Roselynde, page 25
“Whatever made you think I was offended?” the queen asked.
“Simon—” Alinor faltered, dizzy with confusion, “he said— He said I was not to anger you.”
The queen shrugged. “I must suppose it was in the nature of a general warning. We did speak of you, my dear, but only as to the advisability of your coming with me to Normandy and Aquitaine or remaining here.”
Alinor struggled for composure. Her only interest in whether she went or stayed was where Simon would be, but she was so overset that she could think of no safe way to ask that question. She heard the queen say that she was to go and even speak most kindly of her usefulness, but she did not dare express either joy or repugnance. She only managed to stammer out some phrases of gratitude for the queen’s favor and kind thoughts, which made Queen Alinor look at her very queerly. Something was definitely troubling Alinor, but if what Simon said was true—and the queen had no cause to doubt his analysis, since it jibed perfectly with her own—the girl had to be removed from the country until whatever trouble she might cause would not spread into a general conflagration.
Because in general Alinor was a sensible girl, the queen felt she could reason away her trouble if only she could discover what it was. So, once again, she questioned. This time Alinor simply could not find laughter. She reiterated her, “Nothing, nothing,” but the queen would not be so easily satisfied. In desperation, Alinor cried, “Simon is unkind. He has been so angry because of that accursed appointment. I have begged pardon, but he will not forgive me.”
At first the queen made no reply at all, even her eyes losing their expression as she added up the bits and pieces of Alinor’s odd behavior and Simon’s even more peculiar reactions. Alinor nearly fainted with terror at what she had unintentionally divulged. The queen’s cynical brow quirked upward.
“You knew he would be angry when you made the arrangement,” the queen said. “I can do nothing to help you. You will have to settle your differences with Simon yourself. So long as it does not interfere with his usefulness to me, you may deal with him in any way you choose. You know, Alinor, what is impossible to avoid must be forgiven. And now, since I can do no more for you, you may go.”
It was a dismissal that called for no more than a curtsy and departure, which was fortunate because Alinor could not have squeezed a syllable past her lips to save her life. Doubtless the queen knew that, she realized, as she sat down beside the fire again and began to ply her needle. What had been said was clear enough. The implications attached had deprived Alinor of speech. Turning the words over and over in her mind, applying an emphasis here or there, pulling the sentences and phrases apart, changed nothing.
There was no doubt in Alinor’s mind that the queen knew she loved Simon and, probably, that Simon loved her. Was confession what brought the light to Simon’s eyes? In addition it was clear that the queen would not help them to marry. Alinor felt no resentment about that. She understood that the queen dared not add even a feather to the burden of disagreement between herself and her son.
There had been more, however. That raised brow, the knowing quirk of lip—Alinor recalled the tales of the queen’s youth. How her first husband had literally to pluck her from the bed of her own uncle; how even after that he had been willing to be reconciled, but the queen had spat upon the floor in the pope’s presence and sneered, “What have I got after ten years of marriage—two daughters”; how everyone had counted days and weeks upon their fingers when the queen’s eldest son, who had died in infancy, had been born, and how it was whispered that the child was not Henry’s but some low-born troubadour’s. Alinor’s needle flew. Color mantled her cheek, died, turned even more burning. No, the founder of the Courts of Love, those celebrations of polite adultery, would not be shocked at an illicit love affair. The queen had really meant that, unless she were hit in the face with proof, she would turn a blind eye if Simon and Alinor wished to become lovers. Had she said the same to Simon? Was that what lit the flame in his eyes? Simon?
The fact that Alinor had already considered tricking or forcing Simon into raping her had no effect on her feeling of revulsion. She had considered the idea only as an expedient, a step on the road to marriage. She had dismissed the notion because of its effect on Simon. The fact that she had no moral scruples about bedding Simon outside of marriage and that the queen had actually suggested and condoned an affair also had no mitigating effect. Alinor regarded the idea that Simon would eagerly accept such a relationship with horror. Men and women were different. Women were sensible and practical creatures, and an affair was a sensible and practical solution to the problem of two people who loved each other and could not marry. Men, however, had their honor. Without it, a male was a distorted shadow, a simulacrum, a two-legged beast, not a man. If Simon was such a thing—Simon?—then perhaps, Alinor thought, my grandfather was the last man alive.
Alinor was not so innocent after six months at Court as she had been after sixteen years of her grandfather’s and Sir Andre’s company. She had been much shocked when she discovered that a number of the queen’s younger ladies had lovers. At first when she thought it over and considered the men to whom these ladies were married, it seemed logical. What better expression of contempt could there be for such a marriage. Later Alinor realized that the lovers were often worse than the husbands. They sighed of everlasting devotion while ogling over their lady’s shoulders for another victim. Or they panted of their pain and their lady’s unkindness into another all-too-sympathetic shell-like ear. She had even heard a lover, in a moment of exasperation, snarl something about “that trull.”
Was that what Simon was willing to accept? Was that more honorable than pushing events about a little so that he or Alinor could openly ask to be married? Was it a greater honor to turn over intact estates than an intact bride? Alinor’s hand stabbed the needle into her work as if into a heart. She had called Simon a courtier, but had never thought what that meant aside from attendance upon the king. What of the idle hours? How many shell-pink ears had Simon whispered into?
The image of Simon leaning amorously forward came into Alinor’s mind, but instead of the bitter bile of jealousy, a giggle rose in her throat. The image was simply false. The laughter died as quickly as it came. Alinor bit her lips and stared unseeingly at her work, her cheeks flaming again. Simon might not lean amorously nor whisper inanities, but he could speak words of love as smoothly as the most practiced seducer.
Angry at herself now more than at Simon, Alinor acknowledged that there must be many facets of Simon’s life and character that she had overlooked or deliberately ignored. No man who was not a priest or afflicted like the king could reach Simon’s age without knowing many women. And the lips that taught her so swiftly and expertly how to kiss gave mute evidence of how well he had known women.
Sequentially hot with rage, cold with disappointment, and sick with jealousy, Alinor stabbed viciously at her innocent embroidery. Slowly the turmoil in her mind subsided. How could she be angry with Simon for what he had done before she was born? Before he knew she existed? The sickness subsided. The disappointment and rage followed, leaving emptiness. Alinor was willing to swear that Simon had not looked at another woman all the time he had been at Court. Not only the evidence of her own eyes supported that notion but the lack of evidence of her ears. Knowing he was her warden and that she admired him, the spiteful ladies of the Court would have been only too eager to tell her if his fancy had fallen on one among them.
Anyhow, she had lost the main thread, the core of the problem. If Simon did wish to be her lover, should she accept or refuse? The busy needle now hung suspended. There was a very unusual uncertainty in Alinor’s mind. All her life she had been a creature of certainties—sometimes mistaken ones that had to be discarded and apologized for but, nonetheless, certainties. Now, however, she was unsure. There was no question about what was right. The question of sin barely brushed her mind. One had time to atone for the sins of youth with good works, alms, and prayer when those sins were no longer so desirable. What Alinor was sure about was that kisses in corners and hurried couplings behind hedges were quite wrong. They would never suit her temperament. That was not the kind of excitement that Alinor craved. But the uncertainty remained. Could she resist Simon?
A sharp memory of the warmth in her lips, the sensitivity of her breasts, the softness in her loins made her sigh. Perhaps she would be able to resist him—perhaps. Perhaps she would remember that the big body that woke such exquisite sensations in hers did not hold the mind and spirit she thought she loved—perhaps.
Chapter Fifteen
It was fortunate that once the queen decided to take Alinor with her, she began to make use of her. Only a very few of the ladies-in-waiting would accompany her. Some were too old, some did not ride well enough, most had husbands and children in England. Alinor was the youngest and also the most competent of those who were going. She was made responsible for the queen’s personal effects, her dresses and her jewels, partly because her fifty men-at-arms could be used to guard them at no cost to the Crown.
In addition there were the letters to write, farewell notes, notes to old friends to say the queen would be in a certain area at a certain time and inviting a visit, and notes to the queen’s regular correspondents to inform them of where to direct future letters. Alinor had little enough time to consider her own clothing and jewels and furniture and none at all to spare on Simon’s intentions.
Her relative calm was encouraged after Simon’s return because he was, if anything, busier than she. Nor was he long at Court. After a day to determine the size of the cortege, he was off again to arrange shipping. Returned from that task, it was necessary for him to assign each group to a ship, determining how many men, how many horses, how much baggage each vessel could accommodate. Only twice did Simon and Alinor have any contact. On the day he returned, Simon sought Alinor out, ostensibly to ask how many men would accompany her. For the first moment, panic gripped her. There was so sweet a smile on Simon’s lips, so tender a glance in his eyes that Alinor turned her own gaze to her fingers while she answered his questions.
In the midst of a question, his voice checked and he said, “Alinor?” gently, pleadingly.
She did not reply nor look up, frozen more by her impulse to yield before he asked than by any continued panic. The moment had passed, however, both for yielding and asking. Simon’s question flowed on, he received his answer and took a polite leave.
Their second meeting was even more businesslike. A winter passage of the Channel was always dangerous, and the queen’s goods were to be divided so that if one ship foundered not all would be lost. In the largest and soundest vessel, the queen, Alais of France, two of the queen’s ladies, and all of their servingwomen would travel together with a small portion of their possessions, horses, and about half of Simon’s men-at-arms under his steady master-at-arms. The next best vessel would carry the remainder of the queen’s ladies, including Alinor, the remainder of the queen’s possessions, Alinor’s men-at-arms, and Simon. Lesser ships carried the rest of the men-at-arms, servants, and horses.
This time there was no need for Alinor to look at her fingers. As Simon arranged when and where he would meet Alinor and her people after he had seen the queen safely aboard her ship, there was nothing in his manner to indicate he had ever met Alinor before. For the two days remaining before departure, a leaden weight lay on Alinor’s heart. Obviously Simon would neither force nor plead his cause. Nor, it seemed, was he willing to maintain a relationship of simple friendship. If Alinor wanted him, on his and the queen’s terms—a lover outside the bond of marriage—she could have him. If not, he was willing to remain a courteous stranger.
Nothing could have been more suitable to Alinor’s mood than the weather through which they traveled from London to Dover. The skies wept soft ice, which clung to cloaks and hoods to melt with the body’s heat and soak all in freezing water. There was none of the bright joy of snow that lay lightly and beautifully upon the limbs of the trees and sheltered the sleeping earth under its white mantle. Even when the sun at last came out, the bare bushes and straggled stalks of the previous autumn’s reaping did not glitter and sparkle. They hung twisted and distorted under the weight of melting, transparent ice, naked and unseemly. The roads were a morass of frigid, glutinous mud that sucked at the horses’ hooves so that they made their way painfully with hanging heads. Worse, it bogged the carts so that the men-at-arms, cursing and groaning, had to dismount and put their shoulders to the half-buried wheels to aid the laboring oxen.
Sometimes Alinor roused herself to speak a word of encouragement to her men, but mostly she just stared in silence, barely remembering to give Beorn Fisherman a few pennies to buy dry firewood. She remembered little of that ride, only misery of body and of mind, only that her fingers and feet froze and cracked even in their furred gloves and boots so that her skin, although it had been well rubbed with goose grease, split and bled.
To be cold was a misery, to be warmed by a fire was a sharp agony because the chilblains stung and stabbed when the numbing cold was gone. She remembered too that the queen had praised her for her stoic endurance when Alais and her other ladies bewailed their state. Alinor had merely laughed. A physical pain, she had discovered, was a very little thing in comparison to an unquiet mind. It was a relief to think about how her hands and feet hurt, to wonder whether she would be able to find dry clothes and to consider the horror of having again to put on her wet, mud-weighted garments if she could not. Anything at all was a pleasure so long as she did not have to think about Simon.
The port, which was strange and interesting to most of the ladies, could not divert Alinor. She had seen similar ships with their rows of benches for rowers and the great sweeps for steering hove in at the town that huddled under the gray walls of Roselynde. These were at their least attractive too, with their sails rolled and their crews emptying the stinking bilge. Alinor shuddered as she saw them preparing to stretch a canvas across the bows of the ship to act as a tent for the protection of the ladies. Inside there would be some relief from the cold and the spray and a little warmth from the braziers of charcoal, which would be lit if the sea was not too violent. There would also be acrid smoke, shrieks and prayers, and the ugly smell of vomit.
Although Alinor had never crossed the narrow sea, she had been sailing often enough. She was fortunate in not being given to seasickness unless the water was very rough, but the choice between freezing in the open or sharing the confined discomforts of the tent, each horrible in its own way, reminded her of choosing between a Simon she did not want or no Simon at all. In these choices there seemed to be no middle way. The choice between good and evil was easy. The choice between two goods was difficult. But the necessary choice between two evils was bitter indeed.
When they came to the appointed ship, Alinor dismounted and stood leaning against her horse, watching the men-at-arms leading and sometimes forcing their trembling, blindfolded mounts into the bottom of the ship. Dawn and Honey were already aboard and, at last, Beorn came to take Cricket, the sturdy little mare Alinor had been riding. He looked around at the naked area, shook his head, and signaled to three of his men.
“You stand between the wind and the mistress, understand?” And then, to Alinor, “I don’t know what else to do, my lady. I cannot take you aboard before the horses are settled.”
Alinor glanced at him rather blankly. “Never mind, Beorn. I am warm enough.”
In fact, she was so numb that she did not feel cold, but she was suddenly aware of a different kind of chill. The other women were looking at her. Alinor flushed with shame. The men were hers, but they were more or less in the queen’s service now and, thus, for the protection of all the ladies. She told Beorn softly to send more men so that the windbreak, such as it was, would shield the whole group. A larger group of men-at-arms hurried back off the ship and formed a semicircle. It did not occur to Alinor that the women in their fur-lined cloaks were already better protected from the wind and cold than the men in their steel and leather armor and sodden wool mantles. The men’s purpose was to serve their betters in any way that was necessary, whether by helping to transport furniture, push mud-bogged carts, fighting and dying to protect them, or by shivering in the wind so that their masters should be a degree or two warmer.
The condition of the men-at-arms did not cross Alinor’s mind. She did her duty to them, and better than most masters, she prided herself. They ate well, had sound armor and good horses; when they were sick, she saw they had medical attention and, if she had time, even came herself to be sure they were cared for. Their wives and children, if they had any, were protected as long as they served and, should they die in service, would be life-settled, the sons to be trained in arms if they were suitable and the daughters to be married or taken as servants in the keep.
What troubled Alinor was her momentary neglect of a proper courtesy to women less fortunate than her. The ladies who were traveling with the queen were not the wives and daughters of great magnates who had their places and duties in England. These women were largely widows who, although still relatively young, were no longer desirable marriage prizes. Their world no longer had a place for them. Most often they had children who were entitled to their dower properties so that they had nothing beyond a life interest to bring to another husband. Besides, if more children were born of the second marriage, war might result between the two sets of heirs. Sometimes the children were grown and wanted their mother’s property now; most often the women were not strong enough to rule and manage their own lands and a male guardian was set over the children. In either case, the women were no longer welcome in what had been their homes.
Other ladies were even less fortunate. The widows, at least, had some claim on the income of the properties they had been ousted from. Having been brought to the queen’s attention, they were somewhat protected by her power; she saw to it that they were not left penniless. The others had never been married. Minor heiresses, whose parents had not been foresighted or who had judged wrong in their selection of guardians or who simply were not powerful enough to protect their children. These girls had been disseisined by some unscrupulous male relative. They had nothing; they were fortunate not to have been murdered. Totally dependent upon the queen, they were kept out of pity or as weapons to be used at need against their dishonest menfolk.
