by Grace Ingram
“What conduct is this? The men will be bringing the bridegroom; will you shame him and your kin by resistance? It is woman’s fate, and you must submit to it.”
“Get you to bed and drink the wine,” whispered Bertille in her other ear. “Will you have Brentborough folk mock your folly? Drink and take heart; this is soon done.”
But she stood stiffly, and would neither drink nor let them take her smock. Nor would she lie in the sheets they drew back to enfold her. A horror of great darkness encompassed her, and a horror of these women who squawked and flapped and tugged at her like carrion crows over a carcass. They pushed her on to the bed by force and dragged the covers to her waist, and she sat against the pillows in a terror so great she could neither speak nor stir. The knife inside her silken sleeve pressed against her breast; she had concealed it among the rushes when they undressed her for the bath, and resumed it later. It was the one resource left her, to kill Red Adam and herself.
A quiet voice spoke from the doorway. “My ladies, will it please you leave my bride to me?”
The fowl-run cluckings stilled to whispers and giggles, but no one protested, and the flurry of gowns and wimples was suddenly banished. Red Adam closed the door.
“Under the circumstances I reckoned you would choose to forgo the ceremony of bedding us,” he remarked, thrusting home the heavy bar. He had thrown a cloak over his scarlet, and held in his left hand the wine cup someone had passed to him. He moved from the door, and his shadow swooped across the bed and over her.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said in that quiet voice. “I shall not hurt you.”
The same words had been uttered last night by the drunken brute who had despoiled her mouth with wine-fumed kisses and crushed her under him. Nausea rose in her. If he touched her she would vomit where she sat. With the light at his back he was a featureless shape of horror. Then he moved nearer, and the candlelight reached her face.
“Hell’s Teeth, must you look at me like that?” he demanded violently. “Am I a monster?”
His anger broke the trance. “You would have murdered Ivar unshriven!”
“No.”
“Your knife at his throat, and you deny—”
“To keep you from your uncle’s wrath, or shame with the Ladies’ Delight,” he answered. “I’m no murderer.”
“And I am no man’s whore.”
For a long moment he looked into her face, then nodded. “That I see.”
“It was a lie—a heartless trick—” Again she huddled her arms about her breasts, shivering in sudden chill.
He moved closer, and she flinched involuntarily, fear an icy thrill along all her nerves. “Don’t be afraid,” he said gently, as though she were seven rather than seventeen. “I shall not force you. I’ll not touch you against your will.”
That was beyond her belief, beyond all she knew of men, beyond her memory of the ravisher who had implanted this horror in her. She stared at him, and unexpectedly he smiled; not the flashing grin she had come to detest, but a softening of his face to kindness, compunction, and a rueful amusement that reminded her again how young he was.
“I mean it, owlet. Here, drink your wine and take heart.”
She took the cup from his hand, scarcely knowing what she did, and whispered over it, “Dare I believe you?”
“I’ll not make ill worse. If I forced you now you’d hate me forever,” he replied candidly, sitting down on the chest and linking his hands about one up-drawn knee. She sipped the wine, watching him over the cup’s rim, and as its warmth spread outward from her belly she resolved that his forbearance should not cozen her into submitting to her woman’s fate as his meek bedmate. Tears prickled at her lids from reaction and the relaxation of immediate fear. “We’ve time before us,” he said, echoing her thought with uncanny accuracy, and she repudiated it.
“Mary Mother, why could you not have sent me to the convent?”
“Have you reflected how any convent would have received you?” he asked soberly.
She had not, but a very brief consideration sufficed. An adequate dowry might induce some nunnery to admit her, to be treated as a penitent whore and live out her years in humiliation. He watched her from the chest. He had shrugged off the cloak, and flamed fire-red under the candle. She swallowed more wine, and its unaccustomed pungency caught at her throat and set her coughing. Angrily she mopped her eyes with the sheet’s edge, and then stiffened lest he should think she weakened.
“Should I thank you? I shall pray for a speedy widowing!”
“I’ll not quarrel with that so long as prayer suffices. Lie down and cover yourself, girl, for you are a sore temptation.”
“You will doubtless find consolation among the kitchen wenches.”
“I’ll not put that affront on my wife in her own household,” he told her bleakly.
It had been an unworthy jibe, but she would not retract; there was naught in her but hatred after all the day’s bludgeonings. She scowled at him, drained the cup and relinquished it into his hand instead of yielding to the impulse to hurl it at his head, and sullenly slid down between the sheets as his wary look gave place to a grin. He stood up, stretching so that his shadow leaped over bed and wall.
“I suppose if I were nobly ninny-witted I’d leave you to your virgin rest, but Devil grill me if I proclaim myself a eunuch on my wedding night,” he observed. Stooping, he hauled from under the bed a pallet of plaited straw, of the kind used by servants. He swung it beyond the bedfoot, under the window, and over it flashed her a rueful grin. “Some foreboding warned me to provide this. If I’d found you ready to leap into my bed, vixen, we might be very merry therein but we’d not be wedded.” He pulled his tunic over his head while she sought for an answer, kicked off his shoes, swung the cloak about him and blew out the candle. She heard the rustle of his movements, and then the straw creaked faintly under his weight. His voice provoked her through the dark. “Dare I risk sleeping?”
She choked, flounced over in the admirable feather bed, submerged her head in the pillow and heaved the covers over her uppermost ear. Through sheet, blanket and coverlid his voice still reached her. “Fair dreams be yours, sweet wife!” She gulped, hoping he lay hard and cold but not trusting her voice to say so. Then a sudden recollection jerked her head out.
“What have you done with Ivar?”
“Naught, as yet.”
“But—but what—you’ll not hang him?”
“I’ve a better use for him.”
“As a hold on me, you mean?”
“No need of a hostage now we’re wedded.”
“Then what do you intend?”
“That depends on him, but no hurt. Go to sleep, vixen. Your troubles will wear a fairer face in the morning—except my lord your uncle.”
Sound advice it might have been, but it was half the night before she could follow it.
An irregular hammering roused her, and she lifted on one elbow to see Red Adam assaulting the shutter. It yielded with a noise of splitting, and he addressed it in foreign words and pulled a splinter from his palm with his teeth. He knelt in the window splay to thrust forth his nose, his tousled head dark against scurrying clouds, and then turned bright eyes upon her.
“Ruing your bargain?” she demanded acidly.
“Not yet,” he answered equably. “I knew you’d teeth. But if you persist in snapping at me, vixen, all my forbearance will be wasted.”
“If you seek to cozen me—”
“I merely suggest you use the wit you were born with.”
“What do you mean?”
“We must show a decent amity in public or become the jest of the North Parts. Will you cry truce outside this chamber?”
Sourly she reflected upon that reasonable proposal. To humiliate him publicly would gratify her, but common sense warned her that such satisfaction would cost her more than its worth. She nodded sullenly.
“A bargain!” he announced briskly, and thrust the pallet under the big bed. “Get up, g
irl.” She clutched the covers to her as he advanced, jerked them back and swung his long legs in beside her. She shot forth and over the low bedfoot, grabbing at the dagger as she went. He sprawled there, mocking her panic, and rolled across the bed and back, creating havoc among sheets and pillows. His own dagger flashed; as she gasped, he pushed up his left shirt-sleeve, nicked the inside of his forearm, and squeezed and smeared a little blood in the midst of the bed. “That will silence those who maligned your virtue,” he said, suddenly sober. He picked up his tunic and dived into it, his next words coming muffled and jerky from within. “And now, Saints aid me, to show courtesy—to my new uncle.” He tied the throat lacings, clasped his belt, settled his dagger in its sheath and stooped for his shoes. He glanced sharply up at her. “Do you never smile?”
“What cause have I?”
“It might become you.” He unbarred the door, said over his shoulder, “I’ll send the women to you,” stepped out and shouted, “Odo!”
Odo must have been waiting close at hand, for she heard the rumble of his voice at once. She paid little heed until Red Adam’s voice lifted in anger.
“… let the fellow get clear away?”
“Safest rid of a knife-minded knave like that, Master, so I thought it wisest to let him run.”
“Hell’s Teeth! You can’t think. Whenever you try, you prove it. It’s a compliment to call you beetle-witted.”
“Now, Master Adam, you don’t want a back-stabbing hound lurking—”
“I said I’d a use for him. Don’t we need something better in the stables than that redhaired bastard? Hell’s Teeth, Odo, you’ll find thinking fatal some day!”
“Master Adam—”
“In fact, I’ll most likely murder you myself.”
Julitta waited, unconsciously holding her breath, for the order consigning Odo to dungeon, stocks or whipping post, but apparently those exasperated words were to be the end of the matter, for a moment later Red Adam put his head round the door.
“As you doubtless heard, my well-intentioned half-wit let your Ivar run. He’s had the best part of a day’s start. Has he kinsmen or friends where he might refuge, do you know?”
“Did you mean it—that you’d take him into your service?”
“How could I do less, when the blame’s mine? And I’d rather have him peaceably occupied in my stables than prowling with a grudge. Gives me an itch between the blade-bones.”
“By your leave, Lord Adam!” an imperative voice commanded, and his head disappeared.
“Always at your gracious bidding, Lady Matilda!”
With compressed lips and anger-heightened color she swept in, at the head of a procession that might make the boldest hero give way. Bertille, the seneschal’s and marshal’s wives, and a serving wench with towels, basin and ewer crammed the narrow space, twittering with excitement, examining and freely commenting upon the state of the bridal bed, assaulting her with explicit questions about Red Adam’s conduct therein. Julitta, taking refuge in a dour silence which she hoped they would mistake for modesty, washed and dried herself, glad to turn her back. Even the servant goggled like a frog as she took the towel from her hand. Lady Matilda’s voice beat insistently at her ears, demanding for the fifth or fifteenth time a reply to a query that scorched her cheeks.
“Are you smitten deaf or daft, girl? We are all wedded women here, so answer straightway.”
It suddenly came to Julitta that she need never again heed Lady Matilda’s bidding, that she was free of her carping for ever. “That concerns only my husband and me, my lady.” The serving wench dropped a towel into the basin, Bertille clutched at her belly as though to guard the child within from hurt, and Lady Matilda’s sallow face mottled red.
“Insolence!” she quacked like an affronted duck. “You dare—”
Julitta took the scarlet gown from palsied hands and hauled it over her head. Tugging it into place, she turned a challenging stare on her uncle’s wife. “You were saying, my lady?”
Recognition of her status reached Lady Matilda. “Ungrateful girl, we are concerned for your welfare and the child you may have conceived, but if you set yourself up above your guardians who have tried to teach you seemliness, we will trouble you no more. Wench, what are you about, gaping like a zany? A comb and a mirror for your lady, at once! The service in this hold would disgrace a cowbyre, but what can be expected when it has lacked a mistress these eighteen years? Dolt, do you reckon you are currying a horse?”
Julitta seized the comb herself. “Take away that water, girl!” she bade briskly, doubly angry that she and her servant should be chided each in the other’s presence. Only appreciation of gossip’s power restrained her until the broad buttocks had switched round the door. “The service of Brentborough is for me to amend.”
“What folly and pride is this? You are far too young, and what instruction have you ever had in ordering a household? Your uncle and I have decided that Gilbert and Bertille shall remain to school you in your duties, since Lord Adam has no elder kinswoman and there is in this hold no lady fit to take you in charge—”
“You mistake, Lady Matilda,” said Lady Constance’s voice from the doorway. “This household has been in my hands many years, and it is my privilege to take my lady in charge.”
Julitta desired no overseer, and the thought of being governed yet by her uncle’s emissaries gave her an acute griping of the guts. The fair woman was smiling invincibly, Lady Matilda drawing breath for battle. They might rend one another asunder and strew Brentborough with fragments for all she cared, but a surer instinct bade her seize control. “That is for my lord to decide,” she declared, and reflected, as she turned to the mirror and dragged the comb through tangles, that Red Adam would never tolerate Gilbert and Bertille in command of his household.
Lady Constance, her smile undimmed, pressed between the others, took the comb from Julitta’s hand and set about ordering her hair. It was so unnatural to the Montrigord women to attend upon their kinswoman that no one thought to forestall her, and Julitta’s toilet was completed in eloquent silence. She drew a deep breath, braced her shoulders, and stepped out into her frightening new life.
Stumbling feet rushed at her from the stairhead, knees thudded on the boards, a weight fell against her legs and hands clawed at her gown. She looked down into a face that had been pretty before much weeping swelled and blotched it.
“Oh, Avice, I am sorry!”
“My lady, my lady, help me!”
“What can I do?” Julitta asked bitterly, gripping her heaving shoulders. “Ivar has fled. I’ll try to find him—”
“That’ll be too late,” the girl whimpered. “We’d have been wed if there’d been a hut free in the garth. But now Ivar’s gone, and—and—oh, my lady, I’ll have to take Cuthbert the smith! He’s spoke for me—soon’s they put Ivar out o’ the gate—and my lord said yes. Oh, my lady, save me!”
“If it’s possible—but you know Lord William will do nothing for my asking.”
“If you’d speak for me—keep me with you—if you’d get Lord Adam to ask it—m’ lord won’t refuse him nowt he asks. Please, m’ lady! I’d serve you faithful—I can sew and wash and cook—but not that smutty beast! I’ll chuck mesen ower t’ cliff-end afore I’ll lay wi’ him!” She was wailing like a child in the dialect of the peasantry, all her painfully-learned French cast from her. Julitta stiffened. Avice read the revulsion in her face, uttered a lamentable howl and buried her face in her gown.
“Get up, get up, you shameless girl!” Lady Matilda clucked. “You’ll do as your lord bids you. Obedience—Lord Adam!”
He was standing by the stairhead. Avice cast one wild look at him over her shoulder and clutched Julitta’s legs, gulping sobs. He frowned at her, his mouth twisting in distaste, and Julitta stiffly did her what justice she might.
“She was Ivar’s sweetheart. My uncle would give her to a man she hates.”
“Fellow-feeling? Is there naught in her but salt water?”
“Ask him—oh, ask him!”
She had to swallow twice before she could force the words between her teeth. “My lord, I ask a boon.”
“This misery?”
“She is in great distress.”
“You’ll need a decent girl to attend you; the castle wenches are strumpets every one. Only keep her from dripping under my feet.”
“I thank you,” she began, illogically resenting his acquiescence.
“Ask and it shall be given unto you,” he said. “A bridegroom’s ardor, burning undamped.” He took her hand in the grip she was coming to know, and she forced it to stay passive. The oaf was grinning; there could be no trace of delicate feeling in all his carcass. She looked up indignantly, and he stooped his head to drop a kiss on her cheek. The women behind cooed and giggled, Julitta’s face flamed, and he drew her down the stair and the length of the hall to the dais, the perfect semblance of a bashful bride.
Before the high chair that was now hers he turned her to face them all, guests and household officers, soldiers, serving men and wenches, and released her hands. One of the men passed him something that gleamed and clinked. “My lady,” he announced formally, “as morning-gift I lay all I possess in your hands.” He placed in them a bunch of keys on a silver chain.
She bit her lip and looked down at them, trying to utter some equally formal acknowledgment. Courtly gesture and words were all a maid’s dreams might spin for her, all she had hoped someday to receive, and they came in mockery from the wrong man. But she had to collect herself; he was beckoning forward man after man to present to her.
“Sir Bertram FitzAlain, seneschal of Brentborough.”
This was he who had passed the keys, massive and gray, his bones stark under withering flesh. The brown eyes peering under heavy brows were friendly, and so was the rough voice that declared him at her service. Until he fumbled at her extended hand it was hard to realize that he was nearly blind.
