Afton of Margate Castle (28 page)

The child lay between Afton’s legs for only a moment. Hubert scooped up the baby, cut the cord, and headed for the door. “It is a girl child,” he said, smiling at Afton in satisfaction. “And God has given me a sign, for the child is marked as the offspring of an adulteress. I read your sin in the child’s face.”

***

Afton did not know how long he was gone; she only knew she was going to die. Hubert came back into the chamber, without either baby, and methodically lifted the edge of the blanket she lay on and draped it over her body. “This will be your shroud, for I will burn you on a pyre out back,” he said, walking around the room to lift the other side of the blanket. “I will find another wife to raise my son, and a wet nurse to suckle him. But you, unfaithful wife, shall die the death you deserve.”

“My daughter?” she whispered.

“The child of sin is dead,” he snapped.

She had been defeated. Though she had borne humiliations too great to fathom and flattered the man least deserving of praise, she was now vanquished, by his whip and his cruelty. Her daughter was dead. Her son would be raised by another. She had neither the energy or the will to protest when Hubert lifted her into his arms.

She smelled rather than saw him; his rancid sweat seemed to fall upon the blanket that enveloped her. He faltered for a moment as he carried her, as though he were failing in his resolve, but Afton knew Hubert was a single-minded man. He had determined that she was worthy of death, and nothing short of her death would please him.

When they were outside the house, Afton felt the freezing wind wrap her in a chilly cocoon. She felt strangely detached. Her arms and legs were numb, as unfeeling as they had been when as a child she had stayed too long in the cool waters of the forest pool at the twin trees.

She smiled.
Have I been away from the twin trees for so long?

 
Twigs crackled beneath her and Afton was dimly aware that she was lying upon a bed of leaves and brush.
It’s all right
, she told herself
. I’m in the forest, and I’m safe. No one else knows about this place--except Calhoun.
Her eyes opened, and for a moment she thought she saw Calhoun standing beside her. He smiled at her, clutched his heart in a farewell gesture, and fell down at her side.

She heard the wind whistle coldly, felt the cool numbness of death, and thought again
: Have I been away from the twin trees for so long?
And then she thought nothing more.

Ambrose

1124-1126

T
he bitter cold of the January night stung Wilda’s eyes, so she drew her shawl closer about her head and muttered to herself. The biting wind whipped at her cloak as she walked on the long road that led out of town, but she shouted curses into it. “Drown the babe, indeed I won’t do it!” she screamed, her crackly voice breaking as the wind carried it away. “You can lash me a thousand times like you done the mistress, but I won’t give in to you. It’s a mortal sin to even think of such a thing!”

Wilda suddenly became aware that the sun had set, and dark night surrounded her. It was dangerous for a woman to be out alone after curfew. But the infant in her arms mewed softly through the blankets, and Wilda clutched her burden more firmly and set her cracked lips together. “Don’t you worry,” she croaked, hobbling down the road with greater speed. “God will be with you. And I won’t worry about the master, because I just won’t go back there, that’s all. I’m an old woman, with not many days left, and I’ll not work myself into my grave in his service.”

She darted behind the shelter of a tree and peered into the blanket. At the sight of the baby, her broken lips parted in a smile, and she rebundled the baby and redoubled her efforts on the road. “God will watch over both of us, little one, you wait and see.”

From the distance, a light gleamed from the convent outside the village and the bell tolled for vespers. “No one will know us at the nunnery,” Wilda whispered under her breath. “The good women of this place don’t come into the village.”

The moon had risen high into the dark sky when Wilda made her way to the gate and pulled on the bell rope. A tiny peephole in the wooden gate opened, and a pair of wide eyes peered out at her.

“Please, missy, I’ve a present for you,” Wilda whispered, glancing nervously around her. “Please open the gate. A more God-fearin’ and harmless old woman as me you canna’ find anywhere.”

 
The novice opened the gate and put her finger across her lips. “I understand you canna’ talk,” Wilda said, shifting the bundle in her arms to the arms of the young nun. “But here. Take this to your abbess, right quick, and God bless you for your trouble.”

The novice nodded, and the gate closed again. Wilda turned away and chuckled to herself. “Won’t my lord Hubert be surprised if he ever finds out that part of ‘imself’s gone to God?” She laughed aloud. “That’s the only part of ‘im that will ever come close to God, that’s for sure. The man’s a devil in flesh, ‘e is.”

She waddled on down the road in the darkness, laughing to herself.

***

Corba paced in the stillness of the church, the baby in her arms growing louder and more insistent by the minute. “Can’t you get the child to hush?” Wido asked her, wiping sleep from his eyes. Isn’t it enough you woke everyone in our house? Do we have to wake the whole village, too?”

“Don’t you even care that this babe is bone of your bones?” Corba answered. She made gentle shushing noises to the baby, who continued his squalling. “What is keeping Father Odoric?”

“He’s probably still in bed,” Wido answered, yawning.

“Well, he’s got to get out here and tend to this baby. Wido, I fear for the child. I fear for our daughter. Though the babe seems healthy and strong, the man Afton married is not--”

The sound of Father Odoric’s shuffling footsteps silenced Corba. The priest entered the church, carrying his candle and stifling a yawn. “What is it that couldn’t wait until morning?” he asked.

“A baptism, father,” Corba answered. “We did not think it wise to wait until morning.”

“Bring me the baby, then,” the priest grunted, gesturing.

***

Madame Hildegard, the abbess of the nunnery, sat up with a start when she heard the rap on her door. It must be an emergency, for her nuns knew better than to wake her before Matins. She pulled her tunic around her and opened the door.

The young novice Lienor stood there with a bundle in her arms. She remained silent, obeying the rule of grand silence, so Hildegard took the squirming bundle without a word and placed it on her bed. She unwrapped the rough wool, and both she and the novice gasped at the sight of the baby lying there.

Hildegard had received babies at the nunnery before. Often she had found suitable positions for infants of young mothers who had died in childbirth; and on three occasions she had prayed over the forms of monstrous children destined for early deaths: one born without limbs, another with an open wound, and the third with a swollen head. Hildegard had the priest baptize the deformed babies and she prayed for their souls up to the hour they died and for three days afterward, for she earnestly believed they bore the mark of some gross sin in their bodies.

But the child that lay before her now would not die. Even though the unwashed infant girl still bore the blood of childbirth, Hildegard could see that she was perfect and complete. She lacked neither fingers nor toes nor did she exhibit the weakness or wheezing of impending death. She was a tiny child, probably born too soon, and would have been a beauty save for a scarlet birthmark across her face. Hildegard could not repress a shudder: it was as though a three-fingered beast had resolutely grasped the child’s face with a bloody claw.

Hildegard tugged on Lienor’s sleeve to draw the novice’s attention, then nodded toward the door and made the sign of the cross. Lienor understood the older nun’s sign language immediately, and went for the priest. Abbot Hugh was visiting in the abbey hostelry, and he would not mind rising at this late hour for this purpose.

Hildegard also rang the bell that would bring the housekeeper forth from her apartment. Trilby would know what to do with the tiny baby. She had born ten children and buried four; and she would know how to care for this little one.

While she waited for the housekeeper, Hildegard wrapped the baby warmly. Private moments like this were rare, and she lifted the baby to her face and inhaled deeply. There was no scent like a baby’s: warm, earthy, and sweet! When Hildegard had been in the world, a married woman, how she had longed for a baby! But her impatient husband had cast her off and willingly paid her admission fee to the convent to free himself for a more fertile wife.

Hildegard lifted the baby to her barren breast. If only this little one could suckle there! Perhaps this infant had been sent to her from God, for no woman in the village would raise or endure this marked child. And the child would live; Hildegard knew instinctively by the way the baby energetically curled and flexed her long fingers that the child was strong.

There in the midst of the grand silence, Hildegard heard the deep sleepy breathing of her sisters in God, and calmly resolved to accept this gift of God and raise the babe herself. Somehow the Almighty had seen fit to compensate for her unfruitful womb, and He had entrusted her not only with the rearing of nuns to spiritual maturity, but the rearing of a baby as well.

Hildegard placed her hand over the baby’s downy head. “Deus lo volt,” she whispered. “God wills it.”

***

Father Odoric put his hand on the baby boy’s head and blessed it. “Blessed art thou, young son of Hubert,” he said, rubbing salt in the baby’s mouth. He paused and looked at Corba. “What is the child’s name?”

“Ambrose,” she answered.

***

Abbot Hugh entered the convent chapel where Madame Hildegard waited. “Greetings to you, Madame,” he said, removing his dark cloak. “How can I be of service? You may speak freely, Madame Hildegard.”

Hildegard smiled at the abbot and quietly jiggled the baby in her arms. “God, in His wisdom, has sent us a baby to be baptized. We wish to make a profession of faith for her.”

She placed the baby in the crook of the abbot’s arm and heard him draw in his breath when he lifted the blanket from the baby’s face. “From where did this baby come?” he asked, his voice clipped.

“Is it not enough that God brought her to us?”

“Are we sure this is not a child of the devil?”

“If it is, can we not save its soul by baptizing it?”

Abbot Hugh hesitated, and Hildegard saw a flicker of confusion cross his strong features. “Your chapel has no baptismal font,” he said, studying the baby.

Hildegard motioned toward a basin she had prepared. “We have a wash basin.”

The abbot placed his hand on the baby’s head and blessed it.

“And what are we to call this baby, Madame?”

Hildegard toyed with the edge of her veil. The dawning day would be January 21, the day of the feast of St. Agnes, a day of rejoicing. “Agnes,” she said, smiling at the infant, who stared in fascination at Abbot Hugh’s chin. “For she is a lamb of God.”

The priest looked down at the fragile baby in his arms. “She’s just a lambkin,” he corrected the abbess. “I baptize thee, Agnelet.”

 
***

“I baptize thee, Ambrose, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” Father Odoric recited. He held the naked baby aloft over the baptismal font, then quickly immersed the baby in the water and brought it up again.

The baby squalled and shivered, and Corba wrapped it in a warm piece of wool. Wido had brought a worn christening garment, and she wrapped the baby securely while Father Odoric dipped his finger in holy oil and made the sign of the cross on the baby’s forehead.

***