Forbidden Forest (10 page)

The lord sheriff of Nottingham was at the edge of the crowd, seated on a well-muscled palfrey, the gentlest of all varieties of town horse. Only a knight's war-horse was superior, and few would ride a powerful charger in or around a city—they were given to sudden kicks and flashes of strong humor.

The lord sheriff was a tall, thin-faced man who eyed the horizon and the distant treetops and never gazed in the direction of the felon's oxcart. When he passed on his handsome gray horse, men and women gave him the respectful bow he was due. His chief deputy was stout, clean-shaven Henry. Henry kept his mouth shut around the sheriff, and swaggered through the knots of common folk.

Henry paused beside Margaret and wished her a good day.

“Her ladyship wishes you a good day in return, Henry,” said Bridgit.

“A lady-to-be,” said Henry, “can still speak for herself.” He wore the ebony leather body armor and heavy broadsword of the sheriff's retinue, and he was sweating in the sun. There was much work for such deputies—some said that outlaws owned the king's High Way.

“God's peace to you, good Henry,” said Margaret mildly. “You look well enough to defeat a giant this fine day.”

This was intended only as the mildest compliment. Margaret preferred to not speak to Rat Henry, as Bridgit called him. William Lea paid Henry a gold mark every Candlemas to ensure that the deputy and his fellow lawmen stood near the spicery on market day, discouraging the idle thieves who liked to catch a pinch of white pepper off the scale and run away. Margaret and her neighbors knew that the lord sheriff would have Henry in chains if he dreamed what bribes his deputy was growing fat on.

“My lady Margaret,” said Henry, “does not know what feats a swordsman like me can perform.”

“Indeed, she will live without that honor, Henry Ploughman,” said Bridgit.

Henry stiffened at the sound of his full name, his father and grandfather having trodden the fields behind yoked oxen. No doubt Henry hoped that some new name would be his: Henry Law, Henry le Strong, Henry de la Dure Main—Henry Hardhand.

Henry readied a remark, but dropped his gaze and gave a quick, respectful bow as the lord sheriff approached.

“Of all liars and thieves,” opined Bridgit, “lawmen are the worst.”

The executioner of the city was a dark, slight man who went by the name of Nottingham, acting, as he did, with the intent of the entire city in his hands. The ground had been prepared, the earth sloping on all sides down to slats of wood and a small pallet of fresh boards. Margaret watched with the hundreds of quiet people as the criminal was drawn through the city gates in an oxcart.

The sinner sat facing the rear of the cart, his eyes downcast, his hands lashed together. A priest sat beside him. Everything that happened now was part of a formula every onlooker knew well. The criminal was led down from the oxcart, his hands still lashed together, and the crowd stirred to catch sight of his expression.

Nottingham himself untied the criminal's hands, and with the Latin prayers carrying all the way to where Margaret stood, the felon was stripped down to a white linen cloth that covered his most shameful parts. There was a market in the clothing, and every other relic, once belonging to condemned sinners, so the priest made a show of gathering the man's garments and rolling them up tightly, keeping them under his arm as he prayed.

The felon stretched out on the lengths of wood, a board under his ankles and under each wrist. He did not have to be dragged or forced, as sometimes happened.

“He's remaining right worshipful, even now!” exclaimed Bridgit admiringly.

The criminal had been a dyer's man and had spent his days stirring tubs of cloth as it steamed, taking on color. Even now the tips of his fingers were tinged with blue—no amount of washing would clean them. The felon did not struggle and his lips moved, silently echoing the prayers of the priest or offering his own penance to Heaven.

His limbs were staked fully extended, and Nottingham did not have to give a command—the wheelers knew what to do.

The great iron-rimmed wheel was so heavy that four men put their weight to it, rolling it in from the shadow of the walls, through the silent crowd. The men had to brake it with all their effort as the wheel found the slope. The crowd had been silently respectful, but now it grew entirely still. Nottingham motioned, a crook of his forefinger, and the wheel came on fast.

When the iron wheel ran over the felon's legs, the sound of the bones breaking was loud, two reports. The wheel rolled up the opposite slope and gradually stopped. The crowd took in a breath, like one single creature, and waited. What happened now was extremely important, Margaret knew, and meant all the difference between a sacred death and a meaningless, squalid exit from life.

The felon gasped—that was expected, and no reflection on his state of mind or on his awareness of his own wicked nature. His body shivered, and a sheen of sweat instantly silvered his naked flesh. That was all—he made no other sound. He uttered no words except a single, half-barked “
Mea culpa.
”

As the wheelers maneuvered the dully gleaming, iron-shod wheel into position again, the great circle cutting a shallow rut in the ground, the criminal made no complaint. He spoke the common tongue now, begging Heaven's mercy in a tone not of an anguished, injured man, but of a believer in full faith that his suffering would be acknowledged by the angels, and help to cleanse his sin.

Margaret could not watch as the wheel did its work on his forearms. She heard them well, two smaller, less sickening reports, broomsticks snapping. The wheel crushed the felon's thighs and upper arms. The turning, sun-shaped disk that the sweating assistants steered into position was a symbol of the round, wheeling heavens above earth. The frame was adjusted under the criminal's body, and then the wheel broke his back and ribs—and still no curse or even scream assaulted the hush of the crowd. Many knelt in prayer, thankful to see such holy penance, as the wheel continued its relentless route.

“I have been too proud,” said Margaret.

“My lady should be very proud, marrying a worthy knight tomorrow,” said Bridgit, brushing her charge's hair.

“No, I mean sinfully so.” The wheeling had filled her with shame. A wretched sinner had died piously and well, and here she was quailing at the thought of her marriage.

Superbia
. Father Joseph had said it crept into every Christian heart. “Some people are even proud of their piety,” he had laughed, shaking his head.

The candlewick made a subtle fizzling whisper, the stub burning low. Bridgit had brought this house-made candle from the dining hall, shielding it against drafts with her hand. It was the only illumination in the room. William had met with some burgesses in the shop that afternoon who had gathered with the pretense of wishing a father well on the eve of a wedding. Bridgit did not have to be told that if her master did not purchase a shipment with the silver from the wedding contract he would soon not have a single candle stub to light.

“I have not been obedient, in my heart,” said Margaret.

The brush stopped for an instant.

The dark-robed Nottingham had knelt when the wheel's work was done and had slipped a knife through the crushed ribs, into the sinner's heart. The crowd had murmured approvingly at this—many wheel-broken criminals were hung up to die over a period of days.

“I should do as my father wishes,” Margaret continued. “And after I am married, what my husband desires will be my wish too.”

“This is what we are taught,” said Bridgit, the hairbrush beginning its strokes again. “Although Heaven in its wisdom has never asked me to marry. The men of this kingdom are not upright or warm-livered enough for a woman like myself.”

Margaret took Bridgit's hand.

“Oh, my dear, never worry for a moment,” said Bridgit, taking her lady in her arms.

“I don't know why I feel so,” said Margaret. “Shouldn't I be happy?”

“Why, you are happy, my lady,” said Bridgit, blotting Margaret's tears.

Chapter 19

Margaret told herself she would never sleep the night before her wedding. Even as a little girl she had known that such a night would be one long vigil.

She did sleep, although badly, waking moment by moment. But each time the dark was perfect outside. She could hear the watchman calling that long, high-voiced syllable that sounded to her like
swell, swell
, as if he were treading the streets imploring the moon to swell and grow round.

“All is well, all is well,” he was saying, the words grown smooth over the hundreds of nights of duty. Where did her beloved Matthew's bones lie? she wondered. For all the love she still held for him, his face was blurred now in her memory. She prayed that he might be at peace.

She put her hands to her face, to her hair, wondering how, when she was a wife, this new state would change her nature. She had seen the wives of worthy men, their cool gaze dismissing beggars, no word spoken. Would she be like that, or would she still spare a farthing for the minstrel and a loaf for the blind man at the city gate?

Bridgit swept through the earliest gray dawn, calling sweetly that it was time for the maidens of the kingdom to stir themselves. Margaret knelt, and after her usual morning prayers added a special prayer to Saint Nicholas of Myra, the patron saint of brides. She had rehearsed this prayer for many months.

In this strange body, arms and legs that belonged to her father but were soon to belong to a knight of wide renown, she moved the way a poppet might, a doll given unexpected but uncertain life.

Bridgit gave her watered white wine and wheat bread for breakfast. Margaret dipped the bread in the wine. She could not eat more than a few bites.

“Eat well, my lady,” said Bridgit. “This is no day for a weak woman, nor the night to come, either.”

Bridgit had arranged for the gown maker and his seamster to be on hand, and the mantler too, as Margaret stood in her father's workshop—the only room in the house large enough to admit such activity. Margaret now believed she knew how a knight must feel as his squire and shield bearer, draping him in chain mail, girdled and strapped him, cinching tight the raiment of battle.

Bridgit gave her anise seeds to chew, “So your wedding breath is sweet.” But Margaret knew the woman was simply providing her with something to occupy her tongue and her mind as the apprentices and their masters did their work, deftly, cunningly, full of courtesy and well-wishing.

“Too slow, by my faith, every one of you,” said Bridgit.

“I cannot walk or breathe,” said Margaret. It was not a complaint—to be so straitened by her layers of clothing was proof of the new station in life she was about to achieve. No new eminence, Margaret had been taught, could be attained without the price of measured suffering.

“A lady can walk encased in stone,” said Bridgit.

Margaret directed the mantler to leave them, and she stood arrayed like one of the Holy Virgins of Heaven, she imagined, and felt exactly that far removed from her usual life. Her father's workshop smelled even now of crushed cinnamon bark, powdered mace, and other spices used to flavor wine.

“I knew you would be so,” said Bridgit, weeping. “I knew you would be as a queen is, and I am thankful to Heaven I lived to see this day.”

The wedding mantle was purest white wool, combed soft, the finest any draper could provide. Margaret wore it through the streets on her way to Saint Alban's, the train carried by women Bridgit had chosen herself, women of “chastity and deep worship.”

The street was not paved, and the damp earth, though so crisscrossed with ruts and hooves and footprints that it was flat in most places, was strewn with rushes and white flowers, pale irises, and white rose petals. It was proper that Margaret should keep her eyes downcast, and she did, although sometimes she lifted her chin and took in the brown rooflines and the dark shutters flung wide so that each window could be crowded with faces.

Only before the church itself was there any pavement. The cobbled street there sounded so hard underfoot that footsteps rasped, especially the steps of men, her old neighbors with their ready smiles like strangers.

Chapter 20

Weddings were always at the church door, and while occasionally the ceremony was followed by Holy Mass within the sanctuary, in planning the wedding Sir Gilbert had expressed no desire for “any further prayers on the day of my joy.”

Today, as Margaret ascended the steps, the familiar church door gleamed, its brass hinges bright in the sunlight. Each step was too high—her knees lacked the vigor to bring her all the way before Father Joseph.

A few heartbeats, a few deep breaths, and the ceremony was underway.

“Till death us depart,” vowed Sir Gilbert. He was tall, and with his eyes fixed on Father Joseph he looked both gentle and lit from within by some deep inner emotion. “If Holy Church it will ordain,” his vow continued. “And thereto I plight my troth.”

Father Joseph smiled, and Margaret's words came from her lips like those of a foreign tongue, unfamiliar but solemn. “For richer or for poorer,” she vowed, “in bed and at table.”

As they exchanged rings they both gave voice to the further promise, “With my body I thee honor.”

At the wedding feast Sir Gilbert was like a man she had never seen before. Margaret had never seen the knight in such blissful cheer or heard him with such a good-natured, beam-ringing laugh. All during the wedding feast she reminded herself that this happy man was her new, Heaven-blessed husband.

Sir Gilbert wore a gown of velvet trimmed with miniver, the fur of a rarely sighted squirrel from the far north that had to be caught, legend held, by white hounds. He kissed every guest, as was proper, and gave each man a squeeze of the arm or a pat on the shoulder. The wedding gifts were plentiful, supervised by Sir Gilbert's servants, who arranged them on a table. An ornamental bridle from the saddler, candleholders, a portrait of Our Lady framed in agate and bloodstone. Otto, moneyer to the king, had given a tall silver ewer that gleamed chief among all the gifts.