Keeper of the Dream (49 page)

She touched Arianna’s arm and the girl started. “Come, I will show you where you and Raine are to sleep.”

She led them up to the gallery above, to one of the
many small private sleeping chambers built into the thickness of the wall. Guests at Chester did not clutter the hall with their sleeping pallets at night.

Sybil pushed open a door and ushered the Welsh girl inside. “I’ve put the child and her nurse in an attic room. This chamber is somewhat shabby and cramped, I fear.” It was false disparagement, for in truth, the room was furnished with such luxuries as candles made of twisted beeswax and its own bed, whose coverlet was of green silk lined with beaver.

Raine’s wife whipped around when she saw that her child and its nurse had continued on up the stairs, led by a servant. For a moment, Sybil feared she would run after them. “Your babe will be well cared for, you mustn’t fret.”

Arianna turned back and a sudden smile brightened her face. Hers was a spare, striking beauty, Sybil thought with a pang. A beauty that men would find irresistible.

“I didn’t mean to be so rude,” Arianna said. “Of course she’ll be well cared for. And Edith can bring her to me when she grows hungry.”

“How I envy you the babe,” Sybil said, striving to spin a thread of friendship between herself and this self-contained girl who was Raine’s wife. She sensed a core of iron in Arianna of Gwynedd, hard and endurable like the ore mined from the black hills of her land, a strength that she herself had always lacked.
Perhaps if I had been stronger,
she thought, I
would have waited for Raine as I had promised.

“I’ve tried everything to conceive,” Sybil went on, to fill the silence. “From hanging mistletoe over the bed to drinking anise in wine. I’ve sent so many prayers up to St. Margaret, the poor woman’s ears must ache—if saints do have any ears.”

She stopped her babbling, feeling swamped suddenly with the old, familiar ache. God, God, she so wanted a child. For what sin was the emptiness of her womb a punishment?
For not loving Raine enough, or for loving him too much? If she had waited … What would have been their fate if she had waited?

To Sybil’s surprise Arianna took her hand and there was true sympathy in her dusky green eyes, but then she said, “You are young yet.” Sybil felt a flash of anger, for twenty was young, not twenty-seven.

As if to underscore her own youth, Arianna suddenly blew her breath out in a loud, gusty sigh, the way a child would do, and flapped her hand in front of her face. “God’s death … Is it always so hot in England?”

In spite of the closed shutters and thickness of the castle’s stone walls, it was warm in the chamber. Sybil was about to comment on the weather when Raine, who had lingered in the yard with his brother, appeared suddenly at the door. His gaze went directly to his wife, who had yet to notice him.

She stood in the middle of the chamber and pulled off her coif, shaking out her hair, and it fell like a cataract of autumn leaves down her back—red and gold and brown. She ran her hands over her breasts in an unconsciously erotic gesture, smoothing her bliaut. Raine watched his wife’s movements and Sybil saw his face grow taut and his eyes darken. But then Arianna glanced up at him, and he looked away.

For a moment Arianna simply stared at her husband’s averted face, and the tension between them could be felt in the air, as thick and stifling as the heat. “I’ll go see how Nesta has settled in,” she finally said, going to the door. She brushed past him as she left, but she no longer looked at him.

“She doesn’t like me, I fear,” Sybil said.

“She has little use for any Norman. Can you blame her?”

Sybil was taken aback by the hard edge to his voice. She had not expected him to leap so swiftly to his wife’s defense.

Raine unbarred the shutters, pulling them open with a squeak of leather hinges. He looked out toward the west, toward his land. The blue-gray hills of Tegeingl could be seen from this window. It was why she had put him in this particular chamber.

She came up and stood beside him so that she could see his face. “Do you find Chester changed since last you were here?”

“No. Not especially.”

There was the tiniest, almost imperceptible tick in one cheek. The last time he was here had been the day she married Hugh. He had come striding into the hall in the middle of the wedding feast. He had marched down the length of it, had stopped before her, had looked at her where she sat frozen in her chair, joy and fear and despair all churning within her breast at the sight of him, and she would never forget his eyes. Because there had been nothing in them, not pain or anger, not even regret. There had been nothing in his eyes at all.

He turned abruptly away from the window to prowl the chamber. He stopped for a moment to toy with the perch put beside the bed for a hawk that he didn’t have. But then hawking was a nobleman’s sport; it had not been a part of his childhood.

Servants appeared at the door just then bearing a tub filled with scented, steaming water. It was expected of the lady of the manor to assist the guests in bathing upon their arrival and Sybil felt a flutter of panic She wondered how she would be able to touch him without going into his arms, without his knowing just how very badly she wanted to be in his arms.

But he did not exhibit the least embarrassment at the sight of the tub or at the thought that she would be the one to bathe him. She had undressed him before, though not for such innocent matters, and it was the memory of all those other times that caused her hands to tremble as she pulled off his boots and helped him off with his tunic
She could feel the heat building on her face, and she could no longer look at him. When he was completely naked, he walked with unselfconscious grace to the tub and stepped in.

She took up a cloth and began to wash his back. From behind him, where he could not see her, she could look her fill of him. She noted the changes in his body. He had the hardness and strength of a man now, and the scars of a man as well. She looked down at the bowed nape of his neck, vulnerable for all his warrior’s strength, and in her imagination she kissed him there. She discarded the cloth, and with her bare, soaped hands she kneaded his shoulders, down over the battle-sculpted muscles of his chest, to the flat planes of his stomach. And though she felt wicked to be doing so, she looked to see if he had become aroused. He had not.

A sound brought Raine’s head up sharply. His wife stood just within the open doorway, caught fast within a beam of sunlight blazing through the window. It flashed off the bronze torque she wore around her neck, encircling her throat with a ring of fire. And as they looked at one another, she and Raine, something leapt between them, hot and bright, like the fiery circle around her neck.

Sybil knelt beside the tub, forgotten.

The alewife took Taliesin’s penny, cut it in half and gave him back the change. The squire passed to Arianna one of the clay flagons brimming with ale, keeping the other for himself. He touched his cup to hers with a clink of pottery and flashed a wicked grin. “To love.”

“I’d rather drink to something else.”

The squire’s grin deepened, putting two dimples the size of half-pennies in his cheeks. “To swiving then,” he said, and Arianna couldn’t help but laugh.

The ale was hot from the sun and tasted leathery, but it quenched her thirst. Trying not to be obvious about it, she looked around to see if she could spot Raine. They had all
set off to walk to the fair together, but somehow she and the squire had gotten separated from the others.

Taliesin took her arm, steering her down the crowded path. Tents and stalls filled with a dizzying array of goods, and flaunting bright pennons lined the way. Soon Arianna began to notice how every female turned her head as they walked by. But then Taliesin, in his cloak of peacock feathers, outdazzled even the booths displaying silks and tapestries. He carried a gittern strapped to his back and several of the prettier girls called out to him, begging him for a song.

Up ahead a crowd had gathered, spewing cheers and shouts. Taliesin elbowed their way in to see what was happening.

It was a band of performing mountebanks with trick dogs, a tired old dancing bear, and a mangy lion in a cage. But what had drawn the crowd was a man who had woolly hair like a sheep’s and skin as black as soot, and with a flaming firebrand in his hand. Arianna watched with fascinated horror as the man tipped his head back and stuck the torch down his throat, seeming to swallow the fire.

Beside her Taliesin sniffed with disdain. “It is a base trick, milady. Easily accomplished.”

Arianna opened her mouth to ask the boy if he could do better, then thought better of it. If he really were
magi,
he could doubtless spit fire out his mouth like a dragon as well as swallow it, and she didn’t want a demonstration.

They had started to turn away from the fire-eater when a cloth merchant and his assistant stretched out a length of scarlet silk across their path, separating them. By the time she had walked around the shimmering river of silk, Taliesin was nowhere to be found.

Arianna felt a silly moment of panic to find herself abandoned and alone in the middle of the crowded fair. She spun around and nearly backed into a carved wooden soldier that was modeling a hauberk and helm for sale.
She walked fast, nearly running, past stalls selling copper pots, leather saddles, wooden tubs, and Saracen carpets.

Earl Hugh appeared suddenly before her, laughing as he rescued a tray of strawberry-jam tarts that she’d almost tipped into the dirt. “Arianna!” he exclaimed. “You look lost. I thought Taliesin was taking care of you.”

“That wretched squire,” she said, with a laugh that sounded slightly strained. “Doubtless some pretty wench caught his eye.”

Hugh led her down a path that was less crowded. He tinkled as he walked, for he bore a falcon with silver bells and varvels on his wrist. The hawk was dressed nearly as splendidly as his master in a hood embroidered with gold thread, pearls, and bright feathers.

They paused before a spice booth, and the smells of cinnamon and clove reminded Arianna of the day she and Raine had gone to the Rhuddlan market together. Somehow their problems had not seemed so insurmountable then. But that had been before he’d learned of her visions and turned away from her in fear and disgust.

Above the shouts of the moneychangers and the shopkeepers, she heard his laugh.

He had a distinctive laugh, deep, smoky. She turned and saw him, with Sybil at his side. They were watching the antics of a display of pet monkeys. Sybil tilted back her golden head and her laughter joined with his. Hers was light and tinkling, like a falcon’s bells.

She is too beautiful,
Arianna thought. She was so fair, so fragile. Her mouth was small and soft and always appeared on the verge of trembling open. Arianna felt ill as she looked at Sybil’s beauty. Beside this white-and-gold perfection, she was awkward and plain. This woman, who had known Raine’s kisses, had felt Raine’s body thrust into hers. This woman, who once knew Raine’s love.

Suddenly his head snapped around. Their gazes clashed and held, but, of course, she could tell nothing of his thoughts from the expression on his face.

She heard the trailing sound of Hugh’s voice, and she laughed although she had no idea what the man had said. But she turned to him and flashed her brightest smile. “You, my lord earl, are most skilled at gay and flattering talk.”

She let Hugh take her arm and lead her away. She knew Raine watched them. Let him be jealous, she thought. But she was the one who was jealous, she was sick inside with jealousy.

“I possess other skills as well,” Hugh was saying. His voice had turned low, urgent. “Certain skills in particular, which you might come to appreciate should you bestow on me the gift of your mercy, sweet Arianna.”

The gift of mercy. It was chivalry’s euphemism for sex.

She pulled her arm from his grasp. “I am married, my lord earl. To your brother.”

Hugh shrugged. “As if vows could bind a lady’s heart. Love does not belong in wedlock, my sweet. Besides, it would be a folly of the worse sort to give your heart to Raine.”

Too late. I already love him with all my heart.
She knew by the way Hugh was regarding her that her thoughts must show on her face, but she no longer cared.

Hugh seemed neither dismayed nor insulted by her rejection. “You and my wife both,” he said with a sigh, and then a ragged laugh. “Christ, I love him myself. When I’m not hating him.”

It was a strange sort of love Hugh must feel for his brother, Arianna thought, if he could so nonchalantly play with his brother’s life, and then try to bed his brother’s wife.

The song carried to her pure and sweet, over the tent-tops and heads of the crowd. “Listen!” she cried.

“What?” Hugh said, but she was already dragging him in the direction of the music.

It was Taliesin singing, she was sure of it, even before she saw him. He sat on an upturned ale keg, the gittern in his lap. When she pushed her way to the fore of the audience, mostly female, that surrounded him, he looked up at her. He brushed the fall of red hair back off his face and winked at her before singing:

At last, she thought, I will hear the rest of the story. She would know if the lady of the lake got her man. It seemed important to Arianna suddenly, as if the lady’s life and her own moved on parallel lines. If the lady won the love of her brave knight, then so, too, might Arianna win the love of hers.

She felt a presence beside her, and she knew without looking that it was Raine. She barely stopped herself in time from leaning against him, seeking the shelter of his arms.

In the song the knight had come back to his lady of the lake, defeated in his quest, and she taunted him, as well he deserved it.