Keeper of the Dream (56 page)

He knelt naked at her feet and offered her his love, and she was so moved by the silly, romantic gesture that tears filled her eyes. Oh, Lord, how she loved this man.

She opened her mouth to tell him so, and screamed.

Raine grabbed her as she fell forward, settling her down into the grass. “Arianna!”

She clutched at her middle as another savage pain racked her. “The baby, Raine. It’s coming.”

“Oooh, God …” He started to get up, sat back down again, started to get up, then sat down again. “All right. Don’t panic. There’s no reason to panic,” he said, sounding like a man on the edge of hysteria. He patted her cheek, then stood up for good and all, and dashed around the stones, snatching up boots and tunic and braies. He looked so funny that Arianna wanted to laugh in spite of the fierce pains that tore through her middle.

Raine hunkered down beside her again, breathless, his arms full of clothes. She heard in his voice the effort he was making to sound calm so that he wouldn’t frighten her, when he was scared witless himself. She loved him so
much in that one moment that it made her throat hurt. “Arianna, little wife, I’m going to have to leave you for just a few minutes. I’m going to ride back to the castle and fetch a cart.”

He was behaving so sweetly, she almost hated to have to do this to him, but …

Another pain ripped through her. She seized his arm, almost pulling him down on top of her. “Now, Raine. The baby is coming now.”

He stared at her, his eyes wide, and then he looked down at her convulsing stomach. “Oh, sweet heavenly Jesus. Damn you, Arianna, you are doing this on purpose.” He started to lift her bliaut, hesitated a moment, then shoved it up around her waist. “Christ Jesus save us … I can already see her head!”

“It’s a son I’m giving you, husband. Not a daughter,” Arianna said in between panting grunts.

“She’s as bald as an old man.”

“He, not she. He has dark hair, black as a raven’s wing. And beautiful gray eyes, soft like smoke.”

“The rest of her is coming … I think. Push.” She lifted her head to see him reaching between her legs. “Arianna, for the love of Christ, will you push!”

“I’m
pushing,
curse you!”

“Well, push harder. I can’t do this all by myself.”

She pushed harder. She pushed so hard it felt like she was pushing herself inside out. He would be sorry, yelling at her when she was in the middle of having a baby. “ ‘Push harder,’ he says. I’d like to see you do any better, Norman,” she muttered between clenched teeth.

She felt the baby come out of her all in a rush. She heard a rusty squawk and a man’s deep laughter of relief. She lay, looking up at the blue, blue sky, and she smiled. Unlike the last time when she’d felt so exhausted after the birth, this time she felt euphoric.

She turned her head and saw Raine, with the baby in his hands. The poor little thing looked like a red and
wrinkled old pod. Yet she experienced again that heart-soaring love that a mother feels when she sees her child for the first time.

Her husband was, she noticed, behaving most efficiently—cutting the navel cord with his dagger and wiping the blood and mucus off the baby with his chainse. Arianna began to giggle, then her giggles turned into loud whooping laughter.

Raine loomed over her. “What’s so cursed funny?”

“You. You’ll do Dame Beatrix out of a living, you’re so good at midwifing. And you’re naked, Raine. As naked as the day you were born.”

He laid the babe, now wrapped in his tunic, gently onto her breast, and his face broke into that smile she loved so well. “As naked as my son.”

She started to smile back at him, but it twisted crooked up on the ends, turning into a grimace. “Raine … something very strange is happening.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, sounding like quite the authority. “It’s only the afterbirth.”

“Nay, husband, you forget I have done this before, I …” She stopped, gasping as a fierce pain racked her. “It’s happening again. I’m having another baby.”

His face disappeared from her sight, then reappeared. “You’re right,” he said, looking disgustingly cheerful. “It’s another baby. Start pushing.”

“Go to hell, Norman,” she gritted out between her clenched teeth. But she pushed.

Five minutes later Arianna gave to her husband another little girl.

The babes thrived.

One hot August afternoon the lord and lady of the castle disappeared into their chamber, and all who saw smiled and shook their heads, for they were in love, were those two, and mad with it.

Arianna went to the window, while Raine poured them each a cup of wine. Below, the beekeeper was walking across the bailey, covered from head to toe like a leper and carrying his drums in a yoke across his back. There will be honey on our manchet loaves tomorrow morning, she thought with a smile, for it was one of Raine’s favorite things.

She had turned around to tell him this, when she caught him tipping a small leather packet over one of the wine cups. He must have felt her eyes on him, for he whipped around suddenly, his fist closing over the packet and his hand going behind his back.

She advanced on him. “What is that you are hiding?”

“Nothing.” He turned in a half-circle, presenting her with his chest and keeping his hand out of reach.

She feinted to the left, then dashed to the right. Her hand snaked behind him, seizing his wrist. “I can see that
it is something. A something that you just put into my wine.” She tried to pull his clenched fingers apart. “Are you trying to poison me, Norman?”

He opened his fist, surrendering its contents. “It’s a love philter.” There was a faint blush on his sharp cheekbones.

“Oooh, a love philter,” she cooed, examining the small leather bag. “Have I demanded so much of your poor male member lately, that you must use magic to assist you in fulfilling your husbandly duty?”

To her delight his blush deepened. “I was just sort of curious, is all. Taliesin gave the cursed thing to me on that Lugnasa night when you danced naked under the moon, back when you were being a stubborn wench about sharing my bed.”

“You have a faulty memory, my lord, about who was being stubborn about what. That squire is a scheming, interfering trickster!”

He grinned suddenly. “You must admit, though, that it might be fun to try it. Look, we’ll both drink it.” He picked up the wine goblet, stirring it with his finger, then held it up to her lips. His voice turned husky. “You go first.”

Arianna grasped his wrist with both hands, pulling the cup away from her face. She looked down, half expecting to see a white light and swirling mist, but all she saw was wine with a faint brown scum floating on the surface. But she had more sense than to trust that wretched squire, and Raine, too, should know better.

“It could be powerful magic,” she said.

“It’s some kind of root and hedgehog fat and toad liver. It’ll probably just give us a bit of a tingle.” He wriggled his brows in a comical leer. “Mayhap I will be moved to perform even more perverted French perversions upon you.” He lifted the cup to his own lips.

“Don’t!” She grabbed his wrist again. “Raine, you
must have realized by now that Taliesin is not really a squire. He is
magi, llyfrawr
… a wizard.”

“Aye, a wizard at getting out of work and into trouble.”

“He can conjure storms out of clear air and be in two places at once.”

“It’s been my experience that he’s never where he should be.”

“But that helmet of his came from the ancient ones. There is magic in it—”

He leaned over and kissed her to shut her up, slopping a good part of the wine into the rushes. “There is no such thing as a wizard,” he said when they stopped for air.

“If you say so, husband.” She glanced down meekly, but a moment later her head was back up. “But I’m beginning to understand from whence there came that old Welsh saying: ‘There is no rarer thing than wisdom from the mouth of a Norman.’ ”

He laughed and pressed the wine into her hands. “Put this in
your
mouth and quit insulting your lord and master.”

She looked from his smiling, expectant face, down to the wine, then back up to his face again. She licked her lips, started to raise the cup, then shuddered and shoved it at him. “You go first.”

He shrugged and downed two healthy swallows of the wine.

She watched him carefully. The effigies in the chapel bore more expression on their faces than he did on his. “Well?”

His eyes widened slightly. “I feel a sort of tingling.”

“A tingling?”

His eyes grew wider. “Nay, more like a swelling and a throbbing, and a hardening. Aye, a definite hardening.”

He leapt at her, and she shrieked. They fell onto the bed and their mouths came together in a kiss that started out rough and hot, and became slow and deep.

“My lord!”

Raine pulled his mouth away from hers only far enough to bellow. “Go away, Taliesin. This time the wench is willing.”

An adolescent voice rose, cracked and dipped low. “ ’Tis Rhodri, my lord. There is a messenger here. From the king.”

Raine rolled off her, standing up, and Arianna leapt from the bed, straightening her clothing. She slanted a look at the stranger in the doorway. He was naked but for a loincloth, and sweat coated his body, which had been oiled to help him run faster. He was very thin; she could almost see his heart pumping behind his skeletal ribs.

The message was encased in a short, split cane. Raine tipped out the rolled parchment and broke the seal. Arianna watched him read, feeling proud, for she had been the one to teach him the skill. But the warm feeling vanished as she watched the change come over his face.

Saying nothing, he gave her the parchment. Though she didn’t yet know what it said, still her hands shook as she unfurled the message.

The words seemed to leap at her, burning her eyes, and a low, half-worded cry escaped her. King Henry of England was once again gathering a massive army to conquer Wales and destroy the Welsh prince Owain Gwynedd. He was calling on his Black Dragon, his “best and bravest knight,” to ride with him, to fight with him. To kill for him. To kill the Welsh … her people.

They had been so happy, she and Raine. Since the day of their babies’ birth, when he had told her he loved her, she had gone through the days in a blaze of contentment. She felt, finally, secure, well loved, cherished.

But always, always, underneath her joy had lurked a fear that a day such as this one would come to pass. It was too much to hope for that the truce would last, that his people and hers could live in peace. The Normans forever dreamed of power and more power, land and more land.
And the Welsh, they dreamed of liberty. Naught else, only liberty.

But her husband was Norman, and his lord was Norman. He had taken a knightly oath of fealty—sworn to King Henry his loyalty, his pride, and his man’s honor. He loved her, of this she had no doubt, and out of his love for her he would do most anything. But she could not ask him to betray his honor.

The messenger cleared his throat. “The king has started across the Berwyn range, my lord. He requests that you and your knights join him there.”

“Go down to the hall, my good man,” Raine said. “My servants will fill you with ale and food.”

The messenger bowed. “Thank you, my lord.”

Arianna let the curling parchment flutter onto the table and went over to stare unseeing out the narrow window. Damn Henry, she thought. Damn the misbegotten, greedy hellspawn. Was half of Christendom not enough for him, that he must have Wales as well? Why couldn’t he have left them in peace to raise their children and grow old together?

She squeezed her lids shut and her hands fisted on the sill until her knuckles whitened. But when she opened her eyes again, nothing had changed. The sun beat down still, bright and hot on the packed earth of the bailey. She could hear the beekeeper pounding his iron drums now, simulating thunder to bring down his swarms. They made an ominous sound, like a steady barrage from a war machine. A runnel of sweat ran down between her breasts. She hadn’t noticed the heat before, but now it seemed stifling.

A pair of heavy hands settled onto her shoulders. “Henry is my liege lord and my king. It is my duty to come when he summons.”

He only told her what she already knew. But she felt the anger come, in spite of her acceptance of the knowledge. “I don’t know if I can bear this. What if you kill my
father, Raine? How will I be able to live with the man who kills my father?”

“I will not kill your father.”

She whirled, knocking his hands aside. “How can you swear on an uncertainty? You could run him through on your lance or with your sword in the midst of the battle and not even know it!”

A hardness settled over his face, the old shutters fell over his eyes, turning them flat and cold. Already, she thought with a numb despair, already it is happening. And then she realized that it could be Raine who could be killed by her father.

He turned, striding away from her, toward the door. His foot struck something in the rushes and he bent to pick it up. It was one of the twins’ toys—a stuffed lamb with a body made of kinky wool, a painted head, and wooden legs.