A Tapestry of Dreams (29 page)

Hugh could not take seriously any threat displayed in a woven picture. He saw that Audris was worried, and his heart ached to think that she should carry any burden. She was so small and light, flitting down the garden path, needing to take two steps to his one and hardly turning a piece of gravel as she went. He would find a soothing explanation, he told himself, no matter what the tapestry showed.

He did not get to see the picture that afternoon. On their way out of the garden, they met Lady Eadyth coming in. Sir Oliver had sent word to his wife that Sir Hugh had arrived so she could have a room made ready, but Eadyth had not forgotten that Hugh was too much attracted to Audris. Audris had behaved very well after she had been warned not to add to Hugh’s desire, but Eadyth did not trust Audris to remember her warning. So as soon as she had given the necessary orders for a fire to be lit in the chamber and a bench to be brought in and laid with fleeces for a bed, she had come to fetch their guest. It was easy enough to separate him from Audris; she had only to bid Audris go and change her dress, which was all stained from the garden, and suggest to Hugh that she would lend him a gown so he could take off his arming tunic.

Although Eadyth pretended not to see, the glance Hugh cast at Audris and the shake of the head with which Audris replied troubled her; there was a kind of intimacy about the unspoken communication that made her uneasy. It was too ephemeral an exchange, however, for Eadyth even to formulate her doubts. Oliver came into the hall soon after Hugh had changed, and when Eadyth saw how much her husband favored Hugh, she pushed the doubts away altogether. Moreover, there was nothing more to disturb her, even after Audris came down.

The talk was all of politics—whether it would be possible for Stephen to reconcile himself to the Norman barons, with Robert of Gloucester subtly urging them to resist and Geoffrey of Anjou offering a welcome to those who wished to rebel; how long such a reconciliation would take if it were possible; and whether if the king stayed very long in Normandy, there might be open rebellion in England, or whether the Scots would grow impatient and try to force King David to break the agreement he had made with Thurstan. Oliver was so interested in the talk that he had a second pitcher of wine and then a third brought to the table after the evening meal was eaten and ordered candles to be lit when the light failed.

Audris wished the men a good night and went away when her uncle called for lights, realizing that Oliver, although not the most perceptive of men, would certainly wonder at her behavior if she outsat him. She sent Fritha down to watch, with orders that the maid bring Hugh to her chamber as soon as everyone was asleep. Meanwhile she took out the third tapestry and readied it for hanging beside the other two panels.

Eventually the third pitcher was empty, and when Oliver suggested more, Hugh was able to laugh, shake his head, and remind his host that he had to leave very early the next morning. He might have cut the talk shorter, except that he was fascinated by the possibility of rebellion in England. Hugh knew it was easier by far for a faithful follower to obtain a rebel’s possessions than to obtain an outright grant of royal property from the king.

It cost the king nothing to give away land that had never paid revenues directly to the crown and had the added benefit of exchanging a faithful vassal for a rebellious one. Hugh went to bed with his head full of hopes inspired by the talk and the wine and dreamed of saving Stephen single-handedly from an ambush and being granted all of Gloucester’s lands. He was just kneeling to offer thanks when someone seized his hand and began to draw him away. Furious, he tried to jerk his hand free, but the tugging persisted.

It was fortunate for Fritha that Hugh felt, even in his dream, that it would be highly impolitic to begin a fight in the king’s presence. Dimly he recalled that some private quarrel had caused Stephen much harm, and he forbore to strike out at the stupid person who was preventing him from thanking his benefactor. Instead, he made a huge effort and mumbled, “What do you want?” Infuriatingly, the tugging only continued—but the sound of his own voice had half waked Hugh, and he opened his eyes.

Still muddled by sleep and too much wine and half blinded by the light of the candle she held, he stared at Fritha blankly. At first he thought Sir Oliver had sent him a girl to warm his bed, and he shook his head angrily and gestured for her to be gone, but Fritha only pulled at his hand again. Annoyed, he again asked what she wanted, but when she pointed to her mouth with a look of extreme surprise he finally saw the harelip and recognized her as Audris’s mute maidservant.

Instantly, thinking that Audris wanted to spend the night with him, desire flooded him, and he leapt out of bed and would have gone at once, naked as he was. Fritha caught at him, shaking her head wildly, and then pointing firmly to the chausses and shirt that lay on the chest. By the time he was dressed, Hugh’s drunken notions were gone, his head had cleared, and he remembered Audris’s picture.

But the wine was still working in him and he was aware of a weight on his spirits that made him strangely reluctant to go with Fritha. The “strange revelation” in the tapestry, which he had dismissed so lightly in the sunlit garden, became more threatening in the dark chamber, illuminated only by the dim night candle in the corner and the small one Fritha held.

In the deep-shadowed hall, the yellow glimmer of the few night lights was swallowed up in the immensity, leaving the dull, angry red glow of the banked fire. Hugh clenched his jaw; there was light, but one could not see in it, and lack of vision changed the sounds of snores and sleepers’ movements on their pallets to strange groans and slitherings. It came to Hugh as he followed the silent maid, who wove a skilled and noiseless path past the sleepers on the rush-strewn floor, that he had become almost a different person since he had first seen Audris in her tower window a year and a half ago.

In the past, he had no high desire for land or title; he had been content to serve a man he loved. Now ambition burned so hot in him that he had come close to cursing his father in God for the infirmities of age and holiness. Before he had laid eyes on Audris, he knew what sin was; he had not been perfect, but he repented and did penance when he erred. Now he sinned with joy in his heart, with neither guilt nor desire to confess. He looked back over his shoulder toward the upper end of the hall near the hearth. There, before the opening, lay black heaps, barely visible in the sullen red glow, some twisting slowly. So would hell look. Was he being warned? Was Audris what the people thought she was—a witch? Had she ensorcelled him? He remembered writing just those words to her.

Hugh stopped, feeling his heart beating slow and heavy, but Fritha seized his wrist. He almost jerked away, and then he saw she was lowering the candle in her hand to show him the step into the stair. The small, prosaic fact of the step and the stair ahead loosened the web his wine-sodden imagination had been weaving around him. He felt a new jolt of apprehension when Fritha darted up the stairs ahead of him, but it was only to pull open the door to Audris’s chamber. A bright glow of candle and torch light spilled down the stairs toward him, extending a golden carpet of welcome, and Audris was there, stretching out her small hand. The weight of oppression lifted; warmth surged through Hugh’s body, and a delicious ache started in his loins. He took the stairs two at a time, caught Audris to him with one arm, and pulled the door shut with the other.

Although she was startled by the way Hugh seized her, Audris did not resist him. As soon as he pressed her close and she felt the hard, engorged shaft against her belly, her own craving woke. She had been eager for him all the time they sat side by side at the table, strongly stimulated by the warmth of his thigh against hers and the occasional touches of his shoulder, arm, and hand. It was the main reason she had been tempted to outsit her uncle; in her desire she had almost forgotten the tapestry. But her desire had been quenched when she looked again at the third panel of her weaving. Once it was before her eyes, she could no longer comfort herself with the notion that she had misread it; the savage intent of the unicorn was so clear it terrified her.

Audris regretted bitterly that she had ever seen Hugh, ever noticed his desire for her. Until that day, she had lived in contentment. True, sometimes she felt vaguely that she had missed the high joys of life, of possessing and being possessed by a mate and children, but she now knew she had also been almost untouched by the deep agonies of fear and desire. Now both racked her. The passions of the heart were a kind of madness, and in that madness she had invited a fierce and savage destroyer into her safe, small world. As she stared at the wild and threatening beast she had woven, she told herself she would find a cure for her madness; she would show Hugh the panel and send him away forever so he could not break and tear Jernaeve, neither the keep nor herself—for the pain she felt, racked between fear and desire, was like to being rent apart.

Still, the moment she saw him on the stair, his strange face with its wide-set, brilliant eyes illuminated by the light from her chamber, she felt so strong a joy in him that the fear and longing all seemed small pricks in comparison with what filled her, and she stretched out her hand to welcome him. And the rage of wanting that seized her when she felt him hard and ready, the need to be filled with him, made her think of the tapestry only as a thing to be hidden from Hugh until she could complete herself with him. His head was already bending toward her; she had only to lift her lips, and when their mouths were sealed, to turn him so that his shoulder was toward the wall where the panels hung and his face toward the bed.

Hugh dropped his arms to press her tighter against his swollen shaft, to lift her and then set her on her feet again so that her body rubbed against him, moaning softly with pleasure behind his dammed lips. Audris held his head between her hands, so when he had to pull away to gasp for more air, he should see only the bed. She need not have held him; he did not try to look right or left, but lifted her and strode across the room to the bed, where he laid her down. He had even forgotten Fritha; Audris heard the door open and shut, but Hugh never shifted his eyes from their rapt contemplation of her.

She saw him reach for the tie of his chausses and held out her arms to receive him, but he did not accept that invitation to join himself to her instantly, as he had in the garden. Instead, he took off his clothing entirely, watching her, feeding himself on the hunger with which she looked at his body. Then he undressed her. There was only her bedrobe to remove, but Hugh lingered long over drawing it off, stroking and kissing whatever part of her he bared.

He resisted her and continued to caress her, even when she was so driven by passion that she lifted her hips toward him and twisted half off the bed, reaching for him with her legs to draw him into her. He knelt before her then, to give her ease and drink her nectar, but it was not enough. She cried to be filled, and he came into her at last, both of them crying out with his first thrust but not subsiding, building to a climax so violent that it was closer to agony than pleasure.

They lay quiet afterward for some time. Once Hugh moved as if he would separate them, but Audris’s strong legs were locked around his hips, and she would not release him. He sighed and abandoned himself to the warm, sensual delight of being immersed in her without excitement or the pangs of passion. Later, when he felt himself filling again, he turned so that she was above him, leaving her to move on him or not as it pleased her. It took a very long time, for in the beginning Audris did no more than keep him hard while he played with her hair, caressed her pale, silken skin, and twisted himself nearly in two to lip at the pink buds that tipped her breasts. And their climax was like their lovemaking, long, slow, gentle thrills that passed into peace. Oddly, it was the peace that set spurs of eagerness into Hugh, sharp pangs of wanting this woman above all other things in life—above life itself, for if he could not have her, he had no use for life.

“I am afraid of you, Audris,” Hugh whispered to her as she rested on him.

She did not answer, but Hugh soon felt his breast wet and realized she was weeping.

“I did not mean to hurt you,” he sighed, but she still said nothing, and he did not know how to comfort her.

Slowly, reluctantly, she lifted herself off him and stood beside the bed, her hand stretched out to him. The tears coursed down her cheeks, but she did not speak, and she stepped back when Hugh reached out to take her in his arms, forcing him to sit up and then follow her. He was looking at her as they walked across the room, regretting the words that had hurt her and seeking a way to soothe the pain he had inflicted. Then she reached up and turned his face so that his eyes fell on the first panel of her tapestry.

The beauty of the work made him catch his breath, and he realized instantly that it was the picture that was somehow connected to Audris’s tears. He studied it eagerly but could see nothing in the magnificent beast and its salutation to the maiden in the tower to frighten even the most timid. Then he saw it was not the only piece.

He nearly wept himself at the joy and confidence that united the maiden and the unicorn as they walked together in the sunlit woods, but he did not allow his eyes to linger on that happy picture, for he knew this could not be the cause of Audris’s distress either. The third panel brought another gasp—of pain this time.

“I would not harm Jernaeve!” Hugh cried and then fell silent, appalled, not having consciously thought of himself as the unicorn until he heard his own words.

“Not by your will,” Audris agreed softly.

“Why did you weave that?” Hugh asked, his voice harsh.

Audris shook her head. “Not by
my
will.” Then after a pause, while Hugh stepped back and looked at all three panels, she asked, “Do you know what it means?”

“Of course not,” Hugh snapped. He wanted to ask sharply why there should be any meaning in a ridiculous picture woven by a silly girl, who even said she did not always know what she was weaving—but he could not. There was something compelling in the set of panels and a subtle flattery in the exquisite ferocity of the beast. He tore his eyes away and looked back at Audris. “I desire you greatly, but I am not fool enough to consider winning you by taking Jernaeve. Truly, I cannot see any way I could be a threat to your castle, but I will go and not return here—”