ASilverMirror

by Roberta Gellis

  Barbara was utterly delighted with the course of events. She was relieved of her worst fear, that her inability to conceal her violent response to her husband’s lovemaking would make her seem a dull domestic cow. She had seen his doubt when he begged her not to act cold and his pleasure when she said she wished to learn. Enough doubt of her was in him to keep his interest, at least for a time. And for the future there was also hope. Alphonse would surely show her what gave him the greatest delight for purely selfish reasons. Just as surely, she would make those things her special pleasure. It mattered little to her where he kissed her or touched her, all he need do was want her and she was afire.

  The theory was excellent, but Barbara found the practice near impossible. Not that she was loath to ape Alphonse’s movements, and certainly not that she found any place he touched or kissed unpleasant to her. On the contrary! Everything he did to her brought pleasure, and what she did to him blew up the little flames of delight he created into so roaring an inferno that she soon lost track of any special place or touch. She remembered a tangle of limbs, a warmth and pressure that threatened to split her open and yet so filled a gaping hole in her senses that she struggled to draw it farther in despite the pain. But was it pain? Whatever it was mingled and blended and swelled and swelled until she must burst or die. Was she dying? Was it she crying out in extremis? Surely the voice that groaned in higher and higher tones was not her own. But her throat was sore with cries as shrill as those of a victim on the rack.

  “Barbe? Barbe?”

  No, she was not dead. Barbara’s lips curved as she slowly opened her eyes. Alphonse hung over her, his dark face anxious. “Mmmm?” she responded.

  He uttered a sigh and dropped flat on his back. “Thank God I did not cheat you,” he muttered. “You took me too far out of myself. I lost my hold.”

  The words meant nothing to Barbara at the time. What was important then was that Alphonse said no more and let her drift asleep, a state she craved more even than his love.

  Barbara woke first, disturbed by touching a companion in bed, since she had slept alone since childhood. Her heart gave a single giant leap of joy when she saw his face, the features harsher in their stillness and yet more innocent. But the first real thought she had, which overlaid but could not spoil the deep satisfaction she felt about Alphonse sleeping beside her, was that she had never had a chance to tell him about the king. Imagine his being so foolish as to worry about her reaction to a bride gift when they were in the midst of so delicate a political situation! But it was a foolishness very easy to forgive.

  Smiling fondly, Barbara eased herself out of the bed, used the pot, and started to the door to bid Clotilde bring her washing water. She stopped abruptly, remembering that she was naked and Chacier might be waiting to attend his master in the solar, and turned to get a bedrobe. As she pulled it over her, she glimpsed Alphonse, still peacefully asleep, and suffered a shock. She had forgotten his service with the prince. Should he be on duty? Before she stopped to think that Chacier would surely have called his master, she was shaking Alphonse’s shoulder.

  “What time must you be with the prince?” she asked as his eyes opened.

  He shot upright, then sagged back against the headboard of the bed, rubbing his hands over his face while he yawned and shook his head. “No service today.”

  “Oh.” Barbara smiled sheepishly. “I should have guessed you would ask at least one day’s leave. I am sorry I woke you.”

  But Alphonse had let his hands drop from his face and was staring at her. “That is very interesting, Barbe, that you should say I asked for leave. I did not. Nor did Edward give me leave though that, I think, was only because we both forgot—I to ask and he to offer. It was Henry de Montfort who said I should have a day’s freedom, and he told me the night before last, when we were all making merry at your father’s expense. I thought nothing of it, only that Henry was being his usual thoughtful self, but now… Did it seem to you, Barbe, that our wedding feast would never end?”

  “It surely did. I was half out of my mind with impatience—”

  “Oh? Were you?”

  His hand went out so swiftly that she was caught and pulled onto his lap before she could resist. She pushed him hard when he had snatched only a single kiss, however, and slid out of his grasp, standing up and saying with icy dignity, “Not for the bedding.” Then her brows made their enchanting circumflex on her forehead in response to his hurt expression, and she added, “After all, I did not yet know whether I would like it.”

  The hurt disappeared from Alphonse’s face, replaced by a slightly smug smile. “And you did, did you not, my love?”

  She eluded the hands that reached for her again, stepping back and out of the way. “That is not to the point, and you had better get out of bed. Perhaps then you will be better able to think with the head on which you grow hair, rather than that little bald red one between your legs.”

  “You do me an injustice,” Alphonse protested mildly, getting out of bed as she suggested. “Although I do believe that two heads are better than one, I manage to keep the one that thinks and the one that feels in their proper places.”

  He looked so bland and innocent that Barbara half turned away to get his bedrobe. She was totally unprepared to be seized and kissed and pushed back toward the bed. She almost yielded, her first thought being that they could discuss the political implications of the wedding feast and her summons to the king any time. However, the assurance in his manner set off a clangor of alarms that quickly quelled her desire.

  “Alphonse!” she exclaimed. “Stop your teasing and listen.” An odd expression, a kind of mingled gladness and exasperation came into his face. Barbara was not certain what it meant, but she felt she had hit the right note when he smiled and let her go.

  “Not only was that wedding feast far too elaborate,” she contin­ued quickly, “but while you were out cavorting with my father and Henry de Montfort the evening before, I was summoned to have my evening meal with the king.”

  “What?”

  Alphonse’s face went dark and rigid and Barbara hastily shook her head. “No, no. Henry is not so pure as Louis, but he is no lecher. In any case, his designs were not on my fair body but on yours.”

  “What!”

  The note of horrified incredulity made Barbara laugh. “You are making me doubt which head you think with again, or whether you can think at all, except about futtering. What King Henry said he wanted was for me to convince you to remain in England now that we are married, but although he seemed well pleased with the idea, I do not think it was his own. Peter de Montfort’s wife was my fellow guest, and she was there, I believe, to see that the king did her husband’s bidding.”

  Alphonse blinked and said, “Let me piss while I swallow that.”

  While he went for the pot, Barbara opened the door, called for washing water from Clotilde, and told Chacier to go for food for breaking their fast. When she turned back to the room, Alphonse had pulled on his bedrobe. As soon as he saw her eyes on him, he shook his head.

  “I cannot make top nor bottom of why Peter de Montfort should want me to stay in England with the prince.”

  “Even if he does, why would he approach me through the king?” Barbara asked. “Why not ask you himself, or simply forbid you to leave?”

  “He would not forbid my leaving. To keep me here unwilling would surely make me refuse to serve his purpose, whatever it may be. And he might not want to ask me directly lest word of that come to Edward, who might then assume I was Montfort’s man. To tell the truth, after his manner of swearing to the terms of peace I do not understand why Edward was permitted his promised rewards. I thought all his privileges would be revoked.”

  “I thought so myself,” Barbara said, pushing open the traveling basket in which the linen lay and taking out a drying cloth. “But it may be that Peter and Henry considered his giving the oath, no matter what his manner, a softening of his previous behavior.”

  Alphons
e nodded and went toward the stand where Clotilde was pouring water into a wide bowl. “Yes, you may have the root of the matter there,” he said over his shoulder, then turned to face her again to add, “Henry de Montfort is so relieved that Edward is willing to talk civilly with him that he will overlook much. He believes he can win Edward to his opinion.”

  “Well, the prince did join Leicester three years ago,” Barbara pointed out. “Edward knows how ill the realm has been governed by his father, and he is aware of the bitter hatred aroused by the king’s half brothers. But when King Henry reproached him for joining Leicester and refused to meet him at all, Edward could not bear it. He left Leicester and since then has supported his father.”

  “So Henry de Montfort has reason to hope that he can win Edward over,” Alphonse said. “Now I wonder less at his indulgence. I see that he is trying to use the carrot and the stick—and quite cleverly.”

  “You mean that elaborate feast was a taste of what Edward has lost, and the day’s leave you have is a reminder to the prince of how dull and miserable prison can be.”

  “Just so.” Alphonse shrugged. “Likely, then, that King Henry’s suggestion that we stay in England was urged by Peter de Montfort to further Henry de Montfort’s purpose. Yes, why not? Peter took no dangerous chances. It was certainly by Peter’s order that we almost galloped to the cathedral and back and the wedding service was overquick. I think it was also by his order that the king and prince were seated together—to prevent anyone from coming near either of them and saying a few words without being noticed.”

  He dropped the bedrobe off his shoulders, turned back to the bowl of washing water, and began to scrub his upper body briskly. Clearly Alphonse was relieved to find some sense in what had puzzled him and made him uneasy. Barbara was silent while he washed, but when she presented the drying cloth her face was sad.

  “Almost no one came to speak to the king or prince,” she said, “only the Montforts themselves and Humphrey de Bohun and my father.” Her lips tightened. “I suppose all the others were afraid, and I wonder if my father was wise? The king spoke most favorably of Papa to me—and Alice de Montfort no doubt carried every word he said to her husband.”

  “Your father is no fool, Barbe.”

  She sighed then smiled. “Quite true. He is always telling me so himself and calling me a fool for worrying about him. Perhaps I am.” She took back the drying cloth and asked, “Do you want to dress, or shall we break our fast as we are? Chacier will be back with the food soon.”

  Alphonse hesitated and Barbara cocked her head questioningly. The corners of his lips curved, and he sighed. “We had better dress or Monsieur Tête à Vide Rouge will begin to do my thinking for me again.”

  Barbara went immediately to Alphonse’s clothes chest, only turning her head after she had lifted the lid to ask, “Court clothing or common wear?”

  It had taken Barbara that little while to conquer her disappointment. Now that most of her uneasiness about the king’s summons had been laid to rest, she would not have minded a bit letting the empty-headed little red rascal do the thinking. She could not show herself to be eager, however. Alphonse must always be the pursuer, and the harder he had to run the better he would enjoy the prize he won. But one could be too coy, Barbara thought. No, he did not seem disappointed. Actually he looked rather smug as he answered that common riding wear for both of them would be best.

  “I would like to ride out, if it does not rain,” he said, with a sparkle of mischief in his dark eyes. “Let us take food and blankets. We can find a haystack for comfort at this time of year, I am sure. And I need to be out in the open…free.”

  As he said the last words, the amusement disappeared from his expression. Barbara caught up the clothes she had chosen and hurried back to him. “I am so sorry,” she said. “I never thought how you must hate being locked up with Edward, as if you were a prisoner yourself.”

  “No, I do not mind that so much,” he said. “What I hate is this state where there is neither right nor wrong. Your uncle Hugh explained some things to me—and Henry de Montfort told me more. And Edward talks about little else—only the subject of escape is forbidden us. There can be no doubt that King Henry ruled very ill. Edward does not deny it. There can be as little doubt that what Leicester desires for this realm is good. But even Henry de Montfort does not deny that only King Henry has the right to rule, no matter how ill he does it. Both sides are right. Both sides are wrong. Both sides know it, and that is the worst of all. There is a heaviness in Edward’s heart and in Henry de Montfort’s, though he is the victor, that weighs on me.”

  Barbara kissed his cheek. “It weighs on us all, but should not weigh on you, who have no obligation to this land. Come, for today let us put this grief aside.”

  They managed to do that. By the time they had eaten, the morning damp had cleared, and they were able to ride out. Barbara discovered why Alphonse had looked both smug and mischievous when he spoke about finding “comfort” in a haystack. The fresh air, open sky, and feeling of freedom lent a certain charm to love play, Barbara admitted, and a gaiety was added by small discomforts, like the prickles and uneven surface of the hay, which once pulled them apart at a near crucial moment. But later on, when they returned to the lodging, there was an equal pleasure in the warm, shadowed softness of their bed where odd gleams from the night-candle gave a kind of mystery to her lover’s body and to the intentness of his face.

  Over the next week, both Alphonse and Barbara blessed their confinement at Dover for making them too suspicious to stay at the castle. The privacy of their lodgings permitted them to shake off, even within Canterbury, the odd pall that hung over the rest of the court. When they were alone in their chamber they found enough comfort in each other’s company and enough to talk about in memories of the past and plans for the future to forget England’s troubles.

  The discomfort of the court was not owing to fear. Within a week of the wedding, news from Wales confirmed that Leicester and Gloucester had driven the Marcher lords back into their final stronghold and that they had again sued for peace. The desultory negotiations with the French emissaries were temporarily suspended. Leicester had written that he expected to join them in Canterbury very soon, and it did not seem worthwhile to continue the discussions without him.

  The very afternoon the earl’s letter came, Barbara’s father told her that he would leave the next morning for his own lands. Barbara’s heart sank at the news. It seemed to her that her father was eager to avoid Leicester, and the only reason she could think of was that he feared Leicester would blame him for leaving his duty to guard the coast to come to her wedding. But when she confessed her fear to Alphonse, he smiled and reminded her that she worried too much about Norfolk. No blame could attach to her father, he pointed out, when all the information that came from France made more certain the failure of Queen Eleanor’s plans to invade England.

  Yet Barbara knew that Alphonse was troubled too. And when she asked him why, he would not meet her eyes, he only shook his head and said he had no better explanation than what he had already given her, a weight on his spirit. She asked him then if he would like to go back to France at once, her purpose in coming to England having been fulfilled, but he shook his head again, reminding her that he had agreed to serve the prince at least until the court left Canterbury.

  He was relieved of that duty, however. Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, arrived in Canterbury at the very end of August. That evening he was closeted with his son Henry and his cousin Peter. The next day he had several conferences with the French emissaries. On the third morning, when Alphonse arrived at the castle to join Edward he was met by a page who escorted him instead to the quarters of the Earl of Leicester. The two men knew each other slightly from meetings at the French court, but Leicester was much the elder and they had never even had a private conversation.

  Alphonse bowed, and Leicester smiled and gestured him toward a bench that flanked his own chair. “I wish to t
hank you,” the earl said, “for agreeing, against your own inclination, to serve Prince Edward.”

  “I have no disinclination to serve the prince.” Alphonse met the steady gaze of Leicester’s large eyes with an equally steady look. “Prince Edward and I are tourney companions of old. I am glad to do anything I can for him.”

  Leicester smiled again. “I understand it was you who pointed out to Henry that if foreign officers of the household are forbidden to the king, no other royal household should have them either, particularly if appointed by the…ah…government.”

  “Yes, but I hope we covered that problem by giving me no appointment. I receive no wages or perquisites and am promised no favors.”

  “I thank you again,” Leicester said. “That was very generous.” Now he looked sad and much older than when he smiled, deep lines graven between his brows and down his cheeks. “Unfortunately, Sieur Alphonse, few have so much generosity in them, and most wish to believe everyone as avaricious as they are themselves. There is talk already—I have heard complaints—and so I must ask you to end your service to the prince.”

  Alphonse was not surprised. He had expected to be dismissed as soon as the page announced that Leicester wished to see him. In the days that he had served Edward, however, Alphonse had come closer to Henry de Montfort’s viewpoint. Not all the way. Alphonse was sure the prince could never be brought to accept the principle that Leicester or even a group of barons could interfere with the royal right to rule. On the other hand, he had seen in the prince the beginning of a less passionate rejection of all that Leicester upheld. When Edward’s pride and temper were not flayed, he could see the good in a clear statement of the rights and duties of the king and the barons so that fair judgment could be given on the basis of solid law.