‘Ach! My legs have gone to sleep!’ Guillelm scowled, then laughed as Alyson said quickly, ’Stamp your feet and rub your calves, that will bring them back to life.’
‘What else do you suggest, physic?’ Rising, he lifted her with him, dangling her from his arms.
‘Food,’ Alyson answered determinedly. ’For you will have brought some victuals for our journey, I think. Now, are you going to set me down?’
Guillelm grinned and did so.
Out of his pannier came a meal that threatened to rival their betrothal feast. As the cold meats and bread, flagons of wine and nuts, cheeses and rare raisins were spread by Guillelm before Alyson—using his cloak as a table between the spreading roots of their oak tree (it was theirs now because they had kissed beneath it)—she found herself snapping her fingers in sheer delight and wonder.
‘Amazing!’ she cried. ’So much! You are a worker of wonders.’
‘Every dragon is,’ Guillelm replied, a little smug but glad his plans had met with her approval. He thought of the final gift he had for her, tucked into his shirt, but then decided it would be better after they had eaten. He drummed his fingers on the earth. ’The banquet is ready. Come.’
They sat with their backs resting against the oak tree, close enough so that Guillelm could feel Alyson’s long sleeve brush against his arm whenever she stirred: a delicate, tormenting pleasure. She sampled everything, praising especially the wine and the freshness of the soft cheese, and seemingly happy to have nuts cracked for her and to be fed raisins by him. She offered him a slice of pork off her knife, giggling as he pretended to gobble it, and was altogether easy with him.
Of course she is, nagged the devil of conscience and dread that whispered in his mind in a strange mingling of Heloise and Fulk, Alyson treats you as an older brother.
Brother and sister do not kiss as we have done, Guillelm told himself, but some of the sparkle of the day diminished for him and, turning their talk away from the spice markets of Outremer, he began to speak of more practical concerns, the digging of a new well at Hardspen.
‘That would be a good thing.’ Alyson went along with his abrupt change of subject without any pause. ’Last summer, my father gave the villagers of Olverton Minor a new well.’
‘Oh, yes, a village,’ Preoccupied with this new goal, Guillelm spoke dismissively. ’The castle well would need to supply hundreds, not merely a few cottars and passing tinkers.’
‘What do you mean?’ Alyson asked, sitting up straighter and hugging her knees.
‘The needs of Hardspen are not like those of your father’s holdings,’ Guillelm began reasonably. ‘A single unfortified manor and some modest lands —’
He was astonished when Alyson bridled.
’Are you saying that my family are little more than serfs? We may not be rich or powerful but we are loyal and we look after our own!’
‘That is your family motto, is it not? To look after our own?’ Guillelm said quickly, but Alyson would not be placated.
‘Answer me.’ She whirled to her feet, casting a half-finished daisy chain to one side. ‘What am I to you?’
Everything, Guillelm thought, but now behind them came the pounding of hooves and creak of carts and Fulk, bawling in a voice designed to carry even over the field of battle, ‘Well met, my Lord! We have finally caught up with you!’
Chapter 6
St Foy’s was a closed order, but the Prioress allowed Matilda and Alyson to meet in the small infirmary-garden. Guillelm and the other men were kept out of the convent and were kicking their heels somewhere beyond the high walls, but Guillelm had told Alyson not to hurry her visit.
‘Stay until after sunset and compline if you wish,’ he told her. ’I have our sleeping arrangements already in hand.’ Ignoring her blush, he went on, ‘A friend of mine has a manor no more than a mile from here. Your sister is welcome, too, if the Prioress allows it.’
‘Who is your friend?’ Alyson had asked, wondering if he had been at her betrothal feast, and if so, why he had not travelled back with her and Guillelm.
‘Thomas of Beresford. He fought with me in the Holy Land, losing a hand and a foot, and is much scarred besides. He does not like to travel, or to subject himself to the pity of strangers, but former comrades from Outremer are always welcome in his house.’ Guillelm must have guessed something of her disquiet, for he had grinned and added, ’Steady, there, Bright-eyes. Tom knows we are coming.’
‘The prioress will not allow me to undertake such a secular outing, especially in the company of men-at-arms,’ Matilda said.
‘But they are former crusaders,’ she protested.
Matilda smoothed away an imagined crease on her dark sleeve. ’You must be content with what we have here,’ she said. ’It is the will of God.’
‘Tilda —’ Alyson tried the childhood nickname, but her sister said quickly, ‘I am Sister Ursula. That is my true title and you must call me by no other. Nor should we indulge in any worldly gossip. Indeed, after today, it is my wish that we should not meet again, unless there is urgent need.’
The reminder of her religious name and purpose, the sober habit, which accentuated Matilda-Ursula’s natural pallor, throwing her handsome, somewhat sharp-featured face into even more desolate relief, and most of all that final, cruel instruction brought home to Alyson how distant her birth-sister had become after only a few months separation. Her kindness and slow smile were gone—or did she share these only with her sisters in Christ? Whatever the truth, this sudden blow was like a second bereavement: first she had lost her father and now this.
‘Are you happy here?’ she stammered, at a loss for conversation.
Sister Ursula inclined her head. ‘It is what I always wanted.’ She walked through a wattle arched gate into another part of the garden, calling over her shoulder, ‘Come, look at our vine walk. It provides us with welcome shade on warm days such as these.’
Alyson had little choice but to follow, passing the elderly convent infirmarer who was weeding the beds of leeks, celery and parsley. The scent of coriander was heavy in the still air and she was acutely conscious of her own footfalls on the beaten earth paths.
‘You could have been a part of this,’ her sister remarked as she drew near. ’You once wanted to be a great healer, a scholar. As I am.’ Sister Ursula held out her right hand, showing her thumb and forefinger, stained with the inks of the scriptorium. ’Why did you break your vow?’
‘What vow?’ Alyson did not understand the question.
‘You swore to join the nuns. Why did you break that promise?’
‘I never —’ Aware from the infirmarer’s puzzled glance that she had raised her voice, Alyson forced herself to speak more quietly. ’As a girl, yes, I wished to be part of convent life, but I made no formal vow.’
‘You were seduced by secular pleasures.’ Sister Ursula gave her gown a look of undisguised scorn. ’Pretty clothes!’
Just in time, Alyson stopped herself from saying that the gown was once ’Tilda’s: that would be a most unwelcome reminder. Instead she tried reason. ’It pleased our father for me to take another path in life.’
‘I agree our father was morally weak, as are all men, but do not blame him for your own fore-swearing.’
‘I do not,‘ sighed Alyson, staring at the patch of poppies in the physic garden and trying to remain as calm as if she had swallowed a draught of poppy juice. By her own choice she had made it possible for Sir Henry to allow Matilda to enter the convent in some style, but she did not say that. She knew there were other, darker and more urgent reasons why her elder sister had been so desperate to remain unmarried.
‘Our mother died in childbirth. Have you forgotten?’
Tears stood in Alyson’s eyes at the unjust accusation. She shook her head, but her sister was deep in the past, reliving those terrible three days.
‘She screamed so loud and she was pleading with God and all the saints for the pain to stop. Our father was out hunting, taking his
ease as do all men, and mother was shrieking in their chamber, with no one to help her but a few twittering old women.’
‘Please, ‘Tilda,’ Alyson begged, the memory that forever haunted the dark spaces of her mind rising up and striking her afresh.
She had been just four years old. To know those pitiful cries had been made by her mother, to see the pallid, sweating faces of the helpless nurses and midwives, to be shut out of her mother’s chamber had been truly terrifying. It must have been worse for Matilda, the older by five years and so more aware of what was happening. They had clung to each other, hiding out of sight under a trestle in a corner in the great hall while in the small, narrow room off from the hall their mother laboured and suffered. Alyson remembered Matilda weeping: she was weeping now, tears coursing down her thin, sallow cheeks.
‘It is a judgment of God upon women. The only way to escape it is to avoid the contaminating sin of marriage and to take the veil, as I have. As you should have done!’
‘Sister —’ Alyson tried to enfold the slim, sobbing figure in her arms, but although they were a height and similar in build, if not in looks, her sister tore herself away with the strength of desperation.
‘Do not touch me! You did not see our mother when she was dead! I did and she was white with loss of blood! Her bed and chamber reeked of it! Even now, I can smell it.’ Distracted, Sister Ursula thrust past Alyson and fled back to the main church of the convent, ignoring Alyson’s calls for her to return.
Some time later, after she was forced to admit that her sister would not emerge to bid her farewell, Alyson took her leave of the Prioress of St Foy’s. Feeling battered and rather degraded by Tilda-Ursula’s accusations, she responded as briefly as possible to Guillelm’s greeting, aware of Fulk’s avid interest.
Guillelm took in her sunless demeanour in a single piercing glance and lifted her onto her horse without comment. He asked no questions on the journey to the manor of his friend, but spurred on his piebald so that his men had to gallop to keep with him. Alyson was grateful for his tact and glad of the hard ride: concentrating on that blotted out some of her grief.
Soon enough—too soon for Alyson—the party had reached the home of Thomas of Beresford. The former crusader was as Guillelm had described, with many ragged scars blazoned upon his forehead, the tip of his nose missing and a deep groove hacked from his jawbone, where the rest of his curly black beard would not grow. He stumbled down his manor steps to clap Guillelm on the shoulder and roar out a ‘Well-met!’ wielding a stump of a right arm and a peg-leg for his right foot, but Alyson sensed a warm and genuine welcome beneath the fierce, battle-hewn countenance. She liked him at once, even before Guillelm drew the man across to her horse, so that she would have the advantage of looking down on them, two hulking, seasoned warriors with skins the colour and texture of polished beech wood.
‘My betrothed, the lady Alyson of Olverton,’ Guillelm said formally, smiling at her while Alyson prayed that her face was not filthy with the dusty ride. She put out her hand to her lord’s stocky, barrel-chested companion.
‘Thank you for allowing us to stay at your house, Sir Thomas,’ she said.
Guillelm laughed at the look of mingled awe and shyness on his friend’s rough-hewn face. ‘Mother of God, Tom, make some answer or my excellent wife-to-be will think you dumb as well as ugly!’
‘No more brute than you, my lord,’ Alyson flashed at him, an answer which had several of nearby men-at-arms who were still riding round the manor yard, cooling their foam-speckled horses, glance at her with some astonishment. Fulk even scowled but not Thomas.
‘Excellent indeed!’ He clasped her hand in his left and stamped his peg leg in sheer good humour. ‘She is a match for you, Guido, and more! Welcome to my home, my lady!’
‘Thank you, Sir,’ Alyson responded, wondering afresh if Guillelm really did consider her his equal, given the difference of their lands and titles. But she had no time to consider the question before she was swept off her mount by Guillelm and set down beside Thomas with the growled warning from her lord dragon, ’There shall be a reckoning later for that pert answer, mistress, now go in with Tom and try to be good, eh?’ He sent her on her way with a teasing pat and turned to bellow instructions to his men.
Staying at the manor of Thomas of Beresford was a bitter-sweet occasion for Alyson. Still grieving after the painful encounter with her sister, she found the manor contained many echoes of her old home at Olverton. It was the same kind of house, with a great hall and solar, a small pantry and buttery, a staircase to a series of small upper rooms and the kitchens and bake-house across the yard. The furnishings were those that reminded her of her childhood: sturdy oak tables and trestles, earthenware crocks, a few faded wall-hangings. She missed the flowers that she had spread about Olverton hall, and the scents of her old still-room, but otherwise she could have wandered through this place blindfold and known where she was.
In one way however it was strange—very strange. There were no womenfolk, no maids, no lady of the manor, no laundresses or spinsters.
Her host remarked on it as he showed her to the narrow chamber that would be hers for the night. ’I had my steward put you in here, my lady; you being a lone lass among men. It was my mother’s sewing room.’
‘Thank you, Sir.’ Alyson glanced about, taking in the fresh thatch over the window shutters, the recently re-daubed wall by the bed, the stout bar to place across the door. There was even a candle for her and a small brazier, in case the summer night turned cold. ’You have made me most welcome.’
‘No, ’tis nothing for the woman who can look at me without flinching. That is a rare skill, and one none of the village maids have mastered.’ He scratched uneasily at his patchy beard, ducking his head under the low roof-beams. ’I would have women here, but they do not stay. The last washer-woman to work here told me straight out before she left that I had the evil eye and would sour milk.’
‘How cruel!’ Indignant on his behalf, Alyson crossed the floor in two steps to lay a hand on his arm. ’That is folly, utter superstition. You must never think it true.’
‘I am used to it. Do not let it trouble you.’ Thomas grinned, the scars on his forehead seeming to crack open afresh once more. ’But you are as fiery as the dragon himself! Tell me, are you the wee maid who gave him that title?’
Startled, Alyson dropped her cloak on the bed. ’I did not realize he had mentioned it.’
‘Once, only, my lady, in Outremer, when he was a lad of twenty and we were making camp before our first siege. The talk round the fire fell to those remaining at home. The other men spoke half in jest as they bragged of women bedded and left, but not Guillelm. “If I could have the girl of my liking, she would be a small, dark elf, a clever girl, with eyes the colour of a rising storm. She knew and recognized me before any other,” he told us then, and he tapped the dragon on his shield.’ Thomas of Beresford regarded her closely, his battered head on one side. ’I thought then Guillelm spoke of his ideal, but here you are, in the flesh.’
‘Please, Sir —’ Alyson knew she was blushing and fumbled with her riding gloves. She was stopped by her companion.
‘I am glad you are real, my lady.’
‘Please, call me Alyson.’
‘Then you must call me Tom, as Guillelm does.’
‘Sir—Tom,’ Alyson faltered.
‘Sir Tom will do very well.’ He peered at her in the dim light of the chamber and nodded. ’The good thing is that you are so different from the other one.’
Alyson felt the scrape of a sudden chill across the back of her neck. ’What other?’ she whispered.
‘Never mind, it is years past and best forgotten.’ Sir Tom squeezed her arm, his eyes very kind behind their mesh of angry scars. ’Now we should return to the hall, or Guillelm or his miserable shadow Fulk will have something to say.’
They walked downstairs, Alyson beset with a new fear. Who was the other one? What woman had Guillelm known in Outremer that she shou
ld cast so long a shadow? ‘Who was she?’ she demanded.
‘Her name was Heloise.’
‘What was she like?’
‘Proud and blonde—but I will say no more, so do not ask.’
‘Then I will ask Guillelm.’
‘No!’ Sir Tom stopped her on the stairs. ‘Swear to me now you will say nothing to him! He was so mauled by her, it would do him no good even to remember!’ His earnestness was painful. ‘Promise me, Alyson. This is no idle thing I ask. I beg you to believe me when I say it would do great harm.’
‘But surely for him to speak would bring relief?’
‘So women ever think. It is not the same for men. Guillelm needs to forget. Promise me, please.’ A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead, running past his ruined nose.
In the teeth of his distress Alyson felt the worst kind of gossip. ’I promise,’ she answered swiftly. ’I will not ask him direct. If he wishes to tell me…’ she spread her hands.
‘He will not!’ Sir Tom spoke in heart-felt accents that pained and alarmed her.
I must know more, she thought. Somehow I must find out. Or I will have no peace.
Although it would be painful, she knew whom she could ask and get some answers—perhaps not all true, but certainly full. Sir Tom’s miserable shadow and her own nemesis, Fulk.
Guillelm watched Alyson enter the great hall on Tom’s arm and cursed again his lack of foresight in providing her with no maids. He should have remembered the masculine nature of his friend’s household: as it was, Alyson was the only female present. Even the wolfhounds slinking round the great unlit fireplace were male.
He was jealous, Guillelm realized and was ashamed of the emotion, for Alyson gave him no cause. In this situation, a single woman in a mêlée of men-folk, Heloise would have revelled in the attention, would have ensured that all eyes were on her. Quiet and grave, concentrating on what was being told her, Alyson strolled about with Tom, utterly unaware of the stir she made.
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