A Knight's Vow (12 page)

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 redaubed 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 washerwoman 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 color 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 should cast so long a shadow? “Who
was she?” she demanded.

“Her name was Heloise.”

“What was she like?”

“Proud and blond-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 heartfelt 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. Guillelm’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 melee of menfolk, Heloise would have reveled 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.

The stares of his men irked Guillelm. He wanted Alyson all
to himself, wanted her alone. He strode across, deliberately
heavy-footed so all would know he was coming.

“I will take her now, Tom,” he said, closing fast.

“Aye, no doubt you will.” The former crusader stepped
back without breaking off from feasting a pair of very busy
eyes on Alyson. He wore a look on his mangled face that
could only be described as foolish. The man is besotted,
thought Guillelm, jealous afresh.

He turned on his men. “Have you no tasks to be doing?” he
barked at the astonished company. “Must I order everything?”
He snatched at Alyson’s hand, almost dragging her away from
Tom. “Come, mistress, I would have a word.”

He walked her behind the screens separating the great hall
from the pantry and buttery, where a glower at a dice-throwing page had the boy scurrying off. Checking there was no one lingering in the buttery or pantry, he threaded his thumbs
into his belt, taking pleasure just in looking at her. He had his
second betrothal gift ready; he had wanted to give it to her
earlier in the day, when they were alone in the woodland, but
Fulk’s battle roar had interrupted him. Now he and Alyson
had a moment and he intended to make best use of it.

“Yes, my lord?” Alyson asked. “It is ever your custom to
call me mistress when I have displeased you, so in what way
have I offended now? I would know.”

Quite apart from the justness of her mild reproof, the weariness in her voice startled him. Clasping her by the shoulders,
he swiveled her toward the greater light streaming into the
pantry and saw how bleached-out she was about the eyes. Her
face had a suspiciously scrubbed look and her lips were pale.

“Your meeting with your sister?” he prompted, utterly
changing what he was about to say. His gift would keep, but
Alyson’s distress would not. “Was she not pleased to see you?”

It was a shrewd guess. He felt her tremble, saw the sinews
in her neck stiffen as she clenched her jaw. “She saw me”

“And?”

“We spoke for a while.”

“What about?”

“Family matters. Very little, really.”

“You have less in common than you thought?”

Alyson rubbed at her eyes. “Our lives are very different.”

She moved to go past him and return to the hall but he
stopped her. “Please, tell me what happened. I cannot bear to
see you so … so beaten down”

She stared at him for so long that Guillelm wondered if he
had changed into a hippogriff, or unicorn, or some other
strange beast. “Please, sweeting,” he said, the endearment
feeling as if it had been wrung from him.

Out it came in a low tumble of words: her sister’s anger that Alyson had not also joined the convent, that her sister saw
marriage as a sin.

“Why should she think that?” Guillelm knotted his forehead, trying to remember Alyson’s sister, Matilda. A fleeing
shadow in a dark dress was all that came to him and now he
was all attention because Alyson was speaking.

“Our mother died in childbirth.”

“Ah” Inwardly, Guillelm cursed his own memory; he
should have remembered why Sir Henry had been a widower
when he met him. “I am sorry.”

“It frightened my sister greatly. She was older; she saw and
understood more than I did. I was only four.”

Old enough to be petrified, thought Guillelm grimly, sensing
her taut as a harp string, while a small selfish part whispered
that he was glad to be a man. He cleared his throat, embarrassed
and yet wanting to offer some comfort. “In Outremer there are
many skilled doctors who understand such things.”

Alyson smiled. “We are not in Outremer.” With that simple
reply she drew away from him, adding, “Do you not think we
should rejoin our host? Or he will perhaps consider the excellence of his welcome is lacking.”

“You are right.” As ever. Taking only a small pleasure from
the fact she had used one of his own habitual phrases, Guillelm offered her his arm and they walked out from behind the
screens.

Preoccupied, he did not notice Fulk emerge from behind
a barrel of wine in the buttery and slip off to the chambers
upstairs.

Alyson pushed open the door to her night’s lodgings, relieved
that she was upstairs, beyond the tumult of the men. Below her,
the noise in the great hall abated slightly as another dish of roast
pig was carried in from the kitchen and the drunken diners fell
on it with much hacking of knives and belches of satisfaction.
Barring her chamber, Alyson unlaced her gown with a sigh, glad
she was nimble enough to do this on her own.

No doubt Guillelm would have helped and played the part
of lady’s maid, if she had asked. Throughout the evening,
with its noisy toasts and loud reminiscences of old campaigns, she had sensed his dark eyes ever straying to her. Had
he watched the mysterious Heloise in the same way?

At least Fulk had been civil, Alyson reflected, shrugging
off her shoes. He had been sitting beside her on the dais at
dinner and had passed her several platters. He had even asked
if she was warm enough.

Perhaps he is coming to accept me, she thought, glancing
round the bare room for a comb or brush. She did not want to
waste the candle in closer search, or lose the heat of the
chamber by opening the shutters. Besides, the midsummer
night was almost light enough to see by.

Finding nothing to do her hair with, she left it in its usual
thick plait and sat on the edge of the bed, still considering
Fulk. He had been almost suave tonight and certainly less
hostile. If she could have devised a way of asking him about
Heloise without Guillelm overhearing, she might have done.

She lifted back the woolen blanket—

And was off the bed in an instant, lunging for the shutters.
Through her own shocked, harsh breathing she heard the
catch give and she pushed, admitting a spill of moonlight into
this sudden chamber of horrors.

I could have climbed into bed with that. Her stomach rolled
at the thought and she gagged, turning toward the window to
gulp down the fresh night air. What was it?

Setting her back to the window, she forced herself to look
again. Shudders ran through her and her mind snatched at one
piece of comfort: She had not touched the thing.

Below her the rafters shook as Guillelm bested two men at
once in a wrestling match. She heard the shouts of congratulations with only a brief fizz of pleasure. She had her own
contest here, with an unknown enemy. What had been left for
her in the bed?

Alyson crouched and tugged slowly at the nearest blanket. With a queer sucking sound the mound of flesh hidden
beneath the coarse wool shifted, as if alive, and then was still.

“Imagine it is the ingredients for a potion,” she said aloud,
but still she could not take any steps closer. She peered at
the ruin of sheets.

It was offal, she decided. Lung, heart, liver. All washed.
Filched from the kitchen and brought up here as what? A
warning to her? A spiteful joke?

What had Fulk hoped to achieve? Even as Alyson’s reason
pointed out that she had no proof that it was Guillelm’s
seneschal who had done this, her instincts all agreed that it
would be no other man. But why?

Working swiftly, Alyson bundled up the parcel of lights
into a blanket and tossed it out of the open shutters. She
would have to explain tomorrow how she had lost a sheet but
she would think of something.

Or should she go down now and confront Fulk?

“With what?” Alyson scoffed. “You have just hurled the evidence out of the window!” And to judge from the chanting
and foot stamping that was now going on in the hall, the men
there were deep in drink. What if they merely laughed at her?
What if Guillelm laughed?

He would never do that, she thought, but it would be a bad
business, to accuse his most loyal follower of such a low trick.
Fulk would deny it and she had no proof. Worse, Fulk could
blame others, perhaps even Sir Thomas.

The thought of that kind, good-hearted man realizing that
his home and hospitality had been so abused stopped Alyson
on her way to the door. She could not do it.

Better perhaps to act as if she had found nothing amiss.
That would annoy Fulk. And she could tell Guillelm in the
morning.

But she would bed down on the floor tonight.

Although she was spent with the long ride and the emotions of the day Alyson did not expect to sleep. It was with
shock that she was awakened early the next morning by a
greenfinch fluttering around her room in a panic. The poor
bird had flown in through the open shutters and kept beating
itself against the roof thatch in its efforts to escape.

Alyson tossed her veil over the finch and gathered it gently,
setting it flying free into the dawn. She wished she could
rescue herself as easily; her rest had been troubled, plagued
with dark dreams of blood and her dead mother.

Had Fulk somehow overheard what she had told Guillelm? Had he left the offal as some kind of grisly token of childbirtha future warning to her?