by Susan Wiggs
She said nothing, only cursed herself inwardly for being unable to deceive him in this. Finally, her emotions laid raw by his tenderness, she whispered, “I’m scared. I know not what to do with a babe.”
He crushed her against him. “You love it. You just love it.” She sobbed into his shoulder. “You wanted a child,” he said, “an heir for Bois-Long. Why are you not happy?”
“I wanted a French heir. This child will be torn between England and France as I am. You’ll seek to make him vassal to King Henry.”
He shook his head. “I will love him as I love you. I will bellow at him, lavish him with gifts and kisses, fight legions to keep him safe...this babe, and his brothers and sisters to come.”
Lianna went about the rest of the day in a pensive mood, alternately angry, despairing, confused. She wanted to believe him, to be his wife, to bear his child. She wanted to forget that he meant to hold the castle for England.
That night, instead of barring the door against him, she held it wide for him to enter. She’d begun to feel hope for herself, her child, Bois-Long, and that hope hinged on shutting down all resistance to him—for a time. She’d be the bedmate he wanted...for now.
He made love to her slowly. A sense of aliveness quickened her heart, but with it came the recognition that she would never be the same. Still, she gave herself up to sensual abandonment, to the almost intolerable magic of his caresses. He seemed to touch her very soul with tenderness, and when he whispered that he loved her, she believed him.
Aye, she believed him. Before, resentment had gotten in the way of reason. Now she conceded that if he’d known she was his betrothed, he’d not have risked the harrowing abduction. He could far more easily have taken her to Le Crotoy from the place of St. Cuthbert’s cross. Yet he hadn’t. He hadn’t, because perhaps he had truly believed the demoiselle to be the raven-haired woman he’d glimpsed soon after his arrival.
“I love you,” he repeated, pressing his lips to her brow, her eyes, her cheeks.
“But does that make life easier for us? Must I disavow France as if she were an outmoded gown?”
He stroked her cheek. “Perhaps our captains and kings will come to terms yet. Perhaps there will be no war.”
She knew better; the tortured look in his eyes told her he knew, also. “You say you love me, yet do you love my loyalty to France, my resistance to England?”
“I love you for your devotion, your spirit.”
An idea burst into her mind. She had Rand’s love. Her uncle of Burgundy had once said that love was the most powerful emotion of all. Could she one day call upon that love, test it, find its boundaries?
Yes, she thought, wrapping her arms around Rand in exultation, eliciting a groan of response from him. She’d had the answer all along. Instead of fighting she should have been loving him, binding him to her, body, heart, and soul. Later she felt him drift off to sleep, felt his big limbs relax, smelled the sunshine in his hair.
He’s mine, she said fiercely, silently, to the implacable English monarch across the Narrow Sea. He’s mine, and you’ll not have him. For by the time you mount your unholy invasion, Rand will belong to me so completely that he’ll turn away from you.
Fifteen
Autumn blazed over Bois-Long with unseasonable, chest-squeezing heat. The shimmering rays of the Norman sun invaded every chamber and cloister of the château, warming the well water, turning the rooms to ovens, making a frying iron of every surface.
Perhaps, thought Rand, mopping his brow as he glumly surveyed the single sow pacing the stockyard, the heat wouldn’t seem so oppressive if they could lower the drawbridge, take advantage of a cross breeze, or ride out into the cool woods and water meadows and bathe in the river.
Rides and river baths were impossible. For the château was under siege.
His big hands tightened into fists. Years from now, bards might sing of the bloodless coup that had placed Bois-Long in the hands of an Englishman. Yet Rand’s victory would be meaningless if Gervais succeeded in his current enterprise.
Leading thirty knights of the dauphin’s household, Gervais had returned six weeks before. Aware of the castle’s defenses, he’d mounted an insidious method of persuasion.
He’d raised not a siege of arms, but a siege of starvation.
Staring at the restive sow, Rand shook his head. A heavy burden of futility settled over him. The sow was in season, yet all the boars had been butchered and eaten. In his own way, he felt as frustrated as the mateless sow.
He turned from the stockyard and strode to the tilting green where Jack was browbeating and cajoling the knights of Bois-Long at their archery practice.
“Aim not with one eye closed,” Jack railed at one man. “The good Lord gave you two.” Spying Rand, he hastened over. “Shoots like a green youth on his first whore. Quick and off the mark.”
Rand nodded. “I wonder if Jufroy’s aim would be truer did he not fear he was being trained to fight the dauphin’s men. I worry that I ask too...” His words evaporated and his mouth went dry as Lianna stepped into view and walked to the cistern.
Her body ripe with their blossoming child, her hair flowing behind her like a banner of moon-colored silk, she bent to drink water from a dipper.
Suddenly Rand had no notion of what he had been saying. Always she had this effect on him, the sight of her enough to drive even the most burdensome thought from his mind. No worry held sway over her winsome face, her enchanting demeanor, or the fact that in her beloved body grew the most wondrous and tangible evidence of his love for her.
Jack’s elbow landed sharp in Rand’s ribs. “My lord?”
“I...forgot.” Catching Jack’s wide, knowing grin, Rand shook his head and borrowed a phrase from his friend. “‘She does fling a cravin’ upon me.’”
“Thinks sit well between my lord and lady.”
“More than well.”
She turned, sailed a kiss in his direction, and disappeared into the hall. In the months since he’d taken control of the castle, and against all expectations, she had grown to accept him. By day she was devoted and helpful as they met Gervais’s challenge; by night she was warm and pliant as they sought refuge in each other’s arms. She still refused to speak of love, yet they had both agreed, in an unspoken pact, to keep their differences at bay. But what would happen when war came?
Doubt cast an ominous shadow. Her capitulation had come too suddenly. How had he won a woman like Lianna? He glanced up at the banner of lilies and leopards flapping on the ramparts. Someday there would be a price to pay.
A stirring atop the battlements dragged his thoughts from Lianna. A horde of women, their wimples cast off in the heat, had clambered to the wall walk. Guards tried ineffectually to keep the castle dames at bay. Yelling and shoving, they surged toward the wall facing the river.
“What the hell are those crones about?” asked Jack.
Rand was already running across the yard. Vaulting a stone railing, he bounded up the stairs.
“Your pardon, my lord,” said Giles. “Mondragon taunts them with food. They clamor to see.”
“Get away from those embrasures!” Rand’s voice scattered the women like a flock of hens. “Go tend your children.”
“He’s brought a herd of swine,” yelled Mère Brûlot.
Rand rolled his eyes. Taunting a starving host with food could be as deadly as a shower of Greek fire.
He stepped between two merlons and looked down. Gervais and perhaps fifty head of swine milled at the end of the causeway. Sylvain, the castle swineherd, stood nearby, looking confused. Rand cursed under his breath. The lad had made some successful forays for food, but Gervais had him now.
Woods fringed the long meadow beyond the river. As Rand watched, the forest seemed to shift and shimmer in the heat. The knights of the dauphin waited on mounts, ready to charge the gate if Rand were fool enough to open it.
“Greetings,” Gervais called. “I bring a gift from the dauphin.” He waved his hand to encompas
s the squirming swine.
“Keep your gift,” Rand snapped. “Pigs are fitting company to keep you warm at night.”
Hands clasped behind his back, Gervais paced the planks of the causeway. “Open, my lord, and you’ll be feasting on pork tonight, not rationing out stale bread and thin soup.”
“Get us the meat, my lord,” Mère Brûlot urged, and the other women echoed her plea. “You’ll not let us starve!”
Rand wheeled on the old woman. “Nay, but neither will I risk the death of our men.”
Mère Brûlot faced him squarely. “We’ve but a week’s worth of food left, if that. My niece birthed twins a fortnight ago, and the smith needs fresh meat if he’s to heal from the burn he suffered while mending your armor.”
Nodding and muttering, the others clustered around her.
Rand’s eyes flicked over the thin, weary faces of the women and then back to Gervais, who had planted himself at the head of the herd of fine, fat pigs. A gust of hot wind ruffled Gervais’s dark mane and carried the animal smell to Rand.
“Don’t forget your wife bides within,” said Rand.
“Don’t forget I care not,” replied Gervais. “You’d never harm Macée,” he added with maddening insight. “I smell hunger on the wind, hunger and dissension. Think you they’ll follow an Englishman into starvation? Their French bellies say no.”
Chiang appeared with a long, narrow handgun. “My lord, perhaps ’tis time for a display....”
Rand waved him away, saying, “’Tis too risky. Sylvain stands in the way.” He ground his teeth in frustration. If he kept the gate closed to Gervais, people would starve. Yet if he opened it, people would die.
The hot wind stole over him again, blowing in from the south. As if borne on the heated gust, an idea occurred to Rand, an idea so outrageous that it just might work.
“We will accept your gift, Mondragon,” he called.
Behind him, the women murmured words of thanks.
Chiang gasped. Gervais grabbed Sylvain, hauled the lad in front of him like a shield, and said, “Remember, you’re in no position to play tricks, Englishman.”
Bellowing for the women to clear the battlements, Rand bounded down the stairs.
* * *
Lianna sped from the hall. Mère Brûlot had warned her that Rand was about to open the gate to Gervais. She reached the outer ward to find the archers ready behind the merlons. Armed knights sat mounted in the yard.
Moving quickly despite the burden of her distended belly, she searched for Rand. There had to be a better way, a safer way. Gervais would offer no quarter to the man who had humiliated him.
Rand appeared from the stockyard. Instead of leading a small force, he pulled a disgruntled, squealing sow behind him. Jack followed, cursing and beating the animal with a switch.
Lianna ran toward them. “What in the name of God do you—”
“Jesu, Lianna, stay away,” he ordered, and hauled on the sow’s tether. “She could knock you down.”
He disappeared beneath the barbican. Like an intolerable itch, the temptation to discover his purpose deviled her. She hastened up to the battlement.
Huffing with effort, she reached the top. Rand gave the order to lower the drawbridge. A withering swirl of heated wind blew small tempests of dust around the river’s edge. The stone wall savaged her fingers as she gripped the edge of an embrasure. From the fringe of woods at the river’s south bank appeared a line of mounted knights. Gervais planted himself in the middle of the causeway.
The drawbridge yawned open and connected with the lip of the causeway. Gervais motioned to the swineherd, who reluctantly plied his switch in an effort to drive his pigs back toward the guarded meadow.
The pigs at the head of the causeway pricked their ears and lifted their snouts. French knights burst from the wood.
A blur of dust rose. The squealing herd turned, not away from the drawbridge, but toward it. Whooping, Sylvain lunged toward the gate. Porcine screams and the pattering of hoofs filled the air.
“Ha!” Bonne shouted at Gervais. “You’ll die where you stand, trampled by your own kin!”
Bellowing a curse, he dove into the river and swam frantically for the south bank. One animal fell, surfaced, and, jaws snapping, swam clumsily in his wake. The rest of the herd stampeded into the outer ward. Chains rattled as men hastened to pull up the drawbridge. The French knights thundered to a halt and milled outside helplessly. A few of them shook their fists at Gervais before veering from the causeway and heading back toward the woods.
Pigs squealed, men shouted, and women ran from all directions. At the center of the confusion, Rand bore a round of much backslapping and hand pumping. The swineherd, who had entered with the pigs, tried frantically to maneuver his herd to the stockyard. Bois-Long’s last sow, the tether still around her neck, screeched hysterically as the boars closed in on her.
The sow was in season. Carried on the hot breeze, her scent must have incited the stampede. Rand had outwitted Gervais again.
* * *
On St. Crispin’s Day, a shower of sparks burst in the night sky over Bois-Long. The weather had turned; the sharp chill of autumn had driven away the stifling heat. A swirl of wind brought the smell of roasting pork.
The victory feast, a week in preparation, had begun. Not only did Bois-Long now have stores to last the winter, but a humiliated Gervais and the dauphin’s knights had also quit the area. Frustrated by weeks of idle waiting and impatient for their pay, the Frenchmen had taken Rand’s second bloodless victory and the change in weather as a springboard for retreat.
With the siege over, spirits soared. Lianna sat at a table, her hands folded over her belly, and stared contentedly at the bonfire. Three carcasses, hoisted on cranes above the flames, turned slowly, the fat sizzling and popping. Seasonings of rosemary and garlic wafted on the breeze. Rand was in the armory with Chiang, so some of the men started the toasting without him.
“Here’s to victory,” said Piers, lifting a mug. “Lord Rand’s learned well how to handle a female.”
“Learned to think with his pizzle,” said Jack.
Jehan grinned drunkenly. “I always knew there was more than one use for a female in heat.”
As a small host of servitors lowered the chains and carved the meat, Lianna studied Gervais’s wife. Sympathy and regret welled in her heart. Gervais had all but forsaken Macée, rejecting the sauf-conduit offered by Rand, refusing to allow her to join his travels. Now the young woman wandered almost listlessly toward the bonfire, the hem of her red gown dangerously near the flames.
Jumping up, Lianna cried out, “Have a care!” Macée stared uninterestedly at the sparks dancing near her feet, but she stepped away from the fire and wandered off.
Since Gervais’s last departure, Lianna had sensed a new level of desperation in Macée, a curious disregard for her own safety.
Guy sat with Edithe and Bonne on a bench nearby. The seneschal lifted his mug. “Look, the illuminations are set.”
Lianna glanced up at the gunner’s walk. Assisted by Simon, who’d vowed never to be bested by firepower again, Chiang commenced a dazzling display in honor of the triumph. Sulfur seared the air; sunbursts of yellow and plumes of cobalt blue lit the night sky.
Guy seemed to have found something of great interest in the cleft of Edithe’s breasts. Clearing her throat, Lianna said, “We’ve spent nigh on a week preparing this feast. Starting tomorrow we must being plowing the burned-out fields and putting in a crop of winter wheat.”
“Yes, my lady,” he said, chastened. “Of course.”
“Guy, I didn’t mean to diminish your pleasure in this night. ’Tis only that—”
“I understand, my lady.” He leaned over and whispered in Edithe’s ear. She giggled and edged closer to him.
“Never mind them,” Bonne said loyally, leaving the bench and coming to Lianna’s side.
Lianna sighed. “I wish everything I said didn’t sound like a general’s command. I wish—”
Bonne pointed. “Your husband comes with his harp.”
Surrounded by boisterous men, his eyes bright with reflected firelight and hearty drink, Rand strolled across the bailey while children skipped around him, begging for a song.
With a heart-catching grin, he stopped before Lianna, pointed his toe, and swept into an unsteady bow. “What be my lady’s pleasure?”
Warmth spread through her. He stood with legs splayed, harp in hand, exuding a dashing masculinity. Desire snatched her breath, and pride lifted her heart. “‘Tristan and Isolde’?”
“’Tis a fitting lay.” He seated himself on the ground, the fire at his back, his hands caressing the harp strings as he adjusted the pitch.
He began to sing in his clear, noble voice. Beckoned by the spell of his art, people gathered around him. He sang of Tristan, a man captivated by his tragic love for Isolde, a knight rent asunder by devotion to his lady and duty to his king. Happy faces grew pensive as Rand sang the sweet, mournful ballad of love and loss.
* * *
“A man, a woman; a woman, a man:
Tristan, Isolde; Isolde, Tristan.”
* * *
A chill stole into Lianna’s heart. How like the legendary Tristan her husband was. The lovers of old turned their backs on the world, only to find their charmed garden rife with evil and sorrow. Would Rand, like the hero in the ballad, turn away from external claims? Tristan’s king had stabbed him from behind. Stricken by grief, Isolde had joined Tristan in death. That they loved without caution, without compromise, was their downfall.
By the time Rand finished, the eyes of besotted men and love-struck women swam with tears. If ever forced to choose between lord and lady, England or France, Lianna suspected they would follow their hearts. They would follow Rand.
Her eyes locked with his. Gentle fingers stroked tender chords from the harp. She sent him a tremulous smile and murmured a word of praise for his art.
Beside her, Bonne cried quietly into her apron.
