Fire and Steel

by Anita Mills

  “Aye, there were others who went unpunished for greater wrongs,” Roger sympathized.

  “But they had not wed Catherine of the Condes, my lord.” Guy’s jaw worked as he sought to control the anger he felt at the memory. “But I swear afore God that before I am done, I’ll have every hide and every mark that I ever lost—and more. Nay, but I’ll not leave my son as my father left me.”

  Surprised by Guy’s bitterness, Roger wondered if they’d been wrong to bring him back to Catherine. If he blamed her for his losses, he was not likely to make a kind or loving husband. But when he spoke, such thoughts were veiled. “If you know not what you will find at Rivaux, Guy, mayhap you would wish to leave Cat here until ’tis safe. Aye—go to your own lands and see to your defenses, and then come for her. Lea will be glad for her company when Aislinn is gone.”

  Without answering, Guy cocked his head back to look at his wife. She’d turned again to her sister and now disputed whether she would wear her red gown or her purple one to the younger girl’s wedding. She was so lovely to look on that it made him ache almost, and even her soft baudekin veil could not hide her rich, dark hair. Instead, the light of the torch above them caught the many silver and gold threads in the silk tissue and made the braids beneath shimmer. As she inclined her head closer to her sister, the gossamer veil cast iridescent shadows on her white neck. Desire flooded over him as he watched her.

  “Take her to Rouen with you when you swear to Henry, if ’tis your will,” Roger persisted, “but bring her back to the Condes until you have had the time to rebuild Rivaux.”

  “I have other castles,” Guy murmured, his eyes still on Catherine.

  While she yet argued her point with Aislinn, she reached absently for a comfit on the serving platter in front of them, and this time, it was her hand that touched his arm. Startled, she looked up into his face and saw his thoughts mirrored there. Her expression froze, but not before he’d heard the sharp intake of her breath. Her heart pounded, sending blood rushing to her head and forcing her to look away. He picked up one of the pitted sugar dates and bit off half of it, chewing almost lazily, and then held the rest in front of her mouth. Her fingers plucked it from his as though she feared he would burn her, and she popped it into her mouth quickly.

  Aislinn leaned around her to address him, “What think you, my lord—is it red or purple that favors Cat best?”

  His eyes still on Catherine, he answered almost too softly for Linn’s ears, “I think her comelier than anything she could wear.”

  “Aye, but…” Aislinn’s voice trailed off as she became aware that he was not speaking to her at all.

  His voice was low and husky, and his eyes had warmed almost gold, betraying what he would have of her. Catherine swallowed hard to maintain her composure under his gaze. The pulse in her neck was visible where the filmy baudekin fell away, and when his eyes dropped to the swell of her breasts, she could feel the heat spread through her body.

  Roger’s voice sounded far away as it penetrated Guy’s consciousness when he repeated his suggestion, that Catherine remain at the Condes. “Nay,” Guy answered finally, his eyes still on her. “I take her with me by King Henry’s command.”

  As the servants began removing platters from the tables and refilling wine cups, jongleurs tumbled into view from behind a screen at the end of the great hall. Roger leaned back reluctantly, knowing that Guy had the right to do with Cat what he would. Mayhap before it was time for them to leave for Rouen, he would have a better opportunity to discuss the matter. Eleanor, who had been keeping Brian FitzHenry away from her daughter with a determination that made her husband marvel, turned to whisper in his ear, “He does not look to be one to brook interference in his affairs, my lord.” Reaching to tweak an errant lock of blond hair made lighter by strands of silver, she teased to lighten his mood, “On the morrow, ’tis the barber for you, lord husband, else you’ll look more English than Norman.”

  The household began to clap in rhythm as the tumblers performed their feats of agility, rolling, leaping, and springing across the open area of the hall, contorting their bodies to form platforms for those who would run, bounce, and cartwheel into the air. The girls’ shortened skirts fell away from their lithe legs, revealing the modesty cloths they wore beneath them. To Guy, it was as though everything conspired to heighten his desire—the rhythm, the wine, the dancers, and, above all, the girl at his side. Even though he’d drunk very little, he felt intoxicated, his senses reeling with the very nearness of Catherine.

  “Eleanor would have you come to her solar when we are done here,” Roger leaned to murmur behind Guy’s ear. “’Tis our custom to play at tables or dames—or chess, if you prefer it—ere we retire.”

  “I am overtired, I fear,” Guy answered. “Mayhap tomorrow…” His voice trailed off, his thoughts racing ahead to when he would again be alone with her.

  “Oh, but you must come!” Aislinn urged. “If you do not, I shall be left with Brian, who is a poor player at best. You do play chess, do you not?”

  “Aye, but I have not the will for it tonight. I—”

  “Brian is not a poor player!” Cat felt compelled to argue. “For shame, Linn—I never win against him.”

  “Because you do not try. God’s blood, Cat, but if you ceased watching him with sheep’s eyes and did but watch your game instead—”Aislinn halted and her hands crept to her stricken face when she realized what she’d said in Rivaux’s presence. “That is…well, you never were a very good player anyway,” she added lamely. But stealing a look at her sister’s husband, she knew her barb had struck the wrong mark.

  Guy felt a surge of anger that everyone knew of Catherine’s preference for another man, and his ardor dissipated. “I would play him,” he muttered grimly.

  “But I…” Aislinn fought to hide her disappointment, realizing that he meant to challenge Brian on any field he could now.

  “Leave him be, Linn,” Eleanor ordered hastily. “Can you not accept that the man is tired and would not play?”

  “Well, I would,” Cat decided. “Aye, let him retire, and I will best you at tables, Linn. Then Brian can sing and you will be spared his game.”

  “Nay, I would play him also.” Brian, his face flushed from too much drink, stared past Eleanor and Roger to Guy. His animosity evident, his courage bolstered with Roger’s wine, he challenged, “I will play you at anything, my lord, if the wager is sufficient.”

  “Done,” Guy growled.

  Eleanor and Roger exchanged uneasy glances before Roger signaled the end of the meal. As serving maids sopped up spilled wine and began removing the covers, men-at-arms and other household members rose to bid their lord and lady good night. Ten-year-old Isabella complained loudly of the injustice of letting thirteen-year-old Philippa accompany their parents whilst she had to follow Hawise to bed, but both Pippa and Aislinn ignored her in their efforts to gain Guy of Rivaux’s attention.

  “When you have beaten Brian, would you play tables with me?” Pippa begged him.

  “Nay, ’tis my right as the elder,” Linn insisted. “If Cat will not play with him, then it should be me.”

  “Stop it—both of you,” Cat hissed at them.

  “Jesu, but you are cross, sister,” Pippa noted.

  “With good reason.”

  Roger’s chamberlain lighted the way up the narrow, winding steps, pausing at the top to hand his master the torch, and then pressing his body back against the cold stone to let everyone pass. The night was cool for late spring, and the fresh fire in the central brazier was warm and inviting. Impulsively Eleanor turned back to Guy to ask, “Do you sing, my lord?”

  “When I was a squire,” he admitted with a rueful smile. “Now I doubt I know above one lay from beginning to end.”

  Brian, with the ease of one long accustomed to life at the Condes, crossed the room to find a wineskin, and Catherine followed him to whisper, “Have you not had enough? Nay, but you’ll be no match for him.”

  “L
eave me be.” Dismissing her with an unsteady wave of his hand, he found a cup and filled it, spilling the red liquid onto the woven mats that warmed the floor. “I do not need you to tell me how to play the game.”

  “Linn, see if there is any honey in the pot,” Eleanor ordered her second daughter. “If there is, offer Lord Guy some sweetened wine. Would you have it mulled for you?” she asked, turning to him. “There is some ginger for it.”

  “Aye.”

  “Pippa, get the lute for Lord Guy, that he may play for us.”

  “Maman, ’tis Brian’s lute,” Cat protested. “And Guy did not say he would sing, anyway.”

  “Lea…”

  Eleanor turned back to her husband, a mischievous smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “Ah, did you wish to sing for me, Roger?” she asked innocently, knowing full well that there was little chance of getting him to do it.

  “Nay.”

  “I did not think so. And while the pieces are found and the board is set, Cat may mull the wine and Guy may sing to us. Linn, see if you and Pippa can find the dice for tables, if you will.” Passing close to Roger, she leaned to murmur for his ears alone, “I would not have Brian play when he is half gone with drink—else he may force a quarrel. If you can but keep them apart for a little while, I doubt not that he will just go to sleep.” Aloud, she directed Philippa, “Get the cushions, that we may sit around the fire, sweeting.” Taking the lute from the girl’s hands, she thrust it at Guy. “I would hear your one lay, my lord, and mayhap ’twill remind you of others. There’s not a knight I know that cannot sing enough to entertain me.

  Philippa dragged a long bench up closer to the fire and then banked silk-covered cushions against it. “If it would please you, my lord, you may sit here,” she offered with uncharacteristic shyness. Tossing another cushion at the end, she nodded to her sister. “Cat?”

  “Nay, ’tis too hot. And you heard Maman—I am to mull the wine. Do you want yours heated with the rest, Brian?”

  “Nay.” He slumped heavily to sit, his back braced against the outer wall of the solar, and drank deeply.

  “I have the bones,” Aislinn announced triumphantly, straightening up from where she’d been rummaging in a chest for the dice. “If Brian is to drink and Lord Guy is to sing, then I will stand you in tables, Cat.” Then, noting her sister’s chagrin, she added impishly, “And I get the first toss.”

  “Nay—play with Papa, Linn.” Cat removed the cooling poker from the pitcher of heated wine and stirred in the honey and ginger. Satisfied with the sweetness of the mixture, she began pouring it into cups. “Here—see that everyone has some.”

  “Even Brian, sister?” Aislinn asked with feigned innocence. With a toss of her still-unbound chestnut hair, she nodded toward where he sat pouring himself yet another cup of Roger’s wine. “’Twould seem he has found his own.” Even as both girls watched, he let the skin slip to rest against his leg and turned to cradle his head against the solid rock, and it was obvious that he was very drunk. Cat walked over to shake him awake, and his eyes opened briefly, tried to focus on her, and then closed as she turned away in disgust. His cup rolled, spilling its contents into a pool beside him.

  Behind them, his back settled against the cushions, Guy strummed Brian’s lute softly,” his fingers seeking the feel of the instrument, while he hummed a tune under his breath and tried to remember the words. Eleanor set up the chessboard and motioned to her husband to play, and Philippa picked up the dice from where Aislinn had laid them and began casting them aimlessly onto the floor, waiting for a challenge from one of her sisters.

  Wishing fervently that Brian had not chosen to drink himself into a stupor, Cat finished pouring the warm, sweetened wine and handed the cups to Aislinn for distribution. Taking a seat on the other side of the fire, she looked across the circle to where Guy tightened a string on the lute. The flames glowed red and orange on his face, illuminating the scar she’d given him, and his eyes, when they met hers, reflected the flickering firelight eerily. Apparently satisfied at last, he stopped humming and began testing his voice with a short verse of the sort the guards chorused on long watches. Aislinn handed him a steaming cup and he paused to take a sip, setting it down on the mat beside him. Cat hunched forward, clasping her arms around her knees and resting her head on them, telling herself she hoped he got as drunk as Brian.

  An intimate hush settled over the room, broken only by the popping and spitting of the logs in the brazier, when Guy self-consciously began the lay he knew best. His voice, warmed by the wine, was deeper than Brian’s, but his delivery was clear and pleasant, gaining in richness as he relaxed and gave himself up to his song.

  Roger, who had been about to move one of his knights on the chessboard, stopped to listen again to the story of how he had been the only man to lay Robert of Belesme on the ground and live. There were as many versions of the song as there were singers in Normandy, he reflected as he sat, his piece still in his hand, and heard Guy sing the old tale. Pippa dropped her dice and edged closer to listen, and Aislinn dropped down beside Guy to sip her wine.

  The lay was long, its verses having grown with the intervening years, its story embellished until Roger was no longer merely a man, but rather a symbolic hero of epic proportions who had taken on evil and vanquished it. And Guy’s delivery of the song was compelling, drawing everyone’s rapt attention. Even Catherine found herself under the spell of the story she knew by heart, and as he bent his head down in concentration, she could picture again the way it must have been the day that her father fought Robert of Belesme for her mother.

  Eleanor pushed aside the chessboard and leaned to rest her head on her husband’s shoulder, savoring again the strength of the man she’d wed. Aye, for most of her life, he’d been her sword and buckler against a violent and treacherous world. His arm cradled her, stroking her silk sleeve against her shoulder, and she felt again the thrill of knowing he was hers. Guy paused, his throat parched from singing, and washed his mouth with the warm liquid, swallowing it slowly before returning to his song. His eyes met Eleanor’s warmly and he nodded as he began again with a verse that described her incredible beauty.

  She sucked in her breath and stared in that moment, feeling for all the world that time stood still. An awful stab of recognition hit her, sending a shiver to the very core of her being, and then it passed. She forced herself to look again, but he’d bent his head to the lute. The fire played off the glossy black of his hair and off the shimmering embroidery on his tunic. Her heart hammering fearfully, she willed him to look up again, and she prayed she would not see the resemblance again. But this time, when he turned to Catherine, Eleanor studied his profile, taking in the high cheekbone, the chiseled, slightly aquiline nose, and the firm chin, and her frightful suspicion returned. The song forgotten, she argued within herself, chiding herself for foolish fear, telling herself that it could not be, and yet wondering what she had done to her daughter. Then, shaking off what her rational mind told her was impossible, she tried to listen to the part about Belesme coming for her at Fontainebleau and taking her prisoner.

  Catherine cast a disgusted look at Brian and then turned her attention to her husband. Even she, who professed not to want him, had to own that Guy of Rivaux was everything that Aislinn had said of him—handsome beyond any other she’d seen, big and dark, with those strange eyes of his, his handsomeness marred only by the two scars that appeared as one on his face. Her thoughts ended abruptly when she realized he stared back, and the blood rushed to her head.

  He missed neither words nor cadence despite the sudden rekindling of his desire for her. Her unguarded admiration of him gave him a headier feel than the wine. This night she would be his, this night she’d think of no other, he promised himself. Even his fingertips that strummed the strings were sensitive to the anticipation that surged anew within him. His mind raced ahead of his words, discarding verses, in his haste to be done.

  He’d reached the place where “Lord Roger threw d
own his gauntlet” when she looked away. At his side, Aislinn refilled his cup with the now cool wine and whispered that he’d forgotten part of the story, but he shook his head and went on to tell of the battle itself. “And when ’twas all done, ’twas Belesme that lay vanquished in the dust, his green plumes lying in his blood,” he finished, strumming the lute strings rapidly to signal the end of his song. There was silence for a moment, and then the sound of Brian’s snoring broke the spell.

  Roger pulled himself up by a low bench and reached a hand to Eleanor. Yawning, he stretched sleepily. “If ’tis the only lay you know, my lord, you have managed to remember it well,” he murmured to Guy. “Aye, if you could not earn your bread with your sword, I’d warrant you could do it with your song.” Putting an arm about Eleanor’s shoulders, he yawned again. “Jesu, but I am tired tonight.”

  Eleanor stared upward at Guy, seeking some sign of what she’d thought she’d seen, and was relieved to discover it had passed. ’Twas but a sign she was getting older, she decided finally as she told herself that her mind had but wandered from the song he’d sung. “I’d not heard the story told in a long while—I thank you for it,” she managed.

  “Aye—I learned it in Wales, where his enemies still sing of Belesme.” Guy grinned. “’Tis a favorite there.” Turning to look across to where Catherine gathered the empty cups, he addressed her, “And I am tired also—I would retire, Cat.”