Fires of Winter

by Roberta Gellis

  “I do not blame him,” I muttered, “and my honor, will I nill I, is tied to his. You may be sure I will not missay him to any other nor invite a beating by waking his wrath.”

  Maud sighed. “I doubt he would beat you for speaking the truth—Bruno is honest and honorable to a fault, and such a nature has advantages—but you will lose all chance of winning his love if you show you scorn him. Oh, I know you do not now think that is of value because you are all the more foolish for being all too clever, but I tell you that there is no greater happiness on earth than a good marriage.” She shook her head and sighed again. “It is a pity that most clever women are so stupid. Never mind what you think. Hold your tongue for fear of me, if for no other reason. Bruno is a good man and I do not want him hurt. I will give you another warning, which no doubt you will also scorn. Bruno is the king’s man, and nothing you can do will change that. If you do not torment him to be disloyal, your life with him will be sweet.”

  “It may be short too, if he spends all his time in the king’s wars,” I snapped before I thought.

  To my astonishment, the queen winced as though I had slapped her, tears flooded her eyes, and she closed them. My hand went out and touched hers before I could stop myself as I realized that if she loved her husband, as what she had said to me about marriage implied, her fears must be even deeper and more dreadful than mine had been before all cause for fear was reft from me. I snatched my hand back and clutched my cup, which I lifted to my lips before her eyes opened, but I knew she had felt the touch. She said no more, rising and walking away, and I finished my meal, trying to lock her words out of my mind by thinking of the whore Bruno had sent to wait on me and my promise to see that she was fed.

  This I managed by carrying down a good portion from the ladies’ table. It would have to serve as the girl’s dinner too, since I could scarcely ask a place for her among the castle servants while she was dressed in rags that would be scorned by the dog boys. I wondered what I would say to any queen’s lady who followed me, but none did. I suppose responsibility for watching me was now Bruno’s, or else he had told the queen that I had taken the bait of the restoration of my lands and would be quiet and obedient.

  A flicker of rage touched me at that thought, but I was not nearly as clever or stupid as the queen believed. I had time to discover whether that offer was only a trap. Besides, I scarcely knew where I was or how to reach Ulle, and what I had thought the first day I recovered my wits was still true. I would be a greater danger than a help to my people if I fled to them.

  When I returned to the queen’s hall, there was so loud a sound of talk and so great a crowd that I paused in the doorway. A single glance showed me that the chamber was full of men as well as women, and I sidled in carefully and soon saw a small open space near the hearth where the queen was talking to a richly garbed man that could only be the king. He was tall and fair, very handsome, and his face was familiar to me. I put that memory aside to think about later because I was struck so forcibly by the look of pleasure Stephen wore while speaking to the queen, holding her hand in his and looking down at her. His expression caused a strange stirring within me and brought Maud’s words about the joy of a happy marriage back to my mind. Her face, too, was changed. Nothing could make her features beautiful; nonetheless, there was a kind of beauty in her.

  I had no time to see more because Bruno touched my arm to draw my attention. He looked at me with anxiety, and I raised my brows and stared back haughtily, thinking he was concerned about my reaction to discovering he had sent a whore to serve me.

  “I hope you said nothing to make the queen more uneasy about your loyalty,” he said softly, drawing me closer to him so that I could hear. “I am sorry I did not send word of David’s defeat to you so that you would be warned and have time to collect yourself, but it was impossible for me to get away from the king at first. By the time I could have left him, I was sure you had already heard.”

  It was just as well Bruno’s apology was so long-winded for it gave me time to reorient my thinking and to reconsider expressing my exasperation too. “I said to the queen exactly what I am about to say to you.” I spoke as softly as he and I made no effort to escape from the arm that was encircling my waist, but I did not try to hide the sharp edge of irritation in my voice either. “I do not care whether King David was defeated or victorious and never did care.”

  The anxiety cleared from Bruno’s face, and the arm around me tightened a trifle. “She will not believe you, but it was the best thing to say. I—”

  “Do you believe me?” I interrupted him because I was annoyed and wondered whether he would lie and say he did.

  A slow smile curved his lips and lit his dark eyes. There was a kind of contagious mischief in that expression that made me smile back and almost forget the whore.

  “Should I not?” he countered, then smiled more broadly and added, “I think I do believe you—but I will not tell you why since that will make you cross and I want you in a good temper. I have news for you. I hope you will think it good news.”

  “I am sure to think it the worst news in the world after that introduction,” I said, but I could not keep an angry look on my face. My lips quivered upward, tempted to laughter by the teasing.

  “Why then, I will not tell my news at all,” Bruno remarked loftily.

  That drew a gasp of indignation from me as I saw the trap into which I had fallen. “Why did you go to all that trouble not to tell me something that you could simply have kept to yourself in the first place?” I asked angrily.

  Bruno opened his eyes wide in a patently false astonishment. “What? And have you hear from someone else of the king’s order, then blame me for not telling you now so that you seemed neglected by your husband and the last to learn from him what you should be first to know?”

  I burst out laughing. I could not help it. The open admission of his maneuver was too comical to resist at the moment, although I knew I would be furious later. All I could do was take a small revenge by asking, “Did you say that in the most confusing manner and the largest number of words possible apurpose, or is that the way you talk all the time? If so, I will know that the king and queen have visited upon me the worst cruelty they could imagine by condemning me to a lifetime of listening to you.”

  “How do I know how I talk? One does not listen to oneself talk,” Bruno pointed out gravely. “Half the men in this court would have hung themselves years ago if they did.”

  Despite my desire to choke him, I crowed with laughter again and then was startled to feel the arm that had been holding me drop away. Bruno stiffened and stepped to the side. Almost, I cried out that I was sorry I had offended him and moved toward him, although I had not the faintest idea what in my laugh could have made him angry. I bit back the words and checked the movement as I saw his eyes were looking past my shoulder at someone behind me. I turned, and there were the king and queen. Stephen was smiling broadly at us; the queen was smiling too, but the curve of her lips was not mirrored in her eyes.

  “My dear Lady Melusine,” the king said, “that is the first time I have heard you laugh in all the months I have known you. I have wished you happy already at your wedding, but it is a great easing of my heart to see—”

  “The first step in that direction,” Maud interrupted smoothly. “I beg you, my heart, do not speak of happiness yet lest an evil ear be cocked to catch your words. Recall that they have not yet had time to quarrel. In a year, you may praise them for being happy. Now is too soon.”

  Stephen patted his wife’s shoulder. “Very well, I will say no more, but you are always too fearful of expecting a happy future, Maud. Surely you can see that these young people are well-suited.”

  “I hope they are.” Maud’s voice was warm while her eyes were on her husband. “We would be monsters if we planned a marriage for those we knew to be ill-suited.”

  Then she looked at Bruno and me,
and there was no more to be seen in her eyes than in small black stones. It took all my strength not to shrink back into the protection of Bruno’s arm, and I flushed with the realization of how much comfort his embrace had given me. Yet he had withdrawn from me the moment the king and queen came near. To show them he did not wish to be coupled with a rebel? The question gave me a feeling of hollowness, and I was ashamed of myself. Where were my vaunted courage and independence? I had always thought myself able to stand alone, but was that only because in the back of my mind I knew my father and brothers would support me?

  Shame made me stiffen my back. Perhaps Bruno saw that for he was a step behind me and could not have read my face. He put his hand on my shoulder, and it was then I noticed that the queen’s expressionless eyes had shifted to him. If Bruno was disturbed, there was no response to that concern in the hand that held me. It was warm and steady, gently linking us, and his voice was amused when he replied lightly to the queen’s remark, “I beg your pardon for contradicting you, madam—not to say we are ill-suited and that you knew it—but we have already quarreled. Somehow people always have time for a quarrel.”

  “May all your quarrels end in laughter,” Stephen said, and put his arm around the queen and drew her away.

  “I wish you had not played the fool for so long,” Bruno said when they were gone. “She is very suspicious of you.”

  “I was not—” I began angrily, about to deny that I had “played the fool,” and then realized that was useless and changed it to “I could not think what else to do. I am very sorry if you are soiled with my dirt,” I added coldly.

  “And so you should be,” Bruno replied equably, dropping his hand to my arm and turning me toward him, “because if I were, your purpose would become impossible to gain. But you need not worry that the queen suspects me of disloyalty. Within or without reason, my life is pledged to the king, and she herself has done me such favors that no service I do her can free me of obligation.”

  “Well, she certainly looked at you strangely for someone who harbors no doubts or suspicions,” I answered tartly.

  “Did she?” Bruno looked puzzled and then shrugged easily. “No doubt I will learn soon enough what troubled her—if she was thinking of me at all. It is not easy to read the queen.”

  He drew me toward the door then, and I saw that everyone was going to the great hall. At dinner, all the talk that came in snatches through Bruno’s conversation was about the great victory at Northallerton. But Bruno seemed to be trying to shield me from this, seating me beside him at the end of a table among the lesser knights and keeping most of my attention with a merry explanation of why he was never chosen to serve the king like the other Knights of the Body. Despite the fact that I was annoyed by his apprehension that I would betray some anger or hurt at the slights to King David, I was amused by his tale.

  Besides, I was glad to be sitting with him rather than among the queen’s ladies. Now that the queen knew I was awake and alert, I dared not continue to pretend to be an idiot among them. I was certain that would make Maud even more suspicious of me. Yet to burst out suddenly into my natural behavior would doubtless make all the other ladies hate me. They would think, as the queen did, that I had been shamming and had made fools of them or, perhaps, heard secrets I should not, as I had heard the previous day that Bruno was little inclined to play with even willing women. Perhaps I should not have cared that the women would dislike me, but I would have to spend nearly all my waking hours with them. I did not know if I could endure to be shunned and despised by all.

  I was glad of a respite from the problem and enjoyed my dinner, thinking when the meal was over and the king rose to leave the table, that I could put off dealing with the queen’s ladies a little longer. I would go and walk in the garden and possibly explore the keep so I would not be lost if any need came to find my way alone. Bruno had risen too and pushed our end of the bench back so that I could step out easily, and I smiled at him and nodded my thanks automatically. He glanced quickly at the king, who was saying a few last words to Maud but already looking toward the entrance to his closet where several men waited.

  “I must go,” he said, “but will you take what food you can to Edna? And if you can find her anything to wear better than what she has on, I will be grateful to you and replace with new whatever you give her.”

  I had forgotten all about the girl so that Bruno’s words were a shock. And I was all the more furious because he was gone before I could find my voice and ask him how he had dared to send a whore to wait on me. I would have liked to spite him by refusing what he asked, but I recalled the girl’s eyes when I brought her the bread and cheese remaining from the morning meal. I had seen eyes like that before—thank God not often—in the rare years that not only crops failed but fish and game were also hard to find. No matter how angry I was with Bruno, I could not deny the girl whatever food I could bring. She could take away what she could not eat, and for a day or two, at least, her belly would not cramp with hunger.

  I glanced around and saw a servant with an alms basket and beckoned him to me. He showed no surprise when I asked for the basket, just gave it to me and went off—I suppose to get another. I had been a little concerned that at the king’s table the custom might be different, but I had taken the chance because I knew that even at such great places as Carlisle and Richmond it was quite usual for noble ladies to gather up the scraps and bring them with their own hands to the beggars at the gate.

  While I piled the basket high, putting at the bottom whatever I thought least likely to spoil, I tried to think what I could give Edna to wear. A chill passed through me as I realized that I had not the slightest notion of what was in my chest, aside from my wedding dress and the clothes on my back. It is not pleasant to remember that you were truly mad. Most of the time, even when I thought of the queen’s suspicion of me and how her ladies would react to the change in my manner, I almost believed what Maud thought was true—that I had been pretending. So when I came to my chamber, I was glad to see Edna there, glad to be able to talk to her and use the excuse that Bruno had told me to give her a gown to turn out the chest with her help and see what was there.

  It was a relief to find that everything that had been mine in Ulle had been sent with me. I suppose the old maids that had stayed with me to face the invaders had packed my things. Even my riding dress and the rough gowns I wore to work in the garden and the storehouses were there, and at the very bottom, my sewing basket, with needles and pins and thread and my scissors. I might have dissolved in tears, remembering that most of my sewing had been the mending of my menfolk’s clothes, but I was distracted from that grief by the need to do something about the gown I had offered Edna. She was half my size and I had to laugh when she put it on. It was more like a tent than a garment.

  I was much surprised to learn that she could not sew. She had been so deft in helping me dress that I thought she had all a maid’s skills. But her fingers were nimble, and when I cut off a wide swathe of the skirt and showed her how to thread the needle and set stitches, she folded and hemmed quite well enough for that rough wool gown. There were things I had to show her, of course, and that was excuse enough to stay in the chamber, away from the other women. I could not say I had been teaching my maid to sew, but it would be natural that, newly married, I examined and altered my gowns.

  Pleased with this notion, which could protect me for several days, I smiled when Edna asked in a timid, shaking voice, “What shall I do with this piece of cloth, madam?” Her fingers caressed the rough length of wool—the gown had been the most worn and stained of my gardening clothes, faded a dull brown from what had been, if I remembered, a rich maroon. The new color had the advantage that the earth stains hardly showed.

  “Would you like to keep it?” I asked in return.

  “If it is not asking too much,” she faltered. “I could use it as a shawl. The weather will turn cold soon.”

 
She was so thin I thought that she might feel cold when my body was glad of a breeze. “Take it then.”

  “Must I go now?”

  Because I did not know what to answer, I almost lost my temper with her—but it was Bruno at whom I was angry, not poor Edna. And the thought of Bruno reminded me that I could not undress without help. His help? The idea terrified me. I did not then know why, although I soon learned, but I said quickly, “No, stay here. I may need you at bed time. You may practice your sewing by hemming the length of cloth where it was cut. Sewing is a useful skill.”

  She thanked me with pathetic gratitude so that I first wondered whether she had no place to go, but she was too clean for Bruno to have picked her off the street. Then I remembered a glimpse of dark bruises on her legs—I had turned away to give her privacy to change to my gown when I realized she wore nothing under her outer rags and had seen no more of her body. Now I thought she must be mistreated wherever she lived. I was tempted to ask whether she would like to remain with me and be my maid, but I held back the words. I would say nothing to her until I had discovered Bruno’s reason for selecting such a servant.

  Nothing happened during the rest of the afternoon to move that purpose from my mind, and I intended to get some satisfaction from making Bruno ashamed of himself, although I had to admit that Edna had some extra skills in service that made me think again of keeping her with me. She found some twine, for example, and strung it through my tunic and bliaut so she could hang them in front of the window to air. And she brushed my hair as no one had ever done, touching the scalp just enough to make it feel clean and fresh without scraping painfully and stroking so evenly that I almost fell asleep on the stool.

  I suppose I was tired by the strains of the day. I remember only telling Edna to leave all the bed-curtains tied back. Then, I suppose I slept as soon as I was stretched out in the bed, but I was no longer so shocked and exhausted that I could not wake easily. A bump against the bed brought my eyes open.