Roselynde (34 page)

Alinor was not so innocent after six months at Court as she had
been after sixteen years of her grandfather's and Sir Andre's company. She had
been much shocked when she discovered that a number of the Queen's younger
ladies had lovers. At first when she thought it over and considered the men to
whom these ladies were married, it seemed logical. What better expression of
contempt could there be for such a marriage. Later Alinor realized that the
lovers were often worse than the husbands. They sighed of everlasting devotion
while ogling over their lady's shoulders for another victim. Or they panted of
their pain and their lady's unkindness into another all-too-sympathetic
shell-like ear. She had even heard a lover, in a moment of exasperation, snarl
something about "that trull."

Was that what Simon was willing to accept? Was that more honorable
than pushing events about a little so that he or Alinor could openly ask to be
married? Was it a greater honor to turn over intact estates than an intact
bride? Alinor's hand stabbed the needle into her work as if into a heart. She
had called Simon a courtier, but had never thought what that meant aside from
attendance upon the King. What of the idle hours? How many shell-pink ears had
Simon whispered into?

The image of Simon leaning amorously forward came into Alinor's
mind, but instead of the bitter bile of jealousy, a giggle rose in her throat.
The image was simply false. The laughter died as quickly as it came. Alinor bit
her lips and stared unseeingly at her work, her cheeks flaming again. Simon
might not lean amorously nor whisper inanities, but he could speak words of
love as smoothly as the most practiced seducer.

Angry at herself now more than at Simon, Alinor acknowledged that
there must be many facets of Simon's life and character that she had overlooked
or deliberately ignored. No man who was not a priest or afflicted like the King
could reach Simon's age without knowing many women. And the lips that taught
her so swiftly and expertly how to kiss gave mute evidence of how well he had
known women.

Sequentially hot with rage, cold with disappointment, and sick
with jealousy, Alinor stabbed viciously at her innocent embroidery. Slowly the
turmoil in her mind subsided. How could she be angry with Simon for what he had
done before she was born? Before he knew she existed? The sickness subsided.
The disappointment and rage followed, leaving emptiness. Alinor was willing to
swear that Simon had not looked at another woman all the time he had been at
Court. Not only the evidence of her own eyes supported that notion but the lack
of evidence of her ears. Knowing he was her warden and that she admired him,
the spiteful ladies of the Court would have been only too eager to tell her if
his fancy had fallen on one among them.

Anyhow, she had lost the main thread, the core of the problem. If
Simon did wish to be her lover, should she accept or refuse? The busy needle
now hung suspended. There was a very unusual uncertainty in Alinor's mind. All
her life she had been a creature of certainties—sometimes mistaken ones that
had to be discarded and apologized for but, nonetheless, certainties. Now,
however, she was unsure. There was no question about what was right. The
question of sin barely brushed her mind. One had time to atone for the sins of
youth with good works, alms, and prayer when those sins were no longer so
desirable. What Alinor was sure about was that kisses in corners and hurried
couplings behind hedges were quite wrong. They would never suit her
temperament. That was not the kind of excitement that Alinor craved. But the
uncertainty remained. Could she resist Simon?

A sharp memory of the warmth in her lips, the sensitivity of her
breasts, the softness in her loins made her sigh. Perhaps she would be able to
resist him—perhaps. Perhaps she would remember that the big body that woke such
exquisite sensations in hers did not hold the mind and spirit she thought she
loved—perhaps.

It was fortunate that once the Queen decided to take Alinor with
her, she began to make use of her. Only a very few of the ladies-in-waiting
would accompany her. Some were too old; some did not ride well enough; most had
husbands and children in England. Alinor was made responsible for the Queen's
personal effects, her dresses and her jewels, partly because her fifty men-at-arms
could be used to guard them at no cost to the Crown.

In addition there were the letters to write, farewell notes, notes
to old friends to say the Queen would be in a certain area at a certain time
and inviting a visit, and notes to the Queen's regular correspondents to inform
them of where to direct future letters. Alinor had little enough time to
consider her own clothing and jewels and furniture and none at all to spare on
Simon's intentions.

Her relative calm was encouraged after Simon's return because he
was, if anything, busier than she. Nor was he long at Court. After a day to
determine the size of the cortege, he was off again to arrange shipping.
Returned from that task, it was necessary for him to assign each group to a
ship, determining how many men, how many horses, how much baggage each vessel
could accommodate. Only twice did Simon and Alinor have any contact. On the day
he returned, Simon sought Alinor out, ostensibly to ask how many men would
accompany her. For the first moment, panic gripped her. There was so sweet a
smile on Simon's lips, so tender a glance in his eyes that Alinor turned her
own gaze to her fingers while she answered his questions.

In the midst of a question, his voice checked and he said,
"Alinor?" gently, pleadingly.

She did not reply nor look up, frozen more by her impulse to yield
before he asked than by any continued panic. The moment had passed, however,
both for yielding and asking. Simon's question flowed on; he received his
answer and took a polite leave.

Their second meeting was even more businesslike. A winter passage
of the channel was always dangerous, and the Queen's goods were to be divided
so that if one ship foundered not all would be lost. In the largest and
soundest vessel, the Queen, Alais of France, two of the Queen's ladies, and all
of their servingwomen would travel together with a small portion of their
possessions, horses, and about half of Simon's men-at-arms under his steady
master-at-arms. The next best vessel would carry the remainder of the Queen's
ladies, including Alinor, the remainder of the Queen's possessions, Alinor's
men-at-arms, and Simon. Lesser ships carried the rest of the men-at-arms,
servants, and horses.

This time there was no need for Alinor to look at her fingers. As
Simon arranged when and where he would meet Alinor and her people after he had
seen the Queen safely aboard her ship, there was nothing in his manner to
indicate he had ever met Alinor before. For the two days remaining before
departure, a leaden weight lay on Alinor's heart. Obviously Simon would neither
force nor plead his cause. Nor, it seemed, was he willing to maintain a
relationship of simple friendship. If Alinor wanted him, on his and the Queen's
terms—a lover outside the bond of marriage—she could have him. If not, he was
willing to remain a courteous stranger.

Nothing could have been more suitable to Alinor's mood than the
weather through which they traveled from London to Dover. The skies wept soft
ice, which clung to cloaks and hoods to melt with the body's heat and soak all
in freezing water. There was none of the bright joy of snow that lay lightly
and beautifully upon the limbs of the trees and sheltered the sleeping earth
under its white mantle. Even when the sun at last came out, the bare bushes and
straggled stalks of the previous autumn's reaping did not glitter and sparkle.
They hung twisted and distorted under the weight of melting, transparent ice,
naked and unseemly. The roads were a morass of frigid, glutinous mud that
sucked at the horses' hooves so that they made their way painfully with hanging
heads. Worse, it bogged the carts so that the men-at-arms, cursing and
groaning, had to dismount and put their shoulders to the half-buried wheels to
aid the laboring oxen.

Sometimes Alinor roused herself to speak a word of encouragement
to her men, but mostly she just stared in silence, barely remembering to give
Beorn Fisherman a few pennies to buy dry firewood. She remembered little of
that ride, only misery of body and of mind, only that her fingers and feet
froze and cracked even in their furred gloves and boots so that her skin,
although it had been well rubbed with goose grease, split and bled.

To be cold was a misery, to be warmed by a fire was a sharp agony
because the chilblains stung and stabbed when the numbing cold was gone. She
remembered, too, that the Queen had praised her for her stoic endurance when
Alais and her other ladies bewailed their state. Alinor had merely laughed.

A physical pain, she had discovered, was a very little thing in
comparison to an unquiet mind. It was a relief to think about how her hands and
feet hurt, to wonder whether she would be able to find dry clothes and to
consider the horror of having again to put on her wet, mudweighted garments if
she could not. Anything at all was a pleasure so long as she did not have to
think about Simon.

The port, which was strange and interesting to most of the ladies,
could not divert Alinor. She had seen similar ships with their rows of benches
for rowers and the great sweeps for steering hove in at the town that huddled
under the gray walls of Roselynde. These were at their least attractive, too,
with their sails rolled and their crews emptying the stinking bilge. Alinor
shuddered as she saw them preparing to stretch a canvas across the bows of the
ship to act as a tent for the protection of the ladies. Inside there would be
some relief from the cold and the spray and a little warmth from the braziers
of charcoal, which would be lit if the sea was not too violent. There would
also be acrid smoke, shrieks and prayers, and the ugly smell of vomit.

Although Alinor had never crossed the narrow sea, she had been
sailing often enough. She was fortunate in not being given to seasickness
unless the water was very rough, but the choice between freezing in the open or
sharing the confined discomforts of the tent, each horrible in its own way,
reminded her of choosing between a Simon she did not want or no Simon at all.
In these choices there seemed to be no middle way. The choice between two goods
was difficult. But the necessary choice between two evils was bitter indeed.

When they came to the appointed ship, Alinor dismounted and stood
leaning against her horse, watching the men-at-arms leading and sometimes
forcing their trembling, blind-folded mounts into the bottom of the ship. Dawn
and Honey were already aboard and, at last, Beorn came to take Cricket, the
sturdy little mare Alinor had been riding. He looked around at the naked area,
shook his head, and signaled to three of his men.

"You stand between the wind and the mistress,
understand?" And then, to Alinor, "I don't know what else to do, my
lady. I cannot take you aboard before the horses are settled."

Alinor glanced at him rather blankly. "Never mind, Beorn. I
am warm enough."

In fact, she was so numb that she did not feel cold, but she was
suddenly aware of a different kind of chill. The other women were looking at
her. Alinor flushed with shame. The men were hers, but they were more or less
in the Queen's service now and, thus, for the protection of all the ladies. She
told Beorn softly to send more men so that the windbreak, such as it was, would
shield the whole group. A larger group of men-at-arms hurried back off the ship
and formed a semicircle. It did not occur to Alinor that the women in their
fur-lined cloaks were already better protected from the wind and cold than the
men in their steel and leather armor and sodden wool mantles. The men's purpose
was to serve their betters in any way that was necessary, whether by helping to
transport furniture, push mud-bogged carts, fighting and dying to protect them,
or by shivering in the wind so that noble ladies should be a degree or two
warmer.

The condition of the men-at-arms did not cross Alinor's mind. She
did her duty to them, and better than most masters, she prided herself. They
ate well, they had sound armor and good horses; when they were sick, she saw
they had medical attention and, if she had time, even came herself to be sure
they were well cared for. Their wives and children, if they had any, were
protected as long as they served and, should they die in service, would be
life-settled, the sons to be trained in arms if they were suitable and the
daughters to be married or taken as servants in the keep.

What troubled Alinor was her momentary neglect of a proper
courtesy to women less fortunate than herself. The ladies who were traveling
with the Queen were not the wives and daughters of great magnates who had their
places and duties in England. These women were largely widows who, although
still relatively young, were no longer desirable marriage prizes. Their world
no longer had a place for them. Most often they had children who were entitled
to their dower properties so that they had nothing beyond a life interest to
bring to another husband. Besides, if more children were born of the second
marriage, war might result between the two sets of heirs. Sometimes the
children were grown and wanted their mother's property
now;
most often
the women were not strong enough to rule and manage their own lands and a male
guardian was set over the children. In either case, the women were no longer
welcome in what had been their homes.