Fires of Winter (57 page)

My hand and arm were so stiff I had a little trouble letting go, and I realized I had been clutching Melusine all night. “I am sorry,” I said. “You must have been uncomfortable with me holding you and not letting you move.”

“Oh no.” Her voice drifted up from below the bed on the other side where she sat on the pot, and somehow I knew she was smiling. “I managed to wriggle around.” Then she stood up and leaned over me and spoke much more softly. “I do not think I have ever known the kind of joy I felt each time I woke and felt your embrace. I never believed I would get you back, Bruno.” She was smiling, but her lips trembled and again there was a darkness in her eyes that did not come from their color. But before I could command my voice to answer, she turned merry again, marveling at how long a man could hold his water, and called Edna to help her lift me so I could relieve myself.

Usually I sank back to sleep after breaking my fast, but Melusine, having kissed me for eating well, made a moue of distaste and asked me if I intended to keep the beard I had grown.

“No,” I responded, opening my eyes. “I long to be rid of it.”

“I am very glad to hear it,” she said, laughing. “I can get used to being stabbed by bones, even welcome it, but a mouthful of hair every time I kiss you—” She shuddered eloquently and told Edna to fetch the barber at once.

I was so delighted, I sat up by myself, wide awake. No one had bothered to shave me since Grolier's death and by now I had a bushy and untidy beard. But when the barber came, he pointed out that he could not shave me in the bed. I was so eager to be rid of that growth of hair, that I insisted I was strong enough to sit on a stool, but Melusine shook her head.

“Not for being shaved,” she said. “For some other purpose, I could stand behind you and you could rest on me, but if I should move or you, the barber could slit your throat.”

I knew it was true—not that the man would slit my throat but that he might cut me badly—and I knew too that it was perfectly foolish to care whether I was shaved now or a few days later, but still tears came to my eyes and I had to turn my head away. Melusine did not seem to notice. When she spoke, she was not looking at me but at the barber, and she asked him whether he could shave me if I sat in a chair. The man agreed to that, and Melusine went out. I felt a fool but also unreasonably happy, like a child who had received a toy he had despaired of getting.

For a moment I watched the barber run a fine pumice stone over the blades of his knives, which added to my feeling of well-being since a dull blade made a painful shave. Then I heard movement outside the door and the constable's wife asking angrily who had dared to take Lord Robert's chair. With the unstable reactions of the very weak, I flew from joy to rage, fearing that I would be cheated of a clean face—but I had underestimated Melusine.

“I do not care whose chair it is,” my wife said. Her voice was soft, but I would not have blamed anyone who recoiled before it. “Just now my husband's lightest wish is of greater importance to me than your Lord Robert's, and your wishes, madam, I take delight in ignoring. How would you like your son back without his nose or his hands or feet?”

“My man will send an army to fetch him!” the woman cried.

Melusine laughed and asked, “Where? To the White Tower? To Jernaeve? To a cave hidden in the Cumbrian mountains? I said your son was Bruno's ransom—life for life—but I did not promise in what condition he would come back to you. Woman, if my Bruno is made unhappy by your stupidity, I will see that you mourn that stupidity every day of your son's life ever after. Now let me go.”

The laugh and the voice in which Melusine spoke made my skin crawl, and it did worse no doubt to the constable's wife, who cried out that Melusine should take the chair. In another moment two stout womenservants entered carrying it and set it down near the bed. Until they went out, Melusine stood by the door looking out. That, I thought, was the face of the woman who had thrust a knife at my throat on the second night of our married life. I had almost forgotten that part of Melusine, but the memory pleased me. It made more loving, more precious, her gentleness to me, the tenderness with which she drew my bedrobe about me and with the barber's help moved me to the chair.

My legs trembled like the jelly that surrounds boiled fish, but I stiffened them as best I could and did manage the few steps to the chair. I held my head steady too, although Melusine stood behind me ready to support it. And when I was shaved, I leaned less heavily, not more, on Melusine and the barber as I went back to bed.

I felt wonderful and was just about to ask Melusine how it happened that at the moment I was hungry there was no sign of her pots and bowls when the king appeared in the doorway with the queen behind him. I suppose with the beard gone, I looked more deathlike than when the thinness and pallor of my face were hidden, for Stephen hesitated and cried, “No, do not move,” when I pushed myself higher so I could at least bow from the waist. Then he came to the bed and took my hand.

“I have come to bid you farewell, my dear Bruno,” he said. “You have served me more devotedly than I could have asked of any man. I am sorry to leave you here, but I must pick up the reins of my bolting kingdom and bring it to order, and it will be, I fear, many weeks before you are fit for service.”

“Yes, my lord,” I said. “I am to follow you when I am well?”

But the queen touched Stephen's arm and then came forward. Our eyes met. I tried to hide the despair in mine, but Maud had always been able to read me better than most people, and I knew she saw my horror of what was to come. For just an instant I thought I saw a similar horror mirrored in her eyes, but then to my surprise she bent and kissed me and stroked my hair as if I were her child in need of comforting.

“You will be too busy serving the king in another way for a long time, dear Bruno, but your place will always be held for you. When you are ready you will be most welcome to us. Stephen, he does not understand what we mean. Give him the charter, for goodness sake.”

The king looked mulish for a moment. I am sure he had been about to extract a promise to follow him before he offered my reward; however, he drew out a roll of thick parchment, heavy with a wax impression of the great seal, and handed it to me.

“It seems very little for what you have done,” Maud said, “but Melusine insisted that Ulle and the other smaller manors were all you desired even though the lands and people have been misused. I know that is truly what Melusine wants, but if
you
would like some other, richer lands you can have those also.”

“No,” I breathed. “Ulle is what I desire. Thank you, sire. Thank you, madam. I have always been poor, so Ulle seems rich to me. I greatly fear power, and Ulle will bring me none. All I need or want is the peace of those great hills with their silver hair of flowing water.”

“You must love the lands indeed to find words of such beauty to describe them,” Maud said. “I hope someday I will be able to visit you and look on your hills.” She touched my face gently and stepped back.

Stephen had recovered from his small pique, and he smiled at me and patted the charter that lay on my lap. “I do not expect to need to visit you,” he said, grinning—meaning, of course, that he was sure I would be faithful and he would not need to attack Ulle again. “But you will have to come to me to do homage someday.”

“I will come whenever you send for me, my lord,” I promised. “I have already sworn my faith to you, and will do so again at any time.”

He was very pleased with that, and leaned over and kissed me before he and Maud left the room. I stroked the parchment in my lap, hardly believing what I held and looking at Melusine, who held her deep curtsey by the door, I suppose until the king and queen were out of sight. Then she flew to me and embraced me and kissed me and began to weep, whispering, “Free! Bruno, we are free!”

“I hope so,” I said, “but when the king and queen are gone, we will be fortunate if the constable or his wife do not murder us.”

“I do not fear for that.” Melusine sat upright. “I have their precious son safe, and if you and I together do not appear before Sir Gerald at a particular time, which I will not say lest there be someone listening at the door, Sir Gerald will send one of the prisoner's ears. After that, he will send other, more important parts until we come.”

“Melusine!” I exclaimed, “that is monstrous. What if I am slow to gain strength?”

“I cannot help that,” she said. “I did not expect to find you half dead owing to their cruel neglect. But if you are worried about what will happen to the young man, you must strive to get well quickly.” And then she winked at me. “Besides,” she went on, “the queen is not leaving with the king. What was arranged was that Stephen would be freed and the queen and Eustace would remain here as hostages. When Stephen arrives safe in London, Robert of Gloucester will be freed, leaving his son, Lord William, as hostage for the queen's release. When Lord Robert arrives here, the queen and Eustace will go, and when she and her son are with the king, Lord William will be freed.”

I shook my head. “Once Robert of Gloucester is here, we will need no other assurance of gaining our freedom. He is a very good man.”

“Well, I had no way to know that,” she said pertly, “and it does no harm to be doubly sure.”

In spite of her wink, which I took to mean she had never told Sir Gerald to dismember his prisoner and was only using that as a threat, I felt uneasy. I had found that women could be terribly cruel and spiteful. She must have seen that I was troubled, for that night when we were abed and there was no danger of being overheard, she told me that the young knight was safe and sound at Ulle in Sir Gerald's care. She had seen the constable's wife listening by the door while the king and queen were with us, which annoyed her, so she decided to give the woman an earful.

As if one irritation had made her think of another, she then told me that Sir Giles would be gone and Ulle restored by the time we arrived. A copy of our charter and a letter from the queen as well as a full pardon for anything Sir Gerald might have done had gone with him to Ulle, together with permission for Sir Giles to give up his charge of the estate to Sir Gerald.

“I have promised Sir Gerald that you would invest him with Irthing for his life,” she went on. “I hope you do not mind, Bruno. King David offered him a fine estate in Scotland—”

“King David!” I echoed. “Do not tell me you induced him to be part of your army. I will not believe that.”

Melusine giggled. “I will not ask it of you. No, it was Sir Gerald who captured him after the rout at Winchester, and David offered the estate as a bribe to allow him to escape.” She explained the circumstances of deciding not to hand King David to the queen and that Hugh had concealed David among his men and taken him safely to the Scottish border. “But Sir Gerald did not want to go to Scotland. He said he did not wish to begin anew among strangers. You are content for him to have Irthing, are you not?”

“Good God, of course I am. I would not have cared if you wished to give him the property outright—I will offer that. It would have been dreadful to lose him. I will need him badly, for example, to tell me the manner of giving justice in Cumbria and such things which I suppose your father did not teach you.”

“There are many things he did not teach me.” I thought I heard resentment in her voice, but it was too dark to see her expression. “He said beautiful women did not need to know…many things.”

I kissed her. “You are certainly beautiful, but I think a woman needs to know everything she can so that she can protect herself. If I am to be away in service to the king, who will hold Ulle? You must be able to defend it—” My voice faltered when I realized what I had said, and I hurried on, “—and give justice and do all things as I would.”

“I prefer to be ignorant and have you there,” she said, but her voice was light again and she cuddled closer against me so that I began to think of the main purpose for lying two in a bed.

Unfortunately my body was not yet ready to follow my thoughts, but I did not mind. The night before, I had not even been able to think about coupling. By then I had forgotten all about the constable's son, but I would have had no need to worry even if Melusine's grisly threat had been true because I gained strength far faster than I had expected after my inability to recover when Grolier had cared for me. I suppose the difference in my spirits was the reason; I was very happy, happier each day as that strange terror that seemed to lie behind Melusine's smiles ebbed.

Later I learned that the lightness and laughter, the pretense that I was not sick—and the terrible fear that darkened Melusine's eyes—were all learned over the year it took her mother to die of a wasting sickness. It seems I looked as her mother did toward the end. At first Melusine was sure I would die and all she could do was to ease my way, so she behaved as if my weakness was a game I was playing to amuse her. But I was not dying; I was recovering, and I felt happy with her teasing that I was lazy rather than weak so that it made me much stronger.

Whatever the cause, in a week I was walking about in my room and two days earlier I had managed to put to its proper use the marital bed in which we lay. First when I began to caress her, Melusine seemed stunned, but a timid exploration soon assured her that Sir Jehan could stand by himself very well, even if Sir Bruno could not. To save my strength if not his, Melusine mounted me, but she rode me so well and so thoroughly that I needed a day's rest before I tried again. My enthusiasm grew with my ability, and I played much longer the second time, longer still the third, and I needed no rest day between that and our fourth coupling.

The middle of the second week, I went down on a fine day to walk in the garden. As I came through the bailey, to my joy I was greeted by Merwyn and Fechin. I was quite cross with Melusine for not telling me they were safe and had been with her all along although I grieved that Cormi was dead. Melusine apologized; she had forgotten that I did not know that they had escaped at Lincoln. She told me then how Fechin had put on Gloucester's colors, but she did not tell the whole story, so when we left the garden and found Fechin waiting with Barbe, whom I had long given up as lost, I wept.