Castle of the Heart (30 page)

He came to her on his last night at Afoncaer,
tapping lightly at her chamber door after midnight, and Arianna,
imagining Linnet had knocked to tell her one of the children was
sick, opened her door wide and stood blinking at him in surprise,
shivering in her flimsy nightgown. He stepped inside before she
could make a sound, and closed the door.

She stared at him, reading in his blue eyes
the desire that answered her deepest hunger. She could not prevent
herself, she went into his arms and clung to him, letting him kiss
her, opening her mouth to him, feeling his hard body pressed
tightly to her own. Her mind gave up thought and whirled into
sweet, passionate feeling, her heart throbbed eagerly against his.
But when he lifted her into his arms, and would have carried her to
her bed, she still had sense enough to stop him.

“Put me down,” she demanded, “and leave me. I
will not consent to do this thing, however much I want you.”

He set her down slowly, letting her body
slide along the length of his, and at that touch desire flamed in
her, she who had never known a man, and she thought she would swoon
from it. He knelt before her, his head bowed.

“Forgive me,” he murmured. “I vowed I’d never
do you harm, yet I would have broken that vow out of love and
passion. I only came to say farewell to you in private, and to ask
for one kiss, since we may never meet again. But when I had it, one
kiss was not enough. Arianna, forgive me.”

“I am as guilty as you,” she whispered. “I
let you into my room, and I let you kiss me. I wanted you to.
There’s naught for me to forgive.”

His arms were wrapped around her knees, his
head pressed against her thighs, and she wanted to bend to him and
take him into her arms once more. Her hands lightly caressed his
smooth, golden hair, and through the linen of her nightgown she
felt his burning lips pressed upon one knee and then her thigh. Her
stroking hands were stilled by powerful emotion. She was unable to
stop him, she welcomed that hot, sensual touch, and she wanted
more.

“I love you,” he whispered hoarsely. “I love
you so.”

“Never say those words to me.” She did not
know where she found the strength. She caught his head and pulled
it backward, stopping those fevered motions that set her thighs
atremble, making him stand. “You must go, Thomas.”

“I love you, whether you want me to or
not.”

“Please go, you will break my heart,” she
wept.

He went to the door and opened it, then stood
a moment looking at her, and it seemed to Arianna he was drinking
in every line of her face and form, absorbing her into his heart
and his memory.

“When I die,” he said, “my last thought will
be of you.”

Thomas was a good correspondent. He regularly
sent couriers with letters to Guy, which Reynaud read aloud to him
and to Meredith and Arianna as well. Thus they all heard of the
splendid wedding ceremonies for Henry’s heir, William Atheling, and
how Count Fulk of Anjou had given his daughter, Alice, and her new
husband the entire county of Maine for a wedding gift. They learned
of King Henry’s campaign against King Louis of France, of Thomas’s
growing friendship with William Atheling, how the two young men had
ridden into battle together at Brémule on August twentieth and
covered themselves with glory. William emerged unscathed, while
Thomas had a slight wound in one arm. It was nothing to worry
about, it was healing well because he had used the herbal salve
Meredith had given him. Selene was visiting her mother in Brittany,
and would stay there until the war was over. He did not add that
they had agreed to live apart more or less permanently, but that
was easily inferred from the words he had carefully chosen.

The day after this last letter arrived, the
Welsh made a brief, lightning-fast strike. Reynaud watched it all
in horror from the safety of the gatehouse, and he later told
Meredith and Arianna what had happened. He, Reynaud, had been
standing nearly all day at the outer edge of town where the new
wall was being built. In late afternoon he crossed the drawbridge
over the wet moat to the gatehouse to sit for a time and rest his
aching leg. He had just settled himself upon a bench with his back
against the wall and a flagon of cool ale in one hand, when he saw
Guy ride in after a day’s hunting and pause to check upon the
building. Guy waved his hunting companions on to the castle, else
there would have been more dead and wounded. Guy remained with
Kenelm, Benet, and another squire, a friend of Benet’s. They walked
their horses along the wall, stopping here and there to see the
latest work on it.

Guy turned in his saddle to speak to Kenelm
when the Welsh longbow men loosed their arrows. It was turning that
saved him, for the arrow did not take him squarely in the chest,
and he was well protected by his chain mail hauberk and the padded
gambeson beneath. At Guy’s orders after the last year’s raid, all
who rode outside the castle walls went fully armored, and now his
own command benefited him. But Welsh arrows were deadly, and this
one tore through chain mail and padding to embed itself deep in
Guy’s left shoulder, too near his heart, and the force with which
it struck him was so great he was knocked backward half out of his
saddle. He struggled to stay upright, clinging to reins and saddle
pommel with his right hand while the left dangled uselessly. His
frightened horse reared, further unbalancing him. His right foot
slipped out of the stirrup, but his left foot caught, entangled as
he fell, and his body twisted underneath the horse.

Then Benet was beside him, that squire who
had once been a stableboy and knew every animal in Afoncaer’s
stables. How Benet moved so quickly Reynaud, telling the story
later, could never say, but he had flung himself off his own horse
and leapt to catch the reins of Guy’s mount. He pulled with all his
strength, holding the reins tight and talking to the horse, calling
it by name, while blood streamed down his own arm from a bad flesh
wound. When Guy’s rearing stallion came down, its sharp hooves
landed a scant inch from Guy’s head, missing it only thanks to
Benet’s efforts.

“His leg,” Benet shouted. “Someone free his
leg. I can’t hold on much longer.”

One of the stonemasons, braver than his
fellows, left the cover of the new-laid wall where they were all
huddled fearing for their lives, and ran to untangle Guy’s ankle
from the stirrup while Benet held the horse and tried to calm
it.

Reynaud heaved himself to his foot and
crutches within the gatehouse, and ordered the alarm bell rung at
the same time that Kenelm shouted the same command. And then,
disregarding his own safety, Reynaud crossed the drawbridge and
hurried as fast as he could toward Guy.

“Get back!” Kenelm shouted, wheeling his
horse. “They will loose more arrows. Get back to safety,
Reynaud.”

Kenelm was unharmed, but the second squire,
Benet’s friend, lay face down over a freshly cut stone intended for
the wall, a Welsh arrow in his back. His horse lay thrashing on its
side nearby, felled by two arrows, and Benet’s horse was wounded,
too, both so badly hurt they had to be dispatched later by the
village butcher. Benet and the dust-covered mason knelt on either
side of Guy, shielding him with their bodies.

Reynaud saw that Kenelm was right. He could
be no help but only a target in the open, and a problem to Kenelm,
so he hobbled back into the gatehouse, past armed men now streaming
forth.

“Bring that table,” Reynaud called to two of
the men. “You will have to carry your lord home on it.” They took
the top of the trestle table out of the common room in the
gatehouse and ran with it to where Guy lay unconscious. They lifted
him upon it and raced with it through another storm of Welsh
arrows, the men-at-arms making a wall of shields around them, and
brought their master into the gatehouse. The men-at-arms then went
out again and brought the masons, four of them dead, six wounded,
and the fallen squire inside the wall by the same method, using
their shields for protection. Lastly Kenelm came in, still
untouched though a fine target on his huge stallion. Perhaps the
Welsh had thought him too brave to kill, Benet suggested later,
since the Welsh were said to greatly admire personal courage.

The wounded were carried, or walked if they
could, through the village and back to the castle for treatment,
and the dead were taken to the village church.

Arianna had heard the shouting and the alarm
bell. She ran out of the herb garden into the inner bailey, heading
for the keep, and so quickly had it all happened that before she
reached the steps Guy was being carried senseless across the
bailey, the long arrow still protruding from his left shoulder.
Behind him came Reynaud, moving faster than she had ever seen him,
and Benet, drenched in blood.

Arianna rushed up the steps and past the
wardroom, calling out for Meredith. Meredith came from the
stillroom, white-faced but calm in her manner, and ordered Guy
taken to the special room she used for nursing the sick or injured.
Blanche appeared, ready to help as always, to provide aid for those
whose wounds were less dangerous and stanch the blood of those
badly wounded until Meredith or Arianna could tend to them.

They had the armorer in, to cut the chain
mail away from the arrow in Guy’s shoulder. When he had finished,
Meredith and Arianna pulled carefully at Guy’s silk undershirt, the
tightly woven garment nearest his skin, each pulling at a side with
both hands, lifting out with the strong silk the broken metal links
and fragments of padding from the gambeson. Then they cut out the
arrowhead, cleaned the wound, and sewed it up, Meredith, who
claimed no skill with a needle, doing a neat job of it, never once
flinching as she worked on the body of the man she loved so
dearly.

But Arianna, looking at Guy’s white and
unconscious face, so like his nephew’s, had a swift and terrifying
vision of Thomas lying so, wounded on some foreign field, and with
no one half as skilled as Meredith to tend him. Arianna swayed, her
sight blurring, a great ringing in her ears, so that Meredith had
to ask her twice for the herbal salve to spread over the now-closed
wound. This was no time for tears or fainting, Arianna told
herself, they had to save Guy. Upon his life so much depended.

Blanche came into the room as they were
finishing, and looked down at Guy, nodding approval.

“There is no bloody foam on his lips,” she
said. “I saw a man like that once at Adderbury, and the priest said
when that happens, wounded men will surely die. Guy has not that
sign, so he will live.”

Arianna had recovered from her faintness
enough to notice that Meredith seemed cheered by Blanche’s
optimism, and she silently thanked Blanche for those words. At
Meredith’s nod Arianna went with Blanche to sew up the wounds of
the other men. She assured Benet that the gash in his arm would
heal cleanly and he would soon ride again. She tried to console him
for the loss of his friend, then moved on to tend the others.

Guy was most seriously wounded of all, and
Kenelm and Reynaud were of the opinion that he had been the
intended target of the attack. On the second day after, he
developed a high fever. That, and the blow to his head when he fell
from his horse, kept his wits addled for days.

“Kenelm,” Meredith said on the third night,
“in Guy’s name I appoint you seneschal of Afoncaer. You are under
my orders until Guy is better, but I leave the day-to-day defenses
in your hands.”

At the end of a week, Guy was enough improved
to be moved to his own bedchamber. Meredith never left his side,
sleeping on a straw pallet by his bed each night. Arianna tended
the other wounded and the children, and Blanche managed the
castle’s domestic affairs.

After another week it was evident that
Meredith’s skill had saved Guy. He would live, for the time being
at least, but it would be many months, if ever, before he would be
well enough to resume all of his duties.

“Kenelm is a good captain,” Reynaud told
Meredith and Arianna, “but he needs a strong commander over him. He
dislikes the Welsh, so his decisions concerning them are too often
harsh and stir up the very trouble they are meant to quell.”

“We can’t ask Geoffrey to come here,”
Meredith said thoughtfully. “There have been several attacks on
Tynant recently. He’s needed there.”

“What of you, Reynaud?” Arianna asked. “Could
you not carry Guy’s orders to the men? They all know you, and know
the confidence Guy has in you.”

“I could, if Guy were well enough to give
them, and the men who know me well might obey me on a peaceful day,
but in time of battle, I doubt it. And there are some who would
never listen to a cleric, not even if their lives depended on it.
They need a knight, a soldier, to lead them.”

“I won’t have Guy troubled by these problems
while he’s ill,” Meredith said firmly. “Afoncaer needs a healthy
lord. Write to Thomas, Reynaud, and tell him he must come home at
once. Write to the king, too. Tell him what has happened. He knows
how important it is to keep this fortress strong. He will give
Thomas leave to come here. Until Thomas arrives, I will rule
Afoncaer, with Kenelm to back me.”

The letter was sent, and in mid-October, ten
months after leaving Afoncaer, Thomas returned.

Arianna was in the nursery. She and Linnet
had just finished feeding their four young charges when she glanced
out the window and saw a band of armored men riding up the river
road toward the castle. Above them floated the personal banner of
their leader, azure with three silver rings interlaced.

“Thomas.” Arianna’s hand flew to her throat.
There he was, a tall, broad-shouldered figure riding in the lead,
his azure mantle billowing out behind him, chain mail hauberk and
helm gleaming in the misty autumn sunlight. She could not see his
face. She did not need to. Her heart knew him. She knew she ought
to go down to the great hall to join Meredith and the rest of the
household in greeting him. It would be the wise thing to do, it
would stop any gossipers before they recalled last year’s whispers.
Let everyone see at once that they met as friends, no more.