Afton of Margate Castle (54 page)

But when she opened her eyes and looked at her upturned hands, her gratitude turned to shame and revulsion. Calhoun had come back, but to what? She was now a peasant! He would reach for her hands and find calluses, he would put his face in her hair and gag from the stench of it. Her tunic was not silk or even linen, but rough workday wool, and her skin was no longer smooth, but constantly reddened by the chafing rash of wool.

She lowered her hands quickly and picked up her broom. He would come to see her, of that she was certain, so how could she escape? She could not hide; Margate was far too small a village. She could only let him find her and show herself as she was. If he turned from her in revulsion or pity, then that, too, was a fault to be laid at Endeline’s feet.

***

Lunette and Morgan were at first reluctant to tell Calhoun about Afton. “If she is married or dead, tell me!” Calhoun demanded, cornering the maids in the hall. “And if she is alive, tell me where I can find her.”

“She is alive,” Morgan spoke slowly, “but she is greatly changed, Calhoun. Some say she has grown mad, for she shies away from the villagers like a scared colt.”

“Some say she talks to herself,” Lunette added. “She will not go to church, and she will not come to the castle on feast days, not even to visit her son.”

“He is her son no longer,” Calhoun said, thinking of Ambrose and his confident position in the household. “He has found his way into my parents’ hearts.”

“Afton has no home of her own, nor any means of support,” Morgan said, wiping her hands on her skirt, “and she does not welcome visitors.”

“I have heard zhat Josson zhe steward tried to visit her once,” Lunette added, “and she threw herself in ze creek rather than face him.”

Calhoun stared at the maids, disbelieving. The Afton he remembered was strong and stable. Although she had met with sorrow, losing the mill and her son, surely she had not gone mad!

“Where can I find her?” he asked gently.

“She lives with her mother in the village,” Morgan whispered, peering nervously around. “Now go. And don’t tell anyone we told you.”

Calhoun smiled at the maids. “Thank-you very much.”

***

He chose to go to the village in the morning, when the men would be off to the fields and the women off to their work. The sun shone brightly on the colored trees in the forest, and dappled shadows danced on the road in front of him as lightly as Afton once danced in the castle. “She cannot be much changed,” he reassured himself. “She is, after all, the same person.”

It took Calhoun several minutes to decide which of the mud-walled cottages in the village was Corba’s. He asked a group of children where Corba lived, and one of them, an urchin with red hair and a dirty face, pointed to a thatched-roof near the center of the village. Calhoun nodded his thanks and nudged his horse.

The house sat behind a well-swept courtyard, and a thin thread of smoke rose from the opening in the roof. He dismounted and tied his horse to the sparse hedge that served as a fence and called out a greeting. “Hello? Is anyone home?”

The wrinkled face of an elderly woman appeared in the doorway, and upon seeing him, the woman curtseyed with grave dignity. “I come seeking Afton of Margate Castle,” Calhoun said, making an effort to keep his voice gentle. “Is she here?”

The woman shook her head, and her hand flew to her throat as if she could not trust her voice. She cleared her throat nervously. “No, my lord, she is in the forest. She goes there often.”

Calhoun grinned in spite of himself. She was the same person, and he could prove it by finding her in the forest. He knew where she had gone, but could he still remember the way to the pool by the twin oak trees?

“Thank-you,” he called to Corba. He mounted his horse and left the village.

He let the horse walk along the road that bordered the forest, and prayed that he would remember where Afton had found the path to the forest pool. She went there often, her mother said, so perhaps there was a well-defined trail. He searched for an opening off the road and found none.

He dismounted and tied the stallion to a tree at the point where the forest ended and the meadow began. Margate Castle, tall and imposing, endured in the distance, and he stomped through the meadow, his boots crushing the few remaining flowers. His horse whinnied from the road, voicing his displeasure at being abandoned far from the comfort of the stable.

“It’s no use,” Calhoun muttered after he had gone a few hundred yards into the pale meadow. The forest stood at his right hand, but it stood as a dense tangle of fading vegetation and broad tree trunks. If there was a trail, he could not see it.

But you’ve been here recently
, the voice of a memory whispered.
You visited often while you were in Zengi’s prison, do you remember?

A distant memory beckoned, and he stepped forward into the greenery. His feet moved as if under their own power, his eyes as wide and unseeing as a sleepwalker’s. The sanctuary of the forest drew him in, and the overpowering majesty of creation erased his frustration.

After years of sun and sand, Calhoun found the forest a glorious cathedral. The Holy Land, for all its religious shrines and significance, was not as moving as the tabernacle in which he found himself, for the trees lifted his thoughts high above the earth and toward the heavens
. Surely God has led me here
, he thought, watching overhead as the trees rustled in the early fall breeze.
He has brought me home and spared my life for some purpose.

For the first time since his arrival in Margate, Calhoun felt as if he had come home. The memories and fantasies he had conjured in his captivity paled in contrast to the reality he experienced as his feet moved deeper and deeper into the forest. There was no trail, but with every step there seemed to be only one other possible step forward, and so he progressed further into the woods until he stood before the mammoth trees he remembered from his childhood. The twin oaks were broader now, and more tightly woven together, and someone had engraved a name into each of the trunks. “Calhoun,” read the first tree, and the second, “Afton.”

He caught his breath. She had not changed. No matter when she had written this, whether it was last year or years before, she loved him. He was as elemental to her soul as the right tree was to the left.

His thoughts were interrupted by a sudden splash from beyond the twin trees. He ducked behind a leafy bush that had not yet lost its leaves, and the sight he beheld took his breath away.

A woman walked out of the pool and her bare feet stepped carelessly through the colorful leaves the oaks had thrown for her carpet. Her long hair hung in wet tendrils down her back and over her breasts, and she moved quickly to a bare sapling where her simple tunic dangled.

He averted his eyes in consideration for her modesty, and when he guessed she had time to slip on her tunic, he stood and called her name.

“Afton!”

Her eyes went wide at the sound, and she flinched like a deer who has seen the hunter too late. He stepped into the clearing, embarrassed at his awkwardness, and walked nearer. Twenty feet from her, he stopped. Her eyes were not the eyes of a woman who gladly receives the man she loves. Her dark gray eyes were remote.

“Calhoun.” She pronounced his name calmly, without surprise.

He gazed at her in silence, drinking in her appearance. He wanted to laugh, for Fulk had been so wrong! Afton was not old and gray or stooped from carrying another man’s children, she was still beautiful, but different from the threadworn memory he had replayed over and over in his captivity. Her hair was still long and lush, her lips still full. The skin at her long neck was pale and smooth, disappearing into the simple dark tunic that made her seem thinner than he had remembered.

But the youthful curve of her cheek had been replaced by a square jaw suggesting resolute strength. Her entire posture had changed, from that of a young girl to a woman more regal. He drew in his breath. By all the saints, this woman could pass for a queen!

She reclined her head slowly in his direction. “Welcome home,” she called, then lifted her skirt and began to move away.

“Wait!”

He stepped toward her, and her hand flew up to block his approach. “Come no closer,” she said, backing away.

“Do not do this,” Calhoun answered, unable to tear his eyes from her. “Do you know how many nights your image kept me alive? In my dreams I came upon you, much like this, and held you in my arms--”

She closed her eyes and covered her ears with her hands. “Say no more!” she screamed, startling a flock of pigeons into flight.

“I must,” Calhoun answered, covering the distance between them in frantic steps. She turned and ran, but he caught her in a moment, and turned her to face him. She struggled, and he caught her flailing arms.

“God spared me to come home to you,” he said, relishing the feel of her between his hands. “From this day forward, if you will have me, I am a warrior no longer.”

She lifted her eyes to his, and he saw himself reflected there, an anguished man in love. “There was a day when I would have died of joy to hear those words,” she whispered. “I promised God that if you would come home, I would receive you and be your wife. But that was before, and I can no longer keep that promise.”

 
“In the name of God, why not?” Calhoun asked, his eyes sweeping over her. “I came home for you, Afton, though I tried to forget you in Outremer, still each day brought nothing but a clearer vision of how dear you are to my soul.”

He clasped her to him tightly, and she did not resist. “Fulk said God sends to each of us a moment of revelation,” he whispered through her hair, “and in my moment, I saw myself as a prideful fool, just as you have seen me through the years. Please, dearest Afton, do not let me spend my days alone.”

She did not answer, but he felt her hands slide from his chest and run down his arms. He heard her gasp, and when he released her to look on her face, he saw that she stared at the welts on his arms, scars from Zengi’s regular repeated whippings.

He took her hand from his arm and gently kissed the palm. As he did so, he felt the calluses of her labor beneath his lips, and she clenched her fist in embarrassment and looked away quickly.

“I see we have both suffered,” he said gently. “Let us not suffer in our love as we have in our lives. Consent to be mine, Afton.”

He bent his face to hers and sought her lips, which she gave slowly, then willingly. Her arms slipped around his neck and her body pressed into his and he felt her giving into a passion she had often dreamed of but never experienced.

His lips left hers and traveled down her neck. “I will do anything for you,” he whispered, kissing the soft, moist skin of her throat. “I will build a house for you, defy my father and mother if necessary, and--”

She gasped as if he had bitten her, and pushed him away with all the force she could muster. “No,” she said, her voice quivering with emotion. “I will not love the son of my dearest enemy Endeline.”

Calhoun gazed at her in frustration. “My mother is your enemy?”

“She has stolen my child!” Afton shrieked, striking out at the air as if battling an unseen foe. “She took the mill from me. She has snatched from my arms every joy I have ever known. Do you not know that my own son now despises me? I know it is so, for she made me despise my own father and mother.”

“That is not so,” Calhoun answered, stepping toward her. “She merely wants to give him every advantage--”

“She steals children’s hearts!” Afton cried, covering her face with her hands. She sank to her knees and began to sob. Calhoun put an arm around her, but she rose and turned on him in fury, beating his chest with her fists until he backed away and let her cry in silence.

She glared at Calhoun through her tears. “I will kill her before my life is over,” she whispered. “Do not doubt it. My heart has always belonged to you, Calhoun, but until Endeline lies in her grave, it is directed toward another purpose. I cannot love you now.”