Siren Song

by Roberta Gellis

  It was when Mauger bent low to clap a hand across William’s mouth so that he should not cry out that William saw his neighbor’s face. William jerked his head away, not because he suspected Mauger wished to harm him but for the contrary reason. Mauger had taken care of his men. Mauger had done his best to procure extra comfort for him. Now, he assumed, Mauger had come to nurse him. He could not bear it.

  With the strength of madness, William pushed Mauger away. The suddenness of his action, coupled with the abnormal strength of the shove, sent Mauger stag­gering backward. A chest against the wall caught him just behind the knees so that he sat down with a thump. This sound wakened Raymond, but he was so dazed with sleep that he could not account for what he had heard and he stared wildly around the room, missing Mauger, who, immobile with surprise, was no more than a slightly darker darkness in the dark room.

  Meanwhile, William had struggled upright. “No,” he cried, “no! I am quite well, quite well.”

  Raymond leapt to his feet and grabbed for William, but William had gotten out of the bed and stood up. Still befuddled, Raymond leaned too far so that he fell forward on the bed, and then, instead of jumping up and running around the end to grab William—he still had no idea that Mauger was in the room—he began to crawl across the bed, thinking it the quickest way. William, however, had not stood still. Somehow his fever-moiled brain had come to the conclusion that courtesy required him to walk to the door with Mauger and that that act would serve the double purpose of proving he was well enough to dispense with Mauger’s nursing.

  “See you out,” he mumbled, staggering forward. “My thanks. No need. See you out.”

  Mauger could believe neither his ears nor his eyes. After fighting him off as if he knew what was intended, William was coming toward him with hands outstretched. Mauger’s own guilt made him interpret William’s delusion as suspicion. A trap! his mind shrieked. He knew all along what you were trying to do and set a trap. Mute with terror, Mauger leapt to his feet, made one violent thrust at William with the knife he held, and dropped the weapon. He burst past William, flung open the door, and ran out.

  At that moment, Raymond swung off the bed behind William. He saw the violent gesture, realized for the first time that there was someone in the room beside himself and William, and leapt to attack. But William, who had been stabbed in the left arm, staggered back into his arms, bellowing with rage, pain, and surprise. Thus, Raymond’s first call for help was drowned in William’s outraged cry. What was worse, the blow catapulted William into an entirely different hallucinatory sequence and he began to fight Raymond.

  Twice more Raymond shouted to Hereford’s guards that the assassin was escaping. Unfortunately, the first time William landed such a blow in the young knight’s midsection that the warning was choked off into a howl of anguish. The next time Raymond called, he received instant response, but it was too late. Although the men needed no more than a word to send them hunting through the rooms and corridors and into the garden, Mauger was already out of the postern. Egbert had smiled grimly when he realized his master had also failed. He was very glad he would not be in the camp when Mauger returned to it. Silently he slipped around to the front of the main building and then into the stables where he settled down beside his master’s horse, which he would dutifully bring to camp the next morning.

  Chapter Twelve

  Alys chose a tally stick from the bundle she had been translating into written accounts. This was not because she distrusted Martin’s honesty or accuracy. Each stick was clearly marked with the nicks and scratches that identified the merchant or farmer to whom it pertained and the amounts were clearly incised in large and small notches. She chose to make a written record for several reasons. One leaf of parchment took much less space than a bundle of sticks. Moreover, written records produced awe and suppressed arguments. The villeins and serfs, at least, seemed to regard them as magic, as if the fact of writing a thing down on parchment made it true or inevitable.

  She was sufficiently absorbed in her work that Martin had to clear his throat to draw her attention. She finished inscribing the line and looked up.

  “There is a messenger from Wales.” Martin said.

  Alys smiled and said, “Well, send him in. Papa is a most faithful correspondent. I had a letter from him only five or six days ago.”

  She spoke before she thought, before she saw the unnatural glitter in Martin’s eyes. The fact that the steward’s eyes were full of tears came to her simultaneously with his words.

  “The letter he carries is not from the master.”

  “Dead?” Alys shrieked, leaping to her feet. “Papa is dead?”

  “No!” Martin exclaimed, scuttling around the table to take hold of her. “But he was hurt, sore hurt.”

  “You lie! You wish to make it easy. He is dead,” she whimpered.

  “No, lady, no,” Martin assured her, stroking the hand he held. “He was alive when the messenger left. The letter is from Sir Raymond.”

  The panic that had closed Alys’s throat and made her heart pound until she thought her breast would burst receded a little. There was a comfort in hearing Raymond’s name. She did not think about that but ran eagerly out into the hall to question the messenger. She tore the folded parchment from his hands, ripped off the seals, and began to read.

  The haste undid her. At first she could not make out more than a few words. Although the hand was clear and firm and she could distinguish each letter, they combined all wrong and made nonsense words, full of z’s, that she could not understand. Weeping with frustration, she sounded out a sentence to Martin, crying, “What does it mean? What does he say? Has he writ in Latin?”

  “Not Latin,” Martin replied. He could not read or write himself, but he had heard enough Latin in his years at the monastery that he understood it a little. What Alys had spoken was not Latin. The sounds were harsher, like— “Lady! He has writ as he speaks, not as we speak,” Martin exclaimed.

  Alys wiped her eyes and tried again. She found she had to read the letter aloud and to think of the sounds in Raymond’s voice, but Martin was right. In those terms the words were intelligible, and hearing in her mind Raymond’s pleasant baritone saying them calmed her. Somehow it was more possible to believe he was telling the truth, that her father was badly hurt but not dying. I will go to him, Alys thought. I will make him well. But the next sentence caught her eye just as she was about to lay the letter down and stopped her.

  “For certain reasons that I will tell you when we arrive, the Earl of Hereford has thought it best that I bring your father home to Marlowe.”

  Alys read it aloud twice to Martin. “Am I right in what he says? Is he bringing Papa home? But if he is hurt, will it not be very dangerous to jolt him in a cart so many miles?”

  “I do not know, my lady,” Martin replied. “I did not nurse the sick and know nothing of such matters, but I am sure Sir Raymond does what is best for our lord.” Only he was not sure. A horrible fear had come into his mind. Raymond desired Alys. If her father were dead… Martin pushed the idea away, telling himself that Raymond was a decent, honorable man.

  “But why?” Alys was crying. “I could be with Papa in a few days. I could ride faster to Wales than he can be brought here.”

  “Sir Raymond must know that, and the Earl of Hereford also,” Martin replied, trying to hide his worry. “They must feel that the danger of the journey is less than the danger of remaining.”

  There was no older woman of authority in the keep. Alys’s nurse-companion had died years in the past, and now Alys sensed Martin’s concealed fear. She needed comfort and support, and for all his soothing words, this time she could not obtain it from Martin. Clutching the letter nervously, she stood up.

  “Lady Elizabeth will know,” she said breathlessly. “She is a good physician.”

  She would have run to the boat just as she was, but Martin clung to her hand crying that it was getting cool and begging her to wait until a maid could fetch her
cloak and Diccon could warn two men-at-arms to accompany her. Alys could have pulled away, but the long habit of years prevented her from using any physical force on Martin—even as a child she could hurt him—and the little delay of making ready was in its own way soothing. It was what had always been done when she went to Hurley.

  The normalcy implied normalcy, implied that all was as usual, that the pattern of life was not broken. Papa had set the pattern of being accompanied to Hurley by two men-at-arms when she was a little child, and Alys had never gone without them, even though, as she grew up, she thought it was silly. There was no person in Hurley who did not know her almost as well as her own servants in Marlowe. She could not come to harm in Hurley. Peculiarly, relief flooded her at this check to her headlong flight, and she thanked Martin passionately for making her wait. Hope can breed on nothing when it must do so to avoid despair. Because she was still obeying her father, Alys was suddenly convinced that he would live. She did not think how silly it was. She hugged the comfort to her and did not even urge the boatmen to paddle faster.

  Only when she was hurrying up the short road to the keep did Alys begin to fear that Elizabeth might be out. She nearly burst into tears when Emma minced up to greet her. She guessed as quickly as her father who the stunning creature was, but she had no emotion to spare for outrage. All she could do was ask where Lady Elizabeth was.

  The answer came from the lady herself, who had been warned by a servant of Alys’s arrival and came running down from the women’s quarters just a minute too late to shield Alys from Emma’s greeting. She drew the girl quickly into the stairwell.

  “I am so sorry, my love,” Elizabeth murmured. “If I had known you were coming, I would have sent her away. She is the simplest creature, really silly, and likes to pretend she is mistress. Do not tell your papa—”

  Elizabeth’s voice checked suddenly as Alys winced. It was so dark in the hall and stairwell that Elizabeth had not noticed the girl’s pallor and too-wide eyes. She swallowed and stood still, clutching the rough stone and fighting a sudden overwhelming fear.

  “William?” she breathed. “Alys, is something wrong with your father?” She tried to stiffen her knees, which were threatening to buckle and pitch her over the un­guarded edge of the uneven stair. “Dead?” she whispered.

  “No, thank God,” Alys got out, and then began to cry.

  It was impossible for Elizabeth to take Alys in her arms. The stairs were too narrow and precipitous. She patted her and urged her upward, following close behind, one hand on the wall to steady herself. In her own chamber, she finally held Alys close until the girl could control her choking sobs.

  “Not dead,” she kept assuring herself, “not dead. He is not dead.”

  The murmured repetition penetrated to Alys, who began to shudder even harder and wailed, “But he is sore wounded and Raymond says he is bringing him home. Oh, Elizabeth, is that right? Can it be right? Will it not do him harm if he is hurt to drag him hundreds of miles in a jolting cart?”

  “Not in a cart, love,” Elizabeth said, scarcely knowing her own voice. “You told me when your father’s last letter came that they were West of Shrewsbury. Most likely they will carry him in a litter so far and then take him by water down the Severn to Gloucester. From there it is only fifty miles to Oxford, and that road is a good one. From Oxford they can come by boat again down the Thames right to Marlowe.”

  Alys stopped sobbing and looked hopefully at Elizabeth. “But the horses and the men…”

  “Does not the letter say, sweetheart?” Elizabeth asked tenderly, struggling to hold back her own tears. “Who wrote to you?”

  “Raymond wrote.” Alys took a deep, shaken breath and produced the letter. “I do not know. I did not read the whole letter. It is so hard to read. I was so afraid. I came here.”

  “You did just right, love, just right,” Elizabeth soothed. She looked at the sheet of parchment Alys was holding. “Come, read it now, while I sit with you.”

  “It is so hard to read,” Alys sighed. “He writes in his own tongue.”

  “The langue d’oc?” Elizabeth asked.

  Alys blinked at her. “What?”

  “Does Raymond say oc for oui?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Yes, he does. Do you know Raymond?”

  “They all say oc in his part of the country. I know from the poetry.”

  “Poetry?”

  Practical from the top of her highest curl to the tip of her longest toe, Alys would never have thought of wasting so useful a skill as reading on poetry. If Alys herself was to take the time from her work to read, it had better be a treatise on how to make better crops or get more milk from a cow or remove stains from silk.

  “Do you read poetry?” Alys asked in a puzzled tone.

  “Yes, and much of it is in the langue d’oc,” Elizabeth said. Her voice shook. Over the years, that had been William’s gift to her, books and scrolls of tales and poetry, a gift that would be safe from her illiterate husband. She looked hungrily at the letter in Alys’s hand, but Alys was already extending it toward her.

  “Read it to me,” she cried eagerly.

  Elizabeth stumbled over the first few words, but that was more because of the choking sensation in her throat when she read Raymond’s description of William’s hurts and illness than any trouble with the language. Alys was crying softly but Elizabeth did not stop reading until she finished that part. There was no need after that. The tears were more of relief than of fear now. The poor child had not really been able to make out what Raymond said and had thought the case was worse than it seemed. Unless Raymond was lying… No, he could not be such a fool as that.

  “It is not so bad, love,” Elizabeth said. “Your papa is very strong and—and he has a great desire to live.”

  She then read the sentence that reported Raymond would bring William home and went on, translating into Norman French as she went along. “It is thought here that the war is over for this time and that the Earls of Hereford and Gloucester will soon dismiss the levies. Until that time Sir Mauger, your neighbor at Hurley, will care for your father’s men. Arnald remains as master-at-arms so there should be no trouble. Sir Mauger will also bring home Le Bête, Gros Choc, and the young destrier. Lion, I am sorry to tell you, is dead. He did not suffer, as his throat was pierced by arrows in the same instant that your father was wounded.”

  “Poor Lion,” Alys sighed. “Papa will grieve for him.”

  There was then a description of the rescue which ended, “I should have stayed close by my lord, but the village seemed completely empty, and I fell neatly into the trap. I pray that you will try to forgive me, for I will never forgive myself.”

  Elizabeth stopped and looked at Alys, who had made a soft, inarticulate sound. The struggle in her face was very revealing, and after a moment, she asked, “Could he have saved Papa from being hurt?”

  “I doubt it very much,” Elizabeth replied. “It was not hand-to-hand combat but a flight of arrows. How could Raymond possibly stop that?”

  “Then why does he blame himself and ask my forgiveness?”

  In spite of her anxiety, Elizabeth could not help smiling. “I think he is just overwrought, love. He does not say, but it is possible he was lightly hurt himself, and he has doubtless been tending your father, and he knows how frightened and worried you would be when you had this news. He sounds like a very nice young man, just the kind to blame himself for what was not his fault.”

  “Do you really think he was hurt also?”

  There was a breathless quality to Alys’s question that confirmed Elizabeth’s suspicion. Alys either already loved the hireling knight or was on the thin edge of it. It was most unsuitable. She watched the girl with troubled eyes as she said, “Very likely not. I was just trying to make a reason for what he says. Alys, you should not think about this Raymond. He is only a hireling, without—without even a shirt to his back but what you have given him.”

  “It was you who said I must marry for love
,” Alys snapped.

  “Oh, Alys,” Elizabeth sighed, “there are so many fine young men. Do not permit yourself to love the wrong man. Please do not, dearling. It hurts. It hurts so much.”

  “I do not love anyone,” Alys said hastily, appalled by her sudden perception of Elizabeth’s long agony.

  She had never understood. Papa had concealed his misery behind silence, business, and bad temper. Elizabeth had always presented a facade of placidity and gentle humor, except that last time she and Papa had been together. Alys had almost forgotten that. In fact, she realized, she had wanted to forget it. Now, however, Elizabeth was concealing nothing. It was all she could do, the best warning she could give, to the girl she loved as a daughter.

  It was the wrong thing to do entirely. Elizabeth was steadfast rather than daring. Alys could be steadfast, but she was far more inclined to rush forward to meet trouble halfway. Although she cringed from the knowledge of Elizabeth’s pain, that was for Elizabeth’s sake. From her own point of view the depth of Elizabeth’s agony only made love more interesting. Anything to which one would cling in spite of such suffering must be precious indeed.

  But Elizabeth’s eyes had already returned to Raymond’s letter which held news of William. He went back to describing the battle and Elizabeth could not help thinking that the poor young man must be far deeper in love than Alys. He must know it was not necessary to spend all this time and effort to tell her things he could tell her in person. Most likely he wrote because he could not stop, because writing made him feel closer to her. Oh dear! As soon as William was well enough, she must warn him of what was going on.

  “’Your father is much beloved by the Earl of Hereford, who has provided us with every care and luxury this place affords. Do not fear for your father’s comfort while we travel. We come by water nearly all the way, as this will be swifter and easier for a man who cannot ride, and I hope will be in Marlowe by the end of the month.’”