Conquering William (27 page)

“Thank you, Martha.” Alice stood beside the pallet. “Could I have a moment, Martha, to say goodbye on our own?”

Martha snorted and jammed her hands on her hips. “I am going to tell you a thing or two, Lady Alice. And I never would have done so in the past, what with you here and Sister stuck to you like a burr. She may have raised you, my lady, but she did you no kindness.”

“Thank you. I—”

“Always railing on you about God and sin. Never a kind word or a cuddle for a lonely little girl. We saw it all, we Tarnwych folk, and it fair to made a body sick to see the way she treated a young girl like you. Squashed.” Martha mashed her fist into her palm. “Like chaff beneath her heel you were. All the life pounded out of you.”

“Mart—”

“And then that handsome Sir William comes here, and the sun comes out for our Lady Alice. Does a body a power of good to see your pretty smile when he is about.” Martha puffed her chest.

Alice stood and let her say her piece. Martha had suffered enough censure from Sister through the years to earn her right to speak.

“A blessing from God that man is. For all she calls him and his kin names and does those awful things. I saw her filling your head with her vicious nonsense and my heart fairly failed.” Martha sucked in a deep breath, and tears glittered in her eyes. “I thought your new man would go the same way as the others, but he’s a wily one. I told my boy, the moment I clapped eyes on Sir William, ‘He’s a wily one, that one. He will see Sister coming from a league off, he will.’”

Sister lay on her back, her breathing deep and even, her face relaxed. She looked peaceful, a harmless old woman.

“Then she started with her twistings and turnings afore Sir William had his knees under his table. Whispering to you. Trying to make Sir William look like a bad one.” Martha chuckled, evil enough to lift the hair on Alice’s nape. “But he saw her then, too. Kept his lip buttoned. Watched and waited and she wandered right into the fox’s den, she did.”

Sister had not made many friends in her years at Tarnwych. Here she lay, rendered senseless by Ivy’s herbs and only Martha, who disliked her, would sit with her. What a terrible, lonely existence. In a keep the size of Tarnwych, Sister had not one soul who would bid her God be with you and shed a tear. All these years Alice believed only Sister stood by her. But perhaps, she was the only person for Sister.

“You are a kind one, Lady Alice.” Martha peered down her nose at Sister. “And she does not deserve a heart like yours to ache for her going, but you are the way you are. God bless you for it. I will wait outside until you are done.” Giving her a nudge hard enough to push Alice to the side, Martha chuckled. “That young Domnall will make a pleasure of the waiting.”

The door closed behind Martha.

Sister’s chin rested on the smoothed linens. Did it make her a bad person that she felt relieved that she no longer needed to decide whether or not to share her news with Sister?

“You could have given me a hug,” Alice said. “Or pinched my cheek and told me I had done well.”

Nay, Sister’s always instructed and corrected. Today, with the boys in the hall, Alice had played the first children’s game of her life. Sister did not approve of the keep children as companions.

Alice bent and kissed her dry cheek. “I may be with child. I shall love them, and cuddle them, and tell them every day how wonderful they are.”

* * * *

“There you are.” William strode down the passage.

Alice shut the door to Sister’s chamber behind her.

He nodded to Domnall and Martha. “I came to find my wife, cosset and spoil her in her illness, only to find her rampaging about the keep.”

Martha sighed and clasped her hands to her bosom.

“Hardly rampaging.” Alice worked up a wan smile for his benefit. She would not miss Sister, and that saddened her most of all.

William slid his arms about her waist. “Are you well?”

“I am.” And she was. In the chamber behind her lay the past, and before her, the future, which grew brighter every day. “I came to bid her God be with you, but she was asleep.”

“It is for the best.” William kissed her cheek. “I know you will be saddened to see her go.”

Alice could not accept his sympathy. “I do not think I will, and that makes me sadder than anything.”

“My Alice.” He drew her with him down the passageway. “You are so loyal. Beware of where you bestow that precious gift. Make sure the person you give it to is worthy of it.”

“Have you and Martha been speaking?”

William chuckled. “Nay, but I have been here long enough to see how things lie.”

They reached their bedchamber and William guided her inside. “Now, I believe Ivy said you needed rest. I came up here determined to give my lady company during her tedious confinement.”

“Confinement?” Alice’s heart skipped a beat. What had Ivy told him?

“After the hall.” William pressed her to lie on the bed. “I will not be gainsaid in this, and I have had Cook prepare all your favorites.”

Alice removed her shoes and lay against the pillows he propped for her.

“I have noticed you have a taste for sweet things, my lady.”

He went to the table, his back to her.

How strange life could be. It took and it gave, and left a woman reeling to catch up. “William?”

“Aye?”

“I can think of something I like better than sweet things.”

William spun, an answering gleam in his eyes. “My lady, you are ill.”

“Not that ill.”

William refilled Sister Margaret’s goblet. For a woman of the cloth, the Prioress could tuck away the wine. Short, stout, and with pleasingly round features, Sister Margaret the Prioress of St. Stephen’s Abbey had arrived amid a flurry of nuns.

He would send a couple of Aonghas’s boys with them on their way home. He could not like the idea of women traveling on their own. It couldn’t hurt to bolster the Lord’s protection with a bit of steel.

“The Abbess sends her apologies. She means no insult, but she is not in the best of health.” With a wrist toss, Sister Margaret drained her goblet. Perhaps he should see if any of those Scots had their infernal brew with them.

“She is ill?” He gave her more wine and topped his half-full goblet.

Sister Margaret snorted a laugh. “Nay, Sir William, merely older than dust. She can barely make it to her bench in the sun, never mind two days’ travel from Old Stoney to here.”

“Old Stoney?”

Sister Margaret guffawed and slapped her thigh. Her cheeks jiggled around her wimple. “It is my name for St. Stephen’s. Abbeys are built of stone. Stephen was stoned to death. Old Stoney.”

“Indeed.” Not quite what he had expected of a nun. What with Sister Sunshine’s amiable disposition, his enlightenment regarding Holy Sisters continued.

“Any more wine in that flagon you are clutching, Sir William?”

“Plenty.” It was as if he entertained a tavern wench in a nun’s habit. William motioned Cedric for more wine.

Cedric put one careful foot in front of the other, eyes locked on the flagon as he poured. The lad had returned with the nuns, whole and hale. Lad had grown another inch in his absence. Task completed, Cedric straightened, his cheeks flushed.

“Now then.” Sister Margaret rested her elbows on her knees and gave William a penetrating stare with keen brown eyes. “Let us hear what has been going on with Sister Julianna.”

He would wager not much got past this woman. “She has a rather vehement attachment to my wife. Understandable, given that she raised Lady Alice. The problem is her reaction to the rest of my family.”

“Oh, aye.”

Cedric obeyed the silent command of the outstretched goblet.

“She has taken to calling a certain member of my household a who…a woman of low morals. Just yesterday, she attacked my brother, Mathew, calling him an abomination,” William said.

Sister Margaret shook her head. She leant back in her seat, and her expression grew contemplative as she swished wine from one cheek to the other. “When your lad arrived, I took it upon myself to do a bit of digging.”

“Did you?”

“Indeed.” Sister Margaret’s gaze sharpened. “Your Sister Julianna came from our Abbey. Seems she was related to your wife’s family in some way, a bit distant but enough for the Abbess to send her to oversee the birth of Lady Alice.”

William already knew all this, but he had been raised not to interrupt a lady, especially not a Bride of the Church.

“But that is not the interesting part.” Sister Margaret tapped the side of her head. “I kept wondering why the Abbess had not called for her to return to the Abbey.”

“Aye.” William had thought that enough times himself. “Could you discover why?”

“There is some…murkiness in the records.” Sister Margaret took a long draught from her goblet. “The Abbey then was a different place, and they were not inclined to record their…indiscretions. The Prioress then, now no longer with us, did not like to have the Abbey’s troubles available for scrutiny.”

How much trouble could an Abbey full of nuns get into? William kept his polite listening face in place.

“I am not such a woman.” William would wager his horse she was not. “I like to see trouble out in the open, where one can deal with it.” She stared at him for a long moment, and then grinned. “You are wondering what sort of trouble nuns get into.”

William’s face heated.

“The Abbey shelters all types of women, my lord. I would never dismiss another woman’s calling to serve the Lord, but let me say that there are times when the calling is rather convenient. Nobody looks for a woman who has taken up the veil. Her actions are no longer subject to such keen scrutiny.”

It made sense and William nodded. “And Sister Julianna?”

“Hard to say.” Sister Margaret held out her goblet. “By the by, this is an excellent grape you serve, Sir William.”

“Thank you, Sister.” William chuckled. The woman had her own brand of charm. “I will see a few barrels find their way onto the cart and return with you.”

“I was hoping you would say that.” Sister Margaret winked. “Your Sister Julianna joined the Abbey a little later in her life. The records show she had already been married, but they do not say to whom.”

“Do they usually?”

“Oh, aye.” Sister Margaret waved a hand. “The Abbey likes to know whose daughters and sisters we have beneath our roofs. It can be very useful during leaner months to have some outside support.”

Everybody needed a crust of bread. William motioned for her to continue.

“If the husband is not listed in the records, my predecessor sometimes had a good reason for the omission. It took me forever to divine her system of recording, but I know my way around it now. To hide where a woman came from often meant the woman wanted to stay hidden.”

“But why?”

“Sir William.” Sister Margaret pursed her lips and stroked the armrest with her free hand. “This world we live in is not kind to women. There are as many reasons as hairs on your head for a woman to want to disappear. Bad fathers, worse husbands, cruel brothers, the list goes on and on.”

Sir Arthur had raised his sons to mind their strength, but all men bore the shame of those who would not control their baser natures. “And Sister Julianna was one of these women? A woman escaping her lot in life?”

“Perhaps.” Sister Margaret waggled her head. “Or perhaps it was just a day on which the late Prioress did not make a proper entry. There are enough of those in the records, too.”

“Ah.” No closer to learning the truth. Not that it mattered at this stage. He aimed to do all he could to ensure Alice did not miss her nasty mentor.

“I took my questions to the Abbess.” Sister Margaret snorted into her goblet. “Mind emptier than King John’s coffers. She barely remembers her name on most days, but she did show some recollection of Sister Julianna.” She leant forward and pierced him with a stare. “Seems Sister Julianna has a secret she wants kept that way. She was definitely married when she came to the Abbey, and her husband was not propping up a headstone.”

William found it fascinating that any man would have chosen to marry the old hag. Of course, even Sister Julianna must have been young at some point.

“And, I cannot be sure, but the Abbess did talk about a child.”

That shook him. “Sister Julianna had a child?”

“I cannot be sure. Like I said, the Abbess is not all there, but I suspect that to be the truth.”

“What happened to the child?”

Sister Margaret tossed up a hand and sat back in her chair. “Most likely the same thing that happens to any child born at the Abbey. They join the band of mouths we feed and are cared for by the good Sisters.”

“Are you saying that not all the children in Abbeys are orphans?”

“Nay. A hundred times nay.” Sister Margaret winked at him. “A Prioress would never hint that the good sisters are anything less than pure as a fresh snowfall. Brides of Christ are above worldly temptation, Sir William. Everybody knows this.”

William had to laugh. Gregory had dispelled his innocent belief in monasteries being filled with pious men. Why then would nunneries and convents be any different? He had a strong sense that Sister Margaret had a long and interesting story of her own.

“So.” Sister Margaret slapped her knee. “We will bundle up our sister and take her with us in the morning. She will have less mischief available to her at Old Stoney.”

“I will send some men with you.”

“I appreciate that.” Sister Margaret stood and adjusted her skirts. “Although I heard a rumor that Aonghas’s rabble are less often seen this side of the border. Imagine my surprise when I saw his sons here at Tarnwych.”

“I believe Aonghas and I have reached a sort of truce.”

“Aye.” Sister Margaret pinched his cheek. “For all your pretty face, Sir William, you are a clever man. I am glad you are here.”

She left him gaping like an idiot and strode out of the hall.

* * * *

Alice had to keep reminding herself not to stare at the party from St. Stephen’s.

They laughed, as loud as any of the men, drank wine, and enjoyed Cook’s largesse. One of them had taken Martha’s place beside Sister Julianna in her chamber.