Love Beyond Time (28 page)

“Michel,” Savarec said, “you will be happy to
know that all the preparations are made. You and Danise will be
married tomorrow. That is, unless you have changed your mind?” This
dry question was followed by a wink and another chuckle.

Michel released Danise long enough to put out
one hand to Savarec, but he kept his other arm firmly around his
love’s waist.

“It’s good to see you again, sir,” he said,
“and, no, I have not changed my mind. Nor would I. Not in a
thousand years.”

“Come along,” Savarec invited. “Don’t stand
here in the rain. There is a fire in the great hall, and food and
drink awaiting us.”

With the horses quickly unloaded, they
remounted and all rode the short distance to the fortress.

A firepit ran down the center of the great
hall and Savarec had ordered fires lit there to stave off the damp
chill. Tables were being set for the garrison’s evening meal and
several dozen men stood about the hall talking while they awaited
the call to table. The men who had come with Michel and Guntram
greeted their friends and, after a final word of thanks from Michel
for all their help, they disappeared upon their own business,
leaving only Michel, Savarec, and Guntram in the group about
Danise.

“It is not right for you to be the only woman
in this hall with so many men here,” Savarec said to Danise. “Leave
us now.”

“I want to stay with Michel,” she protested,
taking his arm.

“I allowed you to greet him. Now, go to
Sister Gertrude,” Savarec ordered. “We will join you shortly.”

“Father, you no longer need to be so
protective of me,” Danise said, shaking her head and smiling at
him. “I am as good as married and every man here knows it.” But she
did leave, sending an inviting look in Michel’s direction as she
went out of the hall.

“Now,” said Savarec to Michel, “I want to
hear about Elhein. What kind of place is it? Did you have trouble
with Clodion’s people there?”

“No real trouble, but I couldn’t have managed
without Guntram,” Michel said. He went on to give Savarec a
carefully edited version of what he had found at Elhein, what he
hoped to do there, and how the work was progressing. Guntram added
his bit, but neither of them revealed to Savarec the true state of
disrepair or uninterested servants they had found there.

“It will take a lot of hard work,” Guntram
summed up the situation, “but once Michel’s changes are put into
effect, Elhein will be a productive estate, with a very nice house
for Danise and Michel.”

“I am relieved to hear it,” Savarec said. “I
wasn’t sure what sort of place it would prove to be, or if Clodion
had some of his concubines living there. I did not want Danise sent
to a house that would forever remind her of Clodion and what he did
to her.”

“By the time Danise sees Elhein, there will
be no trace of Clodion left,” Michel promised. But his conscience
pricked him. He knew Savarec wanted something better for Danise
than Michel would be able to provide for her at Elhein. Michel
wanted something better for Danise, too.

The small but clean guestroom to which he was
soon conducted, the pitcher of hot water, wooden bowl of soap, and
clean linen towel provided by a polite maidservant, all were
lacking at Elhein. How could he take Danise there and subject her
to such a rough existance? Yet he did not want to postpone their
wedding for fear of losing her. In this miserable state of
indecision he washed, put on a clean tunic, and went to join
Savarec, Danise, and Sister Gertrude for a light evening meal in
Savarec’s private chambers.

Danise noticed Michel’s distraction at once.
She did not think he was angry with her, nor did she believe her
father had said anything to upset him. She sat through the
strangely quiet meal, during which each of the four people at table
was preoccupied with personal thoughts. Danise decided she would
have to get Michel alone if she was to convince him to tell her
what was weighing so heavily on his mind.

“The rain has stopped,” she said, a little
too brightly, into the silence at meal’s end. “Michel, you have not
seen the garden. Let me show it to you. If it’s a fair day
tomorrow, the ceremony will be held there. I teased Father until he
agreed to let me have my way on that.”

“It is too damp for you to walk there.”
Sister Gertrude’s expected protest was halfhearted, as if she spoke
only out of habit, knowing perfectly well that her years of control
over Danise’s actions had already ended.

“Let them go,” said Savarec. “There is no
harm in allowing them time alone now. By this hour tomorrow, they
will be wed, and Danise no longer our concern.”

“I know you well enough to believe I will
always be your concern,” Danise responded, putting her arms around
his neck and resting her cheek against his. “Father, I will not
stop loving you because I am married to Michel. We will see each
other as often as before, since most of the last few years I have
spent away from you at Chelles.”

“That’s true enough.” Savarec kissed her. As
she left the room with Michel, Danise momentarily rested a hand on
Sister Gertrude’s shoulder. Sighing, the nun lifted her own hand to
pat Danise’s.

“You must not think they don’t like you,”
Danise said to Michel, leading him down the stairs and toward a
narrow door in the stone wall. “It’s just that they both love me
and it’s hard for them to let me go.”

“I can understand their feelings,” Michel
replied. “I wouldn’t want to let you go, either.”

Danise went through the door first, then
paused, trying to see the garden through Michel’s eyes. It was an
oblong, walled space, and not as well kept as in the days when
Danise’s mother had been alive to tend it. Yet, protected from the
wind as the garden was, with high walls on all four sides, the
herbs and flowers planted there grew well without much attention. A
second door in one long wall opened directly into the kitchen, and
near to this door the herbs were planted so they would be readily
available to the cook. Elsewhere in the garden, since it was early
July, late roses still bloomed on the bushes planted by Danise’s
mother. The white lilies had grown profusely, doubling and
redoubling over the years, and their sweet fragrance permeated the
moist, still air.

Danise and Michel walked along the gravel
path from one end of the garden to the other while Danise explained
where Michel was to stand on the following morning, where Savarec’s
secretary and his chaplain would be, how she and Savarec would
enter through the door Danise and Michel had just used. She could
tell Michel wasn’t really seeing the garden or listening to her
description of the plans for their wedding day. Her eager words
failed and she stopped speaking, watching him for some sign as to
what was wrong. When he did not break the silence that lay between
them, she felt forced to speak.

“I have talked too much,” she said. “It’s
your turn now. I want to hear what you have been doing during these
past weeks.”

For a while he regarded her with a bleak
expression, until she began to wonder if he would ever speak to her
again. He did, after taking a deep breath. She thought he was
steeling himself to give her bad news and she stiffened her
backbone and set her face to hear it without weeping or otherwise
behaving in a cowardly fashion.

“Danise, I have to be fair to you,” he said.
“When I tell you about Elhein, you may decide that you want to back
out of this marriage.”

“Why would I?” she cried. Fearing for an
instant that Sister Gertrude’s dire predictions about men leaving
women they professed to love might be at least partly true, she
asked, “Have you decided that you don’t want to marry me after
all?” Even as she spoke she knew it could not be so. She and Michel
were meant to be together. There must be some other reason for his
talk about their not marrying. He confirmed her belief.

“There is nothing I want more than to marry
you,” he protested. Again he hesitated before bursting into speech.
“It’s Elhein. The place is a disaster. The house isn’t fit for you
to live in, I don’t know if the few crops they’ve planted there
will feed everyone through next winter, there isn’t enough
livestock. I hate the thought of taking you there. The worst thing
about it all is that though I can issue orders, and I think after
the last couple of weeks the people there will obey me, still, I
don’t really know what I’m doing. I haven’t had the right training
for this job. I know what the end result of my efforts should be,
but I’m not sure how to attain them. I am an archaeologist, not a
farmer, or a hunter-gamekeeper, or an architect and builder. I
should be all of those things. Thank heaven Charles sent Guntram
with me, or I would have made a complete mess of things.”

“And this is why you think I should not marry
you?” she asked.

“It’s why I think you will regret it if you
do,” he replied.

“Oh, Michel.” She started to laugh, until she
saw the regret and the pain in his face. Then she sobered to speak
earnestly. “If we had married at once instead of waiting, this
would not have happened. You are so clever at disguising your
foreign origin that I sometimes forget you were not born a Frank.
Let me tell you that in most noble Frankish marriages, it is the
woman who manages the land, because the husband is so often away
from home.” She laid one hand on his chest and her voice took on a
lighter note. “Who do you think has charge of the royal treasury?
Or control of the crops from Charles’s own lands?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose he has a
treasurer, and a steward.”

“No,” she said. “Hildegarde. Who can a man
trust more completely than his wife?”

“She does all that work? No wonder she’s
always sick. After the last couple of weeks at Elhein, I can
appreciate how much work she must do every day, that I never
noticed.”

“Hildegarde doesn’t count every single coin
or golden dish in the treasury, or each sheaf of wheat or cow or
goat on Charles’s land and her own,” Danise said. “There are
stewards and secretaries to help her, as you guessed. But the final
responsibility is hers, and if it were necessary, Hildegarde could
walk into the most dilapidated estate and begin restoring it to
good condition within an hour. So could any other well-trained
Frankish noblewoman.”

“Are you telling me that you know how to do
those things that I have been having so much difficulty with?” he
asked.

“I have known how to do those things since I
was ten years old,” she replied. “I haven’t had much opportunity
here, where fortification is the primary reason for the existence
of Deutz, nor very much chance to show what I can do at Chelles,
either. But I believe that you and I together can turn Elhein into
a fine and happy place.”

“And I thought late twentieth century
marriages were supposed to be liberated and equal.” He put his arms
around her. “Danise, what you are talking about is a real
partnership. But tell me, while you do all that work what am I
supposed to be doing?”

“You, my dearest Michel, are meant to be the
great warrior, the one who meets in council with Charles and the
other nobles to decide if we are to go to war in a particular year,
or to keep the peace. He may send you on a mission to some distant
land, such as Lombardy across the Alps, or Northumbria beyond the
Narrow Sea, where Alcuin was born. Or Charles might assign you to
travel about Francia to make certain that his laws are carried out
and the people treated justly. Those are the duties of a Frankish
noble.”

“I don’t think I’m going to like that last
part of the deal,” he said. “Not if it means leaving you
behind.”

“I will be with you as often as I can,” she
promised.

“I want you with me all the time,” he
whispered, his face in her hair.

“Perhaps you were not treated fairly when we
were betrothed,” she murmured. “No one troubled to tell you what
would be expected of you.”

“Why should they?” he asked. “No one but you
and I knew that I had no idea what I was getting into. It’s my own
fault, Danise. In my previous life I spent too much time digging up
ruins and not enough studying social customs.”

“Now that you do know what is expected of
you, do you still want to marry me?”

“I will never marry anyone else,” he
promised.

“Nor will I.” At that moment it occurred to
Danise that there must be Frankish men who found their lives as
warriors frightening or perhaps, at least occasionally, not to
their liking. She could not imagine such a man revealing his
innermost concerns in the way Michel had done. Redmond certainly
never would, nor Guntram, nor her own father. That Michel trusted
her enough to speak so openly endeared him to her all the more. She
promised herself she would see to it that they would always talk to
each other in this way. There would be no secrets between them.

No secrets at all
. She would tell him
at once about her vision of Hugo and what she believed it
meant.

“Michel,” she began.

“What are you two thinking of?” Sister
Gertrude hurried through the doorway and along the garden path to
confront Danise and Michel. “It is raining again, and you stand
here embracing while you are being soaked, and what’s more, where
you can be seen by anyone glancing out a window. Do you want to
spend your wedding day coughing and sneezing?”

“You are right, Sister Gertrude.” Michel
released Danise from his arms and took her hand instead. “After
tomorrow, it will be my happy duty to protect Danise. I hope I can
do the iob as well as vou have done. I’ll start by taking her out
of the rain at once.”

“I am glad to know one of you still has some
sense left,” snapped Sister Gertrude. As she shooed the lovers
indoors like a hen with her chicks, Michel sent Danise a twinkling
glance and her heart constricted with love and happiness.