Keeper of the Dream

by Penelope Williamson

  “I will discuss this with you later,” he finally said. He tried to make his voice stern, but the words came out sounding tired.

  Still, Rhodri’s throat worked as if he’d just swallowed a minnow, though he squared his shoulders. “Aye, my lord.”

  The door to their chamber was closed. Raine thought about knocking, then changed his mind. His fingers grasped the latch and he wondered for a moment if it would be barred against him. But the iron bolt lifted easily.

  The boy’s voice drifted out of the darkness. “She won’t die, will she?”

  Raine set his jaw and pushed the door open with his fist.

  A woman turned from bending over the bed, having just pulled the covers over Arianna’s still form. For a moment Raine thought his wife was dead, and then her hand moved, clenching at the sheet.

  The woman who had been tending to her came toward Raine. She was of middle years, slab-jawed, and with a nose hooked like an eel pole. “I am Dame Beatrix,” she said.

  Raine nodded at the midwife. It was a moment before he could speak. “Has she lost the babe?”

  “It’s only a little spot of bleeding. This can happen sometimes in the first months. But you must have a care for her, my lord.” She had little slits for eyes and they narrowed even further as she studied him. “A man cannot expect to beat his wife and not have his unborn babe suffer for it.”

  “I didn’t beat her. I … we had an argument, but I didn’t hurt her.” But there is more than one kind of hurt, you bastard, and you hurt her.

  “A babe’s hold on the womb can be weak, my lord,” the midwife was saying. “I always tell man and wife, they should have a care.”

  “I will. I’ll care for her,” Raine said, and he spoke the words as a vow.

  He approached the bed on legs stiff as stilts. She looked so small and vulnerable, lying alone on the big expanse of white sheet. Her lips were bloodless. Her skin had the pale translucent shade of an eggshell; he could see the blue tracery of veins on her closed lids. He had seen too much of death not to know how easy it was to die, how quickly and mercilessly death could come. As he looked at her pinched, drawn face, it was not only the child he thought of. He didn’t want to lose either one of them.

  He leaned over and almost kissed her, then picked up her hand instead. “Arianna?”

  She pulled her hand from his grasp and turned her face away, pressing it into the pillow. She had not opened her eyes to look at him.

  “Arianna … your brother told me the truth.”

  “Go away, Raine.”

  He didn’t go away. He sat on a chair beside the bed throughout the night, watching her sleep. In the morning, when she at last looked at him, he did something he had sworn he would never do. He asked for forgiveness.

  18

  Raine stood on a windswept bluff and watched his wife walk along the high road toward town.

  He watched as she stopped to speak to a strange youth in a dashing saffron mantle—a traveling minstrel and a good one, by the look of the fancy gittern strapped to his back. She stroked the neck of the boy’s piebald pony and the wind carried the sound of her laughter to Raine, where he stood upon the hill.

  A hand fell on his shoulder and he turned to look into the face of Reynold, the master mason from Chester. The man held one of Raine’s drawings spread wide between two big-knuckled fists.

  “This says you intend to dig a canal and divert the Clwyd so that ships can sail right up to the castle.” The man was built like a haystack, round and squat. The tools of his trade hung from his belt: foot iron, compass, level, and plumb line. His breath was wheezy from years of inhaling stone dust.

  At Raine’s nod the man’s face screwed into a fierce frown, which he aimed in the general direction of the river. “You’re talking about digging a ditch wide and deep enough for a ship to navigate and it’s got to be at least a league long. Man, it’ll cost you a fortune.”

  “Just tell me if it can be done.”

  “Oh, aye, it can be done all right. My lord.” A gleam came into the mason’s eyes, which were the pale, washed-out blue of a winter’s sky. “It won’t be easy, mind you. But it can be done. Aye, aye …” He wandered off, muttering to himself about sluices and dock-gates and the vagaries of the tides.

  Raine turned back, expecting Arianna to have passed through the town gate by now and saw instead that she came right toward him, climbing the bluff with long-legged strides.

  The wind pressed her skirt against her legs, and he watched the play of her muscles beneath the silk, lithe and slender, yet strong. She panted a bit from her climb, so that her breasts strained upward against her tightly laced bliaut. Her mouth was slightly parted, and as she approached he saw a film of moisture glistening in the tiny valley above her upper lip.

  “Good morrow, wife.”

  “Good morrow, husband.”

  Her gaze slid away from his, and she looked around her. The master had already put a gang of men to work, excavating trenches for the castle’s foundation. One of the workers passed by, wheeling a barrow filled with dirt. The man tipped his cap at her and smiled, showing a mouthful of stubby, brown teeth, and he greeted her in Welsh, calling her Lady of Gwynedd. Her lips broke into a wide smile in answer, and Raine would have given just about anything to have had the warmth of that smile turned on him.

  “So you have begun to build your new castle,” she said.

  “Aye.” He studied her profile. The sun and wind had put a touch of pink in her cheeks, but the rest of her face was pale. Too pale. She had done up her hair into a white linen coif and veil that framed her face and emphasized the regal elegance of her bones. He thought he preferred it when she wore her hair in the Welsh way, flowing freely down her back and held in place only by a flower or metal chaplet. But this way was nice as well, for a man could then have the pleasure of taking it down. “Would you like to look at the designs?” he said.

  Not giving her a chance to say no, he slipped his hand beneath her elbow, and he thought she might have shivered at his touch, but it could have just been the wind. He led her over to the shelter of a giant oak, where his drawings were spread, held down by rocks. He squatted on his heels and after a brief hesitation, she knelt beside him. She had to put her hand on his shoulder for balance while she did so, and her touch raised the fine hairs on his neck. He breathed deeply, filling his nostrils with the smell of musty parchment, freshly dug dirt … and her.

  “This is just a rough rendition, but you can get an idea.” He showed her how the inner ward would be shaped like a squashed square, with two opposing gatehouses and single towers at the other two corners. He explained to her how the keep and all the towers would be round instead of square, which would make them more defensible against sapping. He told her how he planned to give the castle access to the sea and all the while he watched her face, not quite sure what it was he hoped to see there.

  She twisted her head to look up at him, and he got lost in a pair of depthless green eyes. “You will use this great castle to make war on the Welsh,” she said.

  He felt the muscle begin to throb in his cheek. “I’m building this for our sons. They will be half Welsh. And they won’t want to make war on their mother’s people.”

  “And if their father’s people makes war on their mother’s people? What will they do then?”

  “Perhaps they will find a way to avoid taking sides.” He scooped up a handful of dirt and held it out to her. “Just as this land is ours, Arianna, so it will be our sons’. Their land, their home. If they have to fight to defend it, my castle will help them to do so.”

  When she said nothing more, he let the dirt trickle through his fingers. He dusted off his palms, then helped her to her feet, his hand beneath her elbow. In spite of himself he left it there to linger a moment, before he let it fall to his side.

  A silence came between them. He wanted her. God, he wanted to take her back to their bed and make love to her, and not just once, but again and again. But he didn’t
even have to shut his eyes to see the image of her lying dead from a miscarriage. He was a man, damn it, not a rutting beast. He had gone for months without a woman before, and he could do so again. He would not allow his lust to kill her or their child.

  She made a sudden movement, as if she were going to walk away from him, but then she didn’t. A coil of hair slipped free of her coif and she caught at it. She tried to push it back up beneath the fold of linen, but didn’t quite get it in and the wind whipped it across her eyes. Raine caught the curl and tucked it up for her. He let his fingers trail down her cheek.

  She avoided his eyes. “I was on my way to the market,” she said.

  “It’s too hot for walking. You should have ridden, and brought Taliesin along to carry the things you buy.”

  “Oh, I don’t intend to buy anything, I only want to look. Well, perhaps if I saw a cradle … ” Her eyes flashed to his, then away again. “There’s a man I’ve heard of who’s supposed to be good at working wood.”

  He drew in a deep breath, then blew it out. “Do you mind if I come along with you? I could use a new pair of boots.”

  She didn’t look at him, but her color heightened. “Oh, no, no. Not at all.”

  * * *

  Arianna’s lips softened into an unconscious smile as she watched Raine come toward her, carrying a bucket of ale in one hand and a long, speckly sausage in the other. He stopped in front of her and she eyed the sausage in his hands. She had been to market days with her brothers and she knew where this was leading.

  “If you’re going to stop for a sample every time our path crosses food, you’ll have a bellyache by the end of the day.”

  “I haven’t eaten my way into a bellyache since I was twelve,” Raine stated. He pressed the end of the sausage against her lips. “Want a bite?”

  The sausage was plump and shiny with juice. It smelled delicious. Arianna opened her mouth wide and sank her teeth into it. Dipping his head, Raine nipped a big chunk off the other end.

  The sausage was also spicy. Very spicy. She swallowed it down, gasping, and her eyes bulged. She sucked in a breath of cooling air. “God’s death!”

  “Don’t look now, but I think there’s smoke coming out of your ears.” Raine handed her the bucket of ale, his eyes watering. “Bit too much pepper.”

  He tossed the rest of the sausage into the road and it was snatched up by a spotted dog with a bent tail. The dog swallowed the meat in one gulp and Arianna and Raine both burst into laughter at the expression on the dog’s face. His lips curled back over his teeth and his eyes opened wide. He whirled around in circles nipping at his crooked tail and then took off for the river to put out the fire.

  Their laughter trailed off and they stared at each other. Raine’s eyes had turned the color of black smoke and his gaze roamed over her, as intimate as a caress. Arianna thought she could feel it on her skin, like a breath, moist and hot.

  She backed away, putting distance between them, though it seemed to do little good. Her heart thudded so loudly, she was surprised he couldn’t hear it. She wiped her sweating palms on her skirt. Though the wind blew briskly, she felt suddenly very warm.

  The market filled the town square. Though some business was conducted in tents, most of the merchants had set up stalls that were no more than crude, temporary wooden structures, although some did have signboards with pictures advertising their wares. Space between the stalls was narrow and first their hips would bump and then their shoulders kept brushing. Finally, Raine slipped his arm around her waist, and the feel of his hand pressing into her became like a harp string thrumming in her blood.

  They passed by a meat vendor, where deer and stag and rabbit carcasses hung by poles in the hot sun, dripping blood into the dirt. The smell of the curing meat sent a wave of nausea roiling through Arianna. Unconsciously, she turned her head, burying her face in Raine’s shoulder. But then a fishmonger came next and the briny odor of salted herring and the oily reek of whale meat was almost her undoing. She stumbled into Raine and his arm tightened.

  “Arianna, are you all right?”

  “I tripped over something,” she lied, for she didn’t want to leave him, and he would make her go back to the castle if he knew she felt ill. It was a strange and constant ache, this need to be with him, like a bruise on the heart.

  Aye, she wanted to be with him, to hear his voice, feel his touch. Yet, though he knew now that she hadn’t betrayed him, still he barely spoke to her, sometimes it seemed he went out of his way to avoid even being within sight of her. And though they shared the same bed at night, he never touched her. A wide expanse of sheet stretched between them, barren as a desert.

  It’s because I have conceived, she thought. Before her only use for him was to provide him with an heir, and now that this service had been rendered, he no longer wanted or needed her.

  Smells of clove and cinnamon floated to them on the wind from a nearby spice stall, and she began to feel better. And better still when they had passed another stall filled with the sweet odor of tallow and beeswax from the candles that hung on cords, swinging by their wicks.

  They paused to listen to a wandering friar who preached from beside a stall displaying saints’ pictures and relics, most of which were probably false: pig bones in a glass, slivers of wood meant to be the True Cross. And drops of cow’s milk that were supposed to have come from the Virgin Mary’s breasts.

  My breasts will produce milk, too, Arianna thought, and the babe will suckle there. As Raine had once liked to do when they made love.

  Raine’s attention had been caught by a cutler’s booth. His face was turned partly away from her, his eyes narrowed against the dazzle of sunlight that glinted off the blades of hundreds of knives and daggers, sickles and hoes. Even relaxed, as he was now, there was still a hard edge to his features, a wariness. Yet there had been times when he had pressed his face to her breast, like a child, and she had seen a sweet vulnerability there. In the sweep of lashes as his eyes fluttered closed, in the hollows made in his cheeks as he sucked.

  “Buy a gift for yer lady t’day, milor’?”

  A fat woman with unnatural, peach-colored hair thrust herself between them, a brightly colored bird in a golden cage swinging from her red, pudgy fist. The cage’s gilt was chipping and it was bent at the bottom, but the bird was the most beautiful thing Arianna had ever seen. The iridescent crimson feathers on its head were shaped like a blossom and it sported a black band around its neck like a collar, and a blue-and-yellow tail.

  “Been taught to talk, she has, milady.”

  “Oh, Raine, imagine—a talking bird! What can she say?”

  The woman’s three chins bobbed in unison and she flicked a blunted finger at the cage. The bird squawked: Pretty lady, pretty lady.

  Laughing with delight, Arianna turned to Raine. “You shall buy me a present today, husband.”

  He angled his head to one side and cocked a brow. “I don’t know if I can afford to. That castle I’m building is going to be ruinously expensive.”

  Naughty boy, naughty boy, the bird scolded.

  Arianna laughed again. “A present would be very nice.”

  Raine pretended to be deeply engrossed in the wares offered for sale at the toothdrawer’s booth next door. The toothdrawer began extolling the curative properties of a crushed tooth taken from the mouth of a deranged man, but Raine discovered something that interested him more.

  He picked up a pair of artificial teeth made of ox bone and clacked them in Arianna’s face. He assumed a very serious expression. “If your heart is set on receiving a present, I suppose I could part with the coin for these.”

  She gave him a thoroughly insulted look, which was immediately spoiled by a giggle. “I’ll have you know, my lord, that I’ve yet to lose a single tooth.”

  His eyes gleamed back at her, full of laughter. “But it never hurts to be prepared for all eventualities.”

  A hawker, sensing that here was a man about to be persuaded into parting wit
h his money, pushed a two-wheeled cart into their path. The cart overflowed with everything imaginable for sale, from pins to gloves to rabbit skins. Arianna spotted a mirror with a carved ivory back and she picked it up for a closer look.

  “I definitely think, my lord, that you will buy me a present today…. ”

  When he didn’t answer she turned and saw that he held an orange in his hand. It was a piece of fruit not found very often, a delicacy and quite expensive.

  “You must try one, my lord, if you haven’t tasted them before. They’re delicious.” But then she realized that surely he must have run across oranges on his travels. There was a strange, wistful look on his face as if he were caught up in a pleasant memory that was also a little sad. “But then I suppose you have …”

  “Once,” he said.

  He put the orange back into the peddler’s cart and smiled at her. But the smile was forced, and she caught the lingering trace of sadness in his eyes. The wind caught his hair, blowing it into his eyes. Without thinking, she reached up and brushed it back from his brow. His hair was soft and warm from the sun.

  She still held the mirror. He turned her, and reaching around, cupped his hands beneath hers and lifted the glazed metal up to her face. She saw a girl with bright eyes and flushed cheeks and a wide, smiling mouth.

  “You’re very beautiful, little wife,” he said, his lips just brushing her temple. A warm happiness flooded through her. She waited, breath suspended, for him to say more, sure that what happened next would banish forever that constant ache in her chest.

  Something wet and hairy caromed off them. Arianna let out a shriek of surprise, and Raine pulled away from her, laughing. The spotted dog with the bent tail made a big loop around them before lumbering off, a salmon the size of a hearth log dragging from his mouth. He was being chased by a screaming man in a scale-splattered leather apron.

  The spotted dog disappeared among the stalls, but Arianna’s eye had been caught by a row of boots hanging from a rope across the front of a striped tent. “Look, my lord,” she said, pointing. “There’s where you can get your boots.”