Authors: Jennifer Blake
He was ready for an end to it himself, David thought, and he had been a child when it began. How much more ready must Henry be for peace?
If he survived this Yorkist revolt, if Henry prevailed and kept his word to allow Marguerite to remain unwed, then he would escort her to one of the properties left to her by her father. There, if she would but allow it, he would become her husband in name only. Failing that, he would be her seneschal and captain of her guard. He
would watch over her for the rest of her days. And if by chance she should decide of her own will to take another man as husband, then he would leave her, returning to France. He would leave her because he could not bear to watch her with another man, could not endure seeing her bear another man’s children.
He would go back to the tournaments and wars where he had won his fame. What happened afterward would not matter at all.
“When do you go?”
Marguerite’s question ran so closely with his thoughts that it was an instant before he realized she was asking when he would leave the keep again. He glanced at her, wondering why she wanted to know even as he noted, with tightness in his chest, the shadows caused by pain and worry that lay under her eyes.
“In the morning,” he answered.
“So soon? Can you not wait a few more days?”
“I should have been away already. They say Warbeck is making ready to march, in part from fear of losing his followers.” The gentle touch of her fingers upon him made the blood boil through his vein, afflicting him with greater hardness than the roomful of naked dancing girls he had once seen in Italy. The pleasure of it was so great it must surely be sinful.
“Losing them to you, you mean.”
“So I’m told.”
Her smile was a mere tug at one corner of her lips. “It must be gratifying that they are willing to risk it.”
“It might be, if it wasn’t so useless.” He caught her fingers that she was threading through his hair, making his scalp prickle down the back of his neck and all the
way to his spine. With her hand captured in his, he went on. “I would remain if not certain your fever is gone and your wounds beginning to heal.”
“I know you would,” she murmured. “And when do you return?”
He twitched a shoulder. “Who can say? It depends on how many men come to my standard and what news they bring of others who may join me.”
“They will be disappointed, all those men, when you resign your claim to the throne. I hope Henry won’t be too hard on them for breaking away to follow you.”
He smiled a little because it was so like her to think of the fate of others when this was over. “He will have enough to worry about, dealing with those who ride with Warbeck.”
“Let us hope so,” she said on a grimace for the inevitable bloodshed that must accompany a victory.
Female softness was the perfect antidote for thoughts of death. The need to gather her into his arms, to press her against him from neck to his knees, clawed at him. He yearned to bury himself in her, felt with certainty beyond all reason that her touch would take away the grimness of what he was about, just as his might make her well and unscarred by her ordeal. To lie beside her in that narrow bed, naked skin to naked skin, seemed an earthly paradise that he would give his soul to know.
Such sweet damnation. All he had to do for it was to forsake the vow he had made.
That was all.
“Speaking of riding,” he said, the words strangled in his throat as he released her and got to his feet, “I had best go and see that all is in readiness.”
“Yes, I suppose so.” Her gaze was dark brown and deep as she stared up at him, searching his face. “You won’t forget to come and say goodbye?”
“No. No, I won’t do that.”
It was the last thing he would do, in fact. His leave-takings were his most perfect excuse for holding her, kissing her. For that, he would never fail to seek her out. No, not even if it killed him.
Treading down the stairs and into the great hall, David searched the gathered men for Oliver. He saw him playing at dice with a handful of others. A small jerk of his head brought his squire to him.
“You’ve a frown on you like an abbess with only one nun to order about,” Oliver said as he strolled within hearing distance. “Is something amiss?”
“The very thing I would ask you. Has Astrid said anything of what might be troubling Marguerite?”
“Other than a double-punctured arm and nearly getting you killed? Naught at all.”
“She came nowhere near getting me killed. That was my own stupidity.”
Oliver held up his hands. “You said it, not I.”
David ignored that sally. “Astrid’s mentioned nothing of what her mistress might intend when she is well again?”
“Shall I ask her? Is that what you want?”
“If you can do it without making too much of it,” he said in agreement. “And without delay, either, as I’d know the answer before morning.”
“Before we leave,” Oliver clarified.
David nodded, but then put out a hand to touch his arm as he turned away. “Wait. I think…”
Oliver paused in midstep, one brow arched in interrogation.
“You will remain here in the morning. Whatever you do, don’t let Marguerite beyond the gate without you, don’t let her out of your sight, don’t let anyone near her.”
Oliver’s eyes narrowed. “You think she is in danger, or is it…”
“I don’t know. But I cannot do what I must if I have to worry she is being insulted for my sake or that something may happen to her, with her, while I’m away.”
“No. I see that.”
“Explain it to her. Make her understand that she is to remain near the keep.”
“Be easy. I’ll look after her.”
David looked at him through narrowed eyelids. “From a distance.”
Oliver chuckled, the skin around his eyes crinkling with his amusement. “Oh, that was understood.”
“Good,” David said under his breath, though worry clung like a burr caught on the back of his mind. “Good.”
M
arguerite wrote the first of the messages on the day after David left. It was not the easiest of tasks. To hold the parchment steady required pressure from her left hand that caused her upper arm to throb. She could only manage a few lines before she was forced to stop. Resuming again in the afternoon, she finally completed it. The effort actually seemed to ease some of the soreness from the injury, which was encouraging. She might soon regain use of the arm.
Sanding the missive and pouring the fine grains back into their box, she looked toward Oliver who sat in the window embrasure, picking a tune from a lute. Calling him to her where she sat at the narrow table she had ordered brought into the solar for her correspondence, she explained what she wanted done.
“My most abject apologies, milady,” he said gravely as he stared down at the lute in his hands as if he’d never seen it before, “but I am to abide near you. Sir David’s orders.”
She was taken aback. “But why?” As another thought struck her, she frowned. “You aren’t a prisoner?”
“Not yet, milady, but I could be if I fail him.”
“Fail him in what?” she asked in dawning suspicion.
“Looking after you, milady. I am charged with your safety, warned not to let you out of my sight.”
“So it is I who am the prisoner.”
“Nay, milady, nay!” he said in alarm. “Nothing was said of preventing you from going, though you can’t be allowed to go alone.”
“You are my guard.”
“In part, as I have been since you were taken on the road. Nothing has really changed.”
She turned over that information in her mind. It seemed straightforward enough. “Let us see if I have this correctly. If I were to go to London, to West minster, you would be obliged to go with me.”
Oliver looked pained. “Milady…”
“Answer, jackanapes,” Astrid said, looking up from where she sat mending the torn corner of Marguerite’s linen veil in the light from the window.
“But it isn’t safe!” The beleaguered look he cast toward the small serving woman made it difficult to say whether he spoke to her or to Marguerite.
“Not safe to answer?”
“Not safe to go,” he said with exasperation as he turned back again. “I am to keep you safe at all costs.”
“I am shut up in a keep with a goodly number of men-at-arms around me, am I not?”
“Half the number David brought with him,” he agreed with a decided nod.
“How much more safe could I be?”
“It matters not. I must stay with you.”
“Because David said so, I see.” She drummed her fingers on the tabletop. “Very well. I need a trust worthy
man to deliver this message. Yes, and two additional men-at-arms to ride with him in case of trouble. You will see to it?”
“Three? It requires three men to do the task I was to undertake alone.” His outrage was comical, mainly because it was tempered with such obvious relief.
“Are you not flattered?” Oliver could have been trusted with the task, Marguerite thought. For the others, it was to be hoped each of the three would keep the others mindful of the swift completion of their assignment.
“Exceedingly.” He drew a breath that swelled his chest. “And I believe I know just which ones to send, milady.”
“I was sure you would. Mind you, they are to wait for a reply and ride straight back here with it.”
“
Bene,
so it will be done.”
“See that it is, or next time I’ll send Astrid.”
The Italian sent a sly glance toward where her serving woman watched them, her sewing in her lap. “Could you not send her now, with or without extra men-at-arms?”
Marguerite laughed, she couldn’t help it. “She can’t be spared. I require her help to dress with this stiff arm.” She lifted it in a brief gesture. “Besides, you know you would miss her as you would your morning ale if she was not here.”
“One grows used to doing without,” he said stoutly, his gaze going to the window seat once more.
“Scoundrel,” Astrid said without heat as she tied a knot and then bit off the thread with a click of sharp teeth. “You know you love me.”
“No such thing!” Oliver protested.
“Ha! You do, you love me. You want my body. You want to see how I am made under my skirts.”
He turned to Marguerite with beseeching eyes. “Milady, only listen to her.”
“You did start it, you know,” she said without compunction. Pushing back her stool, she got to her feet and went away, leaving them to it.
The reply she sought took the best part of two weeks to be returned, and then was negative. The Mother Superior of the convent near Westminster, from which David had been apprenticed to a tanner of skins before his rescue at Braesford’s hands, regretted that she could not be helpful. She had no personal knowledge of a blond-haired, blue-eyed baby born at the nunnery more than a score years before then branded on the shoulder, though she did agree the incident should have been memorable. However, she had held her post a mere five years, taking it after the former abbess died of the sweating sickness. In pursuit of the information sought, she had spoken to several elderly nuns who were in residence at that early period. They well remembered a young man named David who had carried a brand such as Lady Marguerite described, but said he came to them as a boy rather than a baby. By some peculiar oversight, no record could be found of his arrival, leaving the Mother Superior unable to say precisely when he came to St. Theresa’s. The woman regretted she was unable to be of greater aid.
Marguerite was disappointed but not discouraged. She had suspected this would be no easy task. At her desk once more, she wrote four new missives and sent
them forth to the convents within a reasonable day’s travel of the London nunnery.
Another two weeks and some few days dragged past before the trio of messengers, men from Bruges, who had been with David and Oliver for years, returned at last. They were dusty, sweaty, exhausted and riding different horses from those they had set out upon. Marguerite barely allowed their spokesman time to down a glass of ale before sending for him.
“Have you an answer for me?” she demanded the instant he appeared.
“Aye, milady, four of them.” He fumbled at the pouch that hung from his belt, but brought out only one rather grubby sheet with a wax seal crumbling at its folded edge.
“What is this?” Marguerite said as she accepted the message from his hand. Oliver, standing at her side, stepped forward as the messenger gave her a dogged look.
“The crones at the first three convents gave us to understand they have better things to do than keep track of every nameless babe left on their doorsteps. The fourth said the same. As we were on the point of leaving there, an old nun with a cast in one eye ran after us. She said word was flying from one convent to another of someone asking for information about a certain baby born many years ago.”
Marguerite had not anticipated this development. She should have, of course. Anything as unusual as pointed questions about a former foundling was bound to stir up curiosity. Though the life passed behind convent walls
was quiet and restricted, there was near constant communication between the different domiciles of an order.
She only hoped the interest she had caused remained within the narrow religious community. She did not like to think of what might happen if it was spread abroad.
“Had this woman anything to tell you?” she inquired.
Dust flew from the messenger’s hair as he shook his head. “Said nothing more than that, only shoved the letter at me and ran off as if the devil’s imps were on her heels.”
Marguerite’s fingers were less than steady as she broke the seal and unfolded what appeared to be a piece of wrinkled parchment torn from a religious manuscript. The writing upon it was in some vegetable ink so pale it was nearly invisible. That was until she stepped to the window and held the sheet to the light.
The words were badly formed and the spelling inventive, but the sense of it was clear enough. An elderly nun, one Sister Beatrice, who had befriended the writer when she was but a novice, told a strange tale of a baby which might be the one sought. Sister Beatrice might speak more freely now, as the matter had long weighed upon her conscience. Anyone who would hear her must come without delay, for the good sister was full of years and soon to leave this world.
Marguerite dismissed the messenger with ample reward for him and the men who had ridden with him. When he was gone, she stood tapping the parchment against her thumb. There was little to consider, however, when all was said and done. She must go. Her arm was almost healed after near a month of rest. It sometimes ached at night, but she thought she could handle the
reins. The keep could spare a contingent of men-at-arms to accompany her.
Oliver would go with her, of course, and Astrid, as neither would countenance being left behind. They could be away by daylight on the morrow.
David would not like it.
No, but David wasn’t here. If he had been, if he were not about the king’s business, then the journey would not be necessary.
“Oliver,” she said, turning to the Italian with purpose in her eyes.
“Nay, milady. I know you long to speak with this nun of the message, but it can’t be done.”
“Not to her, but to another who may know more.” She related the contents of the missive in a few succinct phrases.
“’Tis too dangerous to go, milady. Half the countryside is up in arms over this business of the pretender, and you’ve no notion who you may meet on the roads. It’s as much as my life is worth if I allow you to venture beyond the keep’s walls. David will kill me, I promise you.”
“Allow?” she asked, at her most aristocratic.
“Your pardon, milady, but…”
“You cannot stop me. I am my own woman, now, with no father, brother, husband or any other man over me.” How good it felt to speak those words aloud. It was as if a great weight had been lifted from her, the weight of a lifetime of expectation, prohibition and bowing to the dictates of others. No matter what happened after this, she would never again resign herself to any man’s will.
“But, Lady Marguerite, only consider my position,” Oliver moaned.
Astrid came to stand beside Marguerite. She looked up into her face, her eyes bright with understanding. With a glance for Oliver, she spoke up in her piping voice. “Lady Marguerite may feel for your position, you addlepated dunce, but has a purpose more important. She would be about business of her own that has naught to do with the affairs of men.”
“The king will not be pleased.”
“We aren’t that pleased with him, if it comes to that,” Astrid countered with a toss of her head. “What has he done except use us for his own ends? Bustle about now and make ready, or my mistress and I will go without you.”
Oliver cajoled, threatened and pulled his curly hair, but it was for naught. The end was never in doubt.
They left at daybreak on their grueling journey. Set at the pace kept by men-at-arms, it was no royal amble through the countryside, but a race that took them in fast stages from the Yorkist area in northwest England to the south and east of London. Their way was paved by plentiful coin and myriad curses. Fresh horses, cold food and rough beds upon fireside settles were their lot. By the end of the third day, Marguerite was forced to support her arm in a sling. Still every hoof beat that struck the ground over the next two sent a lance of pain from her fingertips to her spine. She was almost ready to admit the endeavor was beyond her strength when they came finally to the convent that held Sister Beatrice.
It was a sleepy enclave where sheep grazed, cattle
lowed and the walls, built for defense against Norsemen in centuries past, enclosed a huddle of buildings of no particular comfort or beauty. They consisted of a Norman church rising four-square and solid at one end, a quadrangle of long dormitories edged by a cloister that enclosed an herb garden, and a collection of outbuildings that had been added over the centuries for purely practical purposes. Its location at the edge of a marsh provided reeds for thatching the humped roofs, and a thousand other plants to keep the body alive and in working order.
The Mother Superior was a most practical lady. On hearing that they wished to speak to a certain elderly nun, she arranged it with dispatch and little curiosity. This may have been the result of Marguerite’s announcement that they were upon the king’s business, but could just as easily have been because the woman was too busy to care about deathbed reminiscences.
Marguerite, with Oliver and Astrid close behind her, was shown into a four-square cell. It was more airy than most, but boasted few comforts beyond a prie-dieu in the corner and a window that overlooked the garden where herbs in flower murmured with bees. Sun-warmed, sweet and pungent, their scents drifted into the room where the elderly woman they sought lay dying. That this was her fate seemed certain from the inescapable odors of old age and disease, which lingered beneath the herbal freshness.
The woman on the bed ran her rosary through gnarled fingers as if in constant prayer. She had a sweet face with thin, fragile skin that was unlined except for grooves of pain on either side of her mouth. Her eyes,
sunk deep in their sockets, were clouded with age. Flustered and fearful at first, she grew calmer as she learned the purpose of their visit.
“All praise to our dear Lord that you have come,” she said in a voice so soft it was barely a whisper. “The pain in my side grows wearisome, and will soon take me away. Now you are come, I may seek my rest, knowing justice may be done.”
“Justice?” Marguerite inquired, stepping closer to the bed while Oliver and Astrid moved forward on either side of her.
“I’ve waited long, so long I had given up hope. So many deaths, so many, and for nothing. I have prayed without ceasing…”
“Justice for what?” Fear that the woman was wandering in her head, that she could tell them nothing because she knew not what she was saying, was like a live coal inside Marguerite’s chest.
“For whom, you mean to say. For poor Lady Eleanor, who did not deserve such use, such betrayal. Father Joseph said the sin of fornication was upon her, that this is why she was brought to bed of a child here. I made so bold as to ask how that could be, when she had her marriage lines that said the union enjoyed the blessing of the church. Yes, and when the man who brought her to childbed was a king such as no woman dared refuse.”