Lady Knight (15 page)

“Vahldomne!” a woman said.

Riannon twisted around to see Aveline holding her gold-rimmed mazer up in
salute.

“Vahldomne!”

The roar from hundreds of throats battered Riannon and threatened to lift the
roof off its rafters. Men leaped to their feet to shout the name again. Even Guy
rose and lifted his goblet. Master Nuon remained seated and smiled as if the
acclaim was solely his.

Riannon looked across to the men of the empire. They sat pale, tight, and
unmistakeably alive to the meaning of the song. With poetic exaggeration and
embellishment, Master Nuon glorified the last act of the war between the empire
and the Eastern Kingdoms. Their emperor’s son had been portrayed as a villain
blacker and more evil than any monster from the depths of the sea. Now they sat
and heard the shouts and cheers for his killer. This was not well done. Whoever
had paid for this performance had not acted with honour.

Riannon looked along the table. Henry had thrown his ring and requested a song.
Everyone would think the Earl Marshal responsible, but he had not chosen the
subject. Someone paid the most renowned troubadour in the Eastern Kingdoms to
come here and all but openly insult the representatives of the Lion Emperor.
Who? To what end?

Eleanor could have wished that Master Nuon had turned his magnificent talents to
a more fitting song for a wedding. The shouts and cheers celebrated a dead hero
rather than a marriage freshly born. The bride, though, looked flushed with
excitement at the long tale.

One of the handful of people in the hall beside Eleanor not infected with
fervour for the heroic was Riannon. Her lover wore that guarded look she
retreated behind whenever troubled. Eleanor followed her gaze to the small group
of imperial visitors. She was unsurprised when they took their leave as soon as
the queen rose and servants dismantled the tables and removed the boards.

Henry and Cicely led the first dance. Henry’s eldest son Richard solicited
Eleanor’s hand and used the length of the music to practise callow gallantries
on her. She nearly made herself laugh aloud in imagining his reaction had she
informed him that he wasted his breath, for she shared a bed with his aunt.

Guy, whose gallantries were well practised and smoother than Rhânish silk,
purposely made Eleanor laugh while they danced.

When Eleanor set in search of claiming the dance Riannon had promised, a
thickset man of about her own age intercepted her. Out of politeness, she
accepted his hand for a pavane. She spent the first half of the stately dance
ransacking her memory for his name. Ralph, son and heir of Lord Howe, contrived
to give her the impression that he conferred some great favour on her by
partnering her. Eleanor politely refrained from comment and moved briskly away
once the end of the music freed her.

A lively but generally older group of revellers, including the queen and the
newlyweds, debated the advantages or disadvantages of conjugal love. Normally,
Eleanor thrived on such disputation. This afternoon, she found herself impatient
when she heard the chamberlain lugubriously expound his belief that love
followed marriage because people chose who they loved – as though passion was a
meek child of duty. Perhaps that was a man’s experience of love, but it was not
hers.

Eleanor had been married to two men she had not loved, however much she had
wanted to. She looked around the hall at the faces of men and women, familiar
and strangers. Could she fall in love with any and all simply by wanting to?
Her every fibre said no.

Eleanor remembered last night with Riannon and knew she would not have the
patience to reduce passion to cold, pallid logic. She walked away to find her
lover.

She paused every few paces to exchange pleasantries with individuals or groups
and accepted their congratulations on her niece’s elevated wedding. She finally
spied Riannon and Guy near the low end of the hall.

Brother and sister stood close, talking, at ease in each other’s company.
Eleanor had noticed, to her dismay, that Riannon’s other brothers avoided or
ignored her. Not that many people sought out Riannon. The scar and her serious
expression lent her an unapproachable air. How different was Eleanor’s
experience of a smiling, tender lover. As Eleanor watched the pair, Riannon said
something to make Guy throw back his head and laugh. Eleanor smiled and threaded
her way determinedly towards them.

Both greeted her – Riannon with a discreet but warm reserve, Guy with a witty
remark. The three of them sat on a bench, Eleanor in the middle.

Eleanor looked from left to right, from Guy to Riannon. He was a handsome man.
Those same facial features would not have made a beautiful woman even without
the disfiguring scar. He exuded charm, knew how to please a woman, and took an
easy part in any company. Though the Riannon behind her defences proved a
delightful surprise, the rigidly formal manners she held between herself and
most people discouraged intimacy and conversation. Yet it was the sister and not
the brother who set Eleanor’s passion smouldering fit to blaze.

For the whole course of her life the idea of her own sex as objects of desire
had simply not occurred to her, whereas she could readily see the potential
attraction in a man’s handsome face, a kind smile, or a broad pair of shoulders.
No bosom or woman’s beauty excited her. Since her birth, she had shared a bed
with other females: nurse, sisters, friends, maids, waiting women. To the best
of her recollection – and surely she would remember such a thing – not once had
her blood quickened with lust towards one of them. Now there was Riannon.

Less dramatically than her realisation in the basilica, Eleanor experienced
another of those profound revelations. She was attracted to a person, not a sex.
The fact that her fancy had previously only fallen on males had disguised that
with a false pattern.

She wondered if she were the only one to realise this. Or were there many in the
hall who had this self-knowledge before her? Was she just slow to discover this?
Why had her mother breathed no word about this when she had explained marriage
and coupling and a wife’s duties? Why did none of the religious teachings expose
and espouse the idea? What conspiracy kept troubadours’ tongues still about the
subject? Was it a knowledge to be kept hidden – like some power too fearful to
be unleashed rather than a joy to be cherished? Could it be, like magic, a power
accessible only to women?

Eleanor looked up at Riannon and smiled.

With the wine flowing freely, talk grew noisier and more boisterous and,
inevitably, bawdy. Eleanor kept an eye on Cicely. She remembered vividly her own
first wedding day. She had been a virgin bride, embarrassed and nervous,
listening to the comments and jests about bedding and coupling. What she had
seen today of the Earl Marshal’s courtesy for his young bride had forced Eleanor
to favourably revise her opinion of him. She hoped, for Cicely’s sake, that his
presence proved sufficiently quelling to avoid the worst excesses of bedding
revels.

Guy had moved away some time before and, by way of a succession of pretty women,
found himself on the fringes of the lively group at the main hearth. Curiously,
it was not he who drew out Cicely’s shy smiles, but Richard, Cicely’s new
stepson.

Eleanor heard raucous male laughter from a group of young men across the hall
and judged it time to act.

“I had best go and be an aunt,” Eleanor said.

Riannon nodded and lightly brushed Eleanor’s hand in a subtle gesture that
produced most unsubtle effects in Eleanor. Tonight she would take her own
pleasure. First, she must ensure that the nuptial chamber was prepared and ready
for the bedding of bride and groom.

The scent of roses and sweet basil greeted Eleanor as she entered the chamber.
They had been strewn with a liberal hand amongst the fresh rushes on the floor.
Wine waited beside the bed. The rich bed hangings were truly beautiful and would
be proof against any draughts. In the swans, unicorns, and lilies, the pattern
married the Earl Marshal’s emblem with that of Cicely’s father and her late
cousin, the earl. They were the Earl Marshal’s bridal gift.

Eleanor caught a faint hint of rosemary. That carried her straight back half a
lifetime to a similar chamber, though not as grand. Not that she had savoured it
in peace like this. She had been fearful and flinching. The morning after, when
she had leisure to appreciate her surroundings, the world had become a place
more bewildering and alien.

“Is all in readiness, Lady Barrowmere?”

Eleanor’s eyes snapped open and she turned to see Joan, Riannon’s sister, in the
doorway. “Yes, madam. Your brother has done my niece proud.”

Eleanor accompanied Joan back towards the hall. In lieu of sisters and mother,
Cicely had chosen to be attended by her aunt, her new sister-in-law, and a
couple of young women she had befriended in the last few days.

When they stepped back into the hall, Eleanor immediately felt the tension.
Riannon stood rigid, returning her brother Henry’s glare. Eleanor did not hear
what he said that made Riannon turn and stalk away. As she began to follow, Joan
hurried past her to intercept Riannon. Eleanor stopped. She heard muttering and
saw disapproving looks from those who had been close enough to have heard what
passed between brother and sister.

Joan detained Riannon just inside the door. Much as she wanted to go to Riannon,
Eleanor moved instead towards her niece. She owed this last service to Cicely –
to ease her away from any tension that would add to that she would already be
feeling.

Cicely lost all but the borrowed blush of rouge from her cheeks when Eleanor
took her hand to lead her away. Some of the men could not resist a few coarse
remarks about mares and mounting. Eleanor clasped Cicely’s cold hand and drew
her from the hall.

Eleanor and the other women helped Cicely undress. She sat, her skin as pale as
her chemise, to have her hair brushed. Eleanor could not help remembering when
she had sat like that, trembling but resigned. By the look of one or two of the
others, she was not alone in her reminiscences. Eleanor rallied herself to a
smile in the here and now.

“Now, let me act as mother to you,” Eleanor said.

Eleanor reached into the purse hanging from her girdle and extracted a necklace
with a teardrop-shaped piece of cloudy green onyx hanging from it.

“This has been blessed in the waters of the sacred pond of the grove house.”
Eleanor fastened it around her niece’s neck. “And we women all offer our own
blessing to you. So that you may know no pain, but only the blessing of children
from your marriage bed.”

Eleanor could not help her mind silently remarking that pleasure in plenty could
be had in a bed, though with a lover rather than a husband. That was the sort of
wisdom an aunt might pass on in a few years, perhaps, but not on a wedding day.

Each of the women touched the stone and kissed Cicely’s cheek.

A cheer carried from the hall.

“Now, sweeting.” Eleanor encouraged Cicely to rise. She smiled reassuringly and
pulled her niece into an embrace. “All will be well.”

Cicely bit her lip and nodded.

How young and frightened she looked when she huddled naked in the big bed with
the sheet clutched up over her breasts. She flinched when the door burst open.
Men spilled into the room, loud and lewd. The groom took one look at his bride
and turned to assert himself. The chamber cleared quickly, though not without
more crude jests tossed back over departing shoulders. Eleanor gratefully
offered the Earl Marshal a curtsy. He nodded to her and the other women.

Eleanor’s last glance in the room, as she shut the door behind her, was of
Cicely’s desperate look at her. Eleanor leaned against the door and bit her lip.
She knew what it felt like to wait for a hairy stranger. And to know, but yet
not know, what he would do with her.

Eleanor shuddered and strode away. She felt a spurt of disappointment when she
could not see Riannon. She worked her way down the hall, absently acknowledging
greetings, but searching for her lover. She finally found Riannon standing as
rigid as a sword near the far wall, her expression as closed as a castle under
siege. Eleanor would have to enquire what had happened with the Earl Marshal,
but later, when they were private and her own nerves were not so raw.

“I had feared you’d left,” Eleanor said.

“I would have done so,” Riannon said, “save I had to wait for you.”

“Thank you. Nonnie, take me home now, please. Take me away from here.”

In her own bed and in Riannon’s arms, Eleanor made new memories to displace
those triggered by her niece’s bedding. She snuggled against a warm, loving
body. She had only to twist her head to look at Riannon’s face and see herself
valued for who she was, not what she owned or how many children she might bear.
Perhaps that was the secret of the pleasure of a lover – they both voluntarily
came together. She had not been compelled to subject herself to Riannon’s
embrace nor become a piece of property passed from one man to another.

“What’s amiss?” Riannon asked. “You shudder.”

Eleanor slid her arm across Riannon’s ribs and pressed herself close. Riannon
still wore her shirt, but Eleanor did not care. First things first.

“Haunted by yesterdays,” Eleanor said. “Unlike you, who had an unhappy today.”

Riannon kissed the top of Eleanor’s head. “It’s of no consequence.”

“Is that your way of saying that you wish not to talk about it? Because I cannot
imagine you, Lady Riannon, my knight errant, would perjure yourself so easily.
And not to your lover.”

Eleanor felt Riannon’s grin in a fractional relaxation of the arms around her.

“Guy is a braver man than I’ve ever met before,” Riannon said. “To dare to
battle wits with you. It would be a surer victory to face a dragon.”