Twelfth Night was different from the other days of Christmas. On this last day of the holiday season, the servants ruled the castle from midday to midnight, while all those usually in authority acted as servants. On the morrow the castle would return to sobriety once more and all the festive greenery would be removed and burned, but for this one afternoon and night a hilarious madness reigned.
Displaying a fine sense of the ludicrous, the servants chose the spitboy to be their Lord of Misrule during the festivities. In an uproariously foolish ceremony they crowned him with a lopsided homemade circlet of leather trimmed with pieces of multicolored glass for jewels. They then installed him at the high table in the lord’s chair and placed the cook on the lady’s chair beside him as his consort. To her credit, the cook accepted this accolade with a graciousness worthy of a true queen. Servants and ordinary men-at-arms filled the other chairs along the high table and at the upper ends of the two lower tables. Adam, his family, the priest, secretary, the captain of the guard, and officers of the men-at-arms, along with a few others who held important offices at the castle were relegated to places below the salt and they were not allowed to sit down until after they had served the meal.
Adam himself carried in the haunch of venison and carved it for his people. Blaise passed meat pies. Connie poured wine, and Aline had a huge bowl of vegetable stew and a ladle with which to serve it. The brawny captain of the guard was delegated to carry the silver tray containing dainty sweetmeats, which he did with good humor. Several barrels of wine were broached, and there was plenty of ale, cider, and perry.
During the afternoon rowdy games were played in the spaces between the tables. A group of men-at-arms sang a series of funny, if somewhat off-color ditties about the castle’s inhabitants. Adam’s usually solemn secretary engaged in a game of leapfrog with two kitchen maids and one of the stableboys. The mistletoe was all but denuded of its remaining berries, as one berry was plucked for each kiss stolen beneath it.
“Come and dance with me.” Adam pulled her into a group of people.
“I don’t know the steps,” she protested.
“You will soon learn them.” He caught her hands and swung her out, then back into the pattern of the dance while her new friends laughed and clapped and cheered her on. Before long she discerned what the pattern was and found she could keep up with the others.
Aline noticed that never did the servants carry their merriment too far. They enjoyed a noisy, cheerful day and made a few observant comments about Blaise and Connie, or Adam and Aline, but they did nothing that might offend their noble masters. And when midnight came, like Cinderella with her coach and horses and footmen, they would all resume their ordinary lives. Aline thought this night was a wonderful idea, a time for masters and servants alike to let off steam and release a few discontents that might otherwise fester through the long winter months yet to come. In a place so closed in upon itself by cold and snow and ice, this celebration was needed. For it had begun to snow again, the second blizzard in twelve days.
“My lady.” Adam interrupted her musings by sliding an arm about her waist. “I believe you and I have an interesting conversation yet to finish.”
“I do seem to remember something begun this morning and left uncompleted,” she murmured. “But dare we leave the party?”
“It is almost over,” he said. “Here comes Father John with my secretary, Robert, to tell us when it’s midnight.”
“If you think either of them will be accurate timekeepers, you are much mistaken,” she informed him. “They have both had too much wine and may well imagine it is still Christmas when February arrives.”
When Adam burst into laughter at this remark, she added, “Don’t be surprised if Robert asks your permission to marry Connie’s personal maid. If he doesn’t, he ought to, after what I caught them doing an hour ago when I went into the coldhouse to get more butter.”
Adam’s renewed laughter was drowned out by the sudden noisy appearance of Connie, who came from the kitchen with Blaise behind her. Flushed, and with her hair pulling loose from her braided earmuffs, Connie was banging on a pan with a rolling pin while her husband cried loudly that midnight was nigh.
“There’s another who has had too much wine in celebration,” Adam observed. “Ah, well, Blaise can hold her head when morning comes. It will make him a better husband.”
“Listen, one and all,” cried Father John, supporting himself with a hand on Robert’s shoulder. “’Tis midnight, ‘tis time to end the feasting and revels. Go ye to your beds now and rise early to the profitable performance of your duties with hearts grateful to Lord Adam, who has allowed you to make so merry this night and all the other nights of Christmas.” He concluded with a loud hiccup that brought a murmur of quiet laughter as those in the great hall began to disband. Calling their good nights and thanks to Adam, they filed out to the barracks, or the loft above the stable, or the kitchen hearth, to seek their pallets.
“A major cleanup job is needed here,” Aline noted, looking around the suddenly empty hall.
“Tomorrow,” Adam said. “For now, my lady, I am taking you to bed. I have a few important things to say to you.”
“And some interesting things to show me, too, I am sure,” Aline teased.
“Always,” he whispered, urging her up the curving staircase.
When they had almost reached the top, Aline looked back to see Blaise and Connie climbing up behind them.
“Good night,” Connie called out. “Sleep well.”
“And you, my dear friend.” Obeying an impulse, Aline went down a few steps to meet Connie so she could hug her and kiss her cheek. “Be happy always, Connie. and you, too, Blaise. Treasure what you have found in each other.” She touched Blaise’s face lightly with one hand. He caught it, holding her where she was for a moment.
“Thank you, Lady Aline. I regret those harsh words I spoke to you a few days ago. You are a wonderfully wise woman.”
She stood watching them hurry along the short corridor to their bedroom, until Adam caught her at the waist again, drawing her upward toward the lord’s chamber at the top of the stairs.
“What a day it has been,” he said, taking her into his arms. “No man on earth is more blessed than I am tonight. My people sleep safe and secure, healthy and well fed, so I need not worry about them. My son is happy in his marriage at last, and I believe he will continue that way. And I have in my heart and in my bed the most wonderful woman in all the world.”
When he kissed her, Aline wound her fingers through his grey-streaked hair and pressed herself against his strength. She felt his hands along her spine and then upon her hips, where he worked to free the knotted sash that rested there.
“I love you, Adam.”
“I love you, with all my heart.”
Swiftly he undressed her and then himself before he lifted her into his arms to kiss her again. With his mouth still upon hers he carried her to the bed. There, slowly and tenderly, he aroused her to a state of desperate need until she wept for the aching emptiness he had created and pleaded with him to take her.
“If you are half-mad with longing,” he muttered, “then I am completely mad. Only with you do I feel such passion, Aline. Only with you.”
He knelt between her thighs and with one hard thrust buried himself in her. Aline received him with a wild cry of joy, giving herself up to his hot, driving passion, responding eagerly to his ever-deepening movements. She loved his complete lack of inhibition when he was inside her, loved the way he stayed with her, no matter how long it took, until she shuddered and gasped and cried out his name over and over in a strangled voice. But with Adam it never took very long; with him her fulfillment was easy and natural, and always, always, exquisitely tender in spite of his forcefulness.
She loved most of all the moment when he went rigid and caught his breath, and then relaxed and moved more slowly in her, for she knew in that instant she was giving him what no one else could, his own fulfillment with a woman who loved him deeply and completely.
Only slightly less sublime was the time immediately afterward, when he gazed at her in the candlelight as though she was some incredible miracle of womanhood, when he told her he loved her, no matter what might happen in the future.
When he slept, with his hand on her breast and her head on his shoulder, Aline lay quietly so as not to disturb him. She did not feel like sleeping. She was too happy. She lay warm in his arms, listening to his breath and feeling his heart beat, and knowing that in Adam she had found the love she had always wanted.
Outside Shotley Castle the snow fell steadily and the wind blew, shaking the shutters in the lord’s chamber. Adam stirred and turned over on his back, releasing Aline from his embrace. She tucked the quilt in around his shoulders and kissed him lightly.
“Hmm. Love,” he murmured, and drifted off to sleep again.
A blast of cold wind blew the shutter open, letting in cold air and a shower of snow. Aline leapt out of bed to close and latch the shutter. She paused with one hand on the shutter, staring at the snow. Through a thick haze of white she could barely see the castle walls. The wind stopped for a moment, and in the stillness big, fat flakes floated gently downward across the window opening, just like the flakes she had noticed from the library on the day when she had first come to Shotley.
A slight stirring of air blew flakes against her face and bare shoulders. She was standing in the wet, melted snow that had blown in already and now more was drifting into the room through the unglazed window. Shivering violently, she began to push the shutter closed…
The stone window frame began to dissolve. The latch and shutter vanished. Around her there was only white…snow…cold….
“Adam!” Aline turned toward him. She saw his bed, saw Adam sit up and throw back the quilt.
“Aline!” He was on his feet, trying to reach her, but his figure began to waver and blur before her eyes.
“Adam, I love you!” She knew what was happening, and she prayed he had heard her last cry. She had heard his, in her heart if not actually in her ears.
“Aline…love….”
Then all was white and cold and silent.