Authors: Teresa Medeiros
Shivering, she pulled the shutter closed. It banged wildly as she left the tower, pulling the door shut behind her. Her slippers made no sound against the stones. She drifted to the bedchamber she shared with Gareth. The morning's fire had died to embers. She spread her palms over their glow to capture a hint of warmth. The snow trapped in her hair and kirtle melted and dripped into her kid shoes. She scooped a pelt from her nest of furs, then let it roll from her fingertips as her gaze locked on the bed frame that dominated the chamber.
She dragged one of Gareth's pelts from the bed and buried her face in it, closing her eyes as the sweet, musky scent of him filled her senses. Her lips moved wordlessly against the fur. Throwing the heavy pelt over her shoulders, she went to the stairs to wait with the rest of the women for their men to return.
As the afternoon waned to dusk, the chatter of the women sharpened, honed by the passing of minutes and the increasing frequency of their glances at the door. The snow had been swept outside by laughing maidservants, the door shoved closed against the wind. Only a dark puddle remained to mark its passing.
Hours passed. The silences grew longer and the laughter more scarce. The ladies bent their heads to their embroidery and pretended not to start at every sound. Dunnla shuffled between them, offering lark pasties and mead, but her platter remained untouched.
In a silence broken only by the howl of the wind, Mortimer hefted his lute and plucked gently at the strings. He was the only man left behind, except for a handful of smooth-chinned pages. Mortimer stroked the beginning notes of first one tune and then another, playing more to comfort himself than to amuse the women. Rowena's head flew up as she thought she heard the haunting notes of a ballad she had thought never to hear again. The lyrics circled unsummoned in her mind, then Mortimer's fingers shifted to the chorus of another tune. Rowena dipped her nose into Gareth's pelt, seeking some comfort to soften the sharp edge of her despair.
When she lifted her head, the Lady Alise's gaze rested on her, curious and cold. Rowena met her gaze unblinkingly until Alise bent her head to the cambric in her lap.
Marlys paced the hall like a caged wolf. The ladies drew in their feet each time she passed and tried not to flinch.
A plump woman encased like a sausage in ocher wool gave a bright, false smile. "Was it not clever of Sir Gareth and Sir Blaine to organize a hunt? Men do so hate to be confined."
Marlys spun around. Her deliberate swagger carried her back to the woman. She leaned forward, resting her hands on the arms of the lady's chair.
The caress of her voice could be heard in every corner of the hall. "You silly bitch. Believe it or not, freezing to death in a snowdrift is a worse confinement than being locked up with a ninny like you. Your fat little belly might crave meat ere this blizzard ends. My brother took your men out there so the villeins would not find a castle full of noble bones come the spring thaw."
The woman stared into her lap, lips quivering. Her needle stabbed the linen kerchief and sank into the tender pad beneath her thumbnail. She burst into tears. Marlys backed away, sneering her contempt.
An uneven melody rose from Mortimer's lute. It seemed there would be no more idle chatter to hold the fear at bay. Marlys strode to the stairs where Rowena huddled and sank down beside her, cracking knuckles stiff with cold. Rowena loosened the pelt beneath her and dropped it like a cape over Marlys's shoulders. It enveloped both of them easily.
Without a word, Marlys scooted against the warmth of Rowena's body. They sat wrapped together for a long time before Rowena's head nodded against Marlys's shoulder in a fitful doze.
Rowena awoke to a silence so profound she thought she was dreaming. She opened her eyes to meet Marlys's quizzical gaze. Not a murmur or a whisper of wool broke the quiet. This was more than silence. It was a terrible absence of sound, as if even the beat of their hearts had stilled. Marlys threw back the pelt and they peered upward. The shadows under the rafters surrendered no answers.
"The wind," came a choked whisper. "The wind has stopped."
"Has it?" The lady who spoke was the freckled girl who had pressed her kerchief into the young knight's hand. "Has it really stopped or are we just deaf to it?" Her voice rose with an edge of hysteria. "Perhaps we are buried alive and can hear nothing. Perhaps the men are behind the snow right outside that door, begging and pleading for us to let them in and we cannot hear them. Perhaps their bodies stiffen and die even as we sit and sew. Perhaps—"
"Stop it." Marlys crossed the space between them in two strides. Her slap rang out in the silence. The girl sank into the arms of a matronly woman.
The woman glared up at Marlys. "I told my husband we never should have come here. All of England knows your brother is a madman. Dismissing all his fiefs. Living like a hermit with no one but cripples and villeins to serve him. Letting you run wild like an animal instead of shutting you in a convent as he should. Caerleon is cursed. Damned by the dark deeds of its master."
A dull flush darkened the back of Marlys's neck. The Lady Alise kneaded her cambric between her thin fingers as Rowena stepped between Marlys and the woman. Those who had never heard her utter a word strained to hear her soft voice.
"You have no right to speak so."
The woman's virulent gaze shifted to Rowena.
"Who are you to defend him? We know where he keeps you at night. Chained to his bed. Forced to satisfy his darkest and most unnatural desires. You should wish his death with your every breath." The woman absently patted the hair of the sobbing girl in her lap.
Rowena fought an absurd desire to laugh, but the cruel words coupled with a jolting realization of her true feelings suddenly did not seem very funny.
Even to her own ears, her voice sounded faint and far away. "You will owe Sir Gareth an apology when he returns."
Marlys's voice was strangled with bitterness. "
If
he returns."
Her words were followed by a distant sound, as deep and rolling as the ocean. Frowning, Rowena cocked her head to the side. The Lady Alise came to her feet. Voices. Male voices, lifted in song, rumbling with vibrancy. And followed by each swelling chorus was an echoing slam, as if a gong sounded deep underwater.
The auburn-haired girl sat straight up. "Holy Mother of God preserve us. They are dead. We hear their angels."
Mortimer threw aside his lute. "If angels sing a song such as that, 'tis not in heaven they reside."
The ghostly chorus swelled:
Me Jenny is a fiery lass
Whose love is ne'er too cold
With her sweet thighs to sheath my sword
I ne'er shall grow too old.
Rowena's lips curved in a smile. The massive door shook in its frame as the battering ram broke through the ice and thundered to a halt against the sturdy wood.
"Do our fair ladies deny us entrance?" came a voice that was unmistakably Blaine's.
Mortimer's wiry arms knotted with effort as he swung open the door. "They might, but I never would."
He was nearly trampled as the ladies surged forward in a mass of squeals and tears. The men swept in to meet them. Ice and snow clung to every fiber and hair, rendering them crackling mountains of white. Suspended on poles between every two men hung wild boars with blood caked and frozen on their carcasses. Cheers rocked the hall.
Rowena stood alone amidst the furniture. Tears misted her eyes as Marlys flung herself on the neck of a snowy giant just inside the door. When he could disengage himself from her embrace, he lowered her, shaking snow from his dark hair. His cheeks glowed with good health. His teeth gleamed through his frosted beard in a smile that held no hint of bitterness as he accepted the embraces and salutes of both men and women. His dark eyes sparkled as he swept Lady Alise under his arm.
Rowena's stomach churned as her feelings for Gareth broke over her like a storm. Believing herself invisible in the joyful chaos, she crept up the stairs, dragging Gareth's pelt behind her.
Dunnla's knock came twice upon the door, then came again in another hour. Each time, Rowena answered the same way. "Go away. I am ill."
How could Dunnla have missed her in the revelry below? Snatches of music and cries of joy drifted up through the stone floor to Rowena's ears. She snuggled deeper into her pelts and stared into the deepening shadows. The snow had stopped but the wind still wailed against the latched shutter.
Rowena
was
ill. Self-contempt curled like a fist deep in her gut. How could she have been such a fool as to let herself be won over by a pair of somber dark eyes and a fine set of muscles? She was no better than Lady Alise. She drifted into sleep more than once, but always awoke with the restless shivering of one fevered and the wetness of tears on her cheeks. She would have a long time to nurse her shattered pride. Gareth would no doubt be celebrating far into the night, first in the great hall, then in the Lady Alise's bedchamber.
She did not even bother to roll over when the door creaked open.
"I beg you, Dunnla. Go away," she said crossly. "I am ill. I am not hungry."
" Tis no wonder you are ill with no fire on the grate. I can see my breath in here."
Rowena rolled over and sat up, her hair tumbling over the fur she'd drawn to her chin. Gareth leaned against the closed door.
He held out a white bundle. "I brought you some hot pastries. Apple. Your favorite."
Rowena sniffed. "Nay. I do not want them." She rolled away from him.
There was a moment of puzzled silence, then the gentle thump of logs being tossed on the grate. The rhythmic snap of a fire followed, making a pretty noise but doing little to warm the icy air. Rowena waited for the slam of the door. It did not come.
She peeked out of her nest. Gareth was pacing in front of the hearth, chafing his arms. "I cannot seem to get warm."
She watched in surprise as he pulled his tunic over his head. Howls of laughter and voices raised in song floated up from below.
" 'Tis poor manners for a host to abandon his own feast, is it not?"
Gareth shrugged. "I tire of their toasts. Fickle lot, are they not? Stuff them with roast boar and they drop their suspicious glances and lift their goblet to you. I came up here to seek a warm bed. I fear I've come to the wrong place."
His words were more ill chosen than he realized. Rowena's lips tightened as she jerked the pelt over her head. Gareth shoved two more logs on the fire, ate one of the pastries he had brought for Rowena, then dove into the center of the bed, and spread the pelts over him.
Even as the fire roared upward, the chill in the chamber deepened. The wind whistled with joy at the plunging temperature. The shutter trembled as stubborn drafts pushed themselves through the narrow slats. Soon Rowena could feel the cold emanating from the stones beneath the thick fur. A shudder wracked her. She wrapped her arms around her back but found little comfort in her own heat. A heap of pelts could not compare to the warmth of nine bodies curled under a single coverlet. She had no Little Freddie, snug and sweet-smelling, to throw her leg over.
She crawled toward the fire, dragging the pelts behind her. She arranged them at the base of the hearth and crawled inside, shivering in the scant warmth. The shadows dancing on the wall cast an illusion of warmth, all the more cruel for its cozy deception. Cold seeped into her bones. Her teeth began to chatter. She wrapped the pelts around her and climbed up to sit on the hearth itself, pressing her cheek to the warmth of the stones.
With a crash, the wind slammed the shutter open. Rowena started as cold wind poured into the chamber, sending the snow piled on the windowsill into a sparkling whirlwind. Gareth jumped up and forced the shutter closed with a curse. He turned, stomping his feet on the stones, to find Rowena huddled on the hearth. Only her eyes and a thatch of golden hair were visible over the dark fur.
He climbed back into the bed. "How am I to sleep with that infernal chattering?" he growled.
"I humbly beg your forgiveness, milord," Rowena choked out between clenched teeth. "You may banish me to Marlys's chamber if it displeases you. I am not accustomed to sleeping alone in the winter."
"I am. But not with half my pelts. This is absurd. There is no benefit in both of us freezing to death within five feet of each other." He threw back his covers,, in an unmistakable invitation.
Rowena's eyes widened. The tip of her reddened nose poked over the furs, but she only hugged the pelts tighter.
Gareth rolled his eyes. "Your hesitation is flattering, but I can assure you that any part of me amenable to molesting you is frozen solid at the moment."
Rowena looked at him sideways, still uncertain. He puffed out a fog of breath in exasperation. She screwed her eyes shut and made a mad dash for the bed, bounding next to him with a leap that shook the bed frame. She snuggled deep into the feather tick, her back to him.
Gareth stared at the graceful curve of her back beneath the cotte and wondered if he had spoken in haste. He tucked the combined pelts around them both, then rolled to his side and closed his eyes.
A steady rustling seized the tick. Gareth opened his eyes and rolled over. Shivers wracked Rowena's slender spine.