Knight's Honor (23 page)

By and large her fears about marriage had not been completely realized. Roger seemed willing enough, even eager sometimes, to discuss his plans with her, but it was plain enough too that he was hiding something, and something very important. This nightmare, recurring every two or three nights was part of it, and more than once Elizabeth had found her husband with his head sunk in his hands and his face drawn with worry. He always laughed when she questioned him, making some light reply about general matters or that he was only assuming the burdens of a married man, but he was obviously avoiding her interest in this particular aspect of his problems.

"Will Walter do as you desire, Roger?"

Hereford's younger brother had appeared suddenly out of nowhere and had stayed at Wallingford with them for two days almost a week ago. He had not come to their wedding and had not come as he had promised his mother he would after Epiphany. When he did arrive at Wallingford, unexpected and unwanted, he brought with him a rowdy band of ill-regulated landless knights and men-at-arms.

The troop was so undisciplined that they had respect for nothing and had quickly lost one member who had inadvisedly attempted to be a little too friendly with Elizabeth. Her startled cry and his shriek of pain as her poniard pierced his arm brought Hereford, who had dispatched him summarily without a word of question or an instant's hesitation. Elizabeth was not thinking of that, but of the scene following when Walter had hurried up to defend his man.

Roger had been standing over the corpse calmly wiping his hands and his knife, having already been reassured by Elizabeth that she was unhurt. He had, at first, made no reply whatsoever to Walter nor given any sign that he heard his brother’s violent questions. Even when Walter had put a hand on his shoulder to spin him around, his other fist raised to strike, Hereford did not deign to answer. Knife in hand, Roger made no move at all to defend himself, and Elizabeth, a silent witness, externally unmoved, had held her breath. Only Hereford's eyes met and held Walter's, and Walter had turned purple and dropped his hands, crying that he would stay no longer in a place where he and his men were insulted and murdered over a woman.

Elizabeth thought Roger would burst; she was accustomed to her father’s violence, used to cover his weakness, and to Roger's quick rages about little things, as quickly dispersed, but this was something quite different. Eventually her husband had said quietly, almost gently, "This is Elizabeth Hereford, my wife, as well you know, not—a woman. Moreover, you may not leave now, Walter. I have something to discuss with you and I will say what is in my mind."

There had been a short pause in which Walter, shifting his gaze under his brother's, had made a remark about Roger's oath that this was no trap. Hereford had swallowed, looked carefully at his hands as if to be sure they were clean, and had spoken in the same gentle voice.

"Do not do it, Walter, do not bait me. You are flesh of my flesh, my brother, blood of my blood. Do not force me to hurt where I love so dearly."

Roger had touched her arm then and taken her away, and Elizabeth, no coward, had been afraid even to mention Walter's name until this moment. Even now she could feel the tensing of the muscles in his shoulder which supported her head, and she regretted opening the subject. It would have been simpler to let him have what he wanted, but Elizabeth was ashamed of being afraid of Roger. It was unreasonable; she knew he would not hurt her. Nonetheless she was afraid, and, characteristically, she pushed herself into a position where she did not really want to be.

"Will he, Roger?" Elizabeth insisted.

"I do not know. Yes, at first, while he remembers he is afraid of me and while the booty runs in freely. But he is like, at any time, to turn and strike his nearest and richest ally. For God's sake, Elizabeth, can you ask nothing of me that does not touch me on the raw?"

"You are too proud. If a tree in the orchard bears one rotten fruit, is that a reason to distrust the whole tree?"

Hereford moved restlessly. "Mayhap, but it is not only pride. I cannot lift from my heart the feeling that I have done amiss with Walter. Yet, I cannot think where I have failed him either. Heaven knows, I have given him more than is due a younger son. I have ever treated him as my heir."

"How can you talk in that way? Even if you did or said what was not perfect—you were so young yourself at first. How can you blame yourself?"

"I do not. At least, I tell myself I could have done no other way. Even now that I know better, when I look back, I cannot see that I did so ill. Still …"

"But if you cannot trust him, Roger—to talk of what you did or did not is fruitless now—how can you employ him safely in such work as you have in hand? If he should turn upon you—or worse, upon your allies—he might bring you to disaster."

"Do you think I know it not? Let be, Liza. I need no more trouble than I have already."

There was such a long silence that Elizabeth thought Roger was asleep. She had just started to doze herself when a gleam of firelight penetrated the dark as Roger drew back the bed curtains and woke her completely by slipping silently out of bed. He dropped the curtain, but Elizabeth could hear the rushes rustle as he moved restlessly around the room, stirred the fire, and poured wine into a drinking goblet.

This too was nothing new to her; usually he returned to bed in a short time, chilled and passionate, but sometimes she would find him in the morning slumped in a chair before the fire or still pacing the room. His mood changed with lightning swiftness when he knew her to be awake and he showed her only his usual laughing tenderness or teasing, but Elizabeth now recognized that the merry-mad facade was just that, a facade behind which the Earl of Hereford concealed himself.

Tears rose to her eyes and she fought them back; tears availed nothing. It was wormwood and gall to know that she, so wise and clever as she thought herself, did not know her own husband, had never guessed that there was more to Roger of Hereford than his obvious gaiety, intelligence, and strength of character. Even bitterer was the knowledge that Roger did not trust her sufficiently to share his troubles with her.

It never occurred to Elizabeth that what Hereford was hiding was only his weakness and his fears, and that she herself had unconsciously made that concealment a condition of their marriage. She had made it very plain that in spite of her great love for her father she despised his weakness and that Roger was attractive because he united Chester's charm with great determination and fixity of purpose. Furthermore, she had given him no reason to believe that her love for him was sufficient to overcome the disappointment she would suffer in knowing him to be as riddled with fears as any other man.

Aside from his subconscious perception of Elizabeth's demand that he be strong, the concealment of indecision and fear was now second nature to Hereford. A sixteen-year-old faced with the overwhelming task of maintaining his birthright in a country almost completely devoid of law and order where rights could only be established by force, either leads his men so that they believe he is forceful and fearless and takes out the change in bad dreams, or yields his rights and honors and sinks into poverty and insignificance. Hereford had chosen the bad dreams and battled his terrors alone in the dark.

Elizabeth listened intently for what seemed hours and hours and actually was about fifteen minutes. She could hear nothing more, however, and finally could bear the suspense no longer. Drawing back the curtain, she peered out. At first she did not see Hereford at all, and her heart sank, but almost immediately she heard a faint creak and realized that he was standing in the shadows looking out through an arrow slit.

"Roger, you will freeze. What in the world are you doing?"

He stiffened as if she had hit him, lifting his head and squaring his shoulders. "I am sorry if I disturbed you. Go back to sleep, Elizabeth. I am only restless."

"About what?" That was unwise and she knew it. Roger was in no mood to be questioned.

He had not turned and now replied in a rather muffled tone. "That is my affair. I assure you that it is no matter that could possibly be of any concern to you." He meant by those words exactly what he had said and no more, and his voice was kind, if a little weary. He never thought of excluding Elizabeth from any practical situation, political or personal, but his struggle with his own depression seemed outside of her sphere of interest to him.

Elizabeth, thinking in entirely different terms, put the worst possible construction on his simple sentence. Before she could stop herself, she had burst into a spate of bitter words, the sum and substance of which was that no concern of Hereford's was any affair of hers because she did not care a piece of broken silver for him, and if he chose to refuse to answer her civil questions it was a matter of complete indifference to her.

"I desire merely to put a good face upon this unhappy relationship between us so that the whole world need not know of the mistake we have made. If you do not care that people laugh at you for refusing to answer civil questions asked only to make conversation, why should I?"

Hereford had finally turned to face his wife during her tirade, which he made no attempt to interrupt. At her assertion that she did not care for him, a spasm of pain crossed his face, but her last statement, so obviously the result of bad temper and so silly in view of the hour and the room empty except for themselves, distracted him from the nameless terrors that pursued him and restored his good humor.

"You are always just what I need, my darling wife. Not, I admit," he added laughing, "always what I want, but what is good for me. Do not, I beg you, say that we have made a mistake. I doubt there is another woman in the world that could do for me what you do."

He returned, still laughing, to the bed, and Elizabeth hastily moved to the other side and turned her back on him. That too was most unwise for it left her defenseless. If she had faced him, she could have pushed him away and continued her scolding, but one cannot scold a bed curtain with dignity or push a man who kisses the small of one's back.

Gasping and indignant at first, Elizabeth soon yielded, ashamed and angry, but docile to her husband's demands. She had learned also to simulate an exhaustion and a desire for sleep which she did not feel on the completion of Roger's lovemaking because, if she did not, he would either continue to caress her, which disturbed her further, or whisper questions and endearments to which she could not reply.

What Elizabeth did not know was that she had not deceived her husband as completely as she thought. He had been too successful a lover in the past to mistake Elizabeth's mild pleasure for a genuine and ultimate response. He was, however, patient with her inability to respond, putting it down correctly to the problem that was causing her general dissatisfaction. Only in misunderstanding the basis of his wife's unhappiness did Hereford err; he believed her not to be in love with him, thus far having completely misunderstood her fears of subjection and her relation of those fears to sexual satisfaction.

Having conceded defeat once more in his attempt to win his wife sexually, Hereford slept at once, leaving her to struggle with her fury until she too slipped into the unconsciousness she had feigned earlier. He was not left long in peace, however, and neither was Elizabeth. A rider, splattered with the mud of the first thaw, was led to his room barely an hour later. When Hereford heard what he had to say and had read a brief missive which he carried, unheaded, unsigned, unsealed, but in the well-known scrawl of Gloucester, he woke Elizabeth. His face might have been carved in marble for all the emotion it held as he told her that she must pack her things and leave at the first light.

"Where must I go? Why must I go?"

"Where you like." Roger meant to be kind, but he was stupid with fatigue, abstracted with concern over the news, and he had no idea of the cold indifference of his voice. 'The king is on the march. Too soon—always too soon. We had meant to take … No matter. I have no time to indulge you with talk, Elizabeth; I must go at once to join my men."

"But, Roger—"

"No words, Elizabeth, no argument." His eyes had a wholly deceptive depth. Elizabeth realized that for her there was nothing in them; he hardly saw her. "I said to go—now go. Alan of Evesham and my household guard can escort you wherever you like. When you are safe they can return to me. I will await them or leave word for them at Devizes."

He did not look at her again as his squires armed him, and he left without a word of farewell. Elizabeth wept with rage, telling herself that she would not go, she would not be ordered about like the meanest serf. She knew, however, that such thoughts were vain. Roger was Alan's god on earth, and he would obey his master even if it came to tying her to her mount. To resist would only mean more indignity. She dried her tears and packed with burning eyes and a heart throbbing so that at first she could scarcely think. Later, as the need to consider what to take and the physical activity calmed her a little the notion of teaching her husband a good lesson came to her.

Elizabeth knew that Roger expected her to go either to Hereford or to Chester, or, as a remote possibility, to Painscastle to stay with Lady Leah. She would teach him. She would go to Corby to Anne and Rannulf. It was not as far as Chester so that his men could return quickly; for all her rage she had no desire to endanger Roger by keeping his most faithful men from his side. She would be just as safe at Corby, but he would not be able to get at her easily and he would be worried sick when no word came from Hereford of her passing through.

Alan of Evesham's surprise when she announced her destination she stared down coldly, and he had no choice but to obey her since his lord was already on his way and had left no contrary instruction. He did not like it though, and made no bones about saying so. To pass so near Oxford, a firm stronghold of the king, and then through Northampton, which did not love the arms of Hereford because Walter had been busy there, seemed foolhardy in the extreme to him. Elizabeth remained adamant. Had she been given time to think, she would have yielded, for she was not foolhardy; but now, in the first flush of her rage, any opposition merely hardened her purpose.