Without pause, the conversation veered to horses, to halters, to saddles. The men left the hall, William in their midst, and the serving folk scurried into action.
The serfs swept the head table clean and laid a white cloth and overcloth on the board. The salt was placed in the center while the panter hurried to Saura and asked, “M’lady, how should we arrange th’ seatin’? My Lord Raymond is an earl, an’ since the death of his brother, Lord Nicholas is a baron. Lord Raymond should sit before th’ salt, but Lord Peter insists he is th’ lord in his own castle, barrin’ a visit from th’ king.”
“Quite right,” Saura nodded. “So Lord Peter and Lord Raymond shall sit before the salt. Lord William shall share a trencher with Nicholas, Lord Peter share a trencher with Raymond, and Charles and Arthur shall share. Do you arrange it that way.”
She listened to the preparation for the evening, ever ready with a suggestion or command. She questioned whether the room needed light, and now tall candles flickered on heavy iron stands and torches of resinous wood smoked in wall brackets. She asked about the meal, and was assured the trestle tables sat at right angles to the head table, now set with eating knives and spoons. Two trenchers rested equidistant from the center and another set toward one end. She heard the buzz as men-at-arms, castle watchmen, and subtenants filtered in to jostle one another. For them, she decreed ale to drink as they waited for the nobility to return. The laws of hospitality had provided an unexpected bonus: their evening meal was usually a crust of bread and a thick porridge. The roar of voices echoed deep and full until the rattling of spurs announced the return of the lords.
Brother Cedric said a brief grace and the working men turned their ravenous attention to the food. Peace reigned as they filled the yawning empty spaces of their bellies. Lord Peter’s squire carved the mutton for the head table, Kimball and Clare carried the pie and pasties in on chargers. Servitors raced to satisfy the demands of the lower tables, and Raymond joked, “Have you discovered a miracle pot in your kitchen, Lord Peter? For the first time in many years, the fare of your table is fit for consumption.”
Lord Peter laughed, accepting another slice of meat on the tip of his knife. “’Tis Lady Saura’s doing. She bullies us to cleanliness. The cook lives in fear of her visits.”
“You mean we’ll not go to bed suffering from a flux of the bowels?” Arthur sneered, and then halted with his knife in midair. “Lady Saura?”
Already sorry he had revealed his treasure, Lord Peter chewed and swallowed before saying, “Aye, she’s one of my wife’s relatives, come to be our housekeeper.” He deliberately didn’t glance into the corner where Saura huddled, afraid to draw attention to the woman.
“Lady Saura,” Arthur murmured. “The only Lady Saura I know of is Saura of Roget. Now there’s a treasure. A virtuous maiden and an heiress, but her stepfather hides her away for fear she’ll be abducted and married and all those glorious lands taken from his control.”
William raised his head and Nicholas examined his alert face with eyes that gleamed with interest.
“How old is she?” William asked.
“Old. She must be…twenty-two? And never wed. But she’s—”
Clare tripped and spilled the venison stew into Arthur’s lap. With a shriek, Arthur leaped up and backhanded the boy into the wall. “Stupid oaf!” Brushing at the thick wine sauce, he lamented the ruin of his best tunic while servants rushed to his assistance. When the hubbub had died down, he turned to chastise the page who had caused him so much grief, but Clare had disappeared.
In Saura’s bedroom, she pressed him down on her bed and laid a wet rag on his swollen face. “I thank you. You’re a brave boy,” she said, hugging him tight. “Mama would be proud of you, defending me like that.”
“All of us brothers have to defend you,” the young warrior answered stoutly, and then winced at the vigor of his speech. “Rollo said so.”
“All of my half brothers are most loyal,” she praised.
He stuck his tongue in his cheek and examined the injury. “I don’t think that man loosened any teeth.”
“Nay, but you’ll be bruised in the morning.” She smoothed the cowlick waving in his short bangs. “You can sleep here in my bed. It would be better if you didn’t return to the hall tonight.”
“Aye, please!” He bounced up and down. “This is better than the palliasse I share with Kimball.”
Snatching the chance to question her brother, Saura asked, “Clare, do you like it here? At Burke Castle?”
“We’re not leaving, are we?” he asked quickly.
“Nay, of course not.” Smiling, she positioned her palm on his face. “You were too young to come for fostering, and I wondered if you missed Lord Theobald. If you missed your father.”
He gave it consideration. “Well, sometimes I do miss him. I liked it when he taught me things and talked to me. But most of the time, he just drank wine and yelled and threw up. Lord Peter teaches me things and talks to me, too, but he only hits me when I deserve it. I miss Blaise,” his voice quivered wistfully.
“And the babies and Lady Blanche?”
“Well, the babies.”
Saura skimmed her fingers over his expression of disgust and laughed. “As long as you are happy. Come in, Kimball.”
The boy stuck his head in the door. “Can’t I ever sneak up on you?” he complained.
“Some people can sneak up on me,” she answered reasonably. “But an eight-year-old boy with big feet is not one of them.”
“How did you know my feet were big?” Kimball stuck out a sandaled foot and examined it.
“All boys’ feet are big. Clare’s sleeping in my bed tonight. Do you wish to join him?”
Kimball shouted and leaped up, and Saura moved aside.
“Is the meal over?”
“Aye. Oh, how’s your face?” Kimball climbed on the bed and callously pronounced, “That’s not as bad as when you fell off the rafter in the barn.”
“The barn?” Saura queried.
“Oops.” Kimball squirmed and Clare whacked him.
“Does your grandfather know about this?”
“’Twas his idea to tell you Clare was thrown from his horse,” Kimball replied, glad to spread the blame on broader shoulders.
Saura groaned, but couldn’t stop a chuckle. The boys sighed in a harmonic whoosh and wrestled as she moved to the door.
A sudden attack of conscience hit Clare. “Where will you sleep this night?”
Pausing in the doorway, she said, “I don’t know if I will. It seems to be developing into a long evening.”
Hovering by the rail in the gallery, Saura listened to the talk from the tables below and sighed. Her faith in Lord Peter was misplaced. War was the business of the day, and war dominated the conversation. He could not avoid the subject, and she doubted he had tried. Battles, warriors, knights, foot soldiers. Maneuvers, destriers, armor, defence. Lord Peter, Raymond, Nicholas, Arthur and Charles argued and agreed, suggested and refuted, with the vehemence of trained men whose life and honor depended on their ability to fight, which it did.
William said not a word. Only the clink of the pitcher against his goblet indicated his presence.
She crept down the stairs and into her corner where Bula slept. The ominous silence from her pupil weighed her spirits. Maud fetched Saura’s hand loom and bent to listen to whispered instructions. Bartley came, too, listened and nodded his understanding. When the chevaliers rose and stretched, maid servants appeared at their elbows immediately to escort them to their rooms. A great deal of groaning ensued, genial groans of weariness and satiety, and Raymond, Nicholas, Charles, and Arthur followed the women to their beds.
Lord Peter followed, and stopped. “Coming, William?”
“Not now.” The golden voice contained no emotion.
“You didn’t say much tonight.”
Saura ground her teeth at the father’s oblivion to his son’s pain and his clumsy attempt to repair a mistake he didn’t know
he’d made.
“It didn’t bother you, did it, that we discussed things you….” His voice trailed off.
“Nay, Father, I’m fine.” William sounded weary, slurring his words slightly.
“We didn’t mean to.”
Maud rescued the moment. “Come on, ye old fool,” she said. “I’ll put you to bed.”
“But—” Lord Peter sounded amazed.
“Come on!” She jerked him by the elbow and he stumbled after her, heeding her wisp of an explanation and giving over his protests.
Saura waited and listened. As she had instructed, serfs cleared the tables and left the room, the slow shuffle of their feet indicating their curiosity. She rose from her stool and gestured, and the shuffle transformed into a stampede.
Satisfied that every man and woman would sleep elsewhere this night, she stroked Bula’s ears for courage and strolled to the table. Pulling out the bench beside her lord, she asked mildly, “What are you doing?”
“Lady Saura! What a surprise,” he mocked. “How amazing that you would be the one to keep me company in my misery.”
She was silent. How she hated that cultured modulation of French, that refined accent he affected to convey her lesser status.
“What am I doing? Why, dear madame, dear nun, I am drinking.”
“And stinking?”
Now he was silent, releasing at last a very small laugh. “How clever you are. Almost clever enough to be a man.”
Her hands clenched the edge of the table until her knuckles cracked. “Cleverer than this man. Smart enough to know getting stinking drunk will never bring a change for the better.”
“Ah, but it will. For tonight, I am happy.”
“Are you?”
“Indeed,” he said, too quickly.
“And in the morning?”
“I have a hard head. I never bring my dinner up. I’ll feel fine in the morning.”
“But will you still be blind?”
His cup clanged on the table and ale splashed her hand. “God’s glove! Blind drunk tonight, blind in the morning, what difference does it make? I’m only half a man, anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t fight, I can’t defend my lands, I can’t order the education of my son in the knightly arts, I can’t keep a squire, I can’t ride a real man’s horse.”
“What’s done is done, and the egg cracked cannot be mended. As you told them earlier, you can keep accounts, you can sit in judgment.”
“I’m not a man, I’m just a monk.”
The pity, the clogging pity, brought her to her feet. The bench crashed behind her and her fist sent his ale mug flying. Her normal serenity disappeared behind the wave of disappointment and fury, and she roared in a voice that rivalled his own. “You’re blind? So? You want to know what trouble is? I’ll tell you what trouble is. Athele’s a widow and her last son has died, and she carries sixty years. She’s got no teeth and no way to support herself and pain twists her joints, and half the village thinks she a witch because she’s lonely and her mind wanders and she mutters to herself. That’s trouble.” She paused, breathing hard. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was amazed at her temerity, her lack of control, and her rage.
But she didn’t want to stop. The anger of all her years roiled in her gut and demanded an outlet, and she shouted, “You want to talk about trouble? Maybe Geoffrey the Miller has an excuse for to pity himself. A band of reavers crept into the mill and stole wheat and tied him to the side of the water wheel. Dear God, they’ve had to amputate his legs. He’s going to live, and he’s happy. He’s grateful, but he’ll live with pain the rest of his life, every day.”
Leaning her hands against his chair, she bent and put her face to his. “But the great William is blind. ’Tis so sad, to think a man has his health and his teeth and his legs and his wits and is missing one tiny component.”
Now he rose, slowly, like a gigantic tidal wave gathering strength to crash over her indignation and douse it with his resentment.
“You’re a nun. You believe resignation and industry will cure all ills, but nothing can bring my sight back. Nothing can give me the view of good English foot soldiers marching into a battle. Nothing can return the satisfaction of laying siege to an enemy and dispossessing him of his castle. Nothing can bring me the pleasure of a tempered sword in my hand and a mêlée before me.” Rising from a reasonable rumble, his voice gathered strength as he spoke and he snatched at her, snagging her wrist. “I am a lord. I do the things you praise me for, because ’tis the work I am required to do. But I am also required to fight, to defend my villeins and their crops, to defend my castles, to destroy thieves, and maintain justice. And that’s my pleasure, my reward.” He shook her wrist. “Do you understand, little nun?”
Bula whined in the corner, unable to decide how to react to such a scene between his master and his mistress.
“Aye.”
“You are a nun, aren’t you?” he sneered. “That display of unholy temper should have been beaten out of you at the convent. What order of nuns are you?”
“I…it doesn’t matter.”
“Are you ashamed of them? At what age were you dedicated to our Savior?”
“Early.”
“Was your father unable to supply the dowry for a husband?”
“Nay. I mean, aye.”
He cocked his head. “You don’t sound very positive about this. You don’t know what order you belong to, when you were dedicated, or if you’re a nun by virtue or material needs. And uncertainty drips from your voice.” He shook her again. “Are you sure, are you sure you’re a bride of Christ?”
“Aye.”
“Swear.”
“My lord!”
“Swear by your mother’s immortal soul you’re a nun.”
Wrestling her arm away from him, she said, “I am not a nun.”
“Not?”
She didn’t know what to make of the tone of his voice.
“Not?” he questioned again.
She would warrant it was relief.
“Swear.” He reached for her again, but she slid away. “Swear by your mother’s immortal soul you are not a nun.”
“By God, William—”
“Swear!” he insisted, and the odd note of his voice swelled with panic.
“I swear,” she said. “By all that I hold holy.”
“Not a nun. Well.” He collapsed back into his chair and it rocked dangerously back on two legs and then settled with a thump.
Hugging her elbows, Saura waited for his reaction. The guffaw started deep in his chest, growing and amplifying through the rafters until it was a full belly laugh. Her concern changed to indignation, then to animosity. “What’s so funny?”
“Are there any other little deceptions you have perpetrated on me?” he wheezed.
She put her hands on her waist, and blurted, “Hundreds of them.”
That sent him into fresh paroxysms of mirth. “Get you to bed, Saura.”
“Are you going to drink some more?” she asked.
“Nay, no more drinking for me. I just remembered the other thing that makes me a man. Now, get you to bed before ’tis too late.”
Stiffly, she moved to the winding stairway and stopped.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“The boys are sleeping in my bed,” she mumbled. “I’m going to sleep on one of the benches.”
“Ah.” He considered. “Take my bed in the solar. I’ll lie out here with the rest of the servants. Where is everyone?”
“I told them to sleep in the barn.”
He laughed again. “Get you to bed.”
In a dark corner of the gallery, the silent eavesdropper watched as William picked up his cane and took the stairs down to the bailey. He noted the strength William gained from Saura, the affection and mutual respect between them, and in his twisted mind Saura joined William as a target to be eliminated.
four
“June is the month of
love. The month when the very air acts as a love philtre, filling my lungs and heating my loins.” Exalting in the afternoon breeze that tossed his blond hair across his forehead, William, with a flick of the reins, urged his mount to a trot.
“Father!” Kimball protested, bound to his father by a leading rein and jostled as his horse danced sideways along the woodland path. “You’re going to run over me.”
“Move that pony along, then,” his father replied sharply, tapping his son’s mare with the oak cane he held. Undeterred by Kimball’s smothered protest, he returned to his musing in a mellow voice. “In June, lambs suckle and life bursts forth with new vigor. Smell the flowers! Smell the new growth! Even the grass transforms itself into a carpet for lovers, offering itself gladly to be bruised by an embrace.”
“Hurray, hurray, the end of June, all the folk rut outside soon,” Clare quoted.
“Clare!” Saura sounded shocked and distracted. “Where did you learn that verse?”
“Lord Peter taught me,” the boy replied tranquilly, holding his sister’s leading rein.
“Do you know what it means?”
“Aye. It means the servants will go out in the barn instead of keeping me awake at night.”
William exploded with laughter. “Hurray, hurray,” he said.
Saura sighed.
“Come,” he encouraged. “Plebeian joinings have no impact on us today. Revel in fresh perceptions of the English summer afternoon. Breathe deep the scents of flower and herb. Feel the motion of the horse between your thighs. Listen to the birds mating in the trees!”
“William!”
“Pretend the boys aren’t with us.”
“My imagination isn’t that good,” Saura replied repressively.
He considered and asked, “Kimball, where are we?”
Kimball cast an experienced eye around him. “On the south corner of the property, close upon Fyngre Brook.”
“That’s what I thought,” William said with satisfaction. “Why don’t you settle Saura and me by the water and you lads can race your horses on the meadow east of here.”
Candle in the Window: Castles #1 Page 7
