The Sword and The Swan (29 page)

Perhaps the war would soon be over and he would be free to return home in peace. She sighed. They had had peace, and they had wasted it in bitter misunderstandings. Catherine sighed again. True, she longed for her husband, but it was just as well that they could not be together again until this war was over. Convinced as she was that her actions were for the best, Catherine was equally convinced that Rannulf would not agree with her and knew that in his presence her conscience would trouble her. What if he asked what she had done or wished to speak to her men himself?

A figure moved, a darker shadow in the darkness of the battlements. Catherine waited peacefully, for no matter how dark or how stealthy-seeming the walk, there was no living soul in Sleaford that wished her harm.

"Yes?" she questioned softly.

"Richard is abed and all the maids also. Is there aught more you would have me do, my lady?"

"No, Mary my love. Get you to your bed also."

A good girl, Catherine thought, a clever girl, and a glutton for work. She had been permitting Mary to manage the keep almost completely, partly as training for her own future as a wife, partly because Catherine intended to be away for several months inspecting and fortifying the keeps that bordered the earl of Norfolk's land. It seemed the simplest way to fulfill Rannulf's instructions.

The training of men, stocking of foodstuffs, and furbishing of gear would all seem natural enough if the countess of Soke were inspecting the property. And, if the countess came alone, even Norfolk would not think that Soke's vassals were making ready to attack.

The only thing wrong with the arrangements, Catherine thought, still smiling, was that they left her too idle. That was why she tormented herself and longed too much for Rannulf. When she was ready to go and was absorbed in her new labors, she would not suffer these vapors. Catherine looked once more on the misty moon and quiet fields, shook her head, and took herself off to bed.

A touch brought her from the peaceful depths to the border of consciousness, a touch on her lips. It was very pleasant, like a physical manifestation of her dream, the hard masculine mouth on hers, the prick of an unshaven face against her smooth skin. For the span of time that might encompass a deep breath, Catherine gave herself up to the kiss. Then her eyes snapped open in horror, and all at once she wrenched her mouth away, screamed for help, and employed her well-sharpened nails like talons to rake the face and throat of the man bending over her.

One scream alone passed her lips before a hand of steel closed over her mouth. Catherine fought in deadly, desperate earnest, writhing her lips back to bite the hand, kicking and clawing, blind and deaf with terror.

"Catherine, for God's sake, do not cry out and struggle so. Your women will think I am murdering you. Catherine!"

The struggles stopped as suddenly as they had begun. Cautiously the muffling hand was withdrawn from her lips.

"Rannulf?"

"Aye—" he laughed softly "—and may I be damned if I ever try to wake you with a kiss again. In future I shall stand well off before I speak."

"What are you doing here?" Her eyes strained into the darkness. "You are not hurt?"

"Not hurt!" he gasped with mock indignation. "I have been mauled about as if I tried to embrace a she-bear. Next time I come upon you suddenly, I will come fully armed. Do I dare try again?" He bent over her once more.

No cold hand was offered him, no averted eyes, no stiff, formal words of welcome. The arms were warm and around his neck, the eyes closed over tears of joy, and the lips offered as loving and informal a greeting as any man could wish. But not for long; fear followed joy. Catherine unclasped her hands from her husband's neck to run them anxiously over his body, pulled her lips free to question him.

"You are not wounded? Not sick? Oh, Rannulf, light the candles. I will not believe you are whole until I see with my own eyes. Why are you come? What is wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong," he soothed, still laughing. "Nothing. I am perfectly well and unhurt. I cannot see how I could have been hurt since I have not yet drawn my sword."

He struck the flint, nonetheless, breathed upon the sparks which flew into the tinder, and lighted candles from the tiny flame. When he saw how anxiously Catherine was examining him, he laughed again.

"I always used to consider you a very calm woman, Catherine, and a peaceful one also. You are changing all my views at once. Nay, in truth, all is well. I have only come home to call up my vassals."

Fortunately in her struggles to rid herself of the tangled bedclothes and sit upright, Catherine's face was shadowed and Rannulf did not see her new expression of terror. Was this all she was to have, the one kiss, before they were locked in a struggle of wills from which their marriage could not emerge unscathed?

"All of them?" she whispered.

He took the breathlessness as a natural result of her physical struggle, the low tone as a mark of intimacy, and his answer was as low as her question as he seated himself beside her on the bed.

"No. Praise God, the king laid no specific commands upon me. Those who have paid in lieu of service, I will not disturb unless I must. It would be no easy thing for me to find the gold to return to them, and I certainly do not wish to pass the debt on to cancel next year's rents at this time. I may well need money next year, and just now there is no pressing need for men."

Catherine did not need to mask her sigh of relief, only to explain it. "Then I am glad you are here, Rannulf—so glad."

He had leaned toward her, but pulled away, frowning at her words. "Is there trouble here? Do not the servants and the men obey you?"

"May I not be glad for my own sake? Must I regard you only as a curer of ills?"

It was worth the effort, all of it—the crazy ride pressing on day and night, the dead horses and exhausted men. He had saved two days at least, and those two days wrested out of time by his own strength were his to do with as he pleased.

Rannulf could have sung and danced, capered like an idiot. He had not mistaken the warmth of Catherine's farewell, nor had she reassumed her armor of indifference in the months they had been parted. He said nothing, equally afraid he would say too much or too little, and simply took Catherine back into his arms. She was willing, so willing that Rannulf soon detached his lips so that he could get into bed. His breathing was uneven, and he sighed trying to steady it.

"Oh dear," Catherine said in a distracted tone, fumbling around the bed for her robe, "You must be so hungry and thirsty. How could I have forgotten?"

"I am, but that can wait," Rannulf replied, lying down and opening his arms.

"You are too tired to eat." Catherine's voice was redolent with self-accusation. "Sleep, my lord, while I go and rouse the maids so that there will be food for you when you wake."

Rannulf glanced sharply at his wife, wondering if she could mean to put him off. It was ridiculous. She would not have kissed him with her heart on her lips one moment to turn to ice the next. He put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her toward him impatiently.

"Catherine, you are a more reasonable woman than any I have ever known—except Maud, perhaps—but you can also be silly beyond measure. I can wait to sleep also. Just now there is something more important to me."

"Oh," Catherine said faintly, "what is it?"

He had heard what she had done and guessed her intentions, she feared, her sense of guilt making her misread perfectly obvious actions.

Rannulf lay for a moment, watching the way Catherine's hair glowed gold and then faded to silver in the flickering candlelight. Guiltily, she turned her face under his gaze, and he was both amused and enchanted, thinking she was suffering a sudden spurt of modesty. Smiling, he pulled her face toward him, a finger under her chin.

"How now, Catherine, we have been man and wife for more than two years. Why do you hide your face from me? Is what I desire repugnant to you?"

Catherine did not answer. Even guilt could not now cloud her realization of what was more important than sleep or food to Rannulf. She blushed rosily, conscious of her stupidity, thereby confirming her husband's opinion that she was embarrassed. Very satisfied, Rannulf laughed softly.

"Must I woo you as if you were maiden-shy?"

Catherine turned into his arms, laughing also. "You need not, but it can do no harm."

It was a gray morning, misty with rain as Catherine expected, and both she and her husband slept late. At that, Catherine was the first to wake, conscious of more than normal warmth in the bed and of a sag in the hair-and-feather-stuffed mattresses that tilted her downward. Cautiously she gathered her hair together and pulled it gently from under Rannulf's arm. Then she drew the bedcurtain aside to let in some light and lifted her head.

The light was of little value, as was her change in position; all she could see was the back of a tangled head of curls, a broad, scarred shoulder, and the swelling biceps of one arm. Drowsily and happily, Catherine lay down again to think about getting up, but the second change in position disturbed Rannulf who, still asleep, moved also, seeking the pressure of her body against his. Seconds later he jerked awake at her mingled giggle and cry of consternation.

"What is the matter, Catherine?"

"Your poor face! Oh, Rannulf, I scratched you unmercifully."

He smiled and stretched. "You do not have to tell me. I can feel it. What the castlefolk will say I shudder to think. You have made me a fine laughingstock before my servants. There is some consolation, however, in knowing that you would not yield tamely to a ravisher."

"Did you think I would before this?"

"No. Yet you look as if a strong breeze would blow you away. For all of that I have a growing feeling that you yield tamely nothing you do not wish to yield, Catherine."

They had been speaking lightly, delighting in the warmth and relaxation between them, which had outlasted their lovemaking. Rannulf frowned slightly as he heard and comprehended his own words, however. There had been more truth in them than jest. Catherine, whose guilty conscience flinched, still managed to laugh as she turned away to pull on a robe.

"Then you must have extra pleasure in the knowledge that I yield tamely to you."

Rannulf put out a hand to detain his wife, frowning harder as he sought for words. "There is nothing in my life that has given me equal pleasure," he said awkwardly at last.

Catherine's eyes filled with tears. For Rannulf that was probably equivalent to a passionate declaration of love. "Thank you, my lord," she murmured, "those are the sweetest words you have ever given me."

"I am no hand at compliments," Rannulf replied defensively.

He was uneasy, shying away from emotion. Catherine understood and hurried to his aid, smiling mischievously at him. "Oh, no, not at all. It is a matter of proper understanding. Whenever you do not knock me down, I know you are satisfied, and when you do not call me an idiot, I understand you to be uncommonly pleased with me. And when—"

"Catherine, when have I ever knocked you down! Men punish saucy wives, Catherine."

"Yes, I remember quite clearly that you told me as much before, when you were last at home. You inflicted a most severe chastisement upon me, but again I found that it was merely a question of how one looked at a thing. Being merely a woman, I was foolish enough to take that punishment also as a compliment. In any case, it gave me no distaste for being saucy."

Rannulf's bewildered expression indicated plainly enough that he did not remember the incident to which she referred, but Catherine did not intend to explain. She slipped past the screen into the women's quarters where her husband was most unlikely to follow, and almost stumbled over Mary who was restraining Richard.

Until he heard voices, the boy had been content to wait quietly until Rannulf woke because he understood that his father had ridden far and was tired. Now, however, he was straining and wriggling in Mary's arms and needed only Catherine's smiling nod to break free of his half sister's grip.

A boyish shriek of joy and a loud, anguished grunt from Rannulf gave evidence of a happy reunion. Listening to the childish voice, shrill with excitement, and the deeper masculine tones quickened by love and pleasure, Catherine could have found it in her heart to pray that life would stop for all of them in this one happy moment.

Neither time nor life does stop upon command, and Catherine wakened to this fact with a shock when she realized she had been waiting some minutes and the women had not brought her water for washing. A sharp question to Mary, a couple of slaps which landed with a more resounding crack than one would have expected from so delicate-seeming a hand and arm, and the maidservants got over their excitement and returned to their duties.

To restore order among the servants was simple, but Catherine received an even greater surprise when she returned to her bedchamber and found Rannulf still abed. For Rannulf to lie abed after the sun was up was unprecedented. Richard was asking and he was answering questions, but ordinarily he would have done so while dressing and then taken the boy with him while he went over the keep to see that all was in order, inspected the men-at-arms who had remained behind, visited the armory, the smithy, the stables, the kennels, and the mews. It was excellent training for his son, and the men expected it. For the lord of the manor to show a lack of interest about the smallest detail of castle life was the first spot of a growing rot that could destroy that life completely.

The devotion of the many castle servants to their duty was integral to the smooth functioning of the keep as a self-sufficient community. Since the servants were paid in no way except by occasional gifts and their easier lives and greatly increased social status over the field serfs, and since each position, whether armorer, executioner, or huntsman, was virtually hereditary, a word of praise from the master for work well done or blame and punishment for work ill done was all the incentive available. That, and the great joy of passionate and uninhibited argument with their lord when his opinion and theirs differed about the best way to manage their special sphere. The master by no means won all, or even any, of these arguments.