The Longing (9 page)

The knight nodded. “As told, Lady Susanna’s circumstances have been most desperate.”

“When I knew the lady, her circumstances and prospects were desirable.”

“How long has that been?”

“Eleven years.”

“Ah.” Sir Elias’s eyes went up to the side. “‘Twould be about the time her brother wed Lady Judith, a woman I am told was most beautiful.”

Once again, they were back to a place Everard did not wish to be. And, doubtless, this knight also suspected him of having fathered Judas.

“What has desperation done to Lady Susanna?” Everard clipped.

The man pressed the back of a hand to his cut lip, drew a sharp breath, and grimaced. “Though I am tempted to speak false, Lord Wulfrith—and with good cause, hmm?—I will tell you that I was promised far more than a kiss to deliver Lady Susanna and her nephew to Wulfen.”

Everard felt all of his being go still as his mind reached back to the unanswered question of those
other things
the knight had said the lady did for Judas’s sake, then farther back to her desperate plea—that she would do anything he asked of her. He had not wanted to believe it was as it had sounded, but it fit. She was in the habit of bargaining with her body and this knight—

Feeling his knuckles again, Everard moved toward Sir Elias who quickly descended a step and thrust a hand forward as if that might ward off another beating. “I did not intend to collect on it,” he said. “This I vow.”

A burst of laughter brought Everard back to himself, and he silently thanked Sir Rowan whose tale had prevented him from behavior most unbecoming—at least, in this setting.

He drew a deep breath. “What
did
you intend to collect, Sir Elias?”

The knight slowly lowered his hand.

“You said it was as much in your best interest as the lady’s to speak of such things,” Everard pressed. “If not greater intimacy with the lady, what, Sir Elias? What is in this for you?”

The man sniffed up a thin line of blood. “Once Judas is acknowledged as de Balliol’s heir—and you seem of no mind to claim him as your own son—I am to be elevated to the head of household knights.
That
I very much want, Lord Wulfrith.”

There—the measure of the man. And yet, Everard could not say his motivation was entirely dishonorable. He inclined his head. “Then make ready to depart Wulfen on the morrow ere first light. I wish you—and Lady Susanna—Godspeed on the journey ahead.” He stepped past him and began the descent of the final steps to the hall.

“After all I have told,” Sir Elias said, “still you will not aid her?”

Everard looked over his shoulder. “I am mostly inclined to believe you speak true—that ’tis not merely a ploy to gain my cooperation—but it changes naught. My duty is to Wulfen and the young men I am charged with growing into knights, and here I shall remain. Good eve, Sir Elias.”

He turned forward and, as he struck out across the hall, called, “Seek your beds!”

As expected, the young men stood and hastened toward the piles of pallets upon which they would gain their night’s sleep—excepting Judas de Balliol who moved stealthily along the walls toward the stairs and over whom Everard grudgingly acknowledged regret. If the boy was not already ruined by the desperately debased Susanna de Balliol, he soon would be.

He thinks me a wanton, a trollop, a harlot. And I do not care.

That last was a lie, and one should never lie to one’s self. Susanna did not
want
to care, for there was no way to take back the words with which she had offered herself to him even more easily than she had agreed to what she had believed Sir Elias required of her. Such a fool she was, for only minutes earlier Everard Wulfrith had forcefully declared he had not come for what Sir Elias had.

Not that. Never that. She was not and never would be a Judith. Did not and never would possess power capable of bending a man to her will. Could not and should not have hoped there.

“Oh, Judas,” she whispered, “forgive me for not being more worthy to gain the Lord’s blessings for you.” The breath of a sob, but one of many over the hours she had knelt amid the rushes, fleetingly warmed her knees through the material of her skirt. That bit of heat in a chamber grown cool was so welcome that she let another sob escape. But that was all, for having long ago spent her tears upon God, she had finally lost the strength to hold her body together while it strove to shake itself apart. She was done with such expressions of misery. It was time to do something.

But what? There was nothing to be done that she had not already attempted. With dawn’s approach, they would be put out of Wulfen Castle. In air colder than that which now clamped itself around her shoulders and clung to her back, they would ride to…

“I do not know,” she whispered, though it would have to be wherever Queen Eleanor could be found. London? Southampton? Dorset? What if when they found her, she would not grant an audience? What if she had already recognized Lady Blanche’s son as heir?

She groaned, a sound so pitiful she thought she might retch.

What good has wallowing ever done, Susanna? Do something!

“Naught to be done,” she muttered.

Arise!

Slowly, she uncurled her hunched back that had stiffened so deeply that the sound of her unfolding did not require silence in which to be heard. And the ache… Not only in her muscles and joints but crowding her head and stabbing at the backs of her eyes.

Tightening her throat against a whimper, she settled back on her heels and peered at the darkened chamber through thinly narrowed lids.

Arise! Now!

She edged around to the left, reached to the bed, and pressed nearly numb hands to the mattress. It was pathetic how difficult it was to raise herself to standing—as if she were four score and five years of age. Breathing hard, shivering harder, she braced herself a long moment and swallowed against the parched tissues lining her throat.

If only she had not subjected the wine to her fit of temper. But there was water.

Moved by a desperate fear that she would dry up and be of no use to Judas, she patted her way around the foot of the bed, took what she hoped would require only one step but required two to reach the long table against the wall, and groped for the wash basin. She nearly upended it, causing the water with which she had earlier set herself to rights to splash her hands.

Teeth chattering, she slid her fingers into the cold depths, scooped up a handful, and put her mouth to it. She did not taste the dross. She tasted blessed wet. And thrice more before she returned to the bed and eased down upon it.

She hurt—so deeply she longed to let fatigue drag her away from here. But the respite would be brief, and Judas would be no better for it. Thus, despite the seeming hopelessness of gaining God’s intervention, she would pray.

“If only there was one more worthy of seeking blessings for Judas,” she whispered.

But there was only the sinful Susanna de Balliol. Even at Cheverel, she had mostly been alone in praying for him, for Alan had refused the local priest admittance to the manor house following Judith’s death. From that time forward, spiritual guidance was found exclusively at the little church in the nearby village, and visits there were limited to the attendance of services in the presence of guests of high rank and those rare occasions when Alan was away from the demesne. For that, Susanna had come to rely upon personal prayer rather than the intercessory prayer of a priest. Though she believed God did attend to her prayers for Judas, ever she was aware they suffered from the taint of the one who spoke them. Hence, the disclaimer.

“Even if my sins are too great for You to bless me, Lord,” she prefaced the prayers yet to come, “I beseech You to bless Your beloved Judas.”

CHAPTER NINE

If not for the son who should have been yours as well, do it for me. Only ever me…

Everard set his mind against the voice he did not wish to hear any more than he wished to hear the answer that had come to him time and again in this place that wore out a man’s knees. But there she was again, so near he imagined it was not a draft near his ear but her sweet breath.

For me, Everard.

Having an hour past spared his body further abuse by abandoning the altar before which he had knelt, he sat forward on the bench against the side wall, pressed his elbows hard into his knees, and gripped his head in his hands.

Only ever me…

He opened his eyes, but the deep shadows in which he sat were nearly as conducive to memory as the dark behind his lids. Like shutters thrown wide, that day returned to him, more vivid in sight and scent, taste and touch, hearing and hope than he had allowed in eleven years.

“Judith,” he murmured.

She laughed, drew slightly back upon the bench they shared, and regarded him out of eyes as starry as the night sky. “
Beloved
Judith. If ’tis true what you feel, that is as you should call me, is it not?”

He smiled. “Beloved Judith.” He reached up, slipped a hand inside her veil, and drew forth a thick, blond tress. “I love your hair,” he said and slid his fingers through it.

Again, she laughed. “My hair? Yours is much finer, Everard Wulfrith. Indeed, ’tis what first caught my notice the day we met.”

“Aye?”

She made a face. “You know it, just as you know all the ladies long to do as I do, even dear Susanna.”

He frowned. “Susanna?” Though she bore the title of ‘lady’ and was only three years younger than Judith, she was younger yet in terms of maturity.

“Aye, ’tis clear she is besotted with you, though not as much as I.” She leaned near and pushed her fingers into his hair. “’Tis softer than my finest bliaut—so soft methinks I would like to wear it.”

Everard knew that already they trespassed one upon the other more than they should, but her touch and words stirred him, and it would be just a kiss. He angled his head and moved in until their lips nearly touched. “Tell me I may, beloved Judith.”

“You may,” she whispered, then it was she who came the last bit and touched her mouth to his.

He kissed her. Tasted and breathed her in.

“Promise me,” she said against his lips.

Everard opened his eyes and looked into hers. “Whatever you would have.”

Her fingers in his hair slid higher, gripped his scalp. “Promise your hair will only ever know my hands—no other’s.”

He chuckled. “And if I do?”

“I will go away with you.”

Then she would break her betrothal to Alan de Balliol? Chest feeling suddenly full, he said, “Only ever you, Judith,” and recaptured her mouth.

It was with great effort and the reminder that he had years and years to better know her kisses, that he finally pulled back.

When she made a mewl of disappointment, he drew her hands from his hair and kissed the left, then right—and sensed a presence that did not belong in this place with his beloved and him.

He swung his chin around. There, on the garden path, stood Alan de Balliol’s sister. Unmoving, leaning slightly forward as if she had suddenly arrested her advance. Color high in her round cheeks. Mouth and eyes wide as she looked between the two of them.

Judith sprang to her feet. “Susanna!”

The girl threw a hand up as if to ward them off, took a step backward, turned, and ran.

When she disappeared around a hedge, Judith looked up at Everard who had risen beside her. “She is my friend. She will not tell.”

“She is also his sister,” he said, “but regardless, it changes naught.”

Judith’s gaze wavered, and he tensed at her nod that seemed less than certain.

He lifted her chin. “Fear not. You are mine.”

“Alan—”

“Will soon be in your past. I give you my word.”

Her smile was tremulous. “You would do anything for me, Everard Wulfrith?”

“Anything, beloved Judith. You have but to ask.”

As that vow, made by a man little more than one score aged, resounded through the one who was now one score and thirteen, Everard felt the fight go out of him.

Dragging his hands down the sides of his shaved head and across his cheeks and jaws, he sat back.

Guessing it was near the hour when all of Wulfen Castle would rouse to start the day with mass that would be followed by pre-dawn training exercises, he settled his gaze upon the low-burning candles at the altar and turned his thoughts to Susanna de Balliol—she whose trespass that day in the garden had caused him to rigorously hone his senses so that never again could any steal upon him.

He sighed. As hard as it was to do what he knew he must, it was the right thing, and he ought to be grateful for the decision, for he was not—and did not ever wish to be—one who allowed emotions to overrule the knowledge of right and wrong. What was asked of him would open him wide, allowing the eyes of others to peer into those places he did not wish light to shine upon. But for Judith he would do it.

He stood, crossed the chapel, and exited. However, when he reached the chamber given to the woman he did not want at Wulfen, he found the door open and the torchlight from the corridor showed it was empty.

His alarm was only momentary, for he knew what it meant. As instructed on the night past, Sir Elias had made ready to depart before first light. If they had not gone already, they would soon. And he would have to ride after them.

Everard strode down the corridor and descended the stairs to the hall where the boys and young men were beginning to rise from their pallets.

“My lord!” Squire Joseph called.

Near the great doors, Everard turned. “Why was I not told our visitors had departed?”

The young man blinked. “I am sorry, my lord. When you said last eve that I should rise early to see them from their chambers, I understood it to mean you did not wish your morning prayers disturbed by their departure.”

He had understood right. “When did they leave?”

“But minutes ago, my lord.”