Wonderful (33 page)

But the irony was, he no longer cared about riches and dower gifts. He did not need them to bribe him to wed his wife. Not even for Camrose, which had been the prize he had first coveted.

He knew with surety that he would have gladly fought every knight of the realm for the privilege of wedding her, even if she’d come to him in nothing but sackcloth and ashes.

A moment later, he scooped her up into his arms and turned toward the bedchamber, striding through the doors and kicking them closed behind him.

Clio’s plump maid spun around and gasped when she saw them.

“Leave us!” He ordered, nodding at the doors. “Now!”

“Merrick!” Clio said, half scolding and half amused.

“Wait!” He looked down at his wife. “Did I mistake your desire, wife? Do you wish her to watch? Or perhaps join us?”

His words hung there.

In a flash the doors flew open and slammed shut.

He laughed loud and hard. “Your maid moves faster than Roger.”

Clio slapped his shoulder. “You are terrible.”

“Aye, but I wager she’ll not bother us if she thinks I have the kind of appetite that desires a threesome.”

“Three people?” She snorted. “Stop jesting.”

He just smiled at the stubborn, yet innocent disbelief in her expression.

“Do you truly think me to be that gullible?”

“I suppose not,” he said, trying to look serious and chagrined for her sake.

“It makes no sense. There is naught for the other person to do.”

He dropped Clio on the mattress and pinned her there with his body, deciding to end the conversation, since it would not matter. She was all he could ever want.

He lowered his head and kissed her the way he had wanted to all morning, long and leisurely and with all of the feeling that was in his heart.

For the longest time he had thought a woman could never be important to him. His life was war and battle and pride.

There had been no softness in his life. No woman who was a part of it, not since he was a lad of six, when he was fostered away from his mother, the only woman he could say he was ever close to knowing.

Though she had given birth to him, she was naught but a memory. A cipher in his past life with black hair and a soft voice, but nothing more.

Later, as he was loving his wife, sharing a miracle that humbled him it was so intense, he struggled to see how very deeply he could be inside of her. He sought to touch her soul with the essence of who and what he was, to bind them together forever, because he knew then he had not lived, not truly, until her.

The Tale of the Alewife

My wife she was a brewer,
I brought her barley malt,
She turned it into magic ale,
Instead of what she ought.
But no one yet did realize,
The power of the brew,
For they gulped it down.
Without a frown.
Or even one small clue.

— 13th-century Welsh Folklore

Chapter 35

Time moved by swiftly. Soon the scarlet poppies that had bloomed in the stubble of early spring turned into summer nightshade, then into first glimpses of Michaelmas daisies with their bright yellow centers.

Only the day before, Clio had noticed that the leaves on the cherrywood trees by the eastern road had begun to turn brown at the tips. On the last market day, the villagers had seen a flock of wild swans flying overhead. So once again, the season was beginning to change, much as life at Camrose had changed.

The wide moat and stone bridge were completed. There were two walls between the keep and the moat, each with two huge iron portcullis gates and plenty of missile holes. Merrick had been pleased.

All the old stone and wood walls had been reinforced, and the parapets were revamped to protect archers and the oilmen, as well as the guard lookouts.

Most of Merrick’s major protective changes were done or close to being done. The masons and carpenters had started enlarging the keep, adding another wing off the eastern side, with drawings sketched for bedchambers with chimneys and other comfort rooms to house the family and provide quarters for the frequent visitors who came to Camrose.

The borders themselves had been quiet, but word came of trouble in the north, near Rhuddlan, and a few random incidences as far south as Radnor. Merrick changed the construction of garrison quarters to areas over both barbicans, then had to go to the coast to oversee the shipments of badly needed building supplies: mortar and stone, iron and oak timber, that came by ship from England and was unloaded at Cardiff.

Now, there were times when Clio walked through the castle and could not believe this was the same place she had come home to, the castle the Welsh had ransacked.

Once again, as in her youth and the heyday of Camrose, the whitewashed and freshly plastered walls were hung with rich imported tapestries, and every stone floor was warm with an exquisite Turkish or Moorish loomed rug.

Their wedding gifts had been dispersed to special places throughout the castle, a brass birdcage with turtledoves in a niche in the solar, an urn with a base of blown Venetian glass sat near a new window with precious diamond-shaped glass panes that when you gazed out of them, made the late August sky look wavy.

The old rough furniture, beds, tables, and benches, and old cooking pieces were given to the servants and villagers. Copper pots and huge kettles lined the kitchen boards, where new ovens crafted of cast iron lined the bakery walls, and seven open spits had mechanical wheels that were run by water weights and could each easily turn a side of beef.

Brother Dismas had returned from a pilgrimage to Rome; he was a whole new martyr, full of the latest in superstitions and papal pronouncements.

He refused to eat anything with walnuts, because of course everyone knew that witches and spirits gathered under the black walnut trees. Two weeks before, he had taken to wearing blue because witches didn’t like blue, it being the color of heaven.

While the monk was gone, poor Sir Roger had become the target of Old Gladdys’ trickery, and not a week passed that someone about the place didn’t have a new tale or jest to tell about her hot pursuit and tormenting of Sir Roger FitzAlan.

He showed up at supper one eve just before he left with Merrick wearing a rich, new royal blue surcoat. A few moments later, Old Gladdys, with her winking eye and dandelion hair, walked into the great hall dressed in a robe of vivid sky blue. She sat down right next to Roger.

But this day, Clio awoke to the long rays of late sunshine slipping through the new west window that Merrick had ordered for their bedchamber. She sat up suddenly, flinging back her long hair and frowning.

What hour was it?

She glanced toward the mercury clock, a saint’s day gift from Queen Eleanor, that sat across the chamber on a small burlwood table with an onyx top. She squinted at the hour, still seeing double from waking up to that amber sunlight.

’Twas late, well past Sext. She wiped her eyes with a hand. Over half the day was gone.

What is wrong with me?

For the last fortnight she kept sleeping later and later, no matter if she went to bed well before Compline.

She started to rise, but the room swam before her eyes. She sat back down quickly, shaking her head, then fell back on the bed until the lightheadedness passed.

The chamber door opened, then clicked closed, but she didn’t look up, just lay there instead with her arm slung over her eyes.

The steps that pattered across the room were light, not manly like Merrick’s.

’Twas Dulcie, she thought, then heard the light sound of pouring water.

She lifted her arm and peered across the room.

It was her maid.

She took a deep breath and pushed herself up, her arms still propping her up.

Dulcie stared at her with a sharp and disapproving frown, as if sleeping so late were a cardinal sin.

Ignoring her, Clio arched her back and stretched her fists high in the air, yawning again.

After twisting this way, then that, she admitted, “I am so very tired.”

“I do not know why when you slept for most of the night and day.” Her maid sounded snippy. It seemed she truly missed that troubadour who had sung at the wedding.

“I know.” Clio sighed wearily. “Perhaps it is because Merrick has been gone. I sleep better when he is here.”

“You sleep less when he is here,” Dulcie pointed out.

Her maid was right. They never slept for more than two hours between loving.

So she sat there, hopeful, but uncertain, afraid to get too excited. Perhaps her wish for a child could be coming true. In her heart, though, she did not want to be let down again. She was almost afraid to want it too much.

After a long stretch of silence, she asked, “Do you think I might be carrying a child.
Finally
?” She wanted so badly to give Merrick a child. A babe that was part of both of them, a symbol of their love.

For the past six months, since the day they had wed, she’d hoped and prayed, only to have her hopes dashed when the new moon came and with it, her body’s signs that she was not breeding.

“You cannot be with child. You just had your woman’s flow.”

“Aye.” She did not know what was wrong with her then. This lazy, listless feeling. With another wistful sigh like so many over the last few months, she washed and dressed, deciding she needed to do something to take her mind off her woes.

By the time the sun was setting, Clio had finished a fresh batch of ale. It had taken longer this time, for it was only she and old Gladdys working in the brewery. Ever since that early spring, Thud and Thwack spent most of their days training under the tutelage of the squires and the other knights.

She still sought the secret Pict ale, but had had little success. She thought she had hit upon something special when everyone who drank the brew began to sneeze.

Even Merrick. But then she found out one of the cook’s lads had spilt precious pepper in the ale ewers and was afraid to tell anyone.

For this day’s brew, Old Gladdys had arranged the water pots in a ring, like the fairy rings and sacred stones in the western hills. Then she had staggered the latest herbs and other ingredients according to their cures and whether they bloomed with the sun or the moon.

The supper bells rang loudly, and Clio’s head popped up. She had dozed off again. Frowning, she scanned the room.

Old Gladdys was sitting in a willow chair, braiding marsh reeds into herb baskets.

“How long did I sleep?”

Gladdys shrugged, “As long as your body needed.”

’Twas the third time that day she’d dozed off. “I wish I knew what was wrong with me.”

“You don’t know?” Old Gladdys threw back her head and laughed. “Married to a bull like your dark lord and you cannot think of what is wrong?” She shook her fuzzy white head. “Foolish girl.”

“I just had my woman’s flow. I cannot be breeding.”

“Some women have their flow every moon until the babe is born.”

“They do?”

She nodded.

“Then how can I know if I am breeding?”

The old woman studied her for a long time. “Stand up.”

Clio stood. Old Gladdys got up and walked around her three times, rubbing her chin and eyeing her belly.

She stuck out a bony finger and poked her in the tip of her breast.

“Ouch!” Clio grabbed herself. “Why did you do that?”

“Your breast is tender?”

Clio nodded.

“And you sleep all the time?”

“Aye.”

“Here, spit in my hand.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

Clio did.

The old woman rubbed her hands together then wiped them on a cloth she took from a leather pouch that hung from her robe. She walked over to the cooling ale pots and waved the cloth over the coals while she chanted some Welsh song.

The cloth caught fire and she swirled around and threw it across the room.

“Hurry!” She waved her hands at Clio. “Stomp out the fire with your left foot.”

Clio ran over and stamped the fire out.

Gladdys hunkered down and stared at the ashes for the longest time, then she looked up at Clio. “Press on your other breast.”

Clio did and flinched.

“Is it sore, too?”

“Aye.”

Gladdys straightened. “You have a babe in your flat belly that should be born about the time of the Easter bonfires.”

Clio prayed she was truly hearing those words and that she wasn’t dreaming. “Truly?”

“Aye.”

Clio stood there, afraid to believe it and afraid not to.

“What made you think you were not breeding?” Gladdys asked.

Clio search the old woman’s crinkled face. “Perhaps the fact that I had not put out any fires with my left foot?”

The old woman cackled and cackled. “You are not so gullible as some of the others.”

“Please tell me the truth. I have to know the truth.”

Gladdys gave her a direct and honest look. “You are breeding.”

“Dulcie said I could not be with child,” Clio mumbled.

“Did she now? She should know, a maiden who swears to all that your ears will fall off if you kiss under a full moon.”