Castle of the Heart (13 page)

Arianna folded away her good linen undershift
and looked about contentedly. She had never enjoyed a room to
herself before. She had always had to share with Selene, or, when
Selene went away to the convent school, she shared with several
maidservants. Now she had her own private place, an almost
unheard-of luxury in a crowded castle. She had useful work to look
forward to, helping to nurse Reynaud back to health and, in the
process, learning all she could from Meredith. She had friends in
Guy and Meredith, in Selene, and in Thomas, too, if she could only
control her unreasonable, foolish love for him and never let him
see it. She was blessed beyond anything a penniless orphan ought to
expect. She was grateful for what she had, and she knew she ought
to ask for nothing more. And yet…and yet…some rebellious corner of
her heart yearned for Thomas, forbidden to her, husband to her dear
friend and kinswoman.

Arianna had bathed and washed her hair, and
the tub and buckets of water had been carried out, when she heard a
tap on the door.

“Come in,” she called, assuming it was
Meredith. The door opened to disclose, not the mistress of the
castle, but a small, slender girl, nine or ten years old by the
look of her.

“I pray your pardon for disturbing you, my
lady,” the girl said, all politeness and careful manners. “Are you
the Lady Arianna?”

“I am.” Arianna looked down into huge blue
eyes and smiled at the child’s serious face. Her copper-gold hair
was in two thick braids which hung over her shoulders, glowing
against her dark blue woolen dress. Curls had come loose from the
braids, to make a halo about her head. Arianna noticed a sprinkling
of freckles across the delicate nose.

“I am Cristin,” the child said formally,
“daughter of Lord Guy and Lady Meredith, and I am sent to escort
you to the great hall for the evening meal, my lady.”

^“
Cristin.” Arianna considered the
carefully composed demeanor and wondered what this girl was really
like. “I’m not quite ready. Will you come in and wait? I won’t be
long.”

“Yes, my lady.” Cristin advanced a few steps
into the room and stood primly, watching while Arianna picked up a
comb and attacked her thick curls. They were still damp and
thoroughly tangled after being washed, and as she tugged at them
the comb caught on a snarl and flew out of her fingers. It
clattered upon the floor and disappeared from sight.

In an instant the well-controlled Cristin was
gone, changed into a young hoyden who dove to the floor to retrieve
the comb, leaving Arianna staring at bare legs and tiny feet in
leather slippers while the rest of the child was underneath the
bed. She quickly came out again, dusting off her dress as she stood
up.

“I have the same problem with my hair,”
Cristin said, handing Arianna the comb.

“I can see you have.” Arianna could not help
laughing. More hair had come loose from Cristin’s braids and it
stood up all over her small head in a mass of curls.

“Try braiding it,” Cristin said wisely,
hoisting herself onto the bed and swinging her legs against the
side.

“I have. It never stays. It doesn’t seem to
stay for you, either.” Arianna went to work again, this time with
more success. She finished the combing and picked up the blue
ribbon with which she habitually tied back her hair.

“I like horses and hawks,” Cristin announced,
kicking her heels against the bed frame, “but not dresses and
ribbons. My mother says I’ll change when I grow up, but I don’t
think so.”

“It will be a few years before you grow up,
Cristin.”

The swinging legs stilled, the childish face
took on a solemn expression.

“Are you going to marry Geoffrey?” she asked,
tilting her head to watch Arianna.

“You mean Sir Geoffrey? Why should you think
that?”

“You’re so pretty, I thought he might ask
you. If he does, say no.”

“I thank you for the compliment, Cristin, but
I have no intention of marrying Sir Geoffrey.”

“That’s good,” Cristin nodded approvingly,
“because I am going to marry him myself. Later, when I’m old
enough.”

“Have your parents arranged it with him?” It
was not at all unusual for a girl as young as Cristin to be
contracted in marriage, but somehow it did not seem the sort of
thing either Guy or Meredith would do. Cristin quickly relieved
Arianna of this supposition.

“Of course not,” she said scornfully. “They
don’t know about it. It’s my own secret. I did tell Geoffrey. I had
to, so he’d wait for me and not marry anyone else.”

“I see,” Arianna said weakly, not certain how
to deal with these revelations. “What did Sir Geoffrey say to your
plans?”

“He laughed at me at first, but after I
kicked his shins he said when I grow up my father will arrange my
marriage, and in the meantime I must behave circ – circumspectly
and just be friends with him. Are you ready to go? I’m hungry. I’ll
die if I don’t eat right now.“ After this dazzling change of
subject Cristin slid off the bed and headed for the door. A
bewildered Arianna followed her down to the great hall.

She watched Geoffrey of Tynant carefully
during the evening meal, quickly concluding that he had no serious
interest in Cristin. His attitude was that of a tolerant adult
toward an adoring child who followed him everywhere. Although he
might not want to hurt Cristin’s feelings, he clearly was not, as
Arianna had at first feared he might be doing, planning to use
Cristin to further his own ambitions. Arianna did not think
Geoffrey was ambitious at all. He seemed devoted to Guy and quite
content to rule Tynant as Guy’s vassal. Arianna also decided that
both Guy and Meredith were well aware of their daughter’s feelings
for Geoffrey, but aside from a gentle controlling word from
Meredith now and then, they were ignoring the situation.

“You’ve noticed,” Meredith said, amused. “You
could not avoid noticing. She’s always under his feet, worshipping.
We feel he’s much too old for her, though otherwise quite suitable.
Guy and I are hoping she will outgrow it, and Geoffrey does nothing
to encourage her beyond ordinary friendliness. In another year or
two, she’ll be sent away for fostering, and perhaps that long
separation will end her adoration.” Meredith dropped that subject
and began to talk of her plans for Reynaud’s treatment.

Now that she was relieved of any anxiety over
Cristin, Arianna tried to keep her eyes from straying toward
Thomas. She was not successful. Time and time again during that
first night at Afoncaer, while Thomas, Guy, Geoffrey and young Sir
Kenelm sat at table with their wine, talking together with Captain
John, who headed Afoncaer’s men-at-arms, Arianna found herself
looking toward Thomas, until Meredith jokingly chided her for not
paying attention.

“I’m overtired,” Arianna apologized. “With
your leave, my lady, I think I’ll seek my bed.”

“And because you are tired,” Meredith said,
leaning toward her and putting a hand on Arianna’s arm to detain
her, “you are also weak. You must find strength inside yourself,
Arianna.”

“Will I outgrow it, like Cristin?” Arianna
whispered, desolate.

“Perhaps not, but you can overcome your
desire for something forbidden to you. I’ll help you all I can, but
in the end you must do it yourself. I know you can. You are
stronger than you think.”

“She avoids him. Watch her.” Arianna did not
add that she would never have moved out of the reach of Thomas’s
arm as Selene had just done. Thomas’s wife sat next to him, but
separate, wrapped in cold dignity, apparently listening to the
minstrel who sat nearby singing of ancient battles, and yet Arianna
was certain Selene did not hear the singer. He was only an excuse
to remove herself from Thomas.

“She’s new to marriage,” Meredith said,
warning in her low voice. “It takes time for some women to grow
accustomed to a husband. Do not interfere, Arianna.”

“How could I,” Arianna asked sadly, “when he
is mad with love for her? He sees no one else. He hardly knows I’m
here. There is nothing to fear from me.”

Later that night, when for the first time
since Thomas’s and Selene’s wedding she was left to herself for
more than a few moments, safe in the enclosed silence of her own
small room, Arianna wept all the tears she had had to hide before
others. Great, wrenching sobs shook her until she had to stop
pacing back and forth across the room and lay upon the bed,
knotting the blue-green coverlet in her fists, trying at first to
stifle the sounds she made lest Reynaud, next door, should be
disturbed by them.

There came an hour when she no longer cared
if anyone could hear her. She recalled the first time she had seen
Thomas, and her instant recognition of the one man she could love
for all her life. Such things should not happen, it was beyond all
reason, but happen it had, and each time she had seen Thomas since
that first time, every encounter she had with him, every action of
his she observed, had only confirmed and increased her feeling for
him. And he could never love her. Never. His own heart was fixed on
Selene and there it would remain. And she, Arianna, must learn to
accept that and somehow live with the pain of it without destroying
herself or hurting either of them.

Toward morning, her bitter grief spent, empty
of all tears and weary of hopelessness, she found within herself
the strength Meredith had said she possessed. Arianna prayed for
forgiveness for the love she held toward another woman’s husband,
and then swore fervently to put that love aside, to lock it up
tightly within her innermost heart, and be a true and honest friend
to both Thomas and Selene.

It was a different Arianna who went to Mass
the following morning in the chapel built just off the second floor
of the tower keep. She was pale and hollow-eyed from lack of sleep,
but she had herself well under control. She would weep no more for
what could not be, and she would take full advantage of the
opportunity Meredith had presented to her. She broke her fast with
dark bread and a cup of ale, then went to Reynaud’s room.

“He looks dreadful,” she whispered to
Meredith.

“He’s bone-weary from the journey,” Meredith
said. “But it’s more than that. He’s in terrible pain and he has
fever again. I wish the swelling around his eye would go down. That
worries me most, but his leg is inflamed, too. Arianna, find Joan
and tell her to choose the strongest wine we have and send me
several pitchers of it. I’ll be in the stillroom.”

Arianna did her errand, and then herself took
a large pitcher of the wine to the stillroom. She looked around at
it, fascinated. Bunches of herbs were hung from the exposed rafters
to dry, and baskets of dried flowers and leaves were lined up on
narrow shelves, along with jars and vials of preparations Meredith
had made. The room smelled marvelous, the pungent scent of lavender
mingling with rose and mint, hyssop and sweet woodruff, tangy rue,
and too many other fragrances for Arianna to separate and identify.
She watched Meredith mix rue into the wine.

“And betony and rosemary,” Meredith said,
tossing them into the jug. “Here’s Joan with more wine. You mix
this next pitcher, Arianna, while I watch you. Then you may help me
heat it, so the herbs will give up their healing qualities to the
wine.”

“But if I make a mistake?” Arianna hesitated.
“I don’t want to harm Reynaud.”

“You won’t. I’ll make certain of it. But
this,” Meredith told her, selecting a jar of ointment from the
shelves, “this I will not let you make until years have
passed.”

“Trust my lady,” Joan said, her complacent
manner reassuring Arianna as much as Meredith’s confidence had
done. “Lady Meredith is the best physician I have ever known.”

They heated the wine, stirring all the time,
then strained the mixture back into the pitchers. When they were
done they took the wine to the sickroom, along with the ointment
and bunches of crackly dry rosemary and rue and hyssop to strew on
the floor.

“These herbs will sweeten and cleanse the
air, and their fragrance helps to stop inflammation in severed
limbs,” Meredith explained.

After she had sent Joan off to make an omelet
for Reynaud, with rue and sweet marjoram and parsley in it, they
removed his bandages and bathed his wounds with the wine they had
prepared. Meredith gently applied the special ointment she had
selected to Reynaud’s battered eye and then wrapped his head in
clean linen.

“At Wenlock they told me to rest and pray,”
Reynaud observed wryly. “They gave me poppy syrup when I was in
pain, but not much else. I suspect they thought I would die
whatever they did, and so they expended their greatest efforts on
those who were less seriously injured.”

“Whereas we know you will not die,” Meredith
said firmly. “We need you, Reynaud. Guy wants you well again by the
time building season comes.”

“I shall do my best to help you,” Reynaud
answered, his pale blue gaze on Arianna’s bent head and her timid
fingers as they removed the lamb’s wool with which Meredith had
packed the stump of his left leg. “Don’t fear hurting me, girl, I
can bear it. I’ve stood worse. This is healing pain. No, Meredith,
I’m not going to die just yet. I foresee an interesting future for
Afoncaer, and I wouldn’t want to miss a thing.”

Arianna was rapidly learning to watch her
tongue and her expression before this clever patient. She secretly
thought Reynaud might very well die of his injuries, but she
realized it was important to make him believe he would live. Now,
to distract him from the pain she was certain he would feel as she
began to peel off the last of his bandages, she asked, “Are you a
prophet, Master Reynaud? How can you see the future?”

“The introduction of one elderly cleric and
two beautiful young women into an isolated outpost on a dangerous
border must cause at least a few interesting changes.” Reynaud
smiled into Arianna’s startled eyes. “You are beautiful, though I
think you do not realize it. Now, lady, don’t hesitate. You are far
too gentle with me, and I’m braced for it. Pull off that linen and
have it over with.”