Winter Song (60 page)

More shocked than pleased, Alys pulled her mouth free. “Oh,
do not!” she cried. “You cannot be so cruel as to beat me after you kiss me.”

“Why should you think I wish to beat you?” Raymond asked
softly. “Do you deserve a beating?”

But the shock had dried Alys’s tears, and she stared at him,
taking in the quiver at the corner of his mouth, the little lines around his
eyes that made them twinkle and indicated not rage, but mirth.

“Oh, you monster!” she cried, flinging her arms around his
neck. “How dare you say to a whole hall full of people that you wished to ‘deal
with me’, frightening me to death—”

“I
am
dealing with you,” Raymond said severely, and
kissed her again. “Would you say I was having naught to do with you?” Then,
when their lips parted, he said, “But you have not answered me. Do you deserve
a beating?”

“Yes, indeed,” Alys sighed, but her eyes shone with
laughter, “for I accused you unjustly, and refused you your rights as a
husband, and—and I struck you with—with my riding whip—”

“You devil!” he said. But now he could not be angry with
Alys, even though the thing itself was outrageous. “That is something you had
better not try again,” was all he managed.

“No, but…” The merriment disappeared from the clear eyes
that had been gazing into his. They became shadowed and dropped, and Alys’s
grip on him loosened. “I was wrong to deny you,” she whispered, “but when…when
you forced me, I-I…”

“Never again, dear heart, I swear it,” Raymond murmured. “I
do not say I will not beat you if you cross me that way, but force you I will
not. Nor would I have done so that night, except that I think I was so tired. I
had been two days without sleep. That I was not altogether right in my wits.”

“Beloved, beloved,” Alys cried, her eyes shining anew with
joy, “I knew, as soon as you were gone, I knew you were not yourself. I would
have followed you, except that I feared you would kill me if I did not let your
anger cool. And the next day, when I heard you had taken Lucie away to be
married, I vowed I would kiss your hands as you beat me, and so I will, if it
will satisfy you to beat me now.”

“Oh, you clever little witch,” Raymond said, deliberately
squeezing her so hard she squeaked with pain, “you know you are safe enough to
offer that now when my desire is for a different satisfaction.”

“No,” Alys said.

Raymond’s arms dropped away and his face went hard, and Alys
burst into laughter.

“Not until you take off that steel shirt,” she went on
pertly before the anger that was gathering in Raymond could burst forth. “I am
scratched and scraped enough from being snatched up and flung down and climbing
mountains—” The bellow drowned her out, but Alys only put her hands over her
ears and finished, “And now you are paid for affrighting me half to death in
the hall.”

Alys then slipped under Raymond’s grasp and bent to take
hold of his hauberk. She pulled it about halfway up, but Raymond was so much
taller than she and the mail so heavy that she could not lift it farther. In
fact, she overbalanced and fell against him, and he caught her again, but with
the folds of mail between them, his intention was frustrated. Half laughing,
half irritated, Raymond swung around, backed toward a stool, and sat down on it
so Alys could lift off the hauberk. He grunted with pain when it pulled free
the clotted blood around the wound, and Alys gasped at the new, sluggish flow
of red. Raymond only stood up and pulled off the remainder of his clothing,
fending Alys away and murmuring again, “Do not try my patience.”

“But Raymond,” Alys protested, “only let me—”

“Later,” he insisted, seizing her gown at the neck and
rending it apart down the center seam.

He expected Alys to be angry, but she had caught fire in a
different way at that, and she only stepped out of the remains and hurriedly
took off her shift and underdress. Holding out her hand to him, she went to the
bed and pushed him gently so that he sat down on it.

“Stay yourself, my lord,” she whispered, “or you will be too
quick for me.”

“Then I will amend it a second time,” Raymond said
impatiently. “I have been celibate as a walled-in monk since I last had you. If
you quarrel with my slaking my thirst with others, then you must accommodate my
eagerness.”

Whereupon Alys threw herself atop him, crying, “If that is
my prize, I will accommodate you any way you desire as often as you desire.”

“As you are then, mount me,” he muttered, pushing himself
back so he would not slip off the bed.

Alys was so inflamed by the idea that she did not even see
the smear of blood her husband’s back left on the bed. She raised her knees,
straddled him, and impaled herself, sighing with delight as she worked herself
down. Raymond groaned, which might have boded ill, betokening he was near
bursting, but Alys had the upper hand—or rather, body—and brought them safely
home. They both slept afterward, swiftly and deeply, Raymond so deeply that he
did not stir when Alys woke and left the bed, nor even later when, having
washed and done her hair and obtained fresh clothing, she shifted him and
gently cleaned and bandaged the tear on his shoulder.

There were candles lit when Raymond opened his eyes at last.
They fell on Alys, sewing beside the bed and singing softly to herself. Passion
spent, anxiety allayed, he watched her for a while, then curiosity stirred in
him. He asked softly, “Do you deserve a beating, Alys? How came you to allow
Beatrice and Margot to fall into such a trap?”

She jumped and blushed, but did not answer until she had
brought him food and wine. Then, while he ate, she told him the whole tale. “I
am so sorry,” she said at last, “not only for the pain I have caused you and
the labor to which I have put you, but for Sir Guillaume, also. If only I had
not been so selfish, wanting something to do so that I would not think every
moment whether you would forgive me and come to me—”

“I cannot object to that,” Raymond interrupted, smiling.

“No, but in a way poor Sir Guillaume is the sufferer. And I
wonder if he is so guilty, for that treacherous Ernaldus may have planted the
idea in his silly head. If I had only looked at Margot and Beatrice and
listened to them, I would never have gone or let them go, and Sir Guillaume
would not be ruined. Indeed, Raymond, he is only a rather stupid, too-young
man.”

“Oh, very well, I will see what I can do for him,” Raymond
conceded. “After all, the fault is really Sir Romeo’s. If he had not bespoke
Beatrice in such a foolish way…or if you will, the fault goes back to my
grandfather, who spoiled the girl.”

“But even so,” Alys sighed, “it comes back to me. It is as I
said from the very first, my lord. In some ways I am truly not fit to be your
wife. No one would have bothered to abduct me, the daughter of a simple knight.
It was too far outside my knowledge, from not being highbred enough.”

“Good God, of all the conceited people!” Raymond exclaimed. “The
trouble with you, Alys, is not that you are too lowbred but that you are too
proud. You think you make the world go around.” And then he began to laugh at
her affronted expression. “Do not dare blame yourself for Beatrice’s and Margot’s
mischief,” he said seriously. “You are fit to be a queen.”

Author’s Note

I wish to point out the mingling of fact and fiction in the
tale of the abduction of Beatrice of Provence. The abduction itself, although
not mentioned in any of the modern histories I have consulted, has a medieval
source. Matthew de Paris (
English
History
, 1245. Bonn’s Library,
London, 1853, vol. II, p. 43.) says:

…a certain knight
of small property, but bold and brave in war, incited by the lady’s beauty, as
well as by the rich inheritance which belonged to her, secretly carried her
off, and placed her in safety in a castle near, which belonged to him,
considering it quite an excusable offense, according to the saying of the poet,
Genialis praeda puella est
. (Woman is a pleasing prize.)

It must be noted, however, that the young knight who
abducted the lady is not named, nor is he identified in any other medieval
source available to me. I have chosen to make him a scion of the family who
held the castle called Les Baux, a most remarkable place (now a ruin) set atop
a precipitous cliff.

This identification of the abductor with Les Baux has no
historical basis at all, nor has the existence of Sir Guillaume, who is a
fictional character associated with Les Baux only for the purposes of this
novel. Thus, Sir Guillaume’s actions and his feelings are equally products of
the author’s imagination.

Finally, no mention at all is made of how Beatrice was
rescued. The chronicler implies that there was some fighting, but there is no
mention of the terms upon which the lady was recovered, nor of any punishment
meted out to the young knight. All that is known is that Beatrice was returned
unharmed to her mother, was betrothed to Charles of Anjou shortly thereafter,
and married Charles in January 1246.

I must concede that the rescue I described is highly
unlikely. Most probably Beatrice was extricated from her too-eager swain’s hold
by her mother and guardian, either by besieging the knight’s castle or by
paying a ransom and taking oath that no retribution would be exacted for the
abduction. I have, therefore, taken a grave liberty with the true facts in order
to produce an exciting and amusing denouement.

In amelioration, I plead that the result, in historical
terms, was identical. Beatrice was freed in a condition to marry Charles of
Anjou. That is, no marriage contract of which the Church was aware had been
made, and she was still a virgin—or, at least not with child. It is the
marriage that is of historical significance, because it led eventually to
Provence being united with the kingdom of France. How Beatrice was returned to
her mother is not relevant in the larger pattern of history, and thus I have
felt no great harm would be done by bending the truth to suit my novel.

Also by
Roberta Gellis

A Woman’s
Estate

Fortune’s
Bride

Siren Song

The
Cornish Heiress

The
English Heiress

The Kent
Heiress

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