Castles in the Air

by Christina Dodd

  Denys’s starved young face lit up at the mention of food, and he trudged toward the trestle table with many a backward glance at Juliana.

  Dagna waggled her heavy eyebrows. “The lad follows where his belly leads. I’d best bring food up from the kitchen.”

  Raymond winked at Juliana. “’Strewth, you’ve found a new champion.”

  “It seems I have,” she agreed, and tried to contain the upsurge of affection the youth’s thin arms and fervent defense had aroused in her. She’d tried to keep aloof from him and the memories he brought back, comforting herself with the excuse that she saw to his clothes and his belly and that was enough. But he’d watched her as she braided Ella’s hair, as she showed Margery how to sew, and when she tucked the girls into bed and kissed them good-night, and his gaze revealed a lad starved for motherly affection. She’d tried to keep her heart closed to him, but she’d have to be a monster not to appreciate the courage he’d displayed for her.

  Raymond grinned, obviously aware she’d been won over. “Young Denys is a good lad, eh, Juliana?”

  Before she could answer, Keir interposed, “A good lad, but crippled by his upbringing. You will teach him the meaning of honor, will you not, Raymond?”

  Startled, Raymond studied his friend. “Lord Peter said honor couldn’t be taught, it had to be shown, and even then the results depended on the pupil.”

  Keir nodded toward the breakfasting Denys. “He is an apt pupil, I think, and not only to those things which are virtuous. He has been shown that virtue is sometimes difficult, and he is impatient.”

  “Really?” Raymond drew the word out. “Are you ready? I’ll walk you down, and we can discuss what you know.”

  “I must take my leave of Lady Juliana,” Keir answered.

  He said it without visible emotion, but she blushed as Raymond looked meaningfully at Denys, then at Keir. Bowing in a deep obeisance and backing away, he called, “Tell her all your secrets, Keir.”

  Keir cocked his head. “I have no secrets.”

  “Then you’ll have none to tell,” Raymond replied.

  Keir’s puzzled expression brought a gurgle of laughter from Juliana. His face cleared, and he said, “He’s not always intelligible, but I find him a good man.” Putting his hand on her arm, he steered her toward the arrow slit overlooking the bailey. “I thought we could watch as the servants pack for my trip to Bartonhale.”

  A ludicrous suggestion, for the sun had not yet done more than create purple in the sky, but Juliana knew Keir would not make a ludicrous suggestion without good reason. He wanted to speak with her, and she acceded with an inclination of the head.

  His forefinger and thumb clasped her wrist like a bracelet. Not for the first time, she noticed those fingers were the only remaining whole digits on his right hand. The other three fingers had been cut down to the first joint. She flinched in empathy, then flinched again, for she didn’t want anything in common with the stolid man for whom her husband had usurped her authority.

  He adjusted his steps to hers. “Before I leave, my lady, I wish to thank you for your generous welcome to me.”

  She suspected him of sarcasm, then acquitted him. Sarcasm required a sense of iniquity which she doubted Keir harbored, or even understood. “I would that I had done more.”

  “A woman in your circumstances cannot be too careful, and I saw your occasional lapses of courtesy as merely the instinctive reaction of a woman to a male stranger. Would that all women were as wise as you.”

  “Would that all men were as astute as you,” she answered cautiously.

  He inclined his head. “’Tis true, I fear. Most men prefer to use their sword and shield as a substitute for intelligence, and by the time they discover God gave them brains, they totter on the edge of the grave.”

  “Some not even then,” she said, thinking of her father. When they reached the arrow loop, she found she could see. The serfs had lit a bonfire for light and warmth, and she picked Raymond out of the figures who hurried past. She smiled when she heard his voice bellow a command, and saw the servants scurry to load the carts as he ordered.

  “When a younger man does make use of his faculties, he finds greatness.” Keir sounded sad. “Raymond is such a man, and his greatness is the result of a painful maturation. He cut my fingers off.”

  Her gaze flew to his.

  “To free me from bondage.” He flexed his hand. “I thanked him, but he cried.”

  “Cried?” Had she spoken aloud? Did it matter? Keir seemed to hear what she couldn’t say.

  “You have no doubt surmised Raymond and I were together in Tunis.” He braced that mutilated hand on the sill where she could see it. Indeed, she couldn’t look away from it. “We had never met each other before we stood on the auction block together. Our master liked to buy good, strong Christian knights and subjugate them to the most humiliating labor.”

  “Was Raymond a blacksmith like you?”

  “For Raymond to be a blacksmith, he would have had to cooperate with the training process.” As unemotional as the statement was, it released a wealth of information—about Raymond, and about Keir, too.

  “He would not…cooperate, then?”

  Keir’s head turned in a slow arc. His jaw clenched, his eyes flashed, and with a shock, Juliana realized he was an attractive man. She’d just never seen it. Never seen it because of Raymond, and the enchantment he’d woven around her. Keir turned back to the arrow slit, and her awareness of him dwindled.

  “He spat on me—literally—because I chose to become a blacksmith.”

  A half smile played on Keir’s lips, but incredulous, she whispered, “Raymond spat on you?”

  “He was as hard a man as I had ever met. He preferred death to association with the Infidels. What Raymond didn’t realize,” he said gently, “was that death was preferable to the methods they used to break recalcitrant knights. Our master showed Raymond the way of things.”

  “He beat him.”

  “With a great deal of pleasure,” Keir said. The mutilated hand flexed on the sill. “In the end, I wished they would break Raymond, just to end the constant bloodletting. I cauterized his deepest wounds, you see.”

  Shamed curiosity drove her to ask, “What broke him?”

  Keir shook his head in self-admonishment. “I talk too much.”

  “You do not!” she cried.

  “I should go below and do a final check on the supplies we are taking.”

  Desperate for this last information, she asked, “Why did he cry?”

  He hesitated. “Are you referring to the moment when he cut off my fingers? Raymond organized our escape. It was successful because of its daring, and it was daring because of Raymond.” Meticulous to a fault, he asked, “You’ve heard we stole a Saracen ship and sailed it to Normandy?”

  “Aye. Aye, I have, so go on.”

  “During the escape, I was caught in a chain on the docks. It tightened on my fingers, and while I could have pulled them off, I feared I would leave much of the inner workings of my hand. So I requested Raymond take a knife and remove the crushed parts. I had crafted the knife, but it was not as sharp as it could have been—”

  She shuddered.

  “—for we had used it to saw through ropes and to pick locks. Although I was phlegmatic during the amputation, Raymond found he had no vocation for surgery.”

  Emboldened by his commentary, she picked up his hand and examined it.

  He suffered her touch without flinching. “The king’s surgeon had to saw off some bone splinters, for Raymond wasn’t able to break them off cleanly.”

  In recognition of his fortitude, she clasped his hand in both of hers.

  “Raymond rescued eight Christian knights, four Christian sailors, and two old women—Valeska and Dagna—without loss of life. He brought a laden Infidel ship into a Christian port. Some of my fingers seemed a small sacrifice for my freedom, but he still mourns their loss. This is muddled thinking, and quite a change in his disposition at t
he time of his capture. Yet the imprisonment changed me, also. Before I was imprisoned, I never found a man I considered worthy of my service.”

  “And now?”

  “I would lay down my life for Raymond.” His chin jutted out, bold and stubborn, as he made his demand. “The captivity fired Raymond, made him the man that he is. But it also placed a burden on his soul. I am not a man given to unwarranted sentiment, but I wish Raymond to be happy. Not just satisfied, not just pleased with his situation—happy.” He turned her hand in his, bowed over it, and walked away.

  She leaned into the arrow slit and waited. Keir appeared and went to Raymond without hesitation. Raymond pointed to the carts, piled with provisions, and at the sturdy work horses harnessed to the carts. Juliana’s eyes narrowed when Raymond pulled a small bag from inside his cloak and handed it to Keir. He gestured, giving instructions clearly involving the wall, the keep and, she suspected, her. Money? she wondered. Whose money? Where did he get it? And why was he sending it with Keir?

  Yet Raymond and Keir proceeded with their business without answering her queries. Keir stood while Raymond embraced him, as Raymond gestured to the war-horse, a destrier stallion, the finest in her stable, and at the saddle and bridle it wore. Clearly, he was presenting it to Keir—clearly, he’d done it without her permission.

  Yesterday, she might have accused him of thievery. Today, she sighed as she considered her situation. It hadn’t changed, not really. The conflict between Raymond and her hadn’t been resolved. He still imagined he was lord of all of her lands. She still knew her word was law. But somehow, during the night, the balance had changed. Somehow he’d spoken to her with his body, inviting her to join him, be one with him. He’d insinuated that together they were greater than apart. Together they would do more than maintain the lands, they would expand them—and expand their family, too. They would become a great family, one of the greatest in England. She made a face as she remembered his mother’s insistence. And of course, in France.

  But somehow, this morning, it wasn’t the lands or the family that seemed important. She stuck her feet out from under her cotte and looked at them. Newborn feet. She wiggled them. They worked the same as yesterday, looked the same as yesterday, but they were newborn.

  She couldn’t resist sticking out her hands. They, too, looked the same as yesterday, worked the same as yesterday, but they were newborn. They weren’t the same as yesterday.

  Could it be she wasn’t the same as yesterday? That a few simple words—and a snow bath, and an exhaustive loving—had created a new woman? When she’d gathered herself together, seeking all the parts of her she’d given away, all the parts of her he’d taken, she had found she was different. Whole, but different.

  A timid hand touched her shoulder. A timid voice said, “My lady?”

  The new and different Juliana faced Denys, and she smiled at him without the selfconsciousness that had marred their other meetings.

  He realized she’d changed somehow; he tilted his head like a bird and studied her from his bright eyes. Thinking he had been too bold, he dropped his gaze and blushed. “My lady, I wanted to thank you”—his voice squeaked, and he sheepishly lowered it—“for your kindness to me. You’ve treated me like one of your family”—it squeaked again, and he blushed even brighter—“and I wish I were worthy.”

  She leaned against the long sill of the arrow slit and took his hand. “You are worthy to be one of my family.”

  He glowed. “Do you really believe that?”

  “Anyone who has the courage to stand up to Sir Joseph has gained my respect.” At the mention of Sir Joseph, he cast her an anguished glance, and she urged him on. “Tell me what troubles you.”

  “Lord Raymond talks about honor. Do you know much about honor?”

  She brushed one scraggly brownish lock out of his eyes and thought how she should reply, and her silence made him rush into speech.

  “Because Lord Raymond says it’s a way of life. He says Lord Peter told him that if a man is to be honorable, he must think honorable thoughts as well as do honorable deeds.”

  “That’s true,” she agreed. “But sometimes honor is easier for a lord to maintain than for a woman or, say, a youth. A lord has only to obey the king and his laws. A woman or a youth counts for little with the king or his laws, and so ofttimes our needs drive us where they don’t a lord.”

  He nodded, and his cowlicks flapped. “It just doesn’t seem fair sometimes.”

  “So if you were afraid of Sir Joseph in your mind, but stood up to him in your body, it doesn’t mean your actions were for naught.”

  “Oh.” Squeezing her hand, he mumbled, “Sometimes I steal bread from the table.”

  At last she saw the direction of his reasoning. Gently, wanting to reassure him, she suggested, “Because you’re hungry?”

  “Because I might get hungry.”

  The specter of starvation hung about the lanky youth, tugging at her sympathies. “If I told you to take as much bread from my table as you wish, then it wouldn’t be stealing.”

  He brightened, then his face dropped again. “But in my heart it would be stealing, and Lord Raymond says a knight must be pure at heart, too.”

  Disgusted with her pedantic husband, Juliana tugged Denys’s hand until he stood beside her, then wrapped her arm around his stiff back. “You are so young that purity of heart is yours without even trying.”

  He broke away from her and stood, chest heaving, glaring from teary eyes. “Nay, it’s not. I want to kill my father for what he did to my mother and me, and the priest says I’ll go to hell. I want to hurt all the people who refused to help my mother, and Lord Raymond says a knight shouldn’t concern himself with petty vengeances. I’ll never be like Lord Raymond, so strong and noble. He’s got Lofts Castle and Bartonhale Castle, all because he’s the greatest warrior King Henry has. He’s got you for his wife and Margery and Ella for his children, all because he’s honorable in mind and soul. I can’t ever be honorable like that! I can’t.”

  She reached for him, but he turned and ran blindly for the door. Her heart ached for the lad who had set his goals impossibly high, and she hoped her honorable, noble ass of a husband didn’t tumble off Denys’s pedestal too soon or with too big a crash.

  As Raymond stood shivering on the drawbridge to wave Keir off, he whistled the tune his sailors had taught him on the merry journey back to Normandy. He’d done it. He’d given Juliana succor and released none of his own secrets. It had been difficult last night, but he’d throttled the impulse to ease Juliana’s embarrassment by revealing his own. After all, what would that gain either of them? His transgression opened like an abyss, so wide he could never cross it or fill sit in. He could only cover it and hope Juliana never suspected its presence—and hope, too, the edges did not crumble beneath his feet. Thus far, he’d been successful beyond his hopes.

  Deep in his soul, he knew a tiny, penitent elation that he’d gotten Keir off to Bartonhale before his friend blurted out the truth.

  Raymond glanced up at the arrow slit where Keir and Juliana had stood to say good-bye. He hoped Keir hadn’t blurted out the truth. Keir had interesting insights into moral character, and he believed in setting things to rights regardless of the hapless victim’s protests. That was why Raymond had roused the entire castle to dispatch Keir before dawn, giving as an excuse the blanket of cold that had settled over the land. It had driven the clouds away, yet maintained the piles of snow in the corners of the bailey. It had frozen the mud of the road into ruts and made travel possible. And it wouldn’t break, the farmers told him, until spring puffed in. So he’d urged Keir to go while he could, and to take Sir Joseph with him.

  With few words, Raymond had sketched the outline of Sir Joseph’s evil and suggested, in the mildest tone, that Keir watch Sir Joseph. He hadn’t said—not aloud—that he would like to see Sir Joseph dangling from a post at the crossroads, but Keir knew. Keir was an honest man, more honest than Raymond thought always necessary, bu
t he seemed positive Sir Joseph would prove his misdeeds.

  Raymond also suggested that once Keir had settled in his new home he prepare to attack a neighboring castle. Lord Felix, Raymond assumed, would benefit from a lesson. Keir reminded him that such private wars were not encouraged by the king, and even Henry’s cousin would be severely fined for such an infraction of the king’s peace.

  Raymond only smiled, so wide and hard his jaw popped. “Lord Felix needs an operation,” he said. “To remove a troublesome part of his body. Once it is done, he’ll have no more trouble from me, and he’ll give no more trouble to my lady.”

  “Ah.” Keir nodded solemnly. “Then of course I see the sense in assisting you with the surgery.”

  Aye, Raymond was glad Keir had gone, but he would miss him. He was even gladder he’d given Keir the pride of Juliana’s stables. The destrier was a reward, an apology, and a pledge of friendship everlasting.

  Hauling up a basket filled with chunks of frozen mud, Tosti spotted him and shouted, “M’lord!” Tosti waded over the uneven ground to reach Raymond’s side. “M’lord, we’ve dug so deep we feel th’ flames o’ hell. Do ye think we should stop?”

  “Are you on bedrock?” Raymond asked as he slid over and peered in the trench. A dozen diggers panted and stomped to show the hardness of the ground. “But is it bedrock?” he insisted.

  “’Tis stiff enough t’ be.”

  Raymond examined a chunk of the solid stuff, and the dark soil showed particles of stone. “Gravel,” he said admiringly. “I believe you’ve got it.”

  With a leap into the air, Tosti crowed. “’Tis deep enough, lads. Halt wi’ yer diggin’.”

  Raymond scratched his stubbled cheek. “Maybe just a little deeper,” he said. Tosti halted his dance. “Might as well dig until the stone arrives.”

  “’Tis here.” Tosti gestured toward the shadow of the wall.

  Raymond strode toward the sandstone blocks. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  “Th’ castle builder was here when it started arrivin’ yestermorn, an’ he screamed an’ jumped around like th’ lunatic foreigner he is.” Too clearly, Tosti’s expression showed his opinion of the hapless Papiol. “So he said, in that gibberish o’ his, t’ put it there, an’ we did. Mayhap we should have called ye, m’lord, but wi’ yer parents an’ yer weddin’ an’ all th’ ruckus—”