Winter Song

by Roberta Gellis

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Winter Song

  ISBN 9781419921537

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Winter Song Copyright 1982, 2009 Roberta Gellis

  Cover art by Dar Albert

  Electronic book publication October 2009

  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing Inc., 1056 Home Avenue, Akron, OH 44310-3502.

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  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Winter Song

  Roberta Gellis

  Dedication

  To all those who read my work, whether on a digital screen or printed paper—thank you.

  Roberta Gellis, 2009

  Chapter One

  “You do not seem to understand what I am saying, Father.” Raymond d’Aix’s voice was quiet, but his pale eyes were like glittering ice in his thin, dark face. “You cannot have me without accepting Alys of Marlowe as my wife.”

  “Marriages made in haste by silly boys can be annulled,” Alphonse d’Aix replied sharply.

  “I am not married to Alys. Her father is a most upright and honorable man. He would not even permit a betrothal between us until your permission could be obtained,” Raymond said.

  Alphonse stared at his son. Raymond had always been long and lean, and now he was painfully thin. Despite what should have been a good night’s sleep, bruised-looking patches showed beneath his eyes. It was clear that he had traveled far and hard with insufficient rest. He had arrived on the preceding evening with ten guardsmen and a master-at-arms, all of them haggard from hard riding. Little information could be gleaned from any of them beyond the fact that they had come all the way from England in about eighteen days, which Alphonse did not doubt. The good horses they rode were hardly more than scarecrows, and the men were glazed and gray with fatigue.

  Raymond had wolfed down the food provided for him, patted his hysterical mother and sisters kindly, and told his father he had important matters to discuss with him but would leave them to the next day, as he was half-dead for need of sleep. Alphonse had made no objections. First, it was obvious that Raymond was exhausted, but more than that kept Alphonse quiet. There was something different about Raymond, something in the assurance of his voice when he said tomorrow, and something in the way he treated his mother and sisters. He was kind—that had not changed—but there was also contempt in the looks he bent on them.

  This morning both the assurance and the contempt had shown again, but they were veiled under consideration as Raymond bade his mother—in a voice she responded to automatically—to go and rest, after she had begun to weep over the six months he had been gone without a word or a sign that he was alive. Then he had calmly announced that he wanted his father’s permission to take in marriage Lady Alys of Marlowe, England. Alphonse had looked at him and said Do not be ridiculous—which had called forth Raymond’s coldly forceful reply.

  Naturally, Alphonse assumed that some wealth- and status-seeking “gentleman” with a pretty daughter had trapped Raymond into marriage. Alphonse himself was an honorable man and was glad that his son wished to honor the commitment. However, he did not consider himself committed, and after all, Raymond’s marriage was his business. He had pointed out the obvious solution—annulment—and had been stunned by Raymond’s reply. There was no commitment even on Raymond’s part. And, if there had been, Alphonse wondered what was the cause of the haste.

  “If you have got this silly girl with child—” Alphonse began, combining the talk of marriage and the need for haste, and coming up with the usual conclusion.

  “How dare you!” Raymond snarled, losing the calm that he had maintained and reaching instinctively for his sword.

  He was not wearing it, but Alphonse’s eyes opened wide with surprise. Barely had he time to absorb the idea that his son was so set on defending the woman’s honor that he would threaten his own father than another surprise was added. Raymond lifted his hand from his hip and began to laugh.

  “Earl Richard and Lady Elizabeth both specially bade me not to do just what I am doing. Please, Father, let us sit down and do you listen to the whole. When you hear, you will find that it is not so unreasonable. I have gone the wrong way about it.”

  “Which Earl Richard?” Alphonse asked, moving toward a chair and gesturing to Raymond to take another.

  “Richard of Cornwall. Sir William is marshal of his lands and closer than a brother. Alys calls the earl ‘uncle’ and—”

  “Richard of Cornwall approved this?” Alphonse asked, amazed.

  “He approved sufficiently to ask King Henry to write you a letter. I have not read it, of course, but I understand the king says that the union would in no way displease him.”

  “Why should it?” Alphonse asked angrily. He realized now that the forces arrayed against him were more considerable than he had first thought. But England was far away, and the king could not really care whether or not the marriage took place. Suddenly another question rose to Alphonse’s mind. “Does Eleanor know of this?”

  “Oh, yes,” Raymond replied at once, his eyes glinting wickedly with humor now. “Both Queen Eleanor and Countess Sancia have written letters in Alys’s favor—addressed to Mother, of course.” He laughed. “So you see that both your half sisters have turned against you, too.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Alphonse said. “It has been said that the climate in England is so terrible that it drives men mad. I see that it has driven my sisters mad, at least. Raymond, my son, you are in love…I see that. Your heart is full. No doubt the lady is perfectly beautiful and probably one of those blondes so attractive to us, who see that coloring rarely, but—”

  “It is quite true, but I am not marrying Alys for her beauty of person.”

  “Yes, yes,” Alphonse agreed quickly. “I have no doubt her soul is as gentle and delicate as a flower—”

  Raymond suddenly roared with laughter, shocking his father into silence. When Raymond could speak again, he said, “Alys is marvelous, completely, but neither gentle nor,” he choked slightly, remembering some of his conversations with Alys, “nor delicate.”

  “Well,” Alphonse hurried on, although his voice now held an uncertain note, “we will accept her character and person as perfect. But Raymond, you know one does not marry for qualities of person.”

  “I intend to do so, however,” Raymond remarked calmly.

  “You are in love,” Alphonse repeated kindly. “I understand. I am sure the lady is well dowered, but—”

  “No, she is not,” Raymond interrupted once more, grinning. “Her dower is one small keep and its lands. Its yield is good for its size. It commands a heavily traveled road, and there are tolls, but even so—”

  “Raymond, have you been having a jest
at my expense?” Alphonse bellowed. He had no time, really, to feel relief, because Raymond was shaking his head.

  “No, Father. I am in dead earnest. I intend to marry Alys, though I know the match is unequal in material matters. That is not significant. Earl Richard—”

  “You are mad!” Alphonse exclaimed.

  Raymond nodded, grinning again. “The climate in England is very bad. That is true.”

  “This makes it even worse,” Alphonse snapped, ignoring his son’s levity. “But even if she had been rich as Croesus, the match would not be possible. A dower in England is of no value here. We do not need money. You must marry in France or Gascony so that—”

  “I thank God, Father, that I am not your only child. There are Alphonse and Jeanine and Margot. You may make alliances as you like with them. Through me, you will have made a strong bond with England—”

  “Stronger than my sister’s marriage to the king?” Alphonse asked caustically.

  Raymond bit his lip, then shrugged. “I supposed I wished to wrap the thing up in clean linen, but there is no need. I know as well as you that there can be no political advantage to the family in my marriage to Alys. The matter of dower can be arranged. Earl Richard will lend Sir William a suitable sum of money to make up a respectable dower, but I know you do not desire money. I am sorry for it, Father, however, I will not marry elsewhere, nor will I live with those who deny me the one thing of import for which I have ever asked.”

  “Are you threatening me?” Alphonse asked harshly.

  “I do not know,” Raymond replied quietly. “I am not asking for a new destrier or a new maidservant to warm my bed. My desire for Alys does not come from an ache in my loins. I am fighting for my whole life…”

  On the words, the eyes of father and son locked. Both remembered the last time Raymond had said those words. When his father told him he could not lead the army being sent to curb a vassal in Gascony because his mother feared for his safety, Raymond had pleaded and demanded that his mother not be allowed to make a popinjay of him. Alphonse had laughed, pointing out that it was only a little action of no importance, but Raymond countered, quite truthfully, that if a man did not learn by leading small actions, he would be of little use in major conflicts. Finally, Raymond had cried, “Can you not see that I am being toyed with as if I were a doll? Let me go and do this, Father. I am a man, not a plaything for Mother. I am fighting for my life.”

  That time Alphonse had made some soothing replies, but because of the near-hysterical note in his son’s voice, he had been misled into thinking that Raymond would forget the matter in a few days. Alphonse had equated Raymond’s behavior with his daughter’s eventual calm after she had exclaimed hysterically that she would die if a suitor were disapproved. He had not even been disturbed when he learned that his son had flung out of Tour Dur in a rage, thinking Raymond would ride off his passion or work it off in hunting or rape. Even when Raymond had not returned that night, Alphonse had not worried. He believed this son was behaving like a naughty little boy, cutting off his nose to spite his face, sleeping out in a field to frighten his parents. However, a letter had come the next day to say Raymond would not return, and indeed he had not, not for six months.

  “You can kill me,” Raymond now continued, just as quietly, “or you can lock me up. If you do not, I will go. And this time I will not return at all, unless I bring Alys of Marlowe with me as my wife.”

  For a moment longer Alphonse d’Aix stared into his son’s eyes, then dropped his own. He had seen his own father looking out at him from his son’s face. There was no threat to him in Raymond’s expression, only a determination that could not be broken by pleas or reason or time.

  “Do you realize what your mother will say to this?” Alphonse asked, shifting his ground.

  Imperceptibly, Raymond relaxed, hardly believing his ears. His father had yielded—so quickly, so easily. Alphonse had not yet said the formal words, but this mention of Raymond’s mother was a move Raymond recognized. It was a sidestep to a new path. In the past, Raymond had often found that path a dead end and his father’s yielding becoming meaningless in the face of his mother’s tears and pleading. However, Raymond was now armored against those explosions of emotionalism.

  Alys had laughed at him when he described the dreadful scenes his mother had always made. Her eyes had twinkled up at him through the abnormally long, thick lashes she had inherited from her father. “It is a woman’s favorite weapon with ‘soft’ men,” Alys had confessed merrily, after wondering aloud whether she should betray her fellow females and deprive herself of the device. “Do not pay any attention, and it will stop, or use a light slap on the cheek if you cannot wait for her to realize it is not working. That is what another woman would do. I suppose you cannot slap your mother, but you can certainly so correct your sisters’ transports.”

  “And you, should I correct you so?” Raymond had asked, drawing Alys into his arms and kissing her.

  “You will not need to,” she replied so meekly after he freed her lips that Raymond looked at her suspiciously. “Papa cured me of such tricks long ago,” she confessed then giggled mischievously. “You do not think I would expose the tricks I use. I may not know how to direct an army, but I am not so poor a tactician as that.”

  But it did not seem possible to Raymond that Alys used any tricks. She appeared transparently honest to him. A more serious discussion had followed between them in which Alys assured him that his mother did not actually feel such agony as she displayed by her shrieks and gasps. Physical fear might make a woman scream and fling herself about, Alys allowed doubtfully, but real grief or sorrow did not.

  Raymond had reason to believe her. He had watched Lady Elizabeth, who had married Alys’s father after years of waiting, during the days when her lover, now her husband, hung between life and death. There had been tears, slow, quiet tears, and sometimes she held her arms across her breast as if to still an unbearable pain, rocking back and forth with the agony. However, there had been no shrieks, no breast-beating, no cries calling God to witness the unnatural cruelty of her children, which was destroying her life.

  Thus Raymond now saw his way clear of his mother’s attempts to control him, and he smiled tightly at his father. “Mother will not like it at all, I know, but you may leave her to me.”

  Alphonse gaped. Never had Raymond said such a thing, nor had such a flash of amused and loving contempt crossed his face when he spoke of his mother. In the past, anxiety and desperation had been evident in Raymond’s expression when he spoke of her. Now Alphonse remembered the voice in which Raymond had forcefully directed Lady Jeannette to “go and rest” while he had his discussion, and how he had turned his back on her while his sister Jeanine supported her faltering footsteps to the door. In earlier times Raymond would have watched, perhaps even followed his mother asking if he had made her unwell.

  “You mean you will tell her of this idiocy of yours, that you intend to destroy all her hopes of a Gascon alliance to extend her—our—lands there?”

  “I will certainly tell her I intend to marry Alys and no other woman. As to the Gascon lands, that might be managed. Earl Richard has lands there which he ceded to his brother, the king, when he married Sancia. It might be possible to arrange for a dower for Alys in Gascony. Sir William, Alys’s father, would pay King Henry out of Alys’s revenues from Bix, and Alys would receive instead the revenue from the Gascon lands.”

  The animosity faded from Alphonse’s face, and he pursed his lips. Raymond hmmmd with sudden thought. A very satisfactory arrangement might be made, both of them realized. King Henry could get little good out of the Gascon lands, because when the holders of the property were not corrupt, they were warring. Revenues were small and sporadic. Thus, the properties were of little value except as a base for the war against France.

  If, then, Henry could be assured of a stable equivalent revenue, and not lose his right to draw on the property in times of war, he might very willingly name Raymond
as vassal in his wife’s right. He might, in fact, be tempted to part with a valuable stronghold because he knew and trusted Raymond and because Raymond was his wife’s nephew. Moreover, Raymond had never been a vassal of Louis of France. He was, through his father, vassal to his grandfather, the Count of Provence, Raymond-Berenger. This could do Henry no harm politically, since he was already bound to Provence by marriage. In addition, Raymond already held a minor property in Gascony and, through his mother, might inherit more, although it was more likely those lands would go to his younger brother, Alphonse, who was currently living at King Louis’s court. Thus, King Henry would gain a powerful and trustworthy ally in Gascony—a rare and precious thing.

  From Raymond’s and Alphonse’s point of view, the Gascon lands would not be any burden to manage. Raymond could do it himself as long as his father was alive. After that his younger brother could spend most of his time there. As it was, Raymond often was in Gascony to oversee his mother’s lands. It would be little more trouble to oversee his wife’s.

  “You know,” Alphonse said suddenly, “I begin to like this marriage of yours much better. It will be most excellent to hold the lands directly from the king of England. If you marry a daughter of one of the Gascon houses, I would be bound to the policy of that house. This way, we will be able to make our own alliances freely as we like.” He paused and bit his lip. “If this could be done, I would have no objections to the marriage…no…I would not. But can it be done?”

  “I think so—that is, if I return quickly enough. The situation between the brothers, King Henry and Earl Richard, is very good, or was when I left England. That means that Henry will do whatever Richard asks, and Richard will do what Alys asks. No, that is unfair. Richard will see the value of having me as Henry’s vassal. What is more, Eleanor will exert her full powers of persuasion for this. She will see the advantages therein, and the king loves her dearly.”