Keeper of the Dream

by Penelope Williamson

  He looked down at her coifed head. He wished he could see her hair. When she was a girl she had worn it loose and it had fallen like a mantle of gold down her back, brushing the swell of her hips when she walked.

  The slipper was back on her foot, but she had not removed her arm from around his waist. “Raine, do you remember that day we danced by the river?”

  “I remember.” She had supplied the music, trilling in her sweet soprano, and they had twirled around and around until they became dizzy and had to lie down in the sun-bleached grass. He had been fifteen, but he had already known for two years what to do with a girl on a bed of grass.

  “You spent most of your time …” Her voice trailed off, as two pink roses bloomed in her cheeks.

  “Trying to put my hands all over your breasts,” he finished for her.

  She had tiny pleats at the corners of her mouth that turned into dimples when she smiled. At last she removed her arm, though she did it slowly, trailing her fingers across his back. She still had that dusting of freckles across her cheekbones and nose. Once they had played a game where he had tried to kiss every single one individually.

  “This is a splendid wedding, Raine.”

  “Is it? I wouldn’t know. The last one I went to was yours.”

  Her head whipped around, and her lavender-blue eyes filled with tears. “I thought you had forgiven me. That we could be friends again. But you hate me still, don’t you? You hate me for marrying Hugh.”

  He watched as a single tear trembled on the end of her pale lashes, then fell to roll down her cheek. “I don’t hate you. I learned long ago that life is divided into a few grand tragedies and a lot of little disappointments. You, sweet Sybil, were one of my little disappointments.”

  Her eyes squeezed shut and her mouth twisted, deepening the pleats and making her look older. “And this marriage of yours. Would you call it a grand tragedy or a little disappointment?”

  His gaze found his wife sitting by herself on the bridal dais. The diffused sunlight filtering through the yellow silk canopy made her sable hair gleam as if sprinkled with gold dust and highlighted the spare bones of her face. She looked like the princess that she was, and she was his, and he wanted her.

  “She brings me Rhuddlan and a title,” he said to the woman he had once loved, though his eyes remained on his wife, and the ache in his loins was for his wife as well. “And she will breed me sons with noble blood in their veins. I call that damned good fortune.”

  “You’ve changed, Raine. I don’t think I like the man you’ve become.” And pressing her hand to her mouth, Sybil whirled and ran away from him.

  Raine followed after her, but all his attention was still on his wife. And she was staring with avid fascination at his brother.

  “Take your eyes off my brother.”

  Arianna’s head jerked up, and she almost recoiled at the look of raw fury on Raine’s hard, dark face, especially because it was unexpected, and so undeserved.

  Raine sat, straddling the chair. His knee pressed into her thigh and stayed there. Arianna’s pulse tripped, and she clenched her jaw to control the shudder that coursed through her. She was afraid of him but a part of her knew, too, that if she didn’t begin now to stand up to his powerful personality, he would grind her down until there would be nothing of Arianna left but the chaff.

  “You are truly a bastard,” she said, her voice a choking whisper.

  “Aye, I truly am. And you are now a bastard’s wife, so take care you don’t forget it. Stay out of my brother’s bed.”

  “How dare you imply that I am so lacking in honor that I would betray a vow? Even one given to you, sir bastard knight—”

  “Enough!” He slammed the flat of his hand down onto the table. “My name is Raine, and from now on when you speak to me you will use it.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “I mean this, Arianna. Don’t push me too far.”

  “I intend to push you, Norman bastard I will push you back into the English bog from which you crawled.”

  She hadn’t been aware her fist had wrapped around the eating knife, until his hand lashed out, pinning her wrist in place.

  “Do you know who wins a joust? It is the knight who smites the hardest, cruelest blow. The man who shows no mercy.” He plucked the knife from her nerveless fingers. “I have never lost a joust, Arianna. Remember that.”

  The people at the tables around them had long ago gone silent, watching this first marital spat with unconcealed amusement. Raine still had hold of her wrist. He wasn’t hurting her. Yet she had no doubt that he could snap the bone in two simply by flexing those long, brown fingers.

  “Our guests are getting the wrong impression, wife. Smile at me.” He applied the barest pressure. Enough to draw her rebellious gaze back up to his face. “Smile at me, Arianna. And look as if you mean it.”

  She bared her teeth at him.

  Taliesin elbowed his way between them, throwing a heaping platter of sugared pancakes onto the table. One slid off the platter, bouncing off Raine’s lap on its way to the ground. “A fine performance, my lord,” the squire scolded. “Everyone is now convinced that you two adore one another.”

  A muscle jumped in Raine’s cheek as he swung his icy gaze onto the boy. “I have had enough from you as well.”

  “Aye, my lord. But you are bungling things again and—”

  “Taliesin …”

  The squire’s pale face went a little paler. He left without another word, but he was soon back—to carve a haunch of stag—and wearing a sulky look.

  Food and drink continued to be piled onto the table in ever greater quantities: boar’s head larded with herb sauce, godale spiced with juniper, roast pike in aspic. As the guests became satiated, the marshal of the hall sent forth entertainers—a juggler who could catch balls in a cup on his forehead, acrobats and conjurers, a man with marmosets that turned somersaults.

  Lastly came the morris dancers with their blackened faces. The bells on their legs jangled as they whirled to the accompaniment of a pipe and tabor and twirled long streamers of brightly colored cloths. One dancer carried a stick high in the air, and on it, bouncing in the hot summer breeze, was a bladder blown up and graphically painted to resemble a giant phallus.

  The guests burst into loud laughter, pointing at this enormous, bobbing, throbbing symbol of masculine power. Loud and bawdy jests about the night to come flew around the tables. Arianna sat stiff as a lance, fighting down the queasiness in her stomach. She had been to weddings before, so it wasn’t the first time that she had seen the raunchy spectacle. But she’d never been forced to witness it while sitting beside the man who would be instructing her in the marriage duty as soon as the sun set.

  The man beside her inclined his head in the direction of the dancer who bore the graphic bladder. “Now that, little wife, is more the sort of willow switch you’ll find beneath a Norman’s tunic.”

  God’s death … He’d meant it as a jest, surely he was only teasing her. But now Arianna began to fear the Normans not only engaged in unnatural acts but were built unnaturally as well.

  Earl Hugh of Chester banged his fist on the table, demanding quiet. Picking up a wine chalice he stood, lifting it high in the air. “Gentle ladies and noble men … I drink to my brother Raine, Lord of Rhuddlan, and his lady.”

  The guests all stood, lifting their wine and ale in the toast, while the local populace, hanging about beyond the lists and waiting for the wedding largesse, tossed their caps into the air and cheered. Again Earl Hugh banged for silence. “I drink to England and King Henry. May they reign supreme.”

  The wedding guests all drank to England, except for a scowling Ivor and Kilydd. There was less cheering from the ranks of peasants this time, and some rather loud grumbling in Welsh. Raine raised the dragon chalice to his lips, and then he held it out to Arianna.

  “Drink, wife.”

  Arianna’s hands curled into fists in her lap. “I would choke ere I swallowed one drop in a to
ast to England. It’s all I can do to sit here and watch you and your friends gloat after having tried to carve up my country as if it were a meat pie.”

  His pale eyes narrowed, his mouth hardened, and for a moment she fully expected him to force the wine down her throat, but instead he lifted his shoulder in a lazy shrug. “That’s the price you pay for losing.”

  “At least I find solace in the knowledge that it is not forever. One day King Arthur will arise from his golden bed on the Isle of Avalon and take up his magic sword, and you will be driven from this island. The day will come when Arthur will once again sit on his throne in London. The great seer Myrddin has so prophesied our ultimate victory.”

  “Ah, yes …” His long fingers toyed with the wine goblet’s dragon tail. “Taliesin tells me you’re something of a seer yourself. Be sure to let me know when Arthur is about to come so that I can begin to worry.”

  “That is a fault of you Normans—one of your many faults. You have no imagination.”

  “On the contrary. I know well the stench of a man after he’s been dead but a few hours, so I can easily imagine how your King Arthur must reek after lying on that golden bed and rotting for six hundred years. If he came back to sit on the throne in London, the inhabitants would expire from the stink.”

  Goaded now beyond fear, Arianna hurled at him the worst insult she could think of. “You, sir, are no true knight!”

  He startled her by throwing back his head and laughing. Sunlight glinted off his strong, tanned throat. For a moment she lost herself in looking at him. At his finely cut mouth, his flaring cheekbones. God help her, but he affected her in ways she didn’t understand, and didn’t like.

  “You may scoff, but the day will come,” she said, though her voice shook, “when you Normans and all your name will know defeat.”

  His face still bore traces of laughter and his eyes had changed color, from flint to soft smoke. His smoldering gaze fastened onto her mouth. “My name will include your son, Arianna. For you will have a son by me.”

  Arianna was convinced her heart had stopped. When it started up again, it beat in unsteady lurches. “No … I won’t …”

  “You will. I will plant him in your belly tonight.”

  10

  Raine knelt among sweet-smelling rushes, his brooding gaze focused on the bed. The gray fur coverlet had been folded back, the fine camlet sheets strewn with violets.

  The bishop swung a censer, sending clouds of incense wreathing around the embroidered canopy. The bronze lamps overhead swayed on their chains, causing shadows to undulate against the gilt-painted walls. The old man’s dry voice crackled like dead leaves as he chanted, “Dominus vobiscum …”

  If ever a marriage bed needed blessing, Raine thought, it was this one.

  God’s truth, he would rather have her willing. But willing or no, he would take her virginity. Their marriage had to be consummated this night, in case Owain showed up outside Rhuddlan’s walls tomorrow demanding back his daughter and his land. More than the truce, more even than his possession of the castle, Raine’s claim to Rhuddlan rested on his marriage to Arianna.

  The bishop shook the aspergillum and holy water flew out the holes of the perforated silver vessel, splattering the bed. The droplets spread, darkening the satin like tears of blood. He needed her virgin’s blood on the sheets come morning. He wanted a son growing in her belly before the end of summer.

  The bishop withdrew on a fanfare of horns. Raine stood and looked down at the bent head of his wife. He was struck by how white was her scalp where it showed in the part of her dark brown hair. He reached down for her, offering his hand. A moment later she put her palm in his. He felt a shudder pass through her body as he pulled her to her feet. When she lifted her eyes to his, he saw that they were filled with a stark kind of fear.

  Then a laughing, chattering group of women surrounded them, pulling her away from him.

  In the great hall below, his brother and the other guests had already made heavy inroads into a tun of malmsey wine. Raine endured in silence their ribald jests while he drank and waited for the women to put her to bed. He suddenly felt so tired that he just wanted to get it over with.

  His mood had turned so grim that when it came time for him to rejoin his bride in their chamber, the men took one look at his face and decided to forego their part in the bedding revels. Raine mounted the stairs alone.

  The door’s hide hinges squealed as he swung it open and Arianna jerked, snatching the sheet up under her chin. The cresset lamps had been doused, the room lit now only by the fire in the brazier and the single flame on the tall, filigreed candlestick beside the bed. The dim flickering light threw the bones of her face into shadowy relief.

  He searched for something to say to her, but could think of nothing. He pushed the door shut and leaned his shoulders against the worn, iron-banded wood. She stared back at him, her eyes black in her pale face.

  “Arianna …”he began, his voice slurred, husky with fatigue. He struggled for a way to reassure her without promising not to hurt her, for he knew that he would.

  But the words wouldn’t come. The tense silence dragged out between them. Her chin lifted and her lips curled into that beautiful sneer—the one that made him want to master her and make love to her, both at the same time. “Well met, Norman. Have you come to plant your babe in my belly?”

  His jaw hardened. He pushed himself off the door and started toward her. “Aye, wench,” he growled between his teeth.

  Her hands clutched the bedcovers tighter to her chest and she pressed back into the pillows.

  “Drop the sheet,” he said.

  “You could at least be chivalrous enough to—”

  “I said … drop the sheet.”

  Her hands fell to her sides, and the sheet slithered to her waist. His fist shot out, grabbing a handful of the satiny material and ripping it completely off her.

  Her palms pressed so hard into the mattress that the tendons stood out on her wrists. Her chest shuddered with the effort she made to contain her breathing. The smell of violets hung heavy in the air around the bed, but it was the sight of her naked body that caused the sweet ache of his sex to swell and harden with need.

  She wore still the bronze torque of twisted snakes around her neck; they seemed to curl and writhe with her heaving breaths. The skin of her breasts was so pale he could see the blue tracery of veins. He cupped one in his palm and felt her heartbeat quicken.

  He turned away, pulling off his tunic and chainse. The air felt cool on his bare chest. He sat on a leather coffer at the end to the bed to pull off his boots. Standing up again, he fumbled with the cords that fastened his braies to his chausses, cursing when one snarled into a knot. He peeled the undergarments down over his buttocks, kicking them aside.

  Her breath sucked in on a gasp.

  He turned his head and saw that her eyes had fastened on his blood-engorged sex. Her wide gaze moved up his stomach, over his chest, and he actually thought he could feel it caressing his flesh like hot, moist breath.

  He lay down onto the bed beside her, not touching her yet. The leather springs groaned beneath his weight and she shrank back as if she could pull the pillows around her like a shell.

  “Arianna, look at me.”

  She wouldn’t look at him, but lay instead staring straight up at the canopy overhead, as pale and stiff as the painted statue of the Virgin in the chapel. God’s mercy but this was going to be impossible.

  He traced the bronze circlet where it followed the con-tours of her collarbone. The metal was hot, scorching hot and it seemed to throb and pulse beneath his fingertips For a brief moment a strange, curling silver mist blurred the edges of his vision and a roaring rose in his ears, like the surf crashing against rocks. He shuddered and the mist dissipated, the crashing, sucking sounds receded. The metal collar was cool against his fingers and he was sure then that he had imagined it all.

  He pushed himself up onto his elbows and looked into his bride’s
still face. She blinked and then at last her eye focused onto him. Again he touched the circlet at he throat. “Why do you wear this?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  He wrapped his hands around her neck, pressing hi thumbs into the hollows just above the twisted metal collar, and felt the drumming of her blood. “When I ask you a question, wife, I want an answer.”

  Her pulse plunged and dipped. Her eyes were dark and haunted, like a Welsh mountain forest. He felt her swallow. “It is a seer’s torque. Only one with the true sight in allowed to wear it.”

  “And what things have you seen?”

  He watched, fascinated, as she ran her tongue along he full lower lip and then sucked the lip hard into her mouth “You. I saw you.”

  That mouth … he had to taste that mouth. He lowered his head, but she flinched, turning her face away, and so he stroked her hair where it pooled, thick and dark like spilled wine, over the violet-strewn pillows. He twisted a hank of it around his fist and brought it up to his face, breathing deeply.

  “It smells like a lemon,” he said, and cupping her cheeks in his hands, he forced her face around and kissed her.

  She jerked her head violently aside.

  He spanned her jaw with his long fingers, holding her in place as he lowered his head to recapture her lips. But she twisted beneath him, panting against his open mouth. “Stop. Please stop …”

  He grasped the sides of her head and gave her a little shake. “You are my wife, damn your thick head. You are supposed to submit to me.”

  “No, I don’t want—”

  His grip tightened, shaking her again, harder. “You will submit, Arianna. You will feel my seed spilling inside of you and then I will know that Rhuddlan is well and truly mine.”

  “Rhuddlan! That is all you care about. I am nothing but a name to you, a means to buy legitimacy, when all I ever wanted … all I want …” Her eyes brimmed with sudden tears and her chest heaved as she fought off a sob. “You can’t have me, not the part of me that matters.”