Winter Song Read online

  “Come aside, Lady Alys,” Gervase said softly. “This cleansing of the air has been needed for a long time. Lady Jeanine and Lady Margot must be freed. When they have all shouted themselves hoarse, they will all weep, then embrace, and the storm will pass over, leaving all fresher behind it.”

  “Is this true?” Alys breathed.

  “I assure you all will be well, my lady. This is not the first time, and I fear it will not be the last.”

  And it was true, at least insofar as the fact that everything ended in tears and kisses. In a sense, Alys was relieved, but she was also furious. She felt drained and battered, although she had only been a witness of the violent dispute, and when she was drawn forward and forced to become part of the general reconciliation, her fury grew. She tried to withdraw, but this caused a renewal of tears and apologies and faint accusations from Lady Jeannette that Alys had not truly forgiven her.

  Bitterly Alys reminded herself that she was Raymond’s wife, and she was doomed to a lifelong bond with this family. At one time it had seemed that no price was too high to pay to be joined to Raymond, but he, too, had offended her and neglected her. Nonetheless, the apologies made to her had been handsome, and it would be ugly and ungenerous to reject them, no matter how false they were at heart. Alys swallowed her rage and joined the now tender and affectionate group.

  Her penance lasted right through dinner, and the knot of anger and disgust inside her made every dish she tasted sour. She was released at last by an ill-natured shaft from Lady Jeannette, who asked why Alys had not insisted on having Enid and Fenice join them at dinner. The truth was that in the turmoil Alys had completely forgotten the children, but she was not going to admit that.

  “I did not wish to add a bone of contention to so sweet a meal,” Alys said, “but you do well to remind me of my responsibilities. It is time for Fenice to do some lessons and for Enid to sleep for a while. If you will excuse me…”

  There were protests, of course, and an offer to send a servant, but Alys insisted that until she had a proper governess to see to the girls, she was obliged to attend to their education herself. Eventually, irritated as well as furious, Alys got away and went up to where the women servants worked at sewing, spinning, and weaving. When she reached the chamber, Alys paused to look over the work being done. She realized that she was in a foul temper and wished to calm herself before she reclaimed Fenice and Enid. They were already too timid and upset at the change in their situation. It would be cruel if she snapped at them for what was not their fault.

  Despite the emotions that seethed in her, Alys could not help being interested. She spent a little time examining the spinning process, which seemed to produce finer yarn than that spun in England. Behind her, where the looms stood, Alys suddenly heard Fenice begin to talk, Enid joining in, and both speaking with more freedom than they showed to her. That irritated her, all over again, although she knew it to be natural that the children should be less in awe of the woman who had raised them than of herself. In fact, it was better that way. Nonetheless, Alys felt a sudden urgency to take them away, and instead of calling them to her, she walked quickly in the direction of the voices.

  A moment later she came upon them, both girls standing beside a woman who was obviously taking a brief rest from her work. Alys could see the scraps with which the girls had been playing strewn about as they had been dropped hastily. “Children,” she said.

  The woman, whose head had been bent to listen, looked up and gasped. Then she jumped to her feet and stared about wildly, as if she wanted to run away. Alys’s eyes were drawn, to her by her hasty movement and in the instant she recognized that this was no nurse but the children’s mother. There was Fenice’s creamy complexion, Enid’s rich black velvet eyes. And she was beautiful! In the same instant she realized the woman’s fear could only be because she had been ordered not to allow Alys to see her. Shock froze all emotion in Alys.

  “Stay,” Alys said, as Lucie took a step sideways. “Are you Fenice’s and Enid’s mother?”

  Another terrified glance right and left and the recognition that escape was impossible preceded a whispered, “Yes.”

  “What is your name?” Alys asked.

  “Lucie, my lady.”

  “I had no intention of stealing your children, Lucie,” Alys said, still so shocked that she was unable to react emotionally, but aware that Fenice and Enid were stiff with fear, having absorbed their mother’s terror although they did not know of what she was afraid.

  “No, no,” Lucie whispered, going down on her knees. “I know it is best for them, and they are so happy because you are kind. My lady, I beg you, do not turn them away.” She pushed the two girls forward roughly, and they both began to cry.

  “Do not be so silly, Lucie,” Alys said. “You are frightening your daughters. Of course I will not turn them away. Get up, do. All I meant was that I would have arranged a time for them to be with you had I known you were here. Now calm yourself, and calm the girls. They are too frightened to come with me immediately. I will send my maid Bertha for them later.”

  “Thank you! Thank you!” Lucie cried, weeping with relief.

  Alys smiled at her mechanically and turned away. She still felt nothing beyond surprise, and when she had returned to her own room in the south tower she sat for some time staring into the fire without being aware of thinking. Still, at some level below conscious thought, her mind was working. Gathering up ideas and evidence distorted by disappointment and disgust, it sorted the bits and pieces until a whole monstrous concept, concocted out of hurt and anger and suspicion, was born.

  Suddenly Alys remembered that Raymond had lied to her father and herself when he first came to Marlowe, claiming to be a poor, simple knight who needed to take service to live. From the beginning then, Alys decided, he had only intended to use them. He had never loved her, merely seen her as a tool with which to wrest a rich dower from the king.

  At this moment Alys was blind to the truth, that there had not been the faintest chance of any dower larger than the small estate of Bix when Raymond first declared he loved her. She had decided that Raymond loved Lucie, had always loved her, that he only needed a gentlewoman to produce a legitimate heir, and that he had chosen her because her father was too far away to protect her.

  The proof of this, she thought, was that he had rushed back into his mistress’s arms as soon as Lucie was within reach. That was why he had not used the passage. That was why he had ordered Alys to live in the south tower. It was not to protect her from his mother, but to keep her from finding out he had another woman more to his taste. Surely he had told his daughters not to mention their mother and had told Lucie to hide herself. No wonder the woman had been so frightened. No wonder Raymond had been so appalled when he saw her with Fenice and Enid, so reluctant for her to take them into her care.

  The contradiction between Raymond’s surprise at seeing his daughters with Alys and her assumption that he had ordered them not to speak of Lucie did not occur to Alys in the fever of rage and pain that burned her. A flicker of logic briefly cast a gleam of doubt on the edifice of nonsense she was erecting when she wondered why Raymond had revealed the passage to her if he did not intend to use it. She doused that small flame of truth quickly in a wet blanket of misery. Naturally he did not intend to desert her bed completely. He needed a legitimate heir, and Lucie could not give him that.

  The day passed in adding useless embellishments to this monster of misinterpretation. Once Alys roused herself to send Bertha to fetch the children as she had promised, but she told the maid to keep them with her, see to their supper, and put them to bed. Another time she was pulled from the morass in which she was allowing herself to sink when Bertha brought her an evening meal. But Alys would not take the hand held out to rescue her. When Bertha deliberately idled about, relaying what she thought were innocent bits of gossip about the doings of the keep, Alys told her sharply to go.

  Bertha’s pleasure in her new situation only compoun
ded Alys’s self-inflicted pain. Alys alternately raged and wept until she was exhausted. Since she had slept hardly at all the preceding night, she was barely able to pull off her clothes and tumble into bed before she was deeply asleep. Bertha’s entry later to fold her clothing and light the night candle did not wake her, nor, some hours after that, did the calls of the sentries and the answering cries of Raymond’s men demanding entrance to Tour Dur. This was most unfortunate. Had Alys wakened, it would have been apparent to her that Raymond had stopped only long enough to take off his armor before he came to her.

  As he carried his candle through the dark passage, Raymond’s mood was exactly the opposite of Alys’s. This was literally true because his euphoria was equally compounded of true and false emotion. There were real reasons for him to be happy, but a good part of his high spirits was owing to the fact that he was so tired that he no longer felt it.

  The first small break in Raymond’s mood came when he pushed the wall open and Alys did not stir. Somehow he had expected that she would either be awake or that the creak of the pivot would wake her and she would spring up to welcome him with a cry of joy. However, he suppressed this small disappointment and went to close the door Bertha had left open in case her mistress should call her in the night. Then he threw off his night robe and soft slippers and crept in beside his wife. He pulled her into his arms and, still asleep, she turned to him, but limply and without real consciousness. That, again unfortunately, was not enough for Raymond.

  All the way home he had been imagining his welcome and it was not working out at all as he had planned. He wanted Alys to be glad he was there. He wanted her to appreciate that he had ridden all the way home and given up a second night’s sleep just to be with her. Moreover, his previous experience of making love to a somnolent wife had left a decidedly bad impression. He shook Alys gently, then bit her ear.

  “Raymond?” she mumbled.

  In that first hazy moment of waking, before she remembered her rage and anguish, Alys tightened her arms around Raymond, as if by reflex, and tried to turn her head to find his lips. The latter gesture pulled her ear harder against his teeth. Memory returned in the instant that she felt the slight pain. It was nothing. If all her imagined misusage had not flooded into her mind at once, the tiny discomfort would have acted as Raymond intended it, as a sharp spur to passion.

  Instead it seemed an ugly confirmation to Alys that Raymond would rather hurt than fondle her. She pushed him away with all her strength, using both legs and arms. Since Raymond was not expecting this kind of violent response, he was not braced against it. Moreover, he was at the very edge of the bed because Alys had been sleeping more in the center than to the side. He slid, teetered, and fell off.

  “Lecher!” Alys shrieked, sitting up and clutching the covers to her as if threatened by a ravisher. “Do not dare touch me. I am no clout to be used to wipe up your dirt and be tossed away. You will get no heir on me while your love and your pleasure belong to another woman.”

  Raymond listened to this while lying on the floor. He had not been hurt when he fell because thick carpets padded the planks on each side of the bed, but he was too surprised to move. When he heard Alys’s accusation, he was further stunned. It was so impossibly far from reality that it did not touch him at all. Alys was his pearl without price. Another woman—it was too ridiculous! He had been as faithful as a celibate priest vowed to Holy Mary. He had probably been more faithful, he thought, for he had never even thought of another woman since he had taken Alys to his bed. He had actually refused a freely offered bedmate without a moment’s hesitation. And he had never been a lecher. As a man, he had had women, but they had not been, until Alys entered his life, of great importance to him.

  Raymond rose to his knees, rubbing the arm he had bruised in falling. He shoved the bed curtain farther aside so that the light of the night candle penetrated into the recess of the bed, and he stared at Alys. He was far too surprised to feel any other emotion.

  “What is wrong with you?” he asked mildly. “What are you talking about?”

  The mildness was a further affront. Had he been innocent, Alys reasoned, he would have been angry. “Where were you last night and the night before?” Alys screamed.

  “Have you run mad?” Raymond countered, still kneeling and staring at his wife’s inflamed face. She was very beautiful with her cheeks flushed and her eyes brilliant with rage. “I told you I was going to my aunt, and last night I was with my father.”

  “For how long?” Alys raged. “And with whom did you go to bed?”

  “You have run mad!” There was now an edge to Raymond’s voice, and he got to his feet. His shock was beginning to recede, making room for other feelings, and they were not pleasant. Still the total lack of reality in Alys’s accusations armored him to some extent, for it is the truth that really hurts. “I slept alone at my aunt’s manor,” Raymond continued. “Do you think I would casually dishonor one of her maidens? And last night I did not go to bed at all.”

  “Liar!” Alys spat, hardly waiting for him to finish.

  Now indignation roused Raymond. “I do not lie!” he snapped. “Why should I? What business is it of yours with whom I sleep? I would not deign to lie—”

  “You yellow-bellied cur, you do lie!” Alys flung herself out of bed at an angle so that she could better confront her husband. “I have found your mistress, though you bade her hide from me, and I do not deny she must be richer meat than I am. Go to her bed! Feast well! But do not think you can throw me scraps from that feast and thus content me.”

  “Mistress! What mistress?” Raymond roared, the shock of hearing his wife call him a yellow-bellied cur having kept him silent just long enough for Alys to finish her tirade. “I have no mistress here nor in any other keep! And what if I had? It is not your place to tell me how to regulate my life.”

  “Is it not?” Alys was no longer screaming. Her voice was low, but clear and deadly cold. “Perhaps not, but I can regulate my own. I will not take between my legs a man who has so little love for me, so little sense of decency in his own behavior, that he will keep a mistress in the same house to which he brings his new-wed wife.”

  “I tell you I have no mistress!” Raymond bellowed, thoroughly enraged.

  Now the other side of the coin was showing. Before, knowledge of his own innocence had prevented Alys’s shafts from hurting him. Conversely, however, once he began to be angry, he became much more angry because he was unjustly accused.

  “And I tell you I found Lucie, despite your orders to her to hide from me. I will not permit you to use me to father legal sons while you disport yourself for pleasure elsewhere.”

  “Permit? Who are you to permit or not permit? It is a wife’s duty to bear sons no matter what her circumstances.”

  Alys’s unwise tone of arrogance deprived Raymond of his last remaining shreds of self-control. He had not slept in forty-eight hours, and in that time he had killed a man and had a soul-shaking confrontation with his father that swung him from despair and bitterness to euphoric happiness. He had come home to share that happiness with the dearest treasure of his life, certain of a joyful and passionate greeting from her. Instead he had been rejected and foully missaid.

  Disappointment, rage, and fatigue swirled together and blocked all his ability to think. There was nothing left of rational humanity in Raymond, and the frustrations and hatreds of years of dealing with his mother, of feeling helpless and controlled, exploded in him. Reacting like an animal whose prey was escaping, he struck at Alys. The blow would have felled her unconscious, but she had stepped back, frightened by the distortion of his features. Moreover, fatigue had thrown off Raymond’s aim and timing.

  The blow fell glancingly on Alys’s shoulder but was still strong enough to knock her off her feet. She scrambled away on her knees, but Raymond on his feet was much faster. He leapt at her, hit her again, then seized her and shook her so hard that he nearly broke her neck. Alys struck back at him feebly, for the
blows and the shaking had made her dizzy, but that served only to incite Raymond further. Mad with frustration and rage, he now had no real awareness of himself or Alys as people. She was only a creature that he knew he must subdue. He cast her on the bed and threw himself atop her.

  Her momentary weakness past, Alys struggled fiercely. She struck and scratched at Raymond’s face, but he seized her wrists. Then she made a fundamental mistake and tried to kick. Raymond’s legs slipped between hers. She writhed and heaved, trying to push him off, but his weight was far more than she could lift. Actually, when Raymond struck and seized Alys, he had desired conquest, not rape. But now, of course, the form of conquest Raymond desired had been made plain to him. The twisting and plunging of Alys’s body, a grotesque mockery of sexual intercourse, served to stimulate him into animal rut.

  He pulled one of her arms brutally across her face so that he could seize both her wrists in one hand. With the other he reached down to position himself, but Alys tried to bite his hand. She kicked, dug a heel into the back of his knee, twisted her hips desperately to prevent him from settling his shaft properly. Her efforts were in vain and worse than vain because they only served to anger and excite Raymond more and more.

  However, Alys’s struggles produced one advantage. By the time Raymond impaled her, he was so inflamed that only a few thrusts brought him to climax. He was aware, in those few seconds, of Alys still writhing to free herself and screaming with hatred and revulsion, but the words, if there were words, were meaningless to him, and with the outpouring of his seed the last flicker of energy left him. He was instantly so deeply asleep that his condition differed little from unconsciousness.

  Alys wrenched her wrists from her husband’s relaxed grasp and heaved. He was limp, a dead weight, and she was exhausted, but her outrage would not let her rest. She pushed and twisted until at last she was free. At this point Alys was little more rational than Raymond had been. All she could think of was driving him away, and she stood gasping, looking for a weapon.