, but she was more distressed by the appreciative glances of the men and by the pain and fear imperfectly concealed in her mother's eyes. Radnor was proving recalcitrant. He had stripped willingly enough down to his chausses and shoes, but these he refused to remove. This naturally enough brought forth a hail of chaff. All would have passed off easily enough, however, for every man there knew of his lameness and his reluctance to expose it, had not Gaunt interfered. Hereford was proposing some particularly indelicate reasons for Radnor's shyness when the earl's harsh voice cut across the merriment.

"Let him be. He has, in truth, something to conceal."

Radnor's face whitened; Hereford's voice was suspended mid-jest. A few uneasy glances passed from eye to eye in the unpleasant silence. Philip of Gloucester, who had been leaning breathlessly against the wall after making the climb up the stairs, came forward to kiss his friend defensively. Hereford followed. Chester embraced his godson's shoulders. Nothing could cover the suspicion renewed in all minds, however, and the spontaneity was gone so that only a few moments later the room was clear.

Afraid to meet Leah's eyes, Cain sat down on the bed with his back to her to remove the rest of his clothes. He dallied, unwinding his cross-garters slowly and allowing his eyes to wander aimlessly about the room. They fell on Leah's shift, passed, suddenly returned. The tunic and shift were stained with blood.

"What? Leah, how did you get blood all over your clothes?" No answer, but the bed shook as her shudder communicated itself to him through the mattresses. He turned to look at her. "Why do you fear me?" he questioned furiously.

He associated her fear with his father's remark which could, indeed, have been taken as acknowledgment that he was a demon. The matter of the bloodstained shift was insignificant in comparison and had already slipped from his mind.

Leah shrank from him slightly and put up her hands as if to hold him off. "I fear because you hurt me." She heard the tone of reproach and resentment in her own voice and was appalled. That was no way to speak to a husband; he would be furious with her.

Cain did not even notice. His only emotion was a wave of relief that she was not afraid he was a supernatural monster.

"I did not mean to hurt you," he said softly, "I did with you as a man does with a woman."

His voice was uncertain. His experience had not been with innocent, virginal women. Radnor frowned thoughtfully at his wife. Leah was terrified by that frown. It would be bad for her indeed if she had made him angry so early in their marriage. The fear showed in her face and in her trembling voice as she spoke to him.

"Come, my lord, lie down. Let me darken the room."

He lay beside her as bidden, remembering that the fear in her eyes now was the same as the look she had given him earlier and that both glances were akin to the way the women whom he seized in the fields regarded him. He heard again the whimper she had given when he left her. Was this the same then? Had he lied to himself about her warmth, about her affection for him? His pleasure he had had, but it was bitter in his mouth as was the frightened stillness of the girl who lay beside him.

"My lord?" Her voice was a thin, trembling whisper.

"Yes."

"Alas, do not be angry with me. Do with me as you will."

"I am not angry."

He did not sound angry, his soft voice carried no threat.

Leah spoke more surely, but still with caution. "You are my very good lord. You will be patient with me, I know." Emboldened further by his passive acceptance of that statement, Leah stroked her husband's arm gently and turned towards him. Cain did not want the response of fear. "Oh, do not turn away," she cried, and he realized that he had frightened her more and took her in his arms.

That was nice, very nice. He could not be angry and hold her so gently. After a little pause Leah sighed and pressed closer. "You are so warm and I so cold. My lord?"

"Yes."

"Were you angry at my boldness when I wrote to you?"

"No, I was well pleased." Cain swallowed. Holding her so close without going further was not easy, for her cool, pliant body awakened his passion. Leah moved her head on his shoulder and laughed softly. "What is it?" he asked.

"The hair on your chest is so harsh. It tickles my face with little pricks." Leah stroked his face. She would have begged him to kiss her, but his assurance that one type of boldness was not offensive to him gave her no guarantee that he would accept another type.

"Do not do that " Her hand stopped and Cain felt her body stiffen. "Nay, I did not mean to frighten you, but that makes me … Your hair is like fine silk. Last night I dreamt of it, like a web over my hands."

Leah's hand, still against his cheek, trembled a little and then turned his face more towards her. "My lord?"

"What now?"

"Is it evil in a woman to desire to kiss her husband?"

"What?"

Leah was silent. Doubtless her mother was correct and her husband would now think she was a woman without virtue. Cain felt suddenly frustrated. It was necessary, of course, for girls to be kept pure, but he was beginning to think that too much innocence could be a fault. Explanation of these matters was a work for other women, he thought, realizing with a shock that how it was for a woman was a mystery to him. Leah's hand dropped from his face.

"Leah, it is good, not evil, for a woman to love her husband."

"Yes, but—"

"What did your mother tell you of marriage?"

Cain did not realize how fortunate he was that Edwina, unlike most mothers who explained carefully and fully, had been unable to bring herself to discuss the sexual aspects of marriage with her daughter. Leah had thus been saved her mother's warped views on the subject and had imbibed only hints from the servant women and certain practical information from the evidence of her eyes in seeing the mating of the beasts in the castle and on the demesne lands.

"That I must obey my husband. That I must allow him to do whatever he would with me. Indeed, my lord, I did wrong to speak in that tone to you before. It is your right to handle me as you will. That I must not hang upon you. That—"

"Enough. She told you nothing of what—what I did?"

"Oh no."

"That is the way children are begotten."

"So much I knew. I ask again for your pardon."

"There is nothing to pardon. I was too rough with you." His voice faltered a little and his arms tightened around her.

"And now what must I do?" he asked softly. "Must I wait? I—it is hard for me."

She could escape the repetition of that experience. All she needed to do was lie a little. In the dim light of the night candle Leah saw the shine of the lashes over his beautiful eyes. What she had been about to say died in her throat.

"Be gentle with me," she whispered instead.

He had his will of her, and it was sweeter than honey because she was willing and then, when he drifted up out of that red well of pleasure, there was more sweetness yet, for Leah was stroking his hair and kissing his face.

"I am sorry,” he whispered. “I tried to be gentle, but I hurt you, I know."

He had hurt her, and not a little, but she cared nothing for that. She lifted his face and kissed his closed eyes and pressed him into her breast again to sleep. Leah had sipped the heady drink of deliberately giving the blinding pleasure of physical love to her husband; she could forgive him anything for the knowledge of that power.

Content with a contentment that comes only with relief from fear, Radnor thanked God for his manifold mercies and drifted from a heavenly languor into the depths of sleep.

Leah, awake in her pain, watched her husband's even breathing. She was not concerned with her physical discomfort because her shrewd mind and quick observation told her that it would grow less with time; after all, the hints of the maidservants and the jests of the other women at the wedding indicated that love was a thing of great pleasure. What caused her brow to wrinkle into a frown and kept her eyes wakefully staring at the bed curtains was the problem of whether her husband had given himself in the same way to the other women—to Lady Shrewsbury.

It was true that it was no business of hers what Cain had done before they were married, but how was she to keep him from going back to the old stewpots? If he did, and her mother said he would, how could she bear it? What could she do to win him back? Round and round went her mind spinning like a wheel around the central hub of fact that could make her life a heaven or a hell—her husband's affection. Radnor sighed and stirred and she clasped him closer. Somehow she would hold him, she thought, as her eyes closed. With meekness and willingness and obedience all things were possible.

Chapter 7

Morning brought the sound of the ladies and gentlemen coming to wake the bride and groom. The guests were still heavy-eyed from their carousal, but they had recovered their good spirits and they greeted the fact that Leah was still abed while her husband was up and dressed with shrieks of glee.

"That does it," Hereford exclaimed. "He never went to bed at all. The whole thing has been a great hoax. I think he cannot mate with a woman and has lied to us all these years about being a man."

"No, no," Philip of Gloucester replied in his breathless voice. "Pembroke, at least, would never perpetrate such an expensive joke. Lord Radnor is only showing us who will be master of his household." The words were obviously meant to be a joke, but there was an undernote of warning. "Look you, he is up first. Will he summon her maids? Bring her her washing water? Run her errands?"

Radnor turned, smiling, from the arrow slit out of which he had been watching the preparations for the tourney. "A good morning to you all. It was the rattle of arms that woke me. It looks a fair green field. I am almost sorry I will not be upon it."

Hereford came up and landed a blow with his fist in Radnor's mid-section that would have done credit to a horse. "For shame! What an admission! What sort of a man finds more attraction in the rattle of harness than in his bed on his wedding morning?"

Radnor grunted at the blow and laughed. "An old soldier is the answer to your riddle. More especially one who has been drawing his weapons to that sound day and night for almost all the years of your life—boy." His eyes, however, moved uneasily to the bed where the ladies were performing their part of the customary ceremony.

The covers had been drawn back so that Leah lay exposed on the bloody sheets. Radnor could feel the terrible sense of possession well up in him. Radnor could see the eyes of the other men on what he now considered peculiarly his own; it was intolerable. He knew he was going to make a fool of himself, but could do nothing to prevent it He flung himself across the room, jerked Leah out of bed, and draped his own gown around her. The women stared in surprise; the men doubled up with mirth, Hereford sinking to the floor where he remained laughing weakly.