A Knight's Vow (39 page)

Beside her, Fulk spun round and tried to run into the forest.
He had not gone above five paces when there came a new
bellow and Sir Tom was there on horseback, barring the way,
a sword in his left hand. Sir Tom advanced and Fulk retreated,
making a dash for another part of the woodland.

As he passed her, Alyson caught his sword arm and clung
on, praying her strength into her hands.

With a squeal of rage, Fulk tossed her off and lunged with
the sword. The blade sang past Alyson’s head and struck one
of the logs intended to be used for her burning. Sir Tom was
yelling but Guillelm, coming at a sprint, shouted, “Mine!”
and, seeing Fulk’s movement to stab with the sword again,
threw back his arm.

There was a flash of light and Fulk tumbled away, a knife
glancing off his shoulder. In shadow, Guillelm knelt by Alyson,
unfastening his cloak. She spoke to him. “You came for me ””

“Little idiot. Of course I came for you” Guillelm shook his
head. As he leaned across and his hands wrapped her gently
in warmth, Alyson felt the touch of water on her face. It surprised her, his weeping.

“How? Why?” she began, but when she moved her arm
which was only just beginning to return to life as the blood
pulsed painfully back into her wrists and fingers-and tried
to touch Guillelm’s hair, he drew back.

“Are you hurt?” he asked. He was running a hand over her
head, neck, throat, arms, flanks all over her, as if to check
she was whole. Even as she was, stunned with everything that
had happened, Alyson felt a spiraling tingle of desire.

“No, no,” she answered hastily, catching his fingers in hers
before she forgot herself completely and launched into his
arms. Then she saw the red staining through his sleeve. “You
are bleeding!”

“‘Tis nothing, a scratch.” Guillelm turned quickly, to hide the injury from her. “But what are these marks, upon your
wrists?” Abruptly, he scanned the bundles of wood and kindling, the broken branches in the elder and birch trees. His
face darkened. “That evil, treacherous bastard-

“Fulk!” he roared, still crouching over her. “I challenge
you! Fight me, damn you!”

She could feel the heat of his rage and yet he clasped her
gently, rocking her to and fro as if she were a babe in arms.

She had yet to tell him about their child, if a child it was.
“Guillelm-“

“No, sweet, explanations as to why you are out of the convent must keep” He glanced at Sir Tom, who had dismounted
and approached. “Tom”

“I know, Guido. I will take care of her for you” With a tiny
grunt of discomfort, Tom sat on the ground beside Guillelm
and cradled Alyson off Guillelm’s knees onto his own. When
Alyson started to protest that she needed no one to “take care
of her,” Tom tightened his arms about her and brought his
mouth to her ear.

“This is the only time, wench, that I will ever have you anywhere near my lap without your ever-anxious husband gutting me. Now be still and let me savor the moment” He was
smiling as he said it, though his eyes were strained. He gave
her more water to drink, muttering “Steady,” as she tried to
take a huge gulp of water to soothe her parched throat.

Tom tried to block her view of the clearing with his own
large head, but Alyson tugged at his cloak.

“Must see,” she choked, for she knew Guillelm had risen
and left her side.

“For sure you must,” Tom sighed and he positioned her so
she was sitting half on the ground with her back resting
against his broad chest.

“He is hurt!” Alyson murmured, seeing a trickle of blood
falling from Guillelm’s arm onto the grass and ferns. “I must
go tend him.”

Tom wound one of his legs across hers, pinning her. “Let
him be. I have seen him fight with worse”

Fight? Alyson tried to warn Guillelm: that he should not
do this; that he had already attacked and driven off most of
Fulk’s straggling group of soldiers; that Fulk no longer mattered; that it was over. She could not find the breath to shout,
and as she struggled, Guillelm spoke.

“Wherever you are, Fulk, whatever tree you are hiding
behind, come out! Fight me, one against one. Whatever happens, your men may go free. Face me! Fight me!”

He began to chant something in a strange mixture of
French and Arabic.

“What is he saying?” Alyson asked Tom. Tom shook his
head. Exasperated, she snapped her fingers. “How did you
find me? Tell me that, at least.”

Sir Tom cleared his throat, his tone amused. “Guido said
you did that trick with your fingers. I did not quite believe
him. You are a fiery creature, mistress Alyson.”

“How?” Alyson repeated, her eyes fixed on Guillelm as he
stalked across the clearing, the evening sun throwing his tall
shadow still farther. “Oh, God, he will be killed. His arm is
bright with blood!”

“Someone may be killed, certainly,” Sir Tom grunted. “No,
you stay still. You cannot help him now. Listen! Listen, Alyson,
show that good sense that Guido praises you for so much. We
found you because your man wanted to see you, because he
rode over to the convent in desperate hope of seeing you”

“Truly?” Alyson hugged that knowledge to herself. “Really
and truly?”

“Truly, Alyson, and if you keep interrupting me I shall
never be done. So we rode to the convent, and what we found
was a full hue and cry over your going missing, but Guido
guessed you had taken the road back to Hardspen. `Whatever
we do, whatever we plan, we are one,’ he told the abbess. `I
know what she will be doing. She must have cut across coun try, and that is how we have missed each other.’ He was right,
too-we had not ridden a half-mile away from the convent
when his trackers spotted Eustace of Normandy in the woods
off the road. He was not easy to miss, since he was sprinting
toward the road, waving his arms”

“Is Eustace a tall, weather-beaten man with red curling hair?”

“How did you know that? No matter, you are right. It was
Eustace, who had gone off with Fulk when Guido told Fulk to
leave his service.” Sir Tom’s battle-scarred face colored with
embarrassment. “The fellow must have had a change of heart”

“Fulk would say I had bewitched him.”

“If any are bewitched, it is Fulk himself. The man was
always wild with ambition, but now he has become obsessed.”

At the edge of Alyson’s vision, she saw Sir Tom make the
sign to ward off the evil eye. “What he did here, what he was
about to do, was madness,” he said.

“Fulk was convinced he was right.”

“In that he has not changed,” Sir Tom replied. “He was ever
one to judge harshly and narrowly. Once in Outremer-“

Alyson waved her hand to silence him. “What is Guillelm
doing?” she asked.

Throughout her hasty, whispered conversation, her eyes
had not left her husband. Guillelm had been walking up and
down the clearing, nodding to his own men who had ridden
out of the woods. Those loyal to Fulk had already fledAlyson could hear them dimly, pounding along the road-or
were sitting or lying at the edge of the clearing. Some were
clearly wounded, others looked as dazed as she was. She noticed them because Guillelm had noticed them and had called
to his own troops to tend them. Of Fulk there was no sign.

Now Guillelm had completed four full circuits of the clearing, scanning this way and that, into the trees and undergrowth and beyond, when he picked a pebble from the earth.
Still in midstride, he hurled it at an elder bush. In a snapping
of twigs the bush seemed to explode; the dark purple juice and pulp of the elderberries splashed against the nearby trees
like blood. As Alyson shivered, Guillelm feinted a throw at a
low canopy of scrubby brambles, then jerked round and
tossed another stone into a squat, dense holly tree.

“He is trying to shock Fulk into breaking cover,” Alyson said.

“Yes,” Sir Tom agreed. “But he will not do it. Fulk’s an old
hand at this.”

Guillelm stopped, scooped up a handful of dried grass and
struck the edge of his sword with something Alyson could not
see. Sparks flew and the grass caught fire, smoke and bright
orange flames rolling from Guillelm’s outstretched hand into
the sky.

“Meet my challenge or burn!” he roared. “Mother of God,
I will burn all these woods from here to Hardspen, but you
shall not escape me!”

“He would, too,” said Sir Tom, half-admiring, halfremonstrating. “That is my wild, mad dragon “

“Mine, too,” said Alyson, coughing as the smoke coiled
into her lungs. “I can sit and watch no more.”

In a spurt of her old familiar speed, she evaded Sir Tom
and, before he could prevent it, pushed herself to her feet.

“Fulk, fight me!” she cried. “If I am a witch, as you say, you
need have no qualms in warring with a woman. I challenge
you!”

“No!” Guillelm shouted, skidding round to her, flinging
his flaming torch aside. “Never!”

As one of his men scrambled out of the woods to stamp out
the torch, Guillelm was running to her. At the sight of his
stark, set face, Sir Tom backed away, but Alyson held her
ground. She was almost too weary to move. Summoning the
last of her fading energy, she called out, “Are you a coward,
Fulk? Or afraid that you are wrong?”

Fulk stepped out from the cover of two rowans, growing so
close to each other their branches interweaved. He walked
around a patch of dog’s mercury and nettles, his sword and helm blackened with smeared mud, a long dark cloak
wrapped around his armor and trailing over the grass. His
face was, if possible, even more gaunt.

“I am not wrong,” he said.

At the sound of his voice the muted speech of Guillelm’s men
as they scoured the woods was cut off sharply, like a musician
placing his hand upon the harp strings to kill the sound. Faces
appeared at the edges of the clearing as the men came to listen.

This was the moment, Alyson knew. She touched the cross
the abbess had given her. “I swear that I am innocent. I did
not flee the convent. I chose to leave it.”

“Why?” Fulk demanded.

Alyson knew she should not hesitate, but she hated the idea
of telling her very personal news to everyone in this clearing.
“That is between my husband and myself.”

Fulk could not contain his dislike. “We all heard the vow
your husband took at Hardspen, madam, on your wedding
night. Shall I remind you of it? `We may share the same bed,
but we shall never lie together in love.”’

“Stop-” Tears pooled into Alyson’s eyes as she remembered. “Why say such things now?”

“Because he knows he is a dead man,” muttered Sir Tom
somewhere behind her.

“He would make himself a dead man,” said Guillelm,
coming beside Alyson and putting himself between her and
Fulk. “But I am not sure that he is worthy of being killed.”

Fulk backed up several paces, his face panic-stricken as Guillelm cast his sword onto the ground and opened his arms. “See
me, Fulk. I am wounded and unarmed. We would be a match.
Come at me, not my wife. For Alyson is my true wife, to have
and to hold until the end of my life, and I put my faith in her.”

Alyson gasped at his use of the words of the marriage ceremony, at the reminder of the sacred promises they had made to
each other. She understood them as never before, and in speaking them, Guillelm was showing her that he felt the same.

“For Alyson I would face any ordeal,” he said, “any trial. I
know she is innocent, although in truth I would defend her
even if she were guilty, she is so excellent to me. I love her.
Do you hear, Fulk? I love her!”

Fulk gave a low cry and moved away, but no one was
watching him. All eyes were on Guillelm as he turned, emotion brimming in his face, his forehead, cheeks and chin red
with feeling, sweat darkening the blond hair plastered to his
temples. He was as weary as she was, Alyson realized, as
worn down with worry. Almost of its own will, her hand rose
and she touched his ear where a branch had scraped across it,
drawing a speckle of blood. She wiped the blood away.

“Your arm,” she whispered. It was still bleeding, though
less than before.

“It is of no matter,” he said softly. “Nothing matters but that
we understand each other.”

He took her hand and kissed her fingers one by one. “I love
you,” he said. “Can you not see this? I have always loved you”

For the second time he opened his arms and Alyson fell
into them.

Sometime after, when Guillelm left her a moment to fetch
his horse, Alyson remembered the others, and Fulk.

“Gone,” Sir Tom said bluntly, when she asked. “Ran off the
instant Guido said he loved you. The fellow can run back to
Outremer for all I care. We are well rid of him.”

“Yes,” said Alyson, though she was thinking of Guillelm
again and those marvelous words, “I have always loved you.”

It was her deepest wish come true.

They returned to the convent. This time, Alyson slept in the
guest house, with Guillelm beside her. There were things to
discuss: the return of Eva to her woodland cottage, and Gytha
to Hardspen, but first Alyson told him her own news.

Sitting side by side on their bed, he heard her out gravely,
in silence. “You are sure of this?” he said at last.

Alyson sensed him watching her as she fed their small brazier fire with twigs. “As sure as I can be,” she answered. Was he
pleased? she wondered, a little of her earlier jubilation and confidence draining away. “You did say that you would not annul
our marriage because I could be with child,” she went on, her
voice becoming higher and faster. “You were right, Guillelm .”

“Mother of God, girl, I said that to Fulk! I spoke the only
language he would understand, but if you think I meant it, you
have less wit than our merlin.” He wrapped his arms about her,
tossed the rest of her twigs onto the fire and kissed her deeply.
“I would never give you up. Unless you wished it, and even
then-” He kissed her again. “No, I do not think I could do
it. You will have to put up with me forever, sweetheart”