But Guillelm was answering Fulk. Alyson scrambled to attend.
‘The lad who delivered me a message yesterday was shadowing us today. I spotted him almost at once, but for the sake of my lady‘s gentle heart I let him be. When I saw the rising dust on the practice ground and realized just how many men would have to be there to make it, I disliked it. So I nodded to the boy, jerked my head. He is a quick study: he was off for the jousting ground in a moment. I cannot guess what he told my men, what plea he made on my behalf, but it was enough. They are here.’
‘We have reached a stalemate, Lord Guillelm,’ Sir Michael remarked, grasping the new situation at once. ‘What do you suggest? An ordeal? Champion against champion?’
No! She would defend her own honour, Alyson thought. She pushed herself off the chair. ‘I will prove my innocence and sanctity,’ she declared, her voice ringing clear to the rafters. ‘I and my nurse Gytha and the woman Eva will go live with the nuns of the former convent of St Foy’s. We shall join them at the convent of Warren Applewick. We shall pray with them, and God and the Holy Virgin will protect us. We are no wrong-doers.’
‘Well said, my lady,’ came a new voice, as Sericus, with Thierry covering his scrawny body with a shield and men loyal to Guillelm streaming past them, now tottered into the great hall.
Guillelm said nothing.
Chapter 25
‘You have been wise.’ Sister Ursula paused in brushing her sister’s hair, an intimacy Alyson had been glad of, until she realized that her sibling was taking their moment alone together as another chance to drive home her argument.
‘As you say,’ Alyson demurred. Having walked all day, leaving Gytha and the wise-woman Eva to ride on Jezebel, she had reached the new convent of the former sisters of St Foy with her legs aching and her whole body weary. That had partly been her intention, to tire herself so she would sleep quickly and not lie awake fretting, but she was too exhausted to dispute with her sister. ‘Is my lord well?’ she asked.
‘He is dining with the Abbess and the Prioress in the guest house,’ replied Sister Ursula stiffly. ‘Why were you walking with him today, Alyson? You should have treated your journey here as a pilgrimage and eschewed his company.’
‘Peace!’ said Alyson, using Guillelm’s own oath. She had walked with Guillelm in the company of his men because not to do so would have caused her almost unendurable pain. As it was, to be separated from him at all and especially in these circumstances, with the threat of witchcraft hanging over her, was vile. She found that the space beneath her breast bone actually ached, that there seemed an absence in the very centre of her.
She glanced about the bare whitewashed cell that would be her sleeping place for this and for how many other lonely nights, seeing the tiny posy of flowers in the wall nook by her thin narrow bed without any real pleasure. She could not even take the trouble to discover what the flowers were.
Am I going to be like this forever? She thought, panicking at the idea. Everything seemed dulled, purposeless. She told herself it was shock, horror at Fulk’s treachery and the Templar leader’s malice, but she knew it was more simple and terrible.
Walking with Guillelm, she had hoped he might say the words she ached to hear from him. But though in parting by the convent gate he had clasped her so tight to him she could hear his racing heart, though he had whispered, ’Sweetheart, take care. This will not be for long—I swear I will challenge the Pope if I need to so that you are safely restored to me!’ he had not said, I love you.
‘When he leaves tomorrow, I will not see him for many days,’ she said, finding it some relief to speak of him, however obliquely. ’Do they serve roasted fruit at the Abbess’ table here? Guillelm enjoys those. And mulled wine.’ She had been planning many variations with spices and the rare sugar to try on him, especially as the winter months drew on. ’I trust they do not over-salt the fish, I know he dislikes that.’
‘I neither know nor care,’ was her sister’s bald response, accompanied by a fierce tug of her brush that tugged at the roots of Alyson’s hair. ’Such worldly concerns are not for me, and they should not be any part of your life.’
Sister Ursula banged the brush down on the edge of the bed. ’Yes, you flinch now!’ she spat, her green-grey eyes flashing dislike, her thin face one long grimace of reproach. ’Why did you not flinch away from him? You know the fate of the women in our family! I have heard him, braying his manhood in the very church of this holy place, asking the Abbess to pray for his unborn son!’
Not for me. Alyson was glad to be sitting on the edge of the bed. As her left foot went into an agonized cramp she almost cried aloud, although not with her body’s pain. I have not been rejected. Guillelm respects my decision and sees the logic of it. It is the safest way for Gytha and Eva. Being here saves them from the questions of Sir Michael and possibly even torture. Guillelm’s mother died in child-birth and he knows too well the history of the women in my family. Perhaps he is right to ask for prayers. What else can he do? It is women who bear children. I am not being abandoned. Trying to be resolute, she limped to the door of her cell and opened it.
‘Thank you.’ She could scarcely look at her much-loved sister, buried in her black piety, her thin fingers stroking the cross at her neck as if to wipe away the contagion of any human contact. ’I wish you good night.’
‘Pray God protects you from the consequences of your own sin and desire,’ Sister Ursula retorted, determined as she had been in childhood to have the final word. She glided past Alyson, leaving without once looking back.
Life in the convent settled for Alyson into a bland, colourless existence. Gytha and Eva were put to work in the gardens but Alyson was told that digging was not seemly for one of her status. ‘It could also injure your child,’ the Abbess continued, smiling at her charge and glancing at the fine silver altar crucifix that Guillelm had left as a gift.
‘Then allow me to work in the infirmary,’ Alyson pleaded, but again she was denied.
‘No. For you, I think that your innocence is best proved here, in our church.’ The Abbess brushed some stray pollen from a vase of drooping lilies off the altar cloth, looking round the convent church in the same satisfied, managing way that a house-proud wife might check over her stores. ’Remain in church from your time of waking to your time of retiring and pray. God and the world will then see your purity.’
‘May I have a little parchment, so I may write to my lord?’ Alyson asked.
The Abbess, still brushing pollen, shook her head. She was a small yet angular woman, seemingly fashioned of straight lines, so that in her plain gown she seemed like a black cube. Her wide face, with its heavy jaw and narrow brown eyes, radiated nothing but honest good nature. ‘You have no need to write, my child,‘ she replied. ‘He knows where you are. You safe here and at peace. You must direct your thoughts to God.’
Alyson prayed in the convent church. She joined the nuns in all their services. She swept and cleaned the church, taking care not to disturb the nuns who entered for their own quiet contemplation, or those who changed the flowers. She asked for nothing for herself and learned not to approach her own sister, who resented being singled out, or to ask for news of Guillelm. Kind but implacable in her own sanctity, the Abbess believed that talk of husbands in a nunnery was inappropriate. She never answered Alyson’s questions.
The days drew on. Speech was not encouraged in the convent and Alyson saw Gytha or the wise-woman Eva only with the width of the church nave between them. At night she prayed on her knees in her cell, longing to speak to Guillelm, to share with him the snippets of news she gleaned from the nuns about the civil strife between King Stephen and the Empress Maud, and to hear about him in return. Was he safe? What had happened to Fulk and the Templars? More selfishly perhaps, did he miss her as greatly as she missed him?
When she first began to feel sick, Alyson thought it was because she was pining. In the refectory at meals she avoided the game and poultry dishes that the convent were a
llowed to serve in addition to fish and vegetables, telling herself she did not fancy the rich roast duck. Even a liking for hot blackberry tisane was nothing new. It was only when her breasts began to feel tender and her monthly course did not come that she began to wonder.
Was Guillelm right? Was she with child?
That night she dreamed of Guillelm. She dreamed they were together again in the barn, only this time the night was fine and dry, spring rather than high summer.
'I ache here.' In her dream, Alyson placed a hand on her breasts. She was so tender there that she could no longer sleep upon her front, and the fabric of her tunic felt tight and harsh.
It was a warm, breezy night and they had lit no fire. Guillelm lifted the wooden whistle from Alyson's lap and laid it aside. 'Untie your tunic, sweetheart: let me see.'
He crouched so that the moon could shine upon her breast and laid hands on her, his firm touch surprisingly comforting. 'Look up.' He stared at the prominent veins below Alyson's collarbone. A smothered laugh escaped him. 'We should be in the lambing field ourselves.'
Guillelm was touched her throat on the big life-vein. 'You know what it is, Alyson. Part of you knows. The part that has caused your mind to give me these words within your dream.'
Alyson looked down at herself. She put a hand on her taut stomach and sucked it in. So tiny, it could not be felt as yet—She felt old, mortal; her own childhood gone forever. She thought of the women in her family, fated to die in childbirth. She lifted her head. 'What should I feel?'
'Nothing yet, the baby is too young to be moving within you,' answered Guillelm, deliberately misunderstanding her. He caught Alyson against him, both of them kneeling, and rocked her.
'Peace, peace,' he whispered, as she remained stiff. 'There will be time enough. Our child will spend three seasons within you—you will love each other by then.'
With Guillelm's dream-acknowledgement of the child as his, some of the fear and numbness ran out of Alyson. 'Are you glad?'
Guillelm nodded, laying his bright head against her shoulder. For a time all was quiet, their dream-world still, then Alyson felt him start against her. 'Listen, the first lamb born!'
Alyson heard the fragile, bleating cry for herself and something woke within her—soon that would be her child, Guillelm's child. She sprang to her feet. 'Who shall we tell?' she cried. 'Who first?'
She woke on her own question, already knowing the answer.
Chapter 26
She felt guilty, stealing away from the convent during the silent pre-dawn hours, before the first service. Without parchment, she had no means of writing a note to the Abbess to explain or apologize for her absence and she dare not wake her sibling: she was certain Sister Ursula would raise an alarm to prevent her going.
Walking barefoot from her cell Alyson had several nerve-jangling moments. The tiny creak of her door as she eased it open seemed as loud as a horn blast. The broken snore of a sleeper in one of the other cells convinced her that she was discovered, until the steady, heavy drone began afresh. Another few steps and she froze, spotting a moving shadow which turned out to be nothing more than the Abbess’ pet tabby cat, Nero, stalking the corridor. The painted eyes of a statue of the Madonna reproached her as she passed the statue’s narrow window niche but now no others saw her.
So far, the Abbess’ instruction that she, Gytha and Eva be housed not in the more lavish comfort of the guest house but with the novices and nuns in the general dormitory had worked to her advantage—no one expected her to take flight from here, in the midst of so many other sleepers. Alyson grimaced afresh at the thought but kept on. Unbarring the final door and closing it slowly and softly behind her, she stepped outside into the pinky-grey morning.
In the clammy, dew-laden air she took several steadying breaths and laced on her shoes. Careful to walk all the way around the courtyard, keeping close to the walls in case any should spot her crossing the cobbles that she herself had swept only the evening before, she made for the small stable block.
In the straw-scented barn she knew she would not find Jezebel—Guillelm had taken the mare back with him when he left—but she hoped to find some mount she could use. There her luck failed. Aside from the Abbess’ grey palfrey—which Alyson dare not borrow—there was only a drab mule, which she sensed would bray loudly if approached. Smiling grimly at the recollection of her sister’s accusation of Guillelm ‘braying’, she retreated rapidly, hurrying from the convent on foot by way of a small eastern gate. Blinking into the yellow glimmer of the rising sun, she turned south-west, towards the distant church tower of Saint Michael. After Saint Michael’s would come Saint Jude’s and after that she would truly be on the road to Hardspen, on the road home.
She walked until she was certain she would be out of earshot of the convent and then ran, anxious to put as much distance as she could between herself and the nuns.
Fixing her eyes on the tower of Saint Michael, she began by cutting across country, blundering once through a patch of thistles that tore at her gown. Behind her, faintly, there were voices shouting and fading: her departure from the convent may have been discovered. Ignoring that, Alyson ran on—she was running more slowly now, making for the track she knew was at the other side of the upcoming wooded valley, pacing herself so that she could breathe but not think. The early sun flashed in her eyes, its heat already as humid as a summer afternoon. There was a rumble in her ears like thunder, but it was her own pounding heartbeat, urging her to greater speed.
Alyson sprinted off the balls of her feet. Her hair broke free of its plait. She flew down the dry stream bed of a water course, her toes scarcely rocking the round yellow pebbles, and her feet bit into mud as she entered the green twilight of the wooded valley. There her speed was checked by the thick undergrowth of hazel and her own weariness.
She slowed to a walk. The bed of the stream grew sloppier, soothing her burning feet. Deeper in the wood she heard the trickling sound of water; a spring welled out from a bank and ran over the grass to the stream bed. Alyson cupped her fingers and drank.
Suddenly she was weeping into her wet hands. What was she doing? Sneaking away from her hosts, deceiving nuns, rushing off with no coherent idea other than to see Guillelm again. Would he be pleased to see her? Please let him be pleased, she thought, while a darker voice in her head added, if I am with child, please let us both survive.
She stretched her hand across her stomach. Be safe, she pleaded to the tiny, fragile life within, another soul, the fruit of hers and Guillelm’s love.
Did he love her?
‘Enough!’ Alyson said aloud, mopping the last of her tears away from her cheeks with her fingers. Even where she did not keep to the winding road, as now, she would have a long, exhausting trek today. ‘Save your energies for the journey. Do not talk. Do not think. Walk.’
Alyson walked on through the woods. She was glad to be taking a short-cut through here—had she kept to the turf-and-stone track that snaked up and down beside this wood, she would have added another mile or so on her trip—but this was no carefully maintained royal forest. In this wood, there were no ditches to keep deer in or out, or woodmen coppicing oaks and limes; it was in truth a long, narrow strip of straggly trees, some old and rotting, others hung about with lichen. It smelt of musty rooms and the only birdsong she heard was the frequent, scolding alarm call of the blackbird.
She moved quickly, wary of disturbing animals—either the two- or four-footed kind. No boar grazed here, Alyson noted with relief, seeing no characteristic score marks on the tree trunks, but she noticed badger hair on a stump and fox tracks near to a small muddy pool in the middle of the wood. From there she could also clearly see the farther edge of the wood and now she quickened her steps, keen to be out in the fresher air again and back on the road.
Then she heard it. A whistle that was not a bird-call, answered by another. Ducking under the low branches of a chestnut, Alyson pelted for deeper cover, a stand of hollies where she could hide until the men
had gone. Had they seen her? Worse, were they tracking her? Whoever they were, Guillelm was not part of their number: he would have shouted, made himself known. Had they seen her?
Risking a look back, Alyson recognized an emerging shadow and instantly flattened herself onto the damp earth, praying the man had not spotted her. He was still on horseback, jabbing and slashing at the undergrowth with his sword, a boyish, childish gesture except that his face was taut and red with anger.
It was Fulk.
Where was she? Fulk had watched her leave the convent and from the instant his men had brought word of her movements he had followed her sneaking progress. No doubt she was heading for Hardspen, but to him it no longer mattered. She was outside the convent, having deliberately left sanctuary. She had put herself outside the protection of the holy place. She was his now.
Fulk tightened his grip on his reins, angry that the search was taking so long. Everything had been clear until she entered the wood. He should never have hung back, but then, he had expected her to keep to the road where a single lone female could be easily ridden down. He had planned to seize her a mile away from the convent, out of sight of anyone, but by fleeing into the trees the cunning witch had escaped. Not for long, though. Once captured, she would be blindfolded, taken to a more private spot, and then—
He closed his eyes, sending a prayer of thanks to God. Sir Michael, that great Templar knight, had been right. His advice had been timely.
‘If you wish to recover your lord’s good graces, then I would suggest you strike camp close to the convent, and wait,’ Sir Michael had told him, as they had shaken hands in parting. ‘Those women will betray themselves: one or all of them will flee sanctuary and when they do, you will know who is guilty. It is a proof your lord will not be able to ignore. A witch cannot bear to stay by a holy place.’
Love and Chivalry: Four Medieval Historical Romances Page 27
