Baron Neufmarché, incredulous at his wife’s eagerness to embrace the raucous proceedings, regarded her with a baffled amazement she mistook for reluctance. “Bernard,” said Lady Agnes, seizing his hand, “if you cannot dance at a wedding, when will you dance?”
The baron allowed himself to be pulled from his chair and into the melee and was very soon enjoying himself with enormous great pleasure, just one of the many revellers lost in the celebration. Amidst the gleeful clatter, he became aware that his wife was speaking to him. “There it is again,” she said.
“What?” he asked, looking around. “Where?”
“There!” she said, pointing at his face. “That smile.”
“My dear?” he said, puzzled.
She laughed, and it was such a thrilling sound to his ears that he wondered how he had lived without it for so long. “I haven’t seen that smile for many years,” she declared. “I had all but forgotten it.”
The music stopped and the dance ended.
“Has it been all that rare?” Bernard asked, falling breathless back into his chair.
“As rare, perhaps, as my own,” replied the baroness.
He suddenly felt a little giddy, although he had only had a mouthful or two of wine. “Then we shall have to do something about that,” he said, and reaching out, pulled his wife to him and gave her a kiss on the cheek.
“Tonight, mon cher,” she whispered, her lips next to his ear, “we shall discover what else we have forgotten.”
The feast resumed in earnest then, and the happy celebrants sat down to their meal, and the day stretched long into the twilight. As the shadows began to deepen across the yard and the first pale stars winked on in the sky, torches were lit and the ale vats and wine tuns replenished. There was more singing and dancing, and one of King Garran’s lords rose to great acclaim to tell a long and, judging from the laughter of his listeners, boisterously entertaining story. Lady Agnes laughed too, although she had not the slightest idea what the story might have been about; it did not matter. Her laughter was merely the overflowing of an uncontainable abundance of joy from a truly happy heart.
As the festivities continued into the night, Lady Agnes noticed that some of the groom’s men had taken up places by the gate—three on each side—and as the musicians began another lively dance, she saw two more of the groom’s men creeping along the far wall. She stiffened to a tingle of fear in the knowledge that something was about to happen—treachery of some kind? Perhaps an ambush?
She nudged the baron with her elbow; he was leaning back in his chair, nodding, tapping his hands on the armrests in time to the music. “Bernard!” she hissed, and nodded towards the gate. The two groom’s men had reached the gate. “Something is happening.”
He looked where she indicated and saw the gathered men. He could make out the forms of horses standing ready just outside the gate. He glanced hurriedly around for his knights. All that he could see were either dancing or drinking, and some had coaxed Welsh girls onto their laps.
Before he could summon them, one of the men at the gate raised a horn and blew a sharp blast. Instantly, a hush fell upon the revellers. “My cymbrogi!” the man called. “Kinsmen and countrymen all!”
“Wait! That’s Garran,” said Baron Bernard.
“Shh! What’s he saying?”
He spoke in Welsh first, and then again in French, saying, “I thank you for your attendance this day, and pray let the celebration continue. My wife and I will join you again tomorrow. You have had the day, but the night belongs to us. Farewell!”
The second groom’s man turned, and Agnes saw her daughter—with a man’s dull cloak pulled over her glistening gown—raise her hand and fling a great handful of silver coins into the crowd. With a shout, the people dashed for the coins, and the newly wedded couple darted through the doorway towards the waiting horses. The groom’s men shut the gate with a resounding thump and took up places before it so that no one could give chase; the music resumed and the festivity commenced once more.
“Extraordinary,” remarked Baron Neufmarché with a laugh. “I wish I had thought of that on my wedding day. It would have saved all that commotion.”
“You loved the commotion, as I recall,” his wife pointed out.
“I loved you,” he said, raising her hand to his lips. “Then—as I love you now.”