Masques of Gold (30 page)

“You are in already,” Lissa pointed out, wrestling him upright with some effort. “And you are bringing in the horse too.” She pushed him back against the frame of the door. “Stand there. Can you stand there?”

Hoping for the best, she ran to the workroom door, flung it open, and shouted for Paul to take the horse to the stable. She then wrested the reins from Justin, tied them to the metal U that held the bar, perforce leaving the door open, and led Justin toward the stair. The horse's nose quivered and it advanced into the shop, drawn by the herbal odors. It was just lipping up a bunch of something when Paul came running.

Justin sat down on the stair. “This is not a sensible arrangement,” he said thickly. “I should not be here, but I knew you would wait all night if I did not come. It was those accursed ship captains—”

Lissa could not help laughing. “I know all about ship captains, but you could have sent me a message. I understand that business must come first. I would not have been angry.”

He hung his head. “It was not business,” he muttered. “They insisted I celebrate their successful voyage with them, as FitzWalter does. I know I should have sent a message, but I hoped I could get free of them. I wanted…I wanted you.”

Lissa was resigned to the fact that men would drink too much, but she had still been shocked and annoyed when she first realized that Justin was drunk. The fact that he was so apologetic and showed no tendency to violence reassured her—the only time her father had more courage than a rabbit and became dangerous was when he was drunk. Amusement had soon become her predominant feeling, and when he hung his head like a scolded child, she could not resist the mixture of guilt and desire he displayed.

“Can you get up the stairs without falling, or do you want to wait for Paul to help you?” she asked, pushing back his hood and then his tumbled hair. “You are too heavy for me.”

“I should go home.”

“I doubt you would get there.”

“The horse knows the way—I think.”

Lissa shook her head and gave him a quick hug. “Let us not make the experiment. I value you too much to take the chance that you would freeze, and I do not wish to send Paul out with you. Come up and sleep for an hour or two.”

Justin was in no laughing mood when Lissa wakened him before full dawn the next morning, yet he managed to summon up a twisted smile at the haste with which she offered him the pot. He promised he would not vomit on the lovely carpet by her bed, and though he first resisted the cup she held out to him in her other hand, he drank when she insisted. By the time she had re-tied his cross garters and pulled on his boots, he had used the pot for its usual purpose and said, in a much more cheerful voice, that there were hidden benefits he had not considered to marrying an apothecary's daughter.

“There are,” Lissa agreed, and bade him sit while she wrapped a cloth around his head. “You can take this off on the way home. But for now, you are an early client who has broken his head. Paul has your horse at the door.”

“That means you will not let me to take you to mass.”

Lissa shook her head. “It is too dangerous. My neighbors know by now that I have come home, and I will be expected at Saint Anthony's. I am well known there. To come escorted by a strange man so soon after my widowing would give rise to too much talk. Go home and finish your sleep.”

He looked at her anxiously. “But it is Sunday. Can we not be together?”

The look was more troubled than the subject merited. Justin had surely filled many Sundays before he met her—but so had she, and suddenly the day stretched before her, endlessly empty. She smiled, took the hand he had reached toward her, and held it to her breast.

“I am half dead for sleep, beloved,” she said, grinning. “My nights with you are not peaceful ones—not that I would have it any other way. We will both be better for a little rest, but I could meet you after dinner.” She hesitated, not sure where to set their meeting, going on half to herself, “I am in no mood for bearbaiting or cockfighting…” Then she nodded. “I know. I will meet you by Aldgate—Paul can bring me there—and we can go to the marsh. We can look at the fools gliding about on the ice, or perhaps be fools too and join them.”

“If you intend that, I think I will not take off my bandage,” Justin said, lifting the hand that held his and kissing it. “I will surely need it before we are done.”

Justin's broad smile and shining eyes were again too strong a reaction, and it suddenly occurred to Lissa that he had thought she was still angry about his drunkenness and was punishing him by withdrawing herself. She almost told him she would never do such a thing, but before she could speak, Justin had pointed out that on her way to Aldgate she would pass right by his house. He began to enlarge on her plan, suggesting that if she was willing, he would invite Thomas to accompany them to the marsh; then on the way back, they could take an evening meal together, all three, at his house. They would also leave his house together; then Thomas would go his way, and he would escort her home after dark. By the time he asked if she would allow him to come in with her and she had laughed in his face and admitted she would drag him in by force if he seemed unwilling, she had also reconsidered reassuring him about her reaction to drunkenness. Justin's own habit of silence with regard to future behavior was far wiser.

The subject did not arise again, but the incident and its resolution marked a new measure of confidence in the relationship. From the first they had been so comfortable together that it was a shock to be reminded, as both had been because Lissa had never seen Justin drank before, how short a time they had really known each other. But the shock had been absorbed and passed, and one more surety had been added to the basis of their affection. Justin in particular needed reasons to love. He had responded to Lissa immediately with such eagerness that he still could not help looking for flaws in her that would free him—and rejoicing like a soul liberated from hell when no flaw could be found.

Another hurdle was passed at the end of the next week when the onset of Lissa's flux made coupling impossible for five nights. The staining of her shift that Lissa noticed when she was about to dress in the morning brought both relief and apprehension, relief because she did not want to be carrying Peter's child—or even Justin's at the present time—and a slight anxiety about how Justin would receive the news. That was wasted. He wrinkled his nose in disappointment; he voiced indignant protests at the vagaries of women who deliberately withdrew from their natural duties for a week of every month, just to frustrate their male partners; he complained of his deprivation—and drew her down on his lap and kissed her soundly and laughed at her, mentioning in no less serious a tone that it was just as well he was to have a few days' reprieve or Cockrobin's head would be worn away by overuse.

More important to Lissa, he never sent an excuse and failed to come that week, and to her surprise he also insisted on sharing her bed each night, confessing that the comfort he derived from simply embracing and being embraced was as important as or more important to him than coupling. She found that hard to believe when he said it, but later she knew that her agreement that they rest together was one of the most important decisions she had ever made. Justin told her things in the warm dark that she did not think he could ever have said in the solar. Most were little nothings, of note only because they troubled him or had a place in his heart, but she needed all her iron will to keep from weeping when she heard the echo of his loneliness, untouched by the love and company of his cousins. She lay silent, holding him warm in her arms, knowing any word no matter how soft or kind from her would silence him. And she could not weep anyway because of the joy she felt at being acknowledged the cure of his hurt.

Lissa was relieved when the end of her flux permitted Justin's enthusiastic, indeed almost violent, resumption of lovemaking to replace pillow talk in bed. His revelations called for similar confessions from her, and she had had to bite her tongue to keep from telling him her fears about her father. Instead she had told him some things about her past, but she was much afraid that if the murmurs in the dark continued long, he would become suspicious of her reluctance wholly to open her soul to him.

That first coupling was too quick and wild a release for anything but a gross physical response, but in the second Lissa finished first and, seized by a demon of mischief, teased Justin to a pitch of excitement he had not previously reached. As she looked down at him while he was catching his breath—she having ridden him to extinction and being still perched astride his thighs—the contrast between quiet talk and active bodies struck Lissa anew. She marveled aloud that she did not feel Justin's eagerness to couple cast any doubt on his assertion that he was happy to lie abed with her even when they could not make love. Justin opened his eyes to stare at her unbelievingly for a moment, then shut them again.

Lissa recognized the unspoken protest against conversation, but she was caught up in her idea. “But Justin,” she mused as she let herself down to lie atop him, “do you not feel that the physical pleasure we take in each other is worth more now when it is not the only tie that binds us?” She wriggled absently to settle herself more comfortably into the curves and hollows of her lover's body. “It is an interesting case,” Lissa went on, “of a part being greater than the whole, so that must be possible in the spiritual if not in the real world.”

Normally Justin found the kind of discussion Lissa had proposed fascinating, but at the moment the only sound he uttered was a groan, followed after another intake of breath by a threat to roll over so that she would fall out of bed if she planned to keep him awake with philosophy at such a time. Lissa laughed then and kissed his ear, promising to offend it no more.

She certainly meant to keep that promise. Lissa had frightened herself with her talk of what love meant, and she intended to think and speak no more about so dangerous a topic. She now knew that what she had felt for Justin in the beginning was nothing to what she presently felt, and as the bond between them grew more and more stable, so, if they had to part, would the agony of separation increase. The subject was better out of mind if she intended to keep her sanity while she expected any day—or never—to hear from her father.

I will have to remain barren too, Lissa thought. She wanted very much to bear Justin's child, but a child would only be another weapon for her father. There were receipts in her book for keeping a woman barren and for clearing her womb if it became full by error. Some of the formulae had been told to her by her mother, others by birthing women, by herb women, and by others less savory to whom she sold scents and lotions. She had been very foolish until now, and sorry as she was for it, she would take care not to conceive.

Another week passed; Justin arrived every evening as soon as it was dark, and except that they did not dine together, they lived as a married pair, sharing their daily experience. In the first week in March Justin's business kept him out of London for several days, but the absence did not disturb their easy bond, and when he came into Lissa's solar, it was as if he had never been away, except perhaps that they were a little gladder to see each other. Even then their talk probed no great depths, for which Lissa was grateful. She was in daily terror that Justin would ask why FitzWalter's business was taking her father so long, and the thought of other questions he might ask in the quiet hours in the dark during her next flux brought cold sweat out on her body.

Fortuitous circumstances saved her. A day before she needed to say she could not receive him, there was news from the king's justiciar, Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester, regarding the king. It was all very favorable. Despite the winter voyage there had been few losses; the vassals from Aquitaine were obeying the king's summons to swear their fealty and bring with them the forces they owed by oath; a few very minor actions mounted against barons who were more outlaws than landlords had been successful—and then, of course, came the sting in the scorpion's tail: Money was disappearing at a rate far higher than expected. A scutage was owed by those who had not gone with the king, and Peter des Roches was ordered to levy the tax.

The scutage was not a surprise; it was one of the ordinary ways for a king to replenish his treasury in time of war, but the news that John was in need of money so soon was most unwelcome. It was certain, Justin told Lissa, the barons would find endless excuses not to pay, and there was nothing at all the justiciar could do about their delinquency; nor would Peter des Roches, who was clever, try to force them, so why did he send the news now? Lissa would not ordinarily have been terribly interested in the question or the answer because London, having sent a force to which her father, like all other guild members, had contributed, was not liable for scutage and she did not see how Winchester's news could affect her. The next night when her bleeding had begun, however, she raised the question herself, most grateful for any subject that would occupy Justin's mind and keep him away from personal topics.

He was clearly pleased with her interest, praising her for having a mind alive to matters outside her own narrow sphere. The praise came somewhat closer to the truth after her interest was truly aroused by learning that Justin, although not a tenant in chief, might himself have to pay the scutage. But Justin was less interested in the personal cost than in the public effect. He believed the scutage had been levied early so that the barons could become accustomed to what would be demanded of them, make their complaints to the justiciar, and be soothed. That would avoid conflict when the king either returned or ordered William Marshal to collect the scutage by force. Aside from saying she thought it a clever move, Lissa could think of no way to extend the discussion, but should have saved her effort because the question of payment of the scutage brought up the whole relationship of the baronage to the king.

The subject was well to the fore in Justin's mind because the mayor was not the only one who had received news. William de Mandeville, Robert FitzWalter's deputy, had summoned Justin to receive a special message of thanks from his father-by-marriage for the profitable dispatch of his business. One of the ship's captains had carried supplies to La Rochelle. He had given FitzWalter Hamo's accounting and also told FitzWalter of his personal satisfaction with Justin's dealings.

“That was very kind of Mandeville,” Lissa commented neutrally when Justin related the matter to her, as they lay abed in the dark.

“So you are as ungrateful as I.” Justin sounded amused. “Now, the message might or might not be real, but Mandeville certainly delivered it in person only as an excuse to talk. Does that stink as high to you as it did to me?”

“I would not say it stank of bad fish,” Lissa said, “unless he had something very particular to say to you.”

Justin laughed. “He did indeed. First Mandeville told me that FitzWalter made much less of the king's successes than Peter des Roches did, and FitzWalter also warned Mandeville not to expect any easy victory over the French because the Poitevin barons were not to be trusted. They would follow the king into such actions as corrected outlawry and injustices in their own lands, but would not fight against King Philip.”

“Is that not possible?” Lissa asked.

“More than possible. It is likely. They and others have done it before, when Normandy was lost, for example. I cannot condone such behavior. An oath is an oath and cannot be set aside for profit or convenience. But I do see that there is a problem: King John will go home with his troops after the war, leaving those barons cheek-by-jowl with King Philip. Moreover, Philip is old. If he dies, his son Louis might easily find a way to violate any treaty his father made as a result of defeat.”

“And FitzWalter encourages the Poitevins' fears, I suppose,” Lissa said. “I can see why you told me it might not need open treachery to harm the king.”

“True, but that is not the point. What Mandeville came to in the end was that he would pay no scutage to a defeated king. I mind me”—Justin's voice grew sour—“that he said nothing of how he would serve a victorious king.” Lissa felt him shrug, dismissing that problem before he went on, “He raised the old argument—the same the barons used when they refused to follow John to France last year—that their oaths do not require them to fight in foreign wars, only to support the king here in England where their own lands lie. This is not new, so why make a special meeting to tell me now, and why tell
me
.”