* * * * *
By the time the castle chaplain finished
reading the letter from Sir Valaire to her, Aloise knew what she
would do. It was not a sudden decision. She had lain awake many a
night during the past two months wrestling with the problem, trying
to find a solution to the fears that troubled her and unwilling to
make the choice she knew she must make. But she understood from her
husband’s words on parchment that Isabel’s desire had come to pass
and Selene would wed Thomas of Afoncaer shortly after Christmas.
Now that it was definite, Aloise’s hesitation disappeared.
She dismissed the chaplain and went to seek
the one person she could depend upon to render her the faithful
service that would banish, or at least alleviate, her lingering
fears. Aloise found her hard at work in the castle kitchen, lending
aid to the temperamental cook by supervising the lesser kitchen
help as, in preparation for the midday meal, they turned meat upon
spits or chopped vegetables for stews. Aloise watched her fondly, a
tall girl with a well-rounded figure swathed in a long apron, and
with a wealth of curling, dark brown hair shot through with red
lights when she bent over into the fire’s glow.
Aloise sighed. Her foster daughter had proven
well worth taking in and nurturing. Aloise hated to send her away,
indeed would miss her far more than she would miss Selene, but it
must be done. She could see no other way.
“Arianna.”
The girl turned, her golden skin flushed from
the heat of the cooking fires.
“My lady.” The wide, laughing mouth deflected
one’s attention from a nose that was just a little too long and
hawk-like for a feminine face. Her beautiful wide-set grey eyes,
her best feature, were fringed with thick, dark lashes. Nothing
about her individual features fitted the ideal of female
loveliness, yet the impression Arianna gave was of strong, exotic
beauty, lit by humor and quick intelligence.
Aloise beckoned to the girl, who left her
post by the spit and followed the castle’s mistress into a small
pantry off one side of the busy kitchen. The servants, seeing their
lady conferring with Arianna, thought nothing of it and went about
their work, leaving the two in privacy.
“A message has come from Sir Valaire,” Aloise
said. “The marriage is agreed to, the contracts drawn up.”
“Does Selene know?”
“Not yet. I want you to come with me when I
tell her.”
“My lady, she has seemed content these last
weeks. Lady Isabel has spent much time with her, and has apparently
turned her mind toward Thomas of Afoncaer. I doubt Selene will be
overly distressed, or even the least bit surprised, by this
news.”
“Arianna, I, too, have thought much of Thomas
of Afoncaer. And of Lord Guy. I cannot let Selene go to Afoncaer
unattended.”
“But she will not, my lady. There will be
servants, waiting women, pages, as large a company as she wishes.
Sir Valaire will be generous with her.”
“I must speak truly, Arianna,” Lady Aloise
said, using one of her favorite phrases, which Arianna had long ago
noticed was usually followed by words she ought not to speak at
all. But Arianna knew how to keep a confidence. She would repeat
nothing Aloise said to her, and she knew Aloise trusted her
completely.
“I fear Selene will go to her marriage as a
martyr,” Aloise went on. “She will take as few folk from her
father’s household as she possibly can, and as soon as she is at
Afoncaer she will send all those away. Once she is in a strange
place, with unfamiliar people, who can tell what she might do? She
could bring dishonor upon her father and me. I must try to prevent
that.”
“Surely her new husband will exert some
control over her.”
“I hope so. I don’t understand her, Arianna.
I never have. She is such a peculiar girl. I feel her hostility
toward me, I’ve endured her terrible rages, and yet I don’t know
why she behaves as she does. She has been chastised, exhorted by
the chaplain, whipped, prayed over, and nothing helps.”
“She was content at the convent, my lady.
Perhaps she should have stayed there. She may be better suited to
the cloister than to marriage.”
“She is too valuable to her father to be
allowed that indulgence. Her marriage to Thomas of Afoncaer will
seal the friendship between Lord Guy and Sir Valaire. Arianna, I
want you to go to Afoncaer with Selene. She cannot send you away.
She wouldn’t want to – you are one of the few people she cares
about. You know how to soothe her when she is distraught. Continue
to be her friend, Arianna, as you have been in the past, stay close
to her, care for her children when they are born, and be as
faithful in your duty to Selene as you have always been to me.”
Here Aloise embraced her foster daughter with a warmth greater than
anything she had ever extended to her own child. “You will have
your reward in heaven, my dear, dear girl.”
“Leave you, my lady? Leave this my home?”
Arianna’s surprised, initially reluctant expression lasted only a
moment before her grey eyes began to shine. “I’ve heard the Welsh
border is an exciting place. The Welsh refuse to be conquered. Sir
Valaire told me that the last time he was home.”
“You and Selene will be safe enough in Lord
Guy’s castle, Arianna.”
“Oh, I’m not afraid of danger,” Arianna
responded, laughing. “To travel so far, to see a new place, how
wonderful it will be. I will miss you, my lady, for I love you
dearly. You have been kind to me beyond anything I deserve. I owe
you and Sir Valaire a great debt.”
It was a debt Arianna knew she could never
repay. Sir Valaire and his lady had taken her into their care when
she was still a baby, orphaned and unwanted by her half-brothers,
who had resented their father’s second marriage to an unknown and
untitled woman. Arianna had spent nearly all of her life in this
household; it was home to her, and she would be sorry to leave it.
But the blood of a crusader father and a daring mother who had
defied her own parents to marry him mingled in Arianna’s veins, and
her spirits soared at the thought of crossing the Narrow Sea and
living in a strange new land. Who knew what opportunities for
usefulness might await her there? Selene would need her, of that
she was certain.
“Yes, my lady. If Sir Valaire gives his
permission, then send me,” Arianna cried, her heart full of love
and gratitude. “I’ll do my best to watch over Selene, and her
children, when she has them. It’s little enough to repay you for
all you have done for me. I will go to Afoncaer most
willingly.”
Selene
A.D. 1115-1116
St. Albans, England
December, A.D. 1115
“I would have preferred,” Thomas said, “to be
knighted at Afoncaer, by Uncle Guy. I have dreamed of it since I
was a boy.”
The new abbey church of St. Albans was to be
consecrated this Christmastide, and King Henry had brought his
court hither for the ceremonies. Thomas had come from Afoncaer with
his family, unwillingly but dutifully, at his king’s bidding, to be
among the select group who would be knighted in the church by the
king himself several days after the consecration. It was an honor
and he knew it, but still he was unhappy about it.
“And,” he went on with increasing irritation,
“I wanted Geoffrey to be at my knighting. It’s only right, since I
was his squire. He should be here.” Thomas strode restlessly about
the small guest chamber that had been allotted to the Baron of
Afoncaer and his lady. A serving woman sat quietly in one corner
mending the hem of a gown, but otherwise he and his aunt were
alone.
“You know Guy felt it best for Geoffrey to
remain at Afoncaer.” Meredith spoke in a soothing tone, smiling up
at the young man. She was sure he had grown even taller in the last
month. He topped Guy by at least two inches, and he looked so much
like Guy it was uncanny. He had the same golden hair and piercing
blue eyes, and the same square jaw. He was just like Guy when she
had first seen him and fallen in love with him. Those old enough to
remember said the late Baron Lionel and his younger brother Guy had
been as much alike, but Meredith had never seen Lionel. One of
Meredith’s hands came down on Thomas’s arm to stop his pacing and
hold him before her so he would listen carefully to what she said.
“Geoffrey will keep the castle safe while we are away. Guy feels
there may be some trouble brewing among the Welsh, and he wanted
someone dependable in charge. Captain John is not as young as he
once was. We will need a new captain of the guard soon, I
fear.”
“The Welsh have no reason to dislike my
uncle’s rule. He has always been most fair with his people, and
that part of the border is more prosperous than it has ever
been.”
Meredith, who knew more of Welsh ways than
Thomas did and understood why they hated the Normans so much,
smiled at her nephew again when he shook his head at the
unpredictable tenants of Afoncaer. Then she changed the
subject.
“When you came in, you said you wanted to
speak about something very important. I think I distracted you by
mentioning your knighting.”
“It’s my marriage. It worries me. I’ve been
thinking about it constantly. I ought to be thinking just as much
about my knighting and all it means, but instead I lie awake half
of every night wondering what will happen after I’m married.”
“You don’t object to the terms, do you? I
thought Guy made it all quite clear to you, every item in the
contract, and all the arrangements for the ceremony. You did
agree.”
“I still agree. I trust Uncle Guy, and Sir
Valaire, and I know this is the way noble marriages are made, but,
Meredith, I don’t want a merely formal arrangement. I have seen you
and Uncle Guy these past ten years, seen how you love and support
each other, how you work together, and how good that is, for you
two and my cousin Cristin, and for all of Afoncaer. My parents had
the usual kind of marriage. They spent almost no time together – I
scarcely remember my father – and I grew up feeling lonely and
unloved, until I met you. I don’t want my wife or children to live
like that, in that cold, empty loneliness. I sometimes think that
was why my mother did the terrible things she did. Because she was
lonely, and afraid, and unloved.”
“Walter loved her.” Meredith’s gentle voice
was harsh whenever she spoke of Isabel.
“Perhaps Walter loved her too late. Or
perhaps she loved him and he used her love for his own
ambition.”
Meredith thought it was the other way around,
but she did not say this aloud. Meredith believed Isabel had never
loved anyone and had always known exactly what she was doing and
why. Isabel had used her son and her second husband for her own
ends, and had caused the deaths of people whom Meredith held
dear.
“I would rather not remember that time,” she
said. “It is too sad.”
“I’m sorry.” Thomas responded quickly,
touching her shoulder in mutual sympathy, for he had lost the same
loved ones to Walter’s and his mother’s treachery. “I wouldn’t have
mentioned my mother, except that I wanted to explain to you how I
feel. I know there are those who would call me soft and unmanly to
care about such things as love, who would say I should be
interested only in warfare and in consolidating our power on the
border. I know I can speak freely to you, I always could, and you
won’t laugh at me. Meredith, I don’t want my wife to end as my
mother has, all alone, in exile, the object of hatred and scorn.
That’s why I want to meet Lady Selene. Now, today. I want time to
know her a little before we marry. If we don’t like each other, or
if she doesn’t want to marry me, I’ll take a sacred oath at my
knighting and make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, never to return.
Sir Valaire couldn’t be insulted by that, nor could the Lady
Selene, and it’s better than marrying someone I shouldn’t, or
making someone else unhappy for a lifetime.”
Meredith gulped back sudden tears. This was
the earnest, thoughtful boy she had first met more than twelve
years ago, the page determined to become an ideal knight and to be
always fair and honest. How like him to be willing to give up his
heritage and all he cared about in England to avoid hurting an
unknown girl.
Meredith could not bear the thought of never
seeing Thomas again. She loved him deeply – he was a worthy
substitute for the son she had never borne – but more importantly,
he was the heir to Afoncaer. Guy, and Afoncaer, needed him. She
must see to it that Thomas carried out the plans Guy had made for
him.
“Thomas, if you and your wife both come to
the marriage with good will, and with the intent to make it a happy
and fruitful union, then it will be a true marriage, and in time
you will learn to love each other.”
“You and Uncle Guy loved each other before
you married.”
“We were different. There were unusual
circumstances.”
“I want to be different, too. I want to love
the woman I marry. Help me, Meredith. I know you can arrange for me
to meet Lady Selene.”
She put her arms around him, as she had done
so many times when he’d been a frightened, unhappy boy. Ignoring
his size and strength, and the convention which said a man must be
brave and unemotional, she pulled his head down onto her shoulder
and held him close, promising to do whatever she could for him.
And, she added silently, for Guy and Afoncaer.
“Lady Meredith is here,” the serving woman
said. “I heard her say she has come to see Lady Aloise. What do you
suppose she wants?” Confronted by Selene’s cold, blank stare, the
woman muttered a hasty apology and left the room.
“Perhaps they are going to cancel the
marriage. Would that please you, silly girl?” The embroidered blue
band around Arianna’s head seldom kept the tumbling curls out of
her eyes. She impatiently brushed a stray piece of dark brown hair
off her face and grinned at Selene, her face full of mischief. But
when she continued there was an annoyed note in her voice. “You
have been uninterested in anything that has happened since we left
Brittany. The journey was so exciting. This abbey is beautiful. The
new church is so glorious the good Lord Himself must be pleased
with it. And the courtiers, how they dress! The jewels and furs!
Look around you, Selene, open your eyes and your heart and admit
how wonderful it all is.”