Knights

by Linda Lael Miller

  Gareth grinned and headed for the door. After only a moment’s hesitation, Dane followed.

  Alone in her chamber, Gloriana considered her situation. She had refused Edward’s marriage proposal gently, reminding him that, for all Lord Kenbrook’s obvious shortcomings, the man was her legal husband and that she, like everyone else in Christendom, was allowed but one spouse at a time. She did not say that she could never offer him any greater love than that which a sister held for a brother.

  Edward had sighed and planted a tender kiss on Gloriana’s forehead. Then, without another word, he had left her.

  Now, more than an hour later, she was fully dressed, in a gown of apple-green wool, and her heavy, waistlength tresses, though quite damp, were neatly combed. Her scalp still stung a little from working out the snarls, but that was nothing compared to the smarting in her heart. Kenbrook had brought a mistress to Hadleigh Castle—it was unbelievable. Had her indignation not been greater than her pain, Gloriana might have thrown herself down on the bed and wept. As it was, fury sustained her.

  It wasn’t as though she were naive, Gloriana insisted silently, turning away from the large oval of polished silver that served as her mirror. Men did take mistresses—her foster father, Cyrus, had been a devoted husband to Edwenna, and yet the servants at the London house had whispered about a woman in Flanders. Her own brother-in-law, Gareth St. Gregory, who was, by Gloriana’s reckoning, among the finest men in England, adored his poor Elaina, would see her want for nothing, in fact. For all his devotion, though, Gareth kept a lover, a dark-haired Irish beauty called Annabel, in a cottage beside the lake.

  It was wrong, Gloriana reflected, for a man or a woman to break their wedding vows, but the reality was that good people went astray sometimes, for a thousand different reasons. She had never thought, even in her most sentimental moments, that Dane would keep himself chaste while he traveled the world, waiting for a seven-year-old bride to grow up. All Gloriana had truly expected of her husband was a chance to prove herself a spirited, attentive, and entertaining wife, and now she had been denied that opportunity, out of hand.

  It was unfair treatment, that’s what it was, Gloriana raged to herself, opening the largest of her three chests and surveying the wimples and headdresses inside. No proper woman went about with her hair uncovered, according to conventional standards, but Gloriana found veils cumbersome and wore them as seldom as possible. Biting her lip, she slammed the chest lid down on the whole array and walked resolutely to the door.

  Supper was about to be served, and she was hungry.

  Fresh rushes had been laid in the great hall, and Gloriana caught the distinctive scents of lavender and sage, dittany and mint and rue, scattered on the damp stone floor. Oil lamps, suspended from the crossbeams overhead by lengths of iron chain, glowed with costly light, and the long table, lined with guests and menat-arms, was scoured pale. Trenchers of roast venison, capon, and rabbit were interspersed with bowls of boiled turnips and beets. On the dais was another, smaller table, where Gareth normally dined—along with Elaina, during her rare, brief visits to the castle. The steward, a Scot called Hamilton Eigg, had a place there, too, as did Cradoc, the friar, and any honored guest. Edward also generally sat with his eldest brother, and so did Gloriana.

  For the moment, only Eigg and Cradoc were in evidence, but Gareth often came late to the table and tonight Kenbrook would surely be in his company. While Gloriana had no objection to dining in the company of her husband, she wasn’t quite ready to break bread with his mistress.

  Gloriana was standing in the middle of the great hall, wondering whether to stay or flee, when Edward came up beside her, caught her elbow in his hand, and guided her toward the steps of the dais.

  “Have no fear,” he whispered, for he was good at divining her thoughts. “My brothers are in the village, quaffing ale, and are not likely to join us. The woman has a headache, I’m told, and will keep to her roomwhich, it may console you to learn, is some distance from Kenbrook’s chambers.”

  For tonight, at least, Gloriana thought with despairing relief, she was to be spared a public introduction to her husband’s lover. The reprieve was temporary, of course, but she was grateful all the same. “I don’t suppose you’ve managed to find out her name,” she whispered back as they stepped together onto the dais.

  “She is called Mariette,” Edward answered.

  Eigg and the priest rose out of deference to Gloriana, and she offered a faltering smile and joined them on the bench.

  “You have forgotten your headdress, Lady Kenbrook,” Cradoc pointed out mildly, between spoonfuls of savory stew. The friar was a pleasant middle-aged man with silver in his tonsured hair and a long, crooked scar beneath his right eye.

  Gloriana lowered her head to murmur a quick prayer and, using the point of her knife, helped herself to a steaming turnip and a slice of venison. She seldom thought of the Time Before, in that place Edwenna said she had only imagined, but at odd moments she remembered things. Just then, she recalled a pronged implement, called a fork, and longed for one.

  “She didn’t forget,” Eigg commented wryly, tearing a hunk of brown bread from the loaf. He was younger than Cradoc by a decade, a handsome man with dark hair and eyes and a good head for figures. “Her ladyship, it would seem, is wont to defy religious convention.”

  Normally, Gloriana did not mind the steward’s teasing and even took a harmless pleasure in it. That evening, however, she was on the prickly side. “You’ll get me burned for a heretic if you keep up that kind of talk,” she said, in a stiff tone. “May I remind you, sir, that I attend mass every morning, as faithfully as anyone else?”

  “If it’s sin that intrigues you,” Edward put in, bending to look around Gloriana to Eigg, “look to the lady’s husband.”

  Eigg wiped his trencher methodically with his portion of bread, while Cradoc snatched a roast pigeon from a tray borne by a passing servant.

  “And now,” said the priest, chewing, “we shall suffer a discourse on virtue—from none other than Edward St. Gregory, who has done more penance than any lad between here and London.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Gloriana saw Edward’s color rise, and she allowed herself a smile. It was true that Edward had an uncommon gift for mischief, and no one knew that better than the friar, who had tutored them both, in their turns.

  Before the youngest St. Gregory could offer a retort, there was a stir at the entrance to the hall, and Gloriana forgot her fleeting amusement.

  It seemed that Gareth had come to supper after all, and Dane was beside him.

  Gloriana started to rise, her first instinct being an unworthy desire to escape, but even as she changed her mind, Eigg grasped her wrist to prevent her from bolting.

  “Things will be too easy for his lordship if you go,”he said quietly, in a tone pitched to reach Gloriana’s ears and no other’s. “Stay, Lady Kenbrook, for it is your right to dine at this table.”

  Gloriana watched her husband stride through the hall, flushed with drink, a comradely arm around his elder brother’s shoulders. They were surrounded by members of Kenbrook’s seedy army, all of them bellowing a discordant version of some bawdy tavern song, and the men at the lower table joined the singing.

  Gareth’s hounds, waiting placidly beneath the trestle for table scraps, wriggled out from under and scattered, whining, in all directions. This phenomenon produced a swell of raucous laughter, for these were hunting dogs who had faced wild boars and dodged the spiked antlers of cornered stags.

  Gloriana sat stiffly, her chin raised and her shoulders straight, watching her husband’s approach. When Kenbrook drew closer, she saw that he was not so drunk as she had thought, but the knowledge was cold comfort. His eyes, blue as a stormy northern sea, were bright with merry defiance and a certain mockery.

  Her hand tightened around the wooden wine goblet she shared with Edward, but she overcame the urge to fling it at her husband’s head. As Dane mounted the dais and came to stand beh
ind her, Gloriana forced her fingers to go limp, to lie flat on the tabletop.

  She felt the warmth of his body against her back, even though they weren’t touching, and a strange, powerful sensation surged through her, wicked and primitive. His breath brushed her neck as he bent to speak quietly into her ear, and goose bumps raced down her arms and chest, hardening her nipples where they pressed against her chemise and fostering an ache in her most personal parts.

  “Go at once,” Kenbrook commented evenly, “and cover your hair.”

  Gloriana turned on the hard bench and looked up into his face. Although he smelled of ale, his eyes were clear and he had not slurred his words. She opened her mouth to speak and then closed it again, but not because she was afraid of this stranger she had wed. She simply had no wish to provide an evening’s entertainment for everyone else in the great hall.

  Edward initiated a protest, but before he’d stammered out more than a few words, one of Dane’s battlehardened hands moved from Gloriana’s shoulder, where it had come to rest lightly, to the boy’s. It was plain by Edward’s indrawn breath and pale cheeks that Dane’s hold was less than gentle.

  “Hold your tongue, pup,” Kenbrook warned. “I will not suffer your interference.”

  Gloriana felt her temper slipping. “Unhand him,” she hissed. “Now.”

  Dane chuckled and released his brother, and Gloriana imagined the bruise Edward would surely have by morning. And all because he had sought to defend her.

  Slowly, and with the regal dignity she had spent years perfecting, Gloriana rose from the bench. Cheeks burning, she nonetheless offered a slight nod to Kenbrook, that being the closest thing to the accustomed curtsy she could manage at the moment, and swept past him, holding her skirts, to descend the steps of the dais.

  Instead of taking a seat beside Gareth, Kenbrook followed Gloriana into the passageway outside the great hall, there to catch her elbow in a grasp so gentle that she barely felt it and, at the same time, so firm that she couldn’t have escaped. Seeing no point in wasting energy only to make a fool of herself, Gloriana did not attempt to break free.

  She glared up at Dane, wishing she had never learned to love him, and waited in silence.

  In the light of the torches burning in the passage, Kenbrook looked more, like a Viking than ever. He seemed impossibly tall, and his body exuded heat and strength. Gloriana did not need to touch him to know he would feel like a statue clothed in flesh, and his eyes, as he stared down at her in seeming consternation, were cold.

  A flood of unseemly warmth rushed through her.

  “Will you be returning to the great hall?” The question was odd, and there was no expression at all in Kenbrook’s voice when he uttered it. “After you’ve covered your hair, I mean?”

  “No, my lord,” Gloriana said, staring pointedly at his hand until he released her. He need never know that he’d set her senses aflame, just by touching her. “I find the company most tedious, and in any case, I have no intention of covering my hair.”

  For a long moment, Kenbrook was silent, and plainly stunned, as though she had struck him with the flat side of a broadsword. Evidently insubordination, even in so mild a form, was almost incomprehensible to him. Or perhaps he was simply stupid.

  Gloriana knew better, of course. He was known to be brilliant, especially in matters involving strategy, but she was angry enough, hurt enough, to indulge herself in purposeful misconception for a few moments.

  When he spoke, his voice was calm, even pleasant. Gloriana sensed that, while Dane was not the sort to harm a woman physically, he was dangerous all the same, for he could break her heart in a thousand different ways. Her body throbbed with dark, primal desires she could not begin to define.

  “As long as you are my wife, Gloriana,” he said, “you will obey me.”

  She was tired, and Kenbrook’s homecoming, however enlightening, had been a bitter disappointment. All her pretty dreams were melting away, like spring snow, and she had exhausted her store of restraint by holding her tongue in the great hall. “If you are not bound by our sacred vows, my lord,” Gloriana replied, “neither am I.”

  “Exactly what do you mean by that?”

  “I think you know,” she said.

  “Mariette.” The name was followed by a weighted sigh.

  “Your mistress,” Gloriana said, in a tone of tremulous triumph. What she felt, of course, was something quite different.

  “Mariette is not my mistress,” Kenbrook hissed, resting his hands on his lean hips now. The light of the torches glimmered in his hair and in the beginnings of a golden beard. “I assure you, my association with the mademoiselle has been of the purest nature.”

  Gloriana fought back the sudden tears burning behind her eyes and aching in her throat. If she wept before this man now, she would never forgive herself. “You might have given me a chance to please you,” she said, “before you brought her here to take my place.”

  “You do not understand—”

  “I’m afraid I do,” Gloriana went on. “Now, I should like to retire to my chambers and rest. This has been a most trying day.”

  “Yes,” Kenbrook agreed, after a long and rather thunderous silence, thrusting a hand through his hair. “Yes, you’re right, it has. We’ll speak tomorrow.”

  Gloriana bit her lower lip and nodded. There were things she wanted to say to her husband, questions she wanted to ask, but this was not the time. She must rest, bring her emotions under control, sort through the shards of her hopes and try to reassemble them into something new.

  “In Elaina’s solar, after mass,” he elaborated, and she thought she heard a note of sorrow in his voice. Laughter echoed from the great hall, and the sound was harsh and somehow foreign.

  Hadleigh Castle had been Gloriana’s home since she was twelve years old, and she’d been happy there. She had never doubted, until her husband returned to claim her, that she belonged within those ancient, sturdy walls. Now she wondered if there was any place for her in all the world and looked forward to the morrow, not with anticipation, but with disquiet.

  Gloriana’s handmaiden, Judith, had already come and gone when she reached her bedchamber. A tallow had been lit, though it was not completely dark outside, this being a summer’s night, and the covers were turned back on the bed. A basin of fresh water waited on a crude washstand beneath an ornate crucifix that had been Edwenna’s most treasured possession.

  Gloriana longed now for her foster mother’s counsel and consolation, as she had many other times since the fever had taken that good woman, as well as her husband, to realms unknown. Friar Cradoc believed that Edwenna and Cyrus were together in heaven, for they had both been devout and paradise was the eventual destination of all who kept the commandments of the Church—after a short visit to purgatory, perhaps, where penance could be served and the last stains of sin might be eradicated.

  Gently, Gloriana touched the pierced feet of the small wooden Christ. She hated to think of sweet Edwenna or of Cyrus, for that matter, spending so much as a moment in purgatory, a terrible place almost as frightening as hell itself. Gloriana had not known her foster father well, for he had been away so much, but Edwenna had been unfailingly kind and devoted herself to the avoidance of sin. Surely even a jealous and wrathful God would not wish to punish such a woman.

  Bowing her head, Gloriana murmured a quick but heartfelt prayer for the souls of Edwenna and Cyrus, then splashed her face at the basin and pulled her woolen gown off over her head. After folding the garment carefully and placing it in the proper chest, she blew out the candle and climbed into bed in her chemise. There, beneath the covers, as she had been assiduously taught, Gloriana wriggled out of her undergarment. It seemed cumbersome to go to so much trouble to be decent when one was all alone in a room anyway, but she performed the ritual nonetheless, because modesty required it.

  Lying in the gathering darkness, Gloriana finally allowed herself to weep. She had looked forward to this night for so long, expecting to b
e held by her husband, and cherished, and finally deflowered. She had even dared to hope she and Kenbrook might conceive a child right away. Instead, she was alone, while Dane’s true love slumbered beneath the same roof, and there was naught to look forward to but an ominous interview in Lady Hadleigh’s solar after morning mass.

  Although she thought she would lie sleepless until the morning came, Gloriana drifted off within moments and found herself in the grip of a dream that had not visited her in a long time.

  Purgatory, perhaps she was in purgatory, for this was a loud, busy place where everything moved too fast and people wore strange garments and spoke in a tongue Gloriana could not understand, even though it was familiar to her. In the dream, she was not Gloriana St. Gregory, a woman grown, but a child called Megan.

  She carried a beautiful doll in her arms and wandered, lost and alone, through the ruins of an old abbey, searching for someone who did not particularly want to be found. She watched as a gate took shape in a crumbling wall, almost remembering.

  Strange words came from her lips, and she knew what they meant only by the desolation in her heart. They don’t want me.

  She awakened suddenly, thrusting herself up and out of the dream, gasping for breath, her slender but sturdy body damp with perspiration.

  Gloriana lay trembling in her bed, remembering at last. Once, she had chattered incessantly about the Other Place, and even written about it, believing it to be real. The Lady Elaina and eventually Edwenna, as well, had cautioned her not to share the tales with anyone else. Over time, Gloriana had put away her writings and gradually faced the fact that she’d only imagined the adventure. Often, years passed without her thinking, even once, of that land she’d created in her mind, but then an image or a word would pop into her mind or she’d dream about it, as she had this night.

  She snuggled down in her thick feather mattress and closed her eyes, determined to sleep, but her bladder wanted emptying. Resigned, she reached for her chemise and, with a dutiful sigh, pulled it on over her head before slipping out from under the covers. Gloriana did not know which she hated more, the chamber pot beneath her bed or the noxious privies at the end of the passage, which emptied into a special conduit beneath the castle.