There was utter silence in the hall. Sir Thomas coughed.
“If the Earl of Clare had but looked at Daria, he would have seen that her eyes are very nearly identical to his brother David’s. But evidently he didn’t see any resemblance. His brother never told him about me or about his daughter. David protected both of us, Daria. But of course Damon knew.”
“So that’s why my father ignored me, why he never kissed me or petted me or told me he loved me.”
Katherine nodded. “I’m sorry, Daria. Every time he looked at you, he would then turn to me and his hatred made me shrivel. He never struck you. He never hurt you. I told him if he did I would kill him. Not with a knife, but with poisons. He believed me, for he knew I had the recipe for many of your grandmother’s potions. But then he was killed and we were at Damon Le Mark’s mercy.”
Roland remembered the sad-eyed Katherine when he’d first visited Reymerstone. So Damon had avenged his half-brother by taking his wife to his bed and by murdering her lover. He probably believed it a fitting punishment for her infidelity. It was more punishment than anyone should have to bear. He too found himself wondering why Damon Le Mark hadn’t taunted Katherine with the possible marriage between her daughter and her daughter’s uncle, the Earl of Clare. Then it occurred to Roland that he hadn’t because such knowledge might have gotten back to Colchester, and Damon Le Mark had wanted that marriage more than anything.
Roland turned to his wife. He couldn’t bear the anguish here, the years of secret, unspoken pain. He said, his voice light, “What say you, Daria? Do you want their ears chopped off? Shall we make them into eunuchs? Do you want me to run them through?”
“Nay,” she said, shaking her head. She looked at him then, and she was very pale, her eyes bewildered. “I very nearly married my uncle.”
“Yes, but you didn’t.”
Katherine said, “I didn’t realize that the Earl of Clare could possibly think of wedding Daria, it never came into my mind, else I would have gone mad. I’m sorry, child, truly, but I didn’t want you to know the truth and perhaps despise me for it and—”
Suddenly Daria laughed, deep, raw laughter that was ugly in its pain. It rang out in the great hall and the anguish of it was more than Roland could bear. He shouted, as he grasped her upper arms and shook her, “Daria, stop it.”
But she couldn’t. She covered her mouth with her hand but the laughter still came out, muffled and deep and wrenching. She gasped for breath as she choked out the words. “It is too much, Roland, far too much. Don’t any of you understand?” Her laughter was dying now but her voice was sharper, more shrill. “Don’t you see? My God, if I hadn’t lost that babe, if I had birthed the babe, it still could have looked like the Earl of Clare, for he would have been the babe’s uncle.” Laughter burst out of her mouth. Roland stared at her.
“Aye, it’s true,” she said, her voice now oddly singsong, “and then you would never have believed me, Roland, never. You would have looked at that babe and remarked, ‘Aye, look at all that red hair. The Earl of Clare is the babe’s father and I am vindicated in my belief that my wife is a liar.’” Daria broke free, whirled about, and looked one last time at her husband. He was still staring at her, his face very pale, his hands now fisted at his sides.
“There’s no winning, Roland, at least not for me. It is over and I have lost.” She turned to Katherine. “You won’t berate yourself again, Mother. Now, if it is truly my judgment, then what I wish is this: I want the two of them put together. I want the two of them to fight it out. Each deserves to fight the other. If the Earl of Clare hadn’t been a coward, he wouldn’t have kidnapped me, he would have met Damon and challenged him as a man of honor should face another man who is his enemy. As for Damon Le Mark, he is despicable. He should have told Roland the truth about my birth, but he kept silent. He cared not what became of me; he cared not if my uncle bedded me. Perhaps he even thought it would be a fine jest on my mother and on the Earl of Clare, but he wouldn’t have said anything, not until it had been done.”
Daria looked straight at Roland and laughed. “One more time for my lie, Roland, then never will you hear me protest again. The Earl of Clare didn’t bed me, no one save you did. He humiliated me but he didn’t bed me. Now, are my wishes to be considered?”
Roland felt mired in the swirling tensions surrounding him. They were also within him and he didn’t like it. So the Earl of Clare hadn’t raped her. He believed that now. Daria was incapable of fostering such a deception in the face of learning that the Earl of Clare had been of her blood, her damned uncle, by all the saints. It still left him puzzled. Her laughter and her pain made him raw.
He nodded slowly. “It will be as you wish.”
Graelam said then, “And if one kills the other? What would you have done with the one who wins?”
Daria said quite without emotion, “He will go free.”
Roland nodded his agreement, but in the next instant he shared a look with Graelam and a silent pact was made.
The afternoon was hot, the early-fall wind harsh and dry and chafing.
Daria knew she would never forget the looks on the two men’s faces, the fury, the raw hatred. They’d been stripped down to loincloths and given swords, maces, and axes.
She didn’t want to watch, but she did, as did her mother. The scores of people surrounding the two men were silent. Daria knew that by now all of Chantry Hall knew what she’d screamed in the great hall. All of them knew that her two uncles would fight to the death.
Both men were her uncles. It was madness. She looked at her mother, hoping she was all right, but she couldn’t tell, for there was no sign, no expression, on Katherine’s face.
She heard the sudden ringing of the heavy battle swords. She heard the curses of the two men as they lunged and withdrew from each other. She could feel the poison of their hatred for each other.
It didn’t last long, though it seemed an eternity. Damon Le Mark fought hard, with all the enmity in his soul, but he was no opponent for the Earl of Clare, whose fighting skills were honed daily on the Welsh outlaws. She saw the Earl of Clare lift the sword with both hands, saw the sword descend, and knew that Damon Le Mark was dead. At the last instant, just as Damon Le Mark jerked sideways, then back, the Earl of Clare used the sword as a spear instead, sending it straight ahead. It sliced through Damon Le Mark’s chest and came out the back, flinging him onto his side on the ground. He was dead before he rolled to his back.
There was a shock of silence. The Earl of Clare stood over his dead enemy, and he was smiling. She couldn’t believe what happened then. She watched her husband, now stripped to his loincloth, step into the circle, a battle sword in his hand. As he lifted it, he grinned and yelled at the Earl of Clare, “Did you know, you stupid whoreson, that Daria is your niece? She is of your flesh, you damned fool. Your brother, David, was her father. Had I not taken her from you, you would have committed the gravest sin in God’s eyes. What say you to that, you stupid sod?”
The Earl of Clare calmed his breathing. He looked at the young man before him, knew him for a dangerous warrior, and wanted to kill him. The humiliation Roland had meted out to him at Tyberton was a raw wound. Roland had thrashed him like a mewling pup, in front of the king, in front of all his men and servants. Well, now he had a sword. He’d killed Reymerstone and now he would kill this impudent bastard. “You lie,” he shouted. “I would have surely recognized her if she had been of mine own blood. She is not.”
Graelam started forward, fury writ on his face. “Roland, this is not for you to do.” he yelled. “Damn you, come out of there. It was to be my turn.”
But it was too late. The two men faced each other. The earl, his red hair blazing in the hot afternoon sun, was the larger of the two, a massive man whose power was evident in each movement he made with the heavy sword. He’d but slightly exerted himself to kill the Earl of Reymerstone. He looked at the young man who was dark as a Muslim, and smiled. He knew that after he killed Roland he w
ould himself be killed, but for now he didn’t care. He would have his revenge. He roared and lunged, only to have Roland feint to the left. He was left panting, feeling like a fool, his sword slicing through air.
Daria looked at her husband. He was more slightly built, leaner, his body hard and taut, but he was strong and agile and very fast. He’d dropped the battle sword and was now swinging an ax in his right hand. Then he tossed the ax to his left hand and back and forth, taunting the Earl of Clare, until he bellowed like an enraged bull, and charged Roland again. Roland danced lightly to the side and struck suddenly, fiercely, with the ax. It thudded loudly against the earl’s sword. Roland looked surprised; then he gave the earl a look of approval before quickly spinning to the left out of the range of the earl’s pounding sword.
Daria touched her hand to Graelam’s sleeve. “Nay,” she said quietly, “he will be all right. He will kill the earl.”
“You cannot possibly know—” Graelam’s impatient voice dropped off. He stared at Daria.
“He will kill him,” she said again, her eyes never leaving her husband. “Nay, I’m not seeing a vision. I saw him fight the Earl of Clare in the presence of the king at Tyberton. He is very skilled, and never does the expected.”
“He’s an evasive fighter,” Graelam said after a moment watching Roland. “That’s true. Look at that. Aye, Roland fights with his brains.”
“He also learned tricks from outlaws in the Holy Land.”
The Earl of Clare was bearing down on Roland, trying to corner him, striking again and again, not letting up, forcing him back with the raw power of his strength.
Suddenly Roland tossed the ax aside. Salin slipped a long slender-bladed knife into his hand and Daria heard Graelam heave a heartfelt sigh. “It’s over now,” he said.
“How do you know that?”
“Just watch.”
Roland slipped away from the earl, dodging right; then he turned on the balls of his bare feet, and fast as lightning, reached out and sliced a clean diagonal line through the thick red hair on the earl’s chest. The earl looked down blankly at the oozing bloody line that marked his chest and howled with fury. “I’ll kill you, you whoreson!”
Roland laughed. “Again, you bastard.” He spun about, his arm extended, and he struck so quickly it was a blur. Now a bloody red X stood out on the earl’s chest.
The earl was so beside himself with rage he began to hammer with the mighty sword, wildly slicing it from side to side in a wide swath.
Graelam said quietly, “He’s no longer thinking. He is reacting, nothing more. He doesn’t realize that his incredible strength isn’t an asset. He doesn’t realize he won’t touch Roland. Roland has learned that his brain is his best weapon.”
Daria watched Roland lightly back away from the earl, not coming to a stop until he was a good fifteen feet from him. The earl was yelling, howling his fury, and he was readying to charge, his sword raised above his head.
Slowly, very slowly, Roland aimed the knife and released it with a smooth flip of his wrist. It sang through the still air and thudded softly into the earl’s chest, just at the point where the X crossed.
Edmond of Clare stared down at the quivering pale ivory handle that still vibrated from the strength and speed of Roland’s throw.
He looked up then, first at Roland, then toward Daria. “I wanted your dowry, not you,” he said. “You’re not of my blood, I would have known if you were, for David kept nothing from me. He would have told me. Nay, you’re naught but—” He crumpled where he stood.
Roland was covered with sweat and dirt and he wore a huge satisfied smile on his face.
“Nay, don’t kill me, Graelam,” he called out with great relish. “It is over now, and he was mine, not yours, not anyone else’s.” He turned to his wife. “Be ready to leave Chantry Hall at first light tomorrow morning. Pack enough clothing for a month. Speak to Alice and have her prepare ample food supplies for us and seven men.” He was still grinning when he turned to Sir Thomas. “Thomas, you will see to Chantry Hall’s safety whilst we’re gone. And, Katherine, worry not about your daughter.”
“No,” Katherine said slowly. “I don’t think I shall now.”
“Where are we going, Roland?”
Roland walked to where his wife stood, and he looked down at her, saying nothing for a very long time. Finally he raised his fingers and cupped her chin. “We go to Wales.”
“Why?”
He leaned down, saying very quietly, so only she could hear his words, “I took your virginity, yet I have no memory of it. I want that memory back, Daria. I want the knowledge of your eyes upon me when I came into you that first time. I want my awareness of you when I first touched your womb.”
They reached Wrexham twelve days later. Incredibly, it had rained only twice. Incredibly, they’d met no outlaws. Incredibly, Roland was whistling when they entered the Wrexham cathedral.
Daria was praying hard. She didn’t know what to expect, but praying seemed the best approach.
Romila opened the door at Roland’s pounding. She was grumbling about louts bothering her until she recognized him. Then she smiled widely, rubbing her hands together as she looked him over from head to toe. “Aye, oh, aye, if it isn’t the pretty lad whose body and face have provided romantic fodder for all the girls in Wrexham. I’ve told them of your endowments, my lad, described to them how your flesh feels beneath a woman’s hand. Ah, when I told them about the size of your rod—Is it you, Daria? Well, well. What do you here? What—”
And on and on she went, and Roland just smiled at her and listened to her babbling. Daria said nothing.
After a time, Roland asked if Romila would take him upstairs to the chamber where he’d been in bed for so many days.
“Nay, Daria, I wish to go alone,” he said to his wife when she would have followed. She nodded, and watched the two of them climb the narrow filthy stairs. She wondered, half-smiling, if Romila would try to seduce him once in the bedchamber.
Salin said from behind her, “Roland is a fair man.”
She only nodded and began her prayers again.
Upstairs, Roland stood in the middle of the small airless chamber. He looked at the bed where he’d spent hours he didn’t remember at all, and more hours he did remember that he couldn’t begin to count. He looked at the chamber pot in the corner and shook his head at those memories. He turned to Romila, cutting off her outpourings of vulgar suggestions. “When I was brought here, I was out of my senses?”
“Aye, ye were, me lad.”
He looked toward the window and saw Daria standing there, quiet and still, looking out onto the courtyard below. He looked at the chair. He remembered clearly Daria sitting in that chair, sewing on one of his tunics.
“Yer little wife took good care of ye. Even when ye were testy, she only smiled and shook her head and loved ye. O’ course, she did ask my advice now and again, and I told her ye’d be in fine form again soon.”
He remembered the spoon touching his mouth, remembered Daria’s soft voice telling him to eat, telling him he must regain his strength.
“Aye, oh, aye,” Romila said, her voice wistful and teasing at the same time. Then she laughed aloud, raucous and loud. “And I remember more than I should, ye randy goat.”
Roland turned slowly to face her. “What do you mean?”
Romila cackled and looked again down his body. “Aye, a randy goat ye were even when ye were out of yer head with the fever and yelling strange things in savage tongues. I knew ye’d not been married to yer little wife long, but still I couldn’t believe that ye had such a dreadful need in yer manhood. Men and their seed—always wanting to spill it, no matter if they’re dying.”
And Roland said again, his heart pounding slow dull beats, “What do you mean?”
“I mean that yer randy body didn’t know ye was frightful sick, oh, no, ye horny pretty lad.” She laughed again and looked at him as if she’d like to throw him on the bed and rip off his clothes.
r /> “What?” he said.
“Oh, aye, me pretty boy. I come up that night, for yer little wife was so tired and so frantic with worry for ye that I was worried about her, and then I stopped outside the door and heard this moaning and groaning and I heard her cry out, and I opened the door, all afeared that ye was dying, and there ye were, holding her on top of ye, lurching into her, and she was crying, and then ye moaned deep and took her but good. Aye, ye made her ride ye hard.” Romila stopped, smiling fondly at Roland. “I like a man whose rod isn’t struck down along with his body. Aye, yer a bonnie lad.”
“Thank you,” Roland said blankly. He flung his arms around Romila, lifted her high, even though she weighed about the same as he did; then, as he lowered her, he gave her a loud smacking kiss on her mouth.
“Thank you,” he said again. As he made his way back down the stairs, he thought: By all the saints, I wish I could remember. Just a moment of it, just an instant. He wondered if perhaps someday he would.
Not that it mattered. Not that what Romila had told him mattered all that much. It struck him then that he wanted to spend the night here, with Daria, in that bed. He wanted her on top of him and he wanted to take her again, here, just as he’d taken her so long ago.
He whistled.
At nearly midnight, a howling storm blew up and the animal hide that covered the window thudded and flapped loudly. On the narrow bed, Roland was sprawled on his back, looking up at his beautiful wife, naked, her hair loose down her back, watching her come down on him, then move as she wished to, then arch her back, bringing him so deep into her that he thought he’d die from the pleasure of it.
He saw nothing but his wife, Daria. As he watched her reach her pleasure, he told her, “I love you, Daria, and you will never doubt me.”