As they rounded a curve of the road that brought them into view of Clawcrag Keep, she got her first sight of her new home and, despite her misgivings, she was impressed.
For she looked at it with the eye of a soldier, as her father had taught her, and not with the eye of a mooning romantic.
It loomed, tall, implacable against the sky and it was clear where the name had come from, for it looked like a powerful, blocky claw trying to grasp the heavens. There was not one thing that softened this structure, for not even ivy or moss had been permitted to grow upon the stones. Nothing could ever have been more imperious, more masculine, more martial.
This was a true keep, strong and eminently defensible. It stood on the top of a steep hill, well above the surrounding village. It was not moated, but with those slopes—on one side, not even a slope but an actual cliff that fell off directly from the right side of the keep—it did not need a moat. The outer walls were three stories high and in the very best repair; stout stone bulwarks that would require not one but many siege engines to break. The inner keep, which loomed an additional two stories above the surrounding walls, was just as strong and studded with arrow slits rather than windows. The inside would be secure from attack, but at the expense of being as dark as a cave, even in the brightest days.
A mooncalf maiden, of course, would have been horrified—Clawcrag was as harsh as its name, a thrust of cold, gray stone into the overcast sky, unyielding, unwelcoming. This was no graceful castle out of a ballad, all airy towers and balconies.
This was a Border keep and anyone who came here expecting a sugar confection was a fool living in a dream. She had anticipated nothing else.
So be it. This was a fighting man’s stronghold, and a woman came into it knowing, as Gwynn had known, that the King did not wish Baron Bretagne’s expertise in the laying out of gardens but in war. It was uncompromisingly masculine, built for the purpose of keeping the Border safe, both from the enemy without and unruly neighbors whose loyalty to the King was questionable. One commander and a handful of men could hold it against an army, especially if it had its own well. Which, she did not doubt, it did. Whoever had built this place had known his business and would not have neglected that detail.
But one thing did trouble her. As they passed through the village, it was ominously quiet. It might almost have been deserted but for the furtive opening of shutters, just a crack, as they progressed up the main road.
There were no villagers gathered along the main street to greet her—no evergreen swags decorated the houses, no children waited to serenade her—there was nothing to show that this was not an ordinary bleak day, not even a market day.
By the time they were halfway through the village and were passing the central square with the stone-walled well, it was very clear that no one was going to come out to greet them, either. The stone houses with their thatched roofs gone gray with weathering looked as uncompromising as the keep above. They presented the same blank gaze as Baron Bretagne’s men-at-arms in their helms.
No one called out so much as a greeting. The few peasants in the street got hurriedly out of the way of the armsmen and did not even give her so much as a curious glance. This was in sorry contrast to the leave-taking through her father’s village at the foot of his keep, where the streets had been strewn with red and yellow leaves, holly and ivy decorated the houses and the children had been brought to sing her a quavery song of farewell to a bride….
Robin frowned but said nothing for a long moment. Then, as they passed the last of the houses and started up the long, winding road to the keep itself, said grudgingly, “Well, and they could not have known when we would arrive.”
And that was true enough. Though Gwynn could not help but think that her father would have had the village in readiness and a watcher on the road….
But this was the Border, and perhaps they did not have the time or the resources to spare on such fripperies. Still, shouldn’t there have been some greeting for the baron’s new bride?
Unless there was enough danger from the neighboring Border Lords that they had not wanted to present the opportunity to catch the village unawares in the midst of celebration. That was something that always had to be thought about, out here.
Nevertheless, from the watchtower the little procession could clearly be seen for many miles, and the road to the top was a long one. If there was no one to greet them at the gate, that would be a bad sign, indeed.
One crow for sorrow…Had they arrived at a bad time? Had there been a death? But if there had been, surely there would have been a sign, the baron’s flag on the top of the keep flying upside-down.
Perhaps not a death in the keep—but perhaps the village headman had died, or some other important person in the village. Perhaps that would explain the closed look of the village.
The road to the top of the hill wound back and forth across the slope, a long, weary trudge not in the least relieved by the scenery. Gwynn supposed that it was a grand vista, and perhaps would be magnificent in the spring and summer, but now, with the gray village beneath, the brown fields beyond, the leafless forest beyond that, all surrounded by brown-and-gray hills covered with more dead grass and leafless forest, it was cold and bleak. The cold wind that had been with them all along now moaned along the edge of the road, sounding as if it was in mourning. The coming of snow would be a positive relief.
They reached the top just as the sun touched the horizon, still a dim disk behind the gray clouds, and had to follow the road halfway around the blank stone walls of the keep to reach the gate. There were probably guards up there on the top of the wall, but they weren’t visible from the road and no one called down so much as a greeting. And there was no one to greet them at the gate, either—
But there was also no room for anyone to greet them. Clearly the purpose of the gate was to keep out as well as to let in, and there was barely enough room for a single cart to make the turn in to go beneath the walls. Certainly you could not bring an army to bear at the entrance, and there was not enough room to wield a battering ram effectively. The outer gate was a fearsome affair, a huge double door of wood a foot thick, and behind it, a portcullis gate of forged iron with sharp teeth meant to be dropped down by means of chains. And as they made the turn into the tunnel under the walls, she saw, with a sigh of relief, that there was to be a greeting party, after all. There was light in there, warm, flickering torchlight and a great deal of it. And now, at least, there was a sound other than the wail of the wind—the sound of men shuffling their feet, murmuring to one another.
They passed under the wall and emerged onto cobbles; their horses’s hooves clattering on the stones. The outer bailey was lined with armed men, all clad in surcoats with her lord’s blue boar upon them, like those of her escort. And there was someone waiting for her on the steps of the keep itself.
But her heart faltered as she drew nearer and saw that the man who awaited her was surely as old as her father. He was dressed in a slightly shabby, dark red surcoat with the baronial device upon it. Although he wore the white belt of a full knight, he had no golden chain, nor a coronet. He looked no wealthier than any of the men-at-arms, and considerably older than she had imagined. Could this be her husband?
Her escort divided and she and Robin rode straight to the steps. The knight limped heavily toward them and offered her his hand to dismount.
She took it, and with a care for her gorgeous cloak, slipped down from the back of her palfrey to alight on the stone cobbles of the courtyard. She was glad that it was dark, for her riding shoes were as ill-treated and dirty as her traveling gown. The knight bent to kiss her hand and rose quickly, smiling into her face; his hand felt very warm, even through her glove. He was clean-shaven, his brown hair going to gray at the temples, his nose had been broken and badly set at one time, and his complexion was weathered from being much out of doors. His eyes were a beautiful blue and yet inexpressibly sad—and somehow, familiar.
“My Lady Gwynnhwyfar,” he said in a deep, melodious voice, which also woke the echo of long-ago memories that she could not bring to the fore of her mind. “It is my honor to welcome you to Clawcrag.”
“It is my honor to be here, my Lord Bretagne—” she began.
“Alas, Lady Gwynnhwyfar!” he interrupted her. “I am not that happy man. And I am not surprised that you do not recognize me, my lady, for the years have not been kind to your father’s friend. I am Sir Atremus. Do you even recall me at all? You were quite a little maid when I saw you last.”
Gwynn gasped and her free hand flew to her lips. Now she most certainly did recognize him. The fact that she had not at first done so was that of all of the places she might have thought to find him, this would have been the very last! Recognize him? How could she have failed to recognize the man she had been in love with at five years old and had vowed to grow up to wed? Why, she had even made him promise to wait for her to grow up, which he, gallantly, had agreed to.
Her heart gave a great leap and then a spasm of utmost pain because—
Because she knew him so very well, knew his kindness, his bravery, his patience and nobility, and if it had been he who was her husband, she would have flown into his arms. Such a nature as that of Atremus would be so worthy of the mature love of a woman grown—
And she was wedded to his liege lord.
So she smiled tremulously and was very proud that her voice remained steady. “Sir Atremus, I beg you to forgive me—I have never forgotten my father’s most trusted friend, and it is only because I never would have anticipated your being here that I did not know you at once. I am overjoyed to find you here, and pleased that you remember me. I will be very glad to have a familiar face, and that of a friend, among all of those both new and strange to me.”
“And I—” He faltered, but covered it well and gave her hand a squeeze. “You will always find a friend in me, my lady. I would have known you among a thousand, for you have grown into the very image of your mother.”
For the first time in a fortnight she was warm— too warm; she felt herself flushing from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, felt herself almost on fire—
—and in the next instant she was as cold as ice. Then flushed. Then cold.
She would have withdrawn her hand, but she could not seem to move it from his grasp. And he…He was turning with it still in his possession, to lead her with knightly courtesy and grace despite his limp, in through the massive wooden, iron-bound doors of the keep, out of the freezing courtyard and into the keep’s Great Hall.
Which, though brightly lit with more torches and supplied with not one but two roaring fires in massive fireplaces to the right and left, was dark with smoke and nearly as cold as the courtyard.
The enormous room must have had a ceiling fifty feet above her, for it was so high that all she got were hints of roof beams when she glanced up. The smoke began a bit above her head and thickened as it rose, but there was enough of it lower down that her eyes stung.
She was the focus of the eyes of all the people seated at their evening meal here, and there seemed to be hundreds of them. A central aisle divided the room into half, each side having two long, wooden tables with benches on both sides of it, the benches being crowded with diners. There were yet more folk serving them and some clustered about the two hearths, dishing up stew or pottage from enormous kettles or carving meat from the pigs roasting on spits above the fire.
Somehow she kept her head high, somehow kept her wits about her, as Sir Atremus led her between the first two tables, that were packed full of servants, men-at-arms and underlings. She thought that there were rushes under her feet, although it was difficult to tell for certain, since no good, clean aroma of dried rushes and sweet herbs came up when she trod on them. She suspected that it had been a very long time since they were last swept out. The hall smelled overpoweringly of smoke, of cooking meat and burned fat, with an undertone of unwashed bodies. There seemed to be dogs everywhere, every possible size of hunting dog, from the lop-eared brachts that coursed rabbits to a great deer hound that stood up and stared at her solemnly as she passed it.
Then she was past the first two tables, and paced past two more, packed equally thickly but this time with lesser nobles, hangers-on, a few shifty-eyed clerics and the baron’s greater servants—all of them staring at her, a murmur of sound before and behind her, but nothing but silence from those immediately around her. She kept her eyes fixed upon the High Table on the dais, upon the seat at the center of that table; a great, high-backed chair as near to a throne as could be contrived without offense to the King.
She kept her eyes fixed on the man in that chair—because if she did not, she must needs see the blowsy, big-breasted redhead in the seat at his right, the seat for the baron’s wife, the seat that should have been left vacant for her. And she dared not give her notice to that wench, dared not allow anyone to guess that she acknowledged her even though the tight, red-velvet gown the redhead wore was worth more than Gwynn’s entire wardrobe and there was the glitter of gold at her throat and glinting on her hands.
She dared not see these things, for to see them would be to acknowledge them, and to acknowledge them would be to give her—whoever she was—the power of that acknowledgment. She was not the baron’s wife; Gwynn doubted that she was his mother, unless she had given birth to him as a toddler. She could only be the baron’s leman—who was occupying the seat meant for his lawful spouse, despite the fact that everyone here must have known for the past hour and more that the lawful spouse was on her way to the keep.
So she kept her eyes fixed on the man. Her husband. Who terrified her.
Not for his size, for he was no taller or more muscular than any of his best fighters. Not for his display of wealth, for he wore black leather, with his blue boar a modest design upon the left breast of his tunic, not silk and velvet like his leman, and no jewels at all save a coronet and the signet ring on his right hand. Not because he was ugly, for he was not; in fact, many would consider his face—black-haired and black bearded—strong and regular features, dark eyes and square chin, to be comely.
No, it was the look in his eyes that terrified her. She had seen such a look in the eyes of a greedy priest studying a fat capon he meant to have on his plate, in the eyes of a miser looking at a fee about to be placed in his hands, in the eyes of a shepherd assessing the fleece of a sheep he was about to shear. It was a look as cold as that in the eyes of his armsmen; measuring, weighing, assessing a possession and reckoning its worth.
And she was that possession.
Atremus led her to the foot of the dais and bowed. “My Lord Baron,” he said into the silence—a silence that not even the dogs broke. “May I present to you the Lady Gwynnhwyfar, your consort and your bride.”
Bretagne rose—
then placed one powerful hand on the table before him, and vaulted over it. Then he leaped down from the dais, not troubling with the two stairs that led up to the platform upon which the High Table stood, landing with a thud right before her.
“Well come at last, bride!” he roared, and before Gwynn could think to make any sort of pretty speech, he seized her and bent her nearly double, planting his mouth on hers. She went limp with shock, as he forced his ale-bitter tongue past her teeth and nearly down her throat, crushing her to him until she could scarcely breathe, while the room erupted in raucous cheers and laughter.
She closed her eyes and forced herself not to bite down on his tongue, forced herself to remain passive, tried to breathe through her nose. This was a test. She knew it. He was trying her, wanting to see if she recoiled from him, if she showed any distaste for him and his embrace.
Now she was very glad she had not worn her new gown. It would have been ruined by the studs ornamenting his leather tunic, every one of which she fancied she could feel grinding into her own flesh. She was growing dizzy, he held her so tightly, and she felt her knees starting to buckle.
Finally he stood her up again, pulled his face away and let her go. She resisted the impulse to wipe the back of her hand across her mouth, somehow kept from gagging, and forced her lips into a smile.
His lips were smiling, but his eyes were still cold and measuring. “Good, my lord,” she said with false brightness. “I had feared you would be reluctant to sacrifice your bachelor state. Had I known this would be my ardent welcome, be sure I would have urged your men to greater speed!”