Winter Song (33 page)

This produced a reaction, but not the one Lady Jeannette had
planned. Lord Alphonse looked delighted. “Are you by chance eating for two, my
dear?” he asked.

“I hope to God she is not!” Raymond exclaimed before Alys had
a chance to answer. “I do not wish to need to explain a seven-months child to
our vassals.”

“No, no,” Alphonse said. “Naturally, if Alys is with child,
we will not make any pretense about the wedding, merely hold it to provide a
celebration and assure the men that all forms and customs of this land have
been observed.”

“I am sorry, my lord,” Alys put in, “but I cannot answer
you, although I fear it is not so. My flux was as usual last month, and it is
not yet due this month.”

“Ah…oh…” Alphonse cleared his throat in some embarrassment.

Raymond guffawed. “Do not ask Alys questions if you are not
prepared for frank answers, Father,” he choked. “She is honest to a fault.”

Their laughter seemed to show acceptance of Alys as she was,
but Lady Jeannette had seen something that was certainly not amusement in
Raymond’s face when he protested his father’s interpretation of Alys’s
appetite. Lady Jeannette believed her son did not wish his wife to be with
child, and her heart leapt with joy. Although Raymond had given a reason for
his expression, his mother refused to accept it. The only reason Lady Jeannette
was willing to consider for Raymond’s reluctance to father Alys’s child,
especially when she combined that with his seeming willingness to avoid Alys’s
bed, was that he was already regretting his marriage.

The pleasure this thought gave her made it possible for Lady
Jeannette to restrain any comment on Alys’s crudity in mentioning her flux. She
was now very happy, and happiness always expressed itself in Lady Jeannette
with a desire for music. Thus, when the tables were cleared and the family
gathered near the hearth, Lady Jeannette graciously asked Alys to sing. She was
hoping, of course, that her performance would be poor in comparison with that
of her own daughters. At first she was surprised when Raymond burst out
laughing as Alys shook her head.

“Do sing, my love,” he urged. “You have a voice like a bird.”

“The wrong kind of bird,” Alys said, flashing what Lady
Jeannette considered a very strange glance at Raymond. “I am sorry, Mother, I
cannot sing. I have a voice like a jackdaw.”

“This must be modesty.” Alphonse tried to encourage her. “Your
speaking voice is sweet. We are only family, my dear. You need not fear we will
be critical.”

Raymond’s eyes glittered with amusement as Alys most
seriously assured his father that she could not sing or play a note because she
had never learned how. Alphonse could not understand this. All daughters of
great houses were taught to sing and play.

“But, Father,” Alys protested, “I am not the daughter of a
great house. Your son and my Uncle Richard worked some miracle whereby my dower
was made suitable to your son’s rank, but I am the daughter of a simple knight.
Surely Raymond told you that. I can do accounts and read and write, but my
education is lacking in refinements, I fear.”

Raymond was laughing again. He had never been so happy in
his life. Everything was a joy, and Alys was the fount of that joy in great
ways and small ones. It was a great thing to be truly independent of his
parents, not in the sulky, small-boy way that had made him run off to England
the preceding year, but as a man with rich estates of his own. It was a very
small thing to be able to look forward to listening to his sisters’ silly songs
because he knew his wife, however politely she listened, would be suffering
boredom as acutely as he was. Between the two extremes were a whole series of
greater and lesser satisfactions, all connected to Alys.

“Your taste and talent are lacking, too,” Raymond muttered
through his gales of laughter.

Alys shot him a single furious glance, lowered her head, and
bit her lips. She was not, of course, angry about his remark on her lack of
fondness for lute music. They were at one on that subject, Alys knew. However,
it was clear that the rest of Raymond’s family were really devoted to that
musical art. Alys felt she was making headway in gaining Alphonse’s and Margot’s
affection, and even Lady Jeannette seemed more accepting of her. Thus she did
not wish to distress or disgust them and, perhaps, destroy their tentative
liking by laughing at something they loved, and thought it cruel of Raymond to
add to her temptation to laugh. It would be hard enough to keep her face
straight when Jeanine or Margot began sighing over some imaginary knight’s
bravery and some silly woman’s coldness without Raymond encouraging her own
sense of the ridiculous.

But Alphonse had turned on his son. “Hold your tongue!” he
ordered sharply. “You should be ashamed of yourself to laugh at your wife in
public for what is no fault of her own. I am shocked!”

“Oh no, my lord, do not be angry,” Alys cried. “Indeed, he
speaks nothing but the truth. Both taste and talent are lacking
in
me.
But he was not laughing at me, only at a private joke that is between us. I am
not hurt or offended.”

“Your sweetness of disposition is a credit to you, my dear,”
Alphonse said softly, glaring at Raymond, who had turned crimson and was nearly
choking to death in his attempts to swallow his laughter.

Eventually he did compose himself to listen to his sisters
sing, but he was several times so shaken by repressed mirth that tears filled
his eyes. Alys was in a similar state. She could be seen several times, at
points in the songs of particular emotion—as ladies died of fear or knights broke
their hearts for love—to tremble perceptibly and wipe her eyes with the hem of
her sleeve.

Each observer interpreted these reactions to suit him- or
herself. Jeanine disregarded her brother completely and put down Alys’s
behavior to envy or chagrin, and Margot thought Raymond was distressed by his
father’s reprimand. It was rare, indeed, for Alphonse to speak so sharply to
his eldest son, and Margot felt sorry for her brother, of whom she was fond.
Alys, Margot believed, was responding to the music and the sentiment in the
songs. She already liked Alys and felt she owed her a debt. Now she saw her way
clear to obtain a good deal of Alys’s company for herself and to do Alys a
service. Margot intended to teach her sister-by-marriage to play and sing.

Alphonse understood Raymond quite clearly. He had heard his
son’s view on love songs to the lute and was well aware of his lack of sympathy
with music and delicate sentiment. He regretted it, but associated it with
Raymond’s pleasure in feats of arms and accepted the fact that the brutality of
the arts of war dulled fine sentiment. Concurrently, he was completely mistaken
about Alys’s emotion, which he felt was a mixture of sensitivity to the
performance, embarrassment at her own limitations, and hurt at her husband’s
cruelty.

Lady Jeannette was even further afield than the others. She
associated Raymond’s occasional rigidity and misted eyes with a deep regret for
the mistake he had made. Since she could not bear to credit Alys with enough of
the softer emotions to generate envy of Jeanine’s and Margot’s skill, she
convinced herself that the effort of controlling spite and rage were causing Alys
to cry. Thus, Lady Jeannette was delighted. Even if Alys did not have courage
to quarrel with Raymond, she was sure Alys would display her anger in some
unsuitable way, perhaps in hurting some weaker creature.

The events of the evening had clarified a puzzle that had
been troubling Lady Jeannette. There was a dichotomy between Raymond’s
confidence in Alys—as evidenced in his broad-ranging order to Gervase to obey
his wife and his urging that everything be left to her to do as she pleased—and
his disinclination to father a child on her, plus his obvious contempt for her
crude nature and upbringing. The puzzle was now resolved to Lady Jeannette’s
satisfaction. Raymond, she decided, regarded Alys as a servant, fit to arrange
furniture and sew clothing, but not fit to bear him an heir for Aix.

Although Raymond enjoyed teasing Alys, he did not really
want her to disgrace herself in front of his family. Nor did he desire to lose
control of himself and spoil his mother’s mood. Thus, when he saw Alys urgently
biting her lips at a particularly silly effusion, in which both knight and lady
perished in an excess of sentiment, Raymond decided to end their torment. As
the last notes died away, he stood up abruptly.

“This is all too much for my poor Alys, atop the traveling
and setting her apartment to rights and meeting my father and mother,” he said.
“I will take her to her rooms to rest and recover.”

It seemed, in fact, all too true. Alys’s shoulders were
shaking, and she had her sleeve pressed firmly against her lips while tears
welled from her tight-shut eyes. Alphonse rose and embraced her, murmuring
soothingly, but Raymond pulled her away and pressed her against him with brutal
force, burying her head under his arm.

“You are making her worse, Father,” he explained when
Alphonse protested angrily. His voice choked and his face rigid as if he were
in a fury. “She is only overtired,” he continued. “Tomorrow she will be quite
well.”

Raymond left quickly, sweeping Alys into his arms so that
her shorter and almost certainly faltering stride would not delay them, and
ignoring the cries and questions that followed them. He had been just in time,
for he could feel Alys whooping in his arms as she struggled to draw breath and
not howl aloud.

“Stop that,” he choked. “If I give way now, I will drop you,
and we will both fall down the stairs.”

“Put me down,” she gasped.

He did so, and they clung together for a moment, struggling
with themselves. Both were aware of the danger of Alphonse following them, but
fortunately Lady Jeannette had checked her husband’s impulse by pointing out
that his interference only seemed to make Raymond crueler. Thus, supporting one
another’s uneven footsteps, Alys and Raymond were able to reach the haven of
the south tower. Here both collapsed.

“Monster!” Alys cried when she had breath enough. “Cruel
monster! How dare you set me to laughing over those silly songs and then make
all worse by sounding as if I were one of the frail flowers they lamented. If I
had choked to death, you would be a murderer.”

Holding his aching ribs, Raymond shook his head. “How else
could I have saved us? I saw you were ready to burst, and I was also.”

“It is all your fault,” Alys sighed, exhausted from
laughing. “I had grown quite accustomed at court. If you had not started
laughing like a jackass when your mother asked me to sing, all would have been
well.”

“Sorry,” Raymond gasped, and began to laugh again, groaning
between whoops as his muscles protested. He wiped his eyes. “I do not know why
it struck me so funny,” he said at last. “You are so small, so sweet and
delicate, you are just the type to sing such songs—and you
do
have a
sweet voice. I have heard it.”

Alys looked surprised. “You have heard me sing?”

“Yes, sometimes when you sew in the evening you sing, and
also you sang while we rode to the slow pace of the carts.”

“Country songs,” Alys said, blushing.

Raymond got up from his chair and pulled her out of hers
into his arms. “At least those songs do not make me laugh. They are of real
things, of plowing and spinning, of the coming of spring. They are sweet to
hear, Alys, when you sing as you work. I hope my speaking of it will not
silence you.”

She smiled at him. “Perhaps it would if I were aware of it,
but even now after you have told me, I cannot really remember singing. Likely I
will not realize I am doing it. Raymond, those were sweet evenings at
Blancheforte.”

They looked at each other, memory warm in each pair of eyes.
Then Raymond sighed. “I must go, my love. We should not be alone here too long.”

Alys nodded. She understood that they must give no cause for
gossip until it was decided how their wedding was to be treated. “Be careful you
are not seen coming back,” she warned. “That would be worse than staying
openly.”

“Good God, I forgot!” Raymond exclaimed. “I must show you
the passage. I chose this tower because it is the one with the wall passage to
the keep. I will come that way.”

He walked to die wall just beyond where the man-high black
iron candlestick stood. Twisting uncomfortably at an unnatural angle, he trod
on the stone between the clawed legs of the candlestick, which was fastened by
base and shaft to the wall behind. Alys had thought nothing of that. It was a
heavy piece that could injure anyone if it should fall. With his foot on the
stone, Raymond pushed strongly at the wall. Creaking, a block of the masonry
pivoted, showing a black hole, which Alys assumed was the passage.

“I wanted to show you so you would not be frightened.” He
allowed the block to pivot closed.

“Will those who know of this suspect you are visiting me?”

Raymond widened his eyes into a look of great innocence. “What
a shocking thought! Would I do such a thing?” Then seeing that Alys looked
uneasy, he said, “My father knows, of course. I doubt anyone else will think of
it, but if there should be talk we will forgo all but the second ceremony
itself.” He pulled her into his arms for another kiss. “I am not willing to
keep apart from you, my love, even if you cannot make lute songs.”

But the comfort of her husband’s presence was to be denied
Alys. Raymond returned not an hour later, looking black as thunderclouds, to
tell her that his mother had begged him to ride over to visit her widowed
sister, Lady Catherine, who had been established by Lord Alphonse’s generosity
on a small estate only one league to the south.

“I will wait,” Alys promised. “It does not matter if you are
late returning.”

Raymond’s frown cleared, and he kissed her. “No, do not sit
up waiting for me. You are tired, I know.” He touched her face gently with a
forefinger where mauve, bruised-looking patches showed beneath her eyes. “This
homecoming of mine cannot have been easy for you. I know my mother was not very
welcoming, and Jeanine has grown into a spiteful bitch since her husband died.
Do not be discouraged, dearling. Mother will grow accustomed, even fond, after
a time. She is like a spoiled child—” He broke off and laughed softly. “You told
me that, and now I am telling it to you. Be patient. Mother needs a space of
time to accept that a thing must be so.” He sighed. “To speak the truth, this
homecoming has not been so easy for me, either.”