Snow in July (43 page)

Having suffered a real abduction, Kendra would have preferred to bypass this tradition, but Edgarburh’s residents seemed to enjoy chasing them through the burh to the chapel’s steps. Noir and his newfound canine friends scampered among them to add profuse encouragement. After the hardships Kendra’s people had endured for the better part of a year following the Hastings disaster, she wouldn’t have denied them this bit of sport for all the gold in the world.

Her father, waiting at the base of the steps, which had been strewn with dried petals saved from the roses with which Kendra had decorated Del’s tomb, looked ten years younger as he puffed his chest and extended his arms to help her dismount.

She lingered in his embrace, her mind bursting with a thousand different things she wanted to tell him. But all she could trust herself to say was, “Thank you, Father.”

Even those words had to compete with her welling tears.

“My beautiful little girl,” he murmured, hugging her close. “I have always loved you, even though I may not have always shown it.” He released her with obvious reluctance. After she relinquished her bouquet to her nearest attendant, Waldron placed her right hand into Alain’s left. “Well come to our family, son.”

Alain, breathtakingly handsome in his gleaming chain mail and new surcoat, laid his right hand over his heart and bowed to Waldron. “The honor and the pleasure is all mine.” He drew a deep breath and held it for a moment. “Father.”

As they gripped forearms, both men were blinking rapidly.

After Waldron withdrew to his assigned place, Alain noticed Kendra’s struggle for composure and caught her tears with a fingertip. “Are you all right,
ma chere
?”

“I—I’m happy…my dearest love,” she managed to say.

They shared a smile and faced their future.

On the chapel’s steps, before the king and queen, the royal attendants, the bridal party, Kendra’s extended family, and as many of Edgarburh’s people as could pack into the yard, Regent Odo, acting in his capacity as bishop, intoned the sacred Latin words uniting Alain and Kendra until death.

At the bishop’s signal, Ruaud produced a silver ring from the pouch at his belt and passed it to Alain, who held it aloft for a moment before snapping it along its scores. The crowd raised a hearty cheer. Next, Ruaud pulled out two lengths of blue silken cord and gave them to Alain, who tied one to each half of the ring and knotted the cords to form loops. This should have occurred at the betrothal ceremony, but their betrothal period had been anything but normal.

Before Alain slipped the cord around her neck, he showed her what he had chosen to have engraved upon her half ring.

“
Mon coeur tu as?
” she asked haltingly, certain she’d butchered the pronunciation.

He repeated the phrase in his lilting accent. “You have my heart,” he whispered as the ring settled into place against her chest, where Del’s locket once had resided. “Always.”

She smiled, needing no reminder of what she had known from the first moment of their first meeting but treasuring the sentiment none the less.

“
Amot vincit om,
” she quoted to him in practiced Latin without looking at the phrase she’d selected to adorn his half.

“Indeed,” Regent Odo agreed, glancing at King William. “Love does conquer all.”

Alain bent so she could slip the cord over his head. The half ring gleamed proudly against his surcoat as if it had always belonged there.

The prickling sensation of something fluttering onto her head startled her. His grin turned mischievous, and she followed the line of his gaze skyward as the “storm” intensified.

Several fyrd members, perched on the chapel’s timber roof, were shaking canvas sacks of dried flower petals—rose, crocus, chamomile, hawthorn, apple blossom; apparently, every white flower they could find—onto the assembly below. Once they’d been discovered, they erupted with peals of laughter as the “flakes” drifted down to coat king and commoner alike.

“You did it,” she whispered in awe to her husband as everyone else enjoyed the jest.

He radiated innocence. “What?”

“You…” Love surged through her with palpable force. “Alain, you made it snow in July.”

He squeezed her hand. “But of course,
ma chere.
” His expression sobered. “I could not enter into this marriage leaving its most important condition unfulfilled.”

Taking advantage of Kendra’s stunned silence, the bishop bade Sir Robert Alain de Bellencombre to kiss his bride.

Alain lifted her veil to provide her first clear sight of her husband, crowned with a chaplet of plaited lavender and white roses similar in design to the one that secured her veil. Loose petals scattered across his shoulders and head. The smile he gave her, that only she and God could see, hinted of the pleasures they would share later this night.

Her heart raced wantonly in anticipation.

The warm touch of his lips on hers so engorged her senses that she scarcely heard the crowd’s thunderous approval. She felt as if the entire world had been made anew, with herself and Alain the first couple to populate it. This teetered on the edge of blasphemy, to be sure, but she could imagine no other way to describe the soul-satisfying intensity of her euphoria.

Later, if anyone had asked her to relate the homily Father Æthelward delivered at mass following the wedding ceremony, she wouldn’t have had the slightest idea what to tell them.

What occurred on their way out of the chapel after the mass’s conclusion, however, she would never forget.

Gripping Alain’s arm, she stopped in front of the sarcophagi housing her mother and brother. Doubtless sensing her need for privacy, the king and queen paused a respectful distance away, preventing anyone else from disturbing her.

She let go of Alain and slipped between the tombs, first turning to her mother’s effigy and caressing the cool, prayer-folded granite hands. Although she still didn’t understand the full measure of the talent her mother had bequeathed her, she silently thanked her for the gift of healing even though it had manifested too late to save either her mother or Del.

Not too late, daughter.
The voice whispered through her mind like a summer morning’s breeze.
Precisely in God’s good time. Wield it well, with His blessings and mine.

For one astounding moment, the stone felt fleshlike. In the next moment, it cooled and hardened, making her certain she must have imagined the sensation.

With the back of her hand she pressed her moist eyes, though why she bothered, she had no idea, for the tears welled in earnest as she faced Del’s tomb.

Around his effigy’s neck, and extending to the sideways
V
formed by his chest and hands, lay the locket she had worn night and day for half a year. Its black cord, knotted in two places because Snake had cut it on the fateful day that now seemed another lifetime ago, was stretched taut. Although she suspected it would prove unnecessary, she sprang the catch to look inside.

It was Alain who voiced the question that leapt to Kendra’s mind: “How did those get there?” He pointed at the brittle blond strands of Del’s hair that once again lay in their rightful place. “Your father gave them to me, to return to you, but I thought…” As he trailed off, staring, she shot him an inquisitive look. He shook his head with a smile. “I thought I had lost them at Thornhill.”

Kendra could guess what he might be thinking about, but now was neither the time nor the place to inquire about a certain dream that had felt altogether too real.

She kissed her fingers and pressed them against the effigy’s cheek. It too grew fleshy for a miraculous moment before behaving like granite ought.

“I shall take good care of her, Delwin Waldronson,” Alain murmured, gazing at the statue.

Kendra noted his emphasis on the word “shall,” as if he were answering a question posed by Del himself. She resolved to ask Alain about it later.

You take care of him too, Kendra. In this new office for the Crown, Alain will need all the love and support you can give him.

Del, that is one promise I am delighted to make to you.

She didn’t think anything else could have surprised her until the effigy—briefly but unmistakably—displayed her brother’s distinctive lopsided grin.

BLINKING AS they emerged from the candlelit chapel into the bright July sun, Kendra and Alain were obliged to duck and run for the feast hall as the people laughingly pelted them with fistfuls of barley. The bridal party was hard-pressed to keep up, the more so when they stopped to arm themselves with grain.

Kendra’s brilliant idea to pull apart her bouquet bought them a respite as people scrambled for the roses she dropped in her wake. But she couldn’t appease the crowd fast enough, so she heaved the entire concoction at them, grabbed her skirts, and lengthened her stride.

Although the barley-pelting ceased when the newly wedded couple crossed the hall’s threshold, by unspoken agreement they continued to run, hand in hand, until they reached the dais. They turned, panting and grinning at each other like moon-mad fools, until the growing noise at the far end of the hall signaled the arrival of everyone else.

The king and queen led the procession at a stately pace, followed by the bridal party, Regent Odo, Waldron and the other members of Kendra’s family, Ruaud, Waldron’s fyrd, and the king’s men-at-arms. The remaining crowd eschewed dignity to jostle for seats. Noir beelined for the dais, where he proceeded to make a nuisance of himself until Alain called him to heel.

Alain, beaming at his gorgeous bride, knew he had the best seat in the hall on this, the very day he once had dreaded above all others.

Seated on Alain’s right, Ruaud, bless his wicked heart, started the chant, “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” Soon the word was echoing throughout the hall, accompanied by clapping and the drumming of dagger hilts on the tabletops. As Kendra and Alain complied, the drumming grew louder and more intense.

Fortunately, the guests had more important business to attend to as the honeyed mead started flowing and royal-liveried servants set the feast before them.

Upholding tradition, however, someone at the high table would revive the chant time and again, most often waiting until either the bride or groom had a full mouth. The king and queen seemed pleased to contribute to the hilarity, and Alain’s kisses got sloppier after every empty goblet.

Before the hall started spinning too badly, he leaned toward Ruaud and asked for Kendra’s gift. He must have spoken more loudly than he imagined, for Kendra made a similar request of the demoiselle sitting beside her.

“You first,” Kendra and Alain said simultaneously, once they had their gifts in hand, and laughed.

At her insistence, he presented his gift: the rose-enameled brooch that had belonged to his mother, the same brooch he had tried to give Kendra while posing as Squire Alain. Her swift, soft intake of breath prompted him to apologize for reviving unpleasant memories.

“Don’t, Alain. Please.” She fumbled with the catch for a moment before securing it to her gown, over her heart. “This is perfect. Thank you.”

He had wondered what she might give him. After untying what felt to his mead-fuddled fingers like a hundred ribbons, though in truth it was only four, he had his answer:

“Your locket?” He turned the shiny silver case over and over in his hands, looking for its catch.

“Its twin.” She took it from him, deftly opened it, and displayed its contents. A lustrous lock of her hair lay nestled inside. She snapped it closed and slipped the cord over his neck, where it clicked against his half ring. “So you will always remember me when you’re off on your knightly pursuits.”

“Hah, as if I could ever forget you, Kendra of Edgarburh!”

That earned another kiss-kiss-kiss chant from Ruaud. When they finished, Ruaud clapped his hands and whispered something to the servant who’d answered his summons. The queen’s woman rushed off and returned a few minutes later bearing a perfect apple sitting atop a polished silver tray, which she presented with a curtsey to the bride and groom.

“Ah!” squealed Queen Matilda. “Now we shall find out how many children the happy couple may expect.” She gave Waldron an exaggerated wink. “Your grandchildren.”

Alain’s new
beau-père
blushed to the roots of his white hair and took a long pull of mead.

“What is this for?” Kendra asked as Alain positioned his dagger’s blade over the fruit.

“Norman wedding custom,” he said as steadily as he could. “Our apples are tart but very fruitful.” He grinned at his bride. “Just as our people are. As many seeds as show inside an apple when the bride and groom cut it open, that’s how many children they may expect to be blessed with.”

“The number in the right hand is the number of sons,” added the queen, projecting her voice for the benefit of the mostly Saxon crowd, “and in the left is daughters.”

With Kendra’s hand to steady him, Alain severed the apple in twain. She snatched the halves, giggling. “Then we had better get started soon, my husband.” She held the fruit aloft, announcing to the assembly with the vigor of a seasoned battle commander, “Three sons and a daughter!”