Keeper of the Dream

by Penelope Williamson

  Without knowing why she did it, she stepped back beneath the shelter cast by the eaves, where he couldn’t see her. He looked around one last time, then slipped out a side gate. She wondered what her cousin Kilydd was doing here, what mischief he was up to. Doubtless whatever it was, it would mean trouble for the Lord of Rhuddlan.

  It was several moments later before Christina joined her in the shop. The girl’s flushed cheeks stood out in stark contrast to the dazzling whiteness of the coif she wore on her head. Her mouth looked wet and swollen.

  “God’s grace to you, milady,” she said, curtseying with folded hands. She sounded out of breath, as if she’d just been running. “What brings you here in foul weather such as this?”

  Arianna smiled. “If one doesn’t venture outdoors in Wales when it rains, one would never go anywhere at all.”

  “How true, milady.” Christina’s eyes darted toward the open door that led to the yard, which was now awash with running water. She forced an answering smile. “Not even the Normans have been able to tame our weather.”

  It was an old jest, but Arianna laughed anyway. A trestle table sat beneath the window, a bolt of moss-green wool lay, partly unwound, on its shear-scarred surface. Arianna fingered the material. She wanted to ask the draper’s daughter what her cousin Kilydd had been doing sneaking down the back stairs. She said instead, “I would like to see what you have in the nature of carmine sarcenet.”

  “If it pleases you, milady.” Christina motioned to the servant, who hooked a bolt of purplish-red material from a top shelf and spread it out on the table.

  The sarcenet was beautiful and would be perfect for the banner. Next she selected a figured silk of the blackest ebony with which to fashion the dragon. As the servant wrapped up the ells of cloth and carried them out to load upon her palfrey, Arianna realized suddenly that she’d brought no coin with her. She had no money to bring anyway, for what she’d had upon her marriage now be-longed-to Raine. All she had of value that could be considered entirely her own were her wedding band and the seer’s torque she wore around her neck.

  Though it pained her to part with it, she reached up and unclasped the bronze circlet of writhing snakes. She held it out the draper’s daughter. “Would you accept this as payment?”

  Christina backed away from the torque as if she feared to touch it. “My lady, that is not necessary. I shall simply add the price of the cloth to the amount left owed for your bridal gown.”

  Arianna thought of the exquisite sapphire silk bliaut, wrought so heavily with gold thread, and the poppy-red pelisse trimmed with fur—their cost must have been exorbitant. Though Raine might soon become rich as the Lord of Rhuddlan, he had been poor on the day of their wedding. Yet still he had given her the beautiful gown and a white mule with all the trappings.

  She practically pushed the torque into Christina’s hands. “But I wish to use the cloth to make a gift for my husband. So I can hardly have him paying for it.”

  Christina hesitated a moment before her fingers closed around the ancient bronze circlet. She looked up at Arianna through a veil of pale lashes. “You are happy then in your marriage to the Norman? Have you fallen in love so soon?”

  “Nay, I love him not at all,” Arianna said, too quickly, and felt the blood leap to her face. For she lusted after him, oh aye, she lusted after him. She could not bear to admit even to herself that this man, who cared for her not at all, could make her throat get all tight and her knees go all loose with but one of his rare smiles.

  “And what of you, Christina?” she demanded, wanting childishly to share her shame. “Perhaps you speak to me about love because you have the subject much on your mind lately? Does my cousin Kilydd share your maiden’s bed?”

  Christina’s doe-brown eyes opened wide, and she started to shake her head. Then her back stiffened and her chin jerked up. “Aye, we are lovers, Kilydd and I, and I care not if the whole world knows it. For though we are not yet married by law, we have plighted our troth before God.”

  Christina waved her hand as Arianna opened her mouth to speak. “You need not point out, my lady, that he is Welsh and of noble blood, whereas I am English and naught but a draper’s daughter. We love each other, and we share a common enemy, he and I, and a common dream. Someday, when the Normans have been driven back across the sea, we can …” Her voice trailed off as tears welled in her eyes. “Oh, milady, I do love him so….”

  Lightning flared suddenly, casting Christina’s face in a greenish glow. Her last words seemed to echo in the darkening room, love him so … so … Thunder rumbled, and a gust of wind dashed rain against the side of the house.

  Arianna wondered how it felt to be so sure of your love, so sure you were loved in return. She shut her eyes trying to recall how she’d felt in her vision when the golden knight had taken her into his arms. But all she saw was Raine charging her with his lance, and the touch she remembered was Raine’s touch, fierce and insistent and full of passion, but not love. Never love.

  “Kilydd has asked his so-called lord, your Norman husband, for permission to marry me,” Christina was saying, and Arianna saw how hatred twisted the young woman’s face, making it seem for a moment almost ugly. “His petition was denied. Lord Raine wishes for his Welsh vassals to wed Norman girls, so that their lands will then be well and truly conquered. He cares not at all that Kilydd and I love each other.”

  No one ever marries for love, Arianna started to say, but thunder pounded again overhead and once it had died she held her tongue. It would bring the English girl little solace to hear the truth so starkly spoken.

  Christina touched her arm. “But I had thought that you, milady, would understand. You, who were wed against your will and to a man you hate.”

  Arianna sighed. “It isn’t that.” She seized the other girl’s hands. “Christina, if it is rebellion that Kilydd plans, then you must stop him—”

  “Stop him? Kilydd has oft told me that you of all women hold most dearly the dream of freedom for your land and your people. Have only two nights in the Norman’s bed changed you so quickly?”

  Arianna stiffened, drawing away from the other girl. “I have not forgotten that I am Cymry. I will never forget.”

  She turned to leave, but Christina seized her arm, and Arianna felt the girl’s fear and desperation in the strength of her grip. “You will not betray Kilydd to the Norman?”

  “I know naught of what he intends, so there is little for me to betray. But tell me no more, Christina, I beg of you. For a wife’s first loyalty must be to her husband, and I would not want to have to choose between my honor and my kin.” But she had already chosen, this she knew. For whatever Kilydd planned, it had to mean ill for her husband, yet she would say nothing.

  Arianna stepped through the door, drawing her hood over her head against the slashing rain. The joy she had taken in purchasing the cloth for the banner was long gone. Her gift to Raine would be betrayal, for silence was after all a form of deceit. Perhaps the worst deceit of all.

  The two squires heaved a simultaneous sigh as they peered through the pouring rain at the lone knight who prepared to charge at them from across a boggy tilting field.

  “Please God, not again,” one said. “I’ve bruises on my bruises and every time I open my mouth to breathe, I nearly drown. Doesn’t he know it’s raining?”

  The other whined through his teeth. “You seriously don’t expect the Black Dragon to call a halt to a little jousting just because God is pissing on Wales again. The man isn’t human, and he’s got no sympathy for those of us who are.”

  He whined again and squinted through the rain, hoping the knight had gone away, but he had not. Again and again they had taken him on, two against one, but so far they hadn’t been able to touch him, let alone unhorse him. In truth, they’d barely scratched the paint on his shield. He was going to knock them on their asses in the mud again, God curse his black and merciless heart. They had both spent a good part of the afternoon becoming intimate with Rhudd
lan’s mud. The knight rarely smiled, but the two squires would have wagered their immortal souls that he was smiling now.

  They would have lost, for the man at the other end of the field was not smiling. Cold water poured down his back and seeped into his bones and he had to resist the urge to shake himself like a dog. I’m getting too old for this, he thought. He was wet and miserable and his decrepit and battered twenty-five-year-old body had wanted to quit an hour ago. He wanted to sit before a warm fire and drink mulled wine. He thought of Arianna, of taking her to bed.

  He wiped the sluicing rain out of his eyes before he lowered his helm. He tightened his right hand around the smooth butt of his lance and brought the long weapon up level with his hip. He winced as its weight pulled against the tired muscles of his arm. The wretched thing seemed to have gained a stone since he had first hefted it a dozen tilts ago.

  He had just touched his spurs to his charger when he saw her, riding alone from the direction of the town. He whirled the great beast around on its hunches and bore down upon her, leaving the two squires to stare after him, first with astonishment, then with two fat grins splitting their mud-splattered faces.

  The hooves of his steed pounded through the sucking muck, sending up sprays of black water. Lightning brightened the sky and thunder boomed so loudly it sounded as if the very heavens were splitting open. He didn’t realize how he must appear, charging out of the storm with lowered lance, until he pulled up before her and saw the stark terror on her face.

  She was paler than death, her lips bloodless and trembling, her eyes wide open and dark as caves. Her fist was pressed to her breast as if she feared her heart would burst, and he could see the blood pumping wildly in her throat.

  He tossed the lance aside and bent down to take hold of the shank of her horse’s bit and keep her from bolting. He looked into her face, wet and pale and vulnerable, and he thought, God’s love, she is so beautiful.

  For that timeless moment, as they stared into each other’s eyes, he was certain they had done this before. Not once, but many times. Yet each time had been different. The woman whose beauty hurt his heart was her, always her, but with a different face. It was not always raining; once, the sun had beat down hot on their uncovered heads and again it had been night and the smell of snow had been in the air. But each time he had felt the hunger, the almost desperate longing to carry her off somewhere and love her until she was his, and only his.

  He wanted to do that now. He wanted her beneath him, he wanted her nails digging into his back, her legs wrapped around his hips, her tongue in his mouth. He wanted to hear her cry out in ecstasy as he pleasured her with his fingers and his lips and his tongue. He wanted to thrust into her and explode inside her and die a little with her.

  “Where in hellfire have you been?” he demanded, his voice harsh. No woman had ever affected him in this way, and he didn’t like it. It mattered not that she was his wife, he could never let her have that sort of power over him.

  She blinked and awareness came slowly over her face, as if she’d just been awakened from a deep sleep. “I went to Rhuddlan town to … to visit with Christina, the draper’s daughter. She is a particular friend.”

  “Where is your escort?”

  She blinked again, then looked behind her, as if she expected an army to appear out of the air. “I—”

  “You are never to ride off alone again. Anywhere.”

  Her head snapped around. “I am not a hound to be kept on a leash!” Then she bit her lip, squeezing her eyes shut. He almost smiled, for he could guess that she was now calling on God and all the saints to give her patience. She sucked in a deep breath, but then, to his surprise, she reached out and laid her hand on his arm. “Please, my lord, don’t treat me like a child.”

  “Then don’t act like one.” His arm was protected by links of tempered steel, yet he could feel her hand, burning, as if she touched bare flesh. He urged his horse back a step, putting distance between them. “There are any number of men within a day’s ride from here who would like nothing better than to take you captive so that they could bleed me for a ransom. Your cousin Kilydd, for one.”

  It had been a lucky cast, a name pulled out of the air. Yet her hands convulsed on the reins, so that the palfrey danced, pulling at the bit. Her lips parted open and two bright bands of color flared across her cheekbones. Raine knew immediately that it was her cattle-raiding cousin, and not the draper’s daughter, whom she had met in town, and he wondered why. But he didn’t ask her. Because he didn’t want to hear any lies coming from those sweet lips. God help him, all he wanted to do was kiss them.

  “Kilydd would never harm me,” she said.

  “But he would dearly love to harm me.”

  “He gave you his oath of fealty.”

  “Aye, an oath that holds about as much value as a sieve does water.”

  He saw her lips tighten with anger, but he didn’t trust either one of her cousins and he wouldn’t pretend that he did. For that matter, he didn’t trust her. They rode toward the gatehouse, side by side, yet in silence. The rain had stopped. Sunlight poured through a break in the clouds, and a rainbow appeared suddenly, directly over the tower of the keep.

  “Look,” he said, pointing to the shimmering band of colors. “Hurry up and make a wish ere I beat you to it.” And then immediately felt foolish. Wishing on rainbows was for children.

  But to his surprise she squeezed her eyes shut and her lips mouthed a silent plea. For a moment he wondered what she wished for, if her heart’s desire had anything to do with him, and he looked away, disgusted with himself. For if anything she had wished him gone from her life.

  “Raine?”

  His head jerked around. It was the first time she had ever used his name, and spoken that way, in her low and slightly husky voice, it had made him think instantly of bed and sex.

  “Would you really pay a ransom to get me back?” she said.

  “You are my wife.”

  He wasn’t sure what response she had expected, but that wasn’t it. Yet it was the only one he had to give her, so he could only watch as her face hardened and she gathered up the reins, spurring her horse into a canter.

  As he watched her ride away from him he let himself wonder, though only for a moment, what would have happened if they had met years ago, before life had finally ruined him. Back when he had still believed in love and happily-ever-after and that wishes on rainbows could sometimes come true.

  14

  Arianna tried to catch one of Taliesin’s eyes—both of which were preoccupied with a pair of round and creamy breasts. The squire sat at the edge of the dais with Bertha instead of his harp in his lap. The girl laughed as she thrust her splendid cleavage beneath the boy’s nose and a cup of hippocras into his hand.

  Arianna scowled at the squire; the wretch as usual was slacking in his duties. Some soothing music would be nice, she thought. Her head pounded like the shuttle on a loom from the din that filled the hall. Everyone seemed to be talking at once, shouting over the snarls and yelps of the dogs, who lay among the rushes and waited for bones to be tossed their way. Several of Raine’s knights had also brought their falcons with them to the table. The hawks sat on perches at their masters’ backs and added their shrill cries to the noise.

  The tables sagged beneath platters loaded with eel coffin pies and roasted pike seasoned with cumin. Fire-blackened cauldrons sent spicy steam into the air: the rich smell of sturgeon stew, flavored with saffron and leeks. There were delicacies, too, peeled walnuts and rice with almonds and white loaves of wastel. As a crowning glory, the cook had made a subtlety—a spun-sugar creation sculptured in the shape of a dragon.

  All in all it promised to be a fine feast, even for a fast day. The only thing missing was the Lord of Rhuddlan himself.

  Just then Sir Odo stepped from behind the screen’s passage. He flapped his big arms wildly about, like the sails on a windmill, and a big grin split his face. Arianna threw a piece of bread at Taliesin’
s head and at last got his attention. The boy hefted Bertha off his lap and picked up his bow-shaped harp. He strummed the heavy brass strings with silver struts, and music, clear and sweet as the chimes of a bell on a clear night, filled and then silenced the hall.

  Raine came through the passage and Arianna felt a smile break across her face. Her eyes burned, her back was stiff, and her fingers blistered from pushing a needle again and again through stiff cloth long into the wee hours of the night. But she knew that it would all be worth it when she watched the look of surprise and pleasure come over her husband’s face as she presented him with his birthday gift. She hoped that it would mean as much to the man as a pony would have meant to the boy.

  Even the dogs had quieted as Raine entered the hall. His step faltered a moment when he noticed the crowd and the sudden hush that greeted him.

  Arianna descended the dais. Perhaps she was only imagining it, but she thought his eyes darkened and his mouth softened a bit as he watched her come toward him. He had been training a young destrier and so he wore his leather broigne, tall boots and worn chausses, yet she thought he looked stunningly handsome. She hesitated a moment, then she took his hand and led him toward the high seat. His hand was large, swallowing hers, but his touch was gentle.

  He dipped his head until his breath brushed her cheek. “You should have warned me that we had guests, wife. I fear I reek of the stables.”

  Arianna leaned into him, breathing deeply of his smell—of horse and leather and man. The broigne was opened to his waist, revealing a sun-browned chest damp with sweat. She felt a curling ache in her belly as she looked up at him. She wanted to press her face against his chest … there, where the hard, scarred muscle protected his heart.

  “Nay, husband, there are no special guests this day,” she said, and her smile was filled with sweet anticipation. “Or rather you are the guest, for this feast is in your honor. All of Rhuddlan is here to mark the occasion of your birthday, my lord.”