Winter Song (52 page)

Beyond that, Ernaldus had wanted Guillaume to thrust
Beatrice into the prison cells in the lowest level of the keep. Here, however,
Guillaume had drawn the line. It was unfitting for a lady, he said. Not even to
induce fear would he perpetrate so shameful an act, and for such an affront to
her honor and dignity, Beatrice would never forgive him. Abduction was no
insult, but a cell fit for common felons and murderers—no! And for the first
time, Ernaldus had seen in Guillaume’s eyes the kind of contempt with which the
highbred regard the baseborn when their code is infringed.

Hastily, Ernaldus had withdrawn that suggestion, but pointed
out that Beatrice could not be lodged in the living quarters. If she were, her
presence could not be kept secret from Guillaume’s mother, which they must do
at least until Lady Beatrice had agreed to marriage. Guillaume had hesitated
and then agreed. His mother would be terrified by his bold move and would weep
and wail. There would be enough of that after the siege had started. Guillaume
had felt a thrill of excitement mixed with apprehension.

Eventually it had been decided that Beatrice should be
lodged in one of the towers, named for a reason even Guillaume did not know,
the Sow’s Tower. Such imprisonment would not be demeaning. It was common usage
for noble malefactors. They decided she should have no servants at first, and
later only those Guillaume would allow her. Ernaldus had promised to see to the
cleaning and furnishing of the tower since they wished to keep the matter
secret as long as possible. Guillaume’s position would be much stronger if he
married the heiress before anyone knew where she was.

What neither Ernaldus nor Guillaume had considered was that
Beatrice would bring along female companions, both had thought she would wish
to hide a clandestine meeting with a lover. Instinctively Guillaume had ordered
his men to seize the other women as well.

Now, however, he had no idea what to do with them. All he
knew was that he could not leave his shrieking, struggling prizes in the bailey
to attract every eye and ear in the keep. Thus, just before they entered,
Guillaume ordered that all three women be gagged, rolled in their cloaks with
the hoods drawn over their faces, and carried to the middle chamber of the Sow’s
Tower.

Guillaume did not stay to see the women carried into
confinement, only telling Beatrice harshly after she was gagged that she had
brought this rough treatment on herself. When she became reasonable, he said,
she could choose her own quarters. He was really infuriated, for she had kicked
him in several tender spots and bitten him when he tried to restrain her.
Ernaldus was right, he fumed, let her do without her dinner. Perhaps that would
lower her high stomach and teach her that his sweet words were not meant in
play.

Thrust roughly into the tower chamber while still blinded by
their hoods and enveloped in their tightly wound cloaks, all three fell to the
floor. Margot and Beatrice, shocked by such handling and exhausted by emotion
and fright, lay where they were and wept. Alys, somewhat more accustomed to
bruises and having within her a fixed purpose, struggled to unwind herself from
the imprisoning garment. Since she had not been bound, this was not difficult.
In minutes she had freed her arms and legs from the cloak, pushed back the
hood, and untied the gag.

First she ran to look out the arrow slit, and immediately
drew back with a gasp of fear. The view was narrow but nonetheless chilling.
Alys had never been atop a mountain peak. Now she knew what it was like. The
world fell away to nothing. She could not see the wall of the keep, only a thin
ledge of bare rock and then, far below, what looked like moss-speckled gray and
green, only Alys knew that what she had seen were the tops of trees, some bare,
some evergreen, because a thin brown line, a road, ran through them.

Afraid to look again lest despair seize her, she turned her attention
to Margot and Beatrice, helping them unwind and free themselves. The moment the
gags were off, Alys regretted it. Shrieks pierced her ears.

“There is no way screaming can help,” Alys cried furiously. “If
your voices had the power of Joshua’s trumpets, the walls would be down
already. Since they are not, we must think of something better to do than
scream.”

A brief, stunned silence followed this statement. Then
Beatrice shivered and began to weep softly. “What can we do better?” she
sobbed. “I have already done the worst.”

“Weeping cannot amend that,” Alys snapped. “There is no
sense in weeping over the past, and not much more sense in weeping over the
future.”

“But I am ruined,” Beatrice cried. “The fool says he will
wed me, and my sisters will tear my heritage apart because he is nothing. Can
he withstand two kings and the Earl of Cornwall?”

“Forced marriages can be annulled,” Alys snarled. “So long
as he does not get between your legs and get you with child, no harm will be
done. Besides, what do you think your mother and Sir Romeo will be doing?”

“What can they do?” Beatrice wailed. “You saw this place.”

Again Alys saw Raymond leading a hopeless assault on the
terrible cliffs and walls. “We must escape.” She forced the words through a dry
throat. “We must escape.”

“Are you mad?” Margot cried. “How can we escape from this
place? Let Beatrice marry him. It is her fault we were taken. He will let us go
once they are married.”

“It is your fault, too,” Beatrice shrieked. “You agreed we
should go. If you had refused…”

Alys did not listen to the remainder of Beatrice’s furious
reply. Guillaume might free Margot and herself, Alys thought, but that would
not stop Sir Romeo from calling up an army, and Raymond would still have to
fight. She covered her face with her hands, but the image of that narrow,
twisting road alternated with that of the precipitous cliffs, and on both she
envisioned her husband dying, his smooth, dark body broken and bleeding. Almost
in defense against this fear, the peevish faultfinding of the others finally
brought her back to the troubles at hand.

“Oh, hush,” Alys said wearily. “If the fault is any person’s,
it is mine. I am the eldest and, moreover, I have lived more in the world.”

“But you did not know…” Beatrice wept.

“I lied to you, Sister,” Margot sobbed.

Alys smiled wryly while tears hung in her lower eyelashes. “You
are not much steeped in vice,” she sighed. “If I had not been thinking of
something else, I would have guessed. But that is not important. Escape may be
impossible, but we must look for a way in case one exists. At the same time, we
must try to convince Sir Guillaume to release us.”

Margot and Beatrice were so surprised and touched by Alys’s
generosity in assuming the blame when she alone was innocent of any fault that
each resolved she would do her best not to cause Alys any more trouble.

“God knows I am willing,” Beatrice quavered, “but I have
already told him I would not have him and told him why. He is an idiot! He said
he would win back for me what my sisters swallowed. Can you imagine such
stupidity?”

“Well, if you do not think that is possible, are you more
willing to try to steal away?” Alys asked.

“It is impossible,” Beatrice said after only a moment’s
thought. “Even if we could get out of this room, which I am sure we could not,
how would we get out of the keep without drawing notice? Do you think grooms
would saddle horses on our order? Who is to escort us?”

“Beatrice,” Alys said caustically, “I said
steal
away. This does not include ordering horses saddled or asking for an escort. It
means finding servants’ garments, if possible, or hiding ours, pretending we
are serfs on an errand, hiding until it is dark, and then…”

Alys allowed her voice to drift away. From the horrified
expressions on the faces turned to her she knew, at least for now, this path
was hopeless. Margot and Beatrice would have to be much more frightened and
desperate before they would make such an attempt. However, she had set the
seed, and now she thought they would at least consider her plan.

In the discussion that followed, Alys learned that Guillaume
did not seem at all interested in the political situation. When not spouting
love poems, he talked only about hunting, fighting and gambling. Alys came to
the conclusion that Guillaume really did not understand the implications of
what he had done, that he probably thought all he had to do was marry Beatrice
and everything would drop into his hand. As Alys was ruminating on whether this
could be turned to some purpose, Beatrice broke in on her thoughts.

“Surely,” Beatrice said, “it is time for dinner. Where—”

“I do not think we will get dinner,” Alys interrupted
sharply, annoyed, “nor supper either.”

“He will starve us to death,” Margot shrieked.

“Do not be ridiculous,” Alys snapped. “One cannot marry a
corpse. We may get hungry, and perhaps very bored with what is offered to
us—mayhap no more than bread and water—but starved we will not be.”

This statement brought a new chorus of wails and tears. Alys
listened with what patience she could muster to the laments and impotent
vituperations, and when they began to subside, she said, “Well, if a meal or
two and a fine table mean so much to you, Beatrice, by all means, marry the
man. I have no objections! I imagine that Guillaume will release Margot and
myself to carry the happy news to Sir Romeo and your mother. You, of course,
will be kept close until your belly swells. Then you may have some freedom.”

Beatrice gaped, momentarily mute with fury. Then she cried, “Never!
Not if I do starve to death!”

“Then what remains,” Alys said calmly, “is to convince Sir
Guillaume that this is true, and that each day he keeps us and each privation
he forces on us only increase your stubbornness.
But
you must speak him
fair, with calm and dignity. If you shriek and threaten, he will think that
your will can be broken when you have exhausted your rage. No matter what you
feel, you must not show anger.”

“But what of us?” Margot sobbed. “We will starve, also.”

“It will be a just punishment,” Alys responded bitterly, “on
you for mischief and on me for stupidity.” Then she went on to describe what
Beatrice must say to show Guillaume that marriage to her would not only gain
him nothing but cause him the loss of what he already had. “You must make
Guillaume believe Louis will swallow the province and that would breed utter
destruction for him. Obviously, Louis could not allow the true heiress or her
husband to retain any power anywhere.”

“Would King Louis kill his own sister-by-marriage?” Margot
breathed.

Alys cast her an infuriated glance, but this time Margot’s
silliness did not overset Beatrice. “No,” she said, “of course not. He is a
good man. We would only be held, probably in his court with seeming honor, but
closely watched.” Beatrice’s lips moved as if something sour was in her mouth. “I
think I had rather starve. From what Margaret says, Louis’s court is so holy and
so dull, one dies of ennui. I will do what you say, Alys. I will, indeed.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Sir Guillaume was totally inexperienced in deeds of
villainy. He had remembered to order the men who had helped him with the
abduction to hold their tongues, and he had sense enough not to name the victim
to them. However, it had not occurred to him to conceal his colors and arms nor
to order his men to make certain Alys’s guards were dead and that all the
horses were gathered up. Thus, when three horses bolted, no one pursued them.
It was not long before one bloodstained animal, no longer frightened, wandered
into the abbey lands. The lay brother who first saw the horse cried out in
surprise, and others came running. As soon as the beast was caught, they saw
the blood on it and realized the blood was fresh.

Informed of this, the good brothers set out at once up and
down the track that led to the abbey, and the party that went south came upon
Alys’s men. For one they were too late, but the others lived. Having bound up
the guardsmen’s wounds, the brothers carried them back to the abbey and into
the infirmary, where they dosed them with syrup of poppies so they would feel
the pain less and sleep. A party of lay brothers was sent for the dead body,
which was decently laid out.

More than this, the good brothers could not do. No one
recognized the men or the arms they bore, and all three babbled at them in an
unknown tongue. Not knowing what else to do, the infirmarian and his helpers
said, “Yes, yes,” soothingly. The men seemed much relieved at this, and the
infirmarian was delighted that he had appeased his patients, who allowed
themselves to sink into sleep. The infirmarian had no idea that the babbling
was meant to convey an urgent message concerning the daughter of one of their
great benefactors or that “yes” was one of the few words of the
langue d’oc
these men understood, so they had taken his “yes, yes” to mean their message
had been transmitted.

* * * * *

It was not until dinnertime that Lady Beatrice first
discovered her daughter missing. Aside from a mild annoyance, she did not give
the fact much heed, thinking the girl was engaged somewhere with friends and
did not wish to interrupt her amusement. She sent several servants off to seek
her daughter and sat down to eat. One by one the servants returned to say they
could not find young Beatrice, and Lady Beatrice became alarmed.

At this point, Lady Jeannette woke up to the fact that Alys
and Margot were also missing. At first this allayed the alarm, for it seemed
obvious that the three must be together. Moreover, when a further investigation
revealed that Alys had told Arnald they were going to Montmajour Abbey, Lady
Beatrice relaxed. She was angry that her daughter had not asked her permission
or left a message for her, but she was not worried. Even when the servant who
had questioned Arnald mentioned that Alys’s master-at-arms had expected his
mistress back before dinner, Lady Beatrice merely shook her head.