Shadows and Strongholds (46 page)

Brunin was being boisterously disrobed in preparation for the bedding ceremony as in similar wise Hawise was being prepared in the bridal chamber above this one. He bore the rough tugging and bawdy remarks with an outward display of aplomb. If he could not have privacy without, then he would have it within.

'Yes,' slurred a drunken Ralf, 'I've often wondered whether he'd got the balls to see matters through, but it's all right, he's got both of them!'

Brunin briefly faced his brother. 'Satisfied?' 'Not as much as your bride had better be!' Joscelin loudly cleared his throat and handed Brunin a cloak to cover his nakedness. 'I hope you are more sober than your brothers,' his new father-in-law muttered angrily. Brunin fastened the clasp with steady fingers. 'I have shared three cups of wine with Hawise all evening,' he said, not adding that the bridal goblet was twice the size of a usual measure and that Hawise had probably swallowed the lion's share. He couldn't afford the oblivion of drink.

Joscelin was still frowning. 'I…' He rubbed the back of his neck, his complexion turning a rich shade of plum. 'Have a care with her,' he said. 'I do not want to see her tears on the morrow.'

'Neither do I… sir.' Brunin wondered if Joscelin realised the weight he was adding to the burden.

Joscelin gave a curt nod. 'I'm trusting you with my daughter…'

'My wife,' Brunin replied to make a point and saw Joscelin gather his emotions together like a harvester tying a shock of wheat in the wind.

'Aye, you have the right of it… your wife.' Joscelin gripped his shoulder. 'If I don't trust you with her now, then it's too late for both of us.' Removing his hand, he stepped back. Brunin could still feel the imprint of the square, strong fingers, hard as a mail glove, reminding him. But if Hawise didn't trust him, what then?

'Hah, no need to look so grim, lad, his father said, and his own hand came down hard on Brunin's shoulder, obliterating the feel of Joscelin's grip. 'It's your wedding night, not your wake.'

'He hopes!' Ralf guffawed, and received a hefty bear cuff from FitzWarin.

'Your turn will come, whelp, and if you conduct yourself half so well, then you will count yourself fortunate!'

That silenced his second son like a splash from a pail of cold water and Ralf fell back amongst the other well-wishers, his expression suddenly miserable. Brunin raised a brow at him. Sooner or later their father would have to know about Sian.

The more sober men of the wedding party were entrusted with bearing the torches to light the way to the bridal chamber, and Brunin was half led, half jostled up the tower stairs to the great wooden door amidst bawdy jests about knocking with a stout staff before entering.

'They're on their way,' said Sibbi, who had posted herself near the door to listen out and give warning.

Hawise caught her breath. Her stomach was a queasy hollow. She hoped she wouldn't disgrace herself by being sick… although if she managed to vomit over Mellette FitzWarin, that might be some consolation. As the women had undressed her, Brunin's grandmother had studied her with the uncompromising, critical eyes of a horse-coper at Shrewsbury Fair perusing a nag of doubtful pedigree.

'Good hips for breeding,' Mellette had said, 'just as long as she proves more fecund than her Talbot side.'

'That is in the hands of God,' Sybilla had replied, lips pursed in anger.

'Indeed, my lady. We'll all be praying hard for a fertile furrow to be ploughed this night.'

Hawise had had to compress her own lips very tightly. It was obvious that the old besom was trying to provoke a reaction and the best defence was not to give her one.

Sybilla had fastened Hawise's cloak around her shoulders and arranged her tresses over it in a gleaming, fiery skein.

'You have beautiful hair,' Eve FitzWarin said softly.

'Let us hope that the colour doesn't carry forward into the children,' Mellette said, continuing to be outrageous.

'There has always been red hair in the de Dinan bloodline,' Sybilla said icily. 'I pray that it does. Marion, stop hiding in the corner and pass me the comb… Saints, girl, you're as green as a new cheese!'

Marion swallowed. 'Too much wine,' she said. Her breathing was rapid and the frightened expression on her face, together with her shaking hands, might have led a newcomer to believe that she was the anxious bride rather than Hawise.

The sight of her distress momentarily distracted Hawise from her own anxieties. She assumed that Marion was upset because she was seeing her dream of wedding Brunin being shattered before her eyes.

'You don't have to stay, Marion,' she said gently. 'I
understand.' She was pleased with the way her own voice sounded: mature and modulated like her mother's.

'No,' Marion spat like a cornered cat. 'You don't even begin to understand, and you never will!' She thrust the comb into Sybilla's hand, ran to the door, wrenched it open, and fled. An instant later the women heard the sound of bawdy welcome as Marion encountered the male wedding party on its way up the stairs.

'I'd have that girl soundly whipped if I were you,' Mellette said, folding her arms beneath her bosom.

'But you are not me, and I will deal with Marion as I see fit… with respect, my lady,' Sybilla answered, and used the comb swiftly to stroke and smooth Hawise's hair in a gesture of affectionate reassurance.

Mellette made a 'hmph' sound down her nose but held her peace, allowing her expression to speak for her.

'Courage,' Sybilla murmured to Hawise. 'It will soon be over. Your father and I will make sure that the guests do not linger beyond what has to be done.'

Hawise nodded and steeled herself as the groom's party surged into the room, voices and laughter loud with drink. Two of Brunin's younger brothers were jesting to each other about Marion, whom they had obviously enjoyed pressing up against on the stairs as she tried to squeeze past. In the midst of all the guffaws and shouting, Brunin, by contrast, was as still as stone. Perhaps his complexion was a little heightened, and the pupils of his eyes were so wide that his eyes seemed black, but otherwise he appeared to be as impassive as a lump of storm-battered granite. Hawise felt as if she were made of small grains of sand, disintegrating against the surge.

Bishop Gilbert entered the room on the heels of the revellers. Raising his arms, ivory crozier in hand, he roared for silence with a voice of carrying power. Mostly it was obeyed, with only the odd titter and belch challenging its authority.

The Bishop beckoned Brunin and Hawise forward to stand before him. 'We are gathered to witness that there is no bodily flaw in bride or groom that will cause the marriage to be null and void.' He gestured and Sybilla gently unfastened the pin and pulled Hawise's cloak from her shoulders. Hawise suppressed the instinct to cover her breasts and pubic mound with her hands. Only let it be over, and quickly, she prayed. Sybilla gathered up her sheaf of hair and held it away from her body so that every pail of Hawise was exposed to the stare of the wedding guests… and her new husband.

'I am satisfied,' he said in a low voice.

'Not yet he isn't!' someone shouted before his exuberance was muffled by a more responsible companion.

Cool fabric slid against Hawise's skin and with deep relief she thrust her head and arms through the openings in an exquisitely embroidered linen chemise.

Now it was Brunin's turn and Hawise had to raise her head and look upon him as his father removed the cloak. He stood quietly, the rise and fall of his chest measured and controlled, his own gaze fixed beyond hers at a point somewhere on the wall. Her eyes hastily skimmed over him as a matter of form, but she absorbed nothing. Even had his nakedness revealed horned hooves and a tail, she would not have noticed at this moment. 'I too am satisfied,' she croaked, ignoring the splutter from the impromptu jester at the room's far end. Brunin was similarly reclothed in an embroidered nightshirt and the couple brought to the bed. Sybilla and Eve drew back the covers to reveal the smooth bleached linen sheet covering the mattress and the guests were asked to witness the proof that any blood spilled on it could not have come from earlier artifice. Bishop Gilbert sprinkled the sheet liberally with holy water and blessed the bed. The women led Hawise around to the left side and placed her in the bed. Then the men, with a deal more manhandling and bawdy talk, threw Brunin in with his bride.

'Go on, lad. She'll be a better ride than that nag of yours!'

'Hah, he's got to mount her first and then try to stay on!'

'You know what they say about red-haired women… mayhap she'll ride him!'

Comments bantered back and forth, becoming bawdier by the moment. Finally Joscelin had had enough and bellowed the word with sufficient resonance to sound against the rafters. 'There is meat and drink aplenty in the hall for those who have not taken their fill. Time to give the bride and groom some peace… and before I hear cries that peace is the last thing they will have tonight, remember that Hawise is my daughter, my youngest child, and Brunin is Lord FitzWarin's heir. As I said… enough!' Spreading his arms, he began to usher everyone out.

'Well said, my lord,' Mellette declared and for once there was a gleam of approval in her eyes. 'Bedding ceremonies always turn into unseemly circuses.' With a curt nod, she left the room, accompanied by Eve and FitzWarin.

Sybilla kissed Hawise on the cheek, and then Brunin. 'May you both find joy,' she said with a warm smile.

'Thank you, Mama.' Hawise wished that she could leave the room with her mother, wished that it was someone else's wedding night and that she was no more than a casual onlooker. Her father was at the door. He looked once over his shoulder and tried to smile. Sybilla came to him, took his arm, kissed his cheek too, and drew him from the chamber.

The moment that the latch dropped, Brunin leaped from the bed and shot the bolt across the door.

'I trust neither my brothers, nor some of the knights,' he said. 'I cannot prevent them from listening at the latch, but I can stop them from bursting in.'

'You think they would do that?' Hawise left the bed too, putting off the inevitable.

'I know they would,' Brunin said with a wry laugh. 'Especially with the drink inside them. A bride and groom are always fair game for sport on their wedding night and I've done my share of teasing.'

'Ah, yes, the packhorse bells tied to the mattress when Hugh and Sibbi were wed. Sibbi told me it took them an hour to unstring them all.'

He shrugged. 'By which time they were at ease with each other. It was a good ploy' He got down on his hands and knees to examine the underside of their mattress, but no one, it seemed, had been prepared to be as inventive, or to risk the ire of the bride's father. Rising to his feet, he faced her and dusted off his palms. 'There is one rule that I am going to make inviolate after the display of that sheet on the morrow.'

'What?' Hawise folded her arms defensively over her breasts, but quickly unfolded them again. She would not show him how nervous she was.

'That this room is ours. That anything we say or do beyond this threshold belongs to us alone… be it talking, or gaming, or quarrelling, or lying together. We will have the antechamber for guests and visitors and official business, but that doorway is where it all stops.'

'You have no complaint from me on that score,' Hawise said fervently. She glanced towards the bed and the waiting, pristine undersheet.

He pushed his hands through his hair and sat down on his clothing coffer. 'I've been thinking about that damned bed all day,' he said.

'You have?' Her voice emerged as a tight croak.

'It's been hard not to with all the reminders.'

Hawise saw that he was frowning. He had apparently borne the preliminaries better than she had, but appearances could be deceptive—especially in his case. Going to her own coffer, she knelt and threw back the lid. 'Do you remember the day when you were cleaning my father's weapons and I came to you?'

'Yes, I remember.' He gave her a cautious look. 'Which part of that day are you asking me to recall?'

'All of it.'

'Why?'

'Because of everything that happened. If there had been a bed in that chamber, we might have used it. It was very sweet between us… wasn't it?

'Yes, it was.' His expression remained guarded. Hawise desperately hoped that what she was about to do would bring down the barrier. She had to see beyond it.

'Then Gilbert de Lacy attacked and I accused you of cowardice when nothing could be further from the truth.' It was hard to hold his gaze, but she forced herself to do so. 'I would throw my words into a void of forgetting, but since we both have good memories, it cannot be done.'

A thin smile broke through his wariness. 'It is only the good memories I would foster.'

She returned his smile with a strained one of her own. 'Liar,' she said.

'I did not say the unpleasant memories would go away, but that I would foster the good ones—or try to anyway' The curve of his lips deepened. 'For example, I will try to forget that my new wife just called me a liar.'

Hawise hesitated. Once she had known him well enough to seize a cushion and throw it at his head, but that was before the day of which they had just spoken… before his father's illness and their joining as man and wife. She had wished for a chamber where they could be alone. Now she had that wish and, like a little girl holding her first distaff and spindle, was unsure how to begin turning a morass of fleece into smooth-running yarn. She mentally shook herself. Unsure, yes. But that did not mean entirely without notion, and the latter was the reason for being on her knees at this open coffer.

'I have other names that I wish to call you instead, if you will let me,' she said.

He arched one eyebrow but the smile remained and her instinct told her that he was diverted. 'Such as?'

Hawise licked her lips. Here was the part where she set the spindle spinning, drew out the fleece and hoped that she had sufficient dexterity to make a thread fine enough to weave the pattern of their lives without clumping or breaking. Reaching inside the chest she withdrew a linen bag, and from it removed a roll of yellow silk. 'Such as honourable and brave and fierce. I thought of those words when I was making this for you.' She handed him the wrapped banner, feeling suddenly shy and at the same time filled with bright anticipation. 'I didn't want to give you this in front of everyone else. It is my personal gift to you.'