Lindsay Townsend (5 page)

Tense, and not only because of getting past
the bridge. The stakes are high here and I believe I know why. Nothing else
makes sense.

“Shall I say what I think?” said Stephen
softly, keeping his eyes on her. “Richard Martinton’s family keep your son. I
know he does not live with you in London. You speak of him with such longing.”

Isabella screwed up her eyes and made a
small choking sound.

“You asked after places and householders in
Kent. Martinton’s kin have property in Kent. I know because the family is
notorious in those parts. They are not well-liked.”

Isabella looked at him. “What can I say?”

“Your keepers are not with you here. You
need not fear my telling them anything. I want to help.”

She continued to watch him, the question
why
now urgent in her face. “I may lose even what I have,” she said, cautious
still.

“But what is that, really? Do they keep
promising that your son will be with you and reneging on that promise?” A new
suspicion flared in his mind. “What do they want you to do, Isabella?”

She stared beyond him, her pinched, gray
face blooming into a brighter crimson, like a molten rod of iron. Shame, he
surmised, and anger.

“Your kin see me as a means to win favor at
court?” He asked the question very quietly, tempering his own rage.

“Yes,” whispered Isabella. “But they
guessed I liked you, too.”

 “And that changed things?” he asked
gently, reining in his temper again.

The shadow of the arches of London Bridge
hid her face but he felt Isabella give a small nod. “For me it changed
everything,” she admitted. She hunched into a tighter ball beside him, misery
pouring off her like smoke from a furnace. “They wanted more. They always want
more. I was told to flirt with others, to draw the attentions of other men.”
Her voice dropped lower still. “To become mistress to many men.”

And Isabella had said no, Stephen thought,
recalling her stalwart protests in the gardens of the Savoy palace.

“Or I lose Matthew forever.” She was as
pale as a corpse, her eyes distant mirrors and memories of pain. “Now you can
destroy me, if you choose,” she continued, in the same dull, dead voice.

I always knew Richard Martinton and his
clan deserved to burn in hell. Let me send a few of them there, though I swing
for it.
The burst of anger
was cleansing but the disgust that followed was as dark as slag.
To abuse a
mother so… this family is beyond contempt.

He plunged a fist into the cold river,
quenching his rage as their bobbing little boat burst through shadows into
sunlight again and the ferryman relaxed on his sculls. He did not waste his
time on being offended by Isabella’s confession that she had sought him out. Thoughts
on that score were luxuries now that their waterman was sculling swiftly to the
nearest wharf. In another moment they would be running again. “Yet why should
we run?” he asked aloud.

“I must be there to put my side, to defend
myself.”

He shook his head. “Has it made any
difference in the past? Ignore them, Isabella, be free of them. Take their dungeon
out of your head.”

She stared at him, a stunned blankness in
her eyes. He did not know if he was reaching her or not but he knew he had to
keep trying.
This is the moment
.

“Can we speak freely at your friend’s
house?”

“At Amice’s? Yes, but I must return before
John and Mary—”

He cut across her. “Your kin will believe
whatever that greasy pair tell them, so why the haste? We can do more out of
doors. Once you are back you will be spied on and stopped. You will be in their
power again.”

“I am always in their grip,” Isabella spat.
“You cannot understand, you are a man. You have nothing to lose.”

That stung Stephen. “You are wrong. My wife
is dead.”

“But you have your daughter!” Isabella
struck her breastbone with her fingers. “Joanna is yours. My son is not mine.
Can you not understand? I do not even know where he is!”

Tearing herself from his embrace she stood
up in the wherry and in another instant would have hurled herself onto the
nearest quayside. Stephen snatched her back, holding her wrists with such force
that he could feel the narrow, fragile bones grind beneath his fingers as she
struggled. Her sudden fierceness surprised him, but only for a moment.

If she is an angel, can she not be an
avenger also? She has been badly wronged.

Still, however much her furious beauty stirred
him he dared not release her.

“Lively one there,” the waterman chortled,
as Stephen man-handled Isabella ashore and paid their fare. “Mind how you go.”

He remembered where her friend had looked
from the upper window on
The Street
and soon found her shop without any directions
from his companion. Hand in hand, hurrying beside him, Isabella was silent but
he did not make the mistake of believing she was resigned. “How are you?” he
asked, as they sped along the alleyways to the spice seller’s.

“Thinking,” she answered.

****

All my life I have been taught to obey. I
obeyed my parents when they told me to marry Richard. I did everything my
husband’s kin asked of me. Richard beat me, but not because I rebelled against
him. He did so because he wanted to see me broken and sniveling. It amused him
to watch me cringe.

Stephen is not like that.

I obeyed my father and he cast me off. I
obeyed my husband and he beat me. I obeyed my husband’s family and they took my
son. They hide him and speak most carefully in my hearing so I cannot work out
where he is. They take away my money and jewels so I have no means, no power of
discovery. They consider my opinions and wishes worthless.

Stephen is not like that.

“You are a woman of London and the world,” he
had said, and “You need not cringe from me.” Best of all, “I never liked your
waste of a husband or his kin,” and “I want to help you.”

He was right, too. When had her arguments
or pleas made any difference? She had obeyed and had never been granted a
single wish.
What is the point of my being a good daughter, wife, or
daughter-in-law when it makes no difference? When I do not get what I want?

She was alone. She had always been alone,
apart from when she had Matthew. Yesterday, even an hour ago she had considered
her solitude a curse and a weakness. Now she looked at the world with new eyes
and saw her singularity as strength.

I do not have to obey any of them. They
truly have no power over me.

What had Stephen said? “Has it made any
difference in the past?” No it had not, of course it had not. She had groveled
to win any glimpse of Matthew, she had sold everything she owned to be given
time with her son and she had not even been granted that, only a brief sight of
him from the back, not even his face.

Be free of them, Stephen had said. Take
their dungeon out of your head.

It was a revelation.

For all that I must hurry. I do not want my
son beaten or hurt. We must hurry…

****

Isabella’s friend Amice unbarred the back
door to her shop and bustled them inside. The beautiful, dark-skinned woman
asked no questions but swept them past her wide-eyed apprentice and up into a
narrow upstairs chamber, closing the downstairs shutters on her spices and
telling her ‘prentice to check stores instead.

“We are losing you customers,” Stephen
remarked when the spice-seller returned in a swirl of red, rustling silks and a
savor of vanilla and cinnamon.

“Not important.” Amice handed him a
steaming cup of raspberry tisane and knelt beside the chair where he had guided
Isabella to sit. “Has she had bad news of Matthew?” Amice demanded, looking
closely at the small, still figure.

Isabella stirred at her scrutiny. “No news,
never any news.” She smiled and stroked Amice’s dark hair. “But I am thinking,
beloved. Finally I am thinking.”

Amice pressed a cup of tisane into
Isabella’s unresisting hand and motioned with her eyes to the threshold.
Stephen put his cup on the window ledge and cleared his throat. “I must seek
your privy.”

“I will show you,” said Amice.

“I dare not leave Issa for long,” she added
at once, as she and Stephen clattered down the stairs again. “What has
happened?”

He told what he knew in a few choice words.
Lingering in her tiny back yard, constantly glancing up the stairs, Amice
snorted when he explained what Isabella had admitted.

“She has not told a peppercorn’s worth of
it! Issa has been bullied for years, starved, beaten, left to rot in the heart
of this city during the pestilence and her son forcibly taken from her. Richard
Martinton was a pig. I wanted to stick a blade in him myself.”

Stand in line, Stephen thought. Anger made
him light-headed, with a dragging thirst. “Her parents? Can they do nothing?”

Amice curled her lower lip. “More useless
sacks of offal. Issa’s father is a vintner, did she tell you that?”

Stephen nodded but got no chance to reply.

“Did she say that her own father sent her to
that pig Martinton when she was twelve? Aged twelve!”

“Yes, she told me.”

“Did she? You must have won some of her
confidence for Issa to admit anything. Did she also tell you that she was the
bride meant to stop a blood feud? Last year when Martinton lurched from her bed
and clubbed down one of her father’s men it was Issa who was blamed and beaten.
Beaten by his family and blamed by her own, I might add. Her parents now ignore
her in the street. Even if the Martintons allowed it, they would not have Issa
back with them.”

“A brawl last year? How can they blame
Isabella for that?” Stephen stared at the roof-tops of London, trying to bar
from his mind the image of his gold-haired, falling angel being struck, of
being rejected and ignored by her parents, the very people who should have
loved her. He failed, the dark knowledge an evil to him. “Married off at twelve,”
he repeated, and shook his head in disbelief, shocked afresh. He thought only
the nobility worked that kind of carelessness with girls. His Cecilia was
eighteen, almost nineteen when they were married. Amice’s Issa, his Isabella,
had been a child herself.

“Made to marry. Wedded, bedded, beaten and
discarded.”

“We must find her son, get him back to her.”
Stephen was aware of far more that was due to Isabella but this was the first.

“And then?” Amice challenged, her fine eyes
as bright as a bird’s. “The law of this land makes the boy Martinton’s, or his
kin’s. They may have shipped him to France for all we know.”

“I will speak to the prince, to my lord,”
Stephen said, with a growing certainty. He had influence and access and
Isabella would finally have protection.
I will protect her
.

“My husband’s kindred wanted more than they
assumed you would be able to get them,” said Isabella, standing perilous at the
top of the stairs, as slender as a candle flame. “When you showed yourself
willing to court me they instantly decided to be more ambitious. They are
goldsmiths after all and their guild is notorious for its pride.”

Amice hissed in a long breath and opened
her arms, as if afraid her friend would tumble down the steps. “Issa, why not
go sit down again?”

“I will not fall, Amice.” She smiled at her
friend and looked at him. “They call you a blacksmith, Stephen, and they do not
mean it well, but to me smiths are the heart of every place there is.”

Her generous words made him catch his
breath but only for an instant. “I began as a smith, and am proud to be so.”
Stephen was more but he gladly claimed the title…
the heart of every place
there is
. Humbled, inspired, he walked to the head of the staircase,
wishing Isabella would return to the upper chamber, longing to sweep her safe
into his arms. He took a step up on the stair.

“Do not be troubled, Stephen. I shall not
fall again.”

“I believe you.” He did, for she looked as
steady as an angel.

“I have thought, Stephen. For years I could
not, because of fear and constant trouble. You showed me the space and the way
to free myself. Because of those things I have thought. Blacksmiths have a
guild, have they not?”

Stephen blinked at the question, wondering
where this strange conversation was going. “I am in the guild of armorers,” he
began, “and I know many smiths.”

“And blacksmiths are in every village.
Places of gossip and news, places where the comings and goings of strangers and
worthies are discussed.”

“I agree.” What she said made sense. “Yet I
am sorry to say that I do not know every blacksmith in Kent.”

Isabella swayed and alarmed, he took
another step upward toward her.

“Do not be concerned,” she said, recovering,
gripping the door jamb. “I am quite clear-headed, for the first time in years,
I might add.”

“For God, Issa, sit down on the steps,”
pleaded Amice.

“Let us all sit,” said Stephen and he did
so, settling on the narrow treads, another step closer to Isabella. “I do know
a great many smiths, including several of Kent,” he went on, to hearten her. “I
can get word out to ask after your boy.”

His cantering heartbeat slowed when
Isabella copied him and sat down on the top step. Amice came alongside him. “That
might work,” she said softly. “The fellowship of craftsmen and all. Will they
be discreet?”

“They will if I ask them to be.” Stephen
said. He turned again to Isabella. “I will begin today,” he promised. “It
should not take long.”

“Are you certain you wish to begin this, my
lord?”

Isabella’s formal question startled him and
he frowned, considering the matter settled. “What do you mean?”

Her steady gaze on him faltered and she
glanced down at her knees. “I mean that Richard’s family… they like to have a
hostage to use.” She hugged her knees and rocked back and forth on the step. “You
and your daughter lodge with your sister, do you not? And you mentioned that her
husband is away at sea?”

It fitted, Stephen thought, while he heard
Amice softly cursing in some exotic tongue
. Isabella is right. I need them
away from the house now, or Bedelia and Joanna will be used as hostages.

His heart clenched at the thought and he
suddenly understood far more clearly the oppression Isabella had been enduring.
This cannot go on.

He twisted about to Amice. “Your
apprentice, is he reliable?”

“He is slow and a touch idle, plays on his
limp at times, but I would say yes.”

“Then he can take a message and a token of
mine to my sister’s.” Bedelia might be bossy but she had sense. He would write
the note in the secret script they had made up between them as youngsters, so
she understood the urgency and danger. “Bedelia knows to go to Thomas Smith’s
house in case of trouble. He is a fellow armorer.”

“Send the message now,” said Isabella,
chewing on her lower lip. “I would have no one else threatened because of me
and mine.” Her voice cracked. “I could not, cannot bear that.”

“As soon as we are done here,” Stephen
replied, with a steadiness he did not quite feel. “Get my sister and daughter
safe, yes, but we need some idea of where to search for Matthew before we go
rushing off. Anything, Isabella, any clue.”

“I must hurry.” Isabella inclined her head.
Her eyes still gleamed but she looked less haunted. “I have thought of
something else,” she said. “Richard’s family never told me anything but as I
served and cleared up after them I overheard a great deal.” Her voice caught. “
Soon after… soon, when Matthew and I were parted, Sir William spoke of a place
of devilry, an orchard where Satan had left his footprint.”

Amice crossed herself. Stephen leaned
closer.

“I think Sir William knew I was listening,”
Isabella went on, “for he jested that my son would not find the fruit there to
his liking.”

“Pig!” Amice muttered.

Stephen agreed but for him anger was
overwhelmed by exultation. “Well-remembered, Isabella, and more than enough for
a Kentish man like me,” he said, with a grim smile.

He watched her stop breathing and lean
forward, willing him to say more, her face bright, her eyes like living flames.
He was most happy to do so. “There is no need for me to send word to the
blacksmiths. I already know where your son is being held. Satan’s footprint is
an old story in Kent.”

“So where?” demanded Amice.

“The village of Newington, close to the old
Roman road.” Stephen rose to his feet. “I can have us there in less than a day.”
He grinned, some of the tension falling off his shoulders. “The farriers and
smiths will loan us good horses along the way, if need be, as part of that
fellowship of blacksmiths Amice mentioned.”

Isabella jumped to her feet and flew down
the stairs to him. “Thank you, how can I thank you?” she gabbled, hugging him
with surprising strength. “I am coming!” she shouted with such force that the
staircase rattled. 

“We are,” said Stephen and Amice together,
both of them caught as Isabella was, between laughter and tears.

****

Isabella did not see the countryside
passing as she rode out from London. Stephen insisted she ride behind him and
she was glad to do so. Amice, changed into a man’s tunic and hood, might pass
for a striking youth as she handled her spirited roan with the casual ease of a
knight, but Isabella was less certain of her abilities, especially now.

I am about to see Matthew.