A Tapestry of Dreams (18 page)

That heedless action saved Audris from several other actions that might have had more serious consequences. It made her reconsider her next impulse, which was to rush out to greet Hugh as he was riding in, and her desire to don her finest gown and wear her richest jewels. When she noticed that Fritha was staring at her with round-eyed astonishment, she realized that she had been making little dashes about the room—first toward the stairs, then toward the clothes chests—and uttering soft, senseless cries of “My unicorn, my unicorn.”

Audris blushed again and plumped herself firmly down on her chair, closing her eyes and folding her hands in her lap in the posture Father Anselm had insisted she assume when he wanted her to think over some unconsidered act. His grave, kind voice sounded in her memory, not scolding but urging her to consider the consequences of what she did.

She remembered when she had said impatiently, “Then tell me why what I desire is wrong and let me go!” he had shaken his head and replied that it was her nature to observe and react, seemingly without the intervention of conscious thought—which was why she was quick enough to snatch a young hawk from its nest. Most of the time, he assured her, smiling at her distress, the results were not bad because her heart was kind and her nature sweet. But, the warm voice warned, inconsiderate kindness could sometimes do more harm than deliberate cruelty. She
must
learn to think.

The enforced blindness and stillness had always brought order to Audris’s thoughts—if thoughts they were. Invariably, images of what had inspired her action and what she desired to accomplish moved in orderly progression past her mind’s eye, followed usually by a variety of “could be” pictures. Most often when Father Anselm had bidden her sit and think, all those “could be” images were dreadful.

This time, however, the pictures did not appear in order. First Audris saw her uncle’s reaction to her racing half-naked out of the keep to greet a man with whom she had once spent a day. A gasp of laughter ended in a shudder of horror, but before the chill had finished running down her spine, a new picture flooded into her mind, erasing all else. The unicorn, whiter than lilies, was walking in the dappled shade of a new-leafed wood, his blue eyes turned to the maiden, who walked beside him with an arm around his neck. The image was so compelling that Audris went at once to her loom, but it was empty—and then she remembered Hugh riding into the keep. Eagerness stirred in her again, but the image of the unicorn in the wood was like a promise of better things if she would be patient.

She looked at the bliaut on the bed, a soft yellow, to be worn over a gray undergown. Both were very plain, and Audris glanced toward the chest of finer gowns. But Hugh was poor; it would be unkind to mark the difference between them. Then she smiled as she remembered that he had looked at her with interest from the first, when she had been wearing a work gown all speckled with the threads of her weaving.

“I will go down,” Audris said to Fritha. “Help me to dress, have your dinner, and then string my loom. Use white warp threads, and only the finest.”

She did not respond to the new surprise in Fritha’s face. Audris rarely wove from the time of early planting in spring until the rains of autumn, but Fritha’s surprise at her order to ready the loom reminded Audris of the maid’s earlier astonishment. Audris was relieved that she did not need to explain her earlier unusual behavior when Hugh answered the guard, nor did she need to warn Fritha to silence lest she mention it to anyone. Mute and illiterate, the maid had no way of communicating anything beyond the simplest needs. Audris had acted, as usual, impulsively, and taken Fritha into her personal service out of pity when she came upon the girl being beaten for not being able to explain something, and the act of pity had been rewarded many, many times over in different ways.

When Audris reached the hall, Hugh had already been greeted by Lady Eadyth and was in one of the wall chambers being unarmed. Although he was not sufficiently important to merit his hostess’s personal attention, a man in Sir Walter Espec’s service would almost certainly have news to tell, and his dinner conversation could not be wasted on upper servants. Thus, Eadyth went to arrange that an extra place be laid on the high table—and it was Audris who rose from the fireside and ran to greet Hugh when he entered the hall.

“Unicorn, unicorn,” she whispered, seizing his hands in hers. “I could not believe it when I heard you call your name. Good news or ill, you are welcome to me.”

“I hardly dared hope you would remember me,” Hugh replied, and before he could recall his promise to himself that he would not trouble Audris with his hopeless desires, he had raised her hands and pressed his mouth to them.

The kisses were scarcely a polite greeting, and Audris almost leaned forward and kissed his bent head. Only a more urgent need saved her from that imprudence, for she needed her mouth to ask, “How long? How long can you stay?”

The anxiety in her voice changed the direction of Hugh’s emotion. The uprush of passion, which in another moment would have led him to wrench his hands from hers and pull her into his arms, was checked. In its place rushed a recurrence of his earliest feeling about Audris, a sense of her fragility and helplessness, which engendered a protectiveness more overwhelming than passion.

“Is your need desperate?” he asked. “Can it wait two days?”

The sensations Hugh’s lips had wakened in Audris were purely sensual, so it was not surprising that her interpretation of his question shocked her. She uttered a small outraged gasp, but could not find words to repudiate so conceited an assumption.

“Has the king sent more suitors to badger you?” Hugh asked next.

Audris uttered another gasp and then burst out laughing as the context of his first two questions became clear and she realized how innocent they were and how she had twisted his meaning. Simultaneously, under the laughter, she was aware of an odd dissatisfaction. She had been offended when she felt Hugh believed her to be so hot for him that she could not wait two days, but that he should only think of her as needing his protection was equally unsatisfactory. Then both amusement at her own stupidity and pique were swallowed up by the hurt she saw her unexplained laughter had dealt him.

“No, do not be angry,” she cried. “You do not know what I thought you meant when you spoke of my need. It was my own silliness at which I laughed, not at you.”

The pain of Audris’s contemptuous rejection, which Hugh had read into her sudden burst of hilarity, was too sharp to permit him to make sense of what she had said. He could only retreat into stiff formality.

“I have no cause for anger,” he said, releasing her hands and bowing. “It is no wonder you laughed. I was indeed presumptuous, forgetting how staunch a protector you have in your uncle.”

“That was not why I laughed!” Audris exclaimed. “I swear it was not.” But Hugh started to turn away, and in her fear and remorse for hurting him, Audris gasped, “I thought you meant
need
like a mare in heat—a mare cannot wait two days—and then I understood and—and…”

Hugh had stopped when she explained, and as what she said penetrated, he turned a dull red. “Demoiselle!” he protested.

“I am very sorry if I have shocked you,” Audris offered, but her lips were already twitching upward into a mischievous smile. “It is the season. It is all my uncle talks about.” Then the smile faded. “Except the chance that there will be war.”

“Of that I bring good news,” Hugh said quickly, glad to leave a topic that he could not discuss without consequences that were bound to be embarrassing. “I have come to beg lodging from your uncle for fifty men-at-arms and their horses.”

“Foreriders of an army?” Sir Oliver asked.

Both Hugh and Audris started, having been so intent on their conversation that they had not noticed Sir Oliver approach. From the tone of his question, it was clear that he had heard nothing except the last few words Hugh said and was unaware of the intensity of their first meeting. Hugh turned toward him.

“No,” he replied, “we are escort for Archbishop Thurstan, who goes to Roxburgh to convince King David to keep the peace.”

“That
is
good news,” Oliver said. “Is the archbishop far behind? It is almost dark.”

“He is settled for the night at Durham.”

Hugh then began to explain Thurstan’s desire to rest at Hexham before beginning the last and most grueling part of his journey. He was not looking at Audris, but she was at the edge of Hugh’s vision, and his sensitivity to her was so high that he was able to feel her tension relax when he asked for a week’s lodging for the archbishop’s troop.

“Certainly.” Sir Oliver nodded. “I will welcome his lordship’s men and keep them until the archbishop is ready to go, even if he should feel the need to remain at Hexham another week or two.”

“That is very generous,” Hugh said, trying to hide his surprise. He had heard enough from Sir Walter and from Bruno to know Sir Oliver was a man careful of cost, and the price of feeding fifty men and fifty horses was not negligible.

Sir Oliver’s lips twisted wryly. “Every day that his lordship keeps the Scots from descending on us is a gain. In another month, we will take in the spring hay, which means, in case we must bring our stock in from the pastures to protect them behind our walls, that we need slaughter a few less cows, sheep, and horses. And if the archbishop can hold King David until the crops are in, we will be saved grievous loss.”

It was Hugh’s turn to nod. “I am sure he is aware of it, but I will remind him on the road of the need to draw out the discussions, particularly if there seems no hope of convincing King David to keep the peace.”

“I hoped you would say that.” Oliver smiled. “I would not wish to intrude on Archbishop Thurstan’s needed rest, but if you think it would help for me to go to Hexham and speak to him, I would be willing to do it.”

“Perhaps he would wish to speak to you,” Hugh answered. “I must ride back to Durham tomorrow to join the escort, and I will ask him.”

“You have easy access to the archbishop?” Sir Oliver sounded surprised, the tone making it clear that he thought Hugh no more than a common messenger.

“Yes,” Hugh replied, his lips thinning.

Sir Oliver misunderstood and shook his head. “I have no favors to beg,” he remarked with a cynical smile. “I had forgotten for the moment how devout Sir Walter is and his many gifts to the Church. I was curious about how you came into his lordship’s service, but I suppose you are lent to the archbishop, and he is courteous for Sir Walter’s sake.”

The inference Sir Oliver made was natural, and under ordinary circumstances it would have roused no more than mild resentment in Hugh, which he would have swallowed. Audris had moved slightly so that Hugh could no longer see her at all, but he felt her presence, and that she should hear him dismissed as a nothing, a simple messenger who could be passed around for use with no more thought or regret than an old cloak, wakened a fury in Hugh. The need to be a person of consequence in Audris’s eyes made him ignore the probability that mention of his relationship to the archbishop would produce the usual obscene snicker. Hugh was so angry that he hoped Sir Oliver would impugn Thurstan’s honor; then he could challenge Oliver and make him eat his words.

“I am Thurstan’s foster son,” Hugh snarled. “It was the archbishop who placed me in Sir Walter’s household, and I serve Thurstan out of love, because
I
was asked to lead his escort, and because it gives me great joy to serve the man I hold dearest in the world.”

“Sir Hugh.” Audris’s hand caught his. “I am sure my uncle meant no insult.”

“No, I did not,” Sir Oliver said, clearly astonished by Hugh’s reaction. “My wife sent a man to say someone had come from Sir Walter. I had no way to know you had been knighted and were no longer bound to Espec. Even so, I cannot see anything in what I said to make you fly up into the trees.”

As Hugh’s flare of temper died, he felt like a fool. He could not explain that he had not been angry because Sir Oliver had not accorded him the honors of knighthood. In fact, it was far better for Sir Oliver to believe him a puffed-up popinjay than that he guess Audris to be the cause of his guest’s overreaction. Then, too, he was all too aware that to attack Sir Oliver could scarcely endear him to Audris, who clearly loved her uncle.

Hugh laughed uneasily. “I am sorry for sounding discourteous, Sir Oliver. I am angry at the world, I fear. I love Thurstan, and he is old and not strong. To make such a journey is dangerous for him.”

“Ah, I understand.” Sir Oliver nodded. “Well, well, I can see why you are worried. In addition to the hardships of the road, I have no doubt there are those who take advantage of the archbishop’s arrival to press him to grant favors or solve their problems. You need not fear that we of Jernaeve will trouble him in that way, but I see, too, that you might not welcome my suggestion that he continue the negotiations with King David as long as he can. Still, it is not Jernaeve alone that will benefit.”

“I know that.” Hugh sighed. “I do not hold anyone to blame—except myself. I was the one who asked him to intervene with King David.”

“But I am sure you never expected that he would go himself,” Audris said softly. Her hand was still on his, and she squeezed it comfortingly.

“Put it aside,” Sir Oliver remarked with rough kindness. “God looks to His own, and Archbishop Thurstan is surely under His care. Come and sit.”

He gestured toward the fireplace, settling himself on a bench and patting the other end to indicate that Hugh should sit beside him. Hugh smothered his impulse to grin. His outburst of temper seemed to have had some good effect. Ordinarily, he suspected, Sir Oliver would not have been so polite, and it was soothing to be treated with honor when Audris was there to see.

“You are Sir Hugh Licorne,” Sir Oliver went on. “I recall now that you are Bruno’s friend and that he mentioned your bold work at the siege of Exeter. I knew your face, but at first I could only connect you with Sir Walter. Tell me, how serious is the trouble with the earl of Gloucester and the western lords?”