Authors: Kathleen McGowan
Tags: #Romance, #Thrillers, #Suspense, #Fiction
Matilda also visited with her mother for several hours a day. She was widowed now for the second time, and on both occasions she had lost men she truly loved. Beatrice carried her grief with the same grace and dignity with which she had lived the rest of her life, but Matilda could see that it was taking a toll. A thick streak of silver shone through her once pristine black hair, and her legendary beauty was beginning to fade with age and strain.
“When the snow thaws, I am returning to Mantua,” Beatrice announced unexpectedly one evening at dinner.
Matilda was taken aback. Because Beatrice was from Lorraine, she had believed that her mother was happy to be here in her ancestral home.
Beatrice elaborated. “Tuscany became my home over our years there, Matilda. It is far more my home than Lorraine will ever be. But beyond that, I do not trust your husband as I trusted mine. He will be tied up with the affairs here in Lorraine, and I would return to our lands to see to their proper administration. It is for your protection as well as mine.”
“I wish I could go with you,” Matilda sighed.
Beatrice reached a hand out to pat her daughter’s arm. “One day, my dear, one day. Do not despair. You are young and you will see Tuscany again.”
And very unexpectedly, Matilda did something she rarely allowed herself the time to do. She cried. Putting her head in her hands, she wept: for her lost homeland, her dead fathers, her friends who were too far away, her repellent marriage, her spiritual responsibilities, and now for her departing mother. Beatrice, for her part, allowed Matilda to cry until she had exhausted herself, all the while stroking her hair in a rare display of maternal affection.
Pray in the manner in which I have instructed you, using the rose as the model for the Holy Spirit.
And working from the left to the right always, embrace the first petal of the holy rose, which is to say the petal of FAITH, and pray,
To Our Father Who is Benevolent and Reigns in Heaven,
Your names are hallowed and sacred.
Contemplate here your faith in the Lord your God and the grace of the Holy Spirit, while giving gratitude for the presence of both in your life and on earth.
Embrace the second petal, which is to say the petal of SURRENDER, and pray,
Your kingdom comes to us through obedience to your will.
Thy will be done.
Listen to the voice of your Father that you may hear his will and carry it out without fear or fail. Stay in this petal for as long as it takes you to submerge yourself and find the blessed release of surrender to his will rather than your own.
Embrace the third petal, which is to say the petal of SERVICE, and pray,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Here you will reaffirm your promise, to God and to yourself, if you are fully
anthropos
and have remembered it. If you have not yet reached the state of realization, you will confirm your commitment to create heaven on earth by acting in accordance with the Way of Love, by loving the Lord thy God above all else, and by loving your brothers and sisters on earth as yourself, for they are a part of yourself. You will pray then for enlightenment, that through gnosis you will remember the nature of your own eternal promise.
Embrace now the fourth petal, which is to say the petal of ABUNDANCE, and pray,
Give us this day our daily bread, the manna.
Give thanks to the Lord for all he has provided you and know that when you live in harmony with his will, and honor your promise to his service, you will know the bounty of abundance and never have a day of want. There is nothing that you need or desire that will not be provided you when you live in the flow of God’s grace, and when you have aligned yourself with God’s will.
Embrace the fifth petal, which is to say the petal of FORGIVENESS, and pray,
And forgive us for our errors and debts
As we forgive ourselves and all others.
Here you must list those who have harmed you, who have given ill witness against you, or who have otherwise caused you pain. And you must forgive them, while praying that they will one day be fully
anthropos
and realize their own connection to God and remember their own promise. You must ask that anyone you have offended forgive you in the same way, and most of all you must forgive yourself for all the actions and thoughts that have brought shame upon you in your human weaknesses. For while all forgiveness is the balm of our compassionate Mother, self-forgiveness is needed most of all.
Embrace the sixth petal, which is to say the petal of STRENGTH, and pray,
Keep me on the path of righteousness and
Deliver me from the temptations of evil.
For temptation is that which keeps us from becoming fully realized beings. It prevents us from keeping our promise to God and to ourselves and to each other and is found through the temptations of avarice, hubris, sloth, lust, wrath, gluttony, and envy most of all. Contemplate these sins and pray for your release from any that tempt you from the path of the
anthropos.
Pray in this manner that I have given you, and teach your brothers and sisters in spirit to do the same. It is through living this prayer that men and women will create heaven on earth. It is through this prayer that they will live as love expressed.
Love Conquers All.
For those with ears to hear, let them hear it.
T
HE PRAYER OF THE
S
IX
-P
ETALED
R
OSE,
FROM THE
B
OOK OF
L
OVE
,
AS PRESERVED IN THE
L
IBRO
R
OSSO
Palace of Verdun
spring 1071
M
ATILDA WAS PREGNANT.
She was certain of it. There had been two full cycles of the moon since she had last bled, and the way her stomach roiled in the morning made it impossible to eat even the plainest breads.
Here was a conundrum for her. If she admitted her pregnancy immediately, she could insist that the hunchback not touch her for fear of hurting the baby. This would be a most welcome reprieve from his grunting and rutting, which she detested like poison. Perhaps she could even insist on private quarters for the duration of her confinement. Unfortunately, her husband had been most highly aroused by her wanton performance on their wedding night, which she had not anticipated. His desire for her had become an instant obsession, an unholy addiction to his exotic wife and her unnatural body. He
now came looking for it on an all too regular basis, desperate and demanding.
The bedroom performances made Matilda ill, but she had still somehow managed to prevent the hunchback from kissing her. That he showed little interest in doing so, preoccupied as he was with the other pleasures of her femininity, was the only thing that kept her sanity intact after the sun went down.
On the other hand, if she told him she was with child, he would insist that she stop riding. This would mean that she could not continue to oversee the building of Orval, which was the one true joy of her life. To be deprived of it was more than she could take. She had placed the first foundation stone herself on the vernal equinox of 1070, almost exactly a year ago, and had been involved in every single decision that was made in the building. Further, the word had come from the Order that Patricio’s brother monks from Calabria who would copy the Libro Rosso were on their way north to her. While she could house them in the palace initially, as the work began in earnest on the translations, she would need to get them out of Verdun and away from the interrogations that were part of Godfrey’s everyday behavior. She did not want to lose her freedom to attend the building any sooner than was necessary.
As it happened, Matilda’s hand was forced on a night shortly after she ascertained her condition. The hunchback was out late, as he often was, given that their lands stretched over a broad expanse beyond Stenay. Normally, when he rode to the edge of their territory, he did not return to Verdun until the next day, much to her relief. Matilda had gone to bed on this particular night, exhausted from the daily running of the household, the building of the grandest abbey in Europe, and the new life growing in her body. Because the hour was so late, she was certain that her husband would be staying elsewhere this night.
She was wrong.
Matilda heard him before she saw him. And smelled him before he entered the chamber.
“Where is my woman?” He stumbled into their bedroom, reeking
of ale and something worse that Matilda could not quite identify until he got closer. Vomit. He was filthy and disgusting, as if he had been rolling about in one of the seedier alehouses for many hours. The hunchback periodically indulged his wretched unhappiness in such ways. For all his physical defects, he was a man and a healthy one, and prior to his marriage he had sought release regularly in the brothels and alehouses. Since wedding the red witch, he found that he needed to escape into the safe familiarity of straw-haired Germanic girls now more than ever, in hope of breaking the spell his wicked wife had cast over him. Compounding his torment was the fact that she hated him, that he disgusted her, and that he knew it.
Previously when Godfrey had sought relief in too much ale and time at the brothels, he had passed out long before he could reach his wife. Tonight she would not be so lucky. The bland milkmaids at the alehouse had simply been no match for Matilda in his fevered brain. Even with two of the more buxom girls in the back room at one time, he had not been able to blot out the vision of the firebrand who awaited him in his own bed. By the time he returned to the palace, he was a man possessed by both his lust and his inner demons.
“Come to your man and husband, you wanton bitch,” he slurred as he moved toward her, pulling roughly at his breeches.
Matilda was half asleep when he came into the room and was now trying to gather her bearings to deal with his unexpected arrival. Her normally quick reflexes were dulled by both sleeplessness and her condition. The unexpected speed with which he climbed upon her barely gave her time to turn her head as he attempted to bring his stinking mouth down upon the softness of her full lips. He caught only her cheek with a grunt, and his teeth left an imprint on her face as he did so. She desperately tried to distract him with her skilled hands, but tonight this normally effective strategy was not going to work.
Godfrey slapped her hard with the back of his hand. “Turn your head to me, woman.”
He didn’t wait for her to comply. Instead, he grabbed fistfuls of her hair in both hands and forced her lips against his. She struggled to keep
her teeth together, but the hunchback overpowered her painfully and forced his slithery, probing tongue into her mouth. Desperate to get out from under him, Matilda used a battle technique that she had been taught by Conn, pushing her knee deep into his chest and rolling over in one quick, painful motion.
The hunchback fell to the floor with a thud and a grunt. He was momentarily still as he waited for his breath to come back. Then he began to rise slowly, menacingly. His hands were clenched in fists as he approached her.
“I will have my rights as a husband from you, when I want and how I want. Your precious legal document does not excuse you from that.”
Matilda blurted out as quickly as she could, before he took another sloppy step, “Godfrey, stop. I am with child.”
He blinked at her, as if he had not heard her clearly, which was likely in his severely intoxicated state. He slurred at her.
“What you say?”
“I said, I am carrying your child. And the midwife says that given my fine bones, if you touch me, I will be at great risk to lose the baby.”
She lied, of course, but he was too ignorant to know such things, even when he was sober.
He took another deliberate step in her direction, reaching out with surprising agility to grab a handful of her hair and using it to yank her toward him. “Why should I believe a lying witch like you?” His lust and his drunkenness were a dangerous and unreasonable combination. And the hunchback was a big man. She had to make him understand. Fast.
“Because you have waited all these years for an heir, and if you touch me, you risk any chance you will ever have of gaining one.”
He loosened his grip but did not release her. Matilda was exasperated now. She snapped the next sentence with more than a little of her warrior attitude returning.
“There are any number of serving wenches in this house who will be happy to relieve you for the price of a trinket. Must you en
danger our child—the future duke of Lorraine—with your drunken lust?”
It worked. Intoxicated as he was, with ale and with her, Matilda was still able to reach some part of his brain that contained his ultimate ambition. The hunchback mumbled something about discussing this with her on the morrow, and he stumbled out of their bedroom without looking back.
Matilda felt pity, and more than a little guilt, for the poor servant girl who would be required to entertain her lord duke in his inflamed state this night. Later, she would find out from the other servants which of them had suffered the indignity and double the girl’s pay. It was the least she could do.
But secretly, she was infinitely relieved that the hunchback’s masculine pleasure would not be her duty for the next seven months, at the very least.
Matilda was a prisoner in the palace. Just as she feared, Godfrey had provided her with a list of what she was and was not allowed to do. Riding was at the top of the list of forbidden activities. She was under constant surveillance by one or another of the hunchback’s employees: priests, doctors, midwives, all who interviewed her constantly and left her no peace whatsoever. Even the cook monitored every morsel she placed into her mouth and surreptitiously stationed servants in the room while she was dining to be sure she ate what was laid out for her.