SirenSong (34 page)

Seeing the flickering of her eyelids, Mauger came closer. “I
will call your woman now. If you do not tell her exactly what I told you to
say, you will both die. If you convince her and do not again anger me, perhaps
you will live.”

Elizabeth knew that to be a lie, but she had to pretend to
believe it. She could not guess why Mauger wanted to keep her alive for a time,
but obviously he did. Nonetheless, she realized he would kill her at once if he
had to and certainly he would kill Maud without the smallest hesitation. Time.
If she had a little time… Mauger brought Maud to the bedside. The maid tried to
come closer, her hand extended to brush Elizabeth’s hair from her face. Mauger
held her back, his eyes on Elizabeth, coldly threatening.

“Do not touch me,” Elizabeth whispered. “You will take my
illness.”

“I am not afraid,” Maud cried. “I am strong. I will care for
you, my lady.”

“No,” Elizabeth replied. “No. I cannot spare you, Maud. You
must see to the women. There is no one else. You must see that the keep does
not fall into disorder.”

“But who will tend to you?” Maud wailed. “I have always attended
you, my lady.”

“Emma can do what I need,” Elizabeth said breathlessly,
seeing Mauger’s hand poised to clamp over the maid’s mouth. “Truly it is
nothing but to carry the pot and wash me, which is more fitting for her than
for you. And she is the most useless creature. She can best be spared of all
the women.”

The slow smile that came to Maud’s face relieved Elizabeth.
She had said the first thing that came into her mind and struck lucky. Maud now
believed that Elizabeth was using her illness to take revenge on her husband’s
mistress, to demean her by making her do the things that only the coarsest,
untrained women would do. Maud herself never emptied a chamber pot nor carried
washing water.

“Go now and let your mistress rest,” Mauger growled at the
woman.

Maud went away willingly enough. Elizabeth did not look very
sick to her. She was also pleased by the fact that Emma was pale as a ghost and
most subdued in manner when she was sent to Elizabeth’s chamber. All the petty,
flaunting arrogance was gone. The girl crept in like a mouse, tearful and
trembling. In fact, when Mauger dropped the bar to lock the door behind her she
nearly fainted. Mauger’s sharp slap, not hard enough this time to knock her
down but quite hard enough to hurt, and his snarl warning her not to indulge
herself or he would give her a real reason to faint forced her to hold onto
consciousness.

“My wife has greatly offended me,” Mauger said. “She is
unfaithful, and I have decided to punish her. You will be her warden. You will
remain in this room with her and you will not allow any of the castlefolk in—no
one except myself. Do you understand me? The door is to be barred at all times
when I am not in the room. I do not want that nosy bitch, Maud, or anyone else
sneaking in and bringing my whore of a wife comfort.”

Unable to speak, Emma stared. She was shivering with terror.
Mauger did not doubt she would mean to do as she was told, but still he did not
trust her.

“Go and look through the chests,” he ordered. “Bring me some
sashes or some thin scarves. You are such a stupid slut that I dare not leave
anything to chance.”

When Emma supplied what he asked for, Mauger bound
Elizabeth’s hands and feet and gagged her. Then he looked from one woman to the
other and an idea came to him that tickled his fancy. He lifted Elizabeth from
the bed and dumped her on the floor.

“Take off your clothes,” he said to Emma.

The girl gaped at him, her eyes flying to Elizabeth. He
struck her once more, lightly, just enough to sting her cheek and remind her
who was her master. Tears overflowed her eyes, but she began to obey. Never had
anything like this happened before. Emma had been assiduously shielded from
priests who would tell her the profession for which she was destined was “bad”.
Thus she knew only vaguely that what she did, coupling with men to whom she was
not married, was a sin. Actually she had never felt sinful or ashamed. Now for
the first time she was sickened, horrified by the idea of the sexual act.

“Now undress me,” Mauger ordered.

Weeping and trembling, Emma obeyed. Although he usually
liked complaisant women, Mauger was enjoying Emma’s distress. Her plainly
unwilling obedience soothed the frustration that had eaten him for months.
While she drew off his clothing, he pinched her nipples and stroked her,
murmuring the crudest obscenities. When she knelt to take off his shoes and
cross garters, he bent over and nibbled her neck and ears.

He found the situation so exciting—his naked wife bound and
gagged a few feet away, his naked mistress kneeling at his feet—that he was
suddenly unwilling to wait any longer. “Take me in your mouth,” he panted,
pulling Emma up by the hair. “Suck me.”

The climax he achieved nearly brought Mauger down on top of
Emma. He was thoroughly delighted, recognizing that the intense pleasure was
partly owing to Elizabeth’s helpless presence. Emma was nothing, any woman
could play her part. It was Elizabeth’s degradation that had pushed him above
his normal sexual response. He turned to her and laughed when he saw her eyes
were shut tight.

“Skinny, ugly bitch. You cannot close your ears.” As he said
it, another idea came to him, but he was too played out at this moment to enjoy
it properly. He looked back at Emma, doubled over, trying to control her
heaving body. “Get up and get my clothes back on and be quick about it,” he
ordered.

After he was dressed, he noticed that Elizabeth was
shivering violently from the cold. He turned to go, then realized he did not
want Elizabeth to be sick. He wanted her to be an unwilling witness to his sexual
pleasure. If she was fevered she would not notice. He scooped her up and dumped
her back into the bed. Last, he ordered Emma to bar the door behind him and not
to dare to speak to Elizabeth or touch her. Then, sated and somewhat relieved
of the gnawing sense of powerlessness that had afflicted him recently, Mauger
went down to demand a supper of roast pasty as well as bread and cheese, and to
listen to Egbert’s report on the final arrangements for Raymond’s
assassination.

It was unfortunate that Mauger had not arrived at Marlowe
fifteen minutes later. Very soon after he went down the stairs, the tableau
that had so infuriated him broke up. Raymond came to the end of his list of
cargoes and Alys stopped giggling at the way he pronounced the names of the
goods, rolled the sheet of parchment, and rose to her feet. In moving, her
glance fell on her father. The laughter went out of her eyes. She was no longer
amused by the dumb misery that masked itself as thoughtfulness.

“You should go back to bed, Papa,” she said softly.

William did not move. Alys touched his arm. He started,
looked up at her, and smiled. “Sorry, I was thinking. Did you say something to
me, my love?”

“I said you have been up and about long enough and you
should go back to bed.”

Back to bed where the scent Elizabeth used lingered very
faintly in the sheets and covers. How long would it be before that odor was
fresh in his nostrils again? How long before he could bury his face in her wild
hair and feel the warmth of her body through it on his lips? He had lowered his
eyes slightly so that Alys could not see them. For a second they were blind,
but the roll of parchment she held soon took on meaning. He turned his head
toward Raymond.

“I will go in a minute. What was your count today, Raymond?”

It was Alys who answered because she was quicker at summing
a total, and they were soon plunged deep in a discussion of the cheating
merchants of Marlowe.

“Now do not lose your temper, Papa,” Alys warned when it
became apparent that the merchants must have cheated on tolls as well as on
fees. She was not entirely serious, however. She preferred her father to be
angry rather than sad.

He cast her an irritated glance, saw she was teasing him,
and laughed. “You have been down there three mornings, right?” he asked
Raymond.

“Yes, sir. And I think—”

“I will lay you a gold mark against a copper mil,” William
interrupted, “that the traffic is already less than it first was. There has
been time enough now to send messages up river and down that an agent for me
watches the docks every morning. We will try a small deviation from our
pattern. Tomorrow you will go down after dinner instead of in the morning, and
the day after also. Then you will miss a few days. We still need to get the
recruiting done and I do not like to send Diccon alone. He picks more by size
and shape than by willingness. Then you can pay visits on odd days or I will. I
should be well enough to ride next week.”

Alys shook her head at him. “You should be, but you will not
if you sit here and tell Raymond what he knows perfectly well already instead
of going to rest.”

“Very well, I am going,” William said, and laughed at the
alacrity with which Raymond hurried forward to help him from his chair and give
him the support of his arm into his bedchamber.

Hardly had Raymond disappeared with him than Diccon came up
to report on the condition of the men who had returned with Mauger. Alys
slumped and sighed with relief, realizing she had got her father out of the way
just in time. Had he heard this news, he would have become frantic to have word
of what had happened in Hurley now that Mauger was home. He had been most
unwilling to let Elizabeth go. They had quarreled bitterly over her insistence
on leaving, Alys knew.

Alys was afraid her father would insist on going to Hurley
to make sure Elizabeth was safe. She could not see why there should be any
danger to Elizabeth, and she did not know of Mauger’s peculiar behavior.
Diccon, assuming that Mauger had spoken to William, did not mention him at all
to Alys. If she mentioned to her father that Mauger was back, he would not
sleep all night.

I will not tell Papa
, Alys thought, settling more
firmly into her chair.
If he is angry, I will say the truth, that it was too
late to visit and ask for news of the campaign,
which would be the only
excuse possible for a visit from her father and also that it would not look
decent.
It must be assumed even if we know better that a man returning from
a two month absence would wish to be alone with his wife
. Yes, Alys
thought, that would do quite well to excuse her for today, but how could she
prevent her father from going tomorrow?

The answer came swiftly, by going herself. And again she
could speak the absolute truth. She could confess she had concealed the
knowledge of Mauger’s arrival to prevent her father from going to Hurley. Not
even an idiot, and Mauger was no idiot, could believe a man with half-healed
wounds would rush out of his sickbed to hear news that his second
master-at-arms could give him in his own keep. However, Alys could go without
raising doubts in anyone. It would be most natural for her to want to consult
Elizabeth about her father’s recovery, and while she was doing so she could
find out whether it would be wise to ask Mauger to come to Marlowe to give her
father the news. She might even ask him to bring Elizabeth so that she could
assure Alys all was going well with William’s healing.

The next morning, William finally wrote a letter to Richard.
It was little more than a note in which he stated what had happened to him and
that he was well on the way to recovery, told Richard when his surveillance of
the clerk had ended, and asked for news of the Scottish negotiations. William
could only hope Richard would not think he had been hurt worse than he said,
but he dared not write more than the simple facts for fear that his sense of
need would permeate the letter. The small effort tired him so much that he ate
his meal alone and went back to bed. Alys could hardly believe her luck. She
had been dreading the morning, not knowing whether she would be able to conceal
her guilty knowledge from her father or whether a servant would inadvertently
mention the arrival of the men from Wales. In fact, everything conspired to
suit her purpose. Because she was so pleased with her father’s behavior, Alys
began to fear that she was blinding herself to some evil symptom he was
displaying. She fussed around him, touching him to see if he was fevered,
asking how he felt, why he was so tired, finally demanding to change his
bandages to make sure healing was advancing properly. At that point, William
was driven to bellow at her to get out and leave him alone so he could sleep.

The volume and ferocity of the order did much to convince
Alys that there was nothing much wrong with her father. With the conviction
came the realization that she could have done nothing more efficacious. She
could now avoid William without his having the faintest suspicion that she
wished to avoid him. Moreover, she could even go to Hurley without telling him
before she left that Mauger had returned. If she left a message that she had
gone to see Elizabeth, her papa would certainly assume that she had gone
because she was worried about him!

She and Raymond had a very early and light dinner. Raymond
could eat again at any time in the town and Alys intended to have an extra meal
with her father when she returned, at which time she could confess and tell
him, she hoped, that Mauger would bring Elizabeth to visit him soon. Both she
and Raymond were preoccupied with their own coming activities and Raymond found
this singularly pleasant. At home, no matter how busy his mind was, he was
required to make conversation suitable to ladies at dinner. Alys was surely the
most delightful woman alive, for she was as comfortable to live with as she was
beautiful to look at.

He rode off into the town in a rosy haze. Probably Sir
William would be furious when he heard Raymond’s full story, but Raymond did
not fear he would refuse permission for Alys to marry him. The past two days,
although nothing had been said, implied the matter was settled. Raymond’s
conscience was much easier. When Sir William was ready—presumably when he had a
chance to inform Earl Richard of his intentions—he would broach the subject.
Raymond hoped the letter that had gone out to Richard of Cornwall this morning
carried the news.