Castle of the Heart (16 page)

She understood that Reynaud’s pride had been
injured, too, and that he would feel himself a useless burden to
Guy and Meredith until he could work once more. She knew of
something Reynaud could do that few others at Afoncaer could. He
was, she informed him one snowy afternoon, going to teach her to
read and write. She had always wanted to learn, but never had the
opportunity. Here she was with a learned cleric at her disposal,
and she planned to make good use of him. Meredith had already given
her approval.

Reynaud expressed no qualms about educating a
woman. He reasoned that women who could read, would read their
Psalters, which ought to please the Church. And a literate Arianna
would be of greater help to Meredith. That would repay Meredith a
little for all she had done, and was still doing, for Reynaud. An
hour was appointed for each day’s lessons, and Arianna, bolstered
at first by curiosity and determination, and later by delight in
learning, was progressing rapidly.

“Good morning, Master Reynaud,” Arianna
greeted him now. “It’s not you I came to speak with, but Meredith.
Selene is ill.” Arianna described Selene’s symptoms, and what her
quick examination had found.

“I’ll come as soon as I have finished with
Reynaud,” Meredith said. “Go back and stay with her.”

“You don’t seem very concerned.”

“I’m not. I’ve seen expecting this.”

Meredith repeated those words half an hour
later after her own examination of Selene and a few questions.

“You are with child, Selene. Haven’t you
guessed? I would say it will be born in October” Meredith counted
quickly. “early November at the latest.”

“A child?” Selene looked frightened.

“Of course a child.” Meredith laughed. “It’s
the usual consequence of marriage.”

“And to think,” a relieved Arianna said,
trying to laugh along with Meredith at Selene’s astonishment,
though there was a catch at her heart at the knowledge that Selene
would bear Thomas’s child, “I never thought of the most obvious
reason for your illness. I still have a lot to learn,
Meredith.”

“I didn’t guess, either. I thought I had a
wasting sickness,” Selene said. “It mustn’t be a girl. Not like me.
I want a boy, just like Thomas.” She brightened a little at the
thought.

“Yes, hope for a son,” Meredith told her, “an
heir for Thomas. But should it be a girl, I know he will love her
as Guy loves Cristin.”

“You look as sick as I feel,” Selene said to
Arianna after Meredith had left them alone again.

“I was worried about you.” Arianna put an arm
about Selene’s shoulders. “Thomas will be so pleased.”

“It will be a son,” Selene said. “It has to
be.”

It was not an easy pregnancy. Selene was
violently ill every morning, her nausea eased only a little by the
herbal tincture Meredith provided for her. But there finally came a
day in late April when Selene was not sick, and then another. A
week passed, and she began to eat heartily again. Her face lost its
pinched look, and Selene took on a soft glow.

“You’ve cured her,” Guy said to Meredith late
one night.

“Not I. Time and nature. And there is still a
long road for her to walk. She will be sick again, and most
uncomfortable, before this is over.”

“Whatever the reason, for the moment she is a
much more pleasant woman than she was at first, and she certainly
looks healthy. She is most insistent that the child should be a
boy. An heir for Thomas, and for Afoncaer.” Guy put his hands on
his beautiful wife. “Somehow, I think I ought to feel older, with
the next generation about to be born, but I don’t. I still feel as
though I were twenty-three.”

“I know,” Meredith laughed, caressing him.
“You are still a young man, Guy. I can feel it. Come to me, my
love. Come here.”

Arianna tried her best to be happy for Thomas
and Selene, and told herself she was succeeding. She could see
Thomas’s delight in his impending fatherhood, and his deepening
affection for Selene was apparent every time he looked at her. As
for Arianna, her days were full, she was needed and useful, and had
it not been for that last little ache in her heart each time she
encountered Thomas, she would have been completely happy.

Reynaud was up and out of his room at last.
Every morning Arianna helped him down the stairs and into the great
hall, where he sat by the fire for most of the day. The castle
carpenter had made him a pair of beautifully carved crutches and
had brought them to him while he was still very ill and confined to
bed.

“I’ll leave them here, propped against the
wall where you can see them whenever your eyes are open, old
friend,” the carpenter had said. “Look on them, and tell yourself
you will be using them come spring. We’ve missed you, Reynaud, in
the years you have been gone. I’m glad you’ve come home to
stay.”

As soon as Meredith allowed him to leave his
bed, Reynaud had begun learning to use the crutches. They lay on
the floor beside his chair, or next to his bed at night. So long as
he did not have to climb the keep’s narrow spiral staircase without
help, Reynaud could get around well enough. Even that difficult
climb, he insisted, he would be able to make alone, given enough
time and practice.

The gash across his face had healed, leaving
only a faint red scar. The swelling around his injured eye was long
since gone, too, and he could open it, though he could see only
light and dark from that eye, no more. Meredith continued to hope
for a full return of his sight, and bathed it several times a day
with a special herbal brew.

Guy wanted the outer wall, the one around the
town, built higher and reinforced, and two new watchtowers added to
it. Reynaud was well occupied in discussions with Guy and Thomas,
and with drawing up the building plans. In his free time there were
still Arianna’s lessons. At her suggestion, Reynaud had begun to
teach Cristin as well, and the murmur of his quiet voice,
punctuated by Cristin’s higher, girlish tones as she stumbled over
her Latin grammar, were frequent sounds in the hall.

“It’s satisfying to see him so content,”
Meredith told Arianna. “And you. I think you are at peace, are you
not? You have done well, my dear.”

“Like Reynaud, I am content,” Arianna
replied. It was only later that she wondered if contentment would
be enough for the rest of her life. She was almost eighteen. She
ought to be thinking of husband and children, would have been had
she a dowry. Perhaps if she had been fortunate enough to have a
husband of her own she would not have to endure this hopeless love
for Thomas. But she quickly rejected such thoughts whenever they
came. She refused to let impossible longings spoil the many good
things she did have, or cast a blight upon the growing friendships
she enjoyed with those who lived at Afoncaer.

Spring came in a sudden burst of greenery and
flowers, releasing the castle’s inhabitants from winter’s long
confinement. With the days at last warm enough for mortaring,
building could begin on the outer wall. A portion of the gold coins
from Selene’s dowry would be used to pay the wages of the
stonecutters and masons who began to arrive from England for their
seasonal work. Their presence swelled the town’s population by
half, and the womenfolk and children that some of them brought
along filled the few empty rooms and the new houses outside the
village wall.

The women of both castle and village indulged
in a frenzy of cleaning and laundry, while the villeins began
tilling and planting the fields, and the lord of the castle and his
knights went hunting for the fresh game that was so welcome after
months of salted and dried meats. The first delicate leaves of
lettuce were ready for salads, and cress grew plentifully along the
edges of the streams that wandered through the forest until they
met the river.

“I know where to find the best cress,”
Cristin said one morning. “Come with me, Arianna, you haven’t been
in the forest yet. Reynaud is busy on the wall. He told me we won’t
have our lessons until evening, and my mother and Joan are counting
the linens. We won’t be needed for a while.”

“I’d like to go with you.” Arianna followed
Cristin to the stables, where a slim, dark-haired lad of about
fifteen or so leapt to his feet at their entrance and bowed to
them, a clumsy effort that made Cristin laugh.

“Benet,” Cristin commanded, “saddle us two
horses.”

“Yes, my lady.” Benet flashed an engaging
grin and hurried to do her bidding. “Have you a man-at-arms to go
with you? Shall I saddle a horse for him, too?”

“We don’t need anyone,” Cristin replied
haughtily. “The Welsh are calm just now. There’s no danger.”

“That depends on where you are going, my
lady.” Benet flung the words over his shoulder as he worked. “I’ll
go with you. You should never ride out alone.”

Arianna had been admiring the horses while
listening idly to the two youngsters. Benet led out a mare for her,
and Arianna recognized the gentle animal on which she had ridden to
Afoncaer. She patted the sleek head and spoke softly to it.

“That’s right, my lady, introduce yourself to
her,” Benet said approvingly. “I’ll have your horse, and mine,
ready in a moment, Lady Cristin.”

“A stable boy for protection?” Cristin
laughed.

“I ride well,” Benet said quietly, “and I
have a dagger I can use if need be.”

Cristin’s protest was cut off by Thomas’s
voice.

“The lad has good sense, Cristin.” Thomas
moved into the stable, frowning at his young cousin. “You should
not go off without a guard.”

“We are only going for cress,” Cristin said.
“Don’t make a great pilgrimage out of it. Men-at-arms will only
tramp around the stream in their heavy boots, and they’ll squash
all the greens while they pretend to look for Welshmen hiding in
the bushes.”

“Well, then,” Thomas said, laughing at her,
“why don’t I go with you? I promise not to squash a thing.”

“Would you?” Cristin’s grin spread clear
across her face. “That would be lovely. You’ve been too busy for me
since you came home married. We haven’t done a thing together for
months. I’ve missed riding with you.”

“Benet shall come, too,” Thomas said, “in
case I need reinforcements.” Benet’s delighted smile was nearly as
broad as Cristin’s.

The four of them rode out of the castle, down
the main street of the town and through the outer gate, calling out
and waving gaily to Reynaud as they went past the spot where he was
directing the stonemasons. Once they were on the main road that ran
between freshly plowed fields in the direction of England, Cristin
impatiently urged her horse into a gallop, and Benet followed her.
Thomas and Arianna rode more slowly.

“When I was Cristin’s age I spent a lot of
time wandering about that forest,” Thomas remarked, nodding toward
the trees they were approaching. “I used to know every path and
every rock and stream.”

“Meredith has told me about your youth,”
Arianna said. “And hers. I find it hard to believe she actually
live in a cave for several years.”

“Many of the Welsh live like that,” Thomas
replied. “Caves are all the shelter some of them have left since we
Normans came. It was a nice cave, warm and dry. I used to imagine
there was a guardian dragon in the inner chamber.”

“A dragon?” Arianna wasn’t quite certain
whether he was joking or not.

“This is Wales, after all. The Welsh say
there is magic in this land. Look around you.” Thomas gestured with
one arm.

They had reached the end of the cultivated
fields and, leaving the main road, were riding into the trees at
the edge of the forest. Golden shafts of sunlight slanted through
the early spring leaves, piercing the soft, drifting mist that
swirled along the ground. The light was a fragile pale gold and
green, and silvery where the mist lay. Shapes were indistinct
except for the dark trunks of trees, oak and birch, rowan and
alder, which stood out clearly. It was quiet, Cristin’s laughter
and Benet’s lower voice floating back to them only faintly through
the mist. Last year’s dead leaves and this spring’s green moss made
a thick carpet to muffle the sound of their horses’ hooves, yet
there was no disguising the essentially rocky nature of the
landscape. Great boulders were strewn about the forest as though by
some giant’s hand, some of them sharp and rough-looking grey stone,
others softened by moss or ivy, a few with bushes or small trees
growing out of cracks. Off to her right, Arianna could hear water
rushing over stones. Always water, Meredith had told her,
everywhere you go in Wales. There was fragrance, too, the sweet
smell of moss and early-season greenery heightened by the moisture
in land and air.

Arianna breathed deeply, knowing she was
foreign here, yet wanting to link herself to the place. She felt
the mood of slumbering mystery that lay over the forest. It seemed
to draw her into itself, alluring and always just a little out of
her reach, incomprehensible to anyone not born there.

“You are right, Thomas,” she said softly.
“There is magic here.”

They were riding side by side, making their
way slowly along. Thomas put out a gloved hand and laid it on top
of hers. She looked into his luminous deep blue eyes and thought
she was drowning.

“I knew you would feel it, too,” he told her.
“Meredith said you have the gift.”

“I?” She laughed and shook her head, dark
hair curling tightly from the dampness, mist clinging to her
eyelashes. She felt oddly free, here with Thomas. “What gift?”

“Of healing. Of learning. Meredith speaks
highly of you, Arianna. Reynaud, too. You are a great asset to
Afoncaer.”

She felt herself blushing. She had almost
never heard herself praised before coming to Afoncaer. When
Meredith commended her work in the still-room, or Reynaud told her
she was a superior pupil, she had been able to accept their words,
knowing she had earned them by her own efforts. But this admiration
from Thomas was completely unexpected and unearned. She had thought
he scarcely noticed her in his absorbed attention to Selene. Now
she learned he had discussed her with both Meredith and
Reynaud.