So Great A Love (33 page)

With an agonized cry, Arden began to thrust
into her. Released from immobility, Margaret moved with him,
meeting his every hard thrust, her passion mounting steadily,
fiercely, as he stroked into her over and over again, until she
dissolved into a pulsating sweetness so intense that she did not
know where she ended and Arden began. She cried aloud with the joy
of it, and in the next heartbeat she heard the wild shout that
Arden tried to smother in the pillow. He plunged deep into her one
last time and stayed there, shuddering with the force of his
release.

Margaret could not move. She did not think
Arden could move, either. He lay atop her, his face buried between
her shoulder and the pillow, and she knew he still lived only by
the way his heart

beat against hers and then, a few moments
later, by the deep breath he drew in as if his lungs were
completely empty, as if all the air had been forced out of him
during the last, intense, moments of his lovemaking.

Margaret's arms were still around him and
when she finally found the strength to move her hands, she tenderly
stroked Arden's back. It seemed to her that his frame lifted and
moved against her caressing hands, as if he longed for the comfort
of her touch. He lay as he was for so long that she began to think
he had fallen asleep.

Arden was not asleep. He was too shaken by
what had happened between him and Margaret to speak or to look into
her tender, trusting eyes. The bride he had unwillingly married had
succeeded in destroying every impediment he raised between them,
until he was no longer capable of concealing his desire from her.
Margaret was able to reach behind his shield of isolation to find
the man he once had been and to touch emotions he had long believed
were frozen for all time. After so many years of refusing to allow
himself to care about anyone or anything except his guilt, Margaret
had ensnared his heart in a matter of days. She had brought him to
life again.

For that precious gift Arden wanted to give
her the world in return. Tragically, all he could offer her was
heartbreak and disillusion, when she learned everything. For now he
was bound to tell her the same sorry tale he was going to have to
reveal to his father.

Margaret's warm, slender hands smoothed his
hair and stroked along his shoulders and down his back. Arden's
muscles responded to her touch, moving as if he possessed no will
of his own, lifting to make closer contact with her, as if her
fingers offered surcease from all guilt and all grief.

She continued to stroke and caress him until
his physical response went so deep and his longing to possess her
again throbbed so strongly within him that he knew it was time to
remove himself from direct contact with her. The hour for honesty
had arrived.

“At least I am still a man in the bedroom,”
he said, pulling away from her and sitting up. “Until tonight, I
did not think it was possible.”

“I never doubted it.” Margaret smiled at him
with love in her eyes. “Not for a single moment did I question your
manhood.”

“You live by faith and hope,” he said, “while
I have nothing left of either.”

Arden swung his legs over the side of the bed
and sat there with his back to her. Afraid he would leave the bed,
and that if he did, his thoughts would once again become distant
from her, Margaret moved to kneel behind him. Winding her arms
around him, she pressed her cheek against his bare shoulder. He
caught her hands where they were clasped together at his chest and
pulled them apart. Margaret feared he would free himself from her
embrace. Instead, he kissed the fingers of one hand and laid it
against his face. They sat that way, in silence, until she felt a
drop of moisture on her wrist, and her heart lurched in grief for
his pain.

“Dear husband, we are one flesh now,” she
said softly, hoping to convince him to confide in her.

“It's a fact you will soon regret.” His voice
was as soft as hers, and far more sad.

“Please tell me what troubles you so sorely.
If you speak what is in your heart, you may discover that speaking
eases the pain. You may say anything you want to me, and I will
never repeat it.”

His back stiffened and his fingers tightened
on her hands. He sat so still for so long that Margaret feared he
was too angry for words. He kept his back to her and she could not
see his expression. Then, to her surprise, he kissed both of her
hands and released them, and when he spoke again his voice was
gentle.

“You have brought me a comfort I never
thought to feel again in this life,” he said. “I have been trying
to hold on to that comfort moment by moment, because what I have to
tell you will make you despise me. I did not guess until this
instant how very difficult it would be to tell you what you have
every right to know.

“Stay where you are, there behind me,” he
said when she started to climb off the bed. “I am a coward; I
cannot face you and say what I must. I do not want to see the look
in your eyes.”

“You are not a coward, but I'll do as you
ask.” Margaret sat back on the bed, keeping her hands on his
shoulders, wanting to maintain that much physical contact with him,
so he would know he was not alone. “I am listening, Arden.”

“As you know, I went to the Holy Land in
company with my Uncle Oliver and my cousin, Roger,” Arden began.
“Oliver was my father's brother, younger than my father by only a
year, and they were close as twins. Aldis was to live at Wortham
while her menfolk were gone.”

Arden fell silent for so long that Margaret
feared he wouldn't continue.

“Tristan mentioned once that he joined the
three of you in Sicily,” she said, gently prodding him to speak
again.

“So he did, and from that day we four
traveled together.” Arden was quiet for a moment more, as if he was
choosing his words carefully. “By the time we reached the Holy
Land, most of it was already under control of the Christian armies
and had been for some years. The Saracens were determined to retake
their lost territories, especially Jerusalem, which is as sacred to
them as it is to us, and so they kept up a continual warfare. For
the most part, our Saracen foes behaved with as much chivalry as
did our own warriors. Sometimes, they were more generous,
especially in the treatment of prisoners. But in any war there are
villains, and on both Christian and Saracen sides there were bands
of men who broke away from their armies to lead a rough existence
out in the desert, where they were bound by no laws, save for the
few rules they made for themselves.”

Again Arden paused and Margaret,
understanding that what he had said so far was only a prologue,
kept her silence and waited for him to continue.

“One band of Saracen brigands was
particularly irksome near the area where we were encamped. Uncle
Oliver led a group of men, including Roger and me, into the desert
to seek them out and destroy them. Of course, the brigands employed
spies to keep them informed of our movements. The rogues knew in
advance that we were coming and they were lying in wait for us.
They took us by surprise and they killed every man in our troop
except my uncle, my cousin, and me. The three of us they bound and
carried away to their camp.

“We were angry at our defeat and we grieved
for our slain comrades, but at first we were not particularly
concerned for our own personal safety,” Arden continued. “We
assumed our captors intended to hold us for ransom, which was the
usual custom. We soon learned otherwise.”

Once more he stopped, and again Margaret
waited, sensing through her fingers still resting on his shoulders
the tension building in him. When he resumed speaking a new note in
his voice sent a cold shiver down her spine.

“What they wanted,” Arden said, “was to make
sport of us, to mock and debase us, while they forced Uncle Oliver
to watch. Five of them held me down, two at my wrists, two at my
ankles, with one sitting on my shoulders and grinding my face into
the sand, because I fought so hard against what they were doing. I
could hear Roger struggling and moaning nearby and I knew they were
doing the same to him. And over it all, through my pain and disgust
at what was happening, above Roger's cries and my own helpless
oaths and the cruel laughter of those bandits, the desert wind
whined across the sand dunes, singing a dirge for my manhood. How I
hate the sound of the wind!”

Peering over Arden's shoulder, Margaret
caught a glimpse of his face before he turned it away from her, and
she wondered if he was going to be sick.

“They tortured you,” she said, hoping to
spare him further painful explanation.

“It was torture, and worse than torture. They
did to Roger and me what no man should ever do to another
person.”

Margaret stared without comprehension at his
stiff shoulders and what she could see of his averted face, until
he spoke again.

“They did to my cousin and me what men too
often do to women who are captured during warfare,” Arden said,
adding in a bitter tone, “Can you appreciate the irony of it, when
the two of us and Uncle Oliver had repeatedly threatened death to
any man in our company who so mistreated an unwilling woman?”

“But, how could -?” Suddenly, she understood.
Horribly, sickeningly, she knew what he had endured and why, out of
shame, he held himself apart from all others, why he kept to
himself with such rigid control. Except for her. He had opened his
heart to her, trusting her with a truth so terrible that he could
barely bring himself to speak of it. Tears for his pain filled
Margaret's eyes; anger against his tormentors filled her thoughts.
“They did that to you? As if you were a woman?”

“Aye, as if I were a woman,” he repeated.
“But I was not a woman! I was a man, a knight and a respected
warrior! I cannot describe the helpless rage I felt in that hour of
degradation, a rage I still feel whenever I allow myself to think
of it. It's why I attacked Eustace yesterday.”

“Eustace?” Margaret repeated, startled by the
change of subject. “What has Eustace to do with what happened to
you?”

“He said I was not a real man,” Arden
reminded her. “I must tell you, Margaret, that I feared what your
brother said was true, that what I dreamed of finding in you was
only a false hope, that I was, as Eustace so mockingly said, no
longer a man. For after what happened, I was incapable of feeling
physical desire. You are the first woman I have wanted since that
day in the desert.”

“You are still a man,” she said. She was so
touched to hear him speak of finding hope in her that she had to
blink away tears and clear her throat before she could continue. “I
have always believed the best way to conquer a fear is to face it
directly. That is what you have done. You have proven your manhood
to me tonight, to my great pleasure and, I believe, to yours, also.
Let there be no more doubt in your heart on that score. Arden, tell
me, when did that dreadful event occur?”

“More than five years ago,” he answered.

“Where was Tristan? Did he not ride with you
that day?”

“No. Tristan was ill of a fever. A fortunate
illness,” Arden added. “I am glad he was not with us. If he had
been, he might well be dead, like Roger. Or worse, he might have
become like me. I am glad he was spared that horror.”

“Does Tristan know what happened?”

“You are the only person I have told,” Arden
said, “though there is one other who knows. When Oliver's troop of
men did not return to camp for two days and Tristan learned we were
missing, he got out of his sickbed to lead one of the search
parties looking for us. It was Tristan who found me wandering
crazed and half-dead in the desert and who took me back to camp.
There a captive Saracen physician, an honest and capable man, cared
for my injuries. He never spoke of the matter in any direct way,
but I could tell that he knew what had been done to me. When
Tristan or the other men came to visit me, my kind physician
attributed my fever and my continuing lassitude to the days I had
spent beneath the desert sun without water or adequate shelter, and
to grief from seeing all of my comrades killed.”

“How could you bear to stay there, in that
land, after what happened?” Margaret asked.

“It was months before I was recovered enough
to care where I was or to think of traveling,” Arden said.
“Isabel's father, Lord Garmon, was also in the Holy Land during
that time, and he and Tristan soon became friends. Almost a year
after Tristan rescued me from the desert, Garmon received news from
Aquitaine of the death of his older brother. The family title thus
passed to Garmon. I think he already harbored the idea of marrying
Tristan to his daughter, so he invited Tristan to go home with him.
Tristan suggested that I go along, too.”

“And so you all went to Aquitaine and Tristan
married Isabel,” Margaret said.

“It becomes a happier story when one speaks
of Tristan,” Arden told her with a twisted little smile.

“I wish your story could reach a happier
ending,” Margaret said. Then, after a moment during which she
considered how best to say what was in her thoughts, “Arden, is
there any way for you to put that horror behind you and let it fade
into the past?”

“If that one incident were all, perhaps, in
time, I could set it aside and go on,” he said. “But there is more
to tell, and the remainder of the tale cuts even more closely to
the bone and marrow of manhood and of honor. That part of my story
I must tell first to my father before anyone else; it's the reason
why I returned to England. And when he has heard it, I do not
believe my father will forgive me.”

“I do not find you at fault in any portion of
the story, as you have told it to me,” Margaret said, wanting to
give him what comfort she could. “I will never betray your trust in
telling it to me.”