Fires of Winter

by Roberta Gellis

  Perhaps we should have walked out, for in the end the seeming respect did no good. Those priests kept us for three hours more—I am sure apurpose—and for all I know would have gone on all day had not the king signalled Camville, who spoke softly to the most elaborately robed priest, one whose paunch was visible under his robes. He was not intoning prayers at the moment and I saw his face redden and his eyes flick toward the king, but he brought the service to an end within the next quarter of an hour.

  We found the queen and her ladies at the back of the church. Maud moved forward to speak to the priests even before she greeted the king, and my heart nearly stopped when I did not at first see Melusine. I thought she had not come just to avoid me, or that she had even left the queen’s service, which shows the state I was in; the only place Melusine could have gone was to King David, and Maud would never have permitted that. But that was only the depth of my fear making me stupid; she was there, very near the door of the church so that when she offered her hand in greeting, I was able to step outside and pull her into my arms to kiss. She did not pull away, and I asked for no reasons.

  “You are hurt,” she said softly, her voice shaking, when our lips parted.

  “Only by stupidity,” I said, grinning like an idiot to see her anxious frown. “I tripped when we entered Sudeley and hurt my foot.”

  I did not bother to say that I had tripped over the king, who had lost his balance climbing over the splintered logs of the palisade, and if not for the happy chance that I had fallen backward, shield and sword uppermost, we would both have been dead. Stephen managed to spit the man in front of him by thrusting up and catching him between the legs, but I would never have been able to turn over in time to get the two coming from the side. As it was I had only to sit up, and I hit the first in the groin with my shield and caught the other with a blow that tore the sword from his hand and cut his thigh to the bone. Actually my foot was not hurt by tripping. The second man-at-arms I had wounded fell on my leg and must have broken one of the small bones in my foot, but the action was so heated just then that I jumped up and walked on the foot until the keep was secured. It was only then that I fell, and my boot had to be cut off because my whole leg was swollen.

  Having already gained Melusine’s sympathy, there was no need to describe any of this. I had learned my lesson with Audris. What I thought amusing had turned Audris pale and sick with terror. Let Melusine think I was just clumsy. She would tend my foot and some other bruises I collected at the same time just as tenderly, and not be set imagining all sorts of horrors that had not happened but might happen in the future. I remembered, too, that her father and brother had died in battle and did not wish to remind her of that.

  “If you hurt your foot,” Melusine said sharply, but without releasing my hand, “why have you been standing on it for hours? Do you think that will do it any good?”

  “No,” I answered meekly, “but I did not think of it at first, and once in the church you know I could not leave while the service was going on. That would be looked on as another deliberate offense I am sure. But it hurts, and I can ask to be excused from duty for the rest of the day. Stephen will be with Maud and will not want me. Will you ask leave from the queen to tend to me?”

  “Do we have lodging?” she asked.

  I could feel my face twist. “So few have come that you can pick whatever you like, inside the bishop’s palace or without, if you do not care for the chamber I have chosen. I took what must have been one of Salisbury’s clerk’s rooms. They all fled, you know, but we came too quickly for much to have been stolen. I could have looked for a lodging outside—we would have been more comfortable I suppose—but…but the palace was so empty…it echoed.”

  Melusine stared up at me without speaking for a moment and then said softly, “I did not realize things had come to so bad a state.” I do not know what she read in my face, but she looked down, away from me, then took my arm over her shoulder and went on, quite briskly, “It is just as well, with your bad foot, that the chamber is close by. Let us go there; then I will ask the queen if I may stay with you, and if she gives permission, I will ask her to tell the king where you are. Then I will bring us dinner to eat in our chamber.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but I saw that dark from which I had just emerged closing in on me and I shut my mouth again. Every minute of the light was precious, so I let Melusine help me to the room, which was in a wing of the palace given over to cells for priests or clerks or I knew not what. It was a small room, but I had collected two braziers and a good store of charcoal, so it was warm. There was no bed—there had been a cot, but I had taken that out and replaced it with two fresh, newly stuffed pallets. The blanket I used on the march was underneath to take up most of the cold from the floor; a fresh blanket I only used when I was with Melusine lay atop, and I knew she would have her own to add. I had collected two stools also, and she pushed one of those close to the pallets so I would have a place to rest my foot and bade me sit.

  I saw Melusine look about with pleasure, but when she turned to me, I would not meet her eyes. She said nothing, so I do not know whether that meant anything to her; she only dropped her cloak, unpinned mine, and helped me to sit down; then she unbound the strips that held my boot together and slid it off. Finally she “tchkd” and drew her cloak over my foot to keep it warm—and she touched my cheek as she rose and went out.

  That touch was full of tenderness, but it only brought the dark closer. I was sure that Melusine had hurried me into the privacy of our chamber to try to induce me to leave the king—not to join the empress, Melusine was not a fool, but to seek the neutral sanctuary of Jernaeve.

  That we would be safe there and not openly connected to either party was true. Stephen had sent no summons for men to the northern shires. Although Prince Henry was nominally his vassal and had given oath to send support if Stephen ever needed it, the king was too wise to test that oath, specially since he did not need men. His army was already larger than any that could be gathered by the rebels. Thus, all that would be necessary to send us into safety—without loss of my position as Knight of the Body and protected from any chance of open conflict with King David or the empress—was an excuse to take Melusine north, and I could think of several, the easiest being that she had discovered she was with child.

  Without loyalty to any person, except perhaps to me, Melusine would never understand my refusal. She would feel that I was deliberately exposing her to danger, and it would be useless for me to offer to send her to Jernaeve alone. If I fell with the king, she could not hope to win back Ulle, for she had offended Empress Matilda by not going with her. Worst of all, she would feel I did not return her loyalty, and her rage would be far worse than when I would not take her to the queen myself.

  By the time Melusine returned, laden with two large baskets, I had reduced myself to the condition of a child ridden by nightmare. And, of course, I had totally underestimated her. It must, indeed, have been the strain of dealing with Matilda that drove her into open fury when I crossed her in Bath. I should have remembered that Melusine was used to managing eight headstrong men (not all at one time, of course, but she had told me a great deal about her father and her brothers) and knew perfectly well that confrontation was not the path to getting her own way.

  What she did was to kneel down beside me and say, “Are we so close to disaster, Bruno? You look as if you had seen Armageddon.”

  “Not for the realm,” I answered, “but for me.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, looking astonished. “I know the king is not angry with you, for by chance—I do not know this place and took a wrong turn and came out right at the door of the king’s chamber just as Stephen and Maud were going in. So I told him your foot was all swollen and he was most concerned for you.”

  There was something in the way she spoke of the king and queen that sparked a hope I had been a fool, and I laughed and took her fac
e in my hands and said, “Oh, I do not fear the king. He cannot bring my Armageddon. Only you can do that, woman.”

  I cannot swear she knew what I meant. I think her eyes widened with realization, but perhaps she thought I was remembering our quarrel in Bath. Whatever she knew she kept to herself, for she also laughed and said, “Well, I did not bring it in my baskets. Shall I bind up your foot first, or shall we eat what I snatched from the kitchen?”

  “I have a stronger appetite,” I murmured, leaning forward and kissing her. “It is too early for dinner, at least by half an hour, and it eases my foot to lie down.”

  “And having nothing else to do in an idle half hour you choose to toy with me? Lecher! The time will be as well spent tending your foot.” She spoke sharply, but her eyes laughed, and when she twisted free of my hold, it was to move the baskets safely out of the way.

  “I do not believe in wasted motion,” I said, snatching at her and catching her around the buttocks without much effort; she did not try to escape. “Since you must take off my chausses to see my foot, you might just as well attend to the other swelling too.”

  “Disgusting,” she said haughtily, but her fingers were busy untying my shirt as mine were undoing her laces. “You have had a bath,” she murmured when we were lying on the pallet.

  She had good reason to know, for she had been playing with me, kissing my belly and thighs and Sir Jehan’s red head too. And she laughed when I answered only with groans, but there seemed to be red flecks in her dark eyes, like the red glints the shaft of sunlight from the small window brought alight in her dark hair. And when I seized her and pulled her atop me, her mouth was hot against mine and she was ready.

  Later, when I could speak again, I said, “You do not need a bath. I love the woman smell of you.”

  She laughed and answered that I would not love it long if she did not bathe at all, but I saw the way she was looking at my shoulder, where the rings of my mail had cut through my arming tunic and into my skin under the pressure of a blow I did not even remember. There were a number of other bruises on my body, and despite the sweet sated feeling that filled me, I began to wish I had left our loving until the dim light of a night candle would have concealed the marks.

  “That was a bad fall,” Melusine said, frowning. “Were you drunk?”

  “No, it was on the palisade,” I said, recalling what I had told her and delighted that she seemed to accept it. “I fell against a broken part, and rolled down—well, it may be that we had been celebrating our victory with a bit of wine. If you will let me up,” I added quickly, “I will show you something prettier than scrapes and scratches.” The less she thought about my story the better I would like it.

  “Beast,” she remarked. “You think I am too big and heavy.”

  “God, no!” I exclaimed. Then I laughed uneasily, remembering that I had thought that at first. Had she felt it and said nothing until now? I hoped not, but the rack would not make me admit it. I said what I knew would please—and it was true too, “But if you do not let me up, I will have more swellings.”

  “A threat or a promise?” she asked, but she slid off me and sat up, pulling the blanket around her.

  I did not answer that, only reached under the top of my pallet and drew out a roll of cloth, which I opened and set in her lap to show a headband of gold set with pearls. To my surprise, she did not touch it, and her eyes went all black and dull.

  “You have been fighting,” she said.

  “It is not loot,” I assured her. “I bought it here. I will take you to the goldsmith—”

  She threw her arms around my neck then and hugged me. “Forgive me,” she cried. “I cannot bear to wear what was torn from some poor woman’s grief.”

  “No, dear heart,” I soothed, “but I am glad you told me. You may be sure that I will bring you no gifts that will burden your spirit.”

  I did not say that the money I had used to buy the headband had been an exchange for my share of the cattle in Sudeley, which I could not use because I had no land. I had thought at the time of sending them to Jernaeve to be kept until Ulle was ours, but in the black cloud in which I had been living then I had lost hope of Ulle and did not think it worth the trouble to have the cattle driven all those miles north. I did not regret that now, seeing the pleasure with which Melusine set the band on her head and preened herself as I admired aloud how fine it looked against her dark hair. But she was not truly vain, and in a moment she had taken it off, dropped the blanket on me, and pulled on her clothing.

  After I sat up and laced her gown, she bound up my foot and helped me dress. Then she laid out our dinner. At first we both ate with too much appetite to talk, but when the first edge of hunger was dulled, she said, “Tell me how bad our state is in the west.”

  “Actually we have gained more than we have lost,” I replied. “Stephen is a great battle leader.” I saw her hand hesitate in bringing a piece of bread to her mouth, and I added hastily, “Even when he does not fight. Our trouble is not taking keeps nor defeating our enemies, it is meeting them.” And then I explained about the holding back of information, if not open treachery, of the sheriffs and the bishops and that because of that, even the yeomen and minor knights were afraid to support the king. Before I had even finished Melusine was nodding her head.

  “You will not have that trouble in the south and east,” she said. “The queen has been busy.” Then she sighed. “We have traveled and traveled and traveled. I think we have been in every shire—and in every chartered town—from Durham to Dover.”

  “Every town?” I echoed. “But—”

  “Men!” she exclaimed. “You say burghers will not fight—”

  “I say nothing of the kind,” I protested. “They will fight, but only to protect their own town.”

  “But you do not need men, you need news—and where does news come quicker than to a town?”

  I sat staring at her, remembering that it was the townsfolk of Malmesbury who came to the king for help, and it was again the townsfolk of Worcester who had brought the news of the attack—too late, but they had not been told to watch and warn the king; he had expected that service from the officers of the Crown. And Bath held steady for the king despite the nearness of Bristol and the rebels; the townsfolk had helped Stephen’s garrison fight off many attacks.

  “The burghers favor Stephen,” Melusine continued, “and they have reason to love the queen. I do not think any army will move east of Oxford without the king knowing. And I think the barons will be more faithful too. Some did not greet us very warmly—oh, did you know the queen has a small army of Flemings?—but I saw how they were eased and their loyalty confirmed after she spoke to them.”

  I doubted much could be done with the barons of the west unless the king had a great victory there, but the towns were another matter. Surely it could do no harm to use the queen’s idea, and I was certain Maud would convince Stephen to do so without difficulty. The king had little pride of birth, perhaps because he was sure of his nobility, and he had always valued and treated well and fairly the burghers of the realm. The trouble was that the west was less populous than the east; there were fewer towns, and many of those were already in rebel hands.

  Still, there were free towns, and they did favor Stephen. I will not say that hope leapt free and full in my breast. To speak the truth, I still saw nothing ahead but years of battle, but with the southeast at peace and solidly for the king, the situation looked much different. I felt less concerned at the idea of a long confrontation with the rebels, and Melusine brought snippets of news that, always good, supported hope.

  For more than a week, I kept to that single chamber so my foot could heal. I did not once ask to leave. I did not want to know how the court progressed. While I was with Melusine I was at peace. We played games—chess, and when we felt silly, riddles, or fox and geese, or nine man morris—we played other games too, in which no
pieces or boards were needed, only soft words and soft touches. And we talked of many things, of her family and of mine, such as it was, which, of course, brought us to Audris and Hugh and Eric and Jernaeve…and Ulle.

  It was strange that it should be I who remembered most vividly the beauty of the land, of purple hills against the sky and deep tarns with glints of silver streams falling into them from cliffs. Melusine saw Ulle as it must be now—so quiet it must be in the hills now with all the passes filled with snow and the lakes frozen over. I even told Melusine about the cattle, not saying they had been my share of the loot, but speaking of another man with land in the north and his doubts about having the beasts driven home. She smiled and said it was fortunate I had no part of that herd for such cattle were useless for Ulle. They needed a hardier breed, like the little wide-horned red cattle of Scotland—a good reason, she added, why Cumbrian men seldom raided south or east and had so little interest in the wars of England.

  At the time I was aware of only the faintest twinge of discontent at my prospects of sweat and blood and pain compared with the long pleasures of holding Ulle and not caring a whit about wars. It was only a twinge, but it left a little sore place in my breast, and over the dreadful year that followed that twinge grew to an ache that gave me no rest. It was then that I realized what Melusine had done. She was much too clever to place hands on hips and scream at me like a shrew that all loyalty to Stephen could bring me was death; she had not that quicksilver lightness with which Audris could bedazzle and get her way. Melusine, dark and warm and sweet, held out peace and joy and pleasure to wean a man from a hard duty turned bitter with shame.