A Tapestry of Dreams Page 27

  The days passed. Audris’s loom stood empty, and her eyes slid away from it guiltily each morning when she rose from her bed. Her work lay folded away in the chest with the special yarns, but she could not rid herself of its image in her mind. She tried and tried to find a different meaning in the picture, but her tapestries had never been subtle, and what the work said was that Hugh was a danger to Jernaeve. Yet she could not bring herself to tell her uncle, and more days passed. Then Morel rode into Jernaeve again, and this time he brought good news, though not the best: for this summer, at least, there would be no war with the Scots; King David had yielded so far to Archbishop Thurstan’s reasons and pleas that he had agreed not to attack English lands until King Stephen returned from Normandy.

  Oliver and Eadyth had been standing tensely, almost expecting to hear that Morel was only a few hours ahead of the invading Scots. The news released them, not only from the fear of immediate attack but from the tension that had driven them, even in their sleep, to will everything into readiness. Eadyth sank into a seat, first sighing with relief and then bursting into tears. Oliver put a hand on her shoulder and patted it in a rare gesture of companionship and comfort.

  Audris was stunned. If there was no war, what danger could Hugh be to Jernaeve? Either she had read the picture amiss, she thought, or it was not a foretelling but only an image of her own fears. That was a comforting idea, and she eagerly waited for Fritha to return from Morel’s house, where she had sent her to fetch Hugh’s letter to her. It was much shorter than the last since, as Hugh explained, there was not much new to say. Most of it had been written after Hugh learned that they would soon be leaving Scotland.

  “I ache for you,” he wrote, “yet I am glad that I will have no more than a brief vision of all that is bright and beautiful to me. I do not wish to be free of the pain of longing for you, especially now when my duty is near over and I will so soon be able to take up my quest. If I were to stay near you, I would be wrapped in a golden dream of contentment—as we were that first day when we walked in your enchanted valley. Ensorcelled by your presence, I would desire nothing and do nothing and thus, perhaps, lose all through having you snatched away from me. The pain of longing will be a spur to me, and so much the sooner, as the pain is greater and drives me harder, will I make myself worthy to be your husband.”

  The passionate eagerness, the joyful embracing of pain as a spur to fierce purpose, woke all Audris’s fears again, and she had to stop reading and blink the tears from her eyes. Hugh had written in plain words what she had felt in him—determination, hot and hard, to win her regardless of the cost. The singleness of purpose terrified Audris; although she loved Hugh and wanted him, she had duties and obligations that she could not violate, even for his sake. Yet neither could she deny him. She craved his desire for her and her alone. She could not reject his need, for it answered a deep need in her. Slowly, she looked back at the letter.

  “I hope,” he had written, “that we will be able to talk in private for a little time—and I do mean talk, not converse in the cruder meaning of the word—for there are questions I must ask you. Think on this, beloved. For myself, I would like to follow the king to Normandy and take up that service to his person that he offered me when I first met him. I refused it then, for I felt unable to leave my old master, but as long as there is no war with Scotland, Sir Walter does not need me. There is easy advancement for those who serve under the king’s eye—but that brings me to the question I must ask. If I am fortunate and win a holding in Normandy, would you go so far, my love? I have asked you before, and you have told me that you would be willing to leave Jernaeve, but is Normandy too distant from the hills and valleys you love?”

  Audris looked up from the letter again, but there were no tears this time. Her eyes were wide and amazed and bright with inward joy. One thing was sure; it was she herself that Hugh desired, for it was plain that he intended to leave Jernaeve to her uncle and even wished to take her so far away that Oliver could not feel his management of Jernaeve to be watched. Now she remembered that Hugh had asked more than once whether she was bound in spirit to Jernaeve—yet she had never connected the question with her uncle. “Fool!” she muttered, shaking her head at herself. How could she have overlooked so simple a solution to the problem of wanting to be with Hugh but needing to leave her uncle as master of Jernaeve?

  Her eyes fixed on the last few lines of the letter hungrily. “I would not have you say yes for love of me and then yearn for your own land. I have some reason to believe that there will be opportunities for me in England. That might be dangerous to write more clearly, and my hand is slow compared with speech, so I will leave these matters to talk about. It will be soon enough to write more if we can find no chance to be together. I burn for you. I am afire with desire and nothing can quench my agony but your cool, silver hair and pale, graceful hands. Does this sound strange? We were hot enough in our coupling, but that warmth was turned outward toward each other. When we are parted, the heat turns in on itself so that my need for you eats at me within as a fire may eat the heart of a tree. Morel is here. I must finish this. Pray for me, Audris. Pray that I do not forget my duty to the man who stood as father to me when I was a nameless, helpless babe and harm him by urging him to travel faster than is good for his enfeebled age, only to be near you sooner.”

  So Hugh recognized the danger in his desire, Audris thought as she slowly folded the parchment to put it away. That was the man, but the beast was there too; the letter disclosed the wild passion struggling within the bonds of duty, and she shivered, torn between fear and longing. What was she to say in answer? Truly she did not think it would matter to her where she lived, but she also did not believe her uncle would agree that Hugh take her across the narrow sea. Nor did she want Hugh to go so far without her. She would rather wait for the opportunity Hugh hinted might come in England, but should she tell him that?

  She opened the letter again, reread the end, and closed her eyes, both thrilled and horrified once more by the barely controlled passion. Would the beast throw off the bonds the man had cast over it if she wrote of delay? It was one thing to strive forward despite pain, but to wait, enduring that pain helplessly, was another thing. The picture in the tapestry again rose in her mind. Would her denial make the unicorn wild and dangerous?

  Audris went slowly to the foot of her bed, where a small table held Father Anselm’s writing desk. She drew a stool up to the table and lifted the cover of the desk to take out a quill and a small slip of parchment. Her eyes were blank with thought as she tested the point on the quill, found it good, and began to work the wax plug out of the small polished inkhorn, fixed into the playful embrace of an exquisitely worked bear cub lying on its back. She caressed the little sculpture absently. Her uncle had brought the ink-horn back from one of his rare attendances at King Henry’s court and thrust it at her brusquely, growling, “You and your beasts. I could not get you out of my mind once I saw it. I still think it unseemly for a girl-child to write, but take it. It is for you.” At the time she had been more frightened than glad, but now she understood better. Her eyes focused on the little bear for a moment, then she dipped the quill and began to write:

  From Audris of Jernaeve to Sir Hugh Licorne, greetings. If you are well, I am well also. Beloved, I must first beg pardon again for so few words, but I have been much distressed by a strange thing in my weaving and have had little spirit to write. I will say only this. My desire cleaves to you and to you only. By my own choice, I would follow you and live, without fear or regret, wheresoever you made a place for me. But as your life is not only by your choice, and that is right and good in my eyes, so mine is not only by my choice. You are wise also in knowing that these matters are better spoken of than written. When you come, I will find a time and place for us to be private together. Fare you well, light of my eyes, until I can see you with my eyes and, God willing, hold you in my arms.

  She read it over twice, fold
ed it, and sealed it with wax, then told Fritha to carry it to Morel in the lower bailey. There was enough assurance in the letter not to arouse any desperate feelings and enough warning, too, to prepare Hugh for trouble. When he came, she would show him the tapestry and then they would decide what was best to do. And perhaps, she thought, caressing his letter as she slid it into the desk before she put away her quill and restoppered her inkhorn, perhaps before he comes something will happen that will help me know what to say.

  After another week passed, Audris could hardly bear to leave the keep, although the hawks were hatched and she should have been spying on the nests to choose the best of the hatchlings. Most of her work in the garden was done, except to point out which early flowers and young leaves should be culled for drying, so she had little excuse to stay in Jernaeve, but she expected Hugh to appear at the gate at every moment, and wherever she was, she listened for the sentry’s call. It was Morel who came, however, not Hugh, and he brought only a verbal message to Oliver and a note as brief as her own to Audris, which he slipped into Fritha’s hand.

  Without greeting or salutation, Hugh had written: “If there is some danger to you or yours, heart of my heart, tell Morel, and I will come to you at once to be your shield. But if the strange thing in your weaving is not a threat, I cannot help you for a time. My dear father in God, Archbishop Thurstan, hid from all how greatly he had been tired by these meetings with King David. Unknowing, for he made no complaint, or perhaps because in my great desire to be with you I was deliberately blind, I brought him as far as Jedburgh. Here, at last, he confessed his weakness, and my eyes were opened. I fear we will be delayed some weeks while Thurstan gathers strength.”

  The note ended as abruptly as it began. Audris sighed, guessing the violent impatience that had been curbed, and curbed by so thin a margin that Hugh did not dare express his feelings lest they overwhelm him. Still, she told herself, he must be calmer by now; she herself was calmer—the time that had passed had dimmed the first shock of seeing her tapestry—although she still had no answer to the danger it displayed or how to keep Hugh from going to Normandy. So Audris wrote a soothing reply, saying that her picture was more a puzzle than a threat, expressing her concern for Thurstan and her approval of Hugh’s decision to stay with him, and ending with the reminder that they were still young and had time for a way to open.

  The delay in Jedburgh was more than a few weeks. By mid-August Thurstan was still barely strong enough to move from his chamber to the garden of the manor house in which they stayed. Also in August a long, scribe-written letter came to Jernaeve from Bruno in Normandy. It was a source of much rejoicing to Audris, for not only did it assure her that her half brother was safe and well, but it provided news that made it ridiculous for Hugh to consider going to Normandy. Oliver was far less pleased with the news than Audris. He was glad enough to know that Bruno was well and in high favor with King Stephen, but the other aspects of the letter roused considerable concern in his mind.

  By the end of August Thurstan was ready to travel again, but Hugh permitted him to move only in short stages so that they did not reach Jarrow abbey until the beginning of September. There Hugh left Thurstan to rest for two days while he paid off those men-at-arms who had come from Northumbria, leaving some at Newcastle and a few others in Prudhoe. This put him within six leagues of Jernaeve, and he thought that would not be so far a ride to pay a visit of courtesy as to raise doubts in Sir Oliver’s mind about why he had bothered to come.

  Hugh rode in, apurpose, more than an hour after dinner was over. He had waited in the hot midday sun in agonized impatience just out of sight of the keep for a long time in the hope of missing Sir Oliver. Thus, he was barely able to conceal his relief when he heard that he had won the prize for which he had struggled—his host was in the fields watching the reapers. With a last desperate effort at calm, he asked for the Demoiselle Audris and was told she was in the garden. Licking dry lips and trying to steady his uneven breathing, Hugh walked across the courtyard, around the wall of the small church, and into the most beautiful castle garden he had ever seen. It was so rich of scents—the sharp aromas of herbs, the sweet odors of flowers, and the rich flavor of ripening fruits—so bright with color, that for one brief moment Hugh was distracted from the desire that burned inside him. And then Audris stepped out of a patch of shadow.

  They stood quite still, their eyes meeting and holding, knowing they must not run into each other’s arms. Then Hugh bowed low, and Audris turned her head and said to the gardener, who was still in the shadow, “Go, and take the others with you. We will finish these tasks tomorrow. My uncle’s guest must not be disturbed if he wishes to walk in the garden.”

  And while the serfs scurried out, Hugh moved slowly toward his lodestone and lifted the hand she held out to him formally to his lips, murmuring, “I am at peace. I see you, and I am at peace.” He chuckled, shaking his head in amused wonderment. “If you knew the images in my dreams these last months, you would run from me in horror.”

  Audris squeezed his hand, which still held hers. “I doubt it,” she replied, laughing also.

  Then she tugged him forward along the path, which soon divided right and left around a large bed of sweet-smelling roses. Behind the bed was a broad patch of grass, sheltered on all sides; the tall rosebushes divided it from the rest of the garden; fruit trees espaliered against the wall of the keep were to the left, where the western sun would encourage ripening; tall foxgloves stood opposite the roses, and some delicate plants that Hugh did not recognize nodded in beds near the outer wall to the right. There was such a place in the garden at Helmsley also, where on fine days Lady Adelina and her maidens had disported themselves on cushions to sew and talk and breathe the sweet air.

  Hugh knew he and Audris could not be seen, but despite her provocative answer and the desires that had tormented him for weeks, Hugh did not seize her. It was she who flung her arms around his neck and pulled his head down until their lips met. Then he pulled her to him and could easily have forgotten time and place, except that as his arms tightened, the rings of his mail bruised her so that she cried out in pain. He released her at once, and in the next moment she was laughing and pushing him back so she could unbuckle his sword belt. She laid the weapon on the bench near the roses, then seated Hugh to untie the neck guard of his mail.

  “I have been practicing,” she said, glowing with joy and pride in her efficiency. “When Bruno first came back to Jernaeve, I could not undo his hood for him, and I was ashamed.” But when she pushed the hood off and saw Hugh’s face clearly, her eyes grew large with concern; she stroked back his hair, its normal fiery color dulled by sweat, and bent down to kiss his forehead gently. “You are very tired, dear heart,” she murmured.

  He uttered a little snort of disgust. “Not for any good reason. God knows I have done nothing for many weeks that could tire the frailest creature in the world.”

  Audris smiled at him. “You are of an impatient and hasty spirit, dearling. I do not think it sits well with you to pace slowly at the head of a cortege of honor.”

  “More blame to me,” Hugh sighed. “I am greatly ashamed that I could feel impatience in the service of a man who loves me and has showered me with kindness upon kindness over all the years of my life. I am unworthy of his love, and very likely unworthy of yours also—”

  Whereupon Audris stopped his mouth with her own, but when he tried to embrace her, she slipped out of the closing circle of his arms. “Let me take off your armor,” she said.

  His surprise doused the spark of resentment struck by her rejection of his embrace. “You!” he exclaimed, then laughed at her. “One sleeve would weigh you down, and if you overbalanced and the hauberk fell on you, it would squash you flat.”

  “I am stronger than I look,” Audris protested, but Hugh continued to laugh as he stood up, bent forward, and pulled the mail hood up and out so that his head went through the neck opening. “At
least let me help,” Audris begged, and tugged the sleeves over his hands. When both head and hands were free of the more constricted portions of the hauberk, Hugh bent forward even farther, almost doubling at the waist. Audris lifted the hem of the armor over the curve of his body, and the hauberk slid off of its own weight. As he straightened up, Audris gathered the garment into her arms and lifted it triumphantly, but Hugh was a larger man than most, and his mail shirt was heavier than those Audris had previously handled. As she turned to lay the hauberk on the bench, she did overbalance slightly and staggered. Hugh caught her in one arm, took the armor from her with the other hand, and tossed it blindly toward the bench behind him while he fixed his mouth on hers.

  Without a word, they both sank to the ground, each struggling one-handed to undo and lift the clothing out of the way while they continued to clutch each other close. Their union was brief and awkward, but so strong a sexual excitement had been building in them, all the more violent for being consciously repressed and denied as they spoke and touched, that both exploded into climax within moments of coming together. They lay for a few moments longer, stunned by the violence of their release, until Hugh finally drew his head back far enough to see Audris’s face.

  “Alas, I am a liar, it seems, as well as being unworthy,” he whispered huskily, but he was wearing a broad grin. “I remember writing to you that I would be content only to look at you.”

  Audris giggled, “How fortunate, then, that I never wished to believe you. I am not so high-minded as you, my heart, and want as much of you as I can get when we can be together.”

  “Which gives me great joy,” Hugh replied, kissing her lightly once more as he gently separated himself from her and straightened her skirt.

  Sighing, for she loved the feel of him linked to her even after their passion was spent, Audris did not try to hold Hugh. She knew that what they had done was foolish, and it would be dangerous to indulge herself further, so, as Hugh pulled his own clothes into decent order, she pushed herself into a sitting position, her back against the support of the bench. Hugh shook his head at her, moved his armor to the very edge of the bench, and lifted her to the other end, seating himself beside her.