Roselynde, page 10
“To ride. To hunt.” Sir Andre’s reply was so blank, so colorless that Alinor’s rage congealed.
“Oh.” She waved an airy hand. “So long as he does not meddle with my lands when I am not by.”
Sir Andre choked. The castellan turned to look at him. “Our lady has used that poor man worse than a serf—more like a slave.” It was all he could think of to say.
“Why not?” Alinor commented, quick to see the advantage of Sir Andre’s lead. “He is very wise in the ways of war. Since the queen has appointed him my warden, let him guard me in truth.”
“He has a right to a day’s freedom, my lady,” Sir Andre warned.
“Oh, yes,” Alinor agreed lightly. “I said I did not mind if he hunted.”
Then she turned the talk as if she had dismissed Sir Simon from her mind completely. This was not possible, Sir Andre knew, but he felt considerable relief at her skillful pretense. The castellan, who knew nothing about the byplay of the morning, put down Alinor’s seeming deep absorption in the affairs of Kingsclere to a desire to know more about the estate than Simon could learn. Loyally, he related every fact he could think of that might be of help to his very kind and gracious lady.
Enough was enough. Soon after dinner Alinor retreated to the women’s quarters, but she did not wish to sew and was too restless to read. The long evening and a good part of an equally long night were spent in checking over what furniture she had with her and making a list of what she would need in addition to furnish a house in London. If by any means she could make the queen agree, Alinor thought she might prefer to live in her own house. She was not at all sure she would be able to accommodate herself to being one unimportant individual in a large group of highborn maidens. Also, it would be very difficult to be alone with Simon in the crowded Court or to conceal her desire for him.
Caught short by where her mind had wandered from furniture, Alinor thought, Do I desire him? Her hand remained poised above the parchment upon which she had been inscribing “2 pr chair wi cushion.” “I will never finish this,” she said aloud, exasperated with her unruly mind, and then burst into laughter as she looked down at what she had written. Instead of the word “red” which should have followed “cushion,” bold and black, as if she had scored down harder than usual with her pen, stood “SIMON.”
The laughter was a release. What had loomed imminently threatening, a brilliantly blazing emotion like a barrel of flaming pitch falling, receded to a warm, pleasant glow like the rising sun on the horizon. There was no need to do anything. First it was necessary to test the temper and atmosphere of the Court. Then, if this feeling that had wakened in her was real and grew, she would find a way to achieve her desire. She always had in the past. Why should she fail now?
Simon never thought in those terms at all. When he rode blindly from Kingsclere, trailed by his squire and a handful of men-at-arms, he had only been seeking solitude as a wounded animal does. Unfortunately solitude could not produce for him a solution as it did for an arrow-struck beast. He could not be alone long enough so that his hurt could heal, and the dart that had struck him was not the kind that killed. Like a few old wounds Simon bore, it would stay in him, aching anew each time the area was touched.
They rode; they flushed game, which Simon never saw. The men glanced at each other and shrugged their shoulders. They were puzzled by their master’s behavior. Most had been in his service for many years and they had seen him well and ill, angered and exhausted, sometimes near to despairing at the evil he found in men. Here, however, there was nothing to distress him. It was all holiday—cheerful welcomes, the best food and entertainment, honest men with honest purposes.
Only Ian de Vipont, Simon’s squire, had a glimmering of understanding. He was suffering from the same disease and had lain awake more nights than he slept with Alinor’s image hanging before his eyes. He was not jealous. To him, Alinor was a distant star and he did not dream of attempting to reach for her. His feeling, although he was much the same age as Alinor, having just passed his seventeenth year, was very similar to what Simon had felt nearly twenty-five years ago for the queen.
Thus, Ian’s pain, unmixed with even the faintest hope of assuagement, was somewhat akin to joy. Simon, however, had outgrown worship. First of all, it was impossible to worship Alinor, who drove him alternately from helpless laughter to equally helpless, roaring rages, which he thought he had conquered twenty years past, and back to laughter. Alinor was all too human, a woman to love, not a goddess to worship. Secondly, she was not impossible of achievement. If he were willing to compromise his honor, there were several paths by which he might obtain her. The most direct path was to do what Sir Andre had warned him others might try to do. He could take Alinor by force to one of her more inaccessible keeps, suborn a priest into marrying them, and get her with child. Doubtless Richard would be too busy preparing for his crusade to begin a war about the disposition of one heiress—especially to a man he well knew would be faithful to him. He would set an enormous fine, take his money out of Alinor’s lands, and accept the fait accompli.
Simon first groaned aloud and then laughed at himself harshly. Quite aside from the fact that he did not believe he could live with himself if he committed so gross a breach of faith, so black an act of dishonor, Alinor was not the sort of woman to be a passive victim. If she did not literally tear the throat out of him with her hands and teeth while he was trying to bed her or slip a knife between his ribs while he was sleeping afterward, she would like as not have him murdered by her faithful men.
Of course it might be possible to win her compliance. She liked him, and she was surprisingly innocent for a girl of her age and birth in some ways. Simon was not fool enough to read more into Alinor’s playfulness than was there. It was that open gaiety that convinced him of her innocence. If, before she was exposed to the practiced gallants of the Court so much younger and more romantic than he, he made love to her himself, he might be able to win her heart. Simon shuddered with disgust. Old lecher pursuing a scarcely nubile girl to gain a prize of shame added to dishonor.
There was no way, really, but to endure. Tomorrow they would leave for the Court. At least they would not be together all day every day. There would be distractions. This sickness of heart came from too much idleness. Alinor’s property was so well run that there was nothing for him to do. Perhaps he would go to France and fight in the tourneys again. A double thought, each prong at opposite ends of hope, sprang into his mind. Men died in tourneys; men won rich estates in tourneys. Simon quashed both thoughts firmly. To hope for death was a black sin. To think of winning a rich estate to make him more eligible for Alinor would not make the old-satyr/young-maiden image less disgusting. There was no way but to endure.
When Simon and Alinor met at breakfast the next morning, he had achieved a balance weighted down evenly on each side by a thick gloom. Alinor, thus far concerned only with her own feelings, was shocked by his red-rimmed, dead-looking eyes and hard-set mouth. Unfortunately, if Sir Andre was correct, there was nothing she could do for him. To ask the queen for a new warden would involve Simon in great trouble and disgrace him. To treat him coldly could only cause him greater pain and probably would not achieve the purpose of killing his love. Besides, Alinor was not at all sure she wanted to kill it.
Simon chewed and swallowed with effort and replied to the inanities of the Lady Grisel with practiced politeness. He had revolved various explanations for the sudden departure he was about to announce and had decided that nothing he could think of would satisfy Alinor. Thus, when the meal was over, he merely stood and thanked the castellan for his hospitality. Then he turned to Alinor.
“My lady, I will ask you to bid your maids to pack. We will leave for London before the prime.”
“Leave for London?” Alinor said blankly. “But why in such haste? My furniture—”
“You will need none for the nonce, my lady. Doubtless until you are established, the queen will house you with her maidens.”
“And my men? And my servants? And Sir Andre? Where are they to live?”
“If Sir Andre wishes to come to London, I cannot prevent him from doing so. However, I can see no purpose to anything so ill-advised. You will be guarded by the queen and by me, if needful. Sir Andre’s place is in Roselynde which, if he deserts it, will be masterless. If he wishes to come, or you wish for it in spite of my word—well, he is not a witless child, I hope. He can arrange to have the furniture and servants brought to your house himself.”
Alinor lowered her eyes and bit her lip. She was too well bred to start a fight in front of her dependents—particularly a fight she might not win. Simon had counted on that, and she knew he had counted on it.
“Yes, my lord,” she said meekly, and walked to him to lay her hand upon his wrist. But as soon as he had led her off the dais, “Coward!” she spat. “Rank coward, to take such an advantage.”
“I am not in the mood for brangling with you, Alinor,” Simon growled back, his color rising.
Lady Grisel started forward to ask if she could help Alinor in any way, but Sir Andre detained her with some question, and Simon and Alinor reached the relative haven of the stairwell, Sir Andre was not sure what Alinor was about, but he had seen Simon’s shoulders lift from their discouraged droop and he was willing to give her a chance.
Alinor had sensed the life flowing back into Simon’s body with his rage too. Initially her sharp response had been quite spontaneous. She had said she was willing to go to Court. She did not see why she should be hurried and harried over it. Now, however, she only wished to relieve Simon’s gloom. If she could not wheedle him into happiness, she would prick him into it. She sought deliberately for something outrageous to say. If anger would relieve Simon’s pain, angry he should be. It would serve the double purpose of keeping his mind on her.
“You are fortunate I am too honest to pay you back in your own cheap coin,” she muttered viciously. “It would serve you right if I suddenly fell ill of some woman’s complaint that would keep us here a sennight.”
“Woman’s complaint!” Simon choked. “I do not believe you are capable of suffering from a woman’s complaint. Women are meek and mild and biddable.”
“I am also meek and mild and biddable when I am well used,” Alinor retorted, and swung around and ran up the stairs without giving Simon a chance to reply.
He stood, staring up after her, fuming. How dare she say he used her ill, only because for once he had asked her to suit his convenience instead of her own. Meek and mild and biddable! She was biddable so long as it was he who said “yea.” Coward, she had called him, rank coward! There was not a man alive who would dare, and she— Simon turned and cast a fulminating glance at Sir Andre, who promptly looked innocently up at the rafters above. Had there not been others present, Simon would have told Alinor’s chief vassal what he thought of his management of his mistress. As it was, he choked down his spleen as well as he could and took himself down to the bailey to harry his men into being ready long before Alinor could possibly be—even if she had been hurrying, which she certainly was not. Strange, he thought, the earth is dry and the sun is shining. I could have sworn that it rained.
Nonetheless, when Alinor finally descended to the bailey, wimpled and gowned for riding only a few minutes after prime, Simon felt as if she had delayed him for hours. He took so frigidly courteous a leave of the castellan and Sir Andre, whom Alinor had kissed and hugged most fondly, that the former gentleman nervously asked the latter in what he had offended the king’s warden.
“Not at all,” Sir Andre said, laughing heartily, “not at all. He has had some small difference of opinion, again, with our lady. Do not let the matter concern you. Lady Alinor knows what she is about. He will guard her interests as devotedly as I.”
Chapter Seven
It was not a merry trip. Hostilities were renewed as soon as Alinor was mounted, but they were no fault of hers. Having enlivened Simon’s mood, she was willing to forget the whole thing. She had wanted to go to Court and here they were on their way. She had not really expected the queen to allow her to live in her own house, at least not just at first, anyway. Her furniture could be sent for after she arrived in London. She even agreed that it was better for Sir Andre to remain to oversee the lands, especially those held by castellans. In fact, she was grateful to Simon for settling the matter so summarily. She did not know how she would have told Sir Andre that she did not need him without hurting his feelings.
“The castle in London must be enormous,” Alinor began civilly and with lively interest. “How will I find my way?”
“There are maidservants who will direct you,” Simon replied coldly.
“Oh yes, for such things as the Great Halls or the garderobe or the queen’s chambers, but how will I summon my men-at-arms if I want to send a message to Sir Andre, for example, or my grooms if I want to hunt or ride out?”
“What men-at-arms? What grooms?” Simon asked.
Alinor blinked. “The ones who ride with us, who have ridden with us since we started.”
“You ordered them to come?” Simon roared. “Well, I will send them back. You will have no need for such servants while in the queen’s care.”
“Do not be ridiculous,” Alinor exclaimed. “I know grandfather brought his men and his servants whenever he went to London.” Suddenly her eyes narrowed. “If you send them back, I do not go! Not unless you gag me and bind me to my horse. And if you try that, you will have a bloody war right here on this road. My men will not idly permit such liberties to be taken with my person. Simon, what does this mean? You know that without my own loyal servants I will be no more than a helpless prisoner—and that state I will not easily accept.”
The ultimate insult. She did not recognize the fact that he would not permit her to be a prisoner or that any harm should come to her. “Take them then,” Simon snarled. “The queen will be furious to be out the cost for their keep. I do not care! I am so grateful that I will be rid of the charge of you, that I care for nothing else. Thank God you will soon have a husband to deal with your vagaries. Holy Mary have mercy on the poor man. I do not envy him his fate.”
“A husband?” Alinor gasped. “Where heard you this?”
“It is common knowledge that the heiresses the old king held are to be given in marriage.”
“Oh, yes, the queen spoke to me of the two Isobels and the others. But not me! I am not to be married. The queen promised.”
Simon’s bridle hand moved so convulsively that his horse stopped and reared. Alinor had to check her own startled mount and circle around so that she could see him.
“The queen promised?” he said, looking so stunned that Alinor began to giggle.
“You have me still,” she laughed, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes, “and will have for many years, I think. She said the king would be loath to let me marry when he saw my rent rolls.”
“Why?” Simon asked, cursing the fluttering sensation in his chest that made his voice breathless. “How did she come to give you such a promise?”
“Mostly for what I just said. You know well that as long as I am single my revenues go to the Crown. But partly I think she believed me when I told her that I would search an unwanted husband’s heart for love with the point of a knife. And if my knife should prove too short, there would be many, longer and sharper, to complete my work.” She moved her horse forward so that she could lay her hand over his. “Simon, my grandfather did not leave me naked in a cold world. Ten years he labored to build an edifice that would protect me.”
“Your vassals might wish to protect you, but they cannot fight the whole realm.”
“Of course not, but I do not think it would be necessary. The last thing the queen would desire with Lord Richard bent upon Crusade is for my men to begin a minor war because I was ill-pleased with the husband chosen for me. Besides, she does not wish me to marry. She prefers that my revenues come into the king’s purse. The two Isobels are a different case. They have long been king’s wards and, I fear, their wardens were not so honest or so honorable as you. Their people cry aloud for relief from rapacious wardens, the women cry for the end of wardship, and Lord Richard is constrained to right his father’s wrongs.
“The queen did speak to you of these matters.” Simon was amazed. Queen Alinor did not suffer from an idly wagging tongue.
“Yes, because she needed to speak about something else which she dared not. Simon, something about Lord Richard lies heavy on his mother’s heart. It is not about the Crusade. She is quick enough to speak of her fears of that, and how she came near to losing her own life more than once on that dreadful journey. It is something—something—”
“For God’s sake, Alinor, do not ask me!” Simon burst out. “Do not think of it! Be blind! Be deaf! And if God curses you with vision and hearing, be mute!”
Alinor’s eyes widened, but she clamped her lips over what else she had to say. There was real fear and anguish in Simon’s voice. Whatever lay on the queen’s heart was bigger and more dreadful than the problem of the notorious Lady Alais which she had heard about—and that was awful enough. Alinor thought of asking Simon about that, but decided against it. Men suffered from odd freaks of delicacy, and an interesting subject like whether or not the old king had fathered a bastard upon his son’s affianced bride was certainly bound to bring out every bit of delicacy Simon had. Soon she would be able to ask other women, who took a more practical view of such things.
After they had reached London and Alinor had been settled into the chambers that held the high-born maidens in the care of the queen, Alinor recalled her decision with doubt. Not that she thought she could have got much information out of Simon. Merely that she would get a great deal more than she wanted out of the busy tongues that surrounded her—and most probably not a mote of it would be true. It was not that information about Alais was really of any importance to Alinor. It was just a straw to show the way the wind blew. If the women could not find out or would not tell the truth about a matter of such interest to them, it was highly unlikely that their views on any other subject would be more informed or more reliable. Feather-brained idiots, Alinor thought exasperatedly. Then, because she was capable of self-discipline when necessary, she admitted that perhaps the lies and the blank, stupid stares were more because the ladies did not like or trust her than because they were ignorant.
