A Knight's Vow by Lindsay Townsend Page B

respect to the Muslims.”
    “And you do not wish to slight a worthy enemy?”
    He laughed. “How well you know me, wench!”
    Alyson felt a glow of satisfaction as they passed the guards
on the gate, glancing again at her betrothal ring and daring to
hope that all would be more than well between them.
    She had filled out a little more in the past few days, lost that
grayness under her eyes and in her face. In her new blue gown
and with her hair streaming out behind her as they cantered
over the downs, Alyson was more vivid than the fresh summer
green of the trees, so bright to his eye after the muted, dusty
colors of Outremer. She was more delicate than the scattered
cowslips, speedwell and orchids that bordered the chalk track
they were racing along, giving the horses their heads. She rode
superbly-but then, what did Alyson not do superbly?
    And she is mine. Guillelm wanted to utter a war cry from
sheer bravado, utter pride and joy. At the castle gate, one of
his guards had asked if he was hunting today and he was,
though not with hawk or dogs. His present quarry needed
more subtlety and patience. Patience above all, Guillelm reminded himself, thinking once more of Heloise of Outremer
and her dreadful warning.

    Desperate to avoid that fate with Alyson, he had planned this
day as he might a military campaign and only prayed that his
preparations would be to her liking. He knew the arts of war but
less those of peace. How did an English lord entertain his lady?
    He had taken food from the kitchen for them but now, as he
spied a stand of oak trees where they might shelter from the
midday heat and relax, he was unsure. As a girl, Alyson had enjoyed romping and eating out of doors but as a woman perhaps
she would consider those things too unmannerly, even coarse.
    “I thought we might stop here, allow the horses to graze”
Fool! It must be obvious that is only an excuse, he thought, scanning the sparse grass under the trees. “If that is acceptable?” he
went on, compounding his error by actually asking permission.
    Alyson nodded and reined in. Swiftly dismounting, perhaps so that she did not have to endure his touch, she knelt by
one of the oaks. As he wondered what she was doing, Guillelm watched her take a worn knife from her belt and begin
sawing at the bracket fungus growing at the base of the trunk.
    “This may be useful for my healing,” she explained, lifting
the fungus onto a clean scrap of cloth she had produced from
somewhere about her person.
    “Healing is surely in God’s hands,” Guillelm began, recalling old childhood tales of poisoned toadstools, but Alyson
wrinkled her nose.
    “It may be, but Christ gave us wit and nimble fingers to aid
ourselves,” she said.
    He knelt beside her and took her knife, plunging it into the
grass.
    “That is a very round reply, mistress.” Would she be teased
by him, Guillelm wondered. Dare he tease?
    The matter was resolved when Alyson thrust her tongue
out at him.

    What was she doing? Guillelm was no longer nineteen.
Because they had stopped beneath the dappled shade of an oak
tree, had knelt close to a small, gurgling stream that she could
hear but not see, it did not mean that he remembered what she
had never forgotten. She had allowed the memory of that afternoon, by another oak wood, on another sultry summer’s day,
near to another clear, swift-flowing brook, to govern her actions.
    Appalled at her folly, Alyson tried to rise to her feet but
was snared in a pair of arms that pinioned her own hands
helplessly by her sides.
    “The last time we were this way together, you saved my life.”
    “No, no,” Alyson demurred, pleased and at the same time
alarmed that he did remember. She tried to squirm free of her
captor.
    “None of that” Still clasping her-so strongly that she felt
bound by fetters of lowered his head. “I mind
it well, brighteyes.”
    “Dragon-“
    “You called me dragon then, too, when I was ready