For Love And Honor (13 page)

“
Then I
will
be a landless knight, like Piers,”
Alain said, trying to accept a truth he had
refused to acknowledge until that moment.

“However,” Ambrose went on, “in Sicily a
knight with intelligence and skill in battle can earn lands and a
high title.”

“Which will do me no good in England,” Alain
responded.

“
In one
thing only do I agree with Radulf,” Ambrose told him. “King Henry
will not live much longer, and when he dies I believe there will be
great confusion in this land, for like Radulf, I do not
beli
eve many nobles will follow a woman
ruler. In that very confusion lies your best hope.
Writs of outlawry are sometimes forgotten or rescinded during times
of civil strife. Go to Sicily with me, Alain, and there gain lands
and wealth and power. Then you can choose your best time to return
and claim what is rightfully yours.”

“You are talking about years,” Alain
objected. “What about Joanna?”

“
There is
nothing you can do for Joanna.” It was Piers who answered the
question; Piers, who had been listening to Ambrose with
ill-concealed and growing excitement. “Radulf will keep Joanna
under such close guard that no one will be able to reach her. He
must keep her confined, for she is his best means of consolidating
his control of Crispin’s lands. If Joanna bears Crispin’s
heir
—”

“
I know
all of that.” Alain was on his feet once more. “Don’t go over it
again. I can’t bear to think of what has be done to Joanna. I am
sick once more
– sick of
your reasonableness. Neither of you knows what it is to love until
your heart breaks and your mouth goes dry and you would dare
anything for her sake – anything!”

“Do you really think I do not know?” asked
Ambrose, still sitting on the bare ground with his robe hiked up to
his knees and a crust of bread in one hand. “Why do you think I
laid aside my chainmail and put on this coarse priest’s robe
instead, if not for the sake of One I love more than life itself?
For Him whom I love, I, too, would do anything, even die a martyr’s
death if I must.”

“
It’s not
the same
as loving a woman,” Alain
declared.

“Perhaps not.” Ambrose maintained his calm in
the face of Alain’s impatient anger. “I have loved a woman or two
in my time, while I was yet a knight. I understand what you are
feeling now, and how hard it is to be rational when your thoughts
are in turmoil and all of your body aches for her touch, her
presence. I ask you to consider that you cannot help Joanna; but in
trying to do so you may waste your life while bringing even greater
harm to her. If you wait, and think, and plan carefully, then in
some later day you may succeed where today you would surely
fail.”

“Wait? I cannot!” Alain flung away from his
companions, heading into the forest. Behind him, Piers made as if
to follow, until Ambrose caught at his arm.

“Let him go,” Ambrose said. “Give him time to
think it through. Alain is no fool. He will reach the right
decision.”

Alain crashed through the underbrush, pausing
only to swing one fist at the thickest tree he could find. He did
the tree no harm, but he sorely bruised his knuckles, and the pain
of torn skin and aching bones brought him to his senses.

He knew
Ambrose was right. If he could have rescued Joanna and taken her
along to Sicily with him, he would have done so and never looked
back at
England. But he could not save her, not without
forfeiting his own life, and he could see
now that in doing so he would not help his love.
If ever he might hope to save Joanna from her father, he would have
to leave England as soon as he could. He had sworn over Crispin’s
body to return to Joanna, and return he would, but not
yet.

He
pounded at the tree again, almost enjoying the pain in his hand,
which helped him to forget the ache in his heart.
That
was a pain that
would not leave him until he held Joanna in his arms once
more.

Nor would
he show his pain. It was unmanly to be so open, and he was a boy no
longer. He would hide what he felt. He would do as Ambrose
suggested: make himself wealthy in Sicily, and so powerful that
Radulf would be b
ut an ant beneath his boot. Then he would
return, to destroy
Radulf and
claim his love.

“I will be back,” he whispered, his forehead
now against the tree bark, his bloodied fist at his mouth. “Wait
for me, Joanna. I will come back to you.”

One hot mid-August night while he was
undressing for bed, Radulf’s dearest wish was given new
promise.

“My lord,” Rohaise said, “Joanna and I are
certain that she is with child. Since you have not visited her for
several weeks, she asked me to tell you.” When Radulf turned to
stare at her, forgetting that he still held his sweat-soaked tunic
in one hand, Rohaise went on. “Twice now Joanna’s monthly bleeding
has not appeared, and lately she is sick each morning. There are
other indications, but those are the sure signs.”

For a few moments Radulf knew true happiness,
until he began to consider adverse possibilities.

“There is no promise that it will be a boy,”
he said, “or that Joanna won’t miscarry, or that the child will
live once it’s born.”

“Oh, my dear lord, can’t you just be
hopeful?” Rohaise asked. “Joanna’s spirits are vastly improved. She
is so grateful to be given this opportunity to provide one last
service for poor Crispin. She will welcome his child whether it is
a son or a daughter.”

“Joanna can indulge in womanish fancies. She
does not need an heir.” Radulf looked at his pretty, brown-haired
wife, who had just climbed into their bed. Her pink and white
shoulders showed above the green coverlet; her throat was long and
slender. Radulf frequently wanted to put his hands around that
elegant throat and press the life out of her in punishment for her
barrenness, but he had sense enough to know he needed Rohaise to
manage his household for him and to see to it that Joanna was
properly cared for, at least until his grandchild was born.

And there
was still the chance that Rohaise might give him a child. If he had
a son as well as a grandson, how fine it would be. Then he might
begin to feel safe from the ever-encroaching Marc
her lords.
Thinking about the possibility of
his own child always increased his interest in Rohaise.
Reaching out, he grabbed the coverlet and pulled it back, revealing
all of his naked wife, from her small, high breasts to her slender
waist and long legs. He pulled those legs apart and knelt between
them, a tall, big-boned man, fair of hair and blue of eye like his
daughter. He had been handsome in his youth, but in middle age his
face was florid and his body heavy from too much food and drink. It
was the drink, along with his constant worry about not having an
heir that too often made it impossible for him to take Rohaise as
he wanted to take her. He did not love her, but it had always been
pleasant to hear her moan and sigh beneath him before he enjoyed
his own release. She had never refused him and she seemed to like
what he did to her.

At the moment he could not do what he wanted,
for his body was not responding to his desire; his manhood hung
limp and shriveled. He took Rohaise’s hand and placed it on
himself.

“Make me hard,” he ordered.

She had an amazingly supple body. With her
legs still spread wide and Radulf kneeling between them, she sat up
to kiss him, letting her tongue flick in and out of his mouth.

“You needn’t do that,” he muttered, pulling
away. “Just concentrate on what’s important.”

“You liked this the last time, my lord.” She
tickled his nipples with one hand, while with the other hand she
stroked him below. He remembered well the last time, when she had
lain beside him and caressed him for what seemed like hours, even
putting her mouth on him and sucking until he was hard enough to
push her onto her back and take her as a man should take a woman,
and she had cried out and held on to him, begging him not to
stop.

Thinking about Rohaise’s lips and tongue on
him on that other night, while in the present her skillful fingers
fondled and stroked and strayed into places where they should not
be, Radulf finally felt his body harden.

Rohaise moved, straddling his thighs and then
settling herself around his hips so that he penetrated her swiftly
and deeply. With a stab of pleasure, Radulf pushed against her,
before he realized that no man worth the name would allow his woman
so much freedom in bed. There was only one way for a real man to
take a woman; with her flat on her back and the man pounding into
her from above. The sole question in Radulf’s mind was whether he
could lay Rohaise down without disengaging from her, because if
they separated he might go limp again. But when Rohaise began to
swivel her hips against him with increased enthusiasm, he decided
it was worth the risk. Clasping her buttocks tightly, he pitched
forward, forcing Rohaise onto her back where she belonged and
driving himself deeper into her.

The
damned woman kept moving and wriggling, but it no longer mattered
what she did, because now Radulf was where he was supposed to
be
– on top of her – and
he felt like a much younger man, hard and vigorous, thrusting into
her again and again, powerful, potent, th
e way a
man should be, until with a loud cry of
relief his body gave up its seed. He went limp again at once, but
that was of little concern to him; Radulf had just proven his
manhood to himself. Rolling off Rohaise, he waited, expecting her
voice.

“Thank you, my lord,” she said, as he had
taught her to do.

“You are a good wife.” Radulf patted her
shoulder, feeling expansive after his sexual success. A compliment
now and then would help to keep Rohaise docile. If only she would
bear a son!

When Radulf lay snoring on his side of the
bed Rohaise curled up facing in the opposite direction so she could
watch the broken shafts of moonlight filtering through the closed
shutters. Once again, largely by her own insistent efforts, she had
found physical release with Radulf. It had been a hollow pleasure.
It always was. She had learned within a few weeks of her marriage
to him that she was a much more sensual creature than her husband.
She needed the kisses and caresses, the stroking and tenderness
that Radulf would never give her. Sometimes, when he required her
help to become hard, he would touch her, but it was never enough to
satisfy her need for emotional warmth and tenderness.

Feeling utterly alone in the bed she shared
with Radulf, Rohaise longed for a man who would kiss her and put
his hands on her with gentle skill while he led both of them to a
closeness that would last beyond his immediate physical desire. She
had only a vaguely imagined picture of this man in her mind. He
would be honest and kind, and always polite to her. She would not
allow herself to put a name to the man, for to do so would be to
admit to adulterous thoughts. But all the same she fell asleep
dreaming of someone who would treat her with the affection she
craved, and knowing in her heart that if ever he came to her she
would do anything at all for him. Anything.

*
* * * *

In her
own room, one level below the lord’s chamber, Joanna
was
also wakeful. The memo
ries she
forced out of her thoughts during the day loosed themselves upon
her at night. Stricken by a hopeless passion for one man,
unwillingly married to another man, widowed within days, imprisoned
by her father, and now pregnant, she saw all that had happened to
her as the result of her meek obedience to Radulf’s
wishes.

Her
obedience had harmed others as well as herself, causing Crispin’s
death -she was more and more certain of that
– sending Alain out into the world as a
fugitive, and catching innocent Piers in the same snare as Alain,
for Radulf claimed that Piers was Alain’s accomplice.

She wondered whether Radulf would tell her if
Alain was dead. She decided he probably would, as a way of letting
her know that he, Radulf, had triumphed. Thus, so long as she did
not hear otherwise, she could assume Alain yet lived. She prayed
each day for his safety, and for Piers, too.

At night,
alone, lying in her bed or sitting wakeful in the window-seat, she
nursed her sense of injustice over what had been done to her and
encouraged the flame of rebellion that had begun to grow in her
bosom. She would be careful, for she had a duty to protect
Crispin’s child, but somehow she would find a way to make things
right
– for herself, for
her child, for Piers, and, most of all, for Alain. He had promised
to return to her. She would see him again … she would.

She was certain of it. She would wait for
him.

*
* * * *

Conceived in early summer, Joanna’s child was
born on the first day of spring in the Year of Our Lord ll35.

In
advance of the great event Radulf brought a midwife from Chester to
Banningford to see to the safe birt
h of his grandchild, but
Joanna took
one look at the
dirty crone and begged Rohaise to be the one to receive the child
from her body instead.

“I don’t trust her,” Joanna whispered,
“because she is my father’s hireling. Rohaise, you have helped
several of the wives of Father’s knights, so you are not without
experience. Please, I want only you in the room.”