Fires of Winter (31 page)

“Is there some reason I should not let you go alone?” I asked.

There was a brief silence, then Melusine said softly, “I am sorry I did not come back at once when you called. I was angry when you bade me to stop until I saw that something was wrong. I thought you believed I was running away. I would not do that. I have given my word.”

“Did it not occur to you that there might be other reasons I did not want you to go alone? You are dear to me, Melusine, and this is wild country—”

“Not to me,” she interrupted, smiling. “There are no outlaws here”—the smile disappeared abruptly—“or were none. Perhaps good men have been driven into outlawry since I have been gone, but none of them would harm me.”

“If good men have been made outlaw, I am sorry for it, and the king will be sorry also,” I told her. “That was not Stephen's intention, and if I see the people are ill-used, I will do my best to amend it.”

She shifted in her saddle restlessly, which surprised me. It was almost as if what I said made her uncomfortable because she did not want me to show interest in or sympathy for her people. That raised a new specter in my mind. The queen had wanted Melusine married so that no Cumbrian lord with a loyalty to David could seize her, marry her, and claim Ulle through her. Just now it had come to me that a widow would serve as well as an unmarried maid for that purpose. I suppose I was staring at her. I do not know what was in my face, but Melusine suddenly turned her head away from me, and as she did I thought I saw tears in her eyes. That only added to the puzzle, but I could think of no way to approach any solution to it, and I was thankful that the trail narrowed as we began to climb again and she pulled ahead.

I soon began to think my doubts were foolish. There was no reason for Melusine to want another husband. Her eagerness to couple and her transports in the marriage bed were genuine, of that I was certain. If she intended to be rid of me, why should she have made our marriage complete in Jernaeve? Surely if she wished to replace me with another man, she could have refused me a little longer. And God knew this homecoming must be bitter as gall to her. There were reasons enough for tears. By the time we came to the next space open enough to ride side-by-side, I had put the doubt aside and was only troubled about how Melusine would endure actually coming into Ulle. But that, like the road, was easier than I expected—except for a few breathtaking stretches.

The worst part of the road was the traverse of Stybarrow Crag. For over a quarter of a mile, the track hung over the water, too narrow over that whole length to turn a horse. One man could hold off a whole army—if he did not tire. On the other hand, archers, so dangerous in most wild and wooded country, would be of little use because the hill bulged out above the road and there were few places where a shot could be angled correctly. My mind was on the impossibility of bringing an army along that road, and I must have pulled back on the reins with surprise because Barbe stopped suddenly. Around a curve below the rise on which Barbe stood, where I expected to see more wilderness, there was a tame and cozy demesne farm—for dolls.

I looked down at the tiny fields, each one not more than half or quarter of an acre—with the same surprise that Melusine expressed a day earlier on seeing the eight-ox plow working near Jernaeve. One could be fooled into thinking the fields were miles away and small with distance, except that below us, close to the edge of the lake, was a substantial, man-sized walled manor. That I recognized! Ulle!

Now my eyes flew to Melusine, but she had not stopped as I had. I could see her head turn from side to side, sweeping the fields and then the lake. I hoped she was not suffering too much; if she had turned to me I would have comforted her as best I could, but in a way it was a relief that she did not. I did not know what to say. I did not even know whether what she saw was the same or different from when she had been mistress of Ulle. I remembered now that the ground had been covered with snow when I led Stephen's forces into Ulle; that was why those tiny fields had not stuck in my memory.

All I could do was increase Barbe's pace so that I could ride beside her. Once I touched her hand, but she did not look at me and I made no further gestures. We met only one man, trudging along the track that bordered the fields with a faggot of sticks on his back. He looked up and gaped for a moment, then backed to the side of the road, staring.

“A good day to you, Tom,” Melusine said. “I have come for a visit. I hope all has gone well with you these months I have been away.”

“None so well,” the man replied, glancing at me before he added, “none so ill either, my lady.”

“This is my husband, Sir Bruno of Jernaeve,” Melusine said, then nodded and rode on.

“Good day to you,” I said, and rode on also.

There had been first gladness and then disappointment in the man's face after his first shock had passed. So much was easy to see, but I put that aside to think about later, my greatest concern being with Melusine as we drew nearer the manor. At least the gate was open and unguarded, which meant there had been no trouble with the local people. That was a relief, but I was surprised that Melusine's arrival caused no more than a few curious looks. The only armed man inside the walls stared at me open-mouthed before he hailed a manservant to take our horses and said he would inform the steward that guests had arrived.

I dismounted and hurried to lift Melusine down. Her face was a mask, but there was horror in her eyes. “Where are the old servants?” she whispered.

“Melusine!” I exclaimed. “Those who were here when the king came were still here when he left. You know they were unharmed, even those silly old men who tried to hold us off.”

She shook her head. “Where are they now?”

“I do not know, my dear, but I will find out,” I said, turning to face a man who cried a hearty greeting as he came, but keeping my arm around Melusine's waist.

“Well come!” he exclaimed. “I am Sir Giles de Montalbe. I have not seen a new face in months. You are well come indeed in this empty end of the world.”

“It is not an empty end of the world to us, Sir Giles,” I said. “I am Sir Bruno of Jernaeve, Knight of the Body to King Stephen, but I am on leave and my coming here has nothing to do with the king. This is Lady Melusine of Ulle, my wife, and I have brought her here because she was sick with longing for her home. I hope you do not mind.”

“I would not mind if you were Satan, bringing Judas with you,” Sir Giles said explosively. “And if your lady wife and you would like to stay for good and can get me permission to leave, I will be overjoyed.”

There was bitterness in his voice and disappointment and anger in his face, and Melusine drew a gasping breath and cried, “Where are the old servants?”

“Gone,” Sir Giles replied in a snarl.

“Dead?” I could hear the edge of hysteria in Melusine's voice and her body stiffened.

“How would I know?”

The rigidity of Melusine's body eased, and she said, “You mean they ran away?”

“I mean that when I came here there were the hall and outbuildings of the manor, sixteen of the twenty men-at-arms with their captain that the king had left to hold the manor, and
nothing
else. And only twelve of the sixteen men left could bear arms. The men had been hunting to feed themselves, and in two months three were killed by falls and another five had been seriously injured, and the captain had a broken leg. The bailiff sent by the king was also dead—he drowned while fishing, and one of the men-at-arms with him.”

Now Melusine was wholly relaxed against my arm. “This is dangerous country,” she said. “I was born here, and I have been overturned in the lake and blown off the trail near Black Crag—” She nodded northwest toward a glowering hulk of mountain that darkened the horizon. “I am sorry about the servants though. Would you like me to ask among the village people where they have gone and if they would be willing to come back?”

“Willing?” Sir Giles almost choked on rage. “They have no right to will. They—”

“Forgive me, Sir Giles,” Melusine interrupted. “The servants in Ulle were all free. There were no slaves or bound serfs in Ulle.” She smiled at him. “We were never rich enough to buy slaves, and they would have been useless for anything except household work or work on the demesne farm—which as you see is not large. As to trying to bind the native born into serfdom, how could we keep them if they wished to run into the hills and hide? It is more practical in Ulle to have free tenants who work willingly.”

“Work?” Again Sir Giles's voice rose with rage. “Who works in Ulle? They are all idlers.”

“Let us go in, Sir Giles,” I interposed before Melusine could answer. “We have been on the road since sunrise and I am sharp-set. I know we have missed dinner—”

“Good God, forgive me,” Sir Giles exclaimed. “I have forgotten my manners and am growing as savage as the country. Do come in and I will see what there is to eat.”

He led us in, and I made sure to enter the hall first and cross to the fire pit, leaving Melusine to hesitate at the doorway as she glanced around the room. I hoped the familiar hall would not be too much for her to bear, but I thought it less important to offer comfort than to keep her from seeing me in the doorway in armor, as she must have seen me the day Ulle was taken. But perhaps she would not have noticed me at all; she seemed far more smugly satisfied than distraught as she looked around the room, and her lips were twitching, not down but upward. I suspected it was laughter, not tears, she was trying to control.

Melusine's expression made me look about also. I cannot say I remembered the hall the day I burst in behind the ram. It had been dark, with all the shutters closed and barred, and my attention had been fixed on the wailing women. All I could remember was a chair of state behind Melusine. I had assumed there were other furnishings fitting for a gentleman's hall. What I saw now would have better suited a hunting lodge where men shelter for a night or two rather than a manor where men lived—three rough benches and a stool flanking the fire pit, a trestle table of splintery planks on the dais, and that was all. I could not see behind the wall screen at the back of the dais, but I doubted that the bed in which Melusine and her brothers had been conceived still stood there.

Had everything in Ulle been looted by Stephen's army? Then I remembered that though there had been little of value, except furs, in any of the Cumbrian estates the king had taken—a few silver coins, some goblets and plate, and stores of food—in Ulle there had been nothing, nothing at all. Yes, that was why Stephen had left one of the minor clerks of his household to be bailiff and ferret out why Ulle was bare bones. But the bailiff had died. I glanced at Melusine, but she only looked politely bland now, as if she were entering a stranger's hall and were determined not to notice anything out of the ordinary.

Melusine maintained that bland indifference while we ate and through the afternoon and evening, making no reply to Sir Giles's angry complaints. He had been made steward, he told us, through the favor of the bishop of Ely and had assumed that there would be some profit to be made from the estate. Instead, he had found a desert. The people of the village had come back after the soldiers and their captain departed, he said, and they had planted the fields and made the furnishings—he laughed bitterly on the word—for his hall. Then he shrugged. At least they were quiet, he admitted; though they were stupid and lazy beyond any serfs he had dealt with, they did not protest the double and triple tithings he made of produce, fish, and game.

How had her family lived, he asked Melusine. They needed little, Melusine replied; they were simple people, content to hunt and fish and eat the black bread and flat cakes from the rye and barley their thin soil would grow, to wear the rough wool woven from the fleece of their few, hardy sheep. Sir Giles came close to howling with rage, snarling that there was not enough, even of such things, to keep him alive, let alone a large family—and Melusine shrugged and said sweetly that she was sorry, she knew no more than she had told him.

I knew she was not lying, for I had seen the gowns in her chest and it was plain which the queen had given her, but I had also seen her fine ivory comb set with small jewels, a silver thimble, and other such luxuries. She had once told me, too, that they had the wherewithal to trade. So she was not telling all the truth. Nonetheless, I held my tongue, pretending I did not understand what Melusine was doing until we were lying together, not in a bed but on straw-stuffed pallets in a little house in which Melusine asked to lodge, saying it had been built for her sister-by-marriage, who had died in childbirth.

Edna was at the far end of the single room, but she slept like one dead after the exhaustion and terror of her journey. I doubted she could be wakened by screams and kicks and knew she would not hear our quiet voices. I took Melusine gently by the ear and shook her head.

“Well?” I asked.

“I am well,” she replied. “It looked so different, like any other hall in Cumbria. I could not see Papa—”

“Melusine,” I murmured dulcetly, “I have never beaten a woman in my life and I think it very wrong for the strong to be cruel to the weak, but I am coming close to forgetting the rules that have guided me through life.”

“What good do you think beating me will do?” she asked, and I could feel the movement of her cheek that meant she was smiling. “I can tell you nothing. I admit I bade the people to take away and hide whatever was in Ulle, but I do not know who took what or where it was taken. I
think
the people would bring back what they carried away if I asked them to do so.” She hesitated, then went on in a voice that was no longer light and teasing. “But I would gladly be beaten to death before I would give that order so that Sir Giles could sleep in my father's bed.”