Winter Song (51 page)

Alys was very wise for her age, but she had never been a
great heiress. The danger of an abduction never entered her mind. Nor did she
think of Sir Guillaume, since Beatrice did not seem in the least disturbed by
his departure. Nonetheless, she might have been less gullible if half her mind
had not been concentrated on her husband. Alys knew when her letter would have
arrived at Aix. If Raymond happened to be there and decided to come to Arles,
he could arrive sometime late in the day that Beatrice and Margot wanted to go
to the abbey. Alys also knew that there was a good chance he would not be at
Aix and the letter would take several days longer to get to him. Still, her
eagerness to see Raymond and her anxiety about his reaction was making time
hang heavy on her hands. She wanted a diversion, and this small expedition to
the abbey seemed ideal.

The weather could have saved them. Had it been particularly cold
or wet, all might have preferred comfort to adventure. Instead the sky was
bright with sunlight, and there was even a hint of spring in the air. Alys sent
down a message to Arnald that she and two ladies would ride out for an hour or
two. Her mare and those of Margot and Beatrice were to be saddled.

However, Arnald did not like to leave his troop. Aelfric had
been left in Blancheforte, Hugo had remained behind in Tour Dur to escort his
wife, Bertha, and the two little girls to Lady Catherine’s manor. He was the
only other man who spoke fair French. It seemed to him that every time he left
the men, a fight developed owing to misunderstandings or pure aggressiveness.
He mentioned this to Alys, who said immediately that he need not come since
their objective was an abbey less than a league distant. In addition, Arnald
had never been guard to an heiress. Lady Alys had often ridden to Bix with only
two men. An armed and mounted man was easily proof against three or four ragged
thieves, and he knew the land around Arles was tame and at peace. To be on the
safe side, he called out four men, the best in the troop, and told two to ride
before and two behind the ladies.

The journey was very pleasant. The road wound along the
river for a short way and then curved up to higher ground, but the rise was
very gentle. Margot and Beatrice chattered excitedly, trying to make a plan to
keep Alys from interfering with a private meeting between Beatrice and
Guillaume. Since they dared not say anything direct about the subject, their
discussion was obscure. Still, Alys might have guessed they had a secret—only
she was thinking that Raymond would not ride as slowly as they were. If he were
coming…if…

Alys’s men talked idly, too. They looked about, but it was
ridiculous to fear danger on this road so near a town as large as Arles. There
were other travelers, not very many, but enough to make any attack unlikely. There
was too great a chance another party would appear to help the victims or report
the thieves. Then Lady Beatrice called out and pointed. The lead men obediently
turned right into a narrower path. This was more heavily wooded and climbed
more steeply, but now they were only a few minutes from the abbey.

The sudden sound of breaking brush turned pleasure to
nightmare. Alys’s men jerked to attention and drew their swords, but they did
not shift their shields and they were not anxious. Thieves, to their minds,
were poor creatures on foot. The tearing brush and branches could only be
caused by large bodies. The men thought that something had startled a herd of
deer that was now fleeing in panic. The swords were drawn only to ward off the
creatures.

These thoughts barely had time to form, however, before the
first armored man burst through the trees. Margot and Beatrice shrieked in
terror, and Alys saw instantly that they had fallen into a trap. She saw her
lead men engaged, heard more men coming, and screamed in English, “Flee! Flee!
Do not fight. No harm will come to us. Tell them at the keep that we are taken.”

For the lead men, however, this order came too late. Alys
saw one already down, and the other, bleeding from several wounds, was falling.
Alys had no time to see whether either of the others had broken loose, but she
feared they had not. She was trying to get her mare around Margot’s and
Beatrice’s mounts, but the animal was terrified and would not obey the rein,
turning in a half-circle and balking. It was too late anyway. A man in knight’s
armor had ridden up to Beatrice and pulled her from her saddle, setting her
before him on his own mount. Setting spurs to his horse, he rode off. Another,
a man-at-arms, had seized Margot, and a third was reaching for Alys. Her hand
went to her breast to pull her eating knife, but it was too late for that, too.

Alys was not frightened, she was furious. As soon as the
party of men-at-arms appeared, she had guessed the intention was to abduct
Beatrice, and when the knight seized Beatrice first, that guess was confirmed.
Obviously no harm would be done her or Margot or the heiress, but Alys’s
impulse was to fight. She subdued it, knowing it was useless. Even if she could
draw her knife and stab the man who held her, she would not be able to escape.
There was no way she could turn the horse against the tide of other horses, and
the men would pursue her and bring her back.

Most of her fury was directed against herself for her
stupidity. Now she recalled glances between Margot and Beatrice, half-uttered
sentences that were suddenly cut off. How could she have been so stupid as to
miss the fact that they were hiding something? Then she realized it was because
she had been thinking about Raymond. Oh, God! He would never forgive her for
this! Never! Alys began to weep.

“No one will hurt you, lady. No one will hurt you,” the
man-at-arms soothed.

Alys paid him no more attention than she paid the horse that
carried them. Nonetheless her tears soon ceased, dried by the heat of her rage.
Those idiots! Those romantic, birdbrained lackwits!
They
had arranged
this! But the shrieks and wails that came floating back to Alys were sufficient
proof that neither of the girls had expected an abduction. Margot and Beatrice
were silly ninnies, but what could be expected when they had been raised on
lute songs about love? It was she herself who should have known better, Alys
thought, sobbing again with anger and frustration, thinking she was not fit to
be Raymond’s wife. Had she been a great lady, she would have understood why it
was important that Beatrice should not leave Arles. Raymond would despise her!
He would never forgive her.

“My lady, do not fear,” the man-at-arms said to her again. “No
harm will come to you. There is nothing to fear. We mean no hurt.”

This time the words penetrated, not that Alys had ever
thought physical harm was intended, but the attempt to soothe the captives
betokened consideration in the captor. This notion, plus the conviction that
the ambusher knew when and where Beatrice would be traveling, created the first
fruitful idea Alys had had. A romantic abduction! Guillaume des Baux! It must
be Sir Guillaume who had seized them, Alys thought. Oh, she would kill that
nitwit Beatrice. That young idiot Guillaume probably thought he was saving his
ladylove from a fate worse than death.

It occurred to Alys at this point that Margot and Beatrice
had stopped screaming. Also, although she could hear Beatrice’s voice, the
tones were vituperative rather than terrified. For a time Alys was quite
hopeful that Guillaume, having learned he had made a mistake and that Beatrice
did not wish to be saved from marriage to Charles of Anjou—or whoever else was
suitable—would then return them to Arles.

Alys was correct in thinking that Sir Guillaume would be
disappointed to learn that Beatrice did not welcome her abduction. He might,
indeed, have acted just as Alys hoped, except that Master Ernaldus had prepared
him.

* * * * *

“She will be very angry,” Ernaldus had told Sir Guillaume. “She
will call you a fool and far worse things.” Master Ernaldus had been surprised
and not too well pleased when he discovered that Guillaume’s courting had been
too effective and the young man thought himself in love, but he had quickly
found an answer.

“But I-I do not wish Beatrice to be angry,” Guillaume
protested. “I will not do it, then.”

“My lord, children, and sometimes grown men, do not wish to
take the bitter draughts of medicine that will restore their health,” Ernaldus
had pointed out. “Often they kick and scream and strike out, and it is needful
to hold them down and even stop their noses until they open their mouths so
that the medicine may be poured in. This is such a case. Charles of Anjou will
be a bad husband. He will treat his wife harshly, beat her, and perhaps
imprison her once the power is in his hands.”

“Are you sure?” Guillaume had asked, horrified. He had heard
that Charles had a sour temper, but this seemed too much.

“Absolutely sure,” Ernaldus had lied glibly, for he knew
nothing more about Charles than what he had heard from Guillaume himself. “The
middle brother, Alphonse of Poitiers, married Jeanne of Toulouse, and Rustengo
de Soler, my kinsman, had close dealings with them. Alphonse disliked his
brother, and Lady Jeanne said she would have taken the veil or killed herself
sooner than marry Charles.” And then, with fine lack of logic, Ernaldus added
another lie. “And he will try to destroy you utterly because your father was
unjustly accused of rebellion.”

Without a thought Guillaume had accepted that as truth, and
it cast a false luster of truth on the other, unrelated statements. Guillaume’s
father had been bitter and complained constantly of malice. And after his
father’s death, his mother had reinforced the idea by repeating her husband’s
complaints. Not given to careful analysis, Guillaume accepted what he heard.

“You must understand, my lord,” Ernaldus had continued, “that
the truth will have been hidden from Lady Beatrice. She, poor lamb, is only the
sacrifice to the ambitions of her mother and Sir Romeo, who seek their own
aggrandizement. It will take a few days to explain these things and make her
understand the truth, for naturally she will not wish to believe that her
mother and her guardian would sell her for their own purposes.”

Thus, although Sir Guillaume pleaded with Beatrice and
reasoned with her and tried to soothe her after he seized her, he did not yield
to her furious demands to be returned to Arles. Toward the end of the ride,
Guillaume changed his tone from pleadings to threats. Ernaldus had warned him
that too much gentleness would merely make the lady stubborn. Women always
desired to rule, the bailiff pointed out sententiously, and if Guillaume did
not frighten Beatrice, she would refuse to listen to him at all and insist on
having her own way.

Guillaume did not accept that advice with his usual lack of
doubt. He felt that Beatrice would not be like other women and, since he
thought she loved him, she would be glad he had taken her. However, when all
his soft words drew only more and more angry replies from his love, Guillaume
began to be very annoyed with Beatrice. He had to admit to himself that Master
Ernaldus had been right yet again. Beatrice would have to be tamed by some
harshness. He told her angrily to hold her tongue, and when she continued to
revile him, he shook her.

“You must learn reason and who is master,” he said sharply. “Had
you been willing to abide by your sweet words to me—?”

“You idiot! You worm!” Beatrice shrieked. “Sweet words are
for play. Do you not realize that my inheritance will be reft from me by my
sisters if I do not marry where there is sufficient power to still their
mouths?”

“Then I will win it back!” Guillaume exclaimed.

Beatrice was so infuriated by this idiotic reply that she
did not even answer in words, but merely screamed, “Take me back, you dolt, you
ass, you shit! Take me back or Sir Romeo’s armies will grind your bones for
meal and sow salt in the fields of your demesne.”

“Not while I have you!” Guillaume snarled. “How will they
reach me there?”

He pointed, and Beatrice’s eyes followed his hand. She
stared and began to wail anew. Alys did not wail, but when she saw Les Baux,
tears rained down her cheeks again. Out of the gentle rolling countryside
swelled a sudden steep jumble of rock. From this base, there rose a sheer
cliff, perhaps a hundred feet high, and this was topped with the high, sheer
walls of a keep. Hopelessness gripped Alys, and then terror. Sooner or later
the identity of Beatrice’s abductor would become known, and then Raymond would
come and try to take the keep to free her.

When that idea came into Alys’s mind, she nearly fainted.
She might not be wise in war, but she knew when a place was impregnable.
Thousands and thousands might die and that fortress would remain untouched.
Alys saw the defenses of the narrow track that wound up and up, turning back and
forth upon itself. No more than one horse or man could climb it at a time, and
there were ledges in the rock from which defenders could shoot. No attacker
would survive to reach the top.

Both Margot and Beatrice were screaming again. Alys went
limp, wondering if she should try to throw herself from some high place. If she
were dead, Raymond might not come and be killed in an attempt to storm this
place. Fortunately, common sense reasserted itself. Her death would be more
likely to incite her husband than restrain him, even if he were furious and
disgusted with her for falling into this trap. The only way to keep Raymond
from trying to take this monstrous keep was to get out of it herself, and get
Margot and Beatrice out, too.

Guillaume might have tried reason again when he saw Beatrice’s
reaction to Les Baux, but he really could not. She screamed and struggled so,
that only a brutal grip could keep hold of her and he would have had to bellow
to be heard. It seemed as if Ernaldus was always right. The bailiff had
suggested that Beatrice be placed in a cell and just left there until her rage
abated. When she had exhausted herself with tears and cries, Ernaldus had said,
and found herself utterly powerless, she would be ripe to listen to reason.