The instant he spoke, Guillelm thought, What am I doing? Only a few hours earlier he had been standing before his father’s tomb in the tiny local church of Olverton where Lord Robert had been buried, his head full of memories and grief. Only yesterday, when he disembarked from his ship at Bristol, had he learned that his father was dead. With that dreadful news and Hardspen castle under threat he had no time for idle, pleasant gallantries, even with a serving maid as pretty as this one.
And yet this dainty, dark-haired serving maid had given him such a smile of welcome, and of sympathy, that he had been comforted. She had not mocked him or flinched, she had given him instead a look of recognition, as if she knew him. She was familiar to him, he felt; as familiar in some ways as the breath in his body, but his mind was moving slowly tonight, trying to take in the loss of his father and his own sudden coming into his inheritance. He had responsibilities to face; the fate of many lives had been placed by God into his hands, and he must be equal to it, not distracted by this girl who reminded him —of what? Something he had put aside long ago, with pain and regret, as being out of his reach.
But what was the use of these thoughts? he reflected, trying to fight off a well-worn, familiar despair. Women feared him— his elder sister Juliana had been proved right about that. What had Heloise of Jerusalem said to him when she had dismissed his suit? ‘You are too big and brutal, my lord Guillelm,’ she had drawled, her hazel eyes widening as she revelled in his frozen expression of shame and distaste. ‘They call you dragon on the field of battle —you would burn a woman to ashes in your marriage bed.’ He had stumbled out of Heloise’s hot airless chamber, the sight of her opulent, silk-draped body, artfully arranged blonde curls and beautiful mocking face burning like a brand into his memory, her scornful voice singing his ears.
‘My Lord! Only kiss the creature and let us all return to our ale!’
Thierry again, damn the man to hellfire! Guillelm thought, scowling at the interruption and his men’s laughter, swiftly stifled as they registered his anger.
‘My Lord!’ the small, skinny seneschal was starting to say something but he was cut off by the maid herself, who observed in a low, swift voice, ‘Do not be concerned. All is well, Sericus.’
To Guillelm there seemed to be a challenge in her words. He took a step closer, amused when she stood her ground. Again, a strange sense of recognition shot through him, an instinct that he knew her very well.
Or was it merely that he found her pleasing? the cynic in Guillelm asked himself. Even when she had been standing in the shadowy stairwell, sequestered like a nun by that drab gown and veil, her beauty had shone through, brighter than any torch. She was more than a head shorter than him, small and fine-boned, so that he felt clumsy beside her, and yet she moved and carried herself as boldly as a warrior, as though she had no fear of him.
As she stood before him now, he could smell the perfume of her hair, the scent of rosemary filling his nostrils as he quelled a sudden, powerful desire to tug off her veil. From the few stray tendrils escaping the edges of that plain cloth to frame her flawless, heart-shaped face, Guillelm knew that her hair was black: very black and fine and straight. He guessed it would be long, reaching as far as her slender waist: fine shimmering tresses that a man could lay his head on for comfort, love.
‘My Lord?’ she inquired softly as he took her hand in his. It was a work-roughened hand, resting in his as lightly as thistledown. This close, he could see the dark shadows under her eyes, the taut, bleached look of her cheeks and was pierced by pity for her weariness. This little maid had clearly done much in this castle but where was her mistress, the new lady of Hardspen? he thought, caught in that instant between anger at the unseen chatelaine and protectiveness for her maid. He had heard rumours tonight that had set his teeth on edge: that his father had married again, that there was a widow in this keep, but he had seen no sign of such a woman.
‘Mother of God, why are you alone with this?’ he murmured, running a thumb gently down the side of her cheek. He felt her palm, still trapped in his right hand, tremble against his. The heat of her fingers and the warm silk of her skin stirred him afresh, making him forget all else.
Telling himself he was only doing this because his men would otherwise consider him soft, he lowered his head and kissed her full on the lips.
Only a few moments had passed since Guillelm had saved her from the odious Thierry and claimed his reward of a kiss. In the final instant, Alyson feared to allow him anything more than the most chaste of embraces, afraid of revealing too much of her own feelings, but now his mouth came down on hers and she was lost. As his lips brushed hers, she felt a shock of feeling tingle down her body in an astonishing wave of heat. She felt his arms clamp around her slender middle, gathering her closer, lifting her to him.
The great hall and the men gathered in it fell away to her, there was only Guillelm and the strong yet tender embrace of his mouth. She knew that she would probably regret it, but it was a wish come true. Sighing, Alyson swayed against him, closing her eyes as the voluptuousness of his kiss overcame all thought of her duty.
Guillelm, no more aware of the raucous cat calls of his men than Alyson was, made himself break from their embrace. After Heloise he had a horror of forcing himself on any girl—he had not had a woman for some time—but now this slender black-haired maid was storming his defences. Her lips were so generous and sweet, and the way her hands brushed shyly against his chest and shoulder as if she learning him was so fearless that he did not want to let her go. He caught her back and swung her into his arms, conscious of a terrifying instinct to bear this woman away somewhere private and alone and have his way with her. He reached the staircase without knowing it, the questions and comments from the men and soldiers in the hall bouncing off him like rainwater.
She laid her head in the crook of his arm, her eyes still closed, as if this was a dream for her. ‘Dragon,’ she whispered. ‘My golden dragon.’
And then he knew her. By her nickname for him and her total fearlessness, and, when she opened her eyes, almost as if she had sensed his recognition, by her solemn dark blue eyes. Eyes he had seen fixed on a patch of herbs in her father’s kitchen garden, or on the stained glass windows in church, or on his own hands and arms as she soothed his various cuts and bruises from the practice field with her potions. He remembered her as a studious child, quiet and serious, passionate about healing and wishing to tend all living things, yet with a smile brighter than gold. He remembered a day in the forest, when she had saved his life.
She was here with him again, in Hardspen and in that moment of realization, Guillelm forgot all other grief and concern in a burst of possessive pride and joy.
He kissed her again—he could not help himself. She was the best part of his past and to see her now, safe and adult and even more lovely made him want to laugh out loud in mingled astonishment and delight.
‘Alyson,’ he said, remembering as he named her how he had loved to make her laugh. ‘How excellent is this! Alyson!’
She had been so still when concentrating on her herbs and healing and yet so quick and nimble when they had run off together, racing each other to the meadows and woods. As a tall gangling lad of nineteen he had hoped to make his fortune, earn renown throughout Christendom and then return to her father’s manor at Olverton Minor to marry her. But in the end that had been a hopeless quest. Alyson’s father, Sir Henry, had seen to that.
The memory of his meeting with Sir Henry blazed through Guillelm. Even after seven and a half years it was a bitter thing that left him sickened inside. All his years in Holy Land he had fought to put the memory behind him. He had thought he had succeeded, until tonight.
‘I will never give my daughter to you, Guillelm de La Rochelle,’ Sir Henry had told him. ‘She is a thoughtful, clever girl who, before she knew you, spoke of a sincere desire to enter the church as a nun. Until she knew you, Guillelm, Alyson’s steadfast goal was to be a second Hildegard of Bermersheim: a sc
holar and sacred mystic, a healer. You have almost driven that noble aim from her head, with your endless talk of quests and chivalry. My reeve tells me that you are much in her company, and often without the presence of her nurse. Alyson is on the brink of womanhood. These outings between you must stop—yes, I know they have been so far innocent but I have my child’s reputation to consider, and my own.
‘Not only that, but I have seen you on the practice field. You are entirely too rash and wild. You will leave my sweet Alyson a widow within six months and your reckless head rotting on a pike. You cannot have her, and must never ask again.’
Soon after that painful and disastrous encounter, Guillelm had announced his intention to go with Raymond of Poitiers to Outremer.
‘Alyson of Olverton.’ Guillelm now gave the grown-up Alyson her title, at once entranced and saddened that she should be here. She was glad to see him, but how long would that last? How long would her innocent fearlessness of him last? He could not bear to think of her turning from him with fear in those dark blue eyes, the same blank-eyed fear he had seen in women’s faces while on campaign in Outremer.
Slowly, with regret and no lessening of his own desire for her, he left the small landing and, crouching slightly to avoid the low roof-space, he carried her up the narrow spiral staircase to the chapel, where a small candle was burning. He set her down carefully on the stone floor and, so that his fingers would not linger too long on her, or give in to the violent temptation to touch her again, he put his hands behind his back.
‘Alyson.’ He swallowed the urgent questions that he wanted to ask—Was she well, had she ever thought of him while he had been away in Outremer, was she still unmarried?—and asked just two things, both equally pressing.
‘Alyson, how is it that you are here? And why is there an army pitched outside this castle?’
Chapter 2
Alyson saw the delight in Guillelm’s eyes fade and almost cried aloud at its passing. When he had recognized her on the stairs, he gave her then such a look—of glory, she thought, recalling how his whole face, rather grave in repose, had lightened and how his smile had driven all signs of grief from him. She had been carried off by him, amazed by his easy strength, pressed tight against his chest and torso, so close that she could feel his tough leather tunic under his woollen cloak. He smelled of rain, damp wool and his own sharp scent, and she had been torn between a desire to touch him and a wish to rest her aching head on him and sleep within the broad circle of his arms.
But that was not to be. Guillelm, grim-faced again and looming above her with his fists thrust behind his back, had asked questions that needed prompt and ready answers, no matter how painful it would be for her to explain, especially about her near-betrothal to Lord Robert. Putting that hard and tangled matter aside for the moment, she spoke first of the hostile forces ranged against Hardspen.
‘The soldiers and mercenaries camped outside the gate appeared seven days ago, as soon as it became known that your father had died,’ she said, staring down at the chapel floor so that she did not have to watch the growing disappointment and likely horror in Guillelm’s face when she told him what she had done to delay an attack from these troops. ‘They are the liege men of Sir Walter of Enford and the Flemish mercenary Étienne the Bold, who has joined Sir Walter on this… enterprise,’ she finished bitterly.
‘I see little evidence of boldness in preparing to lay siege to the holding of a lord who has just died,’ Guillelm remarked in clear distaste, adding, ‘I could not see their standards in the rain and darkness tonight, although I think I know something of this Walter of Enford. A local man, is he not? I recall a fat and swarthy round-faced creature who could not manage his sword or his horses.’
‘Yes, that is Walter. He is a neighbour to your estate,’ Alyson confirmed, with a small smile at Guillelm’s accurate description, ‘and lately grown very ambitious. He is still not war-like, but the man he has hired, Étienne—’ A gust of wind blowing through the keep made the chapel candles flicker and Alyson shivered. ‘He has raided farms and manor houses hereabouts. There are many homeless peasants sheltering in the castle bailey because of the burning and pillaging of the Fleming and his troops.’
‘Then he must be stopped,’ Guillelm said at once, ‘And I will stop him.’ Clearly marking her distress, he took her hand in his again, looking startled at his own action but saying smoothly enough, ‘But this is not a fit subject for a house of God. Shall we move on?’
‘Where do you wish to go?’ Alyson asked, blushing as she wondered if she should have called Guillelm ‘Lord’, even though he now knew she was no serving maid.
If Guillelm noticed any lack of courtesy he said nothing of it. ’I have already spoken to the watchmen and the men manning the battlements tonight. I have other duties to fulfil, other people I must see before this night has ended—’ His voice tightened and he broke off. ‘Where are the womenfolk of this castle? Aside from yourself, of course. Are they all in the kitchen?’
Alyson looked up at him and smiled. ‘At this hour I should think they and the children will all be asleep in the store room downstairs—it is warm and dry there, and is one of the safest places in this keep. As you know,’ she added hastily.
He gave her fingers a gentle, reassuring squeeze. ‘Then lead me on very quietly past the store room. I have no wish to alarm them or disturb their rest. I am still hungry, so a visit to the kitchen will do very well.’
He always had been famished, Alyson thought fondly, before her wits caught up with the rest of what he was saying. ‘There has been no real cooking for the last few days,’ she said hastily. ‘All food has been moved within the keep —there will be nothing for you to eat.’
‘But we can talk freely there and I know I will find something in the cooks’ house.’ Guillelm grinned, driving two attractive and unlikely dimples into his tanned, lean face. ‘I always did in the past.’
Apprehensive about their talking freely, Alyson went ahead of him down the stairs, across the back of the great hall to the huge oak door that led out of the keep into the bailey.
Before she could draw the bolt, Guillelm did it. ‘I can manage for myself.’ Pulling his cloak from his shoulders, he swept it around her, and said gruffly, ‘It is still raining.’
‘Thank you.’ Ridiculously pleased at wearing something of his, even though it trailed past her feet, Alyson hurried down the outer staircase.
As they passed the rough tents huddling close to the keep and sheltering bailey walls, their feet slopping in the mud and puddles, she heard Guillelm mutter another string of oaths in the language of Outremer.
‘I am sorry for this,’ she began in a low, shamed voice that was almost lost in the sweeping, chilly drizzle.
‘You have nothing to be sorry for,’ Guillelm answered, stepping over a soggy, broken sack of beans spilled across their path. ‘Though in truth,’ he added, looking round the dark, empty and eerily quiet bailey, where there were no fires, nor indeed any signs of life within the tents, ‘I thought that I had left such sights as these behind me in the Holy Land. Is this the silence of hunger?’
‘Of sickness and weariness. Some brought the sickness with them, or, I am sorry to say, caught it here,’ Alyson answered, relieved that he understood. Peering into the rain, she pointed past a cart, left stranded in the bailey with a shattered axle. ‘The kitchen is over there, the low timber building.’
‘That is new since I was here last,‘ Guillelm remarked, offering his hand to Alyson to steady her as she deftly skirted a wide puddle of water. ‘How long have these poor folk been here?’ he asked, as Alyson tried to ignore the disturbing prickle of delight the touch of his fingers gave her, like a spark to kindling.
‘A few for over a month.’ Her people mostly, who had come with her when Lord Robert had bluntly told Alyson that she was no longer safe in her father’s manor at Olverton Minor and that her stubborn refusal to leave and join him at Hardspen was putting others at risk. ‘Most arrived in th
e last ten days.’
‘After my father died, the Fleming increased his raiding on those who were left with no protection,’ Guillelm said grimly.
‘Yes.’ She heard the sudden squeal of a rat and gathered the folds of Guillelm‘s cloak closer to herself, touching the eating knife tucked through her belt. In the last few days the rats had grown more daring but so far, through shouts and stamping, and even in one case, in the stables, brandishing her knife, she had kept them at bay.
Guillelm reached the kitchen several paces ahead of her and he shouldered open the door, which had swollen with the water. There was no one inside—the young kitchen lads and scullions who usually curled up snug in the ashes were in the storeroom by Alyson’s express order. If an assault came on the castle, the kitchen would be particularly vulnerable to fire and any left inside easily trapped and burned alive.
While she busied herself finding a horn lantern and lighting it she was conscious of Guillelm close behind her, prowling around the tables, shelves, cooking pots, spits and cauldrons. Dreading but expecting more questions, she was still unprepared for what he did say.
‘Sir Henry has gone, too, has he not? That is why you are here. My father would not have left you out in an undefended manor, no more than I would have done. What happened?’ His voice was very gentle. ‘When did he die?’
‘Just after Easter.’ It was easier to admit this without looking at Guillelm. ‘Not from this sickness and fever that came at the beginning of summer. He was felled from his horse in a hunting accident and never woke from it.’
Abruptly she was back with her father in his small bedchamber behind the comfortable great hall of their manor house, mopping his clammy face, washing his torn hands, speaking soothingly to him while her heart pounded in terror and hopelessness. Memories of that brought more memories—the last few hours of her intended betrothed, Lord Robert, who in his fever had talked to her as if she was his first wife, Guillelm’s mother. Guillelm must never know, she thought, while she knew that this strange, precious time together, in quiet before the dawning of a new day and a likely attack from Étienne the Bold, would soon be at an end. You must tell him you were about to be betrothed to his father, her conscience goaded, while her heart clamoured, Not yet.
Love and Chivalry: Four Medieval Historical Romances Page 2
