Labyrinth

CHAPTER 9

Alais stood at her window, waiting for Guilhem to return. The sky over Carcassonne was a deep, velvet blue, casting a soft mantle over the land. The dry, evening wind from the north, the Cers, was blowing gently down from the mountains, rustling the leaves on the trees and the reeds on the banks of the Aude, bringing the promise of fresher air along with it.

There were pinpricks of light shining in Sant-Miquel and Sant-Vicens. The cobbled streets of the Cite itself were alive with people eating and drinking, telling stories and singing songs of love and valor and loss. Around the corner from the main square, the fires of the blacksmith’s forge still burned.

Waiting. Always waiting.

Alais had rubbed her teeth with herbs to make them whiter and basted a small sachet of forget-me-nots into the neck of her dress for perfume. The chamber was filled with a sweet aroma of burning lavender.

The Council had ended some time ago and Alais had expected Guilhem to come or at least to send word to her. Fragments of conversation drifted up from the courtyard below like wisps of smoke. She caught a glimpse of her sister Oriane’s husband, Jehan Congost, as he scuttled across the courtyard. She counted seven or eight chevaliers of the household and their ecuyers, rushing purposefully to the forge. Earlier, she’d noticed her father reprimanding a young boy who had been hanging around the chapel.

Of Guilhem there was no sign.

Alais sighed, frustrated at having confined herself to her chamber for nothing. She turned back to face the room, wandering randomly from table to chair and back again, her restless fingers looking for something to do. She stopped in front of her loom and stared at the small tapestry she was working on for Dame Agnes, a complicated bestiary of wild creatures and birds with sweeping tails that slithered and clawed their way up a castle wall. Usually, when the weather or her responsibilities in the household kept her confined indoors, Alais found solace in such delicate work.

Tonight she couldn’t settle to anything. Her needles sat untouched at her frame, the thread Sajhe had given her unopened beside it. The potions she’d prepared earlier from the angelica and comfrey were neatly labeled and stored in rows on a wooden shelf in the coolest and darkest part of the room. She’d picked up and examined the wooden board until she was sick of the sight of it and her fingers sore with tracing the pattern of the labyrinth over and over. Waiting, waiting.

“Es totjorn lo meteis,” she murmured. Always the same song.

Alais walked over to the glass and peered at her reflection. A small, serious heart-shaped face with intelligent brown eyes and pale cheeks looked back at her, neither plain nor beautiful. Alais adjusted the neckline of her dress, as she’d seen other girls do, trying to make it more fashionable. Perhaps if she sewed a piece of lace to…

A sharp knock at the door interrupted her thoughts.

Perfin. At last. “I’m here,” she called out.

The door opened. The smile slid from her face.

“Francois. What is it?”

“Intendant Pelletier requests your presence, Dame.”

“At this hour?”

Francois shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other.

“He is waiting on you in his chamber. I think there is some need of haste, Alais.”

She glanced at him, surprised by his use of her name. She had never known him to make such a mistake before. “Is something the matter?” she asked quickly. “Is my father unwell?”

Francois hesitated. “He is much… preoccupied, Dame. He would be glad of your company presently.”

She sighed. “I seem to have been out of step all day.”

He looked puzzled. “Dame?”

“Never mind, Francois. I’m just out of sorts tonight. Of course I will come, if my father wishes it. Shall we go?”

In her room at the opposite end of the living quarters, Oriane was sitting in the center of her bed with her long, shapely legs curled under her.

Her green eyes were half closed, like a cat’s. There was a self-satisfied smile on her face as she allowed the comb to be pulled through her tumbling black curls. From time to time, she felt the lightest touch of its bone teeth on her skin, delicate and suggestive.

“This is very… soothing,” she said.

A man was standing behind her. He was naked to the waist and there was the faintest sheen of sweat between his broad, strong shoulders. “Soothing, Dame?” he said lightly. “That was not quite my intention.”

She could feel his warm breath on her neck as he leaned forward to gather the hair from her face, and then laid it in a twist against her back.

“You are very beautiful,” he whispered.

He began to massage her shoulders and neck, gently at first, then more firmly. Oriane bowed her head, as his skillful hands traced the outline of her cheekbones, her nose, her chin, as if he was committing her features to memory. From time to time, they slid lower, to the soft, white skin at her throat.

Oriane raised one of his hands to her mouth and licked the ends of his fingers with her tongue. He drew her back against him. She could feel the heat and weight of his body, could feel the proof of how much he wanted her pressing against her back. He turned her round to face him and parted her lips with his fingers, then slowly began to kiss her.

She paid no attention to the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside, until somebody started to bang on the door.

“Oriane!” called a shrill, peevish voice. “Are you there?”

“It’s Jehan!” she muttered under her breath, more annoyed than alarmed by the interruption. She opened her eyes. “I thought you said he wouldn’t be back yet.”

He looked toward the door. “I didn’t think he would be. When I left them, it looked as if he would be occupied with the viscount for some time. Is it locked?”

“Of course,” she said.

“Won’t he think that strange?”

Oriane shrugged. “He knows better than to enter without invitation. Nevertheless, you had better conceal yourself.” She gestured to a small alcove behind a tapestry that hung on the far side of the bed. “Don’t worry,” she smiled, seeing the expression on his face. “I’ll get rid of him as quickly as I can.”

“And how are you going to do that?”

She put her hands around his neck and pulled him down to her, close enough for him to feel her eyelashes brush against his skin. He stirred against her.

“Oriane?” whined Congost, his voice rising higher every time he spoke. “Open the door this instant!”

“You’ll have to wait and see,” she murmured, bending to kiss the man’s chest and his firm stomach, a little lower. “Now, you must disappear. Even he won’t remain outside forever.”

Once she was sure her lover was safely hidden, Oriane tiptoed over to the door, turned the key in the lock without making a sound, then ran back to the bed and arranged the curtains around her. She was ready to enjoy herself.

“Oriane!”

“Husband,” she replied petulantly. “There’s no need for all this noise. It is open.”

Oriane heard fumbling, then the door open and bang shut. Her husband bustled into the room. She heard the clip of metal on wood as he put his candle down on the table.

“Where are you?” he said irritably. “And why is it so dark in here? I am in no mood for games.”

Oriane smiled. She stretched back against the pillows, her legs slightly apart and her smooth, bare arms draped above her head. She wanted nothing left to his imagination.

“I’m here, Husband.”

“The door was not open when first I tried it,” he was saying irritably, as he purled back the curtains, then fell speechless.

“Well, you can’t have been… pushing… hard enough,” she said.

Oriane watched his face turn white, then red as puce. His eyes bulged in his head and his mouth hung open as he gaped at her high, full breasts and her dark nipples, her unbound hair fanned out around her on the pillow like a mass of writhing snakes, the curve of her small waist and soft swell of her stomach, the triangle of wiry, black hair between her thighs.

“What do you think you are doing?” he screeched. “Cover yourself up immediately.”

“I was asleep, Husband,” she replied. “You woke me.”

“I woke you? I woke you,” he spluttered. “You were sleeping like… like this?”

“It is a hot night, Jehan. Can I not be allowed to sleep as I wish, in the privacy of my own chamber?”

“Anyone could have come in and seen you like this. Your sister, your serving woman, Guirande. Anyone!”

Oriane slowly sat up and looked defiantly at him, winding a strand of her hair between her fingers. “Anyone?” she said sarcastically. “I dismissed Guirande,” she said coolly. “I had no further need of her services.”

She could see he desperately wanted to turn away, but could not. Desire and disgust were running in equal measure through his dried-up blood.

“Anyone could have come in,” he said again, although less confidently.

“Yes, I suppose that’s true. Although nobody has. Except for you, Husband, of course.” She smiled. It was the look of an animal about to strike. “And now, since you are here, perhaps you can tell me where you have been?”

“You know where I’ve been,” he snapped. “In Council.”

She smiled. “In Council? All this time? The Council broke up well before it was dark.”

Congost flushed. “It is not your place to challenge me.”

Oriane narrowed her eyes. “By Sant Foy, you’re a pompous man, Jehan. ”It’s not your place…“” The mimicry was perfect and both men winced at the cruelty of it. “Come on, Jehan, tell me where you’ve been? Discussing affairs of state, maybe? Or have you been with a lover perhaps, e Jehan? Do you have a lover hidden away in the chateau somewhere?”

“How dare you speak to me like that. I-”

“Other husbands tell their wives where they have been. Why not you? Unless, as I say, there is a good reason not to.”

Congost was shouting now. “Other husbands should learn to hold their tongues. It’s not women’s business.”

Oriane moved slowly across the bed toward him.

“Not women’s business,” she said. “Is that so?”

Her voice was low and full of spite. Congost knew she was making sport with him, but did not understand the rules of engagement. He never had.

Oriane shot out her hand and pressed the telltale bulge beneath his tunic. With satisfaction, she saw the panic and surprise in his eyes as she began to move her hand up and down.

“So, Husband,” she said contemptuously. “Tell me what you do consider to be the business of women? Love?” She pushed harder. “This? What would you call it, sex?”

Congost sensed a trap, but he was mesmerized by her and didn’t know what to say or do. He couldn’t stop himself leaning toward her. His wet lips were flapping like a fish’s mouth and his eyes screwed tight. He might despise her, but she could still make him want her, just like every other man, ruled by what hung between his legs, for all his reading and writing. She despised him.

Abruptly, she withdrew her hand, having got the reaction she wanted. “Well, Jehan,” she said coldly. “If you have nothing you are prepared to tell me, then you might as well go. You are of no use to me here.”

Oriane saw something in him snap, as if all the disappointments and frustrations he’d ever suffered in his life were flashing through his mind. Before she knew what was happening, he had hit her, hard enough to send her sprawling back on the bed.

She gasped in surprise.

Congost was motionless, staring down at his hand as if it had nothing to do with him.

“Oriane, I-”

“You are pathetic,” she screamed at him. She could taste blood in her mouth. “I told you to go. So go. Get out of my sight!”

For a moment, Oriane thought he was going to try to apologize. But when he raised his eyes, she saw hate, not shame, in them. She breathed a sigh of relief. Things would play out as she had planned.

“You disgust me,” he was shouting, backing away from the bed. “You’re no better than an animal. No, worse than a beast, for you know what you are doing.” He snatched up her blue cloak, which was lying wantonly on the floor, and threw it at her face. “And cover yourself up. I don’t want to find you like this when I get back, flaunting yourself like a whore.”

When she was sure he had gone, Oriane lay back on the bed and pulled her cloak up over her, a little shaken but exhilarated. For the first time in four years of marriage, the stupid, feeble, weak old man her father had forced her to take as a husband had actually succeeded in surprising her. She had intended to provoke him, certainly, but she’d not expected him to strike her. And so hard. She ran her fingers over her skin, which was still smarting from the blow. He had meant to hurt her. Perhaps there would be a mark? That might be worth something. Then she could show her father what his decision had brought her to.

Oriane brought herself up short with a bitter laugh. She wasn’t Alais. Only Alais mattered to their father, for all his attempts to conceal it. Oriane was too like their mother, in looks and character, for his liking. As if he would care in the slightest if Jehan beat her half to death. He’d assume she deserved it.

For a moment, she allowed the jealousy she kept hidden, from all but Alais, to leak out from behind the perfect mask of her beautiful, unreadable face. Her resentment at her lack of power, her lack of influence, her disappointment. What value had her youth and beauty when she was tied to a man with no ambition and no prospects, a man who had never even lifted a sword? It wasn’t fair that Alais, the younger sister, should have all the things that she wanted and yet was denied. Things that should be hers by right.

Oriane twisted the material between her fingers, as if it was Alais’ pale skinny arm she was pinching. Plain, spoiled, indulged Alais. She squeezed tighter, seeing in her mind’s eye a purple bruise spreading across her skin.

“You shouldn’t taunt him.”

Her lover’s voice cut through the silence. She had almost forgotten that he was there.

“Why not?” she said. “It’s the only enjoyment I have from him.”

He slipped through the curtain and touched her cheek with his fingers. “Did he hurt you? He’s left a mark.”

She smiled at the concern in his voice. How little he really knew her. He saw only what he wanted to see, an image of the woman he thought she was.

“It’s nothing,” she replied.

The silver chain at his neck brushed her skin as he bent down to kiss her. She could smell his need to possess her. Oriane shifted position, allowing the blue material to fall away from her like water. She ran her hands over his thighs, the skin pale and soft compared to the golden brown of his back and arms and chest, then raised her eyes higher. She smiled. He had waited long enough.

Oriane leaned forward to take him in her mouth, but he pushed her back on the bed and knelt down beside her.

“So what enjoyment do you wish for from me, my lady?” he said, gently parting her legs. “This?”

She murmured as he bent forward and kissed her. “Or this?”

His mouth crept lower, to her hidden, private space. Oriane held her breath as his tongue played across her skin, biting, licking, teasing.

“Or this, maybe?” She felt his hands, strong and tight around her waist as he pulled her to him. Oriane wrapped her legs around his back.

“Or maybe this is what you really want?” he said, his voice straining with desire as he plunged deep inside her. She groaned with satisfaction, scratching her nails down his back, claiming him.

“So your husband thinks you’re a whore, does he,” he said. “Let us see if we can prove him right.”