A Silver Mirror

by Roberta Gellis

  “I knew your niece when she was fostered by my aunt, Queen Marguerite,” Alphonse said with outward calm. “I was much surprised to learn that she had not remarried.”

  But Hugh did not answer. His eyes were on the little wine remaining in his cup and there was something in his face so private that Alphonse looked away.

  “I should imagine Lady Barbe would be much sought after,” he said to John. “Years ago, when Norfolk brought her to my aunt, he put some business into my hands, and I thought at the time that he was fond of his daughter. That alone should make her a marriage prize, and though she is not a great heiress, her manor at Cruas is not poor.”

  John laughed and then said softly, “She was sought after, but she refused all offers, and Norfolk would not force her to marry. You might call him doting rather than fond, but he has had so evil an experience of marriage I could hardly blame him. And poor Barby was caught in the middle. Norfolk had never agreed with his wife, Isabella, but she still blamed Barby’s mother for being the instigator of the earl’s attempt to free himself from his marriage to her, and she hated Barby for that. And to speak the truth, I do not think it was all sweetness and light between Norfolk and Barby’s mother, either. She must have pressed him hard before he became willing to try to set aside Isabella, who is the sister of the King of Scotland. Then Barby’s mother died in childbirth. All in all, one can see why Barby might be reluctant to marry.”

  “One can,” Alphonse agreed dryly.

  “Still,” John said philosophically, “my mother was not happy in her first marriage, but she tried again and is more than content with Marlowe. Of course, we all knew William for many, many years before he married my mother. And although I often could have murdered King Henry, I must say that Barby had an example of a very happy marriage when she served Queen Eleanor. Whatever his faults as a king, Henry is a model husband, and Eleanor loves him dearly. Anyway, Norfolk left the matter of marriage to Barby and she refused every man, no matter whether he wooed or did not woo her. She railed against how women are made chattels and said she did not wish to be ruled by a man simply because he was bigger and stronger than she.”

  John started to say something else, but broke it off when Hugh rose and bade Alphonse good night. Alphonse replied, raising a hand in farewell to John, who followed his master to help him to bed.

  The tale of Norfolk’s unhappy marriage gave Alphonse a twinge of guilt but did not change his decision. He would hold Barbe to the promise she had made, and then he would teach her that marriage could be a happy state. He refilled his cup and emptied it twice more before he rose from the bench to seek his own cot while he planned what to do. Decision made, he told Chacier to wake him at first light as he was undressed.

  Although he woke several times during the night with a pounding heart, having dreamed each time that he was too late for something, Alphonse thought he was perfectly calm the next morning when he sent his message up with Clotilde. For a few minutes after she had gone to her mistress he was tense, half expecting her to reappear with a refusal from Barbara, but as the time stretched, he became more confident and moved from the middle of the hall to lean on the wall beside the stairs. From there he would see Barbe before she saw him and could speak before she did.

  Still, if the words he had planned to say had not been already fixed in his mind when Barbara appeared, he would have been struck mute. Each time he saw her, he was overwhelmed anew by an intense pleasure, which surprised him. The first time he had assumed the reaction to be a result of surprise. When he had spoken to her near the stable, he had told himself the pleasure was owing to finding her fascinating even when he was not surprised. Now he acknowledged that he had felt the same pleasure at seeing her for years before she left France and that the delight she gave him had little to do with her physical appearance. Moreover, he suspected it would last all his life. In the moment he had hesitated she stood poised on the lowest step looking for him. He saw her stiffen with doubt when her eye did not find him, and he stepped forward and put his hand on her arm before her quick temper could rise.

  “No, do not speak,” he said. “What we say to each other now must be in a place where there can be no jesting and no lies.”

  She turned her head. He saw that she was unnaturally pale and had to bite his tongue to keep from promising he would not hold her to a promise she clearly regretted. That would be stupid, he told himself as he led her toward the church. She would be far better off married to him than unmarried. If he could never reconcile her to being a wife, he would give her her freedom. Then she need never fear that some great necessity could force her into a worse marriage.

  Barbara balked slightly at the dark entryway to the church, but Alphonse went forward and she, too, stepped out of the silvery light of a gray early morning into the deeper gray inside the church. He seemed to feel her presence. Although he did not turn his head to look at her, he took her hand as she entered a step behind him and led her out of the center aisle to the right. Near the wall and opposite one of the wide pillars that supported the roof and partially hid them from others in the church, he stopped and turned to face her.

  “I am very sorry to hold you to a promise you made in jest,” he said, “but I love you very much, Barbe, and I think I can reconcile you to being my wife.”

  Barbara peered at his face. “Please say that again,” she whispered. It was not that the light was so poor that she could not see. She simply could not believe her ears and wanted to make sure his lips were moving in the right pattern to form the words she had heard.

  Alphonse’s square chin came forward and his lips thinned. “Very well, but this time I will speak the same truth without courtesy. I intend to hold you to your promise to marry me, and I am not at all sorry about it. I am delighted that you have fallen into a trap of your own digging. No doubt my offer seemed comical to you, who have been sought by others far more wealthy and powerful. No doubt also you were more cautious in your answer to those you feared to scorn, but I want you too much not to close my hand on you when you have fallen into it.”

  “You want me?” Barbara repeated, fastening on the words most important to her. “No, you do not—”

  “Yes I do!”

  His voice echoed in the almost silent building, the priests not yet having entered to begin the mass, and they both started and looked around. However, there were only a few people, well forward in the church, who did not seek the source of the remark. All kinds of business were carried on in a church, especially any that might require oath-taking, and raised voices were not unusual.

  “Why would I take you into a church and insist that you marry me if I did not want you?” he went on in a tense but lowered voice.

  “Because you have great pride and I shamed you by accusing you of wanting to make me your whore.”

  Alphonse stared, wondering if he would spend all the rest of his life being enthralled one moment and exasperated the next. “Idiot!” he exclaimed. “Would I make such a suggestion to you if I did not want you? Do you think I am so ill able to find a willing woman that I urge to my bed even those I find detestable?”

  Barbara giggled. She felt divided into two parts, one on the surface, aware of how ridiculous the conversation was, and another beneath, in which an enormous joy was growing. But Alphonse had stiffened with indignation at her wordless reply.

  “And I wish you would not call a spade a shovel with such frankness,” he added. “There are more polite ways of referring to an irregular arrangement between lovers. To call every woman who forms a bond outside of marriage a whore does not become you, speaks ill of your charity, and makes me think poorly of the English court for not having cured you of such crudities of language.”

  Barbara giggled again. For a moment she was back in a time when her hurt over Alphonse’s rejection had become so much a part of her that she was no more aware of it as a burden than of the weight of her hair. Over the years she had been married to the absent Thouzan le Thor, Alphonse had bec
ome a lively friend and a wise, if irascible, teacher. So when she spoke, the words were a blend of the joyful heart and the amused mind.

  “And am I to spend my life with a man to whom I cannot speak the truth, as I see it, in plain language? Did you not just call me an idiot? I did not take offense.”

  “But to say I intended to make you a—” Alphonse began then choked back the rest of his remark. Suddenly he chuckled. “You are quite right,” he said. “A wife must be able to speak as she likes to her husband in private, so to me you may use the word ‘whoring’ if you think of courtly love that way, but not in the court, and not in Louis’s hearing or I will murder you. Now that is done with, and do not try to start a new subject again. Do you promise, in this place, to marry me?”

  “Alphonse—”

  “You have already given your word. Will you be a coward and go back on it?”

  She was silent for a long moment, then shook her head. “I do not wish to go back on my word. I only—” She intended to explain that the answer she had given him in the stable yard had come from her heart, that the laughter had been an accident, but he gave her no chance.

  “And do you swear, before God, in His own house, that you will appeal to King Louis and to your father to accept me as your husband?”

  “Yes,” she said, and then, realizing that the joy inside her had become so great that she would die if she first gave it free rein and then discovered it to be false, she added, “but—”

  “No ‘buts.’ You promise you will speak to the king and to your father as if our wedding were the dearest wish of your heart?”

  “Not until you answer one question,” Barbara insisted. And before Alphonse could object she asked, “Why did you first offer your ‘protection’ instead of asking me to marry you if you wished to marry me?”

  The look of angry refusal—of what Barbara could not guess—was replaced on Alphonse’s face by an expression of astonishment, which melted into a smile. “I thought you were married already. I tried four or five times to discover the name of your husband, but you seemed not to wish to speak of him. Well, how was I to suspect that your father had not arranged a marriage for you?”

  There was a vague noise at the door of the church. They both glanced toward the central aisle and saw that the priests and their acolytes were entering.

  Alphonse drew Barbara a little closer, speaking softly and quickly but determined to finish what he wanted to say. “And Sir Hugh gave me no time to ask any questions after you and John left to see Queen Eleanor. He said, and I knew it was true, that she would be terribly hurt if I did not appear. So I changed my clothes for an excuse to be late and followed. Then when I found you near the stable and you spoke of your reason for remaining in France, I thought your husband was trying to push you into accepting the Montfort boy to curry favor with Leicester. But I told you the truth. You could have had my protection without coming to my bed. Nonetheless, you agreed to be my wife and I will keep you to your promise. I love you, Barbe.”

  The chanting had begun by then, without the usual hum of conversation and movement to blur the sound. The quiet was a warning that King Louis was in the church. Neither Barbara nor Alphonse found anything peculiar in a greater reluctance to offend the devout king with inattention to the mass than to offend God. The king was closer, and the result of his anger would be more direct. Together, they moved quietly toward the center aisle of the church and some way forward. As they stopped, they glanced at each other, recognizing that their thoughts were so much in tune that they had acted in concert without a word or sign needed.

  Alphonse was filled with an enormous sense of relief. If Barbe wished to be seen with him at mass, it was very likely that she intended in good faith to ask King Louis to permit her to marry him. Had she hoped that the king would provide a way for her to escape her promise, she would have stayed near the wall where Louis would have been unlikely to notice her. After that, full of gratitude, Alphonse gave his attention to the service, sincerely praying for forgiveness for the many times he had not done so.

  The wisdom of showing themselves to King Louis also passed through Barbara’s mind, but her response to the mass was otherwise the result of endless repetitions. Her mind was fully engaged with the secular miracle she had experienced. She went over and over every word Alphonse had said, savoring her joy.

  He had said he loved her, he had said he wanted her. At first it was enough to cherish the idea and to glance at him as he knelt and rose with her, catching fragmentary views of his black curls, the stubble of dark beard on cheeks and jaw, the strong nose and bold cheekbones, his gleaming dark eyes. But he did not look at her. Barbara was not hurt. It was clear that he was truly attending to the mass and she was not such a fool as to be jealous of his love of God. But the withdrawal that did not hurt reminded her that one might come—despite his present declaration of love and need—that would hurt.

  How did one hold a man? She had never tried, never had any reason to want to hold one. She reviewed in her mind the men she knew to be faithful to their wives, but none of them seemed ever to have been a hunter of women like Alphonse. And then the word “hunter” provided a clue. In hunting a doe, the pleasure was in the chase. The kill itself was nothing, and the dead thing that remained was only meat for the table. It was the chase that was thrilling. So if Alphonse went from woman to woman, was it not because having “killed” his prey he lost interest in the dead meat?

  Yet a wife, because she was bound to her husband’s will and bed, was, by definition, dead meat. Only, he had believed she was laughing at him when she said she had loved him for eleven long years. From everything he had said, he believed he was forcing her into marriage—or, if not forcing, at least urging an only partly willing woman to accept him. Then let him believe it. There was no need to tell him the truth. Let him hunt her love.

  Barbara choked back laughter. She would not hurt him by seeming resentful, but she could admit she was tired of refusing suitors, tired of being torn apart between her father and her uncle, and that, after consideration, she had decided that being bound to an old, familiar friend was the least of the evils that might attend marriage. Oh, what fun she would have, leading him a wild dance—and what pleasure she would give him, yielding a smile here, a kiss there. He would feel he was winning a rare prize.

  Barbara was so busy planning into the future that she was still kneeling, seemingly absorbed in prayer, when King Louis, coming back up the aisle and nodding right and left to bowing courtiers suddenly stopped in front of Alphonse.

  “Ah, Sieur Alphonse,” he said. “Marguerite told me you had asked to speak to me, but I had forgotten in the press of business.”

  His voice startled Barbara out of her reverie. She jumped up only to sink down again into a deep curtsy when she saw who was speaking. The movement attracted Louis’s eye, and he stared for a moment, then said, “Lady Barbe? Is it you?”

  “Yes, sire.” Barbara smiled and dipped again. “How kind of you to remember me after all these years.”

  “I see you have not taken the veil after all,” he said with mild disapproval.

  “No, sire,” Barbara replied, looking down at her toes. “I knew it was best, but I could not subdue my heart to the cloister. There was a different desire buried too deep in it.” She looked at Alphonse.

  Louis sighed. “It is true that God takes pleasure only in willing sacrifices.” Then, although Barbara had bowed her head in acceptance of the gentle rebuke, he seemed to remember how her eyes had gone to Alphonse and also looked at him. “Does your business with me concern Lady Barbe?” he asked, frowning but sounding relieved.

  “Yes, sire, but—but not altogether.”

  “If you have an appeal to make because of the trouble in England, I must tell you that I can give you no answer. I cannot undertake to listen to any private pleas until King Henry’s affairs are settled.”

  “I understand that, my lord, but if you could find a few moments for Lady Barbara to speak to y
ou on a personal matter, we would be most grateful.”

  The king looked from one to the other and Barbara said, “You are my overlord for the manor of Cruas, sire.”

  Louis nodded. “If it is to do with Cruas, I will see you at the evening meal.”

  Barbara curtsied, Alphonse bowed, and the king passed on and out of the church.

  “That was clever, bringing in Cruas,” Alphonse said, urging Barbara back into the side aisle, “and I am glad too that you made plain you no longer wished to become a nun.”

  “Yes, well, I was thinking how I could explain why I had not married all these years,” Barbara said coolly. “If I do not find a better reason before this evening, I will tell him I thought I would take the veil because you refused me and I did not wish to marry any other man.” She shook her head and smiled as Alphonse seized her hand. “But do not allow the notion to take too strong a hold on you. It is not true.”

  Alphonse frowned. “It is not safe to lie to King Louis, Barbe. He is cleverer than you think.”

  She shrugged. “Then give me a better reason to offer him for my sudden request for permission to marry you. He cannot read inside my heart, and appearances will support what I say. I did not marry in all the years after Thouzan le Thor died, and I did accept you when you asked me.” A smile of pure delight began to form, but Barbara managed to tighten her lips against it, which gave her mouth a peculiarly flat, hard look. “Even if I did not expect to be taken at my word.”

  “I will not release you.” Alphonse’s voice was firm, but his dark eyes were large and sad.