Not stone. Blood. And flesh. Flesh of his flesh. He couldn’t believe that his own father had abandoned him to such a fate … could love him so little …
He found the words he sought, and somewhere the courage to speak them. “Afterward … will you give me a knife?”
Surprise showed on the knight’s face. Triumph. “So that you may kill yourself?”
I am your son, damn you! Your son! How could you have condemned me to this, your own son? “Nay … So that I can kill him … my father.”
Hate ate at his guts. Hate and a sick despair. He felt unwanted, unworthy … unloved. A raven croaked, the wind blew. Rain fell on his face. He lifted his gaze toward the bloodred walls of Rhuddlan keep and waited for the pain….
Rain splashed on her face. The ravens croaked her name as she fought through luminescent mists that clung to her mind like silver webs. She brushed the sticky strands aside and touched smooth skin instead, and the ravens’ cries changed, became a boy’s voice. “My lady …”
She felt hard dirt beneath her back and dampness seeping into her clothes. She looked into two eyes, black as bruises. A white hand flashed across her face and water flicked onto her cheeks. “Taliesin?”
She tried to sit up, but the world spun around and darkened. Nausea rose in her throat. She clutched at the front of his leather tunic and struggled not to gag.
“Now, don’t you be spewing up all over me, my lady,” he said. “This is a new tunic I’ve got on and it cost me all my winnings at dice.”
Arianna started to laugh and choked instead. Eventually the dizziness subsided, along with the nausea. She leaned back. Taliesin was wearing his golden helmet and it seemed to glow within the darkness, lighting his face so that his eyes shone like twin stars.
She released her grip on his tunic. “What are you doing here? Has Lord Raine returned?”
“Nay, not till nightfall. Milady, you are trembling.” His head dipped forward until his face was only inches from hers. He had the strangest eyes she had ever seen. It was almost as if they were lit from within, but with a cold light, like moonshine. “You saw,” he said. “You saw what happened to my lord here.”
His eyes drew the truth from her. “I saw …” she whispered, “but I don’t understand.” Suddenly the memory of the vision was so fresh that she could taste it, salty and rusty, like blood. She hadn’t just witnessed what had happened in Rhuddlan’s bailey that day, she had been Raine. “Eyes … oh God, Taliesin, they were going to put out his eyes.”
Somehow she was pressed against his chest and he was stroking her back. He no longer seemed like a such a boy. Perhaps it was the strength of the arm that held her, or the deep musical tones of his voice. “Hush now. It didn’t happen, for you know how my lord grew to manhood whole and hearty.”
She shuddered again, pulling away from him. “But it almost happened, didn’t it? Taliesin, do you know why? What was he doing here?”
Wisps of hair had come loose from her braids. He brushed them back from her face. “It was before your father took back Rhuddlan Castle from the Normans, back when the old Earl of Chester was overlord of this part of the marcher lands.”
“Raine’s father?”
“Aye, back when Stephen and Matilda were fighting over England’s throne and all the barons were forced to take one side or the other. The old earl seemed to have a knack for knowing which side would emerge the victor at any given time and he switched his allegiance often. But one day he outguessed himself, jumping over to Stephen when he should have stuck with Matilda. The mistake cost him several castles, one of which was Rhuddlan.
“The castle was taken over by one of Matilda’s favorite barons, Roger de Bessin. The Earl of Chester also agreed to give up his son to this new Lord of Rhuddlan, as a hostage to ensure his future neutrality. But the earl had the last laugh because the son he delivered was not Hugh, as everyone expected, but his bastard. Who was and is, as you know, my liege lord, Raine.”
“So they kept him locked up here in the cellars.” Arianna’s heart ached as she thought of the letters painstakingly carved into the stone. It would have taken weeks, months …
“For the whole of that summer and autumn,” Taliesin said, as if he had read her thoughts. “And Roger de Bessin vowed that if the old earl broke his neutrality, he would pluck out Raine’s eyes and … well, do worse in retaliation.”
Terror filled her mouth, acrid and hot. She was in the bailey, waiting, waiting for them to cut him, to put out her eyes—no, his eyes.
“But it didn’t happen,” she said. Her head throbbed. He had been so hurt, so bitterly hurt to think that his father had abandoned and betrayed him. The pain, his pain, was so still raw and fresh it was as if she had a gaping hole in her heart. She pressed her hand to her chest. “He was wrong, you see,” she said to Taliesin, desperate to set this one point straight, for it seemed important. Important to that boy in the cellar. “It never happened, so his father must have loved him after all.”
Taliesin shook his head, and Arianna saw within his moonstruck eyes a wisdom that was old and battered and worn like the earth itself. “Roger de Bessin was so awed by my lord’s courage that he couldn’t bring himself to carry out the deed. ’Tis that simple, milady. And that difficult.”
The pain grew worse. She ground her fist into her breast. “And his father—”
“Laughed. When he was told what they would do to his son, the Earl of Chester laughed. They vowed to blind the boy, to cut out his manhood, and all he did was laugh and laugh.”
Arianna was at the window, waiting, when the trumpeter of the guard sounded the lord’s approach.
The sky was a deep indigo blue, with only a thread of light on the horizon. A new moon, thin and sharp as a sickle, hung above the gatehouse. At the bottom of the stairs to the hall, a varlet was just lighting the torches. The flames flapped like banners in a gusty wind.
Two horses trotted into the pool of light. Arianna saw a flash of fox-red hair. Somehow she was not surprised to find Taliesin at his master’s side, as if he had never left there. That afternoon he had vanished from the wine vault when her back was turned, like a wraith fading back into a crypt. Already she wondered if she had imagined him, a codicil to her vision.
She watched from the window as Raine dismounted. He glanced up as soon as his foot touched the ground. She almost backed away, but then she didn’t. Torchlight glimmered off the sharp bones of his face; the wind ruffled his hair, causing it to stand up like devil’s horns.
Someone hailed him from the door of the hall. With one last look at her, he mounted the stairs. Fear and excitement unfurled deep within her belly, like coils of hot smoke that became entwined until she couldn’t tell one from the other.
She looked around the bedchamber while she waited for him to come. A fire burned in the brazier and nearby stood a bathing tub, perfumed steam coiling into the air. A carpeted dormant table had been laid out with simnel and oat cakes, fruit and cheese, and ewers of wine and ale. Dried herbs smoldered in a bowl to sweeten the air. The rushes had been changed. Even the bed curtains had been taken down and had the dust beaten out of them.
He was a long time in coming. She was pacing by the time she heard the clink of spurs and scuffling sound of boots coming up the stairs. She noticed that her hands were clasped together like a penitent nun’s and she forced them down to her sides. Her palms were sweating; she wiped them on her skirt.
The door swung open on newly tallowed hinges and he entered, bringing with him the coolness of the night and the smell of the sea.
He was not alone. Sir Odo came with him, followed by three other men, all speaking at once, vying for his attention. She poured a jack of ale and put it into his hand, but he was talking at the time and acknowledged her with only a nod. She felt in the way, but when she started for the door, he said, “Stay, Arianna.”
When he spoke to his men there was a tone of quiet command in his voice, and they made their respect, their admiration, of him obvious
. As she watched him she thought of how, with a title and lands even half the size of Chester’s, a man of his talents could have made himself powerful enough to rival the king. Yet he had been given nothing from his father. Nothing but betrayal. No wonder he wore his base blood like a shirt of pitch, when it had brought him nothing but pain.
The men left and at last they were alone.
He turned from shutting the door, and his gaze roamed the length of her. His eyes grew dark and heavy lidded, and a tautness came over his face. Within her the strange tension coiled, warm and moist like the steam from his bath.
She wished he would speak first, but when he didn’t she said, “There is a bath prepared for you, my lord. And food.”
He looked around the room. “I think I could easily come to like having a wife,” he said, and a smile blazed across his face, bright and dazzling like hot sunshine.
Arianna’s heartbeat skittered. Surely it was against the laws of God for a man to look like that when he smiled. It wasn’t until she opened her mouth to speak that she realized that smile had stolen her breath. “But I doubt I shall come to like having a husband,” she finally managed.
His gaze fastened onto her mouth, and she felt it as if he had touched her there with his fingertips. Or his lips.
“Help me to undress, wife,” he said, his voice rough.
She obeyed, coming up to help him off with his broigne, as she had done so often for her brothers after a raid or a day’s hunting. But his hands closed over her arms and he pulled her up against him. He dipped his head and for a poised moment they stood almost nose to nose. She had time to think that his eyes really did darken to warm soot just before he kissed her.
He kissed her hard, bruising her lips. Her hands slid around his waist and she arched against his chest, flattening her breasts against the horn plates in his broigne. His hand slid down her back, cupping her bottom, bringing her up against the hard ridge of his sex. When at last he raised his head, her lips throbbed and she touched them with her tongue, tasting ale, and him.
He seized her wrist and thrust her hand up beneath his chainse. “And what about that, Arianna? Will you come to like that?”
His member was alive beneath her palm—stiff, thick, hot. Her breathing was so loud, her heart hammering so wildly, she thought he wouldn’t have been able to hear her answer even if she could have found the words. She waited until he let her go before she backed away from him. Her hand felt on fire.
He shrugged out of his broigne and she took it from him. Its weight dragged against her arms as she hung it on a wall perch. When she turned around he was pulling his quilted chainse over his head. He winced as the abrupt movement tugged at the cut she’d made on his arm. He had bandaged it with a rag and the cloth was stained brown with dried blood. She wondered how he would punish her for cutting him. And for the sackcloth and ashes.
He stretched, flexing a back strapped with muscle. He walked over to the table and poured more ale into the leather jack. As he brought the jack to his mouth, the veins and tendons in his forearm pushed out against the skin. She thought of how one blow from that arm with all his strength could kill her. She knew him better now but not well enough, and she was still afraid of him.
“Will you beat me, husband?”
He turned to face her, his brows raised slightly in a look of surprise. Foam laced his upper lip and he licked it off.
“I don’t normally beat my women just to get in the practice. Have you done something today that deserves punishment?” She clasped her hands behind her back and held herself tall. “So you would beat me if you determined I deserved it,” she said.
He set the jack back on the table, though his gaze remained fixed on her face. His lips parted slightly on an expulsion of breath. “What have you done?”
“You misunderstand. It’s simply that I am not used to your Norman ways and I only wished to know where … where I stand with you.” If I need to be afraid of you, was what she meant, though her pride would not let her ask that. “In Wales, the law states a husband may beat his wife for three reasons only—if she lies with another, if she gambles away his goods, or if she insults his manhood. If he strikes her for any other reason, she may disavow the marriage. Unless he pays her a sarhaed, of course. Her honor-price.” The need to cry was now so strong, her throat was tight with it. “I cannot allow you to beat me for any other reason.”
“You cannot allow? You seem to have forgotten that you are a subject of England now, and in England a man can do what he wills with his wife.”
“He can beat her just to get in the practice,” she said, unable to keep the bitterness she felt from tinging her voice. As a Cymraes she’d had rights and respect; married to him she had nothing at all.
He came up to her, and she had to stiffen every muscle to keep from backing away. Though she thought by the slow, lazy way he moved that he wasn’t angry and wouldn’t hit her. This time.
She had her hair woven into a single fat braid that fell over her shoulder. His fingers started at her neck and followed the length of it where it curled around her breast. “Have you been stricken with a gambling fever?” he asked.
Startled, she realized he was unbraiding her hair. “Nay, but—”
His voice was flat and hard, but the fingers combing through her hair were gentle. “If I catch you with another man, Arianna, I won’t beat you, I shall kill you. And as for my manhood … it is pointless to cast slurs upon an object which is unassailable.” Something flashed in his eyes. Arianna thought it could have almost been laughter. “So do you understand now where you stand with me?”
Arianna tried to think, though her head suddenly felt slow and thick, like resin on a cold day. All she could concentrate on was the way his fingers felt in her hair. “I am to be your obedient and submissive chattel.”
His hand fell to his side. “Then at last we are in agreement about something.”
He turned away from her abruptly. He threw himself into a chair with a grunt and began to work loose the heel of one boot with the toe of the other.
Arianna watched him, dazed for a moment. Then she knelt in the rushes before him, her bottom settling down onto her heels. She pulled off his boots, and then his slippers. His chausses hugged the muscles of his calves and thighs, and she remembered how he had looked in the joust, with those legs wrapped around the thick body of his war-horse, how he had controlled the charging, thundering beast with those muscles alone.
He leaned forward, threading his fingers in her hair. He tugged her head up until her eyes met his. “I will be very slow and easy with you tonight, and if you don’t fight me it won’t hurt so much.”
“It will hurt.”
“A little, perhaps. At first. You are very small and tight.”
“And your male appendage is so very big and thick.”
His lips danced on the verge of a smile, and she caught her breath. “Was that a slur you just cast upon my appendage, or a compliment?”
Absurdly pleased that he was teasing her, Arianna lowered her lids. Then she smiled as a memory suddenly came to her. It had been the summer she was twelve. She could almost feel again the hot sun beating down on her head and the warm sand oozing up between her toes, smell the salt and wet seaweed, and hear the sucking, popping sound of the waves.
She spoke her memory aloud, without thinking. “You men are all so vain about your appendages. I snuck up on four of my brothers once, one summer day on the beach near Father’s llys on the Isle of Môn. They were standing in a half-circle right at the water’s edge, and at first I couldn’t imagine what they were doing because their braies were sagging down around their knees. They were seeing who could pee the farthest into the ocean, and comparing the sizes of their privy members.”
Raine laughed and she laughed with him and the sounds they made—hers airy and sweet, his deep and rich—blended together and filled the room.
He stopped first, and when she heard him stop she caught the last of her laughter in her
throat. She looked down. Her hands were clenched in her lap and she flattened them, smoothing them over the pale blue silk.
After their laughter, the room seemed too quiet. His hand had been idly toying with her hair, but now his fingers stroked her neck, stroked, stroked, and a warm, heavy feeling spread over her.
She pulled away from him, stumbling to her feet. She went to the laver and filled an enameled basin with water. She brought it to him, along with a towel she tucked under her arm.
“What are you doing?” he asked as she set the basin down beside him.
She bent over him and her loosened hair fell forward, slapping against his bare shoulder. He turned his face into it, his eyes squeezing shut. But she didn’t notice, for she was busy plucking at the edge of the bandage on his arm, trying to see if the cut had mortified. “This filthy rag is stuck to your wound. It’ll have to be soaked a bit before it can come off.”
“Just rip it off.”
“But that would hurt—”
“It couldn’t possibly hurt any worse than it already is with you poking at it.”
She ripped off the bandage. He didn’t utter a sound. But his whole body went rigid and the creases at the corners of his mouth turned hard and white.
Fresh blood welled out of the cut. She wet the towel, folding it into a thick pad, and daubed at the wound. “My lord, I hope you will accept my apology for knifing you. I had my reasons, as you know, but I am sorry for it now.”
He shrugged. “It’s only a scratch.”
“You should have put sicklewort on it to stop the bleeding last night. Now you’ll likely as not be left with a scar.” Some of the water had splashed onto his chest and it ran in slow rivulets, down over the ridges of muscle, matting the dark hair into swirls around his nipples, sliding into the crease of his stomach.
Keeper of the Dream Page 17
