A LONE KNIGHT IN FULL ARMOR spurred a tired, lathered
horse up the winding road toward Roselynde Keep. That
sight was so unusual in this year of our Lord 1206, the
seventh year of the reign of King John — the accursed, as
some called him — that the guard in the tower rubbed his
eyes as if to clear his vision. Times had been bad
periodically during the reign of King Richard because
Richard did not love England, and the officers he
appointed to rule and tax the land were often harsh.
However, there was little lawlessness, and old Queen
Alinor had been alive and had moderated any dangerous
extremity in Richard's demands.
In 1199 Richard had been fatally wounded by an arrow at a
siege he was conducting in one of the innumerable wars he
waged. John, his youngest brother, the last of Henry
Plantagenet's wild brood, had come to the throne. Although
John actually loved England the best of all his
possessions, he was driven by political necessity to even
greater harshness than Richard and, to make all worse, he
was a vicious man. Then, in 1204, the old queen died, and
a strong force for balancing necessity against
unreasonable taxation disappeared. The spite of exactions
of the king then fell so heavily on so many that marauders
prowled the land, and the roads were unsafe. In these
days, men who had stitch or stick about them rode in armed
groups.
Within the bounds of Roselynde's demesne, this was less
true. Sir Simon Lemagne and his wife Lady Alinor had kept
the peace on their own lands for a time, but Sir Simon had
been stricken with a violent disorder of pains in the
chest and arms more than a year past, and in late June he
had died. Sir Giles had come from Iford when Sir Simon
first fell sick, but his wife was not of the stuff of
which Lady Alinor was made, and he had had to return to
his own lands lest they fall into total disorder. Lord Ian
had come also, but the king had summoned him away to the
wars in Normandy. Beorn, Lady Alinor's master-at-arms, did
what he could. There was still peace, although not what it
had been in Sir Simon's time. Nonetheless, the guard knew
that this knight did not come from the lands around
Roselynde. It was plain from the state of his horse and
his garments that he had ridden far and hard.
At the edge of the drawbridge, the knight pulled up his
horse and shouted out his name. The guard's face
lightened, and called an order down the tower. The
portcullis was raised as swiftly as possible; this was a
welcome guest. The guard's surprise diminished when the
knight said his troop followed and they should be passed
when they arrived, but he still wondered what had brought
his late lord's friend so far and in such haste that he
outstripped his men. It was, however, no business of his
to ask questions. He turned back to his duty of watching
as the knight rode through the outer bailey, across the
smaller drawbridge, and under the inner portcullis into
the inner bailey.
Here a groom ran forward to take his horse, and a grizzled
man-at-arms rose to his feet from a cask on which he had
been sitting and watching two children, a girl of nine and
a boy of seven, at play. The children looked up and tensed
when they saw the true mail of a knight instead of the
leather of a manat-arms. Then they shrieked with joy and
ran forward. "Ian!" the boy cried.
The knight dismounted in one smooth movement, pushed off
his helmet and shield, and bent to gather them to him, one
in each arm. He kissed them both, then suddenly buried his
face in the boy's hair and began to sob. The children, who
had been wriggling with delight, quieted at once.
"Are you weeping because Papa is dead, Ian, or is there
more bad news?" the girl, who was the elder, asked
gravely. Simon's daughter, Ian de Vipont thought,
struggling to control himself. She is as like him as if
she had no mother.
"Did you only just hear of it?" the boy asked. "It was in
June. It is a shame you could not come to the funeral
feast. Everyone enjoyed it greatly."
The boy stood quietly, his arms around Ian's neck, one
small hand patting the knight's shoulder consolingly. His
voice, however, was cheerful, irrepressible. In the midst
of his tears, Ian choked on laughter. Alinor's son. Kind
enough to wish to offer comfort but with a spirit that
could not be quenched. He squeezed the children to him
tightly once more, then stood upright and wiped his face
with the leather inside of his steel-sewn gauntlet.
"No, no more bad news," he said to Joanna, and then,
smiling onAdam, "I heard in July, but I was with the king
in France besieging Montauban, and I could not get leave
to come."
"Tell about the siege — tell!" the boy cried.
"Oh, yes, Ian, please tell," the girl begged. The sun came
out from behind a cloud, lighting green and gold flecks in
the boy's hazel eyes and turning the girl's hair to flame.
They were totally unlike in appearance, as if the mother's
and father's strains were each so strong they could not be
mixed; but that was only in coloring. Adam's hair was
straight and black, his skin startlingly white, like his
mother Alinor's, but his frame was sturdy and already very
large for his age. That was his heritage from Simon, and a
good heritage it was. It might be needful, Ian thought
sadly, in the bitter times that loomed ahead, if King John
did not mend his ways.
Ian had not known Simon when his hair was as red as
Joanna's, but her eyes, a misty gray sometimes touched
with blue, had cleared and brightened just as Simon's did
when he was angry, eager, or happy. She was slighter than
her brother but still sturdily made, no frail flower. No
frail spirit either. The eager expression on Joanna's face
mirrored that on Adam's.
"Did you scale the walls?" she asked.
"Did you burst through the gates?" Adam echoed.
"Master Adam! Lady Joanna!" the grizzled man-at-arms
protested, "can you not see Lord Ian is dirty and tired?
You shame our hospitality. A guest is bidden to wash and
take his ease before being battered with questions."
"Beoth hal, Beorn," Ian said in English.
"Beoth hal, eaorling," Beorn responded, "wilcume, wilcume.
Cumeth thu withinne."
Adam's eyes grew large. Beorn was an important man in his
life. He taught the boy the fundamentals of sword and mace
fighting. Adam could dimly remember that his father had
started his lessons, but in the last year Simon had barely
been able to come down to the bailey to watch and offer
breathless and halting advice. Adam knew Beorn spoke a
special language of his own. Adam could even understand
some words, but Beorn would never address him in that
tongue and would never permit him to speak it.
"Ian, Beorn answered you," the boy said.
The man-at-arms flushed slightly, and a faint frown
appeared on Ian's brow. He made no comment, however,
merely saying that it was time he went in and greeted
their mother. After refusing the children's offer to
accompany him and assuring them he would see them later,
he strode into the forebuilding and mounted the stairs to
the great hall, unlacing his mail hood and stripping off
his gauntlets as he went. He looked up at the stair that
led to the women's quarters, but he did not pause. Lady
Alinor was as likely to be anywhere else in the keep as
there, and he was sure someone had run ahead to announce
his arrival.
In that supposition he was quite correct. Before he had
crossed the hall to the great hearth, Lady Alinor came
running from a wall chamber. She seized the hands he held
out toward her and gripped them hard.
"Ian, Ian, I am glad at heart to see you."
"I could not come when I first heard. I begged the king to
let me go, but he would not."
"You do not need to tell me that."
Suddenly her eyes were full of tears. She stepped forward
and laid her head against his breast. Ian's hands came up
to embrace her and then dropped. He fought another upsurge
of his own grief. Alinor uttered a deep sigh and stepped
back to look up at him.
"It is good to have you here," she said, only a trifle un-
steadily. "How long can you stay?"
"I do not know," he replied, not meeting her eyes. "It
depends on —"
"At least the night," she cried.
"Yes, of course, but —"
"Never mind the buts now. Oh, Ian, you look so tired."
"Our ship was blown off course. I meant to land at Rose-
lynde, but we were blown all the way to Dover. We were
attacked three times on the road. I could not believe it.
In the worst days of Longchamp, things had not come to
such a pass. I rode through the night. I had to —"
"You have bad news?" But Alinor did not pause for him to
answer. "Do not tell me now," she said, half laughing but
with a tremor in her voice. "Have you eaten?" He
nodded. "Come, let me unarm you and bathe you." It was
customary for the lady of the manor to bathe her guests,
although Alinor had not usually done so for Ian.
"My squires are with the troop," he protested. "I rode
ahead." At that Alinor laughed more naturally. "I have not
yet grown so feeble that I cannot lift a hauberk. Come."
She drew him toward the wall chamber from which she had
emerged.
"The bath is ready. It will grow cold."
For one instant it seemed as if Ian would resist, and
Alinor stopped to look at him questioningly. However,
there was no particular expression on his face, and he was
already following, so she said nothing. Something was
wrong, Alinor knew. Ian had been her husband's squire
before they were married. After their return from the
Crusade, Simon had so successfully advanced his protégé"s
interest that Ian had been granted a defunct baronage that
went with the estates Ian had inherited from his mother.
He had been a close friend all through the years and a
frequent visitor, particularly attached to the children.
His fondness for them, coupled with his resistance to
marriage had once made Alinor ask her husband whether Ian
was tainted with King Richard's perversion. Simon had
assured her that it was not so, that Ian was a fine young
stallion, and he had warned her seriously not to tease the
young man.
Alinor had been careful, because, despite being 30 years
her senior — or, perhaps, because of it — Simon was no
jealous husband. Indeed, until his illness — he had no
cause to be jealous; he had kept Alinor fully occupied.
Thus, when Simon warned her against flirting playfully
with Ian, it was for Ian's sake. Alinor acknowledged the
justice of that. It would be dreadful to attach Ian to
her, dangerous too. There was violence lurking behind the
young man's hot brown eyes and, although Alinor had loved
Simon and been content with him, she had never denied that
Ian was a magnificent male animal who could be very
attractive to her. Ian had been careful, too, seldom
touching Alinor, even to kiss her hand in courtesy.
Nonetheless, they had been good friends.Alinor knew when
Ian was carrying a burden of trouble. Ordinarily, she
would have pressed him with questions until he opened the
evil package for inspection.Alinor had never feared
trouble. Simon had said sourly more than once that she ran
with eager feet to meet it. That was because she had never
found a trouble for which she or Simon or both of them
together could not discover a solution. Trouble had been a
challenge to be met head-on, trampled over, or slyly
circumvented — until Simon died. Now, all at once, there
were too many troubles. Alinor could not, for the moment,
muster the courage to ask for another.
The afternoon light flooded the antechamber with
brightness, but the inner wall chamber was dim. Ian
hesitated, and Alinor tugged at his hand, leading him
safely around the large wooden tub that sat before the
hearth. To the side was a low stool. Alinor stopped Ian
beside it. She unbelted his sword before he had even
reached toward it, slipped off his surcoat, and laid it
carefully on a chest at the side of the room. Ian gave up
trying to be helpful and abandoned himself to Alinor's
practiced ministrations, docilely doing as he was told and
no more.
Signalling Ian to bend forward, Alinor pulled the hauberk
over his head in a single skillful motion, turned it this
way and that to see whether it needed the attention of the
castle armorer, and laid it on the chest with the sword.
Then bidding him sit she came around in front of him and
unlaced his tunic and shirt. These were stiff with sweat
and dirt, and she threw them on the floor. Next, she knelt
to unfasten his shoes and cross garters, drew them off,
untied his chausses, and bid him stand. Again Ian
hesitated. Alinor thought how tired he was and was about
to assure him he would feel better after he had bathed,
but he stood before she could speak. Still kneeling, she
pulled the chausses down and slipped them off his feet.
When she raised her eyes to tell him to step into the tub,
she saw the reason for his hesitation.