A Knight's Vow (33 page)

“Soon, I was more than ready to believe my sister’s dismal
prediction regarding men. I had seen it too often, played out in alleys when besieging forces broke through. I witnessed
how soldiers hurled themselves upon unwilling girls and
women. I tried to stop it, but other commanders told me it was
the sport of war, that it was the nature of the beast. I remembered what Juliana had told me, and agreed.

“Of course, Heloise was nothing like a common camp follower or courtesan, forced by circumstances to give her unwilling body to greedy, careless troops. When I met her, I
began to entertain the hope that my sister could be mistaken
and that not all men were brutes”

Thunder cracked again, farther away this time. There was
more lightning, but Alyson paid it no attention. “I know that
she is blond,” she remarked, as if that was of great significance. She flicked at her own plait, a nervous, defensive gesture. “Fulk said she is very beautiful.”

“Fulk is an idiot.” With his thumb, Guillelm traced the line
of Alyson’s veil, marveling at the feel of silk against silk. To
him, her flowing black tresses were richer than any gold, but
how could he persuade her of that?

“Heloise bleaches her hair,” he lied. “There is very little of
nature in her. She uses many arts to enhance her looks.”

“She is charming?” Alyson prompted, a question Guillelm
wished she had not asked. “Enough,” she added quickly, sitting back on her heels. “If it pains you to speak of it, then let
it go. It was many years ago, in another country.”

“No, sweet, you deserve the truth”

Guillelm stretched out his arm and drew her close, heartened when she did not stiffen. Burning inwardly at the
memory of the entire episode with Heloise, he began to speak.

“As I say, when I encountered Heloise, I was already convinced that women despised men, especially men like me: the
big, clumsy kind.”

“You are not clumsy, dragon! Not a bit.”

Guillelm kissed her in thanks, then kissed her again for
pleasure.

“If you keep interrupting, I shall never be done,” he warned.

“Why should I not interrupt, when I am kissed for my trouble?” Alyson responded pertly, which made him want to embrace her afresh.

Fighting down his desire, Guillelm resumed his account.

“I met Heloise at a joust in Outremer. She sent me a favor
to wear. I was amazed. Ladies of my uncle’s court in Poitiers
had rarely granted me favors and I had grown accustomed to
the same and worse treatment in the East.

“After the joustin which I won Caliph Heloise sought
me out. I remember she was dressed all in white. She was
radiant on that hot, dusty afternoon. She brought me a covered silver chalice of wine. She called me `my terrible
beauty.’ I was flattered”

Guillelm sighed, looking down at the top of Alyson’s lowered head, wishing he could see into her mind. She was so still,
so quiet, he hardly knew how she was receiving this sorry story.

“She had a rich town house in Jerusalem. From its roof you
could see over the grain market to Tancred’s Tower. I fell into
the habit of calling there, whenever I could. She always received me. I took her gifts: game, flowers, a poem I had written in mangled Arabic. She smiled at my spelling mistakes.”

Alyson inhaled a slow, deep breath but said nothing.

“She would have no other rivals to my affection. Somehow,
she heard that I had a liking for small, dark women and she
scolded me for days, threatening to deny me her company. At
the time I thanked God that she had never learned anything
particular of you, Alyson. You were still my ideal, but your
father had made it very clear to me that he would never consent to a match between us. I was trying to make some kind
of life for myself. All other black-haired, zesty, vivid beauties
were too strong a reminder of you, whom I had already lost. Heloise was tall, voluptuous, pale as a winter new moon.
I told myself I was smitten with her.

“She encouraged me. She allowed me to kiss her hands.
She teased me into washing and kissing her feet. She spoke
of the lands I should be granted in the East. She admired my
battle prowess. When she at last admitted me into her inner
chamber, with no chaperone present save a Greek maid who
knew no French, I took it as a sign and spoke my suit, offering Heloise my hand in marriage.

“She refused me ”” Guillelm felt his mouth twist downward.
“How she refused me! She told me I was altogether too big
and brutal, that I would burn any woman to ashes in a wedding bed. I remember her laughter as I stumbled from her
house. I remember the Greek maid, laughing and pointing,
and Heloise, cool and poised, lounging on cushions, picking
the petals of the roses I had brought her and tossing them on
the floor.”

Guillelm fell silent. Around them, he heard the drizzle of
the departing rain, the faint alarm call of a blackbird. He
waited and felt his companion shudder, but there was no
sound from her.

“After that, I knew it was no use,” he said. “I knew what I
was to women. Juliana had warned me, and Heloise confirmed it. I was a brute male, a warrior, nothing more.

“Then I returned to England, to Hardspen. And I found you
again, sweet, brave Alyson, who has never feared me. I
thought, I hoped-I prayed things would be different between
us. I hoped my love for you would make the difference. I am
sorry it has not”

“But it has,” Alyson said.

She touched his arm, relieved when he did not flinch.

“You are no brute,” she said softly. “You never were”

“Truly?” He looked at her, the ashlike, dull dread in his eyes
terrible to see.

“Yes” She took him by the shoulders. “You are too big to
shake, or I would do so. Do you think I care what an Eastern
harridan says about you?”

“Truly?”

Alyson nodded and, utterly exasperated, snapped her fingers.
“Of course, you great fool. Do you think-?”

Her tongue was stilled from the rest of its complaint as
Guillelm wrapped his arms about her, his whole being transformed into a fiery glitter and brightness. His eyes gleaming,
his stern face glowing, he pressed her close to his heart. The
heat of his strong body made her gasp.

“Do you love me, sweetheart?” he murmured. “Can you
love me, just a little?”

“Yes!” Alyson whispered. “Yes!”

She gasped a second time as his lips embraced the curve of
her breast. She was intoxicated, but not by wine. By Guillelm.
Increasingly daring, she parted the neck drawstrings of his shirt and burrowed her hand inside, reveling in the feel of his solid
body. His chest was crisscrossed with curling golden hairs and,
on his left side, by a ridge of scar tissue running down the length
of two ribs. She drew back the shirt further and kissed the taut,
tanned flesh, close to the scar and then on the scar. His ribs
moved under her lips as he inhaled sharply, not releasing the
breath until she teased her fingers over the powerful band of
muscle across his stomach.

“Mother of God!” she heard him hiss, his big hands circling her breasts in gentle, almost lazy sweeps that made her
entire body quiver with need. In that mysterious, secret place
between her legs, Alyson felt to be melting into sweetnessshe was lost in his touch and in touching him. She loved his
long flanks and his back, so broad that when she wrapped her
arms about his shoulders, her hands could scarcely meet. She
loved his shaggy golden eyebrows and his long-fingered
hands with their pads of callus on the palms and the fingertips that could probe and stroke. She loved his full, sensual
mouth and did not care that his heavy runner’s thigh imprisoned both her legs. In the faint yellow glare of the storm, he
was like a statue of a pagan god come to life.

“So beautiful,” she murmured. He was so wonderfully hot,
his athletic, robust body both smooth and at the same time
rough-skinned. Touching him, Alyson thought of Caliph, recognizing in Guillelm the same compelling vigor.

She ran her thumb along the length of his nose, giggling as
he caught her thumb between his lips and sucked it. His eyes
flashed as he watched her, ravishing her with a glance, and
his mouth was bent into an indulgent smile.

She did not want this moment to end, but outside the barn
there came a pounding of feet. As she and Guillelm broke
apart, a gap-toothed boy almost impaled himself on the
plough inside the door.

“My lord! My lady! I have a message for you!” he yelled,
shaking his dripping head and spraying them with water drops.

Guillelm glanced at Alyson, who was standing poised on
the balls of her feet, her hands bunched into fists. “What are
you doing?” he snorted.

“I could say the same of you,” Alyson retorted. In leaping
to his feet, Guillelm had swept her behind him, and not all
that gently. Each had attempted to shield the other from a possible attacker.

He smiled, a little grimly, she thought, but his answer was
amused. “Peace, wife. I am a soldier. Now let us hear what this
fireball has to say. Your message, young man?” he demanded.

Alyson quickly turned her back to reorder her gown with
hands that were far from steady, but the boy was far too excited at the prospect of dealing with a real crusader to pay attention to her, a mere woman.

“Mistress Eva charges me to tell you that she and the villagers of Setton Minor will await your coming another day, for
today is now too wet for the festival. She bid me give you this.”

He handed over a bundle and then was off again, sprinting
across the downs with wild abandon, as agile as a pine marten.

“How did Eva know where we were?” Guillelm asked.

“She is a wisewoman, doubtless with her methods of divining,” Alyson answered, kneeling back amidst the hay. She was
so deliciously distracted by Guillelm’s declarations and embrace that she could scarcely concentrate; it took her three attempts to untie the bundle.

Inside was a precious scrap of parchment, on which Eva
had scratched the following.

My lady, consider the barn your castle for today and
tonight. Use anything within it as you please. Burn the
plough, but not, I pray you, the rakes. If you stay you will
have good fortune. The pie is venison.

“She has sent us some goodly provisions, this Eva,” Guillelm exclaimed, as Alyson spread the bounty before them.

“Mmm,” Alyson agreed. There was indeed a venison pie,
dark maslin bread, dried apples, nuts and soft cheese. In addition to the food, there were two woolen sheets, big enough
for two to lie between. Alyson lifted one, brushing its rough
warmth against her cheek.

Eva must have talked to her nurse, she thought, for the last
thing she drew from the bundle was a salve. The wisewoman
had tied a strip of parchment round the earthenware, roundbellied jar, with the instruction, For my lady’s shoulder. A
salve ofgarlic.

Alyson blushed. The healer in her knew that garlic was a
good antiseptic, but she also knew that the bulb was said to
be an aphrodisiac.

She glanced at Guillelm, hoping her desire for him did not
show in her face. “If we are to reheat this pie we shall need
a fire.”

Guillelm reached across her to the woodworm-ridden
plough. “Then I shall break this up for you” He walked out
again into a darkening landscape of rainbows and puddles,
whistling as he went.

Later, after she had cleared away the rakes into a corner
and swept an area clear of hay and chaff, Alyson laid the
plough-turned-into-firewood on the “hearthstone” of a lowlevel boulder. “This will smoke, I fear,” she said.

“I do not care,” Guillelm replied.

In case she sounded too brazen, Alyson stopped herself in
time from saying that she did not care at all, either, but that
was still true; she was too happy.

It was a strange intimacy, working companionably and
almost silently with the man she loved to prepare a meal and a bed for the night, on the downs where only sheep lingered.
While Guillelm went off to refill their water flasks at the
spring, she said a prayer to the Virgin, and to Jesus, then
busied herself making the fire.

She had a good blaze going when Guillelm returned. As
she saw him crossing the downs, threading surefootedly
amongst the grass and heather, Alyson was transfixed by love
and then laughter.

“What have you been doing?” she burst out, unable to contain her giggles. He seemed to have gained an instant
gourmet’s stomach; his linen shirt bulged above his belt and
pouched in ungainly folds round his normally sleek middle.

“Kindling for tonight,” he said, patting his heather “stomach” Nodding approval at her fire, he stalked into the empty
space of their barn. “If you want to spread Eva’s bedding in
our sleeping place”-his face broke into a wolfish grin
“you may do it in any way you please, wife.”

Wife. She was truly his wife. Hugging that marvelous
knowledge to herself as Guillelm piled the kindling by their
firestone, Alyson made two rough “mattresses” of hay, covering the smaller with her own cloak and Guillelm’s and the
second with Eva’s blankets. Presuming nothing-although
part of her was scandalously tempted to drag their bedding
into one glorious heap-Alyson was already half-regretting
her action when a deliberate snapping of twigs made her look
up straight into her husband’s face.

His expression was impossible to interpret but as he fed the
fire with more wood, his words were clear enough. “We will
freeze that way. We need to bundle together tonight.”

“But it is summer,” Alyson answered, mentally scolding
the rational part of her head for mentioning that fact. What
did it matter? Bundling, as Guillelm put it, was what she
wanted. Finally, they would be in bed together.

“It is warm now,” Guillelm replied, moving away from the fire to draw the two rough mattresses together. His amused
voice came out of the semidarkness as he respread the sheets
and cloaks, making a single bed. “It is clear you have never
had to take a watch through from dusk to dawn, my girl.”