The Cross and the Dragon (23 page)

Hruodland thought back to the summer at Drachenhaus when he and Alda were betrothed. Alda was eager to lie with him, almost too eager. Could she succumb to another man’s charms?

“There have been rumors,” Luc said. “And I myself saw her with other men while you were away at war last year. She greatly enjoyed their company. And your uncle Guillaume told me he saw her acting like a coquette with a handsome, young merchant.” He pursed his lips and looked down. “He said her clothes were rumpled as if she had lain with him.”

“What is his name?”

“I do not know. He was a merchant. And it does not matter, since she is barren.”

“No!” Hruodland yelled. “I will hear no more of this.”

He strode past Luc and slammed the door. He shook his head as he ran down the stairs.
No, it cannot be,
he thought. But he could not stop other ideas from creeping into his mind.
Alda is a clever woman. And she did not bleed when I first met with her. If she was not chaste then…

* * * * *

When she saw her husband come into the hall of the count’s manor, Alda forgot what she was telling Gerard and stopped in midsentence. Something had infuriated Hruodland. She could see it in his face.

“I must attend to my husband,” she whispered to Gerard in Frankish.

Alda approached him. She would have feared any other man with such a look of rage. But this was Hruodland, and he had never raised a hand against her. Before she could ask what troubled him, he grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her close.

“What have you been doing in my absence?” he yelled in Roman, his voice ragged.

Alda tried to pull herself away, but his grip was too strong. She looked around and saw the servants were listening. “Back to work!” she shouted in Roman.

Hruodland looked around and loosened his grip. Alda stepped back and gave him a puzzled look. “I fail to see why my getting news from Veronica — or answering Gerard’s question — would trouble you,” she said irritably.

“Who was he, Wife?” Hruodland demanded.

Alda looked around at the servants again. They had paused in their duties. “I said back to work,” she commanded. “The first to stop working again will feel my wrath.” The servants returned to their duties more quickly.

Alda turned back to her husband. She would have rather faced a charging stallion. His fists were clenched, and his dark eyes burned through her. She took another step back.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“Who have you betrayed me with?” he roared.

Gerard’s jaw dropped. “Hruodland, this is nonsense,” he called out.

“Gerard,” Hruodland shouted back, “be quiet. This is not your concern.”

“Gerard speaks the truth,” she cried. “This is nonsense. I have been true to you!”

The servants stopped working again. Alda took a step toward a maid who was supposed to be sweeping the floor and directed her fury at her husband with a slap across the maid’s face.

“I said to keep working,” she barked, shaking her finger in the maid’s face. “Disobey me again, and the punishment will be harsher.” She approached Hruodland and hissed in Frankish, “Walk with me to the church. I have no wish to give the servants more fodder for gossip.”

“Wife, we are going to the church,” he said in Roman in a loud voice.

As they left the manor, Alda lifted her skirts to keep them from the dusty street. She felt her cheeks burn. She and Hruodland were barely outside the door when she said in Frankish between clenched teeth, “Why did you humiliate me in front of the servants? You could have spoken Frankish.”

“Your sin of betrayal is much greater,” he retorted in the same tongue.

Alda stopped walking. A chicken strutted in front of them.

“Why are you insisting on such nonsense?” she asked.

“I have on good authority that you have been a coquette with a merchant in my absence.” Hruodland grabbed her elbow and led her toward the church.

“That is not betrayal.” Alda yanked her elbow from his hand and quickened her pace.

“You do not deny it?” he asked. “You do not deny lying with a merchant?”

“A merchant?” She blinked back her disbelief. “You are accusing me of lying with a merchant? I have done nothing more than flatter them. If they think a countess desires them, they become more generous with their wares.”

“Them? There has been more than one?” His expression was somewhere between shock and anger.

“Oh, Hruodland, for pity’s sake,” she snapped. “I complimented them on how their tunics became them and laughed at their bad jokes. There is no sin in that.”

“But your clothes were rumpled,” Hruodland insisted.

“I have lain with no one but you,” Alda said as they approached the church steps. She let go of her skirts when they reached the door.

“You are lying, just like you lied when you said you were chaste before we married,” Hruodland yelled.

Alda was too furious to answer. She clenched her teeth as dust clung to her sweaty skin. She yanked open the door and, without a word, stomped toward the altar. The summer sunlight streamed in on the oaken floor of the sanctuary, and lamps filled with walnut oil illuminated the penitents kneeling in prayer toward Saint Melaine’s grave, which lay under the altar.

Alda stared at the wooden crucifix on the back wall and thought of Bertrada’s offer and how much simpler a life in the cloister on the Rhine island of Nonnenwerth would be.
To be a bride of God and have a life of prayer. God would never accuse me of infidelity
.

Hruodland followed her toward the altar. “Do not be insolent with me!” he roared in Frankish.

Even though Hruodland and Alda were speaking a tongue most of them did not understand, the penitents turned toward the couple.

A thought stuck Alda and filled her with horror. She shivered despite the heat. She shouted in Frankish, “You are looking for an excuse to repudiate me because we have no heirs. You will not end this marriage by dishonoring me!”

“Quiet!” Hruodland barked.

“I will not be silenced. Not when you are inventing lies. I have tried everything to conceive. I have tried to be a good wife. And you… you…” Fury tied her tongue.

Trembling with rage, Alda pointed to a sidewall with a mural of the Crucifixion, where three women watched Christ at the moment of His death.

“Look at this,” she demanded. “Look at the women. The women never forsake Christ. Remember their love for their Lord, Hruodland. Such has been my fidelity for you. May Saint Melaine strike me down if my words are not true!”

Hruodland stared at her, his jaw dropped.

“Well?” Alda asked, her voice dripping with fury. “Do you believe me now?”

Hruodland looked down, his cheeks coloring. Alda’s chest was heaving. Her throat was tight. She let the silence hang in the air as heavily as the scent of incense.

Finally, he raised his head. “Yes, I believe you. Come, Wife. Let us return to the manor.”

Alda stepped away from the altar, but she did not take the hand Hruodland held out for her. He grabbed her arm and hissed in Frankish, “You are not to embarrass me.”

“The same way you embarrassed me?”

She looked at the penitents watching them. She did not want them to spread rumors. Despite her almost blinding anger, she gave her husband her arm.

As they left the church, Alda wondered if Bertrada had suggested divorce to Hruodland while they had been in Paderborn.
No, not in this way.
To keep the peace within her son’s kingdom, Bertrada had been willing to make a bargain, what Alfihar would see as a fair trade to end the marriage and retain the family’s honor.

It had to be somebody here. Picking up her skirts, Alda snarled: “Who is this perjurer who dishonored me? I want his right hand on a silver platter, and the rest of his body and his kin banished.”

“He is beyond my justice,” Hruodland said in a monotone.

“But the only people beyond your justice are…” The words caught in her throat for a moment. “Your kin.” The full import of the words caused her to pause. “I have married into a nest of vipers.”

“Do not say such things,” Hruodland commanded.

“It is true. You wish to divorce me? Do it. I will take my dowry to Nonnenwerth, where it will be more welcome. And I will tell my brother and my uncles of your lies. Do you think your uncle Charles wishes for another blood feud in his realm? Do you want my brother to turn his back on you when you face the enemy?”

“Alda, peace,” Hruodland said. “I have no intention of repudiating you. Without you, I would be lost.”

Alda wiped a tear from her cheek with her free hand. Who could have told Hruodland that lie? Not Gerard, his face showed as much astonishment as she felt. Besides, he would inherit the March of Brittany if she and Hruodland had no children. The only other people beyond Hruodland’s justice were his uncles.

Luc
, she thought, remembering the warning from the old count’s widow:
Be wary of my late husband’s brothers.
For a moment, she wanted to flee from this serpent who called himself a bishop, despite the dishonor it would bring her own family. She wanted to flee to Nonnenwerth, where all she had to worry about were which prayers to say and not to be ever watchful of the most powerful man in the city. But she could not bear leaving Hruodland.

“You mean everything to me,” she said softly. “If you were lost in Hispania next spring…”

“Lost in Hispania?” Hruodland said with a laugh. “Whatever made you think of such a thing?”

“I… I just keep having a feeling that a disaster will strike.”

He kissed her. “It will be the largest army ever. It will include men from all over the realm, even some Lombards. There is nothing to worry about. The Christian cities will welcome a Christian king, and the Islamic cities, when they see our might, will likely surrender without a fight. We will be back by the hay-cutting month. If not then, in time for the harvest.”

Alda wanted to believe him. But the premonition hung over her as oppressively as the summer heat.

* * * * *

The heat broke two days later, but Alda’s premonition did not go away. It clung to her through the fall and winter and into the spring. She could not sleep on the eve that Hruodland would start his journey to Hispania.

This is the largest army ever,
Alda told herself,
and God has always been on our side.

Her eyes opened to blackness. The curtains on the bed had been closed to keep out the chill of the spring night. She lay in Hruodland’s arms. They were both naked, having lain with each other one last time before he went away.

If only this could be the time I am with child,
she thought.

She held him tighter. She could feel his breathing. Alda shuddered to think the March of Brittany would be left with only a few guards.

Suddenly, Hruodland’s body stiffened. His throat made a noise like a muffled scream. His breathing changed from deep and slow to shallow and quick. He sweated. He gasped and rolled on his back. He sounded as if he was struggling to get enough air into his lungs.

“Dearling?” he whispered. His voice startled her.

“Yes, Husband,” she said.

She could feel him turn toward her. She ran her fingers through his hair. She traced his ear, his neck, shoulder, chest. He held her tightly against his body, as if he was making sure she was real.

“Another nightmare?” she asked.

“It is but a dream.”

Alda remained silent, knowing he would tell her if she did not prod him.

“I dreamt I watched a man barely out of boyhood die,” Hruodland said, holding her closer. “He had perhaps seen fifteen winters. A Saxon arrow found him but did not land in his heart straight and true. And he screamed. He screamed for what seemed hours as the men tried to pull it out of him and stop the bleeding. And then I was that boy, screaming, and they could not stop the bleeding. That is when I awoke.”

Despite herself, Alda gasped, wondering if Hruodland’s nightmare was an omen.

As if he read her mind, he said, “It is but a dream. Something I saw during the war in Saxony. Nothing more.” He touched her cheek. “I need you to be cheerful when we leave.”