Keeper of the Dream (29 page)

His head snapped back and all the gentleness vanished from his face. “My
what?”

His voice cut through the noise in the hall like the snap of a whip. Taliesin’s hands stilled the thrumming harp strings. His brow creased with confusion, then his eyes narrowed on his master and they flared for a moment, like twin fireflies.

“Your birthday?” Arianna said, her smile wavering and then dying as she watched her husband’s eyes turn cold and hard.

By now they had reached the dais and as arranged, a pair of heralds trumpeted a signal and Rhodri and Sir Odo’s page came forward bearing the banner. They unfurled it between them with a dramatic flourish and a loud cheer and another blare from the trumpets bounced off the vaulted ceiling.

Raine’s gaze stabbed at her; he hadn’t even looked at the beautiful banner. The closed expression on his face didn’t alter except for a slight flaring of his nostrils. “Is this your idea of a jest?”

Arianna tried to swallow around a thickness in her throat. “ ’Tis a banner to hang on the wall in back of the high seat. It is my gift to you, my lord husband.” The lump was now in danger of choking her. It felt as if she
had tried to swallow an egg and it had gotten stuck in there. “For your birthday,” she added, as if enough explanation would somehow erase that look on his face.

He stared at her for a long, long while, his eyes cold and hard with anger. Slowly he turned his head and looked at her gift. For a moment she thought she saw a startled pain flare in his eyes before they hardened again. “My birthday gift,” he said with a snort of derision. He laughed once, hard and harsh. “Take it out to the midden and burn it.”

The boys hesitated, frozen with shock. “Go!” Raine shouted, and Rhodri dropped his end of the banner as if it had suddenly caught fire and whirled, stumbling off the dais. Sir Odo’s page gathered up the stiff material into a bundle in his arms and followed more slowly.

The hall was now silent, an echoing silence like an empty church. Raine’s gaze flickered down the length of the tables, then back to her. “You are never again to deplete my pantries and my buttery in this fashion without my permission.”

Arianna tried to draw a breath and couldn’t. She felt as if she’d been punched in the chest. He might as well have used his fists on her, so badly had he hurt her. “Why?” she asked softly.
Do you really hate me so much?

But he said nothing, simply stared at her with empty, flint-gray eyes. Then he spun around and strode away from her, down the length of the hall.

“My lord, wait!” she cried after him. “What have I done? Why are you so … angry,” her voice trailed off as she realized he had no intention of answering her.

She stared at his retreating back, fighting tears. She picked up her skirts and ran after him.

“Come back here, Norman!”

Raine lengthened his stride. He heard the soft patter of her leather-soled slippers on the stairs behind him, and then a hand fell on his arm, jerking him around.
Her chin sailed into the air, though it trembled a bit. “If you are angry, then by God’s eyes you will tell me why. But don’t you dare walk away as if I were of no more account than your lowliest villein.”

He pried her fingers loose from his sleeve, but then his hands closed around her arms and with a vicious jerk he brought her crashing against his chest. He looked down into her eyes and saw that they were wide and bright with unshed tears. He stared into those eyes, not moving, saying nothing. His gaze fell on her mouth. To his astonishment, he was filled with such a fierce need to kiss her he almost groaned aloud from it.

His fingers tightened their grip. “How could you pretend to know the date of my birth, when I don’t know it myself?”

Her eyes widened even further. “That God-cursed, wretched squire of yours—he said it was today.”

“Then he lied. Except, the boy has no reason to lie.” He closed his fingers around her scalp and brought his face close to hers, close enough that he could see his own breath stir the wisps of her hair. “But you do. What did you hope to accomplish by this mummery—except to flaunt your contempt for me? Did you think to shame me before all of Rhuddlan by reminding one and all that my birth was so base, no one ever cared to mark the occasion?”

“No!” she protested, but his hand tightened in her hair and he shook her head, hard.

“Pity for you, little wife, but it was a wasted effort. I’ve been called bastard too often and by too many people. That particular knife has long ago lost its edge.”

“No, no, you are wrong!” She laid her palm on his cheek, touching him in a way that was tender and soft, and he couldn’t bear it.

He jerked his head aside and let go of her so abruptly she almost stumbled.

“Raine …” she said, and her voice broke. She drew
her lower lip between her teeth, then pushed it back out again, and he had to tense every muscle to keep from hauling her back into his arms and sucking that lip into his mouth. Never had he wanted to kiss a woman more in his life, and he almost hated her for it. No one had ever made him want something so badly, and so beyond his control.

Again her hand started up to his face, but this time she let it fall without touching him. “It was not done to hurt you. None of it was meant to hurt you.”

His mouth twisted into a mocking smile. “You flatter yourself, wife, if you think that you can hurt me. Not when the only use I have for you is in my bed, where you can breed me sons.”

For the longest moment she simply stared at him, while the blood drained from her face as if he’d torn open her heart, and her chest jerked once on a sob. Then she whirled and ran away from him.

He thrust his fingers through his hair. “Ah, Christ …

“Arianna!” he shouted, as she darted into the path of a cartload of dung that was being taken to the fields for fertilizer. The cart swerved, clipping a pile of empty ale barrels, which went clattering and rolling like ninepins across the yard. At the gatehouse she disappeared into a crowd of beggars and pilgrims who, having heard of the feast, had gathered for the largesse.

Cursing, he started after her then veered toward the stables. It would be easier to catch her on horseback.

Two hours later he still hadn’t caught her.

There were places in the marshlands around Rhuddlan where it was said people had been swallowed up by the shifting sands. The forest to the east harbored wild boar and wolves, and bands of landless marauders who would cut off a woman’s head to sell the hair for a few shillings—after, of course, they had taken turns using her, passing her from man to man like a costrel of wine.

The more Raine thought of the dangers that could have befallen her, the more his guts clenched with fear and the angrier he became until he thought he just might kill her himself, if something or someone else didn’t do it first.

At last he picked up her footprints and he followed them along the river to the sea. He stood up in the stirrups, searching for her among the dunes that rose in heaps, like frozen waves.

“Arianna, little wife,” he muttered through his clenched teeth. “You’ll be sleeping on your stomach for a week once I catch up with you.”

But then he remembered that there was only a limited list of crimes for which she would allow him to beat her, and he smiled. She stood up to him, his little wife. Even when she was in the wrong, she stood up to him.

Her footprints led him to an old dilapidated fishing pier that listed like a three-legged chair, its pilings sinking into the soft sand. He thought she might have sat here for a while, staring out to sea. Clam holes pockmarked a gravelly beach littered with driftwood and spume spit up by the receding tide. Gray weeds trembled in the wind and screams from the sea birds rent the salt-laden air. The land felt empty here, and forgotten.

A movement to his left caught his eye … there, where a group of tall granite boulders poked up like giant gray thumbs on top a nearby rise.

He remembered this place and the circle of stones from the day when his ships had brought him to Wales almost a month ago, for they had landed but a few hundred yards to the north of this spot. The day that he had taken Rhuddlan and started in motion the sequence of events that eventually brought him a coveted title and land.

And her … Arianna, his wife.

Thirteen pillarlike stones stood in a perfect circle atop the rise, with two of the pillars connected by a capstone to form an archway. In the center of this cromlech were more boulders in the shape of an altar that had been
carved with strange markings and blackened by old fires. Marsh grass swayed among the stones, as if dancing to music only the fairies could hear.

“They are called
meinhirion
… the standing stones,” Taliesin had told him that first day in an awe-filled voice, accompanied by a dramatic shiver. “The ancient ones worshipped their gods at such places. Tis a center of powerful magic.”

“It looks like a great pile of useless rocks me,” Raine had said.

But now the stones seemed to float in a murky mist dyed golden by the setting sun. She stood within the cromlech, before the altar. His boots made no sound on the marshy ground, and he was almost on top of her before she heard him. She whirled, but there was no surprise on her face. She simply stared at him, her green eyes mirroring the flames of the dying sun.

The sunset bathed the stones so that they glowed with a defused light, like a candle within a lantern. The light spread from the stones, enveloping her with a gentle radiance, and drawing him with its warmth. Slowly, the light shimmered, brightening, from soft gold to blinding white. He felt a sudden and terrible need to lower his head and bury it in her breasts, to beg for the comfort of her woman’s arms.

“What do you want from me?” he asked, his throat thick. He was not even aware he’d formed the thought aloud.

He saw her lips move, but it took a moment for her voice to be heard over the sudden rushing of the blood in his ears. “Do you know that these are magic stones, my lord? They say that if a woman can get a man to drink of water that has touched the
meinhirion,
then he will love her forever.”

The last of the sun sunk below the horizon. The blaze of light vanished, leaving shadows and a cold wind. Raine looked at the altar. There was a worn spot in the stone
where a small pool of water had collected. It was not a lot, about as much as a man could cup in his two hands.

“And does it work the other way about? If a man will get a woman to drink from this water—”

“Then she will love him. Forever.” She dipped two fingers into the pool, reverently, as if it were a stroup of holy water. Then she brought her fingers, wet and shining silver up to his lips. But she didn’t touch them. If he wanted the water, he was going to have to lick it off, of his own free will.

“All it takes is one drop,” she said.

He told himself it was all a game, a silly Welsh superstition. Yet he thought, too, how this was the way Adam must have felt before he took the apple from Eve’s hands—knowing he was damning himself and unable to stop … not wanting to stop….

He dunked his fingers in the water.

A torrent of sizzling fire coursed through him, as if he had touched a lightning bolt. The air crackled and a blue light, hot and bright, engulfed him. Engulfed him and vanished so quickly, he was sure an instant later that he had imagined it all.

He brought his dripping fingers up to her lips. “You go first.”

“No, you.”

Her eyes were dark and wide with some emotion he couldn’t name, though it seemed to mirror his own. His mouth felt parched, empty. The need to lick the water off her fingers was irresistible. He lowered his head.

The bellowing of his name snapped him around. A man on horseback galloped toward them from the direction of Rhuddlan. As he neared, Raine saw that it was Sir Odo, in full armor. From out the corner of his eye, he saw Arianna wipe her wet fingers on her skirt, and he felt a wrenching sense of loss.

“We’ve trouble, lad!” The big knight reined his charger in sharply, digging up divots of marsh grass. His gaze fell
first on Arianna and his eyes grew soft with sympathy, then he turned to Raine and his craggy face fretted into deep lines of disapproval. Arianna was still a broken sparrow to Sir Odo, and he was still trying to protect her.

“It’s those cursed Welsh vassals you acquired upon your marriage,” Sir Odo said. “Milady’s cousins. They’ve declared Rhos and Rhufoniog free of your suzerainty and they’re both holed up in their castles like badgers in a burrow, daring you to come and dig them out.”

Raine cursed and started toward Sir Odo, but Arianna held him back, her fingers digging into the sleeve of his
broigne.
“What will you do to them?”

“Hang them.”

She sucked in a sharp breath. “But you can’t! Such a death is dishonorable—”

He pulled his arm loose from her grip. He would be damned if he’d justify himself to her. It was always the case when a new lord took over—those of his vassals who were not of his own making, who owed only loose allegiance to the new lord, inevitably tested his mettle with rebellion. If he had any hope to maintain control over his fief, he couldn’t let traitors escape without justice and Arianna knew that.

She stepped in front of him. “You do this because they are Welsh—”

“I do it because they are traitors.”

“You could exile them instead.”

“No.”

Tears filled her eyes, though they did not spill over. “If I were to ask you, for my sake—” “No.”

For once Taliesin seemed to anticipate his master’s needs, for he came trotting up on his cob, leading Raine’s black war-horse.

Raine unhooked his shield off the saddle pommel and ran his left arm through the two leather grips on its back. “Sir Odo, you will escort my wife back to Rhuddlan—”

“I can get there by myself.”

He loosened his sword in its scabbard, then turned to her. “Aye, I’ve no doubt you can. But you could just as easily get yourself to Rhos and join your precious cousin.” He bared his teeth at her in a grim smile. “I don’t trust you, sweet wife.”

He started to step into the stirrup, but his charger danced away, gnawing at the bit. Taliesin, who still had hold of the reins, tried to bring the restless steed under control.