SirenSong (43 page)

They arrived as silently as possible and at night, not for
the sake of a surprise attack—they did not have ready the devices for an
assault and Mauger had warned the captains how strong Marlowe keep was—but because
Mauger wished to pacify the townsfolk and prevent them from running to the keep
for protection. He left the captains to settle their men and rode into Marlowe
town. Confidently he informed them that Marlowe keep was already invested. If
they would victual his forces and make no attempt to aid those in the castle,
he would not attack the town. If they attempted to defend themselves, he would
turn his men loose on them.

There was ready agreement, which Mauger knew there would be.
He also knew the merchants would begin at once to hide their valuables, even
that many would escape the town by river, but he did not care. He had no
intention of damaging Marlowe town if it could be avoided. After all, it would
be his in the future to drain slowly dry. Much more would be made out of it in
that fashion than by raping it now.

Mauger’s troops had moved quietly, but not so quietly that
the guards on Marlowe’s walls did not notice. Diccon was awakened and peered
through the dark while circling the walls. He did not see much, but what he did
see worried him. He passed the responsibility to Raymond, who hurried from his
bed with his mail drawn over unlaced shirt and chausses without cross garters.
His eyes and ears learned no more than Diccon’s, but both agreed troops were
moving around the castle. Raymond’s first instinct was to bid his men arm and
ride out to attack them, but to do that was to risk every veteran in the keep.
The other men, half trained and some not even able to ride a horse, were
useless. Although he hated to do it, Raymond went to wake William, whose right
it was to judge whether to attack or endure.

William was tired. For eight days he had been struggling to
regain his strength in arms and to train the men Raymond had gleaned from the
farms and the town. His own strength improved more rapidly than he expected.
The wound in his right side was well healed and did not much impede his
swordplay. That in his left shoulder was not in such good case. It was tender
and had started looking angry and swollen at the edges again. William knew he
would be unable to use his shield as a weapon, as he was accustomed to doing.
Nonetheless, he could hold it, and that was important. More important was that
his legs no longer shook under him after a few hours of merely sitting or
walking.

Nonetheless, by the end of each day, William felt half dead.
He tumbled into bed expecting to be asleep as he lay down. Instead, through the
aching fatigue, tendrils of heat stole, soon joining across his loins into a
blazing need. The first night, William was as much surprised as Elizabeth by
the hot lash of his passion. He had never thought of himself as a particularly
lustful man, who needed to couple only because a woman was available, but he
saw no need to deny himself either, watching her undress through half-closed
eyes, relishing her surprise, her halfhearted protests that he should rest, her
joyous yielding to his love play when he persisted. He was even more surprised
when he woke just before dawn with an equally urgent need. Again Elizabeth
yielded, but when he dragged himself from bed an hour later to work with the
men, her eyes were worried.

The second night, Elizabeth drew the curtains of the bed as
soon as William lay down so that he could not see her undressing. She idled
over it also, trying to make sure he fell well and deeply asleep before she
joined him. It made no difference. William was not sure whether he was awake
and imagining or asleep and dreaming, but when Elizabeth’s slender body settled
beside him, he was already afire.

“Dear love,” she sighed when they were finished, “I think I
must seek a chamber in the women’s quarters.”

“Why?” William teased. “Have I not contented you?”

They laughed together. The one effect weariness seemed to
have on William was to make his climax slow to come. Elizabeth had been twice
convulsed with joy before he found his release.

“Because you will kill yourself this way.”

William chuckled. “I cannot think of a better way to die.”
He felt her move and pulled her close against him again. “No. I do not believe
it would make any difference. It is not because you touched me in the bed but
because you are here, mine—mine without shame or guilt. If you settled above,
either I would have to follow you there or I would lie here, listening to the
siren’s song, and I have done that for too many years.”

His voice was slurring with sleep, and Elizabeth said no
more. But after he had again wakened in the dawn to caress her awake, mount
her, rouse her from torpor to lust, and satisfy that lust, Elizabeth began to
think her exaggeration of the previous night was no exaggeration. If he
continued this way, William
would
kill himself. They argued about it
while she helped him dress.

“You cannot go on like this,” Elizabeth warned. “You are too
tired!”

“If I were
too
tired, I would not be doing it,”
William pointed out, laughing. Then more soberly he said, “That is true. Unless
I am overburdening you, my love, let me have my way. The weariness passes. I am
stronger each day.”

“You are pressing yourself harder each day,” Elizabeth said
sadly.

William shook his head. “No. I am pressing myself to my
limit each day—that I admit. But each day I can do more. Thus, I am growing
stronger. My life—for you are my life—let me live my own way. If Richard comes
home before Mauger finds the help he needs to attack us, we will come out of
this scot-free. If he does not…”

He did not finish and did not need to. If Mauger found
someone who would give him enough men to attack Marlowe and they could not hold
off the attack, she and William would die. Perhaps William was trying to make
up twenty years of unfulfilled longing in the short time granted them. It was
foolish, but Elizabeth would not deny him anything that gave him happiness. She
argued no more, responding to him each successive night with all the fierce joy
engendered by her own long deprivation.
Dum vivimus, vivamus
, she
thought,
while we live, let us live
!

It was not surprising, however, that when Raymond called
from the outer chamber it was Elizabeth who awoke. William slept on, sodden
with exhaustion. She pushed aside the bed curtains, resolved to tell Raymond
that he should go about his duties as best he could and let William have his
sleep out. The darkness of the room changed her mind. Raymond would never call
William in the middle of the night unless it was a real emergency. She shook
her lover as Raymond called again.

The combined stimulus pierced William’s deep sleep. He got
out of bed, cursing and groaning, promising to murder Raymond if the sky had
not fallen, but he fell silent as he listened. To Raymond’s question about
leading a force out to disrupt the invaders he shook his head firmly.

“If we lose one or two men, it will do us more harm than if
they lose fifty. Nor is this a mercenary group merely looking for pickings, as
happened in the bad old days. Those could be driven away by a show of force. If
the castle is being invested, it is Mauger, and he has come to take us.”

He did not bother to dress, merely belted his bedrobe
tighter around him and put on his shoes before he went to the wall. He, too,
walked all around it, looking and listening, particularly westward toward
Marlowe town.

“Shall I call up the men?” Raymond asked.

“No. Why should they lose sleep before it is needful? We
will all be short enough on that before this is over. They will not attack
tonight. If that had been intended, they would have come better grouped and
begun already. No, I do not believe they will attack at dawn or any time
tomorrow, either.”

Raymond looked surprised and, for the first time since he
had taken service with William, seemed about to argue. “I am not being deceived
by my own wishes,” William said. “If Mauger could have taken us by surprise, he
would have done so. Since he has not, I believe he has not in hand what he
needs for an immediate assault. He will need time to build scaling ladders, to
dam and drain the moat…”

“He could have left orders to build such things at Hurley
and then float them across the river with boat or horses to guide them,”
Raymond suggested, looking out into the dark as if he expected to see such
activity.

“That is clever, very clever,” William said with admiration
after a moment. “I would not have thought of it myself, and I doubt Mauger
would have thought of it either. He must have been nearly beside himself when
he left, if what Alys and Elizabeth say is true. I find it hard to believe he
was thinking of anything clearly. However—yes, double the guard and tell them
to watch the river especially.”

“And alert the men? Even if we do not send them to the walls,
should we not—”

“No,” William said firmly, still looking out into the night.
“We must not seem to be afraid, Raymond. If we take the heart from these
inexperienced churls, we will be lost. Remember, these are not longtime
men-at-arms who are accustomed to judging the odds for themselves, who know
that four or five men are needed for assault to match every one man inside a
keep. These will judge their chances from our manner and orders. To double the
guard is a reasonable precaution, but to alert all the men will cause them to
feel attack is imminent and make them fearful and nervous.”

That made good sense. Raymond was well aware how woefully
inadequate their preparations were. They had all worked as hard as they could,
but there had not been enough time to make the keep ready for war. No one had
believed there would be less than two or three weeks in which to bring the men
from Bix, cart in grain, vegetables, and cattle from the farms, and teach the
new men how to defend the walls. All the more reason, Raymond knew, to appear
confident.

“I wish I knew how many there were,” Raymond said.

William shrugged. “Mauger is not fool enough to come with
fewer men than would make taking Marlowe possible. If he has the minimum, we
may survive until Richard comes. If he has more…” He shrugged again. “Well, I
think I will go back to bed and finish out my sleep. Tomorrow will be soon
enough to worry.”

Before William could turn, Raymond gripped his arm. “Sir—”

Fighting back an urge to scream,
Let me be. Give me time
to face my despair so I can bear it like a man
, William only waited.

“I do not know how to say this,” Raymond began. He felt
William’s arm stiffen under his hand, then the muscles went loose again with
resignation.

“If you wish to leave before you are trapped, you have my—”

“No!” Raymond shouted.

“I beg your pardon,” William offered promptly. “Do forgive
me for such a suggestion, but you have so strange a look—”

“Oh God,” Raymond interrupted, “I do not know how I ever—I
do not know how to tell you, but Alys—”

“I am not blind,” William said gently. “Do not be so
troubled. I am not guiltless myself. I meant you to have her…”

His voice drifted, and he looked out over the wall again.
Poor Raymond. But Alys was in no danger. The worst that would befall her was
that Mauger would try to force her into marriage, but Richard would be back in
time to prevent that.

“You do not understand,” Raymond said. “I have something to
tell you, something that might—not that I love Alys, which I do with all my
heart. I am not ashamed of
that
. But—”

“Can it not wait until tomorrow?” William asked.

“No,” Raymond replied, “because—because if I am to— No. You
must listen to this now because you must tell me what to do.”

“About what?” William found that he was shaking with fatigue
and chill. He had not felt it while they paced the walls, but standing still
made it worse. “Come in. Let us at least sit by the fire in my chamber.”

Raymond was glad of the brief respite, and he lengthened it
a little by closing the shutters of the window, lighting a branch of tapers,
and renewing the fire. Before he had arranged in his mind what he wanted to
say, Elizabeth appeared in the doorway. Looking at her, Raymond thought he knew
where Alys had learned her strength. Elizabeth’s eyes were large with fear, but
her face was quiet and her voice calm.

“Shall I go and wake Alys and the women?”

“No, my love. Go back to bed. We are safe enough for
tonight.”

Their eyes locked, and Raymond looked away from the intimacy
of that glance. There was such love, such communion between them. Although she
must know she was the cause of this threat, there was no apology in Elizabeth’s
expression. There was no blame in William’s, no look of
I do this, lose all,
for you
. There was only a joy in being together for however short or long a
time they were granted. Before he averted his eyes, Raymond saw a flicker of
impatience cross William’s face. Elizabeth moved back into the bedchamber. He
realized how precious the few remaining hours of peace must seem to them, but
what he had to say might give them a whole life rather than a few hours.

“There is no easy way to do this,” he said harshly, I can
only tell you outright that I am the eldest son and heir of Alphonse, Comte
d’Aix, who is the natural son of Raymond Berenger, Comte de Provence, which
makes me nephew, although by the bend sinister, to Queen Eleanor.”

For a long moment William did not move or speak. His first
thought was that fear had somehow unhinged Raymond’s mind, but there was no
fear in the dark face or the brilliant eyes that met his. There was
determination in the firm lips and set jaw, unhappiness in the frowning brows.
No
,
William thought,
this is the truth he is speaking
.