Castle of the Heart (27 page)

Gwenefer smiled at Selene with a deep, secret
amusement. The smile lasted only a moment before Gwenefer sought
out Geoffrey, and there her gaze remained.

Guy’s raised hand began to fall, and when it
came down, the six Welsh rebels were no more, and Selene hung
limply between Thomas and Arianna, supported only by their entwined
arms.

Arianna

A.D. 1117 – 1121

Just as Guy had anticipated, Meredith came
home the day after the executions, in time to help Arianna nurse
Selene through a month-long illness.

Selene had spoken to no one since she had
fainted in front of the scaffold, and she showed no interest in
anything except Deirdre. Every morning either Arianna or Linnet
brought the child, now ten months old, to Selene’s bedchamber.
Selene would touch her daughter, as though reassuring herself
Deirdre was safe, perhaps smile at her, then sigh and close her
eyes and push the little girl away and ignore her until someone
took her back to the nursery.

“Selene has no fever,” Arianna said, “no rash
or pain, no signs of any bodily ill. What is wrong with her?”

“I don’t know,” Meredith admitted. “Perhaps
the shock of all she witnessed during the raid has affected her.
You said she was terrified for Deirdre’s sake.”

They could think of nothing else to cause
such an illness, and nothing that might cure it save the passage of
time. Each day they fed and washed Selene and combed her hair,
talking to her on pleasant subjects all the while, trying to lift
her spirits. Beyond that, they could only pray she would recover
soon.

“It was the hanging,” Thomas said to Arianna.
“I should not have forced her to go to it. She was unwilling, she
begged me to let her stay behind, and I refused. The fault for this
is mine.”

“It pains me to see you so unhappy.” Arianna
put one hand on his arm. They stood in the great hall, where he had
come after one of the visits he daily made to Selene’s bedside.
“Thomas, if you continue to grieve so over Selene’s condition, and
to blame yourself, you will only make yourself ill, too. Then what
will Selene do when she is well again and you are ill?”

“Do you really believe that she will ever be
well?” Thomas asked. “I’ve nearly lost hope.”

“I have not,” Arianna declared firmly. “And
when she is recovered, she will need you, Thomas. Please, for her
sake, and your own, don’t give up.”

“She’s right, you know.” Guy had come into
the hall with Reynaud, and now he joined Arianna and Thomas.
Reynaud, who walked more slowly, lagged a step or two behind
him.

“Support me in this, Guy,” Arianna urged. “I
think Thomas should go hunting with Kenelm. Take Cristin and those
two goshawks she’s been helping the falconer to train. Ride a bit,
and come back tired and hungry, and eat a hearty meal for
once.”

“And tomorrow,” Guy added, “come with Reynaud
and me. We are going to mark out a new town wall to enclose all
those houses that are springing up on the other side of the moat.
They are brave folk to build there after what has just happened,
and they deserve better protection from their lord.”

Reynaud joined them. He stood next to Arianna
and spoke to her under his breath.

“I’ll take Thomas’s mind away from his wife’s
condition. I know how to catch his interest.” Raising his voice,
the architect added, “I thought a high wall with several watch
towers. As for the gatehouse, something clever, to stop would-be
invaders at several places before they can get inside. Your uncle
has told me, Thomas, about a castle he saw once in the Holy Land,
and I’ve made a sketch from his description.”

“May I see it?” Thomas was plainly
interested, and Arianna sent Reynaud a grateful look. She did not
have time to thank him in words until later, for her attention was
claimed by one of the new serving girls who needed her advice.

More people were housed in the castle these
days. Guy had added to the number of his knights and squires while
visiting his English properties, and some of the knights had
brought their ladies and children to live at Afoncaer. Meredith had
made still more additions to the household staff, bringing with her
from Kelsey and Adderbury half a dozen serving women and several
pages, young lads away from home for the first time, nervous and
needing both reassurance and instruction in their duties to the
ladies of the castle.

Kenelm’s new wife had come with Meredith,
too. A plump, pale blonde, aptly named Blanche, this daughter of
Adderbury’s seneschal had brought along four female attendants of
her own.

She and Kenelm had been given two rooms on
the third floor of the keep, granted so much space because of
Kenelm’s rank as Captain of the Guard.

The castle was fairly bursting with the
crowd, and the presence of all these new and attractive young
people enlivened life in great hall and kitchen. Arianna, observing
various pairings-off with an amused eye, suspected several of Guy’s
currently unwed knights and men-at-arms would take wives before
winter was over.

By early October the necessary repairs had
been made to damage done during the Welsh raid, both in castle and
in village. The harvest was well under way. And Selene was finally
showing signs of recovery. She had begun to speak again, and she
was out of her bed, though she still kept to her room. One morning
she surprised Arianna by asking for parchment and quill pen. Once
she had the writing supplies, she sent everyone away and spent the
rest of the day locked in her chamber. She emerged at day’s end
with a thick sealed packet and a second, thinner letter. More
importantly, she had dressed herself and appeared ready to join the
evening meal for the first time since her collapse.

“Could you next courier to King Henry’s court
in Normandy take these also?” she asked Guy, handing him the
letters. “My father will see they are given to my mother, and she
will have the packet sent on to Lady Elvira in Poitou.”

“Only a small note to your mother, and such a
long letter to a friend?” Guy joked, turning the two folded
parchments over as though weighing them.

“I haven’t written to Elvira for a long
time,” Selene countered.

“But you have,” Reynaud said, fixing Selene
with his pale blue gaze. “If I remember correctly, you sent her a
letter just after you and Thomas returned from Tynant last
spring.”

“What could you possibly know, Reynaud?”
Selene’s voice was louder and sharper than she intended, but the
man irritated her so, watching her closely when she came into the
hall just now, as if he knew something about her and was waiting
for her to make a mistake. “What could you know of the things dear
girlhood friends write to each other? So much has happened
recently. I wanted to tell Elvira all of it, and the telling has
helped to make me well again. I’ve put it all behind me.” It was in
fact Isabel to whom Selene had told all, in sentences carefully
phrased lest someone else should read the letter. But Isabel would
understand and approve what Selene had done. Now, if only the
too-curious Reynaud would turn his attention elsewhere and forget
his suspicions of her, she could begin to feel safe.

“Indeed,” he said, still watching her
closely, “you do look much improved, Lady Selene.”

“It is no concern of yours how I look,”
Selene snapped. Ignoring Reynaud’s expression of surprise and Guy’s
raised eyebrows, she went on, “Have I no right to send a letter to
a friend if I chose? It will be no inconvenience to you, Guy. You
told Thomas yesterday you had a letter to go to my father.”

“I did, and there is no difficulty in adding
these to the packet,” Guy assured her.

“There, you see?” she said triumphantly to
Reynaud. He did not respond, but later, after the meal was over,
Arianna took her aside.

“Selene, treat Reynaud more kindly,” she
advised. “He would be your friend if you would let him.”

“I don’t need him for a friend. I can’t bear
to look at him with his crutches and that missing leg. He’s a
dreadful sight.”

“Selene, he’s not at all disfigured, thanks
to Meredith’s good care. However he appears to you, never forget
that he saved your life, and Deirdre’s, by using one of those
crutches you so disdain.”

“And now he stares at me all the time, as
though I have done something wrong. Why doesn’t he leave me
alone?”

“You are imagining it,” Arianna said. She
watched sadly when Selene turned her back on the assembled company
and left the hall, murmuring, “You are not recovered yet, my
friend. What ails you?”

Thomas soon had cause to ask the same
question, for Selene, once roused from her month-long torpor, flung
herself into frantic activity. She joined every hunting party that
set out from Afoncaer, riding as though the devil himself sat
behind her, and when no hunting was planned she rode alone with
only a servant or two and a squire, despite Thomas’s
reservations.

“Remember the Welsh,” he said. “It’s not safe
to go too far from Afoncaer until we are certain there will be no
revenge for those we hanged.”

“I’m not afraid of the Welsh.” Her voice was
strained, as though she was trying to convince herself.

“Stay at the castle, Selene. You never see
Deirdre any more. Days go by—”

“Deirdre has Arianna.”

“I don’t understand. First you cling to the
child, then you ignore her.”

“She doesn’t need me.” She could not explain
to him her fear that Deirdre, the one creature she loved more than
herself, might be contaminated by her evil. Better to stay away
from the child altogether and thus keep her safe. Selene fled from
Thomas to the chapel, the other place where she spent her time.

If her days were divided between horseback
and fervent prayers that her traitorous deeds might never be
discovered, Selene’s nights were devoted to passionate encounters
with Thomas. They had slept apart during her long illness, but no
longer. She began to ration most carefully the tiny remaining
portion of Gwenefer’s medicine. Before it ran out she had to bind
Thomas to her so thoroughly that he would love and defend her no
matter what anyone might discover about her part in the Welsh
attack. She diluted the medicine with wine, swishing it around the
small earthenware vial to mix in every available drop of the stuff,
then peered into the vial. So little was left. What would she do
when it was gone? Selene considered the long years ahead of her,
nights spent with Thomas, and shuddered at the thought of
childbirth. She had to make the liquid in the jar last as long as
possible. Gwenefer had warned her it was very strong, that more
than the recommended amount would harm her. Perhaps she could use
less of it, to make it last longer. Selene began to take the
medicine every other day.

Through the autumn Arianna watched and
wondered at Selene’s odd, secretive manner, and did not know if she
felt greater pity for her or for Thomas. The old friendship between
herself and Selene was broken, their relationship held together
only by the tenuous ties of distant kinship. Selene had shut
Arianna out of her heart along with everyone else, and seemed now
to live in some strange, tightly enclosed world of her own making,
where Arianna could not follow.

“Leave me alone,” Selene said to every
suggestion Arianna made for joint activity. Selene was not
interested in making a new perfume in the stillroom, although she
had once enjoyed that, nor did she want to help Arianna count the
linens and decide which needed mending, or cut out a new gown for
the seamstress to sew for her, or do anything at all in the
kitchen. “I have my own concerns, Arianna. Leave me alone.”

Into the lonely void Selene’s withdrawal left
came Blanche, Kenelm’s new wife, who was Arianna’s own age. She was
shy at first, making tremulous overtures toward friendship as
though afraid to overstep her position. But she was always there to
help when help was needed in that busy harvest season, not too
proud to roll up the linen sleeves of her underdress and tie on an
apron and lay down fruits in honey or baste the side of beef
turning on the spit. Before Blanche had been at Afoncaer a month,
she had quietly assumed most of Joan’s old duties, freeing Meredith
from long hours in kitchen and laundry.

“What a well-trained housekeeper she is,”
Meredith said. “What a relief to me.”

“And funny,” Arianna added. “She makes
everyone laugh. She says good humor improves good food.”

“So it does.” Reynaud had overheard them and
looked up from the parchments he had spread across the high table.
“Her food is marvelous, a delight to the tongue and palate. I
notice Sir Kenelm growing plump and contented. It must be the
gingerbread.”

The two women laughed, for Blanche had
brought with her the recipe for the new delicacy, flavored with
spices carried to England from the distant east beyond the Holy
Land. Kenelm relished the tasty treat and Arianna thought he doted
upon the pretty wife who saw to it he had his fill of his favorite
food.

“Blanche is a fine needlewoman, too,”
Meredith said, putting an arm around Arianna as they walked toward
the stillroom. “A good thing, that, considering our joint lack of
talent.”

“I wish Selene were only half as agreeable as
Blanche. For Thomas’s sake.”

“She’s not and never will be.” Meredith
glanced at her companion, a shrewd look, seeing much that Arianna
would have kept hidden. “Thomas must make his own accommodation
with his wife, and we must stand aside and leave him be. You have
done well, Arianna. You’ve not given in to the temptation his
difficulties with Selene, or her illness, have offered to you. I’m
proud of you.”

Arianna, considering the striking contrast
between the two couples, could only worry about Thomas.