Alinor (34 page)

Eventually, having unburdened his soul of its fears and frustrations, the man handed over his defaced scroll. Alinor begged that her guests would forgive her while she opened and read it at once. It had been overlong in coming, and she desired no more delay before the king's wishes were attended to. Ian bit his lip until he was able to control his mouth. Then he gave low-voiced instructions to Owain to see that the messenger was cared for, allowed to wash, fed and rested, and provided with decent garments instead of the foul rags he was wearing. Ian was happy to have something to hold his attention. He was not sure whether it would have been possible for him to control his expression when Alinor displayed the consternation and regret almost certainly called for by the message. Ian was not even sure what his expression would display because he was so torn between horror, anxiety, relief, and amusement.

He did miss Alinor's first fulsome regrets that it was impossible for her to obey the king's order, but he could not escape it all. She turned to him to grasp his hand with a pretty display of feminine appeal.

"He cannot break our marriage, can he, Ian? He could not part us now?"

Ian could have murdered her in that moment, not for what she said but for the way she was lying with her voice and her body, playing on the sympathies of the witnesses to make them believe she was a weak and frightened woman. There were a few faces, he knew, that had set like stone. Those men knew Alinor for what she was—William of Pembroke, Sir Giles of Iford, perhaps even Robert of Leicester—but none of those men would betray her. What was worse, she had maneuvered him so that he was forced to draw others into a tangle he had made himself with open eyes and felt was his to struggle with alone. Nonetheless, she had been too clever for him. If he did not fall willingly into the trap Alinor had set, he could destroy them both.

"I am no churchman," he replied stiffly, "but I am sure marriage is an affair of the Church and not of the king."

"Is this true, my lords?" Alinor cried to the three bishops.

Before Ian could guess what she would do, she had released his hand and run down from the dais. Ian could feel the color rise into his face. He thought he had been clever enough, answering without requiring confirmation from anyone. Now he saw he had played exactly as she expected, into her hands. All three bishops were assuring her aloud that what God had joined no man, save God's vicar on earth, the Pope, could part asunder.

"And there must be a real reason, must there not? Such as consanguinity or some other holy cause of wrong for the Pope to annul a marriage? It cannot be just for a political purpose?"

Peter des Roches of Winchester looked into the eyes of the woman he had just been—as he thought—comforting. It was fortunate for Alinor that he was a clever man with a marked sense of humor and a keen eye for a beautiful woman. He, too, saw the corner into which he had been backed. Before this crowd of witnesses, it was impossible for him to say aloud—what everyone knew—that political considerations annulled many more marriages than holy causes ever did. He shook his head infinitesimally, knowing Alinor would understand the signal. This once she had caught him, and he would do as she wished, but she was not to play such a game with him again.

"There is no reason of consanguinity or other holy cause to annul
this
marriage," he said, yielding graciously since he had yielded. "And no fate of nations— which, although political in a sense is also a holy cause in itself—can possibly rest upon it. Therefore I can say, and I believe London and Ely will confirm my words, that the king has no cause to ask that this marriage be set aside."

"I am most humbly grateful to your lordships for giving me this reassurance," Alinor said clearly so all could hear. "I hope I am a faithful and loyal subject; thus, it gives my heart ease to know I will have no occasion to contest the king's will. I am not sure he has the right to name a husband to me, but even so, I would have preferred to obey him and—to speak the truth—I could not have done so. However good and devoted servants Fulk de Cantelu and Henry of Cornhill are to the king, I could not have accepted either as a husband."

There was a gasp that echoed around the whole audience of men and women. Ian ground his teeth. That was what she had been aiming for from the beginning. Obviously she could not read the king's message aloud to the group. She had to find a way to communicate to them a piece of information that would enrage every well-born man and any woman who had any feeling softer than hatred for her. Sir Fulk and Sir Henry were the king's lickspittles and dogsbodies. They were low and brutal, lechers and sadists who were employed on those tasks any man of honor would flatly refuse even from the king.

In the minds of Alinor's guests, it was an offense that stank to heaven, that such men should have been proposed as suitable to marry Alinor. True, most of the male guests were indifferent to the brutality of the proposed grooms. What was offensive to them was that the men were outsiders, crude and common, whom, nonetheless, the king preferred to themselves. It was upon Fulk and Henry that favors were heaped. It was to them the king turned in his idle hours. And, if they realized that it was so because Fulk and Henry obeyed John without question, without remonstrating about honor and legality, so much the more offensive was the king's act. After all, the king's nobles were his natural advisors. It was his duty to take counsel with them and to act according to their advice.

The women, except for Isobel, were simply horrified by the thought of the life Alinor would have led. Isobel, who knew Alinor very well indeed, thanked God that such a marriage had not brought the sin of murder upon her friend. She might have wept and prayed and endured. Alinor would, Isobel knew, either kill the man herself or arrange to have him removed out of her way. Yet Isobel was in no way offended by Alinor's pretense of fear and frailty. Weakness was a woman's rightful weapon. Isobel had rather see Alinor using that than a knife.

The initial shock over, the guests crowded forward to offer oblique sympathy and, a few, open support. Alinor's vassals were at one on that subject. Many of them were fond of their overlady, but that was not their reason. The thought of having Fulk de Cantelu or Henry of Cornhill as their liege lord increased their loyalty to Alinor and Ian to fever pitch. Neither their wives and daughters nor their lands would be safe with such a lord.

Ian's vassals were less happy. They did not desire the enmity either of the king's favorites or of the king. Nonetheless, they came forward to pledge their support to Ian. It occurred to them that, Alinor now irrevocably being Ian's heir, if harm came to him they would be inherited along with her by any man to whom the king chose to give her. They had no more sympathy with the king's apparent choice than Alinor's own vassals; de Vipont was a good lord, honest in his dealing and quick to come to the defense of a man in trouble. Had they known the king's pleasure, they would have protested against this marriage, which would be contrary to it. However, none had known because of those accursed outlaws—and those, mostly, existed by the king's fault —so now it behooved them to stand firm behind their lord.

William of Salisbury was furious, but his anger was not directed against any person. How could it be? Plainly, Ian was as surprised and appalled as he himself was at what Alinor had done. Yet he could not blame poor Alinor, who was equally plainly frightened out of her wits by the choice of husbands offered her. Probably Ian should have warned her, Salisbury thought, not knowing that Alinor had read his letter, but he understood why Ian had not done so. Salisbury could not even blame John, poor John, who could never judge a man or a situation aright and who invariably and consistently did exactly the wrong thing. He would have to go to John as soon as he arrived in England, Salisbury thought, and explain what had happened. If he could convince John to accept this marriage graciously, little harm would be done. The king's kindness in forgiving a subject would overshadow his lack of good taste in desiring to enrich his faithful servants.

Shortly after dinner, before he departed, Salisbury said as much to Ian and asked about the disposition of Adam and Joanna. To Tan's relief, he did not seem at all put out by the inconclusive answers he received. He said he understood that Alinor would scarcely be able to give her mind to such matters in the midst of her own wedding. Ian had to be a little less discreet, but Salisbury still did not take offense. He said he was sorry not to have Adam, and then remarked with a laugh and in plain words on what Ian had phrased most delicately.

"Alinor is wrong about my wife. She will have to come to know Ela better, but I can see that attendance at court might not be what is best for a young boy of such high spirit, more particularly for Adam if my brother takes this marriage ill—which I hope he will not. And it is reasonable not to make double ties in one direction when there are only two children. I may hope, then, that Lady Alinor will agree eventually to the marriage of Geoffrey and Joanna? She has no objection to Geoffrey?"

"As to that, none at all," Ian replied, and then, since Salisbury had been very frank, he added, "She said plainly that she would be glad of him even landless and without legitimization, if he could take Joanna's fancy. Moreover, she added she would do whatever was in her power to turn Joanna's eyes in Geoffrey's direction."

"Then I am content."

Salisbury mounted the horse held ready for him and waved farewell as he clattered over the drawbridge, following his wife's party. Ian stood looking after him for some time before he turned and hobbled back toward the keep. It was a relief to know that Salisbury was not offended and that he would do his best to smooth matters over with John. That had been implied, of course, in his letter. Nonetheless, it was good to have his renewed promise in the face of the animosity toward John that Alinor had deliberately raised.

Ian was never deluded into believing in the band of outlaws, but he credited Alinor with even greater skill in management and duplicity than she had. All day, busy speeding parting guests and entertaining those who remained, Ian vacillated between fury at the way Alinor had used her guests and relief that the cause of the king's anger—if John decided to show his spite—would be well and widely known. That night, as soon as Alinor's maids had gathered up his discarded clothing and left the chamber, he turned on his wife.

"What outlaws? How did you dare?"

Alinor made no reply, quietly braiding her hair into two plaits as thick as fan's wrists. Ordinarily she did not braid her hair at night, but it had got in her way when she mounted her husband the previous night. As Ian had been on his feet a good deal this day and his knee seemed, from the way he was standing, to be painful, she thought it just as well to be prepared to play the more active role in lovemaking again.

"Did you hear me?" Ian snarled.

"I am not deaf," Alinor rejoined calmly.

"How dared you trap the bishops, Oxford, Llewelyn, your vassals and mine, even John's own brother and daughter into an open disapproval of the king's act?"

"Because it was an act worthy of disapproval."

"That is not what I meant," Ian bellowed. "You cannot befool me! There were no outlaws in the forest. I scoured it clean, and I know it was clean. It was your men who took the messenger. How dared you do such a thing?"

"I thought it better than adding open defiance of the king's will to the spite he already has against me. The messenger came to no harm. No blame can fall upon him for what clearly was not his fault. No blame can fall on us for what was not our fault Where have I done wrong?"

"You have lied with your eyes, with your mouth and your voice, with your body. You―"

"I will confess and do penance," Alinor said indifferently.

Ian choked. "Father Francis must have the penance for that engraved deep in his heart," he remarked bitterly.

Having finished with her hair, Alinor twisted on her stool to look at her husband. "Not really. I am not a liar by nature," she teased.

Ian's fists clenched, but he made an enormous effort of will. "Alinor," he said softly, "how long do you think two marks will keep the man silent? Will he not soon ask for more, and then for more?"

"What man?"

Her husband took a step forward, obviously near to losing his control. "You may lie to whom else you like, but not to me. Not to me!"

"On Simon's soul," Alinor replied, "I have spoken nor acted no lie to you in this room here and now— nor any other time. What takes place in this chamber is between your heart and mine, and I do not and will not lie."

That cooled Ian like a cold douche. What Alinor swore on Simon's soul was true; she might risk her own damnation, but not Simon's. His hands opened. "Let me understand you," he said reasonably. "Your men took and held the messenger prisoner?" Alinor nodded confirmation. "By whose arrangement, if you did not bribe him, did he come into the hall just after the swearing so that his business would be known to all so conveniently?"

"By God's or the devil's," Alinor replied soberly. "I swear it was not by mine. I told my men to release him this day, so much was my doing, but I made no other arrangement. How could I? I will confess that, could I have arranged such a thing, I would have gladly done it, but it seemed impossible. How could I know where the woodcutters would be working? How could I know whether a sheep might have strayed here or there to bring a shepherd after it? Without such knowledge, I dared not tell the huntsmen exactly where to release their prisoner. Then, he had to be left bound lest he try to follow those who had held him. How could I know how long it would take him to loose himself? Or how long it would take him to find his way here? I bade them leave him near the edge of the wood, but they could not leave him too near. He could have turned about and gone completely astray."

"Who knows of this business?"

Alinor thought that over, then shook her head stubbornly. "They are mine, to me," she said. "They will not betray me. They have never betrayed me, no matter what I bid them do."