Keeper of the Dream

by Penelope Williamson

His hand reached up to cup her breast, but then the wind blew and the candles flared, catching the torque around her neck, setting it afire. So he touched that instead.

  Burned. Oh God, it burned. He could feel her pulse throbbing through the hot metal, as if he touched her heart. It thundered through his own blood like a violent sea beating against rocks. A curling silver mist blurred the edges of his vision. He looked beyond her face to the heavens and all the stars, and constellations began to whirl like a vast millwheel and the sky, the black, black sky bled into a white hot light.

  He stood within the circle of stones with his beloved in his arms while around them chariot-mounted warriors wheeled, brandishing swords, long hair spiked, naked bodies painted blue, and priests in white robes whirled in a frenzied dance, pouring forth imprecations. A trumpet of sound battered his ears, men shouted war cries, screams of rage, howls of pain. Smoke stung his eyes, and the sky burned, and he was afraid to die, for he could not bear the thought of leaving her, even knowing that beyond death she would be there still, waiting, his, always his. His beloved …

  The sky burned red and the stars whirled and fell, raining fire, raining light. The light flooded through him, until he became the light and the light was her, and it burned, burned, and then was gone, and he was looking into Arianna’s face, Arianna’s eyes.

  She was riding him, pushing up on her knees until he touched but the edge of her, then sliding back down his length, clenching around him, and he felt the first shudders of a release he knew he wasn’t going to be able to stop, even if it killed him, sure that it would kill him.

  He shouted, spilling hot and deep inside of her.

  She slumped forward onto his chest, her face nestled within the crook of his shoulder, her heart beating hard and loud against his chest. There were pieces of him up there floating among the stars, but most of him was inside her still, where he belonged. For she had stolen his soul, this woman, his wife. He would never fully belong to himself again.

  “Cariad,” he whispered in Welsh, a word he didn’t know he knew, a word he couldn’t remember hearing. But he knew what it meant … beloved.

  And so it was as the weeks passed and summer faded to autumn, that the Black Dragon came to understand the meaning of joy.

  He watched his people harvest the land. Villeins and cottagers mowed the golden fields with scythes, while others followed, threshing the grain from its husks with wooden flails. Still others fanned and tossed the grain into the air to winnow it from the straw and shaft. The breeze smelled pungently sweet from the freshly mown wheat.

  But it was not Rhuddlan or the land or his place as the lord of it that was the cause of his unbounded joy. It was Arianna and their child. He needed them. More than his next breath, he needed them.

  One day, after all the fields had been reaped and gleaned, Raine thought to celebrate by putting on an exhibition for the pages and squires, an exhibition of knightly horsemanship and lance play.

  He let his knights do the showing off, but it wasn’t long before his men were clamoring at him to put on a little exhibition of his own. They set up a dozen small rings set on stakes at intervals down the length of the tilting field. The object was to spear, while riding bareback on a galloping horse, as many as one could with the tip of one’s lance. A perfect score required a feat of horsemanship, balance, and strength few men could master.

  But Raine had bought himself a suit of Damascus mail with the money he had won performing that particular trick on the jousting fields in France.

  He set his black charger full tilt at the row of stakes. He leaned out and away from the horse’s side, legs gripping hard, lance pointed at a downward angle. Too low and the point would stick into the ground, vaulting him off the horse’s back and wrenching his arm from its socket. Too high and he would humiliate himself by missing the rings entirely.

  He did it perfectly—he should, after all those stolen hours of practice as a boy, paid for with beatings. The metal point scooped up the rings with neat clicks. At the end of the list, he wheeled his horse to the sound of cheering, his lance wearing all twelve rings like bracelets. He saw Arianna standing at the end of the field.

  He spurred his horse, charging at a hard, free-shouldered gallop. The wind bit at his face and flattened his hair. Hooves struck the ground with a steady thunder, like a barrage from a catapult. His thighs gripped moving flesh, powerful muscles flexing and releasing, flexing and releasing, blood pumping hot and fast in his veins. She stood with her head held high and watched him come.

  At the last moment he swerved and pulled up hard beside her. His destrier reared, pawing the air. She looked up at him, sea-foam eyes wide, mouth parted. But with excitement, not fear.

  She is mad for me, he thought, and almost smiled. She was his, and he hadn’t even had to use Taliesin’s philter to get her. But she had never once said she loved him. Lust—too many women had come to him out of lust. He wanted more from Arianna.

  He dismounted, turning his horse over to a page. Closer to her he could see that she looked tired, with shadows like bruises beneath her eyes and a wan tint to her skin. Nesta had kept her awake throughout the night with a cough.

  Nesta … Every time he thought of his daughter he felt a soft warmth, a feeling of coming home. “How is our girl?” he asked. His hand slid beneath the fall of her hair to caress her neck. Arianna reached up and clung to his forearm, twisting her head up and around to smile at him.

  Her smile was sweet. The warmth within him swelled, cocooning his heart, so that he had to blink a wetness from his eyes.

  “Sleeping peacefully,” Arianna said. “I gave her a bit of ale and mustard seed and put a poultice of burdock on her chest.” She pointed toward the head of the lists. “Look, Rhodri is about to tilt now. How is he doing? Will he make a good knight?”

  “He’s strong. A bit reckless, but he’ll grow out of that. He’s got the Gwynedd guts.” He saw that his words pleased her, and he smiled.

  Rhodri caught Arianna’s eyes and waved, grinning. He buckled his helm, hefted his lance, and spurred his horse into a gallop toward the quintain.

  The quintain was dressed up like an infidel, but with a hole in his chest. The object was to put the lance through the hole. If a rider hit the quintain anywhere else it would spin around, thwacking him off his horse.

  Rhodri struck a good solid blow, but he hit the mannikin smack on its right shoulder. He tried to duck but the quintain spun, catching him on the back, and sent him flying into the mud.

  Taliesin, who had been sitting on the fence, hooted and cackled and slapped his knee. “You’re dead, Gwynedd!” he jeered. “Killed by old Quinty the Infidel, a better man than thee.”

  Rhodri pushed himself onto his outstretched arms, shaking mud out his eyes. He was so covered with slime he looked like a tarred scarecrow.

  “Not only are you a dead man, Gwynedd. You’re a dead man that stinks of horse piss!” Taliesin hooted and cackled some more.

  Rhodri let out a bellow of rage and launched himself at the squire.

  The boys tumbled together, end over end, like a bucket rolling down a hill. Taliesin kicked himself free, and both boys stood up, but Rhodri’s fist shot out, quick as a bolt from a crossbow, smacking into the squire’s nose and knocking him back onto his rump. Mud splattered into the air.

  Arianna cried out, starting toward them, but Raine held her back. “Let them fight. It’s time they got it settled between them.”

  Rhodri tried to settle it by kicking Taliesin in the groin. But the squire nimbly spun aside, rolling back onto his feet. He grabbed Rhodri by the hair and threw him to the ground, and Rhodri plowed a furrow in the mud with his nose.

  Arianna winced and covered her eyes with her hands. But then Raine caught her peeping through her fingers.

  The knights and other boys had gathered around to watch the fight, and wagers flew through the air. Amidst all the shouting at first no one heard Edith’s screams. She ran across the fields, her skirts hiked up aro
und the knees, her coif hanging askew on her head, her face twisted with fear.

  “Milady! Oh, milady, come quickly. ’Tis Nesta. She is … oh, milady, she is so very sick.”

  Raine stood alone in the deepening twilight of the deserted tilting ground. His eyes, black in the hollowed-out flesh of his face, stared at the window of their bedchamber. No glow from cresset lamps bled through the shutters. Beyond them, hidden away from the air and the light, in a red cradle gaily painted with vines and flowers, lay Nesta. Six months she had lived and now she was dying.

  Oh God, God, God … But there was no God, and there was no mercy. And he was no brave and honorable knight, no knight in silvered mail. He couldn’t make himself go in there and face this particular dragon, not this one. His own death—hell, that was easy. But not his Nesta, not his baby.

  Still, he had taken a step toward the castle when a tortured scream floated out the opened doors of the hall. Raine jerked to a stop, his eyes squeezing shut as anguish closed around his heart like a fist. Eventually, because he had to, he began walking again, toward the hall that now, after that single unearthly scream, was silent.

  The air inside the darkened chamber was close and still. Arianna stood beside the cradle, rocking it and singing to Nesta as if she still lived.

  Edith laid a hand on his arm. Her cheeks were thick with tears, her eyes nearly swollen shut. “The Lady Arianna has gone mad with grief, my lord. She cannot accept—”

  “Get out,” he grated, and the maidservant, sobbing, scurried out the door. He did not go all the way up to the cradle. Nothing was going to make him look at Nesta dead. Nothing.

  He stood in the middle of the room, unable to breathe for the pain that squeezed his chest. A fierce and terrible anger gripped him, anger with Arianna. He had trusted her with his heart and now he was hurting again, and this time the pain was unbearable, and it was all her fault. Somehow she had wormed her way in under all his careful armor, she had made him start caring about things again, even though he knew better. Start caring, even the least little bit, and he knew he was just asking for a kick in the guts.

  Even in the midst of his agony he knew his thinking wasn’t rational, that Arianna could not be blamed for Nesta’s death. Still, he could not stop it from coming out his mouth. “How could you let this happen?”

  She turned her head and looked at him out of lifeless eyes. “Don’t worry, Raine. It’s only a little cough.”

  He could feel his face hardening. Stop it, he told himself. Stop it now. But he could not. “You’re so good at seeing things, Arianna. Why didn’t you see this?” He flung his arm out in the direction of the cradle. “Why did you give her to me in the first place, if you were only going to let her die?”

  She made a fluttering motion with her hand. She turned back around and looked at the crib, blinking as if dazed. Her hands wrapped around the edge of it, and she hunched over. A sob tore out of her, and then another and another and another, until the sound of her tearing, broken weeping smothered the room.

  “I’ll go speak to the wainwright about a coffin,” he said to no one in particular.

  He turned and walked toward the door, not really seeing where he was going, lost in a hell he knew there was no coming back from. “Raine!”

  He kept walking. She twisted around, falling onto her knees, one hand reaching out for him. But he didn’t know, for he had not looked back.

  A crucifix lay across her tiny chest. She rested upon a bier, draped in a black pall. Around her tall candles burned. Flames flickered in the empty darkness, glowing off the wooden rood and glinting in the gilt of the saints’ effigies and the gems in the reliquary.

  Beside her, Arianna stood and grieved, alone.

  She tried to pray, but the words were a jumble in her mind. Every time she breathed, the sweet smell of incense made her want to choke. She felt as if red hot awls had been thrust into her eyes. They were empty sockets now, incapable of any more tears.

  I cannot bear this, she thought. God must end this right now, for I cannot bear it.

  The chapel door creaked open. Slowly, she turned, wanting it, needing desperately for it to be Raine.

  Candlelight glinted off red hair. Taliesin walked down the chapel’s squat nave on silent feet. He stopped before her, his young face grave, his eyes glittering and old. “Oh, my lady …” he said, that was all. But there were worlds upon worlds of sorrow in those three words.

  Arianna turned back to the bier. Tears … there were fresh tears on her cheeks. God, where were all these tears coming from? Grief was endless, she knew that now. It didn’t stop, it just went on and on and on.

  “We must bury her soon … Oh, God, Taliesin. Where is he?”

  “He loved her, my lady.”

  She whipped around. “But I loved her too! Can’t he see how …” She stuffed a fist into her mouth.

  “He is hurting, my lady.”

  “Does that give him the right to hurt me?” She pounded her chest with her fist. “I love him and he is killing me.”

  “Love always hurts, my lady. Even at its most wondrous there is that sweet agony underneath—the knowledge that to risk loving, is to risk losing and hurting. To risk sometimes destroying the one you love … or being yourself destroyed.”

  Raine felt things too deeply, she understood that now. It was his one weakness—when he loved, he loved too hard. “He will never risk that sort of pain again,” she said. More loss, she thought. More tears. Without him, without his love, I cannot bear it. But with me, with my love, he is the one being forced to give more than he can stand.

  Taliesin touched her shoulder. A soft heat flowed into her, a golden light. She felt it deep within her, in her soul.

  “He will love again, for you will show him how. Go to him, child. He needs you and this time it is you who must be the strong one.”

  She wasn’t sure how she knew where Raine was. Perhaps Taliesin had put the place in her mind. Go to him, child, he had said. Yet the words hadn’t sounded strange coming from someone younger than she. But then he was not really a beardless squire, he was llyfrawr, a shape-changer, and he was older than time.

  Dark gray stones against a pale gray sky, the meinhirion stood as they had always stood, anchored to the earth, reaching for the stars. The wind moaned through the dry grass, buffeting the stones. Yet still they stood.

  One night they had come together here in shattering passion and possession, and it had seemed their love was older than the stones. A love so strong that even the passing of centuries could not kill it. Like a boulder on the beach, she thought. The sea came and swallowed it, but when the tide left again, the boulder remained—endurable, enduring. Forever standing, like the meinhirion.

  He was on the beach, at the very edge of the sea. The waves reached for him, nearly touched, then receded. He stood with his hands fisted at his sides, his head thrown back. As if he were screaming, though she heard no sound.

  She did not call his name. Yet he turned.

  Something had broken inside of him. His face had shattered, his eyes bled pain. He could hide nothing from her anymore. He stood naked before her, down to his soul.

  She took the first step, but he was the one who came stumbling to her across the sand. He fell to his knees and pressed his face into her thighs, turned his cheek over and over against her thighs, like someone blinded.

  Her hand hovered over his hair, and then she touched him.

  “Oh God, God, Arianna … hold me.” A silent sob shuddered through him, and then another. And then they were no longer silent—but the harsh, tearing sobs of a man who had never learned how to weep. “Please hold me …”

  24

  “Raine!”

  She ran up the hill, skirts held high, bare legs whipping through the grass.

  Ox-carts carrying timber and stone groaned to a halt; big wooden hammers paused in midair over chisels and stone; diggers leaned on their shovels and laughed—all work on the lord’s new castle stopped, while the men watch
ed the Lady Arianna run.

  “Raine!”

  He waited for her, legs spread, hands on his hips, his mouth fighting a smile. “There are forty men working here, and every one of them just got an eyeful of your legs,” he said when she had danced to a halt in front of him.

  Her head tilted back, her eyes laughed. “And a piddling lot of men they are if they’ve never gotten a look at a woman’s legs before. Quit scowling at me, Raine. I’ve wonderful news. I tossed up my breakfast into the chamber pot this morning.”

  “Shall I send out the heralds?”

  “Not for eight months or so.”

  But the significance of what she’d said had just struck home to Raine. Joy blazed across his face. “Morning sickness!”

  She opened her mouth to give him all the details, but he seized her around the waist and pulled her up to crush his lips to hers. He whirled her around and around, mouths locked together, her toes skimming the ground, her hair billowing away from her head like a sail.

  He stopped spinning, and they clung together a moment while the world went on whirling dizzily around them. He laughed against her neck and she twisted her fists in his tunic, and his heart was hammering so hard he thought his chest would crack.

  She touched his cheek. “Let’s go for a walk by the river.”

  Their feet crunched on the frozen mud along the shore, crushing the ice into star-burst patterns. The river ran flat and gray, reflecting the pale winter sun like polished mail.

  A biting wind carried the smell of burning lime, which was used for the mortar. And sounds as well, the hawing and chiseling of stone, the screech and groan of pulleys, the shouts and curses and the hoarse laughter of men at labor. From here, looking up at the bluff, he could barely see the beginnings of the bailey wall and mural towers. The main keep, already two man-lengths high, was embraced by a scaffolding of ropes and sapling poles. Twelve feet of stone a year it took to build a tower.

  It surprised him sometimes to think that he had dared to start a project that would take so long to see to fruition. He had always been a man who had measured his future in hours, not years.