by Speer, Flora
“There is bread and some cheese and butter. I know Rhys likes that,” she said. “I’m going with you, Branwen. Lady Isabel is out hunting with Lord Guy and his guests, so I’m free for a while.”
“No, you must stay here. Rhys would be angry if he knew I had come to you.” Branwen took the basket. As she did, Sir Brian walked through the gate. Meredith hastily stepped in front of Branwen so he wouldn’t see the basket of food as he passed them. She knew Guy would not mind her giving food to her friends, but if Lady Isabel found out about it she would make a great fuss and begin asking questions and soon Father Herbert would know of it, and Meredith did not want either of them to know about Rhys and Branwen.
“Good day, Meredith,” Brian looked from Meredith to Branwen. Meredith saw a subtle change come over him when he saw her aunt. Brian’s somber face lightened and his wide mouth curved into a smile. Instead of walking by them as Meredith had assumed he would, Brian stopped. “I haven’t seen this lady at Afoncaer before.”
“Branwen doesn’t live at the castle,” Meredith said, still trying to keep the basket of food hidden. “She’s a friend of mine.”
“I see, Branwen, is it? Welsh.” Brian studied the woman before him. She was almost exactly his own height, and perhaps four or five years older than he. Branwen’s cheeks colored a deep pink under Brian’s steady appraisal, and she suddenly looked younger and prettier. A single curl blew gently across Branwen’s forehead. Her dark eyes were bright, thick-lashed, and clear as they met Brian’s liquid gaze.
“I am half Welsh,” Brian told her. “My mother was captured in a Norman raid into Deheubarth. My father was a Norman knight.”
“Did he marry her?” Branwen asked, a certain edge in her voice, though her smile remained and her eyes carried no challenge.
“No, but he saw to it that I was raised as a Norman and had enough money to become a knight. However,” Brian laughed, still not taking his eyes off Branwen’s flushed face, “there’s something in me that’s not quite Norman.”
Branwen moved then, and he saw what she was holding.
“What’s in the basket?” he asked.
“Food,” Meredith said, deciding to trust him. “It’s not stolen. The cook gave it to me. It’s only leftovers, and it’s for a friend who is sick. But please don’t tell anyone. Lady Isabel is – she’s…”
“Difficult?” Brian suggested. “All right, I won’t give away your secret. Branwen, where are you going? My horse cast a shoe and I had to walk him back from the hunt. The blacksmith has him now and I was just going to saddle my other one. If you like, I’ll take you up behind me and save you walking on this cold day. I can rejoin my companions later.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Branwen backed away as though she was afraid of the dark, battle-scarred man before her. “It’s only a short distance. Goodbye, Meredith.” She was through the inner gate and halfway to the outer wall before Meredith could make a move to stop her.
“Now what do you suppose made her run away like that?” Brian asked. “Could it be me?”
“Aunt Branwen isn’t used to strangers.”
“Aunt Branwen, is it? And is it your uncle who’s sick?”
“My aunt is a widow.”
“She’s very pretty.” Brian grinned. “So are you. You make an interesting pair. Where does she live?”
“Far away.”
“That’s not what she said.”
“Please, don’t ask me questions about it.”
“So many secrets.” Brian gazed thoughtfully down the main road of the new town toward the gate in the outer wall where Branwen had vanished. “Ah, well, she’s Welsh. That explains it.”
That night after Vespers, Walter fitz Alan and Brian of Collen agreed to remain at Afoncaer as Lord Guy’s knights. They knelt in the rude wooden chapel and each man in turn placed his hands in Guy’s, accepting him as liege lord and swearing fealty unto death.
Meredith was deeply moved by the simple ceremony, and impressed by Guy’s dignity. He looked down upon his dark-haired, kneeling friends, his own golden hair shining in the candlelight. He had donned a wine-colored wool tunic and a gilded belt for the occasion, and Meredith thought he must be the handsomest, noblest man on earth.
“No good will come of this,” Isabel muttered as Guy raised first Walter and then Brian and embraced each man.
“The lord of Afoncaer needs knights to serve him, does he not?” Meredith asked.
“Yes, but not these two.” Isabel glared at her maid. “What do you know of such things?”
“Nothing, my lady.” Meredith lowered her eyes and pretended humility, knowing that would pacify her mistress, and Isabel left the chapel in a swirl of green silk skirts.
Meredith would rather not have Sir Walter living at Afoncaer, any more than Isabel would. He had never bothered her again after the episode on Christmas Day, but she disliked the man intensely.
Meredith could not fathom Isabel’s true feelings about Walter. She clearly enjoyed the elaborate attention he paid to her and she flirted with him shamelessly, but all was done in public. Isabel never saw Walter in private. Meredith was certain of that. There simply was no time in the day when Isabel was not in the company of her women, or Father Herbert, or presiding as mistress of the castle in the great hall with a great many people around her. After thinking about it for a while, Meredith finally decided that Isabel really was playing with Walter, and he, whatever his own true feelings, had no choice but to follow Isabel’s lead. Meredith wondered how long Walter would endure such treatment.
A few days after Walter and Brian had become his knights, Guy confronted his brother’s widow in the women’s quarters.
“Isabel, we must talk.” Hands on hips he glowered down at his sister-in-law, who sat at her needlework.
Isabel was embroidering an altar cloth for the new chapel in the tower keep, which was scheduled to be completed during the coming summer. The multicolored silk threads she was using had become badly tangled, and Meredith had been assigned to sort them out. A piece of clean linen was spread on the table, and Meredith bent over it, working at the threads. As she extracted each thread from the pile before her she smoothed it between her fingers and laid it to one side with others of the same shade.
She did not mind the tedious task. She liked to look at the brilliant, glowing colors, and she loved the feeling of the silk threads sliding through her fingers as she worked with them. She kept her head down, trying to pretend Guy wasn’t there, so close she could touch him if she put out her hand. Meredith could imagine what her sharp-tongued mistress would say if she did such a thing.
“If you want to talk about Thomas,” Isabel said, stabbing her silver needle through heavy linen to make a bright blue loop of thread, then bringing the needle out again, “You must know I seldom see him these days. He is constantly with Geoffrey, or that dreadful, crude Brian. Learning to use weapons, he says. Learning to ride a warhorse. My son has no time for me any more.”
“It’s not about Thomas.”
“What then? You can have no complaints about my management of your household.”
“Oh, I have a complaint. One I’ve warned you about several times, but you pay me no heed.” Guy held out a piece of parchment, shaking it under Isabel’s nose. Isabel pricked her finger and a drop of blood fell onto the cloth in her hands.
“Now see what you’ve made me do. How can you speak so cruelly to me?” Isabel’s eyes began to fill with tears. She tossed the embroidery onto the table and began sucking on her injured finger like a sulky child.
“Don’t you dare start that infernal crying again,” Guy raged. “You have been charming Reynaud into writing letters for you, ordering expensive furniture and tapestries and God knows what else, for Afoncaer.”
“Is that all? I thought it was something serious. You must live in a suitable setting, Guy, to impress those who are your inferiors. Not to mention important guests. Perhaps the king and queen will visit us one day. They are my friends,
you know.” Guy snorted, and Isabel’s beautiful face hardened. “If you do not know what is due to your rank, I do.”
“This list,” Guy waved the parchment at her again, “is evidence of expenditures too great for the king himself.”
“You cannot possibly know that,” Isabel said reasonably. “You can’t read.”
“Reynaud read it to me,” Guy told her between clenched teeth.
“How do you know he was truthful? The man is an interfering fool who disapproves of anything that makes life more pleasant.”
“You used him to order things you wanted for your own pleasure without consulting me, after you had promised to be more thrifty. Reynaud was honest enough to tell me about it. God’s Holy Teeth, Isabel, are you deliberately trying to ruin me?”
Isabel stood up. She was so tall her eyes were nearly level with Guy’s as she faced him, her anger more than matching his own.
“If you don’t approve of my efforts in your behalf, I’ll be glad to leave Afoncaer forever, leave you to live in manly squalor, without a touch of refinement or elegance. I’ll go somewhere else. Perhaps I shall marry again after all.”
“Marry?” Guy gave a shout of exasperated, derisive laughter. “Were I the Holy Roman Emperor, I could not find a man to take you, dear sister. You are too well-known from the days when my brother was alive. Weeping, nagging, spendthrift. Pah! Women! A worthless pack of whiners.” Guy held up the parchment again, crumpling it in his hand. “No more. Not one more chair or tapestry or candlestick. Do you understand me?” He tossed the parchment onto the table where Meredith was working, then turned on his heel and left the women’s quarters, slamming the door into the great hall behind him with such force the entire partition shook.
Meredith picked up the parchment, but Isabel snatched it out of her hand.
“What are you gaping at, idiot? Oh, if I were a man, I’d run him through! If only I had a sword!”
“Calm yourself, my lady.” Meredith had seen Lady Isabel’s temper before, but never an outburst like this. “Please sit down. Let me get you some wine.”
“How can I calm myself when he has insulted me like this? And in front of a serving wench, too. How dare he? He’ll pay for this. I’ll find a way to pay him back if it takes all my life to do it.” Isabel began pacing back and forth, her anger nearly uncontrollable.
Meredith wished the other women were there to help her soothe their mistress, but Joan was busy with Isabel’s personal laundry and the rest were preparing the mid-day meal. Meredith poured out a cup of wine and went to Isabel.
“Here, my lady, drink this.”
Isabel turned suddenly in her agitated pacing, her elbow striking the cup in Meredith’s hand and knocking it out of her grasp. Thick red wine splattered over the work table, soaking the threads Meredith had been sorting as well as Isabel’s embroidery.
Both Meredith’s hands flew to her mouth and she cried out in consternation. It would be nearly impossible to get the wine stain out of the linen, and even if that were done, the fine embroidery on which Isabel had worked for months would be ruined. As for the bright-colored threads, they were now a sodden, red-brown mess.
“Look what you’ve done!” Isabel screeched.
“I? You hit my hand. Why couldn’t you be more careful?”
“You willful, insubordinate creature!”
Meredith heard Isabel’s wild cry and saw her hand striking out, but she could not move. Isabel hit her across the cheek so hard that Meredith stumbled and would have fallen had not a pair of youthful arms caught and steadied her.
“Mother, what are you doing?” Thomas’s face was white, his eyes wide. “Don’t hit Meredith.”
“She’s my servant. Don’t interfere. You shouldn’t be here, anyway. You are so grownup; go to the stables with the other men and leave me to discipline my maid.”
Isabel was breathing hard. Meredith, beneath anger and pain and damaged pride, noticed that Isabel was not weeping. Apparently her tears were a weapon to be used only on grown men.
“Reynaud sent me to see what the noise was,” Thomas explained, his arms still about Meredith’s waist. “We could hear you in the hall.”
“Reynaud. That viper.” Isabel’s eyes fell on the destruction on the work table. “Meredith, clean up this mess and then get out of my sight. I don’t want to see you for the rest of the day. I’ll decide on your punishment later.”
Meredith pulled herself out of Thomas’s sheltering embrace. She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath.
“Clean it yourself,” she said. “You made it.”
Isabel uttered a startled gasp as Meredith went out the rear door to the bailey. The January cold caught at her. She was chilled within a few moments except for the spot where Isabel had hit her. She heard Thomas call out to her, but she did not answer him. She paid attention to nothing but the still-stinging pain in her cheek. Wanting above all else to get away from the great hall, she ran from it, straight across the bailey to the tower keep.
It was too cold in mid-winter to lay stones, so work on the tower had stopped until spring. There was no one near the structure. Meredith made her way up the spiral stairs to the lord’s chamber at the top. A crude temporary roof had been installed to keep the snow and rain out during the winter, and the window alcoves, completed by summer’s end, had been shuttered. Meredith threw open a shutter and sat down on the dusty stone window seat at one side of a recess. She rubbed at her cheek. She had had enough. She could endure no more of Isabel’s petty tyranny.
“Meredith?” Guy stood at the chamber entrance. She had not heard him climbing the stairs. “Thomas told me what happened. I thought you might be here.” He crossed the room to her, and put out one large, strong hand to tilt her head upward so he could look directly into her face. He gently touched the spot where Isabel’s hand had struck her.
“That bitch,” he grated. “How I’d like to send her away and never see her again. If only the king had not commanded me to keep her here at Afoncaer. You must be cold.”
He sat down beside Meredith, wrapping them both into his thick woolen cloak, pulling her back against the warmth of his broad chest. She felt his chin rubbing against the hair at her temple where her scarf had come loose. She let herself relax for just a moment, taking intense pleasure in his masculine strength, before she said what she had to say.
“I must leave Afoncaer, my lord.”
“No.” His arms tightened. “I cannot let you go.”
“I cannot remain, not after today.” She moved out of the circle of his arms, out of the warmth of his enveloping cloak. “I am meant to be a healer. I will gladly serve my patients in whatever way I can, but I cannot, I will not, be a servant to Lady Isabel any longer. She says I am much too proud to be a good lady’s maid and she is right. I should never have come here.”
“Meredith.” He caught her face between his hands and put his lips close to hers. “Don’t leave.”
“I must.” She tried to make a joke, hoping by that means to ease the pain in her heart. “It can’t really matter to you. You don’t like women. We are all a pack of nagging, extravagant whiners.”
“Not you.” He would not release her. He drew her back into his arms as he spoke. His mouth was entirely too close to hers. Her heart began to pound with slow, aching beats. “You are like no woman I have ever known before, sweet and gentle, and good and proud, too.”
“Yes, my lord Guy, I am too proud for a villein. Too proud to stay here. There is nothing for me to do but return to Rhys and Branwen.” She knew if they remained as they were for one moment more he would kiss her and hold her closer still, and then she would never be able to leave him. She forced herself to stand up and walk to the middle of the room. The chill she felt had nothing to do with her lack of a cloak.
“I will go at once,” she said, “before it gets dark.”
“I can make you stay,” he told her. She knew he spoke the truth. By Norman law he owned her, as he owned everyone and everyt
hing that was part of Afoncaer, and he could prevent her going if he wished.
“Will you, my lord?”
He got up and faced her, the light through the open shutter streaking across his troubled face. She watched him shake his head slowly, and thought her heart would break.
“No,” he told her. “Not against your will. You are free to go.”
She headed for the stairs, unable to speak any more. The chill had reached her heart and was now sinking into her very bones, into every part of her being. It got worse with each step away from him.
“You will need a cloak, Meredith. Go to the bailey gate and wait there. I’ll send Thomas to you.”
She heard him on the steps behind her. She went around and around, down the spiral and then out of the tower and across the inner bailey. She dared not look back.
Chapter 23
Thomas insisted on accompanying Meredith.
“There are more people about now than when you left the cave last autumn,” he said. “There are all those men-at-arms who came to Afoncaer with Walter and Brian, and new settlers for the town. It isn’t as easy as it used to be to slip into the forest unnoticed, and I don’t want anyone to stop you on your way. I will go with you and protect you, Lady Meredith.”
Meredith could not help smiling. Thomas, at his mother’s behest, had called her simply Meredith while she was Lady Isabel’s servant. Now that she was free and they were away from the castle she was again Lady Meredith to him, and once more he fancied himself her knight and protector.
Thomas had brought more than her cloak. Her clothes and her few other belongings had been folded into a bundle. There was a large basket packed with bread and cheese and butter, and two flasks of wine. Remembering Branwen’s plea for food the last time she had seen her, Meredith did not refuse the food, nor did she ask if it had been Guy’s idea or Thomas’s, She suspected Joan of sending along her personal things.
