Keeper of the Dream

by Penelope Williamson

  “I make up the laws in my own castle,” Raine snarled, then drew in a deep breath. He knew that men were strictly barred from the birthing chamber and in principle he applauded the sentiment.

  In reality, he was damn well going to see his wife. “I only want to see her, then I’ll leave,” he said, and he used one of those rare smiles that had captivated women’s hearts from Jerusalem to Paris.

  Dame Beatrix’s hooked nose quivered as she glowered at Raine. But in the end she was no more immune to that smile than any other female. “Oh, very well,” she said in a voice tart as vinegar. “But only for a moment, mark you.”

  She stepped aside to let Raine enter. So many torches blazed within that it was like stepping into the belly of a forge. The chamber had been prepared for the lying-in, with fresh rushes spread on the floor and sweet herbs burning in brass bowls on every available surface.

  Arianna emerged from behind an osier-reed screen, supported by Edith. The thin chainse she wore was so drenched with sweat, it clung to her body. Her hair hung in damp, matted tangles down her back. The torchlight glazed a face that was the waxy white of an old candle, and shadows lay like old bruises under her eyes. But his gaze was filled mostly with the sight of her belly, heavy and swollen, monstrous with his child.

  Raine’s throat closed up and, to his shock, tears stung his eyes. “Could you not have waited a day or two until after I returned, little wife?”

  She saw him then, and her eyes opened wide. Then joy suffused her face; he could not have missed the joy, and it warmed him. She took a stumbling step, and he covered the room in three quick strides to take her in his arms.

  She felt as fragile as blown glass, for all the bulk of her pregnancy. He smoothed back the wet strands of her hair and kissed her mouth. Her lips were dry and cracked, but they were smiling.

  She stroked his cheek, then pressed her own cheek against his. “I thought you would never come. That you would never come home to see your son.”

  He tried to pull her tighter into his arms, but just then her body jerked and spasmed and a low moan escaped past her clenched teeth. The contraction was fierce and violent, and he felt it against his own stomach.

  Sweat started out on his face, and he eased her carefully away from him. “Arianna … I must go.”

  She clung to his arms and her eyes blazed up at him. “No, you will stay, Norman. This is all your fault in the first place and you will see it through with me to the end.”

  He stroked her back. “I mustn’t, Arianna. It isn’t done.”

  “Huh! Since when has the Black Dragon ever let what isn’t done stop him from doing what he wants?” But he saw the fear lurking in her eyes, and her voice quivered with it. “Stay, Raine. Please …”

  The midwife shoved her face between them. “My lord—”

  Raine’s head snapped around. “I’m staying.”

  “But—”

  “I’m staying.”

  The midwife pressed her lips so tightly together they all but disappeared. She shrugged as if to say, so be it on your head, and turned away.

  Edith came up to them, and she gave Raine a shy smile. Then pressed an opaque green stone into Arianna’s hand. “It’s jasper, milady. For luck. The babe will come soon now,” she said to Raine. “Milady’s waters have broken and not an hour ago she was given a draught of vinegar and sugar with powdered ivory and eagle’s dung.”

  “Eagle’s what? Jesus …” His gaze met Arianna’s, and he saw laughter in her eyes, before they darkened with pain as another contraction wracked her. A strange emotion swelled in his chest, constricting his heart. He didn’t know what it was, for he’d never felt it before. To him it merely seemed a fierce sort of pride—he had never known another woman like her, and she was his.

  He slid his arm around her waist, taking her weight. “Shouldn’t you be lying down?” he said, his voice rough.

  “Nay, I want to walk awhile yet. It seems to make it easier.”

  But before long the contractions sharpened, came closer together, and the midwife announced that it was time. Edith pulled the chainse off over Arianna’s head and led her over to the birthing stool.

  Dame Beatrix slapped a clay crock into Raine’s hand. “If you’re going to be here underfoot, you might as well make yourself useful. Rub this on her belly, it will help to ease her.”

  Raine knelt between his wife’s legs. He poured some of the oil into his palm. It was cool and smelled of roses. He glanced up and his hand paused in midair. There was something terribly erotic about the sight of her, though it stirred not his manhood, but his mind. It was the pure femaleness of her, he supposed. Her belly heavy with child, her legs spread wide, and the hair, dark and wet and mysterious, between her thighs. She was all things to him then, wife and mother and goddess.

  He smoothed the oil over her belly. Her flesh quivered and lurched beneath his hands, as it worked to expel the child. A child is being born, he thought. My child. The thought frightened and humbled him, for he realized his part in this was small, and he could do nothing now to help her.

  The midwife touched his shoulder, and he started. “Stand you behind her there, my lord, and hold her.”

  A wooden plank protruded from the stool, and Raine straddled it, bracing Arianna against his back. She stiffened and writhed against him as her belly clenched and spasmed.

  “I will not shame you by screaming, my lord,” she panted through clenched teeth.

  “No,” he said, and planted a kiss in her sweat-damp hair. Her back arched, and her head flung back until the corded muscles of her throat stood out like white ropes, her lips pulled back in a rictus of pain. Unable to bear it any longer he looked away, and his gaze was caught by the bowl of holy water sitting on a stool nearby, on hand for the last rites, and his belly caved in at the sight of it. He tried to pray, but he couldn’t think of any words.

  Her body wrenched, twisting violently, and a small sound escaped from her taut lips. It sounded to Raine like the last chirp of a strangled bird.

  “Oh, Christ. Is she dying?”

  Dame Beatrix’s thin lips lifted in a superior smile. “It hurts, my lord. A kind of hurt you men know little of.”

  He wanted to know it, he wanted to bear it for her, to take her pain into himself. He remembered how small and tight she had been the night he had so roughly consummated their marriage. He had brought her pain then, and he was the cause of her pain now. If women had to risk suffering agony like this every time they lay with a man, it was a wonder they didn’t wish all men to perdition.

  The midwife greased her hands in a waxy mixture that smelled of chickpeas and put them between Arianna’s thighs. Edith began to pray aloud, calling on St. Margaret to deliver her mistress safely of the child.

  Suddenly he saw something round and dark emerge from between his wife’s legs and he realized it was the babe’s head. Arianna’s stomach convulsed again, and the whole child slid, bloody and slimy, into the midwife’s hands. Its reedy wail was nearly drowned out by Arianna’s harsh, panting breaths.

  “She is a girl, my lord. And she is whole.”

  But Raine’s gaze was riveted on his wife’s face. Her eyes were closed and she seemed so still now after the violence of a moment ago that he was convinced, in spite of her heaving chest, that the last contraction had surely killed her. The midwife had to speak his name again and then again, before he turned his numb gaze onto his daughter.

  She was very red and wrinkled, and so incredibly tiny. The midwife cut and tied the navel cord and then put the baby in his hands. He held her as if she were a fragile butterfly and he a gross giant who could crush her with his big, clumsy strength. Love swelled in his chest, swift and fierce and overwhelming.

  He turned and lay the babe against his wife’s breast and kissed her dry and trembling lips. “We have a daughter, little wife.”

  “Oh, Raine, I’m so sorry. I have failed in my duty.” Tears filled her eyes and spilled over, running down her pale cheeks. She, who r
efused to cry during the pain of labor, now wept because she thought she had disappointed him, and he almost wept with her, though not for that reason.

  “Nay, she is beautiful,” he said, and he could not hide the wonder in his voice. He didn’t even try. “She is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”

  A hand touched his shoulder. “Come, my lord. The child must be bathed. Edith will see to your wife and the afterbirth.”

  Raine hovered over her while the midwife washed and massaged his baby with salt. She plunged her tiny feet into cold water to toughen them to the cold, and touched her fat cheek with a gold coin to make her rich, and rubbed her tongue and gums with honey to give her an appetite. Then she swaddled her in bands of soft wool and placed her once again in her father’s waiting arms.

  Arianna had been put to bed. She stared up at him with tired, glazed eyes as he sat beside her. He peeled back the swaddling cloth, and they looked together at their daughter’s face, and he saw pouring out of Arianna’s eyes the same all-consuming love that he knew was in his own.

  He leaned over and kissed the smiling mouth of the woman who had given him this wondrous gift.

  “Little wife … thank you.”

  21

  “If thou carest not for meeeeee, I will care no more for theeeeeee …”

  Taliesin swept into the room with a jingle and a jangle and a laugh. He was draped in ribbons and flowers like a maypole. A pair of cowbells hung around his neck, and he waved a shepherd’s pipe in the air like a marshal’s baton.

  He danced around the bed where Arianna sat, braced against a hill of pillows. Leaning over, he dropped a garland of roses onto her head. He laughed in her face, and her nose was assaulted by the spicy, grapey fumes of hippocras. “You are drunk!” she exclaimed, brushing falling rose petals out of her eyes.

  “Nay, nay, my lady. I only had a tot or two, I do swear on the honor of my mother,” he proclaimed, hand over his heart. Then spoiled it by hiccupping.

  “Your mother’s honor! I doubt you even know the wench.”

  The squire laughed again. He sucked in a deep breath, stuck the reed pipe into his mouth and blew, dancing a jig so wild that the bells around his neck jangled discordantly.

  “Taliesin!” Raine bellowed. He crossed the threshold bearing a small, white, squalling bundle in his arms. “If you don’t cease pelting our ears with that noise, I swear by Christ I’ll have you stretched on the rack.”

  The pipe cut off in midnote, and the bells tinkled into silence. The baby in Raine’s arms ended her wailing with a gurgle.

  Taliesin looked worried for a moment, then his face brightened. “You haven’t got a rack at Rhuddlan.”

  Raine bared his teeth in an evil smile. “I’ll have the carpenter make me one.”

  Arianna smiled as she watched her husband walk toward her. He looked so handsome in a new tunic and mantle of emerald satin set off by a fine leather belt with a silver gilt buckle and a silver crescent brooch. She had never seen him so happy, and she wanted to kiss his laughing mouth until he begged for mercy.

  She held up her arms, and he filled them with baby. She felt a tightening in her chest as she looked down at the tiny head covered with a lacy crison cap. She planted a kiss on the soft pink brow, taking care not to touch the greasy mark left by the holy oil.

  She made a face at her daughter and laughed, for it seemed the baby made a face back at her. “We never talked about a name,” she said.

  He sat down next to her on the bed. “You were sleeping. I wanted to wait, but the bishop grew impatient.”

  Babies were always baptized as soon as possible upon their birth, for too many died within hours to risk hope of paradise by waiting. Earl Hugh and his lady wife had already stood as godparents in the ceremony that morning, and Raine, knowing Arianna thought her a particular friend, had asked Christina the draper’s daughter to be the second godmother.

  Arianna wouldn’t have been allowed to attend the christening anyway because she had not yet been churched. In a week’s time she would don the clothes she had been married in and enter the chapel, carrying a lighted candle, and thus receive the absolution and blessing of God. But until she was purified, she couldn’t attend any religious ceremonies, prepare food, or touch holy water.

  “I thought to call her Nesta,” Raine said. “I’ve always liked that name.”

  She looked up at him in surprise. “It is a Welsh name.”

  “Aye, I know.”

  “Nesta …” She had rosy skin, a heart-shaped face and her father’s hair, black as sin. “It suits her, I think.” Arianna held little Nesta up for her father’s inspection. “There, see, she likes it. She’s smiling.”

  Taliesin capered around the bed, cackling like a demented chicken. “Babies don’t smile. ’Tis only gas.”

  “What do you know of babies, you dolt of a squire? Aside from the making of them, you—”

  Laughter, warm and rich as mulled wine, filled the room. The Earl of Chester, wearing a smile as bright as a sunbeam, stood in the door, flanked by his wife and Christina, the draper’s daughter. “We have come to pay court to Arianna, fairest of all mothers,” he proclaimed. “May we enter?”

  An image flashed in Arianna’s mind of a man in silvered mail emerging from a grove of fiery trees, a bow and arrow in his hand. She sat staring at her husband’s brother, unable to say a word, until the silence became noticeable.

  Christina came up to lean over and kiss Arianna’s cheek. “Oh, milady, she is the most beautiful baby. I am honored that you wanted me to stand godmother to her and you can be sure I’ll do all in my power to look after the welfare of her soul.” She rubbed her little finger across Nesta’s pursed lips. “Kilydd sends his love,” she whispered. Arianna squeezed the girl’s hand in answer.

  Suddenly Nesta opened her mouth and let out a wail, her eyes clenching into tight, angry slits. Arianna groaned. “Surely she cannot be hungry again already.”

  “Aye, she is a little glutton,” Raine said, beaming down at the squawking babe with fatherly pride. “And she has a pair of lungs fit to be a smithy’s bellows.”

  Feeling a bit self-conscious, Arianna opened her chainse, thumbing up her nipple and poking it into the baby’s mouth. Though most women of her station had a wet-nurse, she had chosen to nurse her babe herself. It was pride, Arianna knew, and thus probably sinful, but little Nesta had the blood of Cymry warriors in her veins and she did not want it contaminated with a commoner’s milk.

  The room fell silent and she knew they all watched her. Her cheeks grew warm and she lifted her head to look into eyes the pale-purple color of lavender. They were the most beautiful eyes Arianna had ever seen, and they belonged to the woman her husband had once loved.

  The Lady Sybil drifted closer to the bed, and Arianna caught the expensive scent of ambergris. The countess looked as slender as a hazel wand and beautiful in a pale-pink bliaut embroidered with jewels and bead work. Gold threads had been woven through her thick silver-blond braids. Her face was so pale, Arianna decided she must sleep with a mashed-bean poultice on it near every night.

  Whereas my face is fat and blotchy and I smell of milk, Arianna thought. Just like an old house cow.

  But there was such a look of pained yearning in Sybil’s eyes as she watched Nesta suckle at her breast that Arianna knew she should feel no envy of the woman’s beauty. She remembered how the gossips said Sybil had been married for six years but had yet to conceive. It was her punishment, they said, for continuing to love a man not her husband.

  Raine began to stroke the dark fuzz on Nesta’s head with a crooked finger. Sybil’s gaze rested on his bent head and the feelings in her heart shone plainly out of her face, like a sunbeam though the sheerest veil.

  Unable to bear it, Arianna looked away … and caught Hugh staring at his wife. Some dark emotion flashed across the earl’s face, before he masked it with his sardonic smile.

  Does he know that his wife loves his brother? she wondered. Of course he do
es—all of England knows it. Such a thing would hurt a man’s pride, if not his heart. It was the sort of thing that would drive a man to shoot an arrow into his brother’s chest.

  But it could not have happened as I saw it, Arianna thought. For Raine would not welcome a man who had once tried to kill him into his castle, he would not ask that man to stand up as godfather to his firstborn.

  Not that it wasn’t possible for brother to hate brother enough to do murder. In Wales, where land was not passed on whole to the eldest, but divided among all the sons, it was common for brothers to blind, castrate, and kill one another to increase their share of the inheritance. It was, Arianna knew, a recurrent fear of her father’s—that when he died, his sons would commence slaughtering one another.

  Nesta decided she’d had enough of eating. She let the nipple fall out of her mouth and heaved a loud belch.

  Hugh laughed. “She has her mother’s beauty and her father’s manners. It’s a pity she’s a girl-child, though. She can’t inherit and she’ll cost you a fat dowry when it comes time to buy her a husband. Especially as she is a bastard’s daughter.”

  “But you forget, my lord earl,” Arianna said in a sugar-sweet voice. “That she is also the granddaughter of a prince, and I am young yet and have proven most fertile. Doubtless I will breed my husband many sons.”

  Taliesin giggled, Hugh looked taken aback, and Sybil paled. Raine frowned at her, but she ignored him.

  She refused to sit silently while Hugh used words like knives on the man she loved. Though she knew that Raine truly did not care that their first child was a girl. Already he loved Nesta with such a fierce gentleness. Arianna couldn’t watch her man holding their baby without her throat closing up and tears blurring her eyes.

  A soft breeze wafted through the open window, carrying with it a mingled scent of the sea and of freshly plowed earth. It was a sweet day, a day meant for laughter and giving. She looked at her husband’s averted face and she was filled with such a love for him that she ached with it.