Lady Knight (23 page)

Agnes finished fastening the end of Eleanor’s night plait. She fiddled
unnecessarily with the brush and combs before speaking.

“Do you wish me to retire to the back chamber for the night, my lady?”

“There’s no need. We’ll keep to our usual arrangements.”

Riannon would not be fit to join her, even if her newfound boon companions
departed ere midnight. Eleanor wondered if she ought to have tried persuading
Riannon to retire early. Whatever that bandage concealed needed longer healing
than the few hours she slept this afternoon.

Eleanor knelt in private devotion before the portable travelling shrine in the
corner of her bedchamber. She again thanked all four gods for Riannon having
passed through the duel. The ordeal had not only been Riannon’s.

Loving a hero meant more days and nights of hell for Eleanor like those she had
just suffered. The waiting. Wanting to scream at her utter impotence while
imagining her lover in mortal danger, and knowing that Riannon would throw
herself in when more prudent men would hesitate. The constant, unrelenting,
harrowing not knowing if the moment that had just passed was the last one
Riannon knew before a sword thrust killed her. Living in perpetual expectation
of the arrival of news that Riannon was dead – or that she had died days or
weeks before and Eleanor had lived on in ignorance of her abrupt loneliness. Or
the unspeakable nightmare of racing to Riannon’s bedside to find her alive but
beyond all mortal aid and lingering in racking agony that Eleanor could do
nothing to ease.

She could see bandages crusted with dirty pus. It was too easy to substitute
Riannon for memories of poor tortured, dying William. There was nothing heroic
in the gut-churning stench of soiled sheets and rotting flesh.

“It didn’t happen,” Eleanor whispered. She forced her fingers to relax from
their white-knuckle grip on the edge of the shrine. “She’s safe. Almighty Gods,
I thank you. You, who see into all hearts, know how deeply and profoundly
grateful I am.”

Before rising, Eleanor added a fervent prayer that she could think of some way
of averting her marriage to Lord Howe.

Though she had not slept last night, Eleanor lay awake with Agnes softly snoring
in the other half of her bed. Since sleeping with Riannon, Eleanor found the
commonplace habit of sharing her bed with other women disquieting. She did not
desire Agnes. She did not desire any woman other than Riannon. Yet, she now felt
a self-consciousness about herself and her proximity to another woman. She
imagined she would feel the same wary discomfort if she found herself lying in
the same bed as a man. Women had become possible sexual partners.

The house quietened. Eleanor no longer heard male shouts and laughter from the
hall below. Riannon’s visitors would have departed – or been carried home by
their servants – and Eleanor’s household would have retired to pallets on the
floor.

Eleanor rose. She groped her way in the dark to the shrine. She found a flint
there for lighting the shrine lamp.

She shielded her candle as she walked through the intervening rooms to Riannon’s
door. She lifted the latch and let herself in. Alan jerked upright on his cot at
the foot of the bed.

“My lady!” he said. “What –”

“Ssh.” Eleanor put a finger to her lips. She stepped closer to him and
whispered, “How is she? Does she sleep?”

“Nell?”

Eleanor’s blood quickened at the sound of Riannon’s voice. She smiled as she
stepped through the gap in the hangings. Riannon looked tired. Eleanor wanted to
throw herself at Riannon and hold her. The candlelight showed the bulge of a
bandage beneath the left shoulder of Riannon’s shirt.

“I feared you were asleep.” Riannon tugged the bedding aside in invitation.
“But I hoped you’d come.”

Eleanor set her candle down and eased herself under the sheet. She made no
remark on the unusual arrangement of being on Riannon’s right, scarred side. “I
want to touch you so badly, but I’m afraid to hurt you.”

“You’ll not hurt me.” Riannon put a gentle hand to Eleanor’s cheek. “But I won’t
be much use to you tonight, love.”

“I need the comfort of being with you.”

“That I can do.”

Eleanor snuggled against Riannon’s uninjured side and slid a hand over Riannon’s
ribs. Riannon kissed Eleanor’s temple.

“This is what I’ve needed more than any healers or cups of wine,” Riannon said.

Eleanor turned her head on Riannon’s uninjured shoulder to kiss the side of her
neck. With her lips feeling Riannon’s pulse, her body hugging the warm solidity
of her, and inhaling the sweaty, musky scent of Riannon – when every sense
confirmed that Riannon had come back to her alive – Eleanor began to weep. She
let all her sadness and fears sob out of herself at last. Her tears wet
Riannon’s shirt. Riannon held her and murmured to her until Eleanor quietened.
Then, finally, Eleanor was able to slip into the peace of sleep.

Eleanor stood at the window watching the dawn and waiting for servants to bring
up the food tray she had ordered. Alan had tactfully scrambled into his clothes
and departed the chamber. Behind her, Riannon slept. This was how Eleanor wished
she could always start a day. She might not greet another morning this way.

The queen had directed the chancellor himself to oversee the negotiation of the
marriage contract and ensure a speedy settlement. For reasons of her own, which
Eleanor did not believe had any connection with the desire to be present at the
ceremony herself, the queen wished them married in a hurry. It could be but a
matter of days. She ought to consider herself fortunate that the queen insisted
they make a contract, for it was not always the case with swift marriages.
Eleanor had more to protect than most. She needed to safeguard her own lands so
that they reverted to her control on Geoffrey’s death, should he sire no
children on her. Unscrupulous heirs were not above claiming the widow’s lands as
their late father’s.

She frowned past the shutter at the brightening sky. By the time this day faded
into twilight, she might have signed the contract and be betrothed. She
suspected Riannon would decline to continue their physical relationship at that
point. The knight who did not claim for herself the name of highest renown would
not use sophistry and lawyers’ arguments to pick apart shades of adultery for
her own convenience.

Eleanor would, though.

“Nell?”

“I’m here.”

Eleanor strode back through the bed curtains. Riannon looked stiff and unusually
awkward as she moved.

“Stay there,” Eleanor said. “Servants are bringing food for us to break our
night fasts.”

Riannon frowned. “This is my chamber, love.”

“I know it. And so do my household. You don’t think that a single one of them
will be ignorant of our intimacy ere this night?”

“Your honour is at stake. Lady –”

Eleanor silenced her with a kiss. “Now, lie back and let me look after you.
Like a good, modest woman should.”

Riannon grinned. “Would your notions of goodness and modesty require you to join
me in this bed?”

Eleanor smiled and propped a pillow behind Riannon. “After the servants have
left. Then I’ll have you at my mercy.”

Riannon gave Eleanor’s night braid a playful tweak.

Eleanor doubted Riannon’s fitness for any bed sport, but did climb back into bed
to share the meal that the servants brought. She derived immense satisfaction
from feeding Riannon. All the while, she was conscious of a shadow voice at the
back of her mind whispering that this might be the last time.

Eleanor put part of a wafer in her mouth and turned to Riannon. After a moment
to understand the invitation, Riannon bent to put her mouth to the wafer. They
kissed and bit off the wafer between them. Crumbs fell into the sheets. Eleanor
didn’t care. She laughed and snuggled closer to Riannon to claim a proper kiss.

“Hmm,” Riannon said. “Good, but not quite as tasty as a cheese wafer.”

Eleanor hit her good shoulder. “Then I’ll leave you to make love to the food.”

As she expected, Riannon grabbed her and prevented her leaving the bed.
Eleanor, mindful of Riannon’s wound, offered only gentle and short-lived
resistance before yielding to another long, deepening kiss. Eleanor’s blood
stirred and heated between her legs, but Riannon sagged unhappily against the
pillows.

“I’m sorry, love,” Riannon said. “I don’t think I could manage it this morning.”

“Does it pain you?”

“No. Truly. The discomfort is no more than you’d expect. I swear it.”

Eleanor tore her gaze from Riannon’s shoulder and nodded. “I’m so eternally
grateful that you’re alive. I prayed so hard. There was little I didn’t offer
the gods in return for that.”

“I hope you didn’t pledge chastity.”

Eleanor smiled. “Considering how quickly I’ve come to your bed, that virtue
would have bought me not even the merest sliver of divine favour, would it?”

“It’d be ungallant of me to make any remark to the disparagement of your
chastity, would it not?”

“Extremely! Since you are the cause of my incontinence.”

“For which I’m wholly and utterly unrepentant.”

“Thank the gods!” Eleanor said.

Riannon laughed. Eleanor caught herself trying to memorise the sound. The more
she tried not to think about it, the more aware she grew of how short a time
they had together.

“Now why do you look so sad?” Riannon asked.

Eleanor could not summon a merry remark or rally her spirits. She traced the
contours of the unscarred side of Riannon’s face. “Whenever I wake in the
night,” Eleanor said, “I want to be able to feel your smile.”

Riannon frowned. “There must be something we can do.” Eleanor sighed and shook
her head. She looked around for the wine cup. “I’ve been beating my brains. If
only you had been a man.” Riannon stiffened and the defences slammed into place.
Eleanor put her hand over Riannon’s fist.

“I do not mean that I’d love you any more, had you been a man,” Eleanor said.
“For certès, I’ve no desire for a cock and balls. You give me intimate pleasure
I’d barely dreamed of beneath a man. And I’ve no fear that you’ll leave me with
the pustules of some disease that will canker my womb again. No, I’d have you no
way other than exactly as you are.”

“Then why the regretful remark about a man?”

“Because I might’ve married you. Clandestinely and quickly. Not even the queen
could force me to commit bigamy.”

Riannon scowled, but she relaxed her fist and interleaved her fingers with
Eleanor’s. “We owe fealty to the queen.”

“I know. Were we to defy her in such a way, it’d cost us dear. The queen
couldn’t let us cross her without punishment. Fines, loss of land, mayhap even
loss of liberty for a time.” Eleanor set her cup aside and turned fully to
Riannon. “But we would’ve been together.”

“We could run away. I could take you to some of those foreign lands you yearn to
see.”

Eleanor leaned her head against Riannon’s good shoulder and stared up at the
hangings. “You’d throw me across your saddle and we’d ride off together into the
sunset? Perhaps Master Nuon would compose a song for us. We could live on that
instead of manchet bread.”

“I’d not let you starve.”

Eleanor hugged Riannon’s arm. “I know. But you barely earn enough to keep your
squire and horses fed. How would you fare with a highly expensive lover?”

“I’d find a way. Mayhap a prince would pay well for the services of the
Vahldomne, rather than Riannon of Gast.”

“You’d do that for me?”

“There is little I’d not do for you.”

Eleanor felt awe as a lump in her throat. “Oh, Nonnie, what did I ever do to
deserve your love?”

“You are you.”

Eleanor smiled and kissed the base of Riannon’s throat. Riannon smelled strongly
of sweat, but it was not unpleasant. It was a smell that Eleanor would always
remember.

“I don’t know how I’ll bear losing you,” Eleanor said, “but knowing that you’ll
be out there somewhere, alive, is a thousand times more endurable than having
only a memory and wishing to be haunted by a beloved ghost.”

“Why can we not run away?”

Eleanor smiled sadly. “Because we are not eighteen years old with our heads
stuffed full of troubadours’ songs. Because you are you, and I am I.”

Riannon tensed.

“Beloved,” Eleanor said, “you and I can dream, but we’re old enough to know
ourselves and to know dream from what is and what might be. Could you break your
oath of homage to your liege lady? Could you break your sworn word and service
to the Order of the Goddess? Running away with me would mean both.”

Riannon’s jaw worked. Eleanor touched it gently.

“No more than I could ride away from everything I own,” Eleanor said. “I hold my
responsibilities dear. Running my estates, managing them, making decisions about
leasing, renting, buying new properties, investments, the welfare of my
retainers, and all the other myriad things I oversee and control. That’s a great
part of who I am. I enjoy it and derive great satisfaction from it all. I could
no more give that up for a tenuous hand-to-mouth existence than you could pick a
goose girl and make her queen. And what would become of me if something happened
to you? Would you have me begging? Or whoring myself for meals?” Riannon glared
at her. “Never! You cannot believe –”

“No. I do not.” Eleanor stroked Riannon’s cheek. “Not by choice. But what if you
became injured or ill and couldn’t earn our meat? What would become of us then?”

“You want to marry him?”

“No! Oh, gods, no.” Eleanor sighed and made a despairing gesture. “But I can
think of nothing else to do. Can you? Fancies and wishes I have in surfeit, but
of a real solution I cannot even see its footprints across my mind, let alone
stand close enough to grasp it. I’m at my wits’ end. But I’m not blinded by
folly. We cannot eat love.”

Aveline watched her sister pacing. Mathilda snatched her cup off a shelf and
hurled it against the far wall. The wooden vessel cracked and left a dark stain
on the beautiful tapestry hanging.