The Marsh King's Daughter (14 page)

For a moment he was flooded with relief, but that rapidly turned to suspicion. Everything looked all right on the surface, but it wasn't. Some of the pouches were missing - a substantial minority in fact. And when he checked the ivory box, it was bare.

He sat back on his heels, his breathing ragged and rage cording the sinews of his throat. 'Bitch,' he said through his teeth. 'Conniving, thieving bitch!' The outrage cut like a sword. She had robbed him whilst he lay helpless. She had betrayed the trust that he had not given lightly. He slammed his fist against the side of the chest, further abusing his knuckles. He should have known from the moment she set her eyes and hands on that crown. It had been lust at first sight.

'Sir?' Baldwin said from the archway.

Nicholas threw the blanket over the coffer and spun round. 'Have your lad saddle my horse,' he commanded.

'If there's a dispute between you and the lady, she's got a long start over you.' Baldwin eyed him shrewdly. 'The best road south is out by St Mary's Gate and over the river at Briggford.'

Nicholas nodded stiffly. His heart still thundered in his throat but the full flood of his rage had reduced to a steady trickle of anger. He told himself that when he caught up with her he was going to wring her neck, but the image that filled his mind as he made swift preparations to leave was not of his hands at her throat, but around her waist, and all his energy was expended in kissing her lying, sultry mouth.

Miriel left Nottingham by the south road and made sure that she spoke to the gate guard so that he would remember her. Then she rode around the town walls until she came to the entrance at Cow Lane. Dismounting, she persuaded a farmer heading into the town to take her on his cart, saying that her mount had strained a foreleg. Now her tracks were covered if Nicholas pursued her. The guard on St Mary's Gate had seen her leave. His counterpart at Cow Lane, if questioned, would not associate the woman riding on the cart, a horse tied behind, with the one who was sought.

The subterfuge gave Miriel a certain pleasure, mainly from the exercising of her wits, although her delight in her own cleverness was marred by an element of guilt. She knew that she was not being fair to Nicholas, but then life had never been fair to her. Her grandfather had been right when he said that to succeed you had to be ruthless.

Her next step was to find lodgings. Once the farmer had deposited her in the market place, she sold the horse to a hiring stables and began asking around. Her enquiries harvested three possibilities, two of which proved untenable, being in poorer parts of the town where families were renting sleeping place on their floors to eke out meagre incomes. The third option was close to a bridlesmith's shop on the high ground at the far end of Cow Lane. Although a modest dwelling, it was in good repair and well appointed.

'Belongs to Master Gerbert Woolman,' said the bridlesmith's wife as she unlocked the heavy oak door and showed Miriel the main room with its central hearth, shelves on the wall, and wooden bread cupboard. 'He's our neighbour and we keep the key. He'd likely show you round himself but he's away at a cloth fair. He lives up the hill near the Weekday market.' She gestured with her hand.

Miriel nodded and paced around the room, noting the burnished cauldron suspended over the hearth, and the kindling laid ready together with a hod of dry timber. There were candles in the holders and the walls of wattle and daub gleamed with new lime-wash, of which there was a strong aroma. The place was not as fine as her grandfather's dwelling in Lincoln, but it was better than she had hoped to find at such short notice.

'Belonged to Master Gerbert's brother,' Mistress Bridlesmith said. 'He died a childless widower at Michaelmas, God rest his soul.' She crossed herself.

Miriel respectfully signed her own breast. The house bore no essence of the former occupant's personality. There were no inexplicable cold spots in the room as there had been in the house at Lincoln after her grandfather had died.

'This will suit me admirably,' she said.

'Master Gerbert will talk to you about the rent himself, but I can tell you that he will expect three months' payment in advance.' The woman's tone was dubious as she looked Miriel up and down.

Miriel shrugged. 'I can pay.' She plucked disdainfully at the coarse grey weave of her skirt. 'I wear this simple garb to deter thieves. They do not think it worth their bother to rob a poor widow.'

Mistress Bridlesmith nodded approval of this sensible precaution, but still her expression was wary. 'Forgive me,' she said. 'Are you not a little young to be a widow?'

Miriel felt an uncomfortable jolt of anxiety. Once started on the slippery slope to falsehood, the lies gathered in number and momentum until it was impossible to stop. Perhaps inserting a grain of truth into the fabrication would slow the headlong rush and make her feel less guilty 'Indeed I am too young.' She dabbed at her eyes for effect. 'My husband was one of the soldiers who lost his life when King John's baggage train was drowned in the quicksand.' She sniffed and turned away, but not before she had seen the woman catch her breath and cup her palm to her mouth.

'I don't like to talk about it,' Miriel whispered. 'We had only been married a few weeks.' The thought of Nicholas lying on his pallet in vulnerable sleep did indeed bring a tear to her eye.

'Oh my dear, of course not. I am so sorry for your loss!'

Miriel shook her head as if accepting the comfort but lost for words. Inside, she was full of self-disgust at deceiving this good woman.

'Have you no family to succour you?'

'No,' Miriel said in a waterlogged voice. 'Leastways, none with whom I could live in amity, and my husband had no living kin.' She sat down on the bed bench at the side of the room and averted her head. 'I am very tired. Perhaps if I paid you the rent, I could stay here now?' She hoped that the woman would take the hint with the money and go.

Mistress Bridlesmith, however, had other ideas. Her gossipy, maternal heart was filled with compassion for Miriel's plight, and she insisted that Miriel should come home with her to a warm fire and hot food. Miriel could hardly refuse without seeming graceless, and she needed Mistress Bridlesmith's good opinion to secure her tenancy of the house. Putting on her bravest face, she followed the woman across the narrow street and into another abode similar but larger than the one she was intending to rent. The room was filled with the cosy, warm fug of smoke and human occupation. The bridlesmith and his eldest son were busy in his workshop at the back of the house, but Miriel met the other seven grown and half-grown children that the business supported.

With great pride and tenderness, Mistress Bridlesmith introduced her offspring to Miriel. Their names went in one ear and out of the other, but the children themselves left a lasting impression, not least that there were seven of them and an eighth elsewhere. Although women bore babies in prolific numbers, it was not often that they survived infancy, or their mother the frequent strain of childbirth. The youngest was a toddler still in tail clouts, the eldest an adolescent girl with silky black hair and bright, dark eyes. But what struck

Miriel the hardest was the noisy companionship, the sense of belonging and the value that each member of the family set upon the other. Even when her grandfather had been alive there had been no such atmosphere of comfort or security in their superior stone house in Lincoln. There had been cold pride and duty, dark looks and disapproval. Miriel did not have to pretend her teariness as she was furnished with a cup of mead and offered small, spicy pancakes off the griddle.

Fortunately she did not have to say much, for the Bridlesmith family did all the talking. It would have been beyond her for the nonce to flesh out the bones of her invented past life. Her silence, her game attempts to smile, were seen by Mistress Bridlesmith as evidence of Miriel's grief over losing her husband and, feeling sorry for the young woman, she plied her with more kindness than ever.

To Miriel it was unbearable. 'Forgive me,' she swallowed. 'I must seem very ungrateful, but I need to be alone for a little while.'

'Not at all,' said the woman sympathetically. 'We're a bit much when we're all crowded together, aren't we?' Standing up, she reached for her cloak. 'Come, I'll take you back over. Master Gerbert won't mind you moving in before he's seen you about the rent. I trust you and that's enough for him.' She preened her wimple in a small gesture of pride. 'He says I'm the best judge of character he's ever known; I can spot falsehood a mile away.' She touched Miriel's rigid arm. 'Visit us again when you're feeling better.'

Miriel nodded, thinking that she would never feel better. Simmering in her breast, tightening with pressure, was the urge to scream into their innocent faces that they were being deceived, that she was on the run from a convent with a bag full of twice stolen coin and part of the royal regalia. But she bit her tongue and dammed the scream inside her.

'I know it's hard,' Mistress Bridlesmith said as she unlocked the door of the house and presented Miriel with the key. 'My sister lost her first husband when she was young. You don't think it now but, mark me, you'll recover. You'll marry again and raise a brood like mine!' She gave Miriel an impulsive hug. 'You know where we are if you have need.' Finally and mercifully she left her alone in the neat, cold room, bereft of all warmth and atmosphere.

Miriel flung herself down on the bed bench and burst into tears, pounding the wood, drumming her heels as the pressure released itself in a violent storm, made all the more debilitating because it had been gathering ever since her grandfather's death. She swore, she threshed, she cursed, until nothing remained but a husk - hollow, drained, exhausted. Her face ravaged and tear-streaked, Miriel curled into a ball and fell asleep.

As she slept, Nicholas rode past the neat little house on his bay cob, the mule on a leading rein behind. The young man's face was grim, and it too wore the ravages of recent days.

Miriel woke in the mid-afternoon with a pounding head and dry mouth. She sat on the edge of the bed bench, knuckling the sleep from her sore eyes and taking stock in the aftermath of the storm. She had a strong urge to curl up again and turn her back on the world but she fought it off. Such an attitude made a mockery of all her striving to be free. Life was what she made it; the onus was on her to seize her opportunities and live it to the full.

Leaving the bed, she went outside to the generous back yard with its central focus of a stone well-housing. Three apple trees tossed threadbare branches in the wind, and there was a small vegetable garden still invested with the leeks and cabbages of its former occupant. She drew a bucket of water and splashed her face. The cold made her gasp with shock, but it was revitalising. It was also a reminder of her daily ablutions at St Catherine's and made her realise with a twinge of guilt how fortunate she was.

Having tidied her appearance, Miriel donned her mantle, took the bolster bag, and went from her lodging up the hill to the market place near St Mary's Church. The market had stood in the same place since Saxon times and, despite the building of a castle on the other side of town and the establishment of a larger market square down the hill, still bustled with activity. Now, with dusk due in an hour, the stallholders were packing up their wares. Many had already departed, making a good start before the city gates shut for the night.

Miriel walked among the remaining booths and managed to buy the necessities of bread and cheese for her next meal, and a small crock of honey for breaking her fast on the morrow. From an apothecary, she obtained a pot of stavesacre ointment to rid herself of the body lice which had accompanied the grey gown to its new owner.

The haberdasher had almost finished stowing his wares, but the flash of coin persuaded him to unpack his braids so that Miriel could select two belt lengths and a pair of silver strap ends. She also bought needles, thread and shears.

The rag stall, run by a wizened little stick of a woman, was still open for business and, after some hard bargaining, Miriel obtained a woollen working gown in a becoming shade of warm russet.

'Good dress that,' the hag said, sucking on her few remaining teeth. 'Belonged to an alabaster merchant's wife, God rest her soul.'

Miriel shuddered. Another dead woman's garment. She could not wait until she had fine clothes of her own again.

'This un's not bad either.' The old woman pulled a gown of expensive dark blue-grey from the bottom of the pile. 'Got a cinder burn on the front, but you could patch it,' she added.