Knight's Honor (9 page)

"It must be a mistake. Peverel could have no reason for such an action. You should not carry such tales, Elizabeth. It may have—"

"Are you saying that I lie?” she hissed. “I have many faults, but lying is not one of them. Of what did my father's companions die, vomiting and foaming at the mouth, minutes after they drank wine sent to them by our dear cousin? Oh, Roger, you know it is true. Your face is a perfect match for that green gown you are wearing. If you would but stop thinking that all men are like yourself and consider the facts, Peverel's purpose would be clear enough. My father's sons are children; his brother, who is not even a full blood brother, the Earl of Lincoln, is an avowed rebel; there is no member of the family other than Peverel who has the king's ear. Who then would the king name as guardian for Chester's lands and children? Lincoln might fight, but he has troubles enough of his own. Think of the power the man would wield with the lands and men of Chester at his back."

Hereford was silenced for a moment. "I still do not see why he should wish to stop our marriage," he replied sullenly after a while. "Soon I too will be an avowed rebel. Where is the difference between myself and Lincoln."

"But Peverel does not know that! He would think that you returned only to fulfill your contract—some men do such things, you know." There was a bitter undertone to Elizabeth's voice, but Hereford was totally preoccupied with his own still smoldering anger and the problem of Lord Peverel and did not notice.

"What does your father say to this?"

Elizabeth raised her eyes heavenward in exasperation. "The good Lord give me patience! He probably has not yet thought of it. Like you he is too busy being furious to think at all. I cannot imagine why rage turns men into idiots."

"Because," Hereford snapped nastily, "it makes women who ordinarily are idiots so wise." He started to walk back to where Chester and the bishop were still talking about the arrangements for the wedding ceremony, but Elizabeth caught his arm.

"Just a minute, Roger, I have something to tell you."

"Well, come and tell your father too. This is as much his affair as mine, according to what you say."

"No. I do not want him to know this."

"Why?"

Elizabeth dropped her eyes. "I have kept it from him so long … in the beginning because I was afraid and later because there was hatred enough between my father and his cousin and I was no longer afraid."

"Well?" Hereford's tone was still cold. It was not Elizabeth's fault that her cousin was a treacherous cur, but his resentment carried over.

"When I was a child my father and Peverel were allied, and Peverel was often here at Chester. He—" Elizabeth turned her face away "he attempted me. He tore my clothes and handled me …"

Hereford made a sound of regurgitation and stepped back as if she had suddenly grown repulsive.

Elizabeth swallowed hard. "Do you think I welcomed that? Oh, God, how I hate men." Her voice faltered.

Hereford could not swallow or speak and spat to clear his mouth. At that, Elizabeth turned to look him full in the face, her eyes defensive, cold, and angry.

"I would not have said anything, I assure you, except that I won free of him then, and later, more than once, I defended myself in such a way that he hates me. I think he would do anything to have me subject to him. You are betrothed to me, Roger, and I have warned you. If I am less in your eyes because of it, I cannot help it."

Head high, she left the hall, abandoning Hereford to his struggle with his revulsion. It did not take him long to clear Elizabeth of any connection with it, however, and he caught up with her at the top of the stair to her solar.

"Elizabeth!" He had her in his arms before the bitter words on her tongue could find release and he pulled her inside with him across the women’s quarters to the screened area private to her. "Do not say it,” he murmured. “Whatever you were going to say, I have well deserved it, but do not. Just let me hold you." He pressed her close, stroked her hair; her cheek was forced against his neck and she could feel the quickened pulse and his uneven breathing. Slowly the rigidity of her body relaxed and she dropped her head until her forehead rested on his shoulder.

There was a chest near the wall to which Hereford drew her. He seated her next to him without releasing her. His eyes were black with a steady abiding fury that boded Peverel no good in the future, and his mind was so occupied with calculating how many men and how much time it would take to destroy Nottingham Castle and its lord that he had nearly forgotten Elizabeth.

"Roger," she said faintly.

"Hush, Elizabeth." He tightened his grip. "I am in no temper for talk."

"But I cannot bear it. The way he looked at me—all my life men have looked at me like that. Even you—the way a rutting boar looks at a sow—"

Hereford's breath caught. Even if he had formulated the difference between his feeling for Elizabeth and that called forth in other men by her voluptuous beauty, he would not have known the words with which to explain. He could do no more for her than to stroke her hair gently. Eventually she turned her face into his breast and began to cry despairingly. Hereford was wrenched with a pain which made him set his jaw; the sensation had nothing in common with the combined pity and exasperation that stirred him when his mother or sisters wept, it was a pure agony comparable only to what he had felt when his father died.

"Stop, Elizabeth," he said with desperate sincerity when he could bring himself to speak at all, "you are killing me. Tell me what you want me to do, and I will do it. Do you want to be free of me? Shall I leave everything I have come for and go back to France? On Crusade? Do you want me dead, Elizabeth? That could be easily arranged—"

She covered his mouth with her hand, shuddering. Triumph, shame, and her own suppressed and rejected passion, awakened only to be denied whenever Roger touched her, boiled together until she was beside herself. She tore loose from his hold and ran across the room to her bed. Hidden by the curtains, she gave free, if silent, reign to her emotions for a few minutes. It was hopeless, she thought, misled by Roger's silence into thinking that he did not understand her.

Free of her initial burst of despair, however, she was first soothed and flattered by the extremities to which Roger seemed willing to go to please her, and then alarmed. He, no more than she, should be forced into an action not sanctioned by his own will and conscience. She wiped her face and bit her knuckles until she had regained some measure of self-control and then peered out of the curtains almost fearfully. Hereford had risen to his feet but made no attempt to follow her. He was standing indecisively near the opening in the screens, plainly unsure of whether to go or stay.

"I am sorry, Roger," she said with commendable calm, coming forward. "I cannot think what overcame me. You know it is not my habit to weep for nothing, and that was all so long ago." She could only pretend that she wept in memory of her past shame and terror since it was impossible to explain her present conflicts. His face did not relax and her voice faltered a little. "I should not have told you. I see now it was stupid, for he did me no real harm, but at the time I was so angry because you did not seem to believe Peverel's treachery to my father. I wanted you to know what sort of a man he was. He is an evil man." In spite of herself she shuddered.

"Well," Hereford replied with deadly quietness, "he will not be much longer, I hope. Let God be his judge. I will dispatch him to his just reward shortly."

Hereford at last relaxed enough to sigh heavily. He realized that his hands had been clenched into fists so hard and for so long that his fingers were numb and he forced them open and flexed them. "Praise God he is a king's man," he said, his face twisting into a grimace he thought was a smile, "the way I feel just now I do not believe that my loyalty to any cause could—" he choked. "The incestuous—"

Elizabeth looked away.

"Forgive me, Elizabeth. I will not speak of it again." He drew a deep breath and made an attempt to sound more natural. "Everything falls at the wrong time. My other letter was from Gaunt to say that he has heard from Lord Radnor and expects to see him early next week. He asked that I come to Painscastle. He thought, of course, that I was at Hereford which is scarce more than a day's ride, even in this weather, and that he was giving me sufficient warning, but now with the time the news has taken to come to me and the distance … I will have to leave early tomorrow to be there in time."

"I see." Elizabeth straightened her back. "And when will you return?"

"Not at all, I am afraid. My mother urgently desires me at home and I have no idea how long Gaunt will keep me or what he wants. But you will be leaving for Hereford yourself in a few weeks' time. I will see you there."

"I have never known you to be so quick to respond to your mother's word before, Roger. Are you sure you do not return because you truly feel I am too sullied to be Lady Hereford now?"

"Elizabeth!” Hereford exclaimed. “If I say I want you, you call me a rutting boar. I do not know what to say, how to look. And you are not reasonable. It will take me three to five days' hard riding to Painscastle in this weather. Would you have me ride all the way back here only to start out at once for Hereford which is so close to the Gaunt lands?"

"Of course not. I would not expect you to put yourself out in any way for me."

"Elizabeth!" Hereford breathed, torn between his present irritation and his memory of her recent distress. His memory won. "If you desire it, of course I will come back.” Then a new thought came to him and he held out his hand. “Mayhap, instead, you would like to come with me. You know Lady Leah and she would be happy to welcome you, even without invitation, I am sure."

"I would like that." She laughed a trifle shakily. "I need diversion. I will tell my father, and … Oh, Roger,
 
I cannot."

"Why?"

"Because," Elizabeth said, putting out both hands to him and smiling with a genuine warmth, "I do not propose to come like a beggar maid to you. Do you realize that my wedding gown is not yet finished, nor a thousand other things which are necessary? Moreover, you had better not return. Somehow nothing is done when you are here and the last day or two will be the worst of all for hurry."

Glancing at her uncertainly, Hereford thought that women often said one thing and meant another. With Elizabeth he did not seem to be able to guess what was under the words. He replied finally with caution. "You must decide. I would like to have you, but will not urge you. If you change your mind, you can come at the last moment, or—if you want me, Elizabeth, write and I will make the best haste I may to return."

"You are kind, Roger, but you always are, and I count upon it. I have been unreasonable.” She laughed lightly. “But there, I always am." She continued to smile, unwilling to show how shaken she still was. "Go down and settle what you must with my father and the bishop. Oh, I never told you but he has offered to come to Hereford to marry us. I will not come. I—I want to be alone for a while."

***

Passing southward through the valley of the Dee soon after sunrise the next morning, Roger of Hereford could not be distracted from his fatigue and ill temper even by the beauty of the scene. Like most landowners dependent upon agriculture for his livelihood, he usually noticed the weather without seeing the landscape, but just now he was thinking of a military campaign and was forced to consider the terrain. He had been trying to compare the land formation around the Dee with his vague memory of that of the Trent, which he had passed through once going to Nottingham, when the glittering loveliness surrounding him impinged upon his consciousness. The alders and aspens drooping above the river were hung with necklaces and bracelets of icicles which dropped, now and again, as the light wind caused branch to rub against branch, into the water below with a tinkling splash. Blackberry and thorn were draped and blanketed into fantastic shapes that should have been dazzlingly white but were now delicately rosy where touched by the rising sun.

In some places where the rosy glow was reflected into bluish shadow, the snow even gained a certain vague violet hue that recalled to his mind Elizabeth's dusky blush. Hereford shifted his reins from one frozen hand to the other which he had been warming beneath his cloak and restlessly hitched his shield further out of his way. He had parted amicably enough with Elizabeth, but there had been no return of the momentary flash of warmth to her manner. She had been alternately sharp and depressed throughout dinner and the evening which followed, and, although she had been courteous in her farewells, Hereford was sure that she was glad he was going.

What was he to do about her? How could he deal with a woman who took admiration as an insult? He was ready to admit that Elizabeth was more than a body that could give him pleasure. If she had not been, he would not have offered to marry her. After all, he could take that pleasure with almost any woman in the kingdom; there were very few who would refuse Roger of Hereford. Why could she not understand, or why did she deliberately misunderstand?

He began to damn her fretfully and stopped the thought. Even as an expression of his temporary annoyance he did not wish to curse Elizabeth. For a while he sought for words to explain what he felt, thinking he would write to her, but there were none that did not include or reflect his sexual attraction, and he thrust the problem away with a bitter sense of frustration. Everything was wrong, everything. He had known Elizabeth would be difficult, that she would scold and drive him, but he had never had the faintest suspicion that she might not care for him or even that she might accept him because she was growing older and "a woman must marry either a man or Christ" and still reject all that went with marriage.

He had no joy even in this journey. How ardently he had looked forward when he was in France to the time when he would return, even to the period of war which would precede seating Henry on the throne. Hereford experienced a horrible sinking sensation and swallowed to still the fluttering of his stomach. In France, if he had known of the offer that had been made to him, he would have been delirious with joy. What was wrong with him?