A Knight's Vow Read online

  Alyson stared at the broom in her hand, wondering why she had wasted time climbing to the battlements for a glimpse of a man who did not want her when there was so much to be done.

  “You have been a fool,” she told herself harshly as she sped back to the staircase leading down to the bailey. But she knew that given the choice afresh, she would do the same. She had loved Guillelm the youth, and surely the man could not be so very changed? He had been far from indifferent when he kissed her. She could not forget the devastating tenderness of his embrace.

  He has seen seven years of war, the sensible part of her mind warned her. He will have known horrors that you can only imagine.

  Yet he has brought no bride with him and he has asked you to marry him, Alyson answered herself with the stubborn, unquenchable optimism of one-and-twenty. “I feel-I knowthat I can love this man, that he is well worthy of all love,” she said aloud, her feet quickening on the treads of the staircase. “So why should I not agree to this marriage? After all, I risk no other but myself.”

  Hoping that her bold words would not prove false, Alyson sped out of the shadowy staircase into the pallid sunshine, preparing to make her way to the stables, then to the kitchen. New strewing herbs were needed for the great hall, and she must check that there was sufficient fodder for the horses and look over the sheep pens and see how Edwin the shepherd was faring. He had been sick with the fever, but not so badly as some of the others.

  Approaching the heaving sheep pens, Alyson heard Edwin’s panicky, “No!” and she saw a small black lamb leap from the tall shepherd’s flailing arms and go jinking wildly across the bailey. With Edwin’s shouts and the mother ewe’s deep bleating in her ears, Alyson dropped her broom and cut through the milling groups in the yard toward the incoming ranks of soldiers, her outstretched arms reaching for the lost lamb.

  The black lamb skidded away from another woman who tried to seize it and bounded closer still to the men in armor and their huge, glossy mounts. Alyson put on a spurt of speed to intercept the tiny, mewing creature before it was trampled underfoot.

  “Caught you!” she cried, her spirits lifting for an instant as she snatched the small squirming body out of the way of the hulking warriors, with their spears, scabbards, and iron-shod warhorses.

  “You, girl! Get back!”

  Too late, Alyson realized just how close she had come to the incoming troops. A warrior in full harness, his face hidden by his iron helm, was bearing down on her, atop a massive bay charger. As the man made no effort to turn or slow the highstepping horse, she flung herself out of its path, where it passed by her so close that she could smell its shining coat and feel the slap of the embroidered saddle cloth against her cheek. She gasped angrily, a protest echoed more vocally by several in the bailey, especially Sericus, who had just appeared on the outer stairway of the keep.

  “Hey! Watch where you are going!” her loyal seneschal bawled, his usually sallow face turning red with indignation. “You almost crushed your own-“

  “Stop your blathering, old man,” came the cold response from the warrior on horseback, an insolent reply that had Alyson’s quick temper boiling.

  “How dare you speak to Sericus in that way!” she shouted up at the tall, disdainful figure, quickly handing Edwin his black lamb as the shepherd pushed through the now encircling men and horses to join her. From the corner of her eye she saw Sericus limping quickly down the steps to do the same and called out, “Stay back! I will deal with this.

  “Now, sir,” she continued, fixing her eyes on the man who had almost ridden her down, “would you care to explain yourself?”

  Tossing the reins of his charger to another mounted knight, the warrior on horseback dismounted in a clatter of armor and spurs. “Who are you to demand anything of me, girl?” he asked in the same dry, cold voice as before, glaring down at her in clear disdain. “It was your own folly that caused this.”

  “And what if the lamb had been a child?” Alyson blazed out in return. “What of my shepherd’s livelihood, which is, I deem, as worthy as yours! More, for it is the arts of peace and tending of new life, without which you soldiers would have nothing. You made no attempt to avoid us!”

  “Should I ruin my horse’s mouth for your stupidity?” Stepping even closer, the arrogant stranger suddenly grabbed her arm. “Perhaps a beating will teach you better manners before you go about your serving duties.”

  “Do not!” Alyson ordered, appalled that he should actually lay hands on her. Catching a glimpse through his battle-worn helm of a thin, sneering mouth and glinting blue eyes, cold as the sky above them, the thought came to her, this man is my enemy, and for an instant she knew real fear. “No!” she cried, struggling furiously in his grip. “Stop!”

  “I think not,” said the stranger, ignoring cries of outrage and warning from others in the bailey as he drew back his arm to strike her.

  “Enough! Release her!” Mowing a path through the soldiers and horses, Guillelm’s face was dark with anger, a smoldering rage rising off his powerful frame as a palpable force. Against that, even the fully armored stranger visibly paled, letting go of Alyson as if she burned.

  “You are unharmed?” Guillelm asked as he reached her, his large hand brushing her arm where the stranger had manhandled her.

  “Yes, but-“

  “Then I will deal with this. I bid you go to your room”

  He was ordering her away as if she were a child. Alyson’s relief and gratitude at his timely intervention turned to indignation. “Did you see what happened?” she demanded in a low, taut voice. “This man has insulted members of my household “

  Guillelm’s face stiffened. “This man, as you call him, is my own seneschal.”

  “That excuses his conduct?” Alyson asked, scarcely believing what she was hearing. “He insulted me!”

  If possible, Guillelm’s eyes became colder still. “And how would he know what was due to you, my lady? Given the manner of your dress?”

  Aware that the stranger was now smirking, Alyson lost her temper completely. “If I dress discreetly that is my choice! As for dues, if I was a serf I would still be owed courtesy and gentleness from this knight. You train your people very ill!”

  She turned to leave, but Guillelm overtook her after only two steps. “In here” He half-guided, half-carried her into the stables, not stopping until they had reached an empty stall. “Now, my lady Alyson.” He barred the stall entrance with his own body. “You will go to your chamber as I have requested. This is the second time you have been mistaken for a little serving maid by one of my men and it must not happen again. I do not wish to see you in this yard or anywhere in this castle, until you are dressed in a manner more fitting to your station and to me”

  That was all he cared about-how she reflected on him, Alyson thought, her mind fizzing with fury at his words, his insulting reference to her as a “little serving maid,” and his earlier action, where he had drawn her ahead of him into the stables as if she were no more than a handcart. She was still more concerned with what he had just told her about the knight who had almost beaten her.

  “That seneschal of yours-is such a person to replace Sericus, who is worth twice of him?” she demanded.

  “Be at peace, my lady. They will work together, or I will know the reasons why not,” rumbled Guillelm, his face in shadow.

  “I hope you are right, my lord,” she answered, angry and alarmed for Sericus and still smarting over what had almost happened. “He should have known I was of gentle birth from the manner of my speech!”

  Guillelm frowned but somehow looked less forbidding. “Yes, I am surprised myself that he did not recognize your true station from that,” he admitted grudgingly. “Unlike Thierry from last night, Fulk speaks English well and if he had listened properly he should have known at once”

  He shook his head, his lips shaping into a rueful smile. “But then, my lady, we both know that I myself mistook you for a maid, and that even after you had spoken to me
°”

  “Then you did not listen properly, either!” Alyson retorted, furious afresh at his admitting this and blushing as she remembered their kiss.

  He touched the shoulder of her plain brown gown with a fingertip. “It is the woman we see first-“

  “I will dress as I please!”

  “And how will it be for our formal betrothal ceremony tomorrow?” he asked with dangerous mildness. “Will you appear in beige, in undyed homespun?”

  “No! I ” Alyson had not forgotten the ceremony, but hearing Guillelm speak of it brought their betrothal, and eventual marriage, that much closer. Suddenly, she felt dizzy, lightheaded. She pressed a hand to her stomach, glad she had eaten no breakfast. For an instant, she could not say if she was pleased or terrified at the prospect, but then she caught a lost, almost haunted look flicker across Guillelm’s face. At once, a great surge of protectiveness rushed through her-she had called him dragon and now if she could she would slay dragons for him.

  “I will not shame you,” she said tartly, using irritation as a shield to hide these feelings as part of her wished to comfort him as she had as a girl, by flinging herself about his neck and hugging him tightly. “You will have no further cause to reproach me ””

  “Mother of God!” Guillelm folded his arms and took several deep breaths, clearly trying to control his temper. In a gentler, more careful way, he asked, “Why are you in such plain attire, Alyson, as if in training for the convent?”

  She had been, many years earlier, and the strictures of the nuns against worldly vanity and needless show were lessons she found hard to shake off, Alyson thought, touched by his use of her name. There was another, closer reason why she had dressed simply, but that was more personal and painful. How could she possibly tell Guillelm, who had just lost his father, that Lord Robert had burnt her better gowns? That he had envied her youth and learning? Guillelm must never know such things, she vowed, determined to preserve his memory of his father.

  “You know I have little interest in clothes,” she said, which was half a lie and half the truth. Guillelm, however, was not convinced.

  “But why so drab?” he continued gently. He studied her a moment, a slight stiffening coming over his long, lean body as a look of wariness replaced his earlier concern. “Was it my father’s wish?”

  “I-” Remembering Lord Robert’s angry and soon-ignited jealousy, Alyson looked down at the hay-strewn stable floor, conscious of the shifting horses and grooms around them. She prayed her face had given nothing away, but Guillelm had always been quick at reading her moods.

  “So you dressed to please him,” he said, all previous gentleness stripped from his voice. “Then there will indeed be little change for you, my lady. You dressed to please your old lord and now you will dress to please your new lord.”

  She had to try to make him understand, and without telling him too much that would dishonor his father’s memory in his eyes, Alyson thought, as Guillelm unfolded his arms, his face as unyielding as stone. “Please, you must understand-” she began desperately, but he would not listen.

  “I must discipline the knight who mistook you,” he said harshly, “though I think it hard on him, for he fell victim to a woman’s wiles. And I doubt if he will wear your favor too quickly after this, my lady.”

  With a mocking bow he turned and strode back into the yard, leaving Alyson with the image of his contemptuous smile and, far worse, with the dreadful fear that she had made a terrible mistake in hoping that one day he might ever come to love her as a husband should his wife.

  Returning to deal with his own man, Guillelm clamped down hard on the feelings of jealousy that his latest encounter with Alyson had provoked. Bitterly aware of the mutterings and pointings, the scandalized faces of her people in the bailey, he crossed to his knights, warning himself to keep his anger in check.

  Only that morning, just after dawn, he had walked into the enemy camp, alone and unheralded, in his long cloak and the jazerant that an Arab armorer had ornamented with his own personal symbol: a dragon rampant, breathing a coil of fire. By the time Etienne the Bold knew that he was there, he was in the mercenary’s tent, crouching by the man’s rough pallet of straw, his knifepoint at his enemy’s throat.

  “The Lady of Hardspen is to be my lady and I will suffer no insult, no slight to her,” he told Etienne. “You will leave now or fight me, man to man, in single combat”

  “But how did you come here?” Etienne stammered, his lean, weather-beaten face breaking into a sweat as he realized that none of his men were about to rescue him.

  Guillelm smiled. “Straight through your lines, even as I am. Several of your guards will have thick heads until sunset today; I had to knock them out to prevent them raising a general alarm.”

  “You are mad!” Etienne the Fleming gasped, his neck reddening where the point of Guillelm’s hunting knife rested. “Alone in an enemy camp”

  “I can move silently enough,” Guillelm answered, “and when no one conceives of a thing being possible, it is relatively easy to accomplish. Men see what they want to see, and none of your knights wanted to see me”

  “It is mad!” Etienne repeated. “Reckless!”

  Guillelm grinned at the charge, remembering Sir Henry’s bitter words and taking a certain satisfaction in proving Alyson’s father wrong. “Reckless perhaps, but my head is still firmly on my shoulders, as you see,” he observed. “This way is quicker and quieter, Etienne. Join one of King Stephen’s or Empress Maud’s war-bands; either will give you welcome and richer booty than you will get hereabouts.”

  “The pickings have been scanty, certainly,” Etienne muttered in French. “Not what I was promised.”

  Giving the mercenary another moment to reflect on that self-interested thought, Guillelm returned to his main point. “You can give Walter the same message: he leaves or fights. My men are fresh and seasoned from the Crusades. I suggest you both leave.”

  Recalling Etienne’s widening eyes as the Fleming imagined the likely outcome of such a contest, his stammered word of honor as a knight that he would stop the siege and leave the district, Guillelm permitted himself a grim smile. He had gauged the courage of the two men correctly. After he had stunned the Fleming with a deft blow and walked slowly through the stirring camp in the same easy way as he had come, he watched Etienne and Walter turn tail and leave without further struggle.

  Men he could always deal with, he thought. Perhaps that was how he should treat Alyson, as a kind of youth. He snorted, knowing the idea was impossible; she was too feminine. Yet brave. He had seen the end of her clash with Fulk-she had stood up to an armored knight and flung back just, round answers to Fulk’s arrogance and all for the sake of a stray lamb.

  In those moments, he had been so proud of her, and so furious at Fulk. If the man had actually hit her, he would be spitting teeth or worse by now, Guillelm thought, his hands tightening into fists. As he had closed with Fulk and Alyson in the yard, he had found his sword hand going straight to his belt, and if he had been armed, things might have gone very badly for Fulk. Yet Fulk was a man whom he trusted with his life, whom he had fought beside in the Holy Land, who had been his own second-in-command for six of his seven years in Outremer. Fulk would be his seneschal here, a reward for true service, and he could not have the man humiliated because of one sorry misunderstanding. That was why he had taken Fulk’s part in the bailey and remonstrated Alyson on her dress, an act he now regretted, for Alyson was right: Were she only a cottar’s child, Fulk should not have treated her as he did.

  He had been wrong himself, Guillelm admitted. She had not started the incident but, after his relief that she was unharmed, he was unfairly angry with Alyson also, and scolded her without cause. “She has bewitched me,” he growled under his breath.

  Yet he was not wrong to have offered her marriage. Her kiss had stirred him as the embrace of no other woman had ever done, even the voluptuous Heloise. The thought of her even smiling at another man acted like pois
on in a wound; he had to possess her or he would have no peace. And the people here loved her. He had been unjust when he called the Lady of Hardspen idle-Alyson was none such, and her servants repaid her with loyalty. Everywhere he went in the castle he had heard the same words, “The little mistress helped with that; she is a good, true lady.” He had seen her own weariness for himself, when he looked in on her sleeping in her chamber just after her maids had risen. She had not stirred when he placed his cloak over her, except to sigh and curl the fingers of one hand about the collar.

  When he thought of those same narrow, workworn hands touching him, he marveled at the idea. She was still unafraid of him, fighting him even in the stable, where for a dreadful moment she had seemed confounded, genuinely terrified, before she rallied, tossing words at him as if they were spears. He had been torn between amusement, a guilty shame at the justice of her complaints, and irritation at being so wrong-footed by a girl of one-and-twenty. Perhaps with her he would prove Juliana and Heloise wrong; perhaps he might even be able to woo her, as he had thought of doing ever since seeing her again.

  But only if you can quench your own envy of your father, Guillelm’s conscience warned. “I know that,” he said under his breath, anger stirring in him again. Dressing to please his father, that miserly, crabbed old man! “She will do the same for me and more,” he vowed darkly, trying to put all thought of Alyson from his mind as he walked up through the lines of his own men to a glowering but distinctly nervous Fulk.

  Chapter 4

  Stalking into her chamber, Alyson was disconcerted to find her nurse kneeling at one of the store chests, lifting out bolts of cloth, belts, gloves and other clothes. Two cloaks, three veils, a linen apron and a dark woolen gown were heaped across the bed as Gytha plunged a plump arm into the depths of the oak chest, murmuring, “I knew I kept these as more than a keepsake! I think the new lord will be very pleased, especially if Osmoda can find a matching veil for the blue-green gown …”