The Shattered Rose (25 page)

"Is there?"

"Of course. Travel implies a place to travel from and return to. Wandering is a rootless life."

"And do you have roots?"

"Yes. Do you?"

Aline thought about it. Burstock wasn't really her home anymore now that her sister-in-law ruled there. She knew, too, that shy Catherine had been delighted to see Aline leave for the convent. They didn't dislike each other, but Aline couldn't help organizing things, and thus supplanting Catherine's authority.

As soon as Aline and Jehanne had turned up at the gates of Burstock the other day, Catherine had remembered an urgent errand to St. Radegund's, and left to avoid any conflict. Catherine hated conflict, but in her own quiet way was determined to rule her house.

So. Where was her home?

St. Radegund's, she supposed, but she had never felt that to be her home either. Or not yet.

"Where are your roots?" she asked Raoul.

"In my home. In the Guyenne and my father's house there."

"Yet you travel."

"I'm curious."

"And you have older brothers."

"Just one. I own property near Jouray and will settle there one day."

That was interesting. She'd thought him landless. "But you will not settle just yet?"

"I need a reason, perhaps."

Bark rough against her back, she met his eyes. "Is that supposed to tempt me?"

He plucked a spray of leaves and tickled her chin with them. "I would like to show you my home. I think you might find it good soil in which to put down roots."

She batted the leaves away. "But if I didn't, I'd have to anyway, wouldn't I? That is the fate of women, to be sent to live with strangers."

He dropped the leaves. "Am I a stranger?" Slowly, his hand slid around to the back of her neck, beneath her plaits.

She shivered. "I don't know you. . . ." But then she leaned back into the size and strength of that warm hand, which tilted her head up to his.

"I think you do." His lips were as warm as his hand, and perhaps as strong, for they seemed able to make hers part so their breath mingled. His other hand rested against her waist so that he seemed to encircle her.

Like a besieging army encircling a castle, breaking down its walls . . .

She twisted her head away. "This isn't right!"

To her surprise, and perhaps disappointment, he moved back, sliding his hand free. "True. I'm supposed to be helping you develop defenses, aren't I, not just charging in and taking the fortress."

"Taking!" Aline snapped. "If you think conquest will be so easy, sirrah, you are vastly mistaken!" Flaming with embarrassment, she pushed at his solid chest, and he moved back to let her pass. Even walking her fastest, however, she could not outpace him.

"Let us review this incident and see where your strategies could be improved," he said in exactly the tone of a teacher.

"I don't even want to speak to you!"

He ignored her. "To begin with, you should not have agreed to walk with me apart from the others. Your defenses are far too weak as yet for single combat."

Aline hissed with annoyance, but knew better than to stop and argue. Anyway, he was completely correct.

"Having walked with me, you should never have allowed me to trap you in that tree. Elementary strategy, my lady."

"I thought I could trust you!" she retorted, not slackening her pace.

"Yet another error. Never trust a declared opponent."

"I thought we were friends." Then she cursed the hint of tears she heard in her own voice.

He seized her arm and swung her to face him. "We are friends."

"How can we be, when I cannot trust myself alone with you?" Tears did escape, and she brushed them furiously away.

He frowned thoughtfully. "When I train with Galeran, would either of us be friends if we did not test each other, push each other to the limit? How else would we improve?"

"You could kill each other doing that."

"That is always a possibility."

She looked up at him, all too aware of his hands on her shoulders. "And with us?"

He gently brushed away a lingering tear. "Yes, Aline, we play a very dangerous game."

* * * * *

The next morning, Aline saw the truth of Raoul and Galeran, for the men decided to use the rest day for training. The small manor house that housed them had a training ground of sorts, but since they'd had a morning shower of rain, soon the place was a rutted sea of mud churned up by furiously gleeful men. Even Lord William was taking part.

Jehanne came over to watch, the baby in her arms. "It’s as well there's a river here. I fear there's not enough water in the well to clean them all."

They shared a look and chuckled.

Then the men spread into a circle and one of Galeran's knights took on one of Lord William's. The latter was an older man who was clearly less agile, but who proved to be both skilled and cunning. The swords were blunted, but even so, soon both men had bleeding wounds and doubtless numerous bruises.

Aline and Jehanne ceased being amused.

Lord William called an end to it before the contestants were flat on their faces with exhaustion, thumping them on the back. "Good men! You've not let your skills grow stale. Off and clean up." Then he turned to Galeran. "What about you? Must be months since you raised a sword with serious intent."

"Not quite," said Galeran with a strange expression, and Aline remembered him turning up at Burstock covered in gore.

"Still," said Lord William, "I'd like to see that you are up to combat."

Aline heard Jehanne suck in a breath and understood the reason for all this. Lord William had called for this one-on-one exercise for this reason alone—to assure himself his son was able to defeat an opponent in a court battle if necessary.

An opponent like Raymond of Lowick.

Surely it was impossible that Galeran defeat Raymond.

Galeran was already in mail. Now he pulled up his coif, pushed on his helmet, and drew his sword. "Raoul and I have kept each other in fighting trim, Father. But it's true we've not exercised in too long."

Raoul was already in the muddy circle, sword and shield ready. "I think you've been avoiding me, midget."

"I didn't want to shame a guest, you great hulk."

"Men!" said Jehanne under her breath, but when Aline glanced sideways, she saw that her cousin was pale.

"They won't hurt each other," she comforted, but she wasn't surprised that Jehanne was worried. Galeran could never prevail against such a huge opponent. Even if he escaped injury, he was going to be embarrassed.

Soon, however, her concern changed and she winced at each clang of metal, each grunt of effort from the men.

Galeran was strong for his size, and he was both more nimble and quicker to react than Raoul, who was himself both agile and quick. Some of the larger man's blows seemed sure to be lethal until they were blocked or avoided. Galeran, too, swung ferociously at his friend, stopped from doing serious injury only by a miraculous deflection.

There. That smashing overhead blow could have crushed Galeran's skull except for a sidestep and a raised shield. Galeran's counterstroke sent a chip of Raoul's shield spinning into the air.

Aline silently echoed Jehanne's comment. Men!

She included Lord William in that, for under her father's rule such dangerous play had never occurred at Burstock. On the other hand, none of her brothers had ever been in imminent danger of a court battle. With a shiver she remembered a case not long ago when accusations of treason had been settled with the sword. The loser had not died in the battle, but since the battle had proved his guilt, he'd lost his eyes and his balls afterward.

The watchers were silent now, all surely holding their breath as she was, praying that there be no disaster.

Then Donata cried.

Galeran's attention slipped sideways for a second. Raoul's sword took him on the helmet.

"God take your soul to hell!"
Raoul bellowed, sliding in the mud as he twisted to weaken his own stroke.

Galeran was knocked sideways to the ground. Raoul slid to his knees screaming at his fallen friend.
"How could you do that? Christ's crown . . . !"

But Galeran was already struggling up, feeling his head and wincing. "How could I not? Thank you for not beheading me."

"I was as close as ..."

Both men turned to stare at Jehanne, and it was then that Aline realized she'd gone. She turned to see her cousin running toward the manor house, a screaming baby in her arms. She picked up her skirts and chased after.

She caught up in the hall just as Jehanne thrust the screaming child into Winifred's arms and the wide-eyed woman hurried away with her.

"I almost
killed
him!" Jehanne cried. "Is there no end to the damage I can do?"

Chapter 13

Aline gripped her cousin's arms. "Raoul wouldn't have killed him. And it wasn't you. The child cried."

"I squeezed her. I was so terrified, I was squeezing her. She probably could sense my fear. . . ."

Aline moved away to splash wine into a goblet and press it into Jehanne's shaking hands. "Drink! You're taking this too seriously. If men play at war games, it isn't our fault if they get hurt."

"Is it not? All this is my fault, Aline.
All
of it. I realized, standing there, that one day it will be a real fight, and I will be the cause of someone's death!"

"It doesn't have to be that way. . . ."

"Doesn't it?"

In the distance, Donata was still shrieking, in the piercing manner of a frantic baby. "Oh, God," Jehanne said. "I'd better feed her."

She thrust the wine goblet back into Aline's hands and hurried away.

Aline drained the wine herself, then went out again, thinking that it was remarkable that the human race survived. No sensible woman would get involved with men and marriage when the orderly, rational world of the convent was available. There a woman had time to study, to create beauty, to think without distraction. . . .

The muddy area in front of the manor house was once more the domain of chickens, pigs, and peasants, though in the distance, beyond the palisade, she could hear the men. Had they taken their silly battles to the fields?

She climbed a ladder to the walk along the top of the wooden palisade and saw them.

They were washing off sweat and mud in the river.

Naked.

Naked men were not a mystery to Aline, but since becoming a woman she had regarded the interest they sparked in her as a weakness to be suppressed Raoul de Jouray was successfully teaching her that weakness could be ruinous, so perhaps she should study these naked men as representative of the enemy she must learn to defeat.

To her relief, she found that the assortment of bodies stirred no feelings in her at all. Thin to fat, bowlegged and knock-kneed, barrel- or sunken-chested, furred or nearly hairless, they were just bodies and no threat.

Most splashed at the water's edge, getting rid of the mud. A few, however, were swimming.

With alarm, she realized she couldn't see Raoul or Galeran. Had the injury been serious after all?

Then she saw two heads in the water, racing down the river.

Competing again, and this time Raoul was clearly winning.

Men!

Raoul reached a spot where a fallen tree hung out over the river and reached up to catch the stub of a branch to stop himself. Then he hauled himself out one-handed.

"Showoff," Aline—sister of five brothers—muttered, but she was impressed in spite of that. Raw muscle power seemed to make her heart beat faster, and when Raoul pushed to his feet and stood on the log in all his arrogant, golden-skinned nakedness, she knew her cheeks had flushed with color.

And not with embarrassment.

He'd told her of the hot sun of his native land that often made clothes an inconvenience rather than a necessity. Now she noticed that he was dusky gold all over. The other men—true Englanders—were paler, or dark only in patches. She could spot the crusaders by the darkness of their arms, their lower legs, and sometimes of their chests.

Raoul, too, was darker in some places, but he was gold everywhere except around his man's parts with their thatch of brown curls.

Aline blushed to think that she was staring and even assessing. But she didn't stop. He was, as they put it, well hung.

Then Galeran reached the tree. Raoul knelt to give him a hand and he, too, rose from the water in a show of mutual strength.

Galeran, of course, was of slighter build, but naked, his strength was clear. He was sun-browned in places, too, but his upper legs and loin area were much paler.

As was only decent.

Aline did feel it was wrong to study her cousin's husband, and so she turned her attention back to Raoul. His nakedness stirred alarming sensations inside her, which she understood perfectly well. It was the physical need for a man. She'd felt it before and trained herself to suppress it. It had never been so strong, however, before she'd encountered Raoul.

But, as Father Robert said, such feelings were normal. She was not wicked to feel them. She would be wicked only if she let them conquer her.

Or if not wicked, weak.

Surely looking at the cause of her weakness would help her fight. In time, all things become ordinary. . . .

They were wrestling now.

Really, she thought with irritation, didn't the two of them realize Jehanne was upset and needed assurance that Galeran was unharmed? That Jehanne did
not
need Galeran brought back to the manor even more damaged by their wild games?

Hands slipping on wet skin, feet firm on rough bark, the two men twisted, pushed, and levered, cheered on by the others. At one point Galeran slipped down onto the log, and Aline thought with satisfaction that he must have scraped his behind.

In straightening up, Galeran managed to lever Raoul off the trunk. Raoul, however, grabbed a wrist as he fell and took his Mend with him to crash into the water.

Moments later they climbed out onto the bank, arms around shoulders, laughing.

Men.

When they separated, Raoul stretched and shook water from his hair, a healthy animal looking around in obvious satisfaction at the world.