A Knight's Vow

by Lindsay Townsend

  Alyson had sneaked out with the squires. Alyson had saved his life, shielded him with her own fragile, slender body. Her courage appalled him. He was ashamed of his own rude health and yes yes, he was angry at her. To put herself in danger for a sister who did not care-it was love but it was also pride and folly. To do what she had done for him-did she not think? Had she forgotten her reason? He wore armor! The crossbolt doubtless would have pierced it, but he was the leader; it was for him to undergo such trials, not her. Did she think him feeble? Or did she not care that his own men might think him weak or easily duped?

  But she was so white, lying amidst the tatters of her torn gown. As part of the madness of this entire night he missed her silk veil and found himself wondering what she had done with it. Was it pinned under that shabby, cow-brown hood?

  “Hurry,” he muttered, aching to take her in his arms and race back to the castle. Biting down on the order to march, he told himself that they had to be slow, or her wound would bleed more. The nuns would not be able to keep pace, either, apart from Sister Ursula, who glided along beside Alyson’s litter in the middle of the column, easy as a shadow.

  Finally the tall walls and keep of Hardspen crawled over the horizon and Fulk shook his arm. “Leave everything to me, my lord,” he said in a low undertone. “I will send out riders to the castle, ensure all is made ready for our return, and for the comfort and housing of our unexpected guests”

  Grateful for his support, Guillelm nodded. “As you ever did in Outremer, Fulk.”

  His seneschal gave a small bow. “I am glad you remember.”

  Sister Ursula tried to keep him out of the main bedchamber while Alyson was being tended afresh, but Guillelm insisted on staying. “She is my wife.”

  “And it is a pity that you did not take better care of her,” Sister Ursula replied. “But then I have heard that you were ever reckless, Guillelm de La Rochelle.”

  The stinging rebuke made him boil with rage. Conscious of Gytha’s sympathetic look, the cowering embarrassment of the other maids, he moved again toward Alyson.

  A black-robed arm stopped him. “I will tend her.” Sister Ursula turned back to the parchment-pale, still figure. Alyson looked scarcely more than a sleeping child, her huddled shape lost in the great bed.

  “Please, let me help. Let me do something.”

  The nun ignored Guillelm’s plea. Briskly, she stripped Alyson of her cloak, veil, gown and undershift, asking at the same time for this and that salve to be put within her reach salves taken, with an irony that did not escape Guillelm, from Alyson’s own potion store.

  “Gytha, help me turn her,” Sister Ursula ordered. “Osmoda, bring a candle closer. I need to be able to check that there is no iron left in the wound”

  With Guillelm left standing, feeling anxious, frustrated and useless, by the foot of the bed, Alyson was rolled onto her stomach. Even in her drugged slumber she moaned, wincing.

  Sister Ursula washed the wound in Alyson’s left shoulder and sniffed it. “Deep, but wholesome,” she announced. “Whoever removed the arrow did so cleanly enough” She glanced at the row of bottles and basins by her feet. “We should pray first, before I use any of these potions or salves. It is God who heals, not us”

  “Wait,” said Guillelm, as Sister Ursula piously pulled the rugs away to kneel on the bare flags. “What are those other marks on her body?”

  The nun ignored him, stepping back from the bed. “I have changed my mind,” she said. “Any of my prayers would be better offered up in the chapel, in the company of my order.”

  Before Guillelm could even think of stopping her, Sister Ursula slipped through the door and was gone.

  Guillelm crouched in her place. The gouge in Alyson’s back, slicing diagonally across the top of her shoulder blade and piercing through to just beneath her collarbone, was bad enough, although Guillelm had seen similar injuries inflicted on soldiers in Outremer and the men had always survived. She was less cold to touch now, and the bleeding had stopped: the dressings that her sister had earlier packed so tightly against the torn muscle, sinews and chipped bone had staunched the flow. He tried to think of the remedies the Arab doctors had used but could not remember any. The shock of seeing Alyson hurt had turned him simple, it seemed.

  And there were those other marks …

  Guillelm gripped the edge of the bed, disbelief and anger exploding in his mind. “She has been beaten, many times,” he said. He was struggling to keep still-his body and spirit were screaming for revenge. He raked a hand across his chest, unaware that he was drawing blood.

  “Who did this?” he demanded, his free hand hovering a palm-span above the line of one long, ragged scar, tracing its painful track from the small of her back to the middle of her thigh. “Was it her father?”

  Osmoda whimpered and tottered for the door, intent on escape, but Gytha said and did nothing.

  “Answer me!” Guillelm punched the bed head, hearing its timbers crack and splinter. Transfixed on the threshold, Osmoda flinched, her scrawny face showing pure terror, but the old nurse, although her complexion changed from apple red to chalk white, looked at him with eyes full of understanding.

  “She would not let me see her naked,” she said. “I suspected but did not know for certain until recently.”

  Osmoda moaned and fled, the wide sleeves of her gown slapping against the stones of the corridor as she hurried away.

  “How recently? And who?” Such was the force of Guillelm’s building rage that he no longer could contain it. He shook with it and the great bed also shuddered. “Mother of God, I have never willingly hurt a woman and I have no wish to start now, but if you do not tell me-“

  Gytha plucked one of the salves off the floor and started to draw a sheet over her young mistress. When Guillelm reached across the edge of the bed and seized her wrist, she raised her eyes to him again.

  “It was her father,” Guillelm stated. “Sir Henry was ever strict.”

  “Sir Henry was not an easy man, but he loved his daughters. He would not raise a hand to either.” Gytha’s eyes were warm with a certain sympathy that sent a stake of pure ice through Guillelm’s vitals. He shied from the idea, his eyes unwillingly drawn to Alyson’s old hurts. There were long, thin lines running vertically and horizontally across her back, buttocks and legs.

  “Birch rods,” Gytha said softly, “sometimes a belt. It was not her father.”

  “It was mine.” Guillelm sat down hard on the stone flags and hid his face in his hands. The knowledge shamed and unmanned him. “Why?” he said. Alyson had been his father’s guest at Hardspen, had been set to be his betrothed and yet Lord Robert had done this. “How could he?” he whispered.

  Now Gytha did cover Alyson with the sheet and began to smear a lavender-scented salve around the area of the wound, although careful not to touch the wound itself. She worked with a deftness that surprised Guillelm, although in these past few moments he had thought himself beyond shock. “Why?” he asked again.

  “Your father drank and was fond of it, particularly malmsey wine.” Gytha passed the pot of salve to Guillelm and indicated a small raw place on Alyson’s forehead. When he gently worked some of the salve across the graze, the nurse resumed her story.

  “He could not always hold his drink. He became … tetchy, quick to take offense. The pages and maids kept out of his way at such times, or Alyson would send them away, out of range of his fists. He would pull her hair. Once I saw him slap her. He demanded her obedience, said he would not commit to their betrothal until she was bent to his will.”

  Moving with great care, Guillelm handed the salve back to the nurse. “I had wondered why my father and Alyson had not been formally betrothed, especially when Alyson and her people moved to the castle.”

  “Your father did that. He liked to keep her in doubt”

  His father had always done that filthy trick, Guillelm remembered.

  “He may have been a lord, but he had no honor.” Gytha cleared her throa
t. “I am sorry to say this, my lord-“

  “No, ‘tis best I know.” So much now made sense: Alyson’s reluctance to speak of his father, her sudden, inexplicable looks of fear. “She must truly hate me and mine,” he said bleakly.

  “Never, my lord!” Gytha shook her head so strongly that she loosened one of the pins from her head rail and it flew from her head, bouncing on the flags. “She would hear no ill word about you from anyone. There was one evening, soon after her own father had died.” Gytha pursued her lips and was silent.

  “Tell me” He dreaded to hear more but could not leave it so. “Please”

  Gytha sighed and settled on the edge of the bed, absently rubbing her knees over and over.

  “Lord Robert had been drinking hard that night. He called you a lost son, said you were worthless, reckless, useless. My lady Alyson flared up at once. She leapt from her seat on the dais and told him to his face that you were three times the worth of any man.

  “Lord Robert stalked from the hall at that. A few moments later, a squire came to my young mistress, told her she should join your father in his great chamber.”

  “His bedroom? But they were not plighted.”

  “Indeed they were not! But what could my lady do? She was in his house. Her father was dead. She had no protectors.

  “I followed her that night.”

  “That night? There had been other occasions?”

  “When Lord Robert summoned my lady to his chamber? Yes. Too many times for my peace of mind, I can say! When I asked Alyson about them, she said Lord Robert scolded her. About her gowns, for one matter, and her learning for another. He thought her altogether too showy. He took her book from her and burned her dresses, all but the plainest.

  “But I was speaking of that particular night,” Gytha went on, while Guillelm listened to Alyson’s light, fast breathing and the unearthly sound of the nuns in the chapel, singing, and wished his father into the darkest, deepest, hottest pit in hell. “That night, I followed her.”

  “So you said.”

  “Be not so sour, my lord, for it is good I did. You were a thousand leagues off in Outremer and my bird had no one else to look out for her. None but her own wits, and sometimes these failed when her temper overcame her. Mind, I think your father provoked her, too, so he had an excuse to punish.”

  “And he did so here” Guillelm looked about the main bedchamber, trying to conceive of the shadows and horrors the room forever would hold for Alyson and feeling a tremendous shame and despair. “A pity he did not die of a surfeit in the great hall, first.”

  “It would have saved my lady much hurt”

  About to say more, Gytha paused as Alyson turned on the bed, her legs thrashing briefly beneath the linen sheet. She quietened and Gytha said quickly, “I am glad you removed Lord Robert’s treasure chest from this room. He bent her over it, you see, while he chastised her.”

  Guillelm tried to swallow and found he could not. Tomorrow he would be burning that chest, he vowed, but tonight he had to know all, every grotesque detail. “You are sure of this?”

  Gytha nodded. “I saw with my own eyes! The door was ajar. He was very drunk, you see. He was using his belt, laying on harshly. I stopped him that night by screaming outside the chamber that I had seen an intruder in the castle, close to Alyson’s room” The nurse gave a grim smile. “He came out quickly enough from his chamber then, you may be sure! He was ever jealous of my lady, convinced all men were spying on her.”

  This was too close to what Guillelm himself felt at times and he hung his head, overwhelmed afresh with shame. “He did this because of me? Because she had spoken up for me?”

  “For other reasons, too, my lord. You must not reproach yourself.”

  How can I not? Guillelm thought, wondering how his father had faced his own confessor, how he had lived with what he had done.

  “Why did she say nothing to me? I would have understood.”

  “Can you imagine my lady wanting to spoil your good memories of Lord Robert by confessing any of this to you?”

  “I have no good memories to spoil.” Guillelm sighed. “Tell me this once and be done”

  Gytha rubbed her knees more and said in a hushed quick way, “I do not know the whole tale. I only learned what I did that night because I saw Alyson before she had time to collect herself.” The nurse glanced at her former charge, a slow blush stealing into her plump cheeks. “I fear I took advantage of her moment of weakness that night and persuaded her to talk by claiming that if she told me a little of what had passed between her and Lord Robert I could advise her on how best to please him and avoid such-‘

  “Please him!” Enraged afresh at his father, Guillelm could say no more.

  I am not proud of what I did.” Gytha sighed. “But, then, I truly feared for her.” Her lip curled. “I would not treat a dog as he had dealt with her that night! When I brought her out of the chamber, she could scarcely walk, she was shaking so much. And this was not the first time, no! The first I knew of it, but Lord Robert had whipped her before. For smiling too broadly at Sericus, a lame old man whom she has known since she was a child! She asked me, then, as we limped slowly back to her room, if she had done wrong. Lord Robert made her doubt herself.”

  Gytha talked more, a sordid, pitiful story that revealed Lord Robert as a bitter misogynist, intent on breaking Alyson in every way he could. His father had wanted her powerless and a victim and so had kept her in doubt of her own place at Hardspen-delaying their formal betrothal, denying her the clothes fit for her station, forbidding her to visit or see her friends, giving her no keys to the store chests. She had sat with him on the dais in the great hall but had not been allowed to speak, even if a villager from Olverton came and asked for audience with Lord Robert.

  “All this within the month she stayed with him,” Guillelm muttered, grinding his fists into his eyes, trying to rid himself of the unwelcome pictures that were now branded into his brain. He had known his father was a narrow, vengeful man but even so-

  “Mother of God!” he burst out.

  Gytha nodded. “He was eaten alive by jealousy, possessed by envy. Every day was worse than the one before. He would smile and say honeyed words to her, let her think he was content, that he approved of her and then he would change: draw back, become cold, not speak, summon her to his chamber.

  “I know this is a terrible thing to say, but the summer sickness was a blessing. With so many falling ill, Lord Robert had to allow her to practice her healing arts and allow her more freedom. When he was taken sick”-Gytha touched Alyson’s still hand, clasping the pale cool fingers in her own chapped palm-“I cannot pretend I was not glad.”

  “I want to kill him,” Guillelm said. “Grind and break his bones-“

  “Would you become another Lord Robert?” Gytha snorted. “He is already dead and buried, as well you know! Can you think of nothing better than that?”

  Astonished at her forthrightness, Guillelm fell silent.

  “Yes,” he said, after a long, tense moment. “Yes, I can, and I will.”

  “Good!” Gytha rose off the bed. “And I will fetch Sister Ursula to tend my lady now. She has prayed enough for one night.”

  Chapter 17

  Alyson leaned back against the pillows and looked at the parchment in her lap. Guillelm had found it for her from somewhere, and ink. He said she could use it to write down her potions, or the tithes that Olverton owed the church, or poetry or stories she remembered-anything she wanted.

  “The Arab doctors believe that when a woman is sick or injured, she must have everything she desires,” he had told her. “You are to indulge your every whim.”

  Carefully, using her left arm, Alyson reached for her cup of mint tisane, conscious of the stretch of the healing sinews in her shoulder. It was ten days since she had been brought back to Hardspen and every day saw her stronger, more interested in her surroundings.

  She could not become any more interested in Guillelm than she already wa
s, but she was becoming anxious of how she might appear to him, with her bandaged shoulder and unwashed hair. It was a small reassurance to her that he seemed equally anxious to please her; whether because of the Arab doctors or for his own reasons Alyson did not know, but she reveled in his attention.

  Five days ago, he had carried her outside their chamber to a made-up bed on the highest point of the keep, well out of range of archers, he said. There between the battlements, on the very roof of the castle, he had made what he called a paradise: a private, hidden garden.

  Paradise it was, Alyson thought, sipping her tisane and watching the swifts tumbling in the cloudless blue skies. The canopy set above her soft mattress creaked softly in the breeze. She had cool drinks waiting for her on a low table beside her couch, and pieces of fresh white bread and honey to eat. There were seven low wooden tubs set out over the roof filled with earth and turf and flowers-roses, lavender, marigolds, hyssop, speedwells and buttercups.

  “I carried the tubs up here, and the earth,” Guillelm said, grinning at her exclamation of delight. “The nuns planted the flowers; I was merely their water-bearer.”

  He did not mention her sister and Alyson did not ask. She felt too weary to delve more deeply into where Ursula might be. Not with her, certainly. She had not seen her sister since the night she had been injured, and even now she was not sure if Ursula’s presence had been a dream or not.

  But she was very glad of this high, private garden. The sight and scents of the flowers eased her. She watched a bumblebee, dusted with pollen, flying among the lavender, and a white butterfly basking on top of the battlement walls and felt truly safe, as she had as a child. She was happy to stay out here from sunrise to sunset.

  She dozed, stirred, ate some bread and honey and took up her quill. Gytha, sitting on a stool close to the canopy, put down her spindle and spread a rough cloth over Alyson so she would not spill ink on herself or the linen sheet.