A Song for Arbonne (31 page)

Galbert de Garsenc, massive and imposing in his riding clothes, makes no immediate reply to her greeting, looking stonily down upon her from his horse. He ought to have dismounted, of course, simple courtesy to his son's wife demands that; his failure to do so is a first signal, an attempt to intimidate. Rosala knows by now that almost everything this man does is meant as a means of control.

"Will you come in?" she says, as if there is nothing untoward in his manner at all. "You must know that Ranald is away, but I will gladly do what I may to make you comfortable." She smiles, but only briefly; she will not abase herself before this man, she has sworn it to herself.

He jerks his reins to make the horse dance a little, quite close to her. She stands motionless; she certainly isn't afraid of horses, and she is quite sure, for the obvious reason, that her father-in-law will not risk doing her any physical harm just now.

Galbert clears his throat. "Get in," he says, the celebrated voice icy cold. "Get into the castle immediately before you shame us further. I heard tell that you were walking abroad but refused to credit it. I came to see for myself, certain that the rumours must be idle and false. Instead I find you brazening about obscenely, parading in your condition before the serfs, exactly as I was told. Are you utterly corrupt that you do such things?"

She had actually thought it might be this. It is almost a relief to have been right, to know from what direction the latest attack is coming.

"You wrong me and cheapen yourself," she says as calmly as she can manage. "I am doing what the Savaric women have done for generations. You know it, my lord, do not feign otherwise. The women of my family have never kept to their rooms while carrying, they have always taken daily walks on the family estates."

He jerks the reins again; the horse dances uneasily. "You are a Garsenc now, not a Savaric."

"False. I will always be a Savaric. my lord. Do not deceive yourself. What I was born to may not be taken from me." She hesitates. "It may only be added to." That last is meant as conciliation; with Ranald away she really does not want a confrontation with his father. "My husband and lord knows I am not lingering abed; I told him of my family tradition when we first learned I was carrying. He raised no objection."

"Of course he didn't. Ranald is beneath contempt. A fool beyond words. He shames our ancestors."

Rosala smiles sweetly. "He did ask me to tell him if ever you spoke disparagingly of him to me. Would these words fit such a description?"

Be careful,
she tells herself then.
This is a man who will not be crossed.
But it is hard to yield spinelessly to him; so very hard, remembering her own father and her home, to cringe before the High Elder, flush with his new ascendancy.

She sees Galbert check a too-swift reply. Ranald has a temper, and Blaise too, to a lesser degree. The father is as ice compared to both of them—his anger and his hate kept channelled, ruthlessly controlled.

"You are deliberately insolent," he says. "Shall I whip you for it?" His voice is incongruously mild speaking the words, as if he were merely offering to walk her about the grounds or summon a servant to her aid.

"Indeed," Rosala says hardily. "A worthy thought. You come here out of alleged concern for the child I carry, and then offer me a beating. A prudent course, my lord."

His turn to smile. His smile frightens her more than anything else. She tries not to let that show.

"I can wait," says Galbert de Garsenc softly. "You are not a child. Discipline can be delayed and you will still know the cause. I am a patient man. Get into the castle now, though, or I will be forced to handle you in front of the corans and the servants. You carry the first of the new generation of the Garsenc line and you will not be permitted to jeopardize that with this folly."

Rosala does not move. He is not going to hurt her. She knows that. A kind of reckless giddiness rises in her, a surge of hatred she cannot quite master. "Forgive me my ignorance, and that of my family," she says. "You are clearly to be deferred to in these matters, my lord. You know so much about helping women survive childbirth." A dangerous cut, one she might truly be made to pay for later. Galbert's first wife died, hours after giving birth to Blaise, and two subsequent wives did not survive their first confinements in this castle, with the children stillborn.

She has meant to wound, wisely or no, but nothing in his face shows that she has done so. "As I said," he murmurs, still smiling, "a whipping may be given at any time."

"Of course," she replies. "I live entirely at the mercy of your kindness, my lord. Though indeed, if you wound and scar me too greatly it might spoil the king's pleasure when he chooses to send for me, might it not?"

She hadn't planned to say anything like that; it has slipped out. She isn't sorry though, now that the words are spoken. The thought, and the fear behind it, are never far from her.

She sees the High Elder react for the first time. She wasn't even thought to have been aware of this aspect of things, she realizes. It is almost amusing: women are imagined to troop like so many sheep through the court, eyes down, dull minds shuttered, oblivious to whatever nuances might be passing about them. She could laugh, were her fears not so tangible.

Galbert de Garsenc's smile deepens now, the smooth-shaven, fleshy face creasing into something truly unpleasant. "You are hungry for that moment, I see. You are already in lust. You would prefer to kill the child that you might come panting and hot to Ademar's bed the sooner, would you not? You have all the vile corruption of women in you, especially those of your lineage. I knew it when first I ever saw you."

Rosala stiffens. She feels dizzy suddenly. The walk uphill, the bright sunlight overhead, and now this foul, streaming torrent of abuse. She actually wishes Ranald were home; his presence might have served to temper or at least deflect onto himself some of Galbert's viciousness. She has brought this upon herself, she thinks shakily. Better to have swallowed pride, to have meekly gone within. How can she, alone and at his mercy, possibly fight this man?

She looks up at him, a sickness within her. Her family is as good as this one, she tells herself fiercely, or so very nearly as to make no difference. She knows what has to be said now. Fighting for self-control, she speaks.

"Hear me. I will kill myself before I let him touch me. Do not ever doubt that this is so. And do not try to deny that you have encouraged the king's shameful thoughts, contemptuous of your son or any true sense of family honour, seeking only to bind a weak man more tightly to your use with whatever tools you may find. My lord, I am not a tool that will ever fit your hand. I will die before Ademar ever lies with me."

She watches his face narrowly, and adds, "Or you, my lord High Elder of Corannos. I will end my life before I suffer you to lay a hand or a lash upon this white flesh you dream about in the dark of the god's house at night." A shaft loosed wildly that one, but she sees it hit, squarely. Galbert's ruddy face goes suddenly white, his eyes creasing to slits and flicking away from hers for the first time. Rosala feels no triumph, only a renewed wave of nausea.

She turns abruptly away and begins to walk across the drawbridge into the forecourt. The corans have stopped their duelling, their attention caught by something in the manner of the two of them here outside the walls. She holds her head high and walks with what composure she can achieve.

"My lady Rosala." Galbert says from behind her, his voice raised slightly. She had known he would call her. He would need to have the final word. His nature will not permit otherwise. She thinks of not turning, of continuing on, but the corans have heard him call her. What she might do at some risk privately she dares not do in public: she might defy him to a certain point, but open shame he will not allow. A woman can be killed for that in Gorhaut.

She stops on the drawbridge and turns slowly back to look at him. After, she will remember that moment, the sun high, a breeze stirring the red and golden leaves of the chestnut trees along the avenue, birdsong in the branches, the stream beyond, glinting blue. A glorious autumn day.

"I wonder," says Galbert de Garsenc, lowering his voice, moving the horse nearer, "has your dear husband told you of our latest agreement? He has probably neglected to, in that forgetful way of his. We have decided that if you should bear a son it is mine. Ah! You seem surprised, Lady Rosala! It is just as I thought, the careless lad has not informed you. A boy is promised to Corannos, a daughter you may keep; a daughter is no use to me immediately, though I am sure I will devise a purpose for her later."

Rosala is actually afraid she is going to faint. The sun swings in an erratic arc in the blue sky. She takes a stumbling, sidelong step to keep her balance. Her heart is a thudding hammer in her breast. She tastes blood; she has bitten through her lip.

"You… you would deprive your family of an heir?" she stammers, her brain stunned, refusing to believe what she has just heard.

"No, no, no, not necessarily." He chuckles now, all benign good humour for the watching eyes of those inside the forecourt. "Though we need another Elder in our family at least as much as we need an heir in this castle. Ranald's brother" — he never speaks Blaise's name—"was to have followed me to the god. A great deal of our future depended upon that. His refusal has marred my planning, put me in a difficult position, but if you present me with a boy matters may yet be remedied. I will, of course, delay final consecration for a time, to judge how best to make use of the child—here at Garsenc or in the god's house. There will be many matters to be considered, but I daresay you will help me by having other children, dear daughter-in-law. And if you do not—seeing as it
did
take some time to conceive this one—why then I imagine Ranald could find a second wife who will. I am not greatly concerned on that score. And I must confess, I am looking forward to attending to a grandson's education and upbringing personally. I pray you, do not disappoint me, lady Rosala. Bear a strong boy child for me to take back to Corannos."

She can say nothing at all. She seems to have lost the power of speech. She can scarcely stand. She feels suddenly exposed, naked in this place to the indifferent or mildly curious scrutiny of her household corans and the serfs of the estate.

"You really ought to go in now," says Galbert kindly. "You do not look well at all. You ought to be in your bed, my child. I would escort you there myself but I am afraid I have no time to linger for such domestic intimacies. The press of affairs demands my attention back at court. I do trust you have taken my meaning, though, and I will not have to come again?"

He turns, not waiting for any reply, lifting one hand to her that the corans might note his salute; it is the hand that holds his whip, though. That will not be an accident; nothing with this man is an accident. She sees that he is smiling as he rides away.

Inside the castle a short time later, alone in her suite of rooms, white-knuckled hands gripping each other, Rosala de Garsenc realizes, without knowing the actual moment of making her decision, that she is going to leave.

Galbert made a mistake, she thinks. He never meant to tell her about these plans, he must have known how she would feel about them; she had angered him though, revealed an awareness of his thoughts, and he replied rashly, to frighten and wound her, to have the final word.

She doesn't know how she is going to do it, she only knows she will not stay and surrender her child to that man.
I am at war now,
she thinks, realizing that her only possible advantage is that she knows it and Galbert might not. Inside her, as if in response, the baby kicks hard against her ribs for the first time that morning.

"Hush," she whispers. "Hush, my love. It will not happen. Fear no harm, for none shall find you. Wherever in the world your father is, whether he ever comes to shelter you or no, I will guard you, little one. I swear it upon my life, and yours."

Blaise was thinking of the child as the men of Talair rode north through the cool breezes of autumn in Arbonne: of Aelis de Miraval's son, and Bertran's. Since Ariane had told him the tale that Midsummer night three months ago, he had thought about it more often than he would have expected to, unable not to gaze curiously at such times at the man his own father had paid a quarter of a million in gold to have killed.

A tragedy had unfolded here some twenty-three years ago, and the effects of it were still rippling through Arbonne today. He remembered Ariane's quiet, measured voice telling him the tale as dawn broke over the littered streets and alleys of Tavernel.

"As I told you just now," she had said, "discretion is everything in love. My cousin Aelis had none, though she was very young, and that might be considered an excuse. There was something uncontrolled in her, something too fierce. Hatred and love drove her hard, and she was not a woman to accept her fate, or work within walls built to house her."

"Neither are you," Blaise remembered saying. "What was the difference?"

She had smiled at that, a little sadly, and had not answered for a time.

"The difference, I suppose, is that I saw what she did, and what followed upon it. Aelis is the difference in my own life. She told her husband, you see. She hoarded the truth for a last, bitter swordstroke—with its own slow, killing poison, if you will. When the priestess who had come to her said she was not going to live they brought Urté to her confinement bed. He was sorrowful, I think. I have always thought he was genuinely in sorrow, though perhaps more for the loss of the power she offered him than anything else. Aelis had no softness in her though, she was all pride and recklessness, even on her deathbed. She pushed herself up in the bed and she told Urté the child was Bertran de Talair's."

"How do you know this?"