A Knight's Vow (23 page)

Guillelm raked them with furious eyes. His knights were
still searching for survivors in the wrecked convent-friends
or foe-but these useless, lumpen youths should be good for
something.

“Get me that archer,” he spat.

“I will do so, my lord.” Fulk stepped into the circle, glanced
at Alyson’s still body and then turned, shouting for his horse.

“Sir 11

At first Guillelm thought it one of the squires, or the halfblind old militiaman he had led to safety from the burning
church.

“Do not scold them, sir. I rode in disguise.” The small,
breathy voice was Alyson’s. She was looking at him, her eyes
dark with pain and fear.

“Peace!” Guillelm took her icy hand in his, trying to will his
own heat into her. “We shall have you home safe, soon enough”

“I am sorry to be so much trouble.” Alyson tried to raise
herself on her elbow, gasped and fell back.

“Alyson!” For a dreadful moment, he thought she had died,
but then saw the quick rise of her chest and realized she had
passed out again. He should lift her from this burnt, wrecked ground as soon as possible, but what way would be best? In
his arms, on horseback? On a litter?

“Give me your cloaks!” he snapped at the hapless squires.
“Cover her with them. You! Bring me the infirmarer! You!
Make a fire here! You! Find Sir Thomas” He almost said Sir
Fulk, his natural second-in-command, but Fulk was off on another necessary task and one he longed to accomplish himself, though revenge on the archer would not save Alyson.

Live, please live, he thought. It was a prayer and wish in one.

“Where is that infirmarer?” he bellowed, above the steady
weeping of the prioress. He was growing incensed with the
lack of speed of everyone about him and exasperated with the
cowering, wailing nuns who had trailed after him like ducklings following their mother as he carried the helpless, vacanteyed head of their order away from her devastated convent. If
Alyson’s sister was in that drab company, why had she not
come forward to be with her? Was she so withdrawn from the
world that even the sight of her own flesh, broken and bleeding
on the ground, stirred no passionate care? “Is there no one?”

“I am here, Guido.” Calm as a rock in a sea of troubles, Sir
Tom leaned down from his horse. “What say I find something
to use as a stretcher?”

“Do it,” Guillelm answered curtly, “and tell your men to
search the infirmary for potions and such” A late thought
struck him, but he could not feel ashamed at it, not with
Alyson injured beside him. “See if any of our own men are
hurt, and tend them”

“They will not be hurt. Men never are” A small, slim nun
emerged from the smoke, her arms full of books and manuscripts.

“I am Sister Ursula, who was once Matilda of Olverton
Minor,” she said, calm as glass. “I have been in our scriptorium, where our true treasures are stored. The mercenaries did not recognize them as such.” Slow, careful, she laid the books
on the ground and only then looked at Alyson.

“Your infirmarer?” Guillelm asked, as Sister Ursula’s lips
moved in prayer. His hands itched to shake her out of her complacency; was this woman human? “Your sister is still bleeding.”

“The infirmarer is dead” Sister Ursula opened her eyes,
fixing Guillelm with a stare of utter dislike, mingled with distaste. “Our sister in Christ passed away eight days ago”

“Mother of God, have you no one who can help my wife?”

“Do not blaspheme against the name of our blessed Lady
of Heaven”

Sister Ursula stared at a kneeling squire striking sparks off
his knife to light a small, swiftly gathered bundle of kindling
until the youth shuffled out of her path. She knelt beside
Alyson, facing Guillelm across her sister’s body. “I will pray.”

“Please-” Guillelm felt to be out of his depth dealing with
this smooth, polished creature. He felt to be drowning in her
piety. If it had been a man he would have appealed to honor or
come to blows. How did women deal with each other? He
thought of his sister, Juliana, but their relationship had been
oddly formal, she being so much the elder and out of reach of
sibling contests.

Rivalry. The answer came to him as he recalled the scrapes
and scraps that he had seen and sometimes intervened in between brothers. It was a risk to employ it against women, but
what other tactic could he use? Luck and recklessness were
all he had left.

“If she could speak, Alyson could tell us how to treat her,”
he remarked, adopting Sister Ursula’s calm tones while
around him his squires and gathering knights held their
breaths against the approaching storm. Gently he had to do
this right. “She is an excellent healer.”

Sister Ursula said nothing.

“She told me you had no diligence in such matters,” Guil lelm went on, lying shamelessly and, worse, feeling no guilt
as he did so. “That you love books more than people.”

“She is wrong,” said Sister Ursula.

“You put your skill above hers, then? I have seen no other
to match her, even in Outremer.”

With a small shake of her head, remarkably like Alyson’s,
Sister Ursula unclasped her palms.

“I thought her judgment a little harsh, but I see that she was
right. She said you lacked the healing touch”

“What nonsense” Sister Ursula rose to her feet. “Build up
that fire,” she commanded. “I must have more light.”

Alyson remembered little of the return journey to Hardspen. Drifting in and out of a fevered consciousness, she was
aware in snatches. Guillelm’s anxious face, leaning over her.
The constant, throbbing pain in her shoulder. The hard, uncomfortable litter, made of lashed-together branches, that felt
like a bed of bones. She tried several times to tell Guillelm
that, on their slow ride home, but could only manage “Bones.”

He misheard and gave her a drink, something cooling. It
tasted strange, as if it was a potion but with parts missing. She
could not say what it lacked.

Tilda was in her dreams, sometimes lying beside her,
sometimes wiping her face and hands. Her sister never smiled
and did not speak to her.

There was weeping, too, a boy or woman crying. It tore at
Alyson because she could not help.

Sleep was easier and in sleep she felt nothing. She treasured sleep.

Guillelm offered the prioress his horse, Caliph, and
safe haven within Hardspen: a living space and refuge while messages were sent out to other convents within the order,
pleading for places for herself and her homeless, beleaguered flock. Sobbing, all the nuns gathered round him to
thank him, which embarrassed him greatly. On the journey,
the prioress continued to weep while her shivering, sootyfaced charges plodded along the track with their pitifully few
belongings, retrieved from the ruins and bundled into rough
homespun blankets. As they traveled, the nuns settled into a
dull, stunned quiescence, almost as disconcerting as the prioress’s endless grief.

“They are women,” Fulk remarked dismissively. He walked
with Guillelm, the crossbow he had taken from the mercenary
who had shot Alyson slung over his back. He told Guillelm
that he had ridden down the archer and another straggler from
the mercenaries. “They died screaming,” he said with relish.

Guillelm clapped him on the shoulder but could find no
words of thanks. Alyson was not screaming, but she might
die. Her sister had washed out her wound with one potion and
packed it with fresh cloths, ripped from Alyson’s own gown,
remarking casually that Alyson might be given another potion
to drink “whenever her pain is too great” Otherwise, she had
offered no comfort or hope. Seemingly indifferent to Alyson’s
suffering, she positioned herself at one side of the litter and
occasionally wiped beads of sweat from her sister’s forehead.
She appeared more concerned with the well-being of the convent’s books and manuscripts, keeping them close beside her
on the litter, sometimes dusting them off, running her fingers
down the spine of the largest Bible as a devoted wife might
trace her fingers down her husband’s back-as Alyson had
with him and might never do again.

Alyson had sneaked out with the squires. Alyson had saved
his life, shielded him with her own fragile, slender body. Her
courage appalled him. He was ashamed of his own rude
health and yes yes, he was angry at her. To put herself in danger for a sister who did not care-it was love but it was
also pride and folly. To do what she had done for him-did
she not think? Had she forgotten her reason? He wore armor!
The crossbolt doubtless would have pierced it, but he was the
leader; it was for him to undergo such trials, not her. Did she
think him feeble? Or did she not care that his own men might
think him weak or easily duped?

But she was so white, lying amidst the tatters of her torn
gown. As part of the madness of this entire night he missed
her silk veil and found himself wondering what she had done
with it. Was it pinned under that shabby, cow-brown hood?

“Hurry,” he muttered, aching to take her in his arms and
race back to the castle. Biting down on the order to march, he
told himself that they had to be slow, or her wound would
bleed more. The nuns would not be able to keep pace, either,
apart from Sister Ursula, who glided along beside Alyson’s
litter in the middle of the column, easy as a shadow.

Finally the tall walls and keep of Hardspen crawled over
the horizon and Fulk shook his arm. “Leave everything to me,
my lord,” he said in a low undertone. “I will send out riders
to the castle, ensure all is made ready for our return, and for
the comfort and housing of our unexpected guests”

Grateful for his support, Guillelm nodded. “As you ever
did in Outremer, Fulk.”

His seneschal gave a small bow. “I am glad you remember.”

Sister Ursula tried to keep him out of the main bedchamber while Alyson was being tended afresh, but Guillelm insisted on staying. “She is my wife.”

“And it is a pity that you did not take better care of her,”
Sister Ursula replied. “But then I have heard that you were
ever reckless, Guillelm de La Rochelle.”

The stinging rebuke made him boil with rage. Conscious of Gytha’s sympathetic look, the cowering embarrassment of
the other maids, he moved again toward Alyson.

A black-robed arm stopped him. “I will tend her.” Sister
Ursula turned back to the parchment-pale, still figure. Alyson
looked scarcely more than a sleeping child, her huddled
shape lost in the great bed.

“Please, let me help. Let me do something.”

The nun ignored Guillelm’s plea. Briskly, she stripped
Alyson of her cloak, veil, gown and undershift, asking at the
same time for this and that salve to be put within her reach
salves taken, with an irony that did not escape Guillelm, from
Alyson’s own potion store.

“Gytha, help me turn her,” Sister Ursula ordered. “Osmoda,
bring a candle closer. I need to be able to check that there is no
iron left in the wound”

With Guillelm left standing, feeling anxious, frustrated and
useless, by the foot of the bed, Alyson was rolled onto her
stomach. Even in her drugged slumber she moaned, wincing.

Sister Ursula washed the wound in Alyson’s left shoulder
and sniffed it. “Deep, but wholesome,” she announced.
“Whoever removed the arrow did so cleanly enough” She
glanced at the row of bottles and basins by her feet. “We
should pray first, before I use any of these potions or salves.
It is God who heals, not us”

“Wait,” said Guillelm, as Sister Ursula piously pulled the
rugs away to kneel on the bare flags. “What are those other
marks on her body?”

The nun ignored him, stepping back from the bed. “I have
changed my mind,” she said. “Any of my prayers would be
better offered up in the chapel, in the company of my order.”

Before Guillelm could even think of stopping her, Sister
Ursula slipped through the door and was gone.

Guillelm crouched in her place. The gouge in Alyson’s
back, slicing diagonally across the top of her shoulder blade and piercing through to just beneath her collarbone, was bad
enough, although Guillelm had seen similar injuries inflicted
on soldiers in Outremer and the men had always survived.
She was less cold to touch now, and the bleeding had stopped:
the dressings that her sister had earlier packed so tightly
against the torn muscle, sinews and chipped bone had
staunched the flow. He tried to think of the remedies the Arab
doctors had used but could not remember any. The shock of
seeing Alyson hurt had turned him simple, it seemed.

And there were those other marks …

Guillelm gripped the edge of the bed, disbelief and anger
exploding in his mind. “She has been beaten, many times,” he
said. He was struggling to keep still-his body and spirit
were screaming for revenge. He raked a hand across his chest,
unaware that he was drawing blood.

“Who did this?” he demanded, his free hand hovering a
palm-span above the line of one long, ragged scar, tracing
its painful track from the small of her back to the middle of
her thigh. “Was it her father?”

Osmoda whimpered and tottered for the door, intent on
escape, but Gytha said and did nothing.

“Answer me!” Guillelm punched the bed head, hearing its
timbers crack and splinter. Transfixed on the threshold, Osmoda
flinched, her scrawny face showing pure terror, but the old
nurse, although her complexion changed from apple red to
chalk white, looked at him with eyes full of understanding.

“She would not let me see her naked,” she said. “I suspected
but did not know for certain until recently.”

Osmoda moaned and fled, the wide sleeves of her gown slapping against the stones of the corridor as she hurried away.

“How recently? And who?” Such was the force of Guillelm’s building rage that he no longer could contain it. He
shook with it and the great bed also shuddered. “Mother of God, I have never willingly hurt a woman and I have no wish
to start now, but if you do not tell me-“