A Tapestry of Dreams (33 page)

It was very late by the time he convinced his uncle to go to bed, but Hugh could not resist writing to Audris. He told himself it was because he might find difficulty getting away from Uncle Ralph the next day, but it was really because he was too excited to sleep. He was bursting with joy and needed to “talk” to his “wife” so that she could rejoice with him. Fortunately, he had already written about the information he had obtained at the convent, so he was free to pour out his joy at having found a welcome, a family—even if it consisted of one old man—and an inheritance, all at once. Without thinking that Audris could feel differently on any subject than he felt, Hugh continued to describe his pleasure at having arrived in time to fight Lionel Heugh:

Wishing to make conditions as easy as he could for his champion, my uncle took lodgings in the town as soon as the challenge was issued. Thus, I will be in Morpeth town at the house of Uhtred the Mercer from All Hallows Eve. I do not know which day of the tourney de Merley has set for this trial by combat, but I look forward to killing so inveterate an enemy of my family. I am surprised at my rage toward him and my thirst for his blood, for although I have killed men, I cannot remember ever
desiring
to kill a man. My desire to rid the world of Lionel Heugh is not only for my own sake, because to be heir to Ruthsson and Trewick without any contest or threat marring my claim will make it possible for me to ask for you in marriage. You know that is a prize greater than any other could be to me. But I think, truly, my rage and hatred toward Sir Lionel are because he has acted with such cruelty toward my uncle, who is an old man and—as far as Heugh knows—the last of Ruthsson blood. Could he not have let the old man die in peace and end the quarrel thus? Not that my uncle seems like to die. He is hale and spry and a man of such an inquiring nature that you, light of my life, would find him perfect company. Although he is worldly and cynical and not in the least holy, in other ways he reminds me of what you have told me of your Father Anselm.

I should hate to think of such a man cast out to starve, for he does not seem to have asked for or received anything from King Henry except the wherewithal to live from day to day at the court. If he were deprived of Ruthsson, I do not believe he would have anywhere to go for a roof over his head. Each time I think you would never have met my uncle had I not come in time to take up arms in his behalf, a great hunger wakes anew in me to cut down the fool that would destroy a man worth ten of any other. Beloved, I could write and write, but I am come to the end of this sheet, my candle is guttering, and I must end this letter so that Morel can carry it to you tomorrow. I am so filled with joy that I can hardly contain myself.

***

Morel arrived in Jernaeve on 23 October, not much more than a month after Hugh had departed. It had been a very long month for Audris. The promise Hugh had made to her that they would not be parted long hung over her like a threat. She had been frozen by fear of the grim purpose in his face and voice, and when he let her go and moved away, her arms slid along his body, powerless to clutch at him to hold him near. She stood where he had left her long after he was gone, until Fritha, who had led Hugh back to his chamber, returned and found her and took her to her bed. Fritha wept in sympathy, gently patting and stroking her mistress and regretting her muteness because it prevented her from offering more comfort.

The maid was so distressed by Audris’s frozen silence that she did not go to her own bed but sat on the floor beside Audris’s, listening. Fritha hoped to hear the slow rhythm of breathing and the small shiftings of a sleeper; she feared to hear weeping; worse, however, was that she heard nothing at all for a long time, until at last a tired voice urged, “Go to bed, Fritha. You can do nothing for me now. Tomorrow… tomorrow you must set a new warp on my loom.”

In the weeks that followed, Audris did not fight the compulsion to weave, as she had in the past. She did not scant her other autumn duties—she saw to the gathering and storage of herbs for seasoning and for medication, to the proper mixing of dried flower petals for sweetening the air and laying between the light summer garments to keep pests and foul odors away, to the steeping of roots and leaves for elixirs, the compounding of lotions and salves. She watched the young falcons begin to hunt and marked the nests to which the best of them returned, and she set ready the devices she would use to take them, letting the birds grow accustomed and lose their fear. But when the weather was wet or she could not sleep, she wove.

The picture that was forming was the last she would ever make that showed a unicorn. Sometimes, as her hands guided the threads, she thought how different a person she had been when she began the first panel—a fantasy, she had called it and had lightly thanked Hugh for giving her the idea. And that had been only a few weeks after she had told Bruno that what she desired was to be to a man what Rachel was to Jacob.

How ignorant she had been; it had never occurred to her that there must be a price to pay for the joy of being the central core of another person’s life. She knew now that one could have either a dull, even plain of simple contentment or the great beauty of high mountains of pleasure and happiness mingled with the bitter, dark valleys of grief and pain. There could be no peaks of joy without valleys of fear.

Audris thought, too, of her childish resentment of the pain Hugh had brought her, of her angry wish to be rid of him. That was gone, together with her ignorance. As she watched the hawks or worked in garden and stillroom or wove at her loom, images of the two sorts of life—the even plain of small fondnesses and the rough, hard terrain of human love—had flowed back and forth in her mind. Long before the tapestry was finished she had made her decision. She did not fear to climb the cliffs for hawks nor fear the pain of falling—she loved the forest and the cliffs best, not the tame, plowed fields—and so she would not fear to love, nor the pain of weeping.

And on the day she told Fritha to turn the loom so she could see what she had wrought, she only sighed. She had known what the picture would be: in a garden bright with flowers the unicorn lay on his side, eyes closed, head pillowed on a woman’s skirt. The woman’s hands tenderly held the great head with its single shining horn, and she was bowed over the beast so deeply that one could see only the top of her head and the waterfall of silver-gilt hair mingling with the pure white of the unicorn’s lustrous mane. The beast might have been asleep; there was no mark or wound on the glossy hide—but Audris’s heavy heart could find no comfort in that false hope.

Then her eyes caught something else, a subtle shadow… When she “saw” it, her glance flew away from the picture, and she stared out the window, fighting cold waves of terror. The shadow lay across the flower beds, one arm outstretched toward the bent form of the woman.

One part of Audris marveled at her own skill in depicting so subtle an image by the use of darker hues for the flowers, leaves, and grasses where the shadow fell. Another part of her shuddered with horror, fearing that Death had shown himself again in her work. Before she could bring her eyes back to her tapestry Audris had to remind herself fiercely that hiding from the truth is always more dangerous than knowing it. More careful inspection revealed nothing more than she had seen when the shadow first caught her eye. There was no clue as to who, or what, darkened the bright garden.

Nonetheless, Audris was comforted by her study of the image. To her, there seemed to be a kind of tenderness in the way the shadow hand reached out. There was no sign of the pointing, accusing finger of the Deaths shown in most memento mori. And then she remembered Father Anselm saying, “Death is always kinder than life, for God and His Mother are infinitely merciful and will pardon any sin sincerely repented. It is life that is unforgiving and makes us pay dearly for our mistakes.”

True enough, Audris thought, almost smiling. Did not the priests say there was no love, except for God, no marrying nor giving in marriage in heaven? Without human love, there could be little pain—and many fewer mistakes. All the while, Audris’s eyes were fixed on her work, and suddenly she shook her head. True, the shadow might be that of Death, but she did not believe it. The tapestries that warned were
never
subtle. Death stood out plain and clear, showing his scythe and his fleshless grin. A sense she had felt before, that she was misreading her last two pieces, grew more insistent.

“Take it from the loom, Fritha,” she said calmly, “and hang it next to the third piece. And lay a new warp on the loom. It is time to do something for my uncle.”

The new work, a gay harvest scene, took shape quickly under Audris’s skilled fingers. October was a quiet month for her, though a busy time for Eadyth and Oliver. Ale was brewed in October and the slaughtering of cattle and hogs with the concomitant salting and smoking of the meat begun, though that would not reach its height until all the grazing in the stubble fields was gone. Audris took no part in these activities, and Eadyth had long since given up trying to teach her. Now, Audris rather regretted that, for the harvest tapestry was soon finished and weaving left her too much time for thinking. She craved activities that would keep her head as busy as her hands and tire her so much that she would drop asleep as soon as the need for her attention was gone.

Thus, although it was rather early in the season, Audris summoned the falconer and his boys and went out to take the hawks she had marked. She explained the early trapping by saying that she feared a turning of the weather, which had been so fine for several weeks—everyone else was saying the same, so her remarks were harmless—but her reason was that she expected Morel any day, and each moment that was not fully filled was becoming a torment.

Although she knew it was unwise to set times because limits of days always made waiting harder, Audris had counted the days and leagues from Jedburgh to Jarrow and, assuming the same rate of travel, calculated when Hugh would arrive in York. Judging by his impatience, she guessed he would leave York at once for Durham to seek traces of his mother. She hoped fervently he would find some information, for she feared if he did not, he would go to the king in Normandy for lack of some more fruitful action.

Audris did not want Hugh to go so far from her. She knew her desire to keep him in England—and in the north of England—was selfish and perhaps even stupid. After all, the tapestries showed the unicorn threatening Jernaeve and also dead in Jernaeve’s garden. Perhaps the best solution for them all was for Hugh to go far away. But still Audris could not bear the thought of his being so unreachable.

Thus, Audris was more than willing to give the training of the young hawks over to the falconer when Morel came into the mews. The news in Hugh’s long letter nearly stunned her. Actually she had had as little expectation as Hugh of his finding any trace of his family, and she had far less hope than he that he would obtain a heritage through service to the king. What she had feared was that he would be hurt or killed, not that he might appear in a few weeks’ time demanding her as a wife. Oliver would never agree, Audris feared, not even if Hugh offered to take her to Ruthsson and make no demand on Jernaeve. She had let herself dream a little when Hugh had first made that offer, because she wanted an easy solution so much—and because she had had so little hope that Hugh would succeed.

Audris knew her uncle’s pride. From his point of view, she and Jernaeve were worth more than Hugh, and it would be useless to say she wished to marry Hugh rather than any other man. Oliver would consider such a desire a form of madness—or sin. Her uncle would laugh at her, insisting that if she wished to marry, she had suitors of great power and large property and that he would not waste her on a powerless young knight with one poor manor. And Hugh would not accept that. He would—Audris’s eyes flew to the third panel, and she felt she understood it at last. It was Uncle Oliver whom she had always thought of as most closely one with Jernaeve. It was not the keep but her uncle that Hugh threatened. The tapestry was
not
a foretelling, but a mirror of her fear, as she had long suspected.

In the flood of anxieties that beset Audris, that was an island of relief. At least she was no witch. And in the light of that ray of reason, the last panel was not a threatening prediction but a natural result of her own anxiety. Unfortunately, it offered no assurance either. Her eyes went back to the letter she still held and flicked down the sheet to the end. For Hugh to fight for Ruthsson so that he could present himself as a suitor was useless, Audris knew. She would write and warn him… But he was not fighting for her alone; there was his own livelihood and his uncle to consider.

Partly because of the tone of easy confidence in Hugh’s letter and partly because of her recent rejection of the tapestry showing the unicorn dead, Audris did not consider the actual trial by combat. She simply accepted that Hugh would win his battle and be unscathed. Her mind leapt forward to the next step and pictured Hugh asking for her and being rejected. Hugh’s reaction might take many forms, but whether he used reason or rage, the result would remain the same. He might even challenge her uncle, but there was no danger to Oliver in that; her uncle would just laugh.

That would not be the end. A small thrill of mixed pleasure and sadness passed through Audris. Whatever her uncle said, Hugh would not give up. The third panel might not be foretelling, but it depicted Hugh’s nature well. He would fight for what he wanted—and for what he believed she wanted. But what could he do? And as the question formed, the answer came. Hugh would take his complaint to the king, and he would not need to travel to Normandy to do it.

Only two days before they had had another letter from Bruno, warning them that King Stephen would soon come back to England. The king had appointed William de Roumare, earl of Lincoln, and others as justiciars to govern Normandy, and Stephen himself, the scribe had written under Bruno’s direction, would be sailing for England by the end of November. Bruno hoped that David would not be so literal in his interpretation of keeping the truce until Stephen was back in England as to attack the moment he had news of Stephen’s arrival. Probably the difficulties of waging war in winter would cause the Scots to hold off the start of hostilities. But Bruno had felt Oliver should be warned, just in case David decided to ignore the onset of winter to obtain the advantage of a surprise attack when Stephen was not ready to oppose him.