A Knight's Vow (24 page)

Gytha plucked one of the salves off the floor and started to
draw a sheet over her young mistress. When Guillelm reached
across the edge of the bed and seized her wrist, she raised her
eyes to him again.

“It was her father,” Guillelm stated. “Sir Henry was ever
strict.”

“Sir Henry was not an easy man, but he loved his daughters.
He would not raise a hand to either.” Gytha’s eyes were warm
with a certain sympathy that sent a stake of pure ice through
Guillelm’s vitals. He shied from the idea, his eyes unwillingly
drawn to Alyson’s old hurts. There were long, thin lines running
vertically and horizontally across her back, buttocks and legs.

“Birch rods,” Gytha said softly, “sometimes a belt. It was
not her father.”

“It was mine.” Guillelm sat down hard on the stone flags
and hid his face in his hands. The knowledge shamed and unmanned him. “Why?” he said. Alyson had been his father’s
guest at Hardspen, had been set to be his betrothed and yet
Lord Robert had done this. “How could he?” he whispered.

Now Gytha did cover Alyson with the sheet and began to
smear a lavender-scented salve around the area of the wound,
although careful not to touch the wound itself. She worked
with a deftness that surprised Guillelm, although in these past
few moments he had thought himself beyond shock. “Why?”
he asked again.

“Your father drank and was fond of it, particularly malmsey
wine.” Gytha passed the pot of salve to Guillelm and indicated
a small raw place on Alyson’s forehead. When he gently worked
some of the salve across the graze, the nurse resumed her story.

“He could not always hold his drink. He became … tetchy,
quick to take offense. The pages and maids kept out of his
way at such times, or Alyson would send them away, out of range of his fists. He would pull her hair. Once I saw him slap
her. He demanded her obedience, said he would not commit
to their betrothal until she was bent to his will.”

Moving with great care, Guillelm handed the salve back to
the nurse. “I had wondered why my father and Alyson had not
been formally betrothed, especially when Alyson and her
people moved to the castle.”

“Your father did that. He liked to keep her in doubt”

His father had always done that filthy trick, Guillelm remembered.

“He may have been a lord, but he had no honor.” Gytha
cleared her throat. “I am sorry to say this, my lord-“

“No, ‘tis best I know.” So much now made sense: Alyson’s
reluctance to speak of his father, her sudden, inexplicable looks
of fear. “She must truly hate me and mine,” he said bleakly.

“Never, my lord!” Gytha shook her head so strongly that she
loosened one of the pins from her head rail and it flew from her
head, bouncing on the flags. “She would hear no ill word about
you from anyone. There was one evening, soon after her own
father had died.” Gytha pursued her lips and was silent.

“Tell me” He dreaded to hear more but could not leave it
so. “Please”

Gytha sighed and settled on the edge of the bed, absently
rubbing her knees over and over.

“Lord Robert had been drinking hard that night. He called
you a lost son, said you were worthless, reckless, useless. My
lady Alyson flared up at once. She leapt from her seat on the
dais and told him to his face that you were three times the
worth of any man.

“Lord Robert stalked from the hall at that. A few moments
later, a squire came to my young mistress, told her she should
join your father in his great chamber.”

“His bedroom? But they were not plighted.”

“Indeed they were not! But what could my lady do? She
was in his house. Her father was dead. She had no protectors.

“I followed her that night.”

“That night? There had been other occasions?”

“When Lord Robert summoned my lady to his chamber?
Yes. Too many times for my peace of mind, I can say! When
I asked Alyson about them, she said Lord Robert scolded her.
About her gowns, for one matter, and her learning for another. He thought her altogether too showy. He took her book
from her and burned her dresses, all but the plainest.

“But I was speaking of that particular night,” Gytha went
on, while Guillelm listened to Alyson’s light, fast breathing
and the unearthly sound of the nuns in the chapel, singing,
and wished his father into the darkest, deepest, hottest pit in
hell. “That night, I followed her.”

“So you said.”

“Be not so sour, my lord, for it is good I did. You were a
thousand leagues off in Outremer and my bird had no one else
to look out for her. None but her own wits, and sometimes
these failed when her temper overcame her. Mind, I think your
father provoked her, too, so he had an excuse to punish.”

“And he did so here” Guillelm looked about the main bedchamber, trying to conceive of the shadows and horrors the
room forever would hold for Alyson and feeling a tremendous
shame and despair. “A pity he did not die of a surfeit in the
great hall, first.”

“It would have saved my lady much hurt”

About to say more, Gytha paused as Alyson turned on the
bed, her legs thrashing briefly beneath the linen sheet. She
quietened and Gytha said quickly, “I am glad you removed
Lord Robert’s treasure chest from this room. He bent her over
it, you see, while he chastised her.”

Guillelm tried to swallow and found he could not. Tomorrow he would be burning that chest, he vowed, but tonight he had to
know all, every grotesque detail. “You are sure of this?”

Gytha nodded. “I saw with my own eyes! The door was ajar.
He was very drunk, you see. He was using his belt, laying on
harshly. I stopped him that night by screaming outside the chamber that I had seen an intruder in the castle, close to Alyson’s
room” The nurse gave a grim smile. “He came out quickly
enough from his chamber then, you may be sure! He was ever
jealous of my lady, convinced all men were spying on her.”

This was too close to what Guillelm himself felt at times
and he hung his head, overwhelmed afresh with shame. “He
did this because of me? Because she had spoken up for me?”

“For other reasons, too, my lord. You must not reproach
yourself.”

How can I not? Guillelm thought, wondering how his
father had faced his own confessor, how he had lived with
what he had done.

“Why did she say nothing to me? I would have understood.”

“Can you imagine my lady wanting to spoil your good
memories of Lord Robert by confessing any of this to you?”

“I have no good memories to spoil.” Guillelm sighed. “Tell
me this once and be done”

Gytha rubbed her knees more and said in a hushed quick
way, “I do not know the whole tale. I only learned what I did
that night because I saw Alyson before she had time to collect herself.” The nurse glanced at her former charge, a slow
blush stealing into her plump cheeks. “I fear I took advantage
of her moment of weakness that night and persuaded her to
talk by claiming that if she told me a little of what had passed
between her and Lord Robert I could advise her on how best
to please him and avoid such-‘

“Please him!” Enraged afresh at his father, Guillelm could
say no more.

I am not proud of what I did.” Gytha sighed. “But, then, I truly feared for her.” Her lip curled. “I would not treat a dog
as he had dealt with her that night! When I brought her out of
the chamber, she could scarcely walk, she was shaking so
much. And this was not the first time, no! The first I knew
of it, but Lord Robert had whipped her before. For smiling
too broadly at Sericus, a lame old man whom she has known
since she was a child! She asked me, then, as we limped
slowly back to her room, if she had done wrong. Lord Robert
made her doubt herself.”

Gytha talked more, a sordid, pitiful story that revealed
Lord Robert as a bitter misogynist, intent on breaking Alyson
in every way he could. His father had wanted her powerless
and a victim and so had kept her in doubt of her own place
at Hardspen-delaying their formal betrothal, denying her the
clothes fit for her station, forbidding her to visit or see her
friends, giving her no keys to the store chests. She had sat
with him on the dais in the great hall but had not been allowed to speak, even if a villager from Olverton came and
asked for audience with Lord Robert.

“All this within the month she stayed with him,” Guillelm
muttered, grinding his fists into his eyes, trying to rid himself
of the unwelcome pictures that were now branded into his brain.
He had known his father was a narrow, vengeful man but even
so-

“Mother of God!” he burst out.

Gytha nodded. “He was eaten alive by jealousy, possessed
by envy. Every day was worse than the one before. He would
smile and say honeyed words to her, let her think he was content, that he approved of her and then he would change: draw
back, become cold, not speak, summon her to his chamber.

“I know this is a terrible thing to say, but the summer sickness was a blessing. With so many falling ill, Lord Robert had
to allow her to practice her healing arts and allow her more
freedom. When he was taken sick”-Gytha touched Alyson’s still hand, clasping the pale cool fingers in her own chapped
palm-“I cannot pretend I was not glad.”

“I want to kill him,” Guillelm said. “Grind and break his
bones-“

“Would you become another Lord Robert?” Gytha snorted.
“He is already dead and buried, as well you know! Can you
think of nothing better than that?”

Astonished at her forthrightness, Guillelm fell silent.

“Yes,” he said, after a long, tense moment. “Yes, I can, and
I will.”

“Good!” Gytha rose off the bed. “And I will fetch Sister
Ursula to tend my lady now. She has prayed enough for one
night.”

Alyson leaned back against the pillows and looked at the
parchment in her lap. Guillelm had found it for her from
somewhere, and ink. He said she could use it to write down
her potions, or the tithes that Olverton owed the church, or
poetry or stories she remembered-anything she wanted.

“The Arab doctors believe that when a woman is sick or injured, she must have everything she desires,” he had told her.
“You are to indulge your every whim.”

Carefully, using her left arm, Alyson reached for her cup of
mint tisane, conscious of the stretch of the healing sinews in
her shoulder. It was ten days since she had been brought back
to Hardspen and every day saw her stronger, more interested
in her surroundings.

She could not become any more interested in Guillelm
than she already was, but she was becoming anxious of how
she might appear to him, with her bandaged shoulder and unwashed hair. It was a small reassurance to her that he seemed
equally anxious to please her; whether because of the Arab
doctors or for his own reasons Alyson did not know, but she
reveled in his attention.

Five days ago, he had carried her outside their chamber to a made-up bed on the highest point of the keep, well out of
range of archers, he said. There between the battlements, on
the very roof of the castle, he had made what he called a paradise: a private, hidden garden.

Paradise it was, Alyson thought, sipping her tisane and
watching the swifts tumbling in the cloudless blue skies. The
canopy set above her soft mattress creaked softly in the
breeze. She had cool drinks waiting for her on a low table
beside her couch, and pieces of fresh white bread and honey
to eat. There were seven low wooden tubs set out over the roof
filled with earth and turf and flowers-roses, lavender,
marigolds, hyssop, speedwells and buttercups.

“I carried the tubs up here, and the earth,” Guillelm said,
grinning at her exclamation of delight. “The nuns planted the
flowers; I was merely their water-bearer.”

He did not mention her sister and Alyson did not ask. She
felt too weary to delve more deeply into where Ursula might
be. Not with her, certainly. She had not seen her sister since
the night she had been injured, and even now she was not sure
if Ursula’s presence had been a dream or not.

But she was very glad of this high, private garden. The
sight and scents of the flowers eased her. She watched a bumblebee, dusted with pollen, flying among the lavender, and a
white butterfly basking on top of the battlement walls and felt
truly safe, as she had as a child. She was happy to stay out
here from sunrise to sunset.

She dozed, stirred, ate some bread and honey and took up
her quill. Gytha, sitting on a stool close to the canopy, put
down her spindle and spread a rough cloth over Alyson so she
would not spill ink on herself or the linen sheet.

Smiling her thanks, Alyson began to write. Though she had
not asked Guillelm for the parchment, she was pleased he had
found it for her and flattered that he had remembered her love of reading and writing. She had written two letters every day
for the past five days: one for Guillelm, and one for herself.

She always began with her letter to Guillelm, before her
shoulder ached too much. Aware that his skill in reading was not
as great as hers, she wrote in a large, even hand. It was more of
a simple “good-day” to him, a scrap of contact between them.

My dear lord,

I trust that your time with the armorers is well spent
this morning. I await your company this afternoon.

With faithful obedience, Alyson

Then, because Guillelm always asked if she was sufficiently warm or cool, or if she was thirsty or hungry or bored,
she added,

I am very comfortable, counting the bees on the
marigolds, drinking a mint tisane that is cooler and
greener than the grass on the downs. I have no pain.

Except the small hurt of missing him, to which she would
not admit.

She tore off the strip of written parchment, tied it with one
of her ribbons and held it out to Gytha.

Her nurse rose off her stool, “I will find a page to take it to
him,” she said and wandered off to do just that.