Chapter 11: Betrothal's Kiss
No stranger history had been recounted in Caer Aldene.
Before the Hall hearth, Lord Gregory's own maiden daughter, Gilling the Troubadour, his best knight and trusted friend Gareth, and the long-haired stranger Tamlyn of Braewode, had told of Margaret's winning the captive from among the Faerie Folk!
Gregory's sense of satisfaction at knowing Briardene's champion was tempered, or perhaps enhanced, by the strangeness of this young nobleman and his fabulous but irrefutable tale: his rash commitment of his daughter's hand to the one whose information had spared Ardinéa the Vallards' attack, was vindicated by serendipity.
He had not given much thought to details regarding the lands he had promised, yet the young man had not seemed concerned with these. Nor, though grateful, was he greatly impressed by the share of gold and silver and jeweled swords and scabbards and gilded mail taken from the Vallards...
But when Gregory offered Tamlyn his daughter's hand, then did the stranger's eyes look into his with thankfulness reflecting the fullness of his reward. Tamlyn had said, "That were the only guerdon I would have asked of you, my lord, and all these others would have meant nothing without my lady your daughter, Margaret of Aldene." Then some part of the strangeness of the stranger departed from Gregory's eyes, for he had himself wed Margaret's mother in preference to increasing his own riches and power. Full of wonder, he watched this Tamlyn take from him his beaming daughter's hand, and found himself singularly moved by the glance they shared.
He had leaned over her to give betrothal's kiss. How slow he was to take it, and how long they lingered near, even as all in the Hall were cheering!
Many days after, Lord Coltyn and Lady Tamar of Braewode sat at their board eating dinner with their daughters and sons when he heard his steward cry out in surprise. There was a commotion in the entry hall, and then a figure appeared at the door. All sound ceased. Lord Coltyn bolted up from his seat, overturning it.
Lady Tamar turned her calm blue eyes on the young man in the doorway and rose. "I knew you would return to us," she sighed, her eyes brimming over with tears.
His father finally realized he was not seeing a ghost, and ran to embrace him with his good arm. He held him, and swore at him, and finally held him away to look at him. "Please forgive me, my lord my father," said Tamlyn. In his father's eyes he read it all.
His brothers and sisters crowded around him; only the oldest ones recognized him, the younger ones had only heard of their brother Tamlyn who vanished. He pushed through them, to reach his mother, who embraced him fiercely, saying only, "My boy, my son..."
"My Father, my Mother, I have been a captive, but am now free."
He looked upon his brothers and sisters, hardly believing the changes seven years had wrought in their growing bodies. "Coltram, Tamaris, Barta...where is Tamarlanne? She is wed! But she was but a child...and these are also my brothers? And this tiny maid, my sister? . . .My niece, Coltram? Your daughter?. . ."
Dinner was forgotten, many voices spoke excitedly at once.
It was much later, after the little ones were in bed, that Tamlyn sat at the hall hearth with his father and mother (whose eyes were never dry even until now), and his oldest brothers and unwed sister. It was then that he drew from his vest a rolled and sealed leaf of paper bearing the signet of Lord Gregory of Aldene. As he told the story of his entrance into the faerie realm, and of Margaret and his redemption, his father and then the rest read over the letter corroborating his story.
"That is why you look so young, why...you look younger than even Barta," said Lady Tamar.
Coltram was just finishing the letter for the third time. His face was dark.
"Father, how can one accept a tale like this? Elves? Come, are we pagans full of superstition, or children taken in by nursery tales?"
"Coltram! Hold your tongue! Will you call the Lord of Aldene a liar? And here is your brother, ere your very eyes! As for the Elves, there are many things of which you know not, son. You just keep your doubts to yourself. We should rejoice that he who was lost to us is now found."
Coltram looked angrier than ever, but said, "Yes my lord my father." His eyes cut into Tamlyn's heart from his seat. Then he averted them. He arose and bowed slightly to his father, then turned to leave the hall. Lord Coltyn called after him, "Hold, son, a moment." He rose and went to the door where Coltram stood impatiently. There they had a hushed conversation.
Lady Tamar said, "I believe every word you say is true, my Tamlyn," and he looked at her, incredulous at the implication that his own father might not. She continued, "Since we gave up hope that you might be found, Coltram has been the eldest, and the Lord-heir. Suddenly he is deposed from the position he had grasped. Give him time. We had long ago given you up...Although, a mother never gives up, my son. These seven years I have never heard hoofbeats approaching but I didn't pray, in the deeps of my heart, that you were coming home to me.
Blue eyes regarded blue for a long moment. Tamlyn leaned forward in the chair and slipped his two hands round his mother's plump, jeweled fingers. He had never known them to be anything but soft and warm as they were now.
"God answers prayer, Mum."
He leaned back in the chair. "I have gifts for everyone, and I completely forgot to bring them out. I believe Coltram will be well pleased with the jeweled dagger and scaled gauntlets I brought him."
"Ah! You haven't forgotten what your brother is like, then! That will go a long way toward bringing him alongside of you." They grinned at each other as his father returned to the hearthside.
"As the letter states, I have been gifted with lands and some wealth of my own. There will be no need to take away anything on which he has cast his eye. If anything, perhaps I will be adding to it. I will soon be adding to our family, as well." His mother did not miss the tender set to his lips as he glanced toward the fire.
Lady Tamar dabbed her eyes quickly. "I have missed you so much, but God has a way of making things good, does He not?"
In the weeks after his return from the assault on the Vallards, Gilling had turned his feet down the lane to the little cottage almost in spite of himself. He had tried to stay away, to give Sintia Rowan time to think. He was afraid of pressing his suit and causing her instead to thrust him away. He knew there was enough pressure on her as it was.
But again he walked slowly toward the newly-thatched cottage and turned in the gate. After latching it behind him, he turned and found that a new pair of eyes regarded him-- wide and ice blue, nearly white; and white-blond hair made the young girl's angelic face almost frightening, although it was but a child's face.
The girl began to keen, rising from her task with the flax breaker in her hand, dropping the half-beaten flax.
Sintia looked out over the double door, then emerged form the house and took the girl by the shoulders and looked reassuringly at her, pushing her back to her seat. The girl peered into her face and then sat down, picking up the fallen flax and beating it, looking to Sintia, who smiled and nodded, and turned to Gilling. He stared at the girl, and she peeked back from beneath the wide brim of her straw hat. Sintia waved him into the house.
Deinn ran to meet him and he caught her up. He saw that Sintia's father lay in his bed, apparently asleep. Sintia had sat at the loom and was again working the shuttle and harnesses...Almost challenging him to ask about the creature in the front yard. Instead, he addressed Deinn.
"Who is the big girl in the yard, darlin' ?”
"Mary." Pronounced, "Meh-wee."
"Mary, is it? Is she helping your mother?"
"She sleeps wit' Mama an' me. She not talk...I talk. I'm big gehl."
"Yes, you are a big girl. Pretty soon you'll be helping Mama too, aye?" He caught Sintia flicking her eyes at him, not unpleased.
Soon she arose to lay the noontime meal on the board. She awoke her father, and Gilling helped him to the bench. Master Rowan asked again Gilling's name, Gilling again told him. Deinn drew Mary in by the hand, and
she sat, furtively glancing around at the bowed heads during the blessing, then drank her milk noisily and tore at her bread with both hands. Sintia finally was forthcoming.
"Mary is deaf, but not so dumb, I'm thinking. She works well and learns fast. Father can't work anymore, he won't stay awake long enough to produce anything. If I have to break and heckle the flax it's time I can't be weaving, which is how I earn our bread. If she works out I can have her for nothing but her keep. She's from a large family, coppicers, woodcutters; they can't feed them all well enough to suit them. Then they left her home alone and... Something happened to her while they were gone. A man took advantage. Of course, nothing can be proven because all she can do is point and yammer. But her brother took out after him and…" Sintia glanced at Deinn. "He got his revenge. Now he's on the run and the family asked the bailiff if he didn't know a way to be rid of her in good conscience, as on her account they lost her brother's wages. He complained to me of it when I saw him last, and I said I'd give her a try. She came day before yesterday."
Gilling listened, trying not to stare at the girl, whose feral eyes roamed the board, resting on the last lump of cheese impaled on Gilling's knife. He offered it to her, pointing the tip of the knife away when he saw her eyes widen. Slowly her hand reached for it, then delicately pulled the cheese from the knife. She rested her eyes on him, their blue-whiteness almost luminous in the half-dark of the cottage. Then she smiled-- such a smile!-- as only infants smile, wide and luminous; the sun coming out.
It lasted but a moment, but a grin lingered behind the hand that clutched the cheese and fed it to the smacking mouth. Gilling realized that there had been a moment of silence, and he glanced at Sintia, who was grinning slightly, knowingly at him. "She is a handful, but I must admit I couldn't be entirely impartial once I'd seen that smile."
The meal was cleared and Deinn sent outside with the few scraps to throw, one at a time, to the pig, and Mary returned to her flax breaking, and Sintia sat again at her loom. Gilling took the hetchel hanging from a peg on the wall, and a beaten armload of flax, and sat between the loom and the doorway, combing the beaten flax and sorting tow from linen, and keeping an eye on Deinn, and singing absently.
"So, Troubadour, have you come to eat my bread and comb my flax again? Are there not ladies in brocade and silk in carpeted courts who would love to offer you much more rewarding company, for only the labor of serenading them?"
That was the way she was, testing him, not daring to trust that he returned for more than the possibility of the joy of her bed. They had been over this ground before.
"None of those ladies' hearts is the softer for their fine clothes. Nor their tongues less sharp," he added. She smiled at her loom and missed not a beat in her work.
"Sintia, you know what brings me here--"
"Penance." He was caught off guard, but only for a moment.
"Nay, Sintia--"
"Atonement. Conscience. Guilt."
Gilling looked at the work of his hands, considering it as he searched his heart.
"While I'll not deny there is some truth in what you say, there is more than that. I want to do now what I let you think I promised three years ago. Yes, conscience prods me. But I intend to pester you and bring you money when I can because I want to. Not only because of Deinn. You are a strong and beautiful and merry-hearted woman. I have been in all the high courts in Ardinéa, and I have been over the White Sea and seen women and men of renowned beauty and nobility; I have sung for queens, princesses, and ladies beyond counting. When I look at you, Sintia Rowan, I know what it is I am looking at."
"Do you, now?" The loom ceased its rhythm; her hands balled and rested, white-knuckled, on her lap. Her voice was low and controlled and hard like a blade. "How can you know what I am and what I have lived since you went your way?"
Gilling's hands also stilled. He quietly put down the hetchel and waited.
"I looked for you, heartbroken, but stupidly hoping you would come for me. Then I was with child. I hid it for as long as I could manage, wearing a bulky shawl to market even in Midsummer. Then the looks began. Soon girls I had gadded about with at the fairs were turning their backs on me. Boys who had flirted with me threw small stones and bits of dung. Father was the last to notice. For his shame he beat me hard as he could manage at his age. He was never the same after. That night I lay in bed crying, when the pangs began. I hoped I was dying from injuries. I had Deinn alone and then I lay in my blood, hoping I would die from childbirth."
Her voice quavered. "But when I heard her cry for only me, I said, here is one who will love me and not leave me. At least for a while."
She lifted her chin, swallowed hard and continued. "Father hasn't been able to weave for years, and between nursing Deinn and caring for him, I hardly had time. So I had to go to the alms-gate, and wait, with my head covered, for charity. Troubadour, can you know what that is like?
"As she got older I could work more and more. People began to ignore me, and then to accept me. I suppose some even pitied me and tried to be kind, but I shut them out. Father could do less and less, but I was able to keep us fed.
"One day I brought a piece of goods to market. I got a good price and the woman liked the quality and ordered two more bolts; she showed her friends and they also ordered a bolt apiece. As I walked home I decided something. When I walked down the lane I was going to hold my head up, uncovered. So it is now. My cloth is good, and sold ere it's woven. Deinn is healthy and brings me joy. I was counting my blessings. Then you come through my gate.
"I had tried to make myself forget you because I couldn't love you, nor could I truly hate you, either. I knew what sort of man you were ere I flattered myself to think I could have you. I hoped you would show me all the splendorous beauties of which you boasted, the true and faithful love of which you sang as you seduced me. When you disappeared I could settle my mind that you were just such a man, and I just another fool. I had taken a risk, and lost. I could live with that. But when you come here, the gates of my heart unbar, against my will. I pummel the resurrecting hopes. I dare not hope that you will come again, and dread the joy I feel when you do.
"Do you know what I am? Can you possibly know?" The balled fists were quivering with tension. Her eyes were still fixed unseeing and dim on the web of the loom.
Gilling got up to his knees and took one of the fists in his hands, smoothing it flat and kissing the palm, and laying it against his face. "Lassie," he said,"I love you more than ever."
Finally her eyes began to stream and her head bowed.
"Oh, please don't. . ." she whispered, but he cut her off.
"Sintia, I can never change the past. If I came here hoping for that, the truth is that I love you now, for who you are now. I don't intend to try to be sorry enough, nor will I now promise splendors. Marry me, and I will take a position at court. Here-- Lord Gregory would take me in a heartbeat-- or somewhere else, where no one would ever have to know, or look at you askance. I can't take away the wounds. But I can, Sintia, offer you something else. Maybe something better for Deinn, in the future.
"Please, please, consider it. You don't have give answer now --"
"Yes."
He looked at her, unsure that he had heard. "Yes, God strike me," she looked at him, vanquished, but her eyes narrowing slightly. She was drooping and looked tired. She sighed deeply; there was relief in it.
Gilling stood slowly. "God bless you, Sintia.” He made the sign of the cross over her. "God help me, I'll do right by you."
"I doubt whether God has much use for the likes of us," she said, the hint of her wonted bitter smile softening her eyes.
"Oh, nay, Sintia. If you recall, His own Son was born under rather-- questionable circumstances."
Elora knelt erect at the prie-dieu in her tiny, private bedchamber. Even here, her elbows pointed at prim angles and her gnarled fingers aligned, pressed palms together in prayer; so habituated was she to a high-ranked servant's posture.
> "Pater Noster, qui es in coelis...Amen."
Stiffly she made to arise, knuckles to the turkey-work cushion on which she knelt: Lady Varden's gift, years ago.
She stood and loosened the coiled plait at the back of her head and let its iron gray heaviness fall. She took up an intricate ivory comb-- Gilling's gift from some faraway land-- and combed, as she had each morning and evening for threescore and ten and more years. Her once night-black hair had been her only beauty.
She thought again of the offer her son had made. Ten years ago Lord Gregory had given her this tiny room, carpeted on walls and floor, and with its own minuscule hearth and mullioned window and narrow wardrobe, and now a pallet against the wall, where her son would creep in and lay later. Before that her bed had been in a nook in the bower of the children, for almost fifty years; except for the two brief eyeblinks that had been her marriages.
Thomas Chase, whom she loved, had brought her to his father's house and loved her tenderly. Thomas had given her two years of happiness she had not considered possible at her age, for she was two score and four years when they wed. Didymus, his twin, she married after Thomas died of some unstoppable internal failing, thinking to borrow joy; but God would not be mocked and in less than a year Thomas's twin passed in the same way. The house had passed to their younger brother and Elora had found welcome in the castle. Then she discovered she was with child. Her son was raised in the way she was, as an adjunct to the Aldene family, even to learning his letters and Latin beside the noble children. But the castle walls had never held him as they did her-- but then, he was a man.
Before all that she had shared a bed with Engyrd, who had ruled the nursery herself twenty years and died in the bed next to Elora, who had spooned broth and porridge and wine into the quivering lips for several weeks, the unseeing eyes focusing and unfocusing on her face, before Elora arose one morning and found her rigid and cold. The girl Elora had set her face and instructed the servants in a hard voice how to tend to the body. Engyrd...Thomas...Didymus...Gyvarda...Geoffrey...Fading memories. Some of those she remembered were known to no one else still living.
She had lived and breathed the halls and floors and windows and doors of Caer Aldene all her life. Someone had once suggested she become an anchoritess, have a cell in the Priory and spend her dotage in reading and prayer. From Elora, the suggestion had elicited a laugh so unwonted, that the recommendation had never again been tendered by anyone in earnest.
Now her son wanted to take her away from this place. Unthinkable.
Except that...Except that she could no longer make herself indispensable as she had always done. She nodded to sleep at sickbeds. Her hands were too cold and knobby to comfort children-- if anything, she frightened them with her never-beautiful and now shriveled visage. Her old connections for news and gossip were all dying off; the younger ones not prone to regard an ancient butleress as influential and therefore worth their time. When she woke in the morning and coiled her hair and splashed her face at the washstand, there was nowhere she had to hurry off to. The tapestry loom could sit vacant and no one would be dismayed. The life she lived in her private bedchamber was never again going to be the life she always had, but would shrink back in on itself, until this room and the old purring grimalkin who warmed her toes at night would be her world, and some child sent to attend to her needs, eventually to spoon broth and wine and porridge into her trembling lips.
She had always wished that Gilling would take a position in court, settle down somewhere and make a place for himself in this world. Now he wanted to take her off over the hill to live with his bride, to sit by her hearth with the girl's old father.
Unthinkable, but. Perhaps. She laid the comb aside and blew out the lamp, and lay open-eyed in the dark until she heard her son slip into the room, hang up his viol and his overgarments, and lay quietly on the pallet by the wall.