Knight's Honor

by Roberta Gellis

  "You will be happy in the end, Elizabeth," she murmured very low, "even if you do not think so just now. You need to be a person. I know. I need to be a person too. Go gently, it will come to you."

  Perhaps, Elizabeth thought, as the sleet stung her face while they rode to the church in the town of Hereford, if she could go gently it would come to her. For Leah it was easy. She was the type who could kneel and cling to her husband's knees and weep until he had no strength to deny anything she asked. That gentle soul was not cursed with the sin of pride that locked her own knees and back so that she could not kneel to save her life. She had not even knelt to the queen for her father's life. She glanced at the Earl of Chester riding beside her, and her heart contracted at the thought of leaving him. They had been so happy.

  Because of the weather, the bridal couples could not exchange their vows at the church door, which was customary, but went in to perform the entire ceremony before the altar. They stood there in two pairs, Anne weeping softly with Rannulf holding her hand. Roger and Elizabeth both still, not touching, apparently intent upon the two bishops who had chosen to share the honor and the guilt of this marriage.

  Hereford looked a little worn in spite of the rest he had, but his eyes were bright and the comers of his lips alternately turned up and were pulled down into a more becoming gravity as he considered the mischief he had created by his gift to Elizabeth. His mother had given him that information by protesting that he should have told her of his plan, and, although he knew he could not count on warmth of heart being Elizabeth's reason for wearing the necklace, he was glad she had done so. If he pretended ignorance of the disturbance among the women, as he would in any case, he could pretend he believed her to have acted out of love alone, and that would serve his purpose almost as well.

  There was a little confusion because Hereford had to act both as bridegroom and as guardian of his sister, but all was finally smooth and both men kissed their brides on the priest's instructions. On their way out of the church, a gust of wind slammed the heavy door to with a loud crash. Hereford laughed as he released Elizabeth whom he had instinctively pushed behind him to protect as he whirled to face the sound.

  "There, I told you the church would come down upon us." He chuckled. "No, it is not that. The Lord has closed the door so that we might be alone. Elizabeth, let us run away. You do not wish to eat, drink, and dance to make a show for our guests, and I do not wish to go boar hunting tomorrow. Let us go and hide so that we can quarrel in peace."

  "How can you be so ridiculous?" Elizabeth replied, laughing too. Roger sounded so ordinary. In spite of being her husband now he did not appear to have changed. His expression was frankly teasing and he squeezed her fingertips just as he used to when he was trying to convince her to do something outrageous at court.

  "A nice way to speak to your lord and master. Come, pick up your skirts and race me to your horse. If we get to the house first, we can eat all the dessert and say dinner is over and get to bed."

  "Roger, if you pull me into that mud and splatter my dress, I will use this necklace you gave me to strangle you. You are drunk already." She shook her head and pushed him away as he attempted to bite her ear, laughing harder instead of being frightened because it was obvious that he was mischievously attempting to discompose her just as he used to before he went to France. "Stop that! Behave yourself. They will have that door open in a moment. Ouch! Roger!"

  He pinched her and she slapped him, just as the door opened. Hereford's eyes danced with merriment and Elizabeth, torn between amusement and embarrassment, could have murdered him very cheerfully just then.

  "Wait," she said between set teeth, "wait, I will pay you back for that. I will make you black and blue where it counts."

  Hereford choked. "Elizabeth! How vulgar! Is that a nice thing to say? You may well, but do not tell the whole world of it."

  Elizabeth blushed hotly. She had not, of course, meant what Roger pretended she did, but to protest would only make him more outrageous. He might well appeal to the crowd now surrounding them for support. Nothing was beyond him when in this mood. He remained completely ungovernable right through dinner, which was eaten in the great hall of the old keep where there was more room.

  Two soups were served, one of vegetables and beef, the other containing various types of sea food, but largely oysters. Of the last he soberly filled a bowl and presented it to Lord Radnor because, as he loudly explained to everyone in hearing, a man who never looked at any woman but his wife must need oysters for their medicinal effect. As oysters were commonly reported to be an aphrodisiac, the ladies and gentlemen roared.

  Lord Radnor, well accustomed to Hereford's sense of humor, merely replied that he hoped Roger would need them for the same reason soon, for there was no other way, since he had returned, of insuring a wife's virtue but to stay in her bed yourself. That turned the laughter of the guests upon their host for his problems with irate husbands had been almost proverbial. It was then obviously necessary to ask Elizabeth what methods she proposed to use to keep him faithful. He never allowed her to answer, but her wits were kept on the jump countering the insane proposals that Hereford was making for his own restraint.

  His next happy notion took the form of plucking a peacock that the cooks had roasted and painfully refeathered to distribute the beautiful tail plumes as consolation prizes to the ladies he had loved and lost by this marriage. By this time, as his eyes were definitely not focusing too well and the wine in the great tuns was being rapidly depleted, Elizabeth really exerted herself to divert him from his purpose. She was not successful, but at least made him promise to keep to women whose husbands were sufficiently sober to recognize his actions as a joke.

  Even so there would have been some angry looks had not Hereford first convulsed Elizabeth herself and the entire group by presenting a feather to William of Gloucester's wife. That poor lady, unlovely and constantly pregnant, was so unlikely a choice for amorous adventure and her husband so notorious for his faithlessness with both men and women that the most jealous of husbands only laughed when their wives were chosen.

  The piece de resistance, however, came with the introduction of the pasties. Hereford left the hall, ostensibly to relieve his bladder, but actually to collect every small hawk from the mews—his own and his guests' indiscriminately. These were surreptitiously carried by the falconers to regular stations around the hall and, when five unusually large pasties were cut open, ten live doves were released from each. The hawks were loosed and pandemonium reigned. Every noble and most of the ladies leapt to their feet to halloo the hawks on; the hawks shrieked, the doves screamed as they were struck, and blood and feathers rained down on the guests from the roof of the hall.

  "How could you, Roger?" Elizabeth gasped as she swung a lure seized from a nearby falconer and called to her own merlin, which had missed its strike and was shrieking angrily and circling near the roof. "You idiot! It will take us days to straighten them out and calm them down."

  Hereford laughed like a madman as he watched his guests caper after the hawks, oversetting the tables and benches. He tore the lure from Elizabeth's hand and pulled her back just in time to save her from being trampled by her own father and the Earl of Salisbury, and then stood over her in a corner, warding off a number of other men and women who, half drunk and mad with excitement, careened into him blindly.

  "Nay, Elizabeth," he said over his shoulder, "I am not such an idiot. Drunk as they are with no fighting to look forward to to ease their hearts, they would be at each others' throats if they had nothing to tire them. By the time the hawks are taken, most of them will be worn out and fairly sober again."

  "You are a fine one to talk. You are drunk yourself."

  "That I am." He giggled. "I could not help it, for everyone presses drink upon me, but I am not so drunk that I wish to see swords out in my hall." He burst then into raucous whoops. "Look, Elizabeth, there is Gloucester in the middle of a pasty. I know not who tripped him into it, bu
t they have the right idea. He would look better baked than he does half roasted as he is now."

  "Hold your tongue," Elizabeth gasped, trying not to laugh with him. "He will hear you. How will we ever clear up this mess?"

  "Better birds' blood than men's. Ouf! Radnor, for God's sake, take your elbow out of my ribs."

  "Everyone always told me your head was screwed on wrong, Hereford, and I defended you. Bless me, if I ever do so again. Here, do not let Leah be trampled on, or better, let me stay with the women and you go and keep Chester and Lincoln from murdering each other. They are laying claim to the same hawk."

  Hereford plunged off into the crowd, singing something about the glory of losing one's life for one's honor, and Radnor watched him, his dark eyes warm with affection. Elizabeth and Leah peered out behind his bulk, laughing when people slid about on the floor, which in spite of the strewn rushes, was now slippery with spilled food. Leah had to cling to her husband for support when one of the dogs bounded into the air to seize a weakly fluttering dove using a portly and highly born abbot's stomach as a springboard.

  "I am glad to see Hereford back in his normal spirits, Lady Elizabeth," Radnor said, wiping his eyes when he returned to his charges after helping the abbot to his feet, "but was there no less disastrous way for him to express them?" Elizabeth explained, and Radnor nodded. "I give him credit for it." He hunched a shoulder off which William Beauchamp bounded as if it had been a stone wall, "but I wonder, if this is the way he has begun, whether it is safe to stay. Tomorrow he will probably let boars loose in the hall so that we may hunt in comfort."

  "Lord Radnor," Elizabeth gasped, half laughing, half horrified, "I pray you, do not say such things in his hearing. You jest, but Roger would very likely think it an excellent idea in all seriousness."

  When the servants came in to renew the torches in the wall holders a second time after dancing had replaced bird catching as the sport of the evening, Lady Hereford caught up with her son who was leaning breathlessly against the fireplace.

  "Roger, I am taking Anne up. Collect Rannulf” her lips twisted “if he is in the same disgusting state as you are you had better look under the benches for him. And bring the rest of the men who can walk. If we do not start now, we will not get you and Elizabeth bedded until tomorrow night. Roger, do you hear me? Can you understand me?"

  "Yes, Mamma." He hiccuped and laughed. "I am not that drunk—though in all good faith, I have been more sober. Where do you propose I start to look for him?"

  Lady Hereford took a deep breath and held it. If she spoke again, she would scream, so she took her unresisting but giggling son firmly by the arm and led him away. She steered for a dark head well above the rest in the crowd; Lord Radnor was usually given to sobriety and could usually manage Roger. When she addressed that gentleman, however, he bowed gravely from the waist so far forward that his wife had to catch him and push him upright, no light task for a small girl. Then, with a vague, but pleased smile of surprised recognition, he embraced Hereford and began to sing.

  "Cain," Leah protested, trying vainly to pull him loose, "where is Rannulf of Lincoln?"

  Radnor stopped singing. "What do you want him for?" he asked aggressively.

  Plainly, as if speaking to a retarded child, Leah explained. "He must go to bed with his new wife. Remember, my lord, you are celebrating his wedding."

  A puzzled frown crossed Lord Radnor's face. "I thought it was Roger that was married. Roger, were you not married?" Hereford giggled. Radnor regarded his companion for a moment and then looked around the room. "How did we come to Lincoln? I could swear we are in Hereford Castle. It looks like Hereford Castle."

  "Is there one sober man in this place?" Lady Hereford cried.

  Leah wished to laugh too, but she was sorry for Lady Hereford, who was faced with coping with the bedding ceremonies. "Cain!" She shook his arm. "You are drunk. Go soak your head, and soak Roger's too. You must sober him up enough to get his sister and her husband bedded and himself also." The men began to wander off vaguely in the direction of the doorway. Leah shook her head. "Madam, he cannot be trusted, he will forget before he is halfway across the room. I must go after them. Where is Lady Elizabeth?"

  "With Anne."

  "Good. If they go out in the cold for a bit they will be all right. Anne will not notice that I am missing. I will come as soon as either of them knows what he is doing."

  It was not easy, but finally Rannulf and Anne were safely ensconced in Lady Hereford's old solar in the keep. Then the entire party trooped out of the keep and across the court to the manor house. The cold sobered everyone a little, but they were still drunk enough to take a very long time to get Hereford undressed, and Elizabeth, sitting naked in the great bed and listening to the obscene jokes, became more and more terrified as the minutes passed.

  She had been happy all day after the ceremony. Roger was just Roger—mad, wild, amusing—teasing her and accepting her teasing in return. Now he was suddenly a stranger. The candlelight gleamed on the soft golden hair of his arms and legs; his body, nearly hairless, like alabaster, was unreal, unrelated to her. In the course of her duties as mistress of Chester Castle, she had bathed Roger of Hereford more than once and knew his body well, but it did not look the same to her now.

  Leah left the head of the bed where she had been standing near Elizabeth. She had been so amused at what was going forward that the restrained but increasing tension of the bride had escaped her notice. Now, as she went to her husband, she hoped she had not delayed so long that Elizabeth's reserve would break into hysteria before she could get the guests out of the room.

  Fastening on little things, anything, to make herself deaf to the talk and keep her mind from what was coming, Elizabeth watched the way Leah walked, watched how quickly Radnor, drunk, aroused, and laughing, responded to her touch, watched her say something to him that made him stare as if surprised and then smile slowly and sensuously. After that, however, he went quickly up to Hereford, kissed him, and ruffled his hair. Elizabeth drew a breath that was nearly a sob. It was the beginning of the end; they would go now.

  Hereford watched the last woman pass through the doorway and close the door with a sense of relief. He had been enjoying himself, but he was glad it was over now. He scratched his buttock and then stretched, reaching as far back as he could first and then pulling his shoulders forward to ease their tension. Rubbing the back of his neck, he turned toward Elizabeth and smiled, about to make easy talk on the success of his first night's entertainment. His wife, however, was sitting tensely erect clutching the bedclothes to her breast, her eyes so wide that the whites showed all around the iris. His smile faded; dizzy with drink, he was faintly annoyed by her rigid attitude.

  "EIizabeth—"

  "Do not touch me. Do not come near me."

  "Do not be a fool!" He strode over to the bed, adding sharply, "Do you think I am going to stand here naked all night?" Then the realization of how very frightened she was came to him through the haze in his mind. "For one thing, I am cold," he said lightly, trying to calm her. "Move over and give me the warm part of the bed—be a good wife—pander to your selfish husband."

  She did not look at him or move; her eyes did not blink or flicker. It was as if she were turned to stone by terror. Her hair was loose around her and he lifted a handful of the silken strands. Looking down he could see the division of her breasts, greenish in the shadow created by the sheets she clutched. He was not accustomed to continence, and, all in all, she was the most desirable woman he had ever seen. He was swept by the desire to seize her and force her to his will because the drink weakened his control over himself, but for Roger there was no pleasure in the rape of an unwilling woman. His full satisfaction could only be gained by winning willingness, not by breaking resistance. He would try, but one way or another he could not wait much longer. He turned her face toward him.

  "Elizabeth, you have known me all your life. Look at me. I am Roger, the same Roger you have teased and tormented
for years, and I love you. How can you fear me?" Her chin trembled. "Love, do not weep. Will you be less afraid in the dark?"

  She did not reply, but all intimacies were easier in the dark so he doused the candles, except for the distant nightlight, and made his way back to the bed mostly by the glare of the fire. He got in beside her but did not pull the bed curtains; the cheerful flames were a reassuring sight, and they provided little light. Gently but inexorably he forced her down onto the pillows. Her skin was so warm to his touch that he knew his hands were cold and his heart was pounding thickly; he too was afraid, although of different things. It was so important to him that she be content. He had never really cared much before. Of course, he had wished the various women who had been his bed companions to find the association pleasant, but he had not much cared whether they found heaven or a pleasant garden … they were only women. This was Elizabeth; for her it had to be heaven.

  "Roger—"

  "Yes, it is Roger," he replied to the trembling question almost in a whisper, slowly, making his voice relaxed and soothing.

  "Help me," she cried.

  Hereford's stomach turned. For a split second he really thought of going away and leaving her alone, but he knew that was insane. Sooner or later she must truly become his wife and the sooner the better for them both. The longer he delayed the more frightened she would be and the less able he would be to command himself.

  "I will, my dearest," he said finally in the same low tone. "Can you tell me of what you are afraid?" Then she made her first voluntary movement. With a violent shudder she turned into his arms. "I wish, Elizabeth, that I could tell you I would not hurt you, but that would be a lie. I must hurt you—are you afraid of that?"

  "No—yes—only a little."

  He found her lips then but did not kiss her full upon them. Often it was better to touch only the corners of a woman's mouth. Her face was wet with tears although she was not sobbing and the salt taste made Hereford's breath catch. He stroked her arm very gently a few times and then, still stroking the arm with the palm of his hand, extended the fingers so that they just brushed her breast.