Keeper of the Dream (48 page)

“I’ve never had a vision of you and Sybil.”

His lips pulled back from his teeth in a travesty of a smile. “How fortunate for you. For I doubt you would have liked what you’d seen.”

A rush of tears stung Arianna’s eyes, and she looked quickly away so that he wouldn’t see them. When they got to Chester they would stay in the castle there as guests of his brother. And Sybil.

A conker fell into her lap from the branch above her head, startling her. She picked up the big glossy brown seed. There was another on the ground beside Raine’s hand. She stared at it, and at the hand, at those long brown fingers that could wield a sword and plait a garland of flowers. And caress a woman’s breast.

She reached for the conker, letting her fingers brush his.

To be touching him, even in so small a way, made her ache with a fierce longing. After a moment he moved his hand away, but it didn’t matter, for she had seen the hairs rise on his arm and the swift hard jerk of his chest.

The white sun blazed down so hot that even the tree, with its wide, palm-shaped leaves, managed to cast little cool in the shade. Sweat trickled down between her breasts. She pulled at the front of her bliaut, flapping the silk like a fan, trying to stir up some cooling air.

She felt Raine’s eyes on her, but when she glanced up, he looked away.

Her mouth felt dry. She picked up a costrel of wine from among the scattered remains of their dinner. The liquid sloshed in the cask as she tilted back her head and drank. Some escaped out the corner of her mouth, running down into the hollow of her throat. She caught the wine with her fingers and stuck them in her mouth, sucking them clean.

Again she felt Raine’s eyes on her, but this time she did
not glance his way. Let him look, she thought. Let him want….

She stood up, shaking the burrs and hooked seeds off her tunic. She started off down the road, in the direction of England.

Several rods or so from where they had stopped to eat, a great ditch slashed diagonally across the land. On the east side of the deep trench an earthen barrier rose up twenty feet high. It spread as far as she could see in either direction. Taliesin had told her it was called Offa’s Dyke, after a Saxon king who had dug the great ditch to shut out the Welsh from England. Now it divided her husband’s land from that of his brother.

As she stood on top the escarpment, looking down into the deep trough, Arianna felt a hankering to go exploring as she would have done were she still a young girl with nine brothers to impress. But it was choked with knee-high brambles and saw grass, and the only male she wanted to impress now didn’t seem to care anymore what she did with herself.

A lone cloud passed across the sun, casting a shadow upon the withered yellow grass. Shading her eyes, Arianna turned and looked back at the chestnut where it stood lonely upon the rise. Some distance away was the retinue of servants, men-at-arms, and sumpter beasts they had brought with him. But Raine still sat alone beneath the tree, but for Nesta, swinging on her bough.

Was it a marriage, Arianna wondered, if you slept in the same bed but did not share it? She was healed now, but she didn’t know how to tell him. She was afraid to turn to him at night, for fear that he would turn away.

Her ears picked up the sound of gurgling water. Among the sunbaked browns and grays was an oasis of bright color—of purple speedwell and white charlock and more bell heather. She walked toward the splash of flowers, her skirts swishing through the tall grass. The water sounded cool and wet.

She disturbed a bird that flew off with a flash of white-barred wings. The grass was green here, the bright green of new growth. The spring must have surfaced recently, she thought, as she knelt among the grass and flowers. She cupped the water and brought it up to her face. How odd, she thought, for it smelled of oranges.

He bit down and juice exploded against the roof of his mouth. Sweet and tangy, cool and wet. He had never tasted anything so fine. He looked at the girl and grinned. Except maybe for your lips, sweet Sybil …

“Do you like it?”

“Aye. Give me another.”

She put another section of the strange, exotic fruit against his lips. He sucked it in, then sucked in her finger as well. He cupped her neck and pulled her face to his and kissed her mouth. She tasted of the orange, tangy and sweet, cool and wet.

“Another.”

“You are greedy, sir.”

“You never complained before.” He kissed her again, and then again.

“Do you love me, Raine?”

“Yessss …” The word came out in a hiss, for her hand had just closed around his sex. She stroked him down to the root. The ache was sweet and tangy, like the taste of orange, the taste of her mouth. Fine, so fine …

“Then don’t leave me,” she said.

He bore her down to the yellow summer grass. He worked at the laces of her bliaut. Her breasts filled his hands.

But he would leave. If he stayed he was afraid, so afraid that he would never get out of the stables.

She spoke into the side of his neck, her breath warm, fruity. “Will you marry me?”

He lifted his head. He stared deep into her eyes. Lavender-blue, the color of a summer sky at dusk. “You are Hugh’s. You cannot stand against your father and mine.”

“I can and I will.” She beat her balled-up fists against his back. “I am yours, Raine. Yours!” She cupped his cheeks, giving his head a little shake. “I asked the priest. He said a girl cannot be married against her consent. I lied. I told him I wished to be a bride of Christ.” Her laughter lilted, curling up at the ends like rose petals. “Oh, Raine, can you imagine me as a nun?” Her mouth softened, became pouting. He didn’t kiss it, though he wanted to. “When you leave, I shall go with you.”

“Aw, Sybil, sweetling … You can’t come with me. I go to join Matilda’s army.”

“And do you think when you walk up to this great queen in your rags and your bare feet that she will make you a knight?” She tried to sound scornful but her voice trembled. “They will put a spear in your hand and make you a foot soldier and you will die in your first battle.”

His sex throbbed against her belly and his chest felt heavy. He rubbed his face in her hair, breathed in her scent, sweet and tangy. Oranges. He would never be able to think of this day without smelling oranges.

He rolled off of her onto his back and looked up at the sky. It was clear, empty, as big as the world. “I won’t die. And I will come back again, but when I do it will be as a knight.”

She touched his cheek, turning his face until their gazes met. “And I shall be here, Raine. Waiting …

“Waiting,” Arianna said.

“We’re in no hurry. Don’t sit up until the dizziness passes.”

Her head was in Raine’s lap. His thighs were hard, warm, and somehow comforting. But he was angry with her. It seemed that lately he was always angry with her. “What happened?” she asked, and in the next instant remembered it all.

“You fainted.” He hauled her half-upright, his grip so hard she missed the fear in his voice. “Jesus God, Arianna,
you toppled over like an axed tree, face first into the spring. You would have drowned if—”

She jerked, trying to pull away from him and sit up. “Quit shouting at me.”

The abrupt movement brought nausea rising in her throat. She rolled aside onto her knees and threw up into the grass.

His fingers were in her hair, smoothing it back from her face. He put something white and dripping wet into her hands. It was a piece of swaddling cloth. She felt an irreverent urge to laugh. God’s death. The Black Dragon, most fearsome knight and champion jouster in all of Christendom, was going about the countryside with swaddling cloths tucked about his person.

“You just had another of those cursed visions, didn’t you?” he said.

She buried her face in the wet cloth, so she wouldn’t have to look at him.

“Whose soul did you possess this time?” he said.

She pushed her face harder into the cloth, shutting out the bitterness in his voice.

He had been crouched down on one knee beside her. Now he stood up abruptly. Only when she heard the sound of his boots crunching through the grass did she raise her head.

She watched his broad back walk away from her. A hot wind bathed her wet face. It held within it the smell of oranges.

Once they crossed Offa’s Dyke into England, the road to Chester spread wide enough for sixteen knights to canter abreast. But she and Raine rode side by side, so close their stirrups bumped from time to time. It was his choice to ride practically on top of her like that, yet not once since she’d had the vision by the spring had he looked at her.

This part of Cheshire was mostly yellow-green salt
marshes and meres dotted with grazing cattle. The summer sun beat down so hard on the road that the air in front of them seemed to ripple, like fumes from a fire. The thick, dusty smell of cow dung and nettles tickled her nose as she breathed.

It occurred to Arianna that for the first time in her life she was in the land of her enemy. As a young girl she had pictured England as a flaming cauldron full of cavorting devils, much the way their priest had described the pits of hell. It was, she thought with a wry smile, certainly hot enough today to match the England of her childhood imagination.

They rounded a bend in the road and there, meandering across the plain, was the fat and slumberous river Dee. Reflected in its placid waters were the rusty-red towers and walls of Chester. A soft haze hung over the river-bank, melting as it crept up the town’s castellated walls. Raine pulled up sharply and stared at what had been his home for so much a part of his life.

Arianna studied his face. His mouth was set, his eyes shuttered. But she knew him better now, knew he worked so hard at hiding his emotions only because he felt them deeper than most. He was returning to Chester in triumph just as he had vowed, but the triumph must surely taste empty. For the girl he loved had not waited for him after all, and the man he wanted most to impress was dead and so would remain forever contemptuous.

She almost reached out and touched his arm, to let him know she understood. But in the end she kept her hand to herself.

They had to take a flat-bottomed ferryboat to cross the river. They passed through a gateway in the town wall and onto a street crowded with houses of magpie-black timber and white plaster, packed as close together as a pile of barrel staves. Most of the houses had shops that opened directly onto the street with stalls in the manner of Oriental bazaars.

There were few towns in Wales, certainly none the size of Chester. Arianna thought her eyes probably looked to be popping out of her head as she took in the congestion of people, all scurrying about like rats in a grain bin, and the streets, so narrow that rooftops touched, blocking out the sun. The very air seemed to vibrate with the clatter of cartwheels, the peals of church bells, and the raucous shouts of the shop vendors touting their wares. The town teemed with life. Perhaps too much life, Arianna thought, for she wanted to hold her breath against the stink of night soil and dung and refuse that clogged the gutters.

They passed a side street and Arianna saw the rounded pink sandstone nave of an enormous church. She supposed this was the cathedral and she had heard a tale about its windows—that they were fashioned of colored jewellike glass. She gave herself a crick in her neck trying to catch another glimpse of this wonder.

They crossed a drawbridge suspended by iron chains as thick as a man’s waist, then they passed through another great gatehouse and into the paved courtyard of the castle itself. Arianna put more strain on her sore neck, tilting her head back to look up the length of a huge square keep that was pierced by small round-headed windows and topped by a banner bearing the White Horse of Chester. The flag hung limp in the hot, still air.

Raine clasped her waist to help her dismount. She thought his hands might have lingered a moment before he released her, but she could not be sure. It was an unconscious gesture, to help a woman down from a horse, nothing more. Yet she had been so aware of the feel of his palms resting on her hips, the brush of his leg against her skirt, the nearness of his face. Though the sun beat down bright and hot on the stone courtyard, she shivered.

But then he turned away from her and helped Edith, who carried Nesta in her arms, to dismount as well.

The Earl of Chester came toward them, his hair glinting in the sun, bright as a newly minted florin. He greeted
them both with the kiss of peace. “Well met, brother. Sister-in-law, you look as pretty as a pear tree in bloom.”

Arianna heard a small cry of delight and she looked around. Sybil glided down the long, sweeping steps of the great hall, but her eyes were on Raine and her smile was for him alone. She wore a bliaut with so much embroidery she looked like a meadow of fresh flowers, and the tippets of her sleeves were so long they dragged on the ground. She looked beautiful and Raine answered her smile with one of his own.

Arianna looked away.

“Welcome,” Sybil said, with a sweeping gesture of her arm, “to our hall.”

She watched, hiding a smile, as the little Welsh princess’s eyes grew wide and then wider still as she turned in a complete circle, looking around her.

Tall and vaulted like a cathedral, the hall had a central hearth big enough to roast two whole oxen in tandem on a spit. Sideboards displayed bowls and dishes of gold and silver and exotic cups made of ostrich egg and agate. Palls of silk and tapestries draped the walls and the entire space in back of the dais was filled with a painting of Delilah cutting off Samson’s hair in glowing colors with a sparkle of gold gilt. Their footsteps echoed on a floor made not of wood, but enameled black and brown bricks, and covered with skins and furs instead of rushes.

Sybil had been nine the year she was affianced to the Earl of Chester’s sole heir and sent here, as was the custom to be brought up in the household of her future husband’s family. Her own father had been a rich and powerful man, but even she had not been prepared for the ostentatious wealth displayed at Chester.