A Knight's Vow (4 page)

“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 the 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 past 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 store room 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 still
was 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 Etienne 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 clamored, Not yet.

“I am truly sorry for your loss.”

Alyson whirled about, the horn lantern clutched protectively in front of her. “You startled me!” He had come up very close
behind her, his feet silent on the stone flags. “I am sorry for
your loss, also,” she said quickly, meaning the words no less
because she gabbled them.

“I know. I could see that from the moment I saw you again,
on the stairs.” His face, as beautiful to Alyson in the beams of
the lantern as the carving of the stone angels in their local
church, was earnest. “You always did feel for others”

For an instant he seemed on the verge of saying more, then
he gave a bark of laughter. “Steady!” He caught the lamp as
it dipped in her hands, the glowing light bouncing over the
sooty beams and rafters. “Mother of God, you are not safe
with that. You wield it like a weapon” He lifted the lantern
from her trembling fingers and placed it on the nearest table.

“Are you all right?” he asked, watching her closely under
thick blond eyebrows. His deep brown eyes seemed to darken
even more. “Is it perhaps the sickness that has laid the rest
of this place low?”

Before Alyson could move or speak, he tucked his cloak
closer about her. “Do you wish me to-?”

“No!” Alyson burst out, afraid that he might offer to carry
her again. She did not deserve his concern, and she was so
tired it would be so very easy to fall asleep in his arms. Their
every touch and embrace made it that much harder for her to
tell him what she must, for it suggested a growing closeness
that would be destroyed soon enough. Let me keep my pride
and not embarrass Guillelm with my unwanted feelings for
him, she thought.

“No one in this castle has been taken ill with the sweating
fever for the past three days; the worst of that is over,” she
said, trying to sound lively and confident. Her face, tense
with grief and weariness and now trying to mask her response
to the tall, handsome man standing less than a hand-stretch away from her, ached as she forced a brittle smile. “With the
help of the blessed Virgin we have come through,” she said.

The worst of the sickness might be past, thought Guillelm,
but Alyson looked close to the breaking point. He wanted to
lift all care from her but knew her stubborn pride of old. He
was also profoundly aware of how greatly they had both
changed. When he had left for the Holy Land he was a boy
and she no more than a girl. Now he was a man and she was
very much a woman. Their relationship had changed forever.
A few moments earlier he had been about to mention their
day in the forest, where she had first teasingly called him
“dragon,” a title he had since taken as a battle name for himself and a rallying cry for his men. He longed to thank her
again for saving his life, but he had decided against it in case
such old history embarrassed her.

Yet he liked the grown-up Alyson very much. Perhaps at
last the time had come when he could woo her properly
when he had dealt with the Fleming and his over-ambitious
neighbor, and when Alyson’s grief at her father’s untimely
death had faded a little. Perhaps with Alyson and her fearlessness he would prove the terrible predictions by Heloise and
his elder sister wrong.

For now, to spare her more pain, he asked nothing else
about the death of his father. Privately he was relieved that
Lord Robert had granted Alyson and her people sanctuary:
He knew from bitter personal experience that his father was
not usually so charitable. There had normally been a price to
be paid for help from the master of Hardspen.

Sending up a sad, regretful prayer for his father, with
whom he had never been truly close, Guillelm considered
more basic matters. Battles and men-at-arms were things he
understood and he turned to them almost with relish as problems he could overcome. Were it not for the danger to others
he could almost look forward to the morning.

“My father held this castle and lands as a vassal of King
Henry. When the old king died, did he swear fealty to Henry’s
daughter, the Empress Maud?”

“He did-as did many others who are now foresworn, forsaking the empress for King Stephen, simply because Maud
is a woman.”

Hearing her indignant speech, Guillelm applauded her loyalty but not her sense. “England is a hard realm to rule. It
needs a man,” he said.

Really, he was her father all over again, thought Alyson, exasperated for the first time with the adult Guillelm. She had
expected him to have shown more vision. “So Stephen demonstrates his kingship by stirring up civil war throughout the
country?” she demanded scornfully. “Setting neighbor against
neighbor, friend against friend-those for Stephen against
those for Maud? Do you know King Stephen is even now besieging Castle Carey, less than thirty leagues from here?”

The sight of her roused struck Guillelm with a low bolt of
pleasure deep in the pit of his stomach. Her eyes glittered as
she spoke and her natural high color was back, stung into her
cheeks and lips by indignation. Her earlier weariness flung off,
she paced the length of the kitchen floor, his cloak snapping
at her heels. She was so pretty that for an instant he was
tempted to make her angrier than ever, but answered mildly,
“And do Etienne the Bold and Walter of Enford now claim they
are “acquiring” Hardspen as loyal followers of Stephen? That
they will wrest it from Maud’s men and hold it for the king?”

“Something very like,” muttered Alyson, her light footfalls
making an interesting counter-rhythm with the falling rain outside. She stopped abruptly and turned to him, lifting her head.
The determined, lost look on her face reminded Guillelm of
men he had seen in battle, casting themselves into the thick of
the fray when all hope of victory was lost. It chilled him.

“What is it?” he asked softly.

“The day Walter and his troops appeared, I put him and the
Fleming off by begging their leave for us to bury and mourn
your father with all due honors,” she said, twisting the edge
of his cloak between her fingers until she clearly realized
what she was doing and tucked her hands out of sight. “They
left us in peace for three days after that”

“Ingenious and not so far from the truth,” Guillelm remarked, wondering at her put him and the Fleming
off-why her? Why not one of the men or, God forbid, the as
yet unseen widow of Hardspen castle? Guillelm shrugged off
the last thought. Although the widow, if real, was one of those
he must see tonight, he was beginning to seriously doubt the
existence of such a female. “And then?” he prompted.

Alyson closed her eyes a moment, then opened them. “I had
the men daub a mixture of mud and pig’s blood on their faces
and hands and let it dry so that it scaled. I myself appeared
on the battlements with my face veiled. I told the herald that
the fever, which still raged within the castle, had left us this
way. Walter of Enford is very particular in regard to his
person,” she added apologetically. “I hoped our play of blistered faces might dissuade him from too hasty an attack. We
had sent messages to the empress by then. With every hour
that passed, we hoped for a relieving force to come to our aid.”

“I see” The Walter of Enford he remembered had been as
vain and strutting as an Eastern peacock, Guillelm thought,
his lips itching to laugh aloud at Alyson’s clever deception.
“And how long did your device win you?”

“Another day.” She sighed and resumed her pacing. “In
truth, there was real sickness still within the bailey and we
were sorely pressed.”

“Of that I have no doubt,” remarked Guillelm, quiet and serious again. “Did my father’s steward die during that time?”

“He did-as did many of his people, which is why my poor
Sericus, who is less than nimble, is now seneschal. There was no other left but Sericus with the necessary experience and
who could also be spared from possible fighting duty.” She was
still and staring at the floor again, her earlier brightness
dimmed. “All my tending and potions-I could not save them.”

It pained Guillelm that she seemed ashamed. “You did all
that man or woman could. Do not reproach yourself.”

Still she would not look at him. The men follow her orders,
he thought. Why? Because she has wit and beauty? Those
alone, although excellent, surely would not be sufficient inducements for grizzled veterans to obey her, even with the
castle reeling with sickness. A dark suspicion bloomed in his
mind, one he swiftly ignored.

“So the herald of Walter and Etienne returned the following day,” he went on, “and presumably he was no longer prepared to wait on any more delays. What reply did you give
when Walter and the Fleming demanded that Hardspen
should now be held as a castle of King Stephen’s? Did you
agree and hold them off with your answer?”

“No!” Her eyes flashed pride. “What do you take me for?
Lord Robert held Hardspen for the empress. Should I then
deny his loyalty and cynically change sides?”

“Men have done such things before.”

“Then men are wrong! Oh, I know you think me a child,”
she went on, jerking her head up to face Guillelm, “but I am
one and twenty, two years older than you were when you traveled to Outremer. I have seen the world.”