Fires of Winter (29 page)

She cried out again then, the hand she had lifted pushing against my shoulder for a moment while the other gripped my buttocks and pulled me tighter. In the next instant, she caught at my head to pull it closer, abandoned that movement, and tangled her fingers in my hair. I could feel her shaking, her legs trembling against mine so that I was afraid she would fall. Carefully, I backed her the few steps to the bed and, supporting her with one arm, pushed her back until she was lying down. I was hard and ready again; now she had to be so wild she would not notice any pain of stretching when I entered her.

I raised my lips from her breast to kiss her mouth, but continued to tease her nipples with one hand while I caressed her nether mouth with my other. She moaned and bucked, trying to force my hand into her, and when my fingers were wet with her woman's dew, I mounted her at last. Her need drove her to learn the rhythm of love easily, and she soon cried and shuddered in a climax of joy. I did not withdraw, but I let her rest, only moving enough to keep myself ready, then began again.

We lay late abed in the morning. Although I had wakened at my usual time, I was glad to take advantage of having no duties. I was very curious to know what Melusine would do and say. Not much later, I became aware that she had wakened also, but when I turned my eyes to her—barely shifting my head so that she should not notice me watching—I saw that her eyes were still closed. She was pretending sleep—out of shame? Before I had done with her during the night, she had rubbed herself against me and finally pleaded with me in words for release.

I was amused, knowing she had not expected to need to confront me immediately. Usually I was gone to my duties before she woke. For a few moments more, I lay quietly, wondering if she would give up her pretense, but then I thought it would be stupid if my teasing turned shame into bitterness and taught her to resent her pleasure in me. To be honest, I had never had such joy before myself. Even the first violent burstings of my manhood were nothing compared with what Melusine had given me. I had planned out of spite for the way she had teased me to make her crave me; probably I had succeeded, but I wondered if I had not trapped myself as much as her. I could die of thirst if she became so angry as to close her well to me.

“May I wish you a good morning, Melusine?” I said, turning to her openly. “God knows, I wish you nothing but good, morning, noon, and eventide for all of your life.”

Her big eyes opened promptly, and she looked at me seriously for a moment, then smiled wryly. “You may wish me good, but I cannot yet judge what you have done me. Of one thing I am sure, not every woman has such an experience in coupling.”

“I hope not,” I replied, feigning indignation. “I was instructed by artists, not allowed, as most men are, to follow their brute instincts. Would you rather I disgusted you and caused you pain?”

Melusine had begun to smile at my jesting answer, but before I finished, her eyes slid away from mine, and her voice was uncertain when she said, “No, of course not.”

Thinking she had suddenly realized who I meant when I said “artists” and that she might now object violently to my use of whores—she had been jealous over poor Edna—I stroked her cheek and murmured, “You need not fear I will be unfaithful. You content me more than any such woman ever could.”

She looked up then and laughed. “And I save you both sin and expense too.”

“Fool that I am, I never thought of that!” I exclaimed, smiling back at her. “But so you do. You are triply precious.”

“And you,” she retorted, suddenly thrusting back the covers and swinging her legs out of bed, “are as skilled with your tongue as with your shaft. Did you learn that from artists too?”

“God witness me, no!” I swore. “No one has ever accused me of oversmooth speech before. Who would bother seeking sweet words for a whore?” While I spoke, she had pulled the pot from beneath the bed and squatted above it. The sound of her water flowing sparked in me an ardent need for similar relief, and I exclaimed that she should hurry.

“There is the window.” Melusine giggled. “Easy for you; impossible for me.”

I was up on the chest before she finished speaking, sending a golden arc of liquid sparkling through the air. “Not impossible,” I remarked judicially, “but a tight squeeze, I agree. But I do not think you could fall out, and what a view from below.”

Melusine laughed again, but did not answer, and I glanced at her over my shoulder to see if I had offended her. Her expression truly surprised me, for the remains of laughter mingled with a worried frown, which seemed a very odd response to so light and silly a jest. In the next moment she had drawn on her bedrobe and was gone to open the door and call down the stair for Edna while I came down from my perch. When she turned back to me, she looked only pleasant and mildly intent on her business, which was choosing clothing for me from my chest.

“The cart arrived,” I said.

“Two days ago,” she answered. “They had very good weather, only enough drizzle to keep down the dust and keep the horse cool. I sent the men and cart back to Winchester yesterday. I hope I did right. Audris said she would lend us another cart if we needed it, and if…if you do mean to go to Ulle—”

“Indeed I do—if
you
are willing, Melusine.”

She was tying one sleeve of my shirt, her head bent to her task so that I could only see her temple and the curve of her cheek. I put my free hand over hers and captured them. She looked up.

“Yes, I am willing.”

“If you cannot bear it, we will go away—perhaps to one of the other manors, where your memories will not be so sharp.”

Melusine was silent for a moment, looking down again at our clasped hands. “Perhaps that would be best in any case,” she said slowly. “If the king's bailiff is at Ulle, will he not send Stephen word that you were there and I also?”

Was this a test of my loyalty? Or was she already urging me to take the first small step into concealment and lying that would lead in the end to open treachery? I could lay a trap for her, but the innocent fall into traps as often as do the guilty, and I wanted no deception on my part. I would make her understand that even after a night of love I would never forget, even while her closeness woke in me faint echoes of that delight, my loyalty to Stephen stood firm.

“I would expect him to do so,” I remarked sharply. “I am not trying to hide our presence. That would be treachery. In fact, if the bailiff does not inform the king of our visit, I will tell him myself.”

She blinked with surprise. “But you bade me not talk of it, lest we be forbidden—”

“Certainly, I did not wish to be forbidden beforehand because of the queen's conviction that you will create some kind of disaster if you return to Ulle. I
know
you will not cause trouble.” I put all the threat I was capable of into that statement, and Melusine flung up her head and stared at me, wide-eyed. But though I had decided not to deceive her, there was no harm in offering honest honey to sweeten the threat, so I went on, “In fact, part of my proof that it would be safe to enfeoff me with your lands will be this visit—the evidence I can present, with the bailiff to support my word, of how you greeted your people and soothed them so that the land would be quiet under the king's hand. Do you understand me, Melusine?”

“Have my people not been obedient?” she asked in a thin, fearful voice. “I bade them be quiet.”

“Did you?” I asked, unsure whether to be surprised or assume she was lying.

“Yes, I did,” she assured me anxiously, and then her lips thinned with anger. “Not for fear or for the king's sake but for theirs. I did not wish them to be tormented or killed. What do they care who rules? They care for their fields and their herds and their boats.”

“And you, Melusine? For what do you care?”

“I care to have my lands back, and no longer be a beggar picking up crumbs from the queen's table!”

There was passion enough in that, her eyes flashing with rage, and I nodded acceptance. I thought the reply was honest; I
prayed
it was honest. I could not bear to think of what I had promised to do if Melusine tried to stir up rebellion in Cumbria. For a moment as I looked at her, bending to pick up my tunic, I felt I must find an excuse and not go to Ulle so that she would have no chance to show the evil that was in her. But even as the beauty I had never before seen in her face tugged at me, I knew I could not live that way. I had warned her over and over. I must take her to Ulle and test her with fire.

It was easy to think, not so easy to do. To tell the truth, I seized eagerly on every excuse offered to linger in Jernaeve and put off that test, but I only increased my pain. Each day made Melusine more precious to me. She and Audris were so different and yet their joy in each other's company was clear; little as I knew of such matters, it was plain from Lady Eadyth's approval that Melusine was a householder of knowledge and high standards; and the nights and early mornings…I understood at last why lust was numbered high among the deadly sins.

At last I set the morrow, a few days before the start of November, as the time to leave. The weather was already turning cold and rainy, and Melusine said if we did not go soon, the high passes between Ulle and the other smaller manors would be blocked with snow. Because we had been talking of the journey to Ulle from time to time, all was planned. The chests were to stay at Jernaeve; what we would need for Ulle would come with us in travel baskets on two packhorses. With us also would come Edna, riding pillion—we had her practicing each day we lingered—behind one of my new men-at-arms. I had three: Fechin, Cormi, and Merwyn; they had come to me to ask if I would take them the day before Hugh planned to select a few men to act as guards and messengers.

After a moment of astonishment, both at the way the servants and men-at-arms knew what no one had yet told them and at these men's eagerness to join me—for I knew Hugh to be a good master—I recognized them; they were older now, but all three had served with me when Sir Oliver had sent me to France as Sir Bernard's squire. I explained that I was not offering an easy duty, that they would not be idling at court but serving mostly as messengers, riding back to Jernaeve in all weathers from all parts of England.

Fechin, the eldest, must have been near forty, but he grinned at me. “If I be goin' to see new things,” he said, “I better be at it now, before it be too late.” Then he looked down and scrubbed at the earth with one foot. “We be old friends, we three, and no women nor young to bind us. Sir Hugh, he be a good man, but—but it be strange wi'out Sir Oliver. We'ul be easier wi' you.”

The others nodded soberly, and tears came to my eyes. I realized suddenly that since I had returned, Audris and Hugh had concealed any signs that Hugh was now lord of Jernaeve. At meals or in the evening, we all sat together on benches; Lady Eadyth ruled the household as she had always done; in the work of rebuilding, Hugh and I gave the orders—but all that riding up and down and helping the men lift and fit and pull out burnt stumps was young men's work and we would have done that even if Sir Oliver was still alive; it was as if he was away, up by the northern wall or visiting another keep. Nonetheless, I understood what Fechin meant. I swallowed the tightness in my throat and said I would have them gladly, if Hugh agreed.

There was no trouble about that, of course, and we set off for Ulle on the twenty-eighth day of October. It was a bright morning, the air crisp enough to nip nose and cheeks into rosiness but not sharp enough to bite, and the sun lay warm on our backs without dazzling our eyes as we rode west after fording the river. There was a smell of smoke in the air as we neared the village that was beholden to Jernaeve, but it had no acrid taint of destruction. This was the pleasant, homely smell of wood fires, bringing thoughts of warmth and ease. As we passed through I did see signs of the ravages of the Scots—the pale wood of the doors on some houses marked the recent replacement of older doors smashed in; there was new thatch on some roofs and burns scarred some walls.

I noticed too that a few of the places had not been repaired. Likely the menfolk of those had been killed, unless their skills had been needed in Jernaeve and they had been summoned to pay their due of labor in the keep. But the few folk who were at work in the village waved at us cheerfully, and Merwyn called out to one man to tell another that he would be gone for a while. A laughing, jesting answer was returned, showing that under Hugh as under Sir Oliver the villagers and the men-at-arms were on good terms. I was glad Sir Oliver's discipline had held and the men of the keep had not taken advantage of Hugh's sickness and single-minded devotion to the restoration of Jernaeve to ill-use the common folk. Briefly I was annoyed with myself for forgetting to ride down and make sure all was well, but fortunately no harm had been done.

When the river turned north, we angled northwest across the rising ground toward the road that ran just south of the great wall. It was easy riding because the land was grazing common, not wooded, but when we had almost reached the crest, Melusine exclaimed in surprise. I had half drawn my sword and my men were gazing around in utter astonishment for any threat before I realized that Melusine was looking far down the valley to where an eight-ox plow was breaking the sod of a fallow field for the planting of winter wheat.

“Now what do you find so startling about the field?” I asked.

“The field!” she exclaimed. “It looks to me like a whole shire. It goes on forever.”

I stared at her, puzzled. The fields of Northumbria were small compared with those plowed in the fertile south. Melusine must have seen those expanses, checkered with their different crops, many times when she rode out with the queen. Yet surely her expression of amazement was a result of true surprise; she could not at this point in our marriage believe it worthwhile to raise again the subject of whether she had been playing an idiot during her first months with the court—or could she? In any case, I would not join her game if that was her purpose.