Medieval Mistletoe - One Magical Christmas Season

by Laurel O'Donnell

  “Damn her, but my mother’s already driving me mad,” Jos continued. “I’d barely set foot in the courtyard yesterday when she dared command me to bed. When I refused, she flew at me like a harridan, scolding me for not honoring her as our Lord commands while weeping at the same time that I was breaking her heart.”

  Gilliam laughed at that. “There’s no doubting that Lady Elyssa is a most persistent mother.”

  Jos’s jaw tightened. “I’ll see her gone from Freyne before I let myself be trapped in here, even for her. By God, but there’s not even an arrow slit in this chamber to show me a bit of sun when I’ve had enough of dark spaces.”

  Gilliam glanced around the room. “Huh, why didn’t we tell the workmen to cut a window when they rebuilt the hall?”

  “Because we were concentrating on more important structures and didn’t think to do it. There was no window in here before Freyne fell,” Jos replied with a careful shrug.

  After the siege that had destroyed this place some years back, the hall had been thrown up in haste with no consideration to comfort or craftsmanship, so the workmen and their protectors would have a place to lay their heads. Although Jos had been but a child at the time, his stepfather and foster father had included him in planning the reconstruction, using the work to teach him the art of defending his home and hall. Jos scanned the bare wooden walls of the chamber. Despite the dimness, he could still make out the lines where new walls had been joined to what had survived of the old hall. For no reason he could imagine, that irritated him.

  Gilliam laughed again. “I don’t know, Jos. I’m not certain I would mind being chained to this bed,” he said, using the pet name he’d forced on Jos when Jos had first come into his service.

  The big knight reached out to touch one of the bedposts, tracing one of the carvings that decorated it. “My poor brother must be bereft. How will he ever replace this piece with anything approaching its beauty?”

  That made Jos smile. Geoffrey of Coudray, Jos’s stepfather and Gilliam’s brother, was a man who liked his luxuries, and no matter how much Jos might resent it, this bed was truly an astonishing piece. The posts and the bedframe were carved with twining ivy, the thick foliage studded most improbably with both acorns and hazelnuts. The mattress was down-filled and the heavy blue bed curtains offered both privacy and warmth when closed. As his mother’s sole and separate property, it was hers to give where she pleased, and she had pleased to make a gift of it to Jos.

  Dropping his hand, Gilliam pulled his chair closer to the bed. “Shift toward me so I may see the damage.”

  Jos did as he was asked, revealing the livid line that marked him from the top of his shoulder to mid-chest. As the monks at Bec had insisted he do throughout the day, he lifted and rotated his right arm. His breath caught as he sought to bring it straight above him, then he carefully returned his arm to his side.

  Gilliam’s eyes widened. “The brothers are true miracle workers. I think me you’re lucky you still have your arm,” he said in no little wonder.

  “That’s what they said as well,” Jos replied. “But they’re no miracle workers. They don’t think I’ll ever again be able to lift a sword on the practice field much less use one on a battlefield. They offered more hope for using my bow although I may have to use it left-handed.”

  His foster father dismissed these predictions with a shrug. “That’s something only time will tell. You’re young and healthy. Did they also instruct you to keep that arm moving? If you don’t, the scar will grow stiff and you won’t even have your bow arm.”

  “Aye, Brother Gilliam, they did,” Jos retorted, teasing again. Lord, but it was good to be home!

  That made Gilliam grin and he flicked his fingers against Jos’s ribs. “Imp! You’re too thin. Tell me you haven’t returned to eating like a Churchman after living with them for these last months.”

  “Never again. You long ago showed me the error in my ways when it came to food.” Jos laughed, although the truth was he hadn’t really been hungry since August past.

  “So I did,” Gilliam agreed, then cocked his head to the side. His expression sobered. “Tell me. How do you fare?”

  “Well enough. The crossing was easier than I expected, but the cart ride from Bristol to Freyne nearly did me in.” Jos rotated his right shoulder again as he spoke.

  Contrary to the warnings of the monks who had tended him, the fresh sea air and the tossing of the ship had made Jos feel alive again. If only he could have sailed all the way to Freyne. He didn’t dare yet mount a horse, not when one accidental wrench might cost him all the progress he’d made over the last month. But neither could his pride tolerate the thought of arriving at Freyne on foot like some pilgrim. So instead he’d hired a cart. No matter how Jos had positioned himself in the damned thing, he still managed to jar his shoulder at least a dozen times a day.

  Gilliam nodded and made a quiet sound of agreement to acknowledge Jos’s statement. The expression in his eyes sharpened. “Now, I’ll ask my question again. How do you fare?”

  However gentle, it was a probe fraught with meaning deeper than Jos cared to explore at the moment. Or ever.

  “I am healing and I am back in England. That is all that matters.”

  “I think not, my lord,” the older man replied, his voice lingering significantly on the honorific. “Now answer my question. How do you fare?”

  “Or what? You’ll bounce a pig’s bladder off my head as you did when I was your squire?” Jos taunted with a smile.

  His deflection didn’t work. Gilliam lifted his brows and waited, all trace of humor gone from his expression. By that alone did Jos know that he would not be able to avoid the question.

  “What if I don’t wish to speak of it?” he dared to try one last time.

  “Spew it anyway,” Gilliam commanded gently. “You are punishing yourself. I can see it in your face. ”

  Of course Gilliam saw it. Of all the men in the world, this one knew him almost better than Jos knew himself.

  “Should I not be?” he threw back, his stomach knotting as it always did when he thought about August past. “Those I led trusted me to bring them safely home. I failed them.”

  It wasn’t the scar on his skin that pulled this time, it was the one on his heart beneath it. That wound would never heal. Every man in his company save him was dead. Their deaths, their grieving widows and mourning children, all lay upon his doorstep. How could he—or his heart—ever be whole again after that?

  “You did not fail them,” his foster father replied, his voice still gentle. “I think your guilt misplaced. Was it not on my behalf that you joined our king in his ill-fated venture, taking my place and Ashby’s men with you? If any man failed them, it was I for wanting to be at my wife’s side as she again came to childbed.” For all Lady Nicola’s healing skills, each child she brought forth cost her dearly and had taken two of her newborn daughters.

  “Ashby and Freyne,” Jos retorted. “My men and yours, as well as Lord Lavendon’s. You and he stayed behind because you were needed here. I went—”

  “Because our king commanded it,” Gilliam interrupted. “You did your sworn duty as God demands and every oathbound man must. If you must place blame, blame me, or better still, blame our king. It’s on his head that the whole of this misadventure rests.”

  Jos closed his eyes. “Hardly so,” he muttered.

  It hadn’t been duty that had taken him to France with King John. A year ago he had been newly knighted, and just come into his inheritance and his title, a rash and headstrong youth who dreamed of winning glory and riches by his exploits. His return to England found him a wiser, poorer man, stripped of his destrier and the value of his armor, indebted to others for a good part of the cost of his ransom, as well as injured in body and soul. When he opened his eyes Gilliam was still watching him.

  The big knight nodded slowly. “You dream of them,” he said. It was not a question.

  Jos frowned in surprise. He did dream of that Au
gust day, although watching the slaughter of his men night after night was more nightmare than dream. In his sleep he was just as helpless to save them as he had been in summer past.

  “How can you know that?” he demanded of Ashby’s master.

  “Do you think you’re the only one?” Gilliam replied. “All of us who let blood do so. I often relive my worst battles in my sleep. Most often it is the massacre of Acre that haunts me. King Richard’s crusade was my first true experience of war. I vow I see the faces of those I slaughtered there more clearly in my dreams than I could ever have seen them whilst awake and plying my sword. I think this is the way of it for those of us whom God has destined to be soldiers. It is our holy duty to retain the memory of the men who died at our sides or upon our swords. Because we do, the fallen continue to live on through us.”

  Jos blinked as the images of his dying friends again rose within him. Holy duty or not, he would not, could not ever forget.

  “How…?” The rest of his question, a plea to know how he was to live the rest of his life bearing this burden, remained unspoken.

  Gilliam needed only that word to know what his former squire asked. “Do not let your past and what you’ve done hold you captive. This is no easy task I set you, but you have no choice. If you cannot escape the past, the pain you presently carry will cripple you, and I don’t mean your body. I mean in your heart.”

  He reached out and pressed a careful finger to the center of Jos’s chest. “It can steal your soul, leaving you naught but an empty shell of a man, hardened to all emotion and bereft of any humanity. Or worse, drive you to madness.

  “Aye, we are warriors,” Gilliam continued, “but that is only what we do. It need not be who we are. Find your purpose outside of battles and bloodletting. Let that purpose be what defines you.”

  “Purpose?” Jos shot back, the raging word tainted with bitterness. “What purpose have I save my ability to kill? Am I not oathbound to slaughter on my king’s behalf? Was it not my ancestors’ skill at letting blood that won us Freyne and its title in the first place? Killing men is my heritage, and this hall,” he waved his good hand to indicate his father’s home, “forever binds me to that duty. Each year, I pay the king his taxes so he can send me and mine to yet more wars. Once I’m wedded, will my purpose not be to breed up sons, boys who have no choice but to become warriors just like their sire?”

  That made Jos’s stomach turn. How could he bring children into the world, knowing they might also be part of some futile, ill-planned battle that cost them their friends the way their father had killed his?

  How could he not? He was yet bound to Avice of Lavendon, and all too soon Lord Henry would demand that a date be set for their marriage ceremony. And this time the ceremony would take place. It had to. Lavendon had contributed a substantial amount to Jos’s ransom.

  Everything in him resisted the thought of marriage, no matter his battlefield regrets, no matter the promise he had made Lord Lavendon’s daughter. Poor little Avice. She deserved better than a husband who had no feeling for her and might well never regain full use of his sword arm.

  Or a man who wasn’t sure he wished to bring children into the world.

  Leaning back in his chair, Gilliam watched him, his expression still sober. “I don’t ask you to do what I haven’t done for myself. Have I ever told you that you were my purpose?”

  At Jos’s surprised and negative shake of his head, Gilliam freed a breath of a laugh. “I suppose I did not. There are not many who know. All I will say is that there are things worse than battle and death that can haunt a man. Becoming your foster father, the man responsible for turning a Church-ish lad into a skilled knight, was what restored honor to my life after I was certain I could never regain it. Geoff entrusted you to me when I did not trust myself. It was after you came to love me, after you nearly lost your life seeking to save me and the woman I love, that I became whole again.”

  Gilliam paused. Moisture sparked in his blue eyes as emotion softened his handsome face. “You did that for me,” he said at almost a whisper, then raised his voice. “You cannot know the depths of my pride in you, in the man you have become, even if you cannot believe you are that man right now.”

  He laid a hand on Jos’s left arm. “When you first arrived at Bec, the monks wrote that only God’s will kept you from dying in that filthy French keep. I give thanks you did not, for if you had, a part of me would have died with you. Our Lord has made a gift to you of your life. Accept it and live on, finding all the joy you can in each day. Rather than bathing in guilt over the deaths of those who fought with you, honor them for loving you enough that they willingly spent their lives while battling at your side.”

  Jos stared at the man who was more father than teacher to him. The bitterness and self-hatred that had poisoned his every waking moment and a good many of his dreams since August rose to fill his throat. Then, beneath it, a tiny spark of hope awoke. It begged him to accept what Gilliam offered.

  Try as he might, Jos couldn’t imagine how to do that, certainly not today and mostly likely not any day soon to come. All he wanted now was to be left alone to heal in precious solitude. But that wasn’t the answer his foster father wanted to hear.

  Jos bowed his head and lied. “As you will, my lord.”

  “Nay, I will not do it!”

  Avice of Lavendon would have stamped her foot in refusal if such behavior weren’t beneath a woman of ten-and-seven. She settled for slamming down the knife she’d been using to chop roasted chestnuts. Bits of nut flew across the ancient scarred surface of the worktable. The scullery lad walking behind her skittered backward in surprise, water sloshing from his pails. It puddled on an earthen floor long since beaten into rock-hardness.

  On the other side of the long worktable, her mother straightened with a start. Lady Adelicia pointed her wooden spoon at her daughter, scattering meaty bits of what would become the household’s Christmas pudding across the tabletop. “You’ll watch your tongue, girl. Though woman you now believe yourself to be, you remain my daughter and you’ll do as you are told or feel my wrath.”

  At the tiny stone oven built into the far wall of the kitchen shed, the cook and her daughter looked over their shoulders at their betters. Steam, scented with the warm aroma of baking bread and the rich smell of roasting chestnuts, curled out of the oven’s round mouth, tendrils snaking along the thatched roof above them. Lina and Sely were peas in a pod despite the difference in their ages, both small and wiry with fair hair and long bony noses. And, like Avice and Adelicia, they both wore stained white aprons over blue gowns and white headcloths to cover their hair.

  Lina’s gaze shifted from her lady to Avice. The older woman’s brows lifted as her pale gaze filled with more than a little amusement. Her expression suggested she thought Avice a kitten attempting to swallow the whole rat. Avice shifted so she could no longer see the servant who was like a second mother to her. Lifting her chin in defiance, she crossed her arms over her chest.

  “You cannot ask this of me. I won’t go to Freyne, not for one day and definitely not for all twelve nights of the Christmas holiday.” No one could force that on her. It wouldn’t be fair, not after the insult Lord Jocelyn had done to her.

  “Do you dare?” her mother shot back, more in shock than in anger.

  “Nay, don’t chide her, Adelicia,” said Lady Elyssa of Coudray, mother of the man who had refused to wed Avice almost a year ago.

  The noblewoman was dressed for travel on this chill and damp December day, wearing a set of thick green woolen gowns beneath a heavy brown cloak lined with squirrel. Her fiery hair was covered with a wide woolen scarf rather than her usual wimple. From Lavendon’s courtyard just outside the kitchen shed came the sound of the troop who escorted her. Bridle rings jingling, leather saddles creaking, Coudray’s horses stomped and huffed in impatience while their riders laughed and chatted with each other.

  Lady Elyssa threaded her way through the barrels, bags and stacked wheels of c
heese that crowded the walls of Lavendon’s kitchen to halt before Avice. She smiled. “I cannot blame you for refusing. After all, who would like to live at Freyne even for a little while, comfortless wreck that it still is?”

  While Avice didn’t know what Freyne looked like these days, it most surely had been in a terrible state when last she saw it, a year after the siege. She’d been shocked to her core at what had become of a castle she’d thought indestructible. The siege had reduced the exterior walls to naught but great piles of rock. Twisted and broken by a battering ram, the gates yet hung askew in the gateway. Indeed, until Lady Elyssa had returned to the keep to prepare it for Jocelyn’s return, the only people living in the hall were one clerk who served as steward, the workmen who ever labored on the place, and a few soldiers to protect them. No women, not even maidservants or washerwomen, took their rest within the circle of the castle’s broken walls.

  Lady Elyssa, the woman who should have already been Avice’s mother-by-marriage, extended her gloved hands, inviting Avice to take them. Avice refused to open her arms. With such a mother, was it any wonder that Jocelyn didn’t want her?

  Lady Elyssa was slender and tall—well, taller than Avice—with gorgeous copper hair and exotic features. Avice, on the other hand, knew what she was—plain and plump, with a round face, little knot of a nose, and brown hair and eyes—brown, brown, brown as dirt. Lord help her, if she could barely stand to look at herself when she caught her image in a pail of water or her mother’s glass, how could she expect Jocelyn to like her?

  Rather than take insult, Lady Elyssa clasped Avice by the upper arms and pulled her close. Avice stiffened against the embrace. She would not love this woman, not when she waited daily for the missive announcing what she was knew would surely come, that Jocelyn intended to dissolve their betrothal.