Knight's Honor (40 page)

Had she been an active part of it, nothing could have been more pleasing than the scene that met her eyes. The room was ablaze with light, both hearths filled with roaring fires, every wall holder with a lighted torch, and every table and chest high enough to hold them supported candelabra of burning candles. Both men looked tired but satisfied, Henry as usual talking and gesticulating vivaciously as he stood near Lady Hereford's chair. He nudged Hereford with his goblet, and Roger turned to fill itand caught sight of Elizabeth.

"Elizabeth! Where the devil did you spring from?"

Fortunately he did not wait for a reply but ran across to her to embrace her most heartily. For once in her life, Elizabeth was struck dumb with surprise and pleasure. Roger led her forward and presented her to Henry, saving her another few moments in which to collect her senses for she sank to the floor with bent head in the curtsy reserved for royalty. Those moments, however, also permitted Hereford to recover from his simple surprise and wonder what she was doing there.

"For God's sake,” he exclaimed. “Have you not set out for Chester yet? You knew my haste. If this is a new scheme of yours to bedevil me, you have gone too far this time. I will beat you witless."

That did it. All the resentment which remorse had swallowed up, rose at once in Elizabeth's breast and she rose from her curtsy as if she had sat on a hot coal. Henry took one look at that magnificent, flaming countenance, gave a low whistle, and began to laugh soundlessly.

"Whoreson! Is that a way to bespeak me before a guest! Watch lest I return to you better measure than you deal out to me. When you ask a question like a man instead of braying like an ass, mayhap you will receive a reply."

Hereford turned crimson and stuttered. His hand went to his belt, Elizabeth's to her knife. Henry laid his hand on Lady Hereford's arm to restrain her from intervening.

"Nay," he murmured, shaking, "let them have at it. Such love-talk is a wonder and a pleasure to hear. Doubtless they missed each other.” He shook his head and grinned, promising, “I will not let them come to harm."

"You will answer however I speak to you, you lousy bitch, before guests or before the whole world, or I will flay you alive in the public square to make sport for my serfs."

"You and what other ten men? Toad! You will have to lay hands on me first. My hero! Call up your armies. With their aid surely you can subdue one woman."

Hereford was so enraged that his hands shook and he could not open the buckle of his belt. Henry, turning his head from wife to husband as if he were watching a game of catch-ball, suddenly gave way to his amusement, spluttered, and then howled with laughter. The sound hit Elizabeth like a pail of cold water. She was proud and in private would gladly have fought Roger to a standstill or been beaten unconscious. To shame her husband before his overlord was far beyond any salve her pride needed.

"Oh, stop, wait, oh, my accursed temper," she stammered. "Indeed I went to Chester. I returned from there only this forenoon. My father will be ready. I stayed to see the muster begin."

She stood her ground then, although she wished the earth would open and swallow her, more flushed and as magnificent in her shame as she had been in her rage. Before Hereford could speak, Henry stepped forward.

"Let her be, Roger," he said, very low. "You have won this round. Be generous." What he thought, though, was that Hereford should not tempt his luck. From what he saw of Elizabeth, the next passage at arms might easily be hers.

To say that the situation was not strained would have been ridiculous, but Henry, suppressing his amusement as well as he might, did nobly. For a time he carried the whole weight of the conversation, while Hereford glowered and Elizabeth struggled to command herself. Eventually he was able to draw Elizabeth into talk with perfectly unexceptional questions about her father. Long practiced in public poise that covered private turmoil, she was able to respond politely, if briefly, at first. Then, as she warmed to her subject and her listener, she spoke with such intelligence that Henry, in his absorption, forgot all about his reason for beginning the conversation.

Henry was not in the least shocked, although many men might have been, by such wifely behavior because it was the norm in the household of which he was a son. The only essential differences were that Elizabeth was far more beautiful than his mother and seemed to have better taste. Quite apparently she preferred to quarrel privately, whereas Matilda seemed to enjoy public squabbling. Henry was charmed and exerted himself to be charming. Elizabeth responded, warming steadily under his open admiration until she was flashing her magnificent eyes as flirtatiously for him as she ever had for Roger himself.

Completely incapable of joining them because of his inability to address his wife civilly, Hereford seized the opportunity, once he had caught his breath, to give his mother instructions about supplying a comely girl for Henry. Not a serf, he ordered, and preferably not a virgin, but above all one who was willing—Henry liked complaisant women.

Briefly Roger had thought of making the same demand for his own amusement in order to insult Elizabeth, but the notion was gone as quickly as it came. He did not desire any other woman when Elizabeth was obtainable. Angry as he was, his wife stirred his senses; he would never be sufficiently angry with her to forego that pleasure.

"My lord," he said finally, interrupting without apology Elizabeth's description of a tactical maneuver that been beaten off at Chester Keep, "it is long past midnight. We would all do well to seek our beds."

"Yes, yes," Henry replied absently, and returned to his absorbing interest. "But, Lady Elizabeth, it was the stupidity of your enemies, not your own strength which defeated them. With such a force they needed only to dam off the water supply of the moat and fill it. Then—"

Elizabeth smiled. "Our water supply is not damable, sire. It is supplied a little by springs, but mostly by an underground outlet of the river. Chester is a hopeless place to attack; it will stand forever."

Henry's eyes flickered. Chester was for him at this moment, but Chester was sure only in his changeability. "Where is the outlet?"

"I do not know, my lord,” Elizabeth replied, with every appearance of sincerity. “Nor does my father. He told me once that he had tried to find it because the fish from our stew pond escape that way and he thought to place some kind of barrier there—but he did not succeed."

Perhaps she was telling the truth, Henry thought, but very likely not. That was the trouble with intelligent women. They were interesting to talk to but not of much use, for a woman lied by nature and, also by nature, trusted no one. Such a combination allied with brains made them useless as sources of information unless they were overmastered by love.

"But I should not keep you longer with my foolish talk, my lord," Elizabeth continued, curtsying again. "I know you have come far and over a rough road. I am sure you desire your rest."

"Your talk is far from foolish, Lady Elizabeth, nor am I tired. Nonetheless, if I do not rest now I may well be tired tomorrow. I will hold you to your promise to tell me what you know of Maud in the morning, however."

Hereford led his lord away, murmuring that he should take whichever of the maids waiting in his chamber that pleased him best. On his return through the hall, he passed Elizabeth, who had backed away a little, without a glance. At the door, however, he stopped to see whether she was following, and when it was apparent that she was not, he returned. His grip on her arm was brutal, his beautiful features distorted.

"And whose bed, madam, were you waiting to try? I assure you I have provided for Henry. You need not stretch your generous hospitality that far."

Elizabeth made no reply and did not attempt to pull away. When Hereford tugged at her she followed docilely, wondering what he would do. He dragged her out of the manor house and across to the keep. As they mounted the outer stair of the donjon, Elizabeth shivered, fearing he was going to imprison her in the dank lower floor or in one of the cheerless and unfurnished tower rooms. He never hesitated at all, however, and continued to yank her unmercifully across the great hall toward the stairwell that ascended to the old women's quarters.

"If you will tell me where you want me to go, I will go willingly," Elizabeth ventured to protest. She won no reply and when they had mounted the stairs, he thrust her into the old solar so roughly that she staggered.

"What were you waiting down there for?"

"Because I did not know where to go. Oh, Roger, have some sense. Do stop quarreling with me—"

"Me?" Hereford nearly choked. "Quarreling with you? You foulmouthed bitch. Every time your lips part you spew venom. It is a wonder that your own spit does not poison you."

"Your own tongue is gilded with honey, is it? You have your just deserts of me. I warned you not to take me to wife. Now you have me, enjoy me."

"That is just what I propose to do."

That was not, of course, what Elizabeth meant, and she struggled against him in earnest, but for once Hereford made no attempt to win her by caresses. He knocked her down and overpowered her, his rage as it mounted being such that even Elizabeth did not dare to fight any longer.

Considering his initial fatigue and the violent venting of his passion, Hereford should have slept like one stunned. Instead he found himself wide awake when he moved away from Elizabeth. Her body had been unresponding, so cold as to be almost inanimate. Ordinarily Hereford was not a jealous man. In the past he had been too sure of his powers and not deeply enough involved emotionally to care whether a woman was unfaithful. Now everything was upside down. He was not afraid that Elizabeth's passions would lead her astray but that her ambition would.

"Elizabeth," he said in the soft voice he often used when he was in deadly earnest, "on my oath, if you ever betray me with your body for any purpose whatsoever, I will kill you."

"Lecher," she replied, but without heat, almost indifferently, "because you crave every woman you speak with, do not think that I am made in the same filthy mold."

"I do not think so. You are not honest enough for that. I could understand, if I could not forgive, an honest passion. You have none. When you sell yourself, it will be for gain. You have the heart of a trull."

Elizabeth should have been hurt, but she was not. Since she had a very honest passion, and since it was for Roger himself, the shaft was so wide of the truth that it did not prick her at all. She shrugged disdainfully.

"And you say I have a venomous tongue. If I am to die for betraying you, I have consolation, for I will doubtless live forever." She turned on her side to look at him instead of staring at the bed curtains as she had been doing. "I have this to say to you, Roger, and I may as well speak even though you are in no mood to hear me. I am sorry I missaid you before your overlord. Mind, I am not sorry for what I said—that you deserved—but for the time and place of my speaking."

Hereford gave no sign of hearing her, but he had. The whole of his impossible relationship with Elizabeth was running in bright flashes through his mind. Elizabeth wantonly tempting him before his journey to France; Elizabeth coldly rejecting him when he returned as her accepted husband. Elizabeth warmly encouraging him in his political ambitions; Elizabeth nearly destroying them and himself because of a fit of temper. Above all the image of that very night returned. Elizabeth's dumb and joyous surprise when he greeted her so warmly, he had not missed that; her towering rage that met and matched his, and her sudden, unexpected capitulation. Interwoven with every memory of her was one of himself, invariably and inevitably doing and saying the wrong thing. Suddenly, helplessly, he began to laugh. He was remembering Henry's blatant admiration for his raving wife.

Startled by this most peculiar reaction, Elizabeth sat up. "What is it, Roger?"

"Elizabeth, oh, Elizabeth, we shall never act like ordinary people. We shall always laugh when we should weep, apologize when we should be angry, argue when we should make love, make love when we should sleep, and make ourselves a scandal and a hissing in all men's eyes and ears. When you do not drive me mad with rage, you drive me mad with love."

"Do you love me still, Roger?"

That made him sit up too. "Why not? Why should you doubt me? What sort of a love is it that fails for a little quarrel? Can I not be angry with you and love you also?"

She did not answer that. She wanted to ask what he meant by love, but did not dare. Instead she asked a little bitterly why he had written to his mother instead of to her regarding Henry's coming.

"Because," Hereford replied, his voice going cold and bitter too, "I was sure you would be still at Chester. I was certain once you were 'at home' with your father whom you love so dearly and in the only place where you are happy, as you have told me so often. I thought that it would not be so easy to tempt you back to Hereford."

"My home is here now, Roger, and—"

"And?"

She spoke so low he had to strain to hear. "I love you too."

Her head was hanging. Hereford lifted it with a hand under her chin. "Those words are the sweetest I have ever heard from you, Liza. Why do you hang your head as if ashamed?" But she would not answer nor meet his eyes, and when he drew her against him, her head drooped again so that he could see only the white parting in her glossy hair. "For all I said of you in a rage, you are a truthful woman. Answer me. Why do you tell me this now?"

"Must I have some purpose other than that you have ever used me kindly—even when I deserved little kindness from you? You must think ill of me indeed to think me insensible of that."

"I do not know what I think of you. To speak the truth, I cannot think of you at all, for one way or another you put me into such a passion that I can do nothing except feel." He lay down pulling her with him, partly because he was tired but partly also to spare her his scrutiny. "I will ask you something I know you do not wish to answer, Elizabeth. Nor must you answer, although I desire to know. Why is your body so cold to me? No, not cold, that is not what I mean for I know that you desire me. You are not cold, you are … You will not let me bring you to joy. Why do you deny me, and yourself too, that final pleasure? Is that no part of your love?"