Fire Song (21 page)

“I could have stood out of reach,” Fenice said, half jesting but still seeking a method to deal with the problem.

Alys smiled, and said absently, as if she were considering something more important, “Yes, for a needful quarrel that is wise,” then after a brief hesitation she went on, “but this is different anyway, I think. I have never known Aubery’s temper to be overset by a little pain. I believe he expected you to act like that silly bird wit Matilda. She was just the kind to weep and wail and wring her hands and shriek that she could not look at such a hurt because it made her sick.”

“I tried to tell him—”

“No,” Alys interrupted, her voice sharp. “Never say anything to Aubery about his first wife.” Her lips tightened, and she looked away, past her stepdaughter. “Let me deal with this. In a way, it has nothing to do with you.”

Fenice did not reply. She had never intended to speak ill of Aubery’s dead wife, although she had heard nothing much good of Matilda. Actually, until this moment she had hardly given Matilda a thought, having assumed from the way Lady Alys and her father spoke of her that Aubery had been married to her for her estate, perhaps without much liking on either side. But Lady Alys’s sharp warning implied that Aubery had felt strongly about Matilda, perhaps he had loved her deeply despite all her silliness.

Suddenly Fenice remembered the odd looks her husband sometimes gave her after coupling and that he had never used a love-word to her, even at the climax of his pleasure. Fury seized her, an anger greater than any she had felt before in her whole gentle life. If Matilda had been alive and near, Fenice would have pulled out her hair and scratched out her eyes. The knowledge that the woman was dead and beyond reach only infuriated Fenice more. She did not wish to share her husband with anyone, but how could she wrest him from a wraith?

“I think I will ride out to the shepherd’s cottage and tell him to bring in as young a lamb as can be had in this season,” Fenice said. She thought her voice sounded strange, but although Lady Alys looked at her briefly, she made no comment.

“Yes, do that,” Alys agreed with relief. “We will need more than hung beef with your papa and Aubery at home.”

Alys had noticed that some strong emotion had gripped Fenice, but she thought it a spate of nervousness at the idea of being involved in a discussion her husband had forbidden. Actually, she had been wondering how to get Fenice out of the place because Raymond was out in the horse pasture looking over his stock and this was an ideal time to have a talk with Aubery. He had seemed less irritable after he and Fenice had been married, but his behavior was not normal. If he was still grieving over that brainless doll he had married, Alys intended to warn him that Fenice must not be hurt because of a woman dead and buried.

Fortunately, she did not need to wake him. Although he had slept through her first entrance, her second was deliberately less noiseless, and a maid carrying water for washing came with her. Alys heard the bed leathers creak and told the maid to set down the water and bowl and go. Aubery pulled back the curtain and awkwardly heaved himself more upright, scowling when he saw her.

“You are late abed,” Alys said. “I suppose you slept ill. Well, you deserve it for being a fool.”

“That is a strange greeting,” Aubery growled, his voice thick with rage. He had thought, of course, that it was Fenice who had come in, and his mind had instantly produced the same sensual image that had kept him so long from sleeping. His immediate reaction had made him furious, particularly as Alys’s presence indicated to him that Fenice was not only still angry but had complained to her stepmother.

Alys shrugged, aware that she had not been wise. “You are the brother of my heart,” she said more gently, coming to stand beside the bed, “and we know each other too long and too well for me to mince words. Perhaps I should have asked why first, but it irked me that you could confuse a girl of my training with Matilda. Fenice—”

“Do not mention Matilda to me in the same breath with that whore to whom you bound me,” Aubery roared, driven by his guilt over preferring Fenice to Matilda, whose death he could not regret, to say more than he meant.

Alys was not often reduced to speechlessness, but now she stood, eyes and mouth both agape with surprise.

“How dare you call me brother,” he shouted, “and use me to rid yourself of a creature whose name no doubt was so befouled in her own country that you could not find a mate for her.”

“Who?” Alys gasped. “Fenice? My Fenice? Why? Why should you say such a thing?”

Enraged beyond restraint, Aubery told her, in detail. Alys’s eyes grew rounder and rounder, and her face turned red as fire. As he saw what he believed to be shock and embarrassment, Aubery’s angry voice faltered. He had accused Alys in the heat of his rage, but he had never really believed she would knowingly do anything to hurt him. They had loved each other as sister and brother from childhood. Because they were much alike in spirit, they had always had their battles, but each had been quick to defend the other against the rest of the world.

There was a brief silence while Aubery regretted what he had said and Alys visibly struggled with some violent emotion. Oddly, now that Aubery was sure Alys had been unaware of her stepdaughter’s nature, what he regretted most bitterly was his betrayal of Fenice. Assuming that Alys’s suffused face indicated rage as well as shock, Aubery took breath to tell her that he had spoken in confidence and she should leave control of Fenice to him. However, before he could speak, Alys lost the struggle with herself and burst out laughing.

“Who could believe it?” she whooped. “How can you be so much an innocent at your age? Did you never stray from that bucket of cold water you married?”

It was fortunate that Alys had staggered back a few steps in her paroxysm of laughter. She was just out of reach of the blow Aubery launched and of his grab at her. Also fortunate was the fact that he was tangled in the bedclothes and, since he had struck out with his right and grabbed with his left hand, the shock of pain caused by his movement inhibited his ability to free himself. By then, Alys was bitterly sorry for what she had said. No man deserved such a blow to his pride, more particularly if his honor made him faithful to a cold, stupid wife.

“Oh, forgive me,” she cried, standing quite still, though she knew Aubery was angry enough to hurt her badly. “I did not mean that as it sounded. What a cruel and stupid thing to say. I am sorry, so sorry.”

Aubery had made it out of the bed and stood looming over her, but he could see her eyes were full of tears, and his raised fist did not strike. He let the arm fall, shrugged, and turned away. Alys clutched at him.

“Dear Aubery, I will not mind if you hit me. I deserve it. Indeed, I do.”

“Will that make me less a fool?” he asked bitterly.

“You are
not
a fool,” Alys cried. “Oh, curse my sharp tongue. You are a good man, and there are so few, I hardly know one when I see him. And I should not have said that of Matilda. It was because I love Fenice, and I could not bear that you should find ill in her by comparison. You do not understand Fenice. I swear to you she was not angry last night when you bespoke her harshly. And how she loved you, that was only to spare you pain so you would not need to use your sore arm.”

Aubery had stopped when Alys grasped him, but he had not turned back toward her. Now he moved his head in her direction, but not quite far enough to face her. “So you say. But she hardly spoke a word to me—”

“But you had told her not to,” Alys pointed out. “Have I not told you Fenice’s one fault is too great an eagerness to please others? Besides, she was troubled because she feared you would hide your hurts and sickness from her when they were worse than a simple bruise. And she was afraid to explain that she would not make a to-do but only ease you as best she could. She was worried, Aubery, not angry.”

“And in the midst of her worry, she… Are you telling me that my wife’s behavior is that of a decent woman?”

“I am telling you it is no different from mine,” Alys said steadily. “If she is evil, then so must I be, and Raymond does not call me whore for giving him pleasure or for taking it from him myself.”

Now Aubery turned his head fully. His desire to believe Alys, to enjoy the passion Fenice aroused in him without sick doubts, was almost a physical ache. But he was not quite satisfied that her actions were not the products of a lewd nature. “Where could she learn such things?” he asked angrily, staring down at Alys.

Again consumed by a desire to laugh, Alys bent and picked up Aubery’s bedrobe, which Fenice had laid ready at the foot of the bed and which had fallen to the floor during Aubery’s struggles with the blankets. The question, perfectly idiotic as it was, gave Alys a strong hope that Aubery cared for Fenice, perhaps more than he was willing to admit. Apparently he did not wish to remember that she, as well as he, had been married previously or, more likely, did not wish to think she had indulged her first husband as she indulged him.

“Here, put this on,’’ she said, acting as if he had not spoken, “you will be cold.”

She held the robe for him, and he turned his back to slide his arms into it, saying, “You have not answered me.”

Alys was annoyed. This was a case in which lying to oneself or conveniently forgetting the fact was the best path. She had tried, but Aubery would not take a hint. “You must know the answer to that yourself,” she replied, rather coldly. “Fenice was no maiden. Her husband taught her, as mine taught me.”

He jerked the robe together and pulled the belt out of her hands, hissing as his arm and shoulder protested but so full of fury that the pain was welcome. He had known the answer to so stupid a question, of course, but had refused to recognize it. Now a double flame of envy and jealousy consumed him, for he had not been able to teach Matilda, and he could not help but fear that another face and body were imaged behind Fenice’s closed eyes when they coupled.

“She goes lightly from one to another carrying the same gift,” he snarled.

“That is not true,” Alys snapped. “And it is what I came to say to you, that Fenice has given you her heart. Aubery, I was wrong to call you a fool for your faithfulness to Matilda, but you will be worse than a fool if you allow a memory to destroy—”

“That is not your affair,” he bellowed.

But Alys did not react with rage as she usually did when he challenged her. Tears came to her eyes. “I love her, and I love you,” she said softly. “Do not hurt her…or make yourself miserable.” Then she drew a deep breath and gestured toward the stand near the wall. “There is water for washing. Shall I help you dress or send a maid to you?”

“Where is Fenice?” he asked.

“She was frightened because she told me you would not let her touch your hurt and you had forbade her to speak of it,” Alys replied. “She went to bid the shepherd to slaughter a lamb for dinner.”

He walked toward the stand where the bowl and pitcher waited, loosened and dropped the bedrobe to hang by its belt at his waist, then turned. “I will be finished quickly,” he said, pouring water into the bowl. Alys brought a drying cloth, and as he took it from her hands, he added roughly, “I will not hurt her.”

Chapter Fifteen

When Alys reconsidered the discussion she had had with Aubery, she felt it had been a mistake. Possibly she had eased his mind in one way, but she had no surety of it. And if he did not yet understand that it was only fear for him that had forced Fenice to ask her advice, she might have done more harm than good. Both he and Fenice were too quiet, and it seemed to her that they watched each other when they felt they were not observed. At first Alys thought they might settle if they were left alone, but before she attempted the stratagem she realized that it could do no good if Aubery felt Fenice would run to her with every slight and problem.

What Aubery and Fenice needed, Alys decided, was to be truly on their own. Since their home was in England, and even there Elizabeth and William would surely spend some time with them in Marlowe so that Elizabeth could get to know Fenice, this was a problem. That night in pillow talk, Alys mentioned it to Raymond, not giving him any details but merely saying that it must be hard for Aubery always to be on show before his father-by-marriage.

“I never thought about it,” Raymond admitted, “but as usual, you are right, my love.” He frowned for a moment at the joining of the bedcurtains, then smiled. “I have an answer. Let us send them to Amou, which is temporarily without a castellan, since Sir Bertrand is with the army at La Réole. Aubery can see if Sir Bertrand’s lady has had any problems with the men left in the keep. About half of them are raw recruits, so he can check on how their training progresses, too.”

Alys was delighted with a proposal that had enough meat in it to allay any suspicions Aubery might develop about his marital affairs having been under discussion. And when Raymond presented the idea casually while they were breaking their fast, Aubery, who had been staring at a piece of cheese as if he could not recognize it, straightened up and turned his head with a gleam of interest in his eyes.

“Will it not be too dangerous to take Fenice so far south?” he asked.

“Do not leave me, my lord,” Fenice begged. “I am not afraid to go.”

Aubery and Raymond both cast one single glance at her. She dropped head and eyes, and they returned their attention to each other.

“No,” Raymond replied to Aubery’s question, ignoring his daughter’s interruption. “If I thought that part of the south dangerous, I would not have asked Sir Bertrand to come to La Réole with his men, and I would not suggest you go there, half-crippled as you are. Gaston de Béarn is the danger in that area, and he will strike only at a target important enough to divert the king from the siege at La Réole. Amou would be useless for that purpose. You might be interested to see the countryside. The hunting is good in this cold season, and it would take no more than the two weeks Hereford has allowed you.”

“I would like to go—yes,” Aubery said. His eyes flicked from Raymond’s face to Fenice’s fingertips, which were touching his hand, and back to Raymond. “But I do not think, unless the matter is more urgent than you have implied, that I have the right. My leave is not a clean two weeks but only until Lord Hereford has need of me.”

“And what need is he likely to have for you for the next two months or four or six?” Raymond asked disgustedly. “If it had been possible to take La Réole by assault at once, Henry would have been glad of it, but now that he has started to negotiate, I doubt he would order an assault even if we breached the walls.”

“Well…” Aubery looked down at his food again as he considered what Raymond had said, but he did cast a glance at Fenice’s fingers, which were almost fully across his hand, he had not pulled it away, and were ever so slightly stroking that hand as if making a plea their mistress dared not voice. “Well,” he repeated briskly now, “it can do no harm to ride out to La Réole and speak to Hereford. I would have to do so anyway, since my armor is in his care.”

“Excellent,” Raymond agreed heartily, “and while you are there, you can stop by my quarters to see if Sir Oliver and Sir Bertrand have letters for their wives. You might as well stay at Benquel a night and assure Sir Oliver’s lady that if her husband does not die of boredom, he will certainly survive this siege.”

For someone who had tried to appear only mildly interested in doing a favor for Raymond, Aubery was remarkably quick in starting for La Réole. When he arrived, Hereford was not in his quarters, so Aubery went on to collect from Raymond’s men their homebound letters and messages. By the time he returned to Hereford’s quarters, Aubery found the servants laying trestle tables for many guests. One of the squires told him that the king had graced the siege with his presence that day and had business to discuss with his constable.

Aubery prepared to beat a hasty retreat but was a few minutes too late. He came face to face with King Henry and his overlord not two feet from the entrance.

“What the devil are you doing here, Aubery?” Hereford asked. “Did I not send you to Blancheforte to coddle that shoulder, and your new wife?”

Aubery had heard enough about King Henry to know it would not be wise simply to bow and say the matter was personal and that he would return when Hereford was at leisure. To do so might, or might not, set up a train of suspicion in Henry’s mind, and that would be stupid when the subject he wished to broach was totally innocent of any connection with the king. Thus, he took the chance of delaying his overlord a few minutes.

“Indeed you did, my lord,” he replied, smiling, “but that leave was only conditional on circumstances here and now Raymond has asked me to ride to his estate at Amou—”

“Why?” King Henry asked alertly. He had recognized the name Amou and connected it with the Raymond he knew well.

Hereford cast Aubery an apologetic glance behind the king’s back, but Aubery smiled again and explained Raymond’s purpose without hesitation. Instead of allowing Hereford to reply to Aubery’s question as to whether it would be permissible for him to leave the area and dismiss him, Henry pointed at him with a satisfied grin.

“I know you,” he said. “You are Sir Aubery of Ilmer, and you have just married Raymond d’Aix’s natural daughter. He mentioned it to me the day after I arrived in Gascony. I also know your face. I have given you more than one tourney prize.”

“Yes, my lord,” Aubery acknowledged. “You have a most excellent memory.”

“But there is some other way I should know you,” Henry said. “It tickles the back of my mind.”

“He is Sir William of Marlowe’s stepson,” Hereford said hurriedly, preferring that the king not remember if he had heard anything about Aubery’s father, “so it might be that Lord Richard has mentioned him from time to time.”

“Ah yes, you—” Henry stopped abruptly. He had been about to mention Aubery’s marriage to Richard of Cornwall’s ward and then, remembering that the girl was dead, felt it might bring back unhappy memories. “Come within with us,” he said instead.

Aubery’s many ties with those of whose loyalty Henry was assured was to his mind a fair guarantee of Aubery’s own loyalty. In addition, the fact that Aubery had no lands and therefore could have little personal interest in Gascony was another assurance. He knew Aubery to be brave and strong, that this was no guarantee he had a brain in his head did not enter the king’s mind. He had been troubled by very contradictory news coming from Bayonne, in the south. Aubery was going south. A little plan began to form in Henry’s mind.

When he was comfortably seated, Henry said, “So Raymond desires you to go south?”

“Only, my lord, if it is agreeable to Lord Hereford,” Aubery replied cautiously.

“And you take your wife?”

Behind Henry’s back, where he had gone to pour a goblet of wine for the king, Hereford raised his brows questioningly at Aubery, who, naturally, could make no response and merely answered the king’s question in the affirmative.

“That is excellent,” Henry said, beaming approval. “Bayonne will not be much out of your way.”

This was not quite the truth, since Bayonne was as far west as it was possible to go, while Amou was to the east, near the center of the province, however, Aubery, being totally ignorant of the geography of Gascony, made no objection. Inwardly he was divided between amusement and a certain anxiety natural to one who had heard as much about the king’s temperament as he had. Raymond had gone to considerable lengths to avoid being involved in one of Henry’s “little plans” and now Aubery himself, after having assured Fenice that he was not one of whom Henry would deign to take notice, was seemingly about to fall alive into one of the king’s machinations instead. Nonetheless, he listened with some interest to the king’s description of the contradictory information he had received from the citizens of Bayonne.

“So you see,” Henry was summing up, “either one party or the other is lying. It is my belief that those who say an attack on Bayonne is planned are the traitors and wish only to deceive me into breaking this siege. Most probably Gaston has, indeed, fled to Castile, as the other party says. It is Gaston’s way to make others pay for his sins, and I think he will try to induce Alfonso to bring an army and attack my rear. Or, if he cannot rouse Castile against me, he will try to induce Alfonso to pay for mercenaries to redeem the promise he made when he stirred up rebellion.”

“I understand what you say, my lord, but I do not see what I, a simple knight of no great power, could do even if I went to Bayonne,” Aubery pointed out.

“Oh, that is no problem at all,” Henry assured him. “Are you not married to my wife’s nephew’s daughter? By blood bond, you are allied to me. I will write letters that you be received by the mayor and recognized as one in my confidence.”

“You do me too much honor,” Aubery said faintly, feeling appalled.

He could not refuse, but neither did he see any way of determining which party was telling the truth, especially if he was known from the beginning as Henry’s man. Of course, if the king were wrong and Gaston de Béarn did attack the city, he would know, but traitors in the town could deliver it into Béarn’s hands before the knowledge was of any use. And in that case, he would be a marked man, which could be dangerous not only to him but to the king’s “kin”, Fenice.

“Not at all,” Henry was saying in reply to Aubery’s remark. “You will do a useful piece of work for me and at the same time give your wife the opportunity to show off her new gowns, for the commune of Bayonne will surely honor you with a feast and then all the wives of the ‘hundred peers’ will also desire you as guests.”

“But, my lord,” Aubery protested, “however small the chance, there
is
a chance that Béarn will attack. I thought it would be safer to leave Lady Fenice with her father.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Henry said, waving a hand airily in dismissal of the notion. “Even so, where would the danger be? Bayonne is a strong city, well defended,” Henry’s voice checked, and his eyes took on a sly gleam as he went on, “and your wife is not such a fool as to be unable to repeat what she hears, is she? There will be this and that whispered among the women. You will need her.”

“Lady Fenice is very young,” Hereford said hastily, seeing Aubery’s color rise.

Henry laughed. “They begin to gossip at three,” he said. “I have daughters. I know.” And then he looked a little self-conscious and added, “She will be in no danger. She is kin to Gaston, also, on his mother’s side.”

Since it was obvious that Henry was determined, there was little either Hereford or Aubery could do. The conversation was prolonged by several other objections, Hereford complaining that Aubery was needed at La Réole and advancing a few other suggestions for accomplishing the same purpose, but in the end the king had his way. Nor, when Aubery returned to Blancheforte and told Raymond what had happened, did Fenice’s father seem to have any fear for her. He laughed at the trap into which Aubery had fallen but assured him that though Gaston was both ambitious and treacherous, he was not at all a monster and Fenice would not be endangered.

“And if I am wrong in promising that Gaston would not even hold my daughter to ransom, I will pay the ransom,” Raymond finished with the intonation of one making a gambling throw. Then he shook his head at Aubery’s worried expression. “You will not find your task so hard as you think.”

“Will I not?” Aubery asked rather sardonically.

“No, because the king will pave the way for you properly. He will say nothing in his letter of introduction about you that has anything to do with Béarn. If I know him, he will write something to the effect that owing to your bravery and prowess
he
arranged a marriage for you with a kinswoman of the queen, perhaps that you are from a cold, dark land and that he wished as an additional favor to allow you to taste the beauty of the country and climate of Gascony. And he will request the hospitality of the commune for you.”

“But how then can I ask about Béarn?”

“Don’t,” Raymond said. “Both sides will talk to you because Henry’s letter will imply broadly, whatever the actual words he uses, that you have his favor. All you need do is listen and you can tell them the truth, that you will tell the king what they say, which is all the encouragement they will need. They will talk you deaf, dumb, and blind and you will hear the false, sour notes, never fear.”

“Then what the devil has this to do with Fenice?” Aubery asked irritably.

“Just what the king said, the women will talk to her, and you two will compare stories. And Fenice is perfect for the part, too although Henry could not have known that. She is not so grand as to induce awe in the merchants’ ladies…” Raymond hesitated, obviously deflected from that subject by a new thought. “Do you know what the merchants who elect the governing body of the commune are called?” he remarked, his lips twisted with an odd combination of wry humor and distaste. “The hundred peers…
peers,
as if they were the equals of the heroes Roland and Oliver or the twelve
ducs de France.
If it did not tickle my fancy, my gall would rise.” He frowned. “I have lost the thread of what I was saying.”