Winter Song Read online

  Thus, Lady Jeannette came down to dinner in a far different mood than she had come down earlier in the day to greet her daughter-by-marriage. She was no longer off balance and had her campaign planned out. First, Lady Jeannette set out to show Raymond how coarse and crude his wife was, despite her small size and delicate looks. At the table she professed herself amazed at the quantity of food Alys consumed. Innocently, Alys did not realize this was an attack and agreed most cordially that she was hungry and the food was very good.

  This produced a reaction, but not the one Lady Jeannette had planned. Lord Alphonse looked delighted. “Are you by chance eating for two, my dear?” he asked.

  “I hope to God she is not!” Raymond exclaimed before Alys had a chance to answer. “I do not wish to need to explain a seven-months child to our vassals.”

  “No, no,” Alphonse said. “Naturally, if Alys is with child, we will not make any pretense about the wedding, merely hold it to provide a celebration and assure the men that all forms and customs of this land have been observed.”

  “I am sorry, my lord,” Alys put in, “but I cannot answer you, although I fear it is not so. My flux was as usual last month, and it is not yet due this month.”

  “Ah…oh…” Alphonse cleared his throat in some embarrassment.

  Raymond guffawed. “Do not ask Alys questions if you are not prepared for frank answers, Father,” he choked. “She is honest to a fault.”

  Their laughter seemed to show acceptance of Alys as she was, but Lady Jeannette had seen something that was certainly not amusement in Raymond’s face when he protested his father’s interpretation of Alys’s appetite. Lady Jeannette believed her son did not wish his wife to be with child, and her heart leapt with joy. Although Raymond had given a reason for his expression, his mother refused to accept it. The only reason Lady Jeannette was willing to consider for Raymond’s reluctance to father Alys’s child, especially when she combined that with his seeming willingness to avoid Alys’s bed, was that he was already regretting his marriage.

  The pleasure this thought gave her made it possible for Lady Jeannette to restrain any comment on Alys’s crudity in mentioning her flux. She was now very happy, and happiness always expressed itself in Lady Jeannette with a desire for music. Thus, when the tables were cleared and the family gathered near the hearth, Lady Jeannette graciously asked Alys to sing. She was hoping, of course, that her performance would be poor in comparison with that of her own daughters. At first she was surprised when Raymond burst out laughing as Alys shook her head.

  “Do sing, my love,” he urged. “You have a voice like a bird.”

  “The wrong kind of bird,” Alys said, flashing what Lady Jeannette considered a very strange glance at Raymond. “I am sorry, Mother, I cannot sing. I have a voice like a jackdaw.”

  “This must be modesty.” Alphonse tried to encourage her. “Your speaking voice is sweet. We are only family, my dear. You need not fear we will be critical.”

  Raymond’s eyes glittered with amusement as Alys most seriously assured his father that she could not sing or play a note because she had never learned how. Alphonse could not understand this. All daughters of great houses were taught to sing and play.

  “But, Father,” Alys protested, “I am not the daughter of a great house. Your son and my Uncle Richard worked some miracle whereby my dower was made suitable to your son’s rank, but I am the daughter of a simple knight. Surely Raymond told you that. I can do accounts and read and write, but my education is lacking in refinements, I fear.”

  Raymond was laughing again. He had never been so happy in his life. Everything was a joy, and Alys was the fount of that joy in great ways and small ones. It was a great thing to be truly independent of his parents, not in the sulky, small-boy way that had made him run off to England the preceding year, but as a man with rich estates of his own. It was a very small thing to be able to look forward to listening to his sisters’ silly songs because he knew his wife, however politely she listened, would be suffering boredom as acutely as he was. Between the two extremes were a whole series of greater and lesser satisfactions, all connected to Alys.

  “Your taste and talent are lacking, too,” Raymond muttered through his gales of laughter.

  Alys shot him a single furious glance, lowered her head, and bit her lips. She was not, of course, angry about his remark on her lack of fondness for lute music. They were at one on that subject, Alys knew. However, it was clear that the rest of Raymond’s family were really devoted to that musical art. Alys felt she was making headway in gaining Alphonse’s and Margot’s affection, and even Lady Jeannette seemed more accepting of her. Thus she did not wish to distress or disgust them and, perhaps, destroy their tentative liking by laughing at something they loved, and thought it cruel of Raymond to add to her temptation to laugh. It would be hard enough to keep her face straight when Jeanine or Margot began sighing over some imaginary knight’s bravery and some silly woman’s coldness without Raymond encouraging her own sense of the ridiculous.

  But Alphonse had turned on his son. “Hold your tongue!” he ordered sharply. “You should be ashamed of yourself to laugh at your wife in public for what is no fault of her own. I am shocked!”

  “Oh no, my lord, do not be angry,” Alys cried. “Indeed, he speaks nothing but the truth. Both taste and talent are lacking in me. But he was not laughing at me, only at a private joke that is between us. I am not hurt or offended.”

  “Your sweetness of disposition is a credit to you, my dear,” Alphonse said softly, glaring at Raymond, who had turned crimson and was nearly choking to death in his attempts to swallow his laughter.

  Eventually he did compose himself to listen to his sisters sing, but he was several times so shaken by repressed mirth that tears filled his eyes. Alys was in a similar state. She could be seen several times, at points in the songs of particular emotion—as ladies died of fear or knights broke their hearts for love—to tremble perceptibly and wipe her eyes with the hem of her sleeve.

  Each observer interpreted these reactions to suit him- or herself. Jeanine disregarded her brother completely and put down Alys’s behavior to envy or chagrin, and Margot thought Raymond was distressed by his father’s reprimand. It was rare, indeed, for Alphonse to speak so sharply to his eldest son, and Margot felt sorry for her brother, of whom she was fond. Alys, Margot believed, was responding to the music and the sentiment in the songs. She already liked Alys and felt she owed her a debt. Now she saw her way clear to obtain a good deal of Alys’s company for herself and to do Alys a service. Margot intended to teach her sister-by-marriage to play and sing.

  Alphonse understood Raymond quite clearly. He had heard his son’s view on love songs to the lute and was well aware of his lack of sympathy with music and delicate sentiment. He regretted it, but associated it with Raymond’s pleasure in feats of arms and accepted the fact that the brutality of the arts of war dulled fine sentiment. Concurrently, he was completely mistaken about Alys’s emotion, which he felt was a mixture of sensitivity to the performance, embarrassment at her own limitations, and hurt at her husband’s cruelty.

  Lady Jeannette was even further afield than the others. She associated Raymond’s occasional rigidity and misted eyes with a deep regret for the mistake he had made. Since she could not bear to credit Alys with enough of the softer emotions to generate envy of Jeanine’s and Margot’s skill, she convinced herself that the effort of controlling spite and rage were causing Alys to cry. Thus, Lady Jeannette was delighted. Even if Alys did not have courage to quarrel with Raymond, she was sure Alys would display her anger in some unsuitable way, perhaps in hurting some weaker creature.

  The events of the evening had clarified a puzzle that had been troubling Lady Jeannette. There was a dichotomy between Raymond’s confidence in Alys—as evidenced in his broad-ranging order to Gervase to obey his wife and his urging that everything be left to her to do as she pleased—and his disinclination to father a child on her, plus his obvious con
tempt for her crude nature and upbringing. The puzzle was now resolved to Lady Jeannette’s satisfaction. Raymond, she decided, regarded Alys as a servant, fit to arrange furniture and sew clothing, but not fit to bear him an heir for Aix.

  Although Raymond enjoyed teasing Alys, he did not really want her to disgrace herself in front of his family. Nor did he desire to lose control of himself and spoil his mother’s mood. Thus, when he saw Alys urgently biting her lips at a particularly silly effusion, in which both knight and lady perished in an excess of sentiment, Raymond decided to end their torment. As the last notes died away, he stood up abruptly.

  “This is all too much for my poor Alys, atop the traveling and setting her apartment to rights and meeting my father and mother,” he said. “I will take her to her rooms to rest and recover.”

  It seemed, in fact, all too true. Alys’s shoulders were shaking, and she had her sleeve pressed firmly against her lips while tears welled from her tight-shut eyes. Alphonse rose and embraced her, murmuring soothingly, but Raymond pulled her away and pressed her against him with brutal force, burying her head under his arm.

  “You are making her worse, Father,” he explained when Alphonse protested angrily. His voice choked and his face rigid as if he were in a fury. “She is only overtired,” he continued. “Tomorrow she will be quite well.”

  Raymond left quickly, sweeping Alys into his arms so that her shorter and almost certainly faltering stride would not delay them, and ignoring the cries and questions that followed them. He had been just in time, for he could feel Alys whooping in his arms as she struggled to draw breath and not howl aloud.

  “Stop that,” he choked. “If I give way now, I will drop you, and we will both fall down the stairs.”

  “Put me down,” she gasped.

  He did so, and they clung together for a moment, struggling with themselves. Both were aware of the danger of Alphonse following them, but fortunately Lady Jeannette had checked her husband’s impulse by pointing out that his interference only seemed to make Raymond crueler. Thus, supporting one another’s uneven footsteps, Alys and Raymond were able to reach the haven of the south tower. Here both collapsed.

  “Monster!” Alys cried when she had breath enough. “Cruel monster! How dare you set me to laughing over those silly songs and then make all worse by sounding as if I were one of the frail flowers they lamented. If I had choked to death, you would be a murderer.”

  Holding his aching ribs, Raymond shook his head. “How else could I have saved us? I saw you were ready to burst, and I was also.”

  “It is all your fault,” Alys sighed, exhausted from laughing. “I had grown quite accustomed at court. If you had not started laughing like a jackass when your mother asked me to sing, all would have been well.”

  “Sorry,” Raymond gasped, and began to laugh again, groaning between whoops as his muscles protested. He wiped his eyes. “I do not know why it struck me so funny,” he said at last. “You are so small, so sweet and delicate, you are just the type to sing such songs—and you do have a sweet voice. I have heard it.”

  Alys looked surprised. “You have heard me sing?”

  “Yes, sometimes when you sew in the evening you sing, and also you sang while we rode to the slow pace of the carts.”

  “Country songs,” Alys said, blushing.

  Raymond got up from his chair and pulled her out of hers into his arms. “At least those songs do not make me laugh. They are of real things, of plowing and spinning, of the coming of spring. They are sweet to hear, Alys, when you sing as you work. I hope my speaking of it will not silence you.”

  She smiled at him. “Perhaps it would if I were aware of it, but even now after you have told me, I cannot really remember singing. Likely I will not realize I am doing it. Raymond, those were sweet evenings at Blancheforte.”

  They looked at each other, memory warm in each pair of eyes. Then Raymond sighed. “I must go, my love. We should not be alone here too long.”

  Alys nodded. She understood that they must give no cause for gossip until it was decided how their wedding was to be treated. “Be careful you are not seen coming back,” she warned. “That would be worse than staying openly.”

  “Good God, I forgot!” Raymond exclaimed. “I must show you the passage. I chose this tower because it is the one with the wall passage to the keep. I will come that way.”

  He walked to die wall just beyond where the man-high black iron candlestick stood. Twisting uncomfortably at an unnatural angle, he trod on the stone between the clawed legs of the candlestick, which was fastened by base and shaft to the wall behind. Alys had thought nothing of that. It was a heavy piece that could injure anyone if it should fall. With his foot on the stone, Raymond pushed strongly at the wall. Creaking, a block of the masonry pivoted, showing a black hole, which Alys assumed was the passage.

  “I wanted to show you so you would not be frightened.” He allowed the block to pivot closed.

  “Will those who know of this suspect you are visiting me?”

  Raymond widened his eyes into a look of great innocence. “What a shocking thought! Would I do such a thing?” Then seeing that Alys looked uneasy, he said, “My father knows, of course. I doubt anyone else will think of it, but if there should be talk we will forgo all but the second ceremony itself.” He pulled her into his arms for another kiss. “I am not willing to keep apart from you, my love, even if you cannot make lute songs.”

  But the comfort of her husband’s presence was to be denied Alys. Raymond returned not an hour later, looking black as thunderclouds, to tell her that his mother had begged him to ride over to visit her widowed sister, Lady Catherine, who had been established by Lord Alphonse’s generosity on a small estate only one league to the south.

  “I will wait,” Alys promised. “It does not matter if you are late returning.”

  Raymond’s frown cleared, and he kissed her. “No, do not sit up waiting for me. You are tired, I know.” He touched her face gently with a forefinger where mauve, bruised-looking patches showed beneath her eyes. “This homecoming of mine cannot have been easy for you. I know my mother was not very welcoming, and Jeanine has grown into a spiteful bitch since her husband died. Do not be discouraged, dearling. Mother will grow accustomed, even fond, after a time. She is like a spoiled child—” He broke off and laughed softly. “You told me that, and now I am telling it to you. Be patient. Mother needs a space of time to accept that a thing must be so.” He sighed. “To speak the truth, this homecoming has not been so easy for me, either.”

  “How selfish I am,” Alys said, “to urge you to break your sleep twice just for the pleasure of having you lie beside me. Indeed, you must not come if you are late returning home.”

  Raymond’s grip on her tightened. “You are the delight of my life and a refreshment to my soul. It is not that I would yield a minute of lying beside you for the breaking of my sleep ten times, beloved. It is that I fear I will not be able to come at all, and you will lie awake all night waiting for me. Take Bertha to your bed, my love, if you feel strange here.”

  Alys hugged him back. “Oh, no. How could I be so cruel! It is Hugo’s first night off duty. They are bedded in the chamber below, where Hugo can guard the door as well as enjoy his wife—not that there is anything to guard against here in Tour Dur. It is only habit. Do not worry about me. I will sleep sound.”

  With a moue of distaste for his duty, Raymond squeezed his wife once more. “If I can come, I will, but do not dare lie awake waiting. I do not want to see you still all blue beneath the eyes tomorrow. Like as not, my aunt will keep me overnight.” Raymond had begun to look angry again, but then his expression softened. “Aunt Catherine would make you welcome, Alys, but my mother says she has been very ill and I must not put even the gentle burden of your company on her. This, of course, may be only my mother’s saying, but my father seemed concerned, also. In truth, that was why I agreed to go alone this afternoon.”

  “I am sorry to hear of her illness,” A
lys said with ready sympathy. “I would be very glad to nurse her, if she would have me. Do you ask her, Raymond.” Then she dimpled at her husband. “I take it she is childless, and you are the apple of her eye?”

  “Not childless, but she has no son.” Raymond grinned back at his wife. “I will ask about the nursing. If she will have you, I will move to her manor with you. It will be a pleasure. In truth, I owe her more than simple courtesy. She bought me my first sword, against my mother’s will, and bade an old man-at-arms, who still serves her, to teach me, and that even though she knew my mother might take from her what little she had.”

  “But your mother was well dowered—I know, because you told me her lands when we talked about what was to come with me—and I take it Lady Catherine was the elder. How comes she to be so poor?”

  “She was ill-used by her husband’s family. Not that my father or brother would do the same, but it was in my mind when I agreed that you should hold your own property.”

  “Your father never would ill-use me!” Alys exclaimed.

  “No,” Raymond agreed with a smile. “He loves you dearly already. You should hear how he scolded me for misusing you.” They both laughed, and he kissed her again briefly before pulling his cloak tighter. “Gros Choc will be cold,” he murmured, rubbing his cheek against her hair. “I must go.”

  Despite Raymond’s warning, Alys did not go early to bed. She sat alone by the fire, embroidering, but she was not unhappy. Mostly she thought of what Raymond had said about Jeanine—that she had soured after being forced to return home by the death of her husband. Then it occurred to her that Lady Jeannette liked to have her daughters about to serve her and be company for her. But Alys knew how hard it was to be a daughter again once one had been the mistress of a household. Perhaps Jeanine wished for a second husband.