At the beginning of the journey Allie had been charmed by her two-year-old playmate. Yet, loving the train’s horses and mules as she did, she wanted to be the center of attention to their grooms—a breed she’d always got on well with. But the grooms were employed by Emma and, by extension, young Pippy, who, if there was a ride to be had at the head of the cavalcade, came first. Little Lord Wolvercote was fussed over not only by his mother and servants but by Gyltha and Adelia as well, and the green-eyed monster of jealousy began to show in Allie’s eyes and in the hits and pushes that sent the little boy to the ground. It came to the point at which the adults couldn’t turn their backs without a wail from Pip as Allie attacked him again.
Mortified, Gyltha lectured, without effect.
“Don’t like him,” Allie said, explaining why she’d pulled a switch from a tree and beaten Lord Wolvercote’s bottom with it.
“She’s a spoiled little madam,” Gyltha said to Adelia, having taken the switch from Allie’s hand and whacked the child’s behind in turn. “She won’t say sorry. You got to do something.”
Secretly, Adelia admired her daughter’s defiance in the face of condemnation and whipping, but Gyltha was right—something had to be done to correct her. She tried an indirect approach and made a doll out of sticks and bandages on which she drew a hideous face, calling it Puncho. She gave it to her daughter. “You are not winning friends with behavior like this, Allie, so when you feel like hitting Pippy, hit Puncho instead.”
Allie regarded the monstrosity with favor and tucked it under her arm. “I like Puncho,” she said. “Don’t like Pippy.” And she continued the assaults until it was impossible, during rests on the road, to allow both children to run around on the verge together.
Incurring Adelia’s gratitude, Emma was tolerant about the situation, though she made sure her son was kept out of Allie’s way. “I know how the child feels. At the convent, I used to pinch little Sister Priscilla when I thought Mother Edyve was favoring her over me.”
Yet she, too, was behaving badly. Adelia failed to realize why Emma, so understanding of Allie, showed resentment at the care lavished on Master Roetger, for whom she seemed to lack all sympathy. “Does he really need to be cooed over?” she would ask, as Gyltha and Adelia attended to their patient. She clucked with irritation when the grooms had to carry Roetger into the trees to help him with his calls of nature, and at the lengthy arrangements that had to be made for him on the ground floor of every inn at which they passed the night—Adelia refused to allow him to be carried upstairs in case his foot should encounter an obstruction in the process.
It was as if Emma’s champion’s needs embarrassed her as much as they did him.
Enlightenment eventually dawned during a rare moment of intimacy when, having reached Marlborough and seen the children to bed, Emma and Adelia were drawn by a lovely evening into the rose garden of their inn—one of the richest they had stayed at so far.
As they walked, Emma’s voice came to her companion out of a scented dusk. “Should you like more children, ’Delia?”
“Yes. Very much, but I’m unlikely to have them now.”
“You might marry.”
“No.” Having kept her independence by refusing marriage to Rowley, she wasn’t going to surrender it now. She said, lightly, “For one thing, any respectable man would regard me as spoiled goods.”
Emma didn’t disagree. They walked on. After a while, Emma said, “I don’t want more children. Another son, for instance, might complicate Pippy’s inheritance.”
Adelia didn’t see how it could; the laws of succession were strict, though she merely asked, “So you won’t marry again?”
“No.” Emma was sharp about it. “And thanks to you, I don’t have to. But …”
It was a lingering conjunction. Adelia waited to hear what it led to.
Suddenly, there was an outburst of anguish. “They talk about the joys of the marriage bed, but I never knew them—not with him, he did things to me. … I was forced … I fought … I never consented, never.….”
“I know.” Adelia took her friend’s arm. “I know.”
“Yet there must
be
joys,” Emma said desperately. “You knew them with Rowley. There must be gentler men, loving men.”
“Yes,” Adelia told her with authority, “there are. You may meet one, Emmy. You
could
marry again, this time by your own choosing.”
“
No.
” It was almost a scream. “I don’t trust … I shall not be subject again … You of all people should understand that.”
Nearby, a nightingale began to sing, its cadences refreshing the garden like silvery drops of water. The two women stopped to listen.
More quietly, Emma went on. “I am seventeen years old, ’Delia. If I live to be ancient, I shall never have known pleasure with a man.”
Adelia waited. This outpouring was heading somewhere; she didn’t know where. Emma was expecting something from her, but she didn’t know what that was, either.
“But suppose,” Emma said desperately, “suppose, for the sake of argument, one set one’s heart on a man, an unsuitable man, someone … oh, I don’t know, of a status below one’s own.”
She became irritated, as if she expected Adelia to answer a question she had not put. Going briskly ahead, she said over her shoulder, “Somebody one couldn’t marry, even if one wanted to, because his occupation and birth would bring social obloquy on one … and one’s child. Suppose that.”
Adelia tried to. Ahead of her, Emma’s figure was that of an elegant ghost in the moonlight, a pale shade that flicked petals from the roses it passed as if it disdained them.
Walking behind, Adelia attempted to follow the circumlocution that Emma had used to pose her question. What was it her poor friend wanted from her? No marriage, never marriage. No children, never more children. A life without physical love, yet a heart, such a sad heart, longing for the tenderness of a man … an unsuitable man …
Then understanding came. Adelia castigated herself.
What a fool I am. Of course. I should have known. That’s it
.
She quickened her pace, caught Emma by the arm, and led her to a seat in an alcove of roses, made her sit down, and sat down herself.
“Did I ever tell you my theory on how it is possible to avoid conception?” she asked, as if she was raising a different subject.
“No,” Emma said, as if she, too, found the matter a new one. “No, I don’t believe you did.”
“It’s my foster parents’ theory, in fact,” Adelia said. “They are an extraordinary couple, I think I’ve told you. They refuse to be bound by their differing religions—he’s a Jew, she’s a Christian, but their minds are free,
so
free, of laws, prejudices, superstition, imprisoned thinking …” She paused, overwhelmed by longing to
see them again and by gratitude for the upbringing they had given her.
“Really?” Emma said politely.
“Yes. And they traveled, you see. To gain medical knowledge. They asked questions of different races, tribes, other histories, customs, and my foster mother, bless her, went to the women, especially the women.”
“Yes?” Emma said, and again it seemed of little interest to her.
“Yes. And by the time she returned to Salerno, she had gathered, first, that women through the ages have tried to have control over their own bodies—and the methods they’ve used.”
“Goodness gracious,” Emma said lightly.
“Yes,” Adelia said. And because she was Adelia, to whom the dissemination of knowledge was essential and must be as fascinating to the listener as it was to her, she went into detailed account of the different ways, in different ages, in which men and women had attempted to achieve the dignity of choosing for themselves how many children they could cope with. First she spoke of “receptacles,” sheaths for the penis that various peoples made from sheepskin, or snakeskin, sometimes soaked in vinegar or lemon juice. “Effective, my mother said, but many men do not like to wear them.”
Then came the subject of coitus interruptus, the biblical sin of Onan, who, forced by Jewish law to marry his brother’s wife, had “spilled his seed upon the ground” rather than let it impregnate her. “But again, most men do not wish to do that.”
The nightingale continued its ethereal song while Adelia labored on through earthy, human truths. “There are plant remedies, of course, pennyroyal, asafetida, et cetera,” she said, “but Mother was wary of those; so many are poisonous and in any case do not work.”
She paused for a moment, hoping for a response. There was none. Whether Emma, sitting so silently, was listening to her or to the blasted nightingale it was difficult to know.
“And then there are the pessaries,” Adelia said. She enlarged on their history, speaking of Outremer women who placed sponges soaked in crocodile dung and lemon juice in the vulva, of an Arab tribe that used the same method, this time favoring a mixture of honey and camel droppings beaten into a paste with wine vinegar. She spoke of similar advice found in ancient writings, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Greek and Latin …
Emma shifted, and Adelia realized she was losing her audience. She took in a breath. “What Mother found was that among all these recipes, when they worked, was what she called
‘acidus,’
a constant theme of the sour—lemon juice, vinegar. She was sure that it was that which killed sperm.”
At the word “killed,” Emma stiffened. “And what has God had to say of these ways to murder?”
“Not murder,” Adelia said. “Prevention. According to the priests, God condemns them, but priests are men who overlook the death of too many women through the imposition of too much childbearing.” Adelia thought of the murdered baby and its grave in the fens. “Or families struggling in poverty because they have too many mouths to feed.”
Emma stood up. “Well, I think it is disgusting. Worse, it’s
vulgar.”
She walked away.
“And in the case of pessaries,” Adelia shouted after her, “Mother recommends the attachment of a silk thread so they can be pulled down afterward.”
She heard the inn door slam closed and sighed. “Well, you did ask,” she said. “At least, I think you did.”
She sat on for a while, listening to the nightingale.
“You been a time,” Gyltha said when Adelia returned to their and Allie’s bedroom.
“I was talking to Emma. Gyltha, I think, I
think,
she’s in love with Master Roetger but doesn’t feel she can marry him.”
“Could’ve told you that,” Gyltha said. “Too high and mighty to look after him herself but jealous as a cat of them as do.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s it. Poor girl, poor girl.”
“And she thinks as how you fancy him yourself.”
“Oh, Gyltha, she
can’t.”
To Adelia, the German was a patient. She saw him only as a broken arm, a ruptured Achilles heel, and a long-suffering nature.
“Maybe she can’t, but she do.”
The next morning, Emma tongue-lashed her people—the grooms for being tardy in saddling up, the nurse for dressing Pippy in the wrong clothes, even Father Septimus for an overlong grace at breakfast. Adelia and Master Roetger were ignored as if they did not exist.
“An oh-be-joyful journey this is going to be,” Gyltha muttered as they set out.
Adelia agreed with her. If the situation continued all the way to Wells, it would be intolerable.
As it turned out, Adelia, Gyltha, Allie, and Mansur did not have to endure it long. The company had been on the road only an hour when the sound of galloping hooves alerted it to riders coming up fast from the rear.
Master Roetger felt for the sword that he kept always by his side, though what, pinioned as he was, he could have done with it was uncertain.
There were three of them, all with the Plantagenet blazon on their tunics, each one leading a remount. Like their horses, they
were lathered with sweat from hard traveling. Their officer addressed Emma. “Are you Mistress Adelia, lady?”
Adelia said, “I am.”
“An’ is he the lord Mansur?”
“He is.”
The officer said, “We’ve been chasing you all the way from Cambridge, mistress. You’re to come along of us.”
“Where? What for?”
“To Wales, mistress. By order of Henry the King.”
L
OOK
,” A
LLIE SAID
, pointing upward as they approached the castle. “Poppies. Lots of poppies. Big ones.”
Against the setting sun, the severed heads decorating Caerleon’s crenellations bore a resemblance to wildly petaled flowers.
“That damned savage,” Adelia said under her breath, and urged her horse forward up the incline so that they would reach the barbican more quickly and her daughter could be sheltered by its walls from the knowledge of what the “poppies” on the battlements were. “Barbarian. Pig. Just wait til I see the brute.”
She was so tired that anger with Henry Plantagenet was the only thing keeping her in the saddle. All of them except Allie, who could sleep in the pannier attached to a horse, were exhausted—and by a journey Adelia had been loath to make.
She’d refused to accompany the soldiers at first. “I am not going.” Twice now she had served the Plantagenet in her capacity of investigator into unexplained deaths, and each time had nearly lost her own life doing it.
Emma, bless her, their contretemps forgotten, had joined the protest.
“I cannot spare this lady, she is—” Emma remembered in time that the title of doctor should not be applied to her friend. “She is attendant to my physician, the lord Mansur here.”
“He comes, too.” The officer’s hand moved to his sword hilt as he said it, and Adelia knew he’d enforce his king’s order if he had to.
Adelia had panicked. “Not without my child. I am not leaving my child.” They’d have to drag her to Wales, she’d throw herself off her horse, she’d fight and scream at every step, she’d…
On that matter, however, the officer had been prepared to give way. “The king said as how you wouldn’t.”
“And I’m coming, too,” Gyltha said.
The officer had nodded wearily. “King said that an’ all.”
They’d barely been given time to say good-bye. Concerned, Emma said, “If you can get away, I shall be at our manor with my mother-in-law. Ask for the dowager Wolvercote.”