A Knight's Vow (22 page)

“I have vowed to win you”

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him, her mouth tasting of
strawberries.

Desire rammed through him, stronger than a siege engine. Stronger still was the marvelous delight that Alyson caredshe truly did. He wrapped his arms about her, embracing her,
his lips finding the rapid pulse at her throat, the soft crease
behind her ears.

There were running feet on the stairs outside. “My lord!”
A breathless page was shouting, “My lord Guillelm!”

The lad pounded on past the room, racing in error for the
main bedchamber.

“My lady!” A maid hammered on the door. “My lady, you
must come!”

As one, Guillelm and Alyson lunged for the door and the
maid tumbled in, teary-eyed and shivering.

“What, girl?” Guillelm barked, and now she did burst into
tears, sobbing into her hands.

“You must come!” she cried, cringing away from Guillelm’s towering figure. “The news! Such terrible news “

Alyson pushed past Guillelm and took the maid by the
shoulders. “Hush, there, Mary. Catch your breath”

“What news?” Guillelm demanded.

The maid gulped and raised her head. “The Fleming has
returned, my lord. The convent of St. Foy is under attack”

Guillelm sprinted from the chamber, shouting for his
sword and armor, leaving Alyson with the shivering maid.

“What has happened?” Alyson asked, desperate to know
more, but Mary could only cry against her shoulder.

“Terrible thing, my lady. Dreadful!” Mary wailed, leaning so
hard against her smaller, slighter mistress that Alyson almost
lost her footing. She hooked a stool with her foot and dragged
it closer, encouraging Mary to sit, put her head down, take deep
breaths.

“Easy, easy,” she soothed, ruffling the girl’s thin brown curls,
trying to calm her while her own imagination was bursting with
horrors. Mercenaries attacking a holy place: it was unthinkable,
unspeakable. Unbearable, that her own sister should be there.
What was England coming to, if a convent could be attacked?
Was Tilda alive? Was she safe, undespoiled?

Alyson dropped to her knees, praying, the Latin words freezing on her tongue as the maid moaned and blubbered, her nose
running. Rising to her feet again, Alyson tore a wide ribbon
from her own hair and pressed it into Mary’s cold fingers.

“Here, Mary, blow your nose,” she said, gentle as if the maid were her daughter. “All will be well. Your lord is a great
fighter; he will see the convent safe”

She swiftly bound her hair, still with its many ribbons, into
a single plait. “Pray, Mary, but be not so afraid. The convent is
close; it will be saved” She looked about for her cloak. “Have
you people at St. Foy’s?” she asked, wondering if that was the
reason Mary seemed so undone. She slipped a cloak belonging
to Gytha, short on her, its narrow trimming of rabbit fur riddled
with moth, over her shoulders and tied the throat strings.

Mary shook her head. She was quieting and less pale, regaining some of her native wit, too, for now she whispered,
“I am sorry, mistress. I know your own dearly missed sister
is there-would that she were not! But I have seen the handiwork of Flemish troops before”

“We all have these days,” replied Alyson bleakly. Forcing
some kind of smile to her lips, she said gently, “Stay here
tonight, if you wish. I will send Gytha and Osmoda to join you”

“But where are you going, my lady?” Mary asked, holding
out the sodden ribbon, which Alyson gently refused.

“To join my husband,” she almost said, but stopped herself.
“To pray,” she answered, which also was true, but was not the
whole truth.

Alyson did not look to find Guillelm in the keep. Pulling
Gytha’s sparse hood over her head, she sped out to the stables.
All there was a riot of comings and goings in a flicker of
torches: men saddling horses, checking girths and gear,
pulling on armguards, squires scampering for armor, helping
their knightly masters onto their mounts.

Lingering in the shadows of her lean-to, Alyson noticed the
lad she had spoken with earlier that day. Sadly, he also noticed her.

“My lady!” He darted across to her. “You should not be
here!”

“I have a token for my lord, for his good fortune,” Alyson
lied quickly. “Will you give it to him and wish him Godspeed? We had not time to say goodbye”

She knew that sounded too plaintive and was ashamed of her
own need, but the stable boy’s face softened. “I will.” He received the hairpin from her as graciously as a courtier, bowing
his head. “He will be safe, my lady. He is a great warrior.”

This was so close to what she had said to comfort the maid
that Alyson smiled. She thanked the lad and watched him
weave back into the press of men and horses, then sagged, the
smile dropping from her lips. She knew Guillelm was a
fighter, of course she knew, but war was war. A stray arrow, a
sword thrust and her dragon’s fire and dazzle might be extinguished. And he was so bright, so obvious a target …

She could not bear to be parted from him in this way. Whatever the danger, however foolish or selfish her action, she had
to go with him. Why not? Other women went in war trains
camp followers and the wives of soldiers. She was a healer;
she could be useful. There was her sister, too, and the other
nuns, women who might appreciate her care, if she could
saddle her horse and ride out unnoticed in this battle horde.

Alyson was lucky-her mount was stabled at the very end
of the block, with a stall full of straw and feed between her
and the other horses. Keeping to the shadows, she reached
Jezebel without raising any alarm and was slipping a bridle
over the mare’s narrow head when she heard Guillelm’s
bloodcurdling war cry. Even as she froze, chilled by the
almost demonic shout, her husband rode past the stable, raising his sword arm and yelling, “Ride to St. Foy’s! Ride!”

“We ride!” the answer rumbled from two score and more
throats, and they were off, thundering out of Hardspen at full
gallop.

Alyson had no time to saddle her horse. She cast herself
onto the mare’s back and pounded out of the stable yard, her
borrowed cloak and hood pulled low over her head to hide her
face and hair. Glad there was no moon to light her clothes or
show off her shape, she urged Jezebel on and joined the
cloaked and hooded squires at the rear of the column.

Guillelm spurred Caliph to greater speed, leaning forward
in the saddle to give the massive warhorse his head. Aware of
the dark ground rushing under his heels, he was merciless in
his riding, never slowing down, careless of obstacles. Reckless as he was, the stallion drove through shadows on the
track, leaping over fallen branches and churning up a miasma
of dust. A fox darted across the road, the white tip of its tail
a banner amongst the dark green and black of the wayside
hazel and hawthorn, but Guillelm was not to be diverted.
“Forward!” he yelled, running Caliph straight at a sapling
growing in the middle of the road. He felt its leaves slap
against his foot and heard the wheeze of horses and men,
falling behind, but he did not draw rein.

Women were in danger. Nuns were under attack by a creature
he had spared. He knew from the sweating, exhausted messenger who had ridden out from the village close to St. Foy’s that
the men there had sworn to defend the convent if need arose, but
what could an aging, ill-armed militia do against mercenaries?
If any died, man, boy or woman, Guillelm knew he would be to
blame. Whatever excuses a confessor might make for him, he
had allowed the Fleming to leave Hardspen with his men and
weapons. He had made a serious misjudgment in trusting the
word of Etienne the so-called Bold: The man had broken his
knightly promise. If Etienne had ever joined the forces of King
Stephen or the empress, the venture clearly had not worked and
so he was back in the area he had terrorized so readily before, looking for easy plunder. And if one had the stomach for it, a
convent was the easiest target of all.

Alyson’s sister was at St. Foy ‘s.

Cursing, Guillelm rode harder still.

Numb with grief and the pounding ride, Alyson saw the
flames and heard the sickening roar of burning timbers
through the trees, before the column reached the convent.
Breasting the rise in the rutted road, she groaned and almost
lost her reins, instinct alone saving her from being pitched
headlong from Jezebel’s back. Around her she heard shouting
from the squires, saw their pallid, sweating faces.

Below, stretched before them in the downland valley, was
a scene from hell. The church of St. Foy’s was wholly ablaze,
spiraling plumes of fire and smoke spilling from the roof of
the nave and leaping out of its shattered windows. There were
prone bodies, suspiciously still, lying like broken toys in the
garden where only a few weeks earlier she and her sister had
walked in peace. Of the mercenaries there seemed no sign,
except for one stray riderless horse, careering round and
round in the road outside.

“Have any survived?” hissed a squire and Alyson, not trusting her voice, pointed back to the church, where a few limping figures seemed to be trying to beat out the flames at the
base of the building, without success. The convent wall had a
massive breach in its eastern side and as Alyson watched,
willing herself to nudge her horse to a final effort but unable
to force her frozen limbs to move, she saw the roof of the
nuns’ dormitory cave in with a splintering crash.

“Tilda!” she shrieked. Flinging herself off the shuddering,
rolling-eyed Jezebel, she ran down the hill, not caring if the
Fleming’s men were there or not.

Suddenly ahead of her she saw Guillelm appear in the gap in the convent wall, carrying a trembling figure in his arms
and leading a dazed old man by the shoulder.

Even as she rejoiced that he was safe, that the mercenaries truly had fled from her lord’s strength and righteous anger,
she realized her mistake. Catching a flurry of movement in
the corner of her eye, she turned about, swerving just in time
to avoid the rushing mount of one of the squires who passed
so close to her that she felt her cheek grazed by the lad’s stirrup. But it was not his headlong dash she had sensed, or even
heard above the general din of the fire, shouting and galloping horses. Instinct guided her to look farther back, up the hill
toward the trees crowning the top of the ridge, and yes! There
it was: a figure, stepping out of the woodland. As he emerged
from the shadows of the trees, he was skylined a moment, his
wiry, mail-clad shape clear against the summer stars. It was
too dark to see the knightly device on his armor or cloak, but
he was no ally-his war helm was closed and he carried a
sword in one hand and a crossbow in the other.

Alyson began to run again, to Guillelm, aware she had only
seconds, instants, before the enemy raised his helm and
wound up his deadly crossbow.

He would shoot at Guillelm-

“Down! Get down! Get away!” Yelling warnings, she ran
straight at Guillelm, her one thought to save him, her only
wild plan that if she could not make him hear her warnings,
she might spoil the aim of the enemy archer.

Ignoring the growing pain of her heat-seared lungs and her
fading, tiring limbs, she screamed again, “Get down!” and
now Guillelm heard and saw her, shock and horror warring in
his face, his mouth forming the question, “How?”

“Down!” Alyson cried, but she was too late. She felt a punch
slam into her shoulder, spinning her round so that she fell backward, the breath knocked out of her. She tried to move, to reach Guillelm, shield him, but as she raised her head a jolt of agony
drove through her body and she blacked out.

Guillelm reacted without conscious thought. He lowered
the shocked, sobbing prioress gently onto the ground and
seized the quivering arrow shaft buried so sickeningly in
Alyson’s shoulder, determined to draw it out before she came
round from her faint.

Even as he worked, images flashed constantly before his
eyes. Alyson running toward him, arms outstretched, making
herself a target. Over and over, he saw the bolt thud into her
slender body, saw her feet actually leave the ground as she was
flung around by the force of the impact. She had been shot in
the back and he had done nothing to save her; worse, he had
not even known she had joined the war band. He had been so
keen to lay sword against sword with Etienne the Bold, who,
cur that he was, had turned tail the instant he saw him, riding
through the smoke and soot of the burning convent.

“Ah!” Although he tried to be steady and careful and the
crossbow bolt came out cleanly, the sharp, decisive tug hurt
her Alyson came out of her swoon with a shriek of agony.

“Sssh, sweetheart, it is done.” Guillelm wanted to cradle
her but dared not; he could not bear to hurt her again. Kneeling by her, he packed his cloak around her body, terrified at
how cold she was. Her shoulder was bleeding freely and that
must be good, for the ill humors would be washed out.

What if the crossbow bolt was poisoned?

What if she died?

“Live, Alyson,” he whispered, too afraid to be angry at her.
He should have known she would attempt something like this;
she was never one to sit still when those she loved were under
threat. Where was that sister of hers? The Flemings had herded the nuns into the courtyard while they torched the
buildings. None had been harmed, so where was she?

Blinking away tears, he raised his head and met the pasty
faces of the squires. The lads had dismounted and gathered
round, forming a shield with their horses. Too late, Guillelm
thought bleakly.

“My lord, we did not know ..

“Truly we never suspected. . “

“She moved so swiftly, ran right amongst the horses .. ”’

“We could not stop her!”

Their excuses died away and they hung their heads.

“What can we do?” asked one.