My Something Wonderful

by Jill Barnett

The plum tart.

  Was not long before she heard the baron bellow, ”This is her untouched supper again? By God thumbs, I swear she will eat something soon or--”

  “Donnald,” Lady Beitris’ voice interrupted him. “Calm down. You cannot make her eat.”

  “I could debate that wife,” he grumbled.

  “She is the king’s daughter. You cannot force her to do anything.”

  “But what if she never eats? I cannot present her to Sutherland, ‘Here my lord, is the king’s daughter…his eldest daughter, the half-starved one.’”

  “Come with me, dear,” Lady Beitris said. “Let us retire to our chamber, where I will pour you some wine, and call the lute and flute players. The music will calm you down. You can put your feet up and forget about all.”

  Glenna exhaled when she heard their footsteps wane, and she listlessly crossed the room, leaned against the small table, filled a goblet with watered wine and sipped it slowly to quiet her belly.

  The baron’s mood grew increasingly foul the longer she refused to eat. She had told him the first night she started her fast that she would eat when he released Lyall from the cell, but not until then. He refused. The poor man had not butted heads with her yet. Her brothers could have warned him. Oh, where we they? If only Al and El would return with the proof of witnesses.

  Her belly turned again. She stared down at it. How could something so empty make so much noise? She placed her hand on it and willed the idea of food away.

  You can do this….

  There was a slight and quiet tapping at the door and Glenna called to open. Mairi stuck her head inside, looked at Glenna, then quietly closed the door behind her. “Are you well?”

  Glenna nodded.

  Mairi pulled a bundle from her skirts and unwrapped it. “Come. Look here. I have bread and cheese and a little meat, not much but I saved you a duck leg, some cheese and a stewed apple from my own supper.”

  The food called to her, as if meat and cheese and apples had soft and haunting voices singing, Come to me….Come to me….

  Glenna spun around, eyes tightly closed, her hand up warding off the idea of eating, of even looking at the food. “I cannot!”

  “Of course you can. No one need know.”

  “I shall know,” Glenna said firmly. She could do anything for Lyall.

  Mairi rolled her eyes. “Really, Glenna. From where comes this sudden need for valor?”

  “You think I cannot starve Lyall free? I can,” Glenna insisted.

  “Of course you can.” Mairi waved a hand as if to add ‘you silly goose.’ “But actually starving is not the point. The point is to make everyone think you are starving, in particular my stepfather Now come here and eat.”

  “I cannot,” Glenna said, having eyes only for the food. “I must grow weak enough to swoon.”

  “Lud!, Glenna, swooning is simple. You have done it once already.”

  “Aye, but I did not know I was swooning.”

  “Swooning is an art, not unlike your swift and thieving hand—which you still have promised to teach me, do not forget—now you will need some swooning practice. Here, watch me.” Mairi crossed over near the bed and flexed her knees. “The most important thing to remember is to position yourself so you will not be hurt when you sink or to make certain you have something to fall back on depending upon which method you choose. Something soft like this mattress is always good.”

  “There are methods?” Glenna repeated.

  “Aye. I believe the most realistic is to let your knees kind of turn to water and just sink to the floor like this—“

  One moment Mairi was standing and the next she was on the floor, half on her back, arms fallen by her head and her lower body turned slightly, her knees bent.

  Glenna burst out laughing and ran over to her. “That was quite wonderful!”

  Mairi sat upright, eyes wide and grinning. “You liked it? Good.” She scrambled up. “Stand here, and you try. Remember to keep your breathing very shallow.”

  “Can I eat first?”

  Mairi grabbed the duck leg and handed it to her. “Eat this while I show you ‘the fall upon something’ method. This is for furniture or someone’s lap or a chair. You will need a more exact position, since you want to land on a bed or chair or a nobleman. As Glenna chewed on the duck leg, she watched Mairi who taught fall gracefully backwards on a chair, and then upon the bed. Glenna stood beside her, half-eaten duck leg between her teeth.

  Mairi said, “Go!” They both fell back on the bed at the same time. Mairi began giggling and Glenna sat up and chewed on another bite of duck, brandishing the bone, both of them laughing

  And that was when they turned together and saw Lady Beitris standing in the room watching them.

  * * *

  The cellars at Rossi were built deep in the ground and held barrels of ale and mead made at the castle brewery, and an entire room of wines, many imported at great cost from Bordeaux, Bruges, Briones, and Crete. The iron gates at the cellar’s entrance were locked, and the anteroom, before the barrel storage rooms, served as Lyall’s cell. He lay sprawled on a straw pallet on a corner as he tilted to lips a clay jar of wine, Ramsey’s costliest from Malvasia, rattling the chains clamped onto his wrists and wincing as the manacle clamp caught and twisted the hairs on his arm.

  He squinted inside the jar’s short neck. “Good stuff,” he muttered, since talking to himself was his only option. Then he drunkenly toasted his missing stepfather and took another swig.

  Footsteps echoed in the dark recesses of the stairs. The guard had been gone for some time, since he took away Lyall’s supper.

  Within moments of being locked behind the gates, he was bored almost senseless, and his remedy was to raid the wine coffers and drink himself to sleep.

  Lyall called out the guard’s name, and his voice echoed in the stone rooms. Where was he? He had known the man for years.

  More footsteps.

  ‘”Tis about time you came back here, you worthless bastard! I uncorked some Malvasian. I’m willing to share!”

  Glenna stood at the base of the stone stairs, a beautiful dream in blue, her hair down and shining, her look all for him, the way he saw her every night, the way she haunted his mind so vividly there were moments when he actually believed she was there and his weak mind was not playing tricks on him.

  This time she held a candle in her hand when she said, “Lyall!”

  The dream speaks! For the maddest of moments he thought he heard her voice. He held up the wine jar. “Little wonder Ramsey pays dearly for this. ‘Tis powerful stuff.”

  “Then pour me some,” she said clearly and used a large key to unlock the gates, stepped inside, closed and locked them behind her.

  “Glenna? ‘Tis really you?”

  She faced him, hands on the hips of her gown. “Nay, fool, ‘tis Mary Magdalene come to pray at the foot of your cross.”

  “Glenna?” He stood up and had to steady himself with a hand to the wall. “Glenna….”

  She threw her arms about him then he had her in his arms, really holding her. He staggered back against the wall, “My love…my love…” She was all he ever wanted.

  Covering him with kisses she was real, her body soft and warm, her kisses—Glenna and her kisses, he almost laughed out loud, the feeling inside him bubbling up. She stopped and pulled back, looking up at him. “You’ve been drinking?”

  “For three days,” he said brightly, then frowned. “Or at least three suppers.” He waved a hand behind him. “See there. I have access to all of my stepfather’s cellars.”

  “What were you planning to do? Drink him dry?”

  “The thought crossed my mind. How am I doing?”

  She wrinkled her nose and waved a hand in front of her face. “Smells as if you are almost there.”

  She had two noses. Beautiful noses, and her face was moving. Lyall staggered back against the wall, his head swimming, hugging the wine jar, and he ran a hand over his face. “What are you doi
ng in here?”

  “I wanted to see you.”

  “And you managed to steal the key? I expect someone will come drag you away soon. The guard is missing but he will be back soon. The world is against us.”

  “That’s not true. And the guard is gone for a reason. We have all night together, and your mother gave me the key.” She waved it under his nose.

  “I am piss-drunk.” He shook his head and it almost felt as if it rattled. “I thought you said my mother gave you the key.”

  “She did.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Perhaps she understands.”

  He grew quiet, taking it all in, and he slid down the wall and landed hard onto the pallet, legs out in front of him. Back against the wall. He thought it might be holding him up. “I’m drunk. So very, very drunk.”

  She came over and sat down beside him, slid her arms around his chest and held him, her head on his shoulder “Then sleep it off. I’m here. I will stay with you. I will be with you.” She moved down, nesting into the curve of his arm and she placed her hand over his heart, as she had done before. “There is nowhere else I would want to be,” she said. “When I close my eyes, here is where I am safe. I know you are no coward, because it is here,” she patted his chest, “where I can always hear how strong your heart is.”

  He closed his eyes, the warm feeling of peace around him and sweet oblivion just an arm’s length away. “Do you regret us?” he asked her.

  “Never,” she said so fiercely he almost believed her.

  “How can you be so certain? How do you know?”

  She was quiet, then asked seriously, “Do you think someday you will regret us?”

  “Nay. Never.” His lips brushed her brow.

  “How do you know?”

  He had his answer, and he smiled.

  * * *

  A shaft of light woke Ramsey from the dregs of a deep and dreamless sleep, and he turned away from the open bed curtains and reached out for Beitris. Her side of the bed was empty, and the linens were cool to the touch. As he lay there, he could hear her moving around their chamber, poking the wood in the fire, the slight clunk of setting something down on a table, the shuffle of her slippers on the stone floor, then suddenly muted by the carpet.

  He tried drifting back to sleep, but his head throbbed, and when he took a deep breath, his mouth tasted as dry and trampled as a tourney field. Sour. Then he remembered the wine, goblets and goblets of undiluted wine. He sat up and winced, hunching his shoulders, and emitting a quiet groan. He felt as if someone dropped an anvil on his head. But he rose and used the garderobe before he burst.

  He heard a gasp and looked over his shoulder to find a maid with her hands over her face. “Where is milady?” he asked the horrified maid.

  “I am here,” Beitris said, standing in the door, capped and veiled and gloved…all imperfections covered, a ewer in her hand. “You may leave,” she kindly told the maid and shut the door after her. She crossed the room to a table near the bed and filled a goblet from the ewer. “I’m afraid seeing you, my lord husband, in all your morning power and glory was too much for her.”

  He snorted and scowled at her, aware that his nose was numb. “I have a bone to pick with you, wife.”

  “I can see you do.”

  “Do not try to deflect the subject with sweet talk.” Ramsey shook his head and winced. “Inside my head there is a full battle going on.” He touched the tip of his nose and frowned again. “I cannot feel my nose. You got me drunk last night.”

  She turned around to fidget with something but he caught her guilty look, at least half if it before she showed him her back.

  Staring at her, waiting, he wondered how early she had risen. Time enough to hide half of herself from me, still, after all these years. The same ritual of hiding herself every morning and every night. “Beitris. I would know what you are up to.”

  “Up to? Here drink this.” She held a goblet out to him. “You will feel better.”

  He drank the potion down, handed her the empty goblet and swallowed a belch. “You have not answered my question.”

  She stood with her back to him for a long time under the pretense of placing the goblet on the table, then turned finally around, her expression serious. “Glenna is with Lyall.”

  His reaction to her news wasn’t immediate. But then everything about him had slowed down. “If I shout like I want to, my head will crack in half,” he said and sank down into a nearby chair, one hand holding his throbbing brow and the other resting on his bare knee. “I am too angry to speak.”

  Naked, stripped to nothing but crapulence, he sat there exposed. Yet his wife was swathed in cloth and veils and caps, covered like a sister of God, well-hidden with the scars she would never love or trust him enough to let him see. They were like two chess pieces at opposite ends of the board, one white, one black.

  And the king’s daughter, his responsibility, in his protection, defied him, was no longer chaste and loosely wed to a scoundrel, his fool stepson, and both were down in his own cellars doing God only knew what together.

  With the morn barely begun, what else would happen?

  Beitris, who had remained silent, walked around the bed and stopped. “Donnald,” she said in a soft, frightened gasp, and he looked up in time to see her swoon.

  “Beitris!” By the time he was at her side she had fallen on the bed, her arms flung back and limp beside her head, her breathing so shallow he had lay his head on her breast to hear it. He patted her face and kept repeating her name, then bellowed for her handmaiden, but his wife opened her eyes and said his name.

  He held her hand and said, “Do not move. I want to send for the chirurgeon.”

  “I am fine.” She started to sit up but he slipped an arm behind her back and helped her, noting her color was fine.

  He poured her some of the potion she gave him and handed her the goblet. “Drink it.”

  She wrinkled her nose and took a sip.

  “You cannot be fine. You did swoon. I have never known you to faint. Have you done so before?”

  “Apparently not often enough,” she murmured into the goblet, confusing him.

  A guard outside the door called out for him and pounded. Donnald shrugged into his robe and opened the door.

  “A rider has come with news, my lord. The earl of Sutherland is near. He and his party should be here before midday.

  He dismissed the guard and began to dress.

  “Are you going to the cellars?” Beitris asked anxiously. “If so, I want to go with you.”

  “You just swooned. You should lie down and rest.

  “I have not eaten,” she protested quickly, standing up. “My faint was from hunger.” She took an apple from a nearby fruit bowl and took a bite. “See? I shall be fine. I will not be left behind, Donnald,” she said fiercely, and he knew that tone in her.

  He should just give in now. Or continue to merely feel as if he were beating his head against a stone wall. In the end, he would give in. So he did not deny her.

  Was not long before they were together near the base of the cellar stairs, and she stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Let me go first.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I ask it of you,” she said.

  Wordlessly he stepped aside and watched her as she reached the bottom of the stairs and paused, then after a moment waved him down, her finger to lips.

  Lyall and Glenna were asleep on a straw pallet in the corner, Lyall’s back against the wall, Glenna tucked under his arm, her head on his shoulder. Then he noticed her hand was on Lyall’s chest, resting above his heart.

  Ramsey’s mind went back to another time and place, and he felt Beitris’ arm link through his. Did she remember?

  Once, long ago, they lay in each other’s arms on a pile of warm hay, her head on his shoulder and asleep like Glenna. That day was everything, the kind of day where a man could believe that life did have its pure and tender moments, that love could
heal a man’s soul, a day of revelation. In a moment of whimsy that day she had listened to his heartbeat, and made him listen to hers.

  “They beat together as one,” she had said to him.

  To this day he could remember the sound of every heartbeat. When she had looked up at him. He found himself staring into the color of the sky, on that happiest day of his life. But she did not have to tell him what he already knew. He understood how much he loved her, and yet barely a fortnight later, he chose what was best for her and walked away.

  He could feel her gaze on him now, and he looked away from her son and into her veiled face, her eye still the exact color of a cloudless sky. She placed her gloved hand over his heart and took his and placed it between her breasts. “They still beat as one.”

  Her words stirred the dreams still in him, the memories of a love that was the single thing in his life he longed to relive, to relive the choice he’d made to let her go and then spent the rest of his life regretting that choice. Brushing aside part of her veil, he lowered his mouth to hers and she didn’t stop him. The kiss was theirs for a long time, and in that touch of their lips was a love that covered more than half a lifetime. When he pulled back, she straightened the veil back into place, looking down. She was still hiding.

  But her hand over his heart, and her words…they were enough for now.

  He glanced back into the cellars to find Lyall staring at him, his look unreadable. Ramsey’s gaze went to the key in the gates’ lock and turned a questioning eye to Beitris.

  She knew his question before he could speak and said bluntly, “I chose to give them last night.”

  “What is happening? “ Glenna said in a voice raspy with sleep. She was awake and frowning.

  Ramsey saw her arms tighten around his stepson, who pulled her even closer to him as if he had to protect her from them. The chains that still bound him rattled, a telling moment, and Ramsey had the thought the two were as close as links on a chain, and trying to look as strong and unbreakable. Something in Ramsey changed as he watched them, and some doubt ran through his mind, adding to his confusion.

  His wife opened the gates and held out her hand to Glenna. “The earl of Sutherland is but a short distance away. I shall help you change before he arrives.”