The Marsh King's Daughter (15 page)

The garment was in the fitted style with the flared skirts and hanging sleeves favoured by wealthy women who had servants to do all the fire-tending and cooking. Not practical, but good for making an impression.

'Is the previous owner dead too?' Miriel asked, pulling a face.

The woman snorted with amused contempt. 'Nay, mistress. If you're finicky about such matters, you can rest easy wi' this un. Belonged to the sheriff's wife, but she had no use for it once it got burned. Gave it to her maid but she had no use for it neither - you can't stir a cauldron wi' sleeves like that, so she sold it on to me.'

'How much do you want?' The woman named an incredible sum. With the instinct that her grandfather had laughed at and nurtured, Miriel settled down with pleasure to bargain.

A little later, flushed with victory, gowns both blue and russet over her arm, Miriel sought among the rapidly diminishing stalls for a draper. When she found one, he was almost ready to leave, but she smiled and fluttered her eyelashes, persuading him to unpack his linens so that she could buy enough for two undergowns, and finally a length of fine grey wool with a fir-green thread running through it for an overdress. Her eye lingered wistfully on a bolt of soft plum-red, a colour almost identical to her favourite gown in Lincoln, but she curtailed the impulse to buy. She was a widow, and for the nonce must make do with sombre robes and colours.

As the sky darkened and an evening chill stole up from the river, Miriel made her short way home. The smells of cooking fires and candle-light filled her nose. She was part of a steady stream of people turning hearthwards, and it gave her a warm feeling of sharing, of not being entirely alone.

Once inside the small house, she set about lighting the fire and tipping water into the cauldron. Humming to herself, she lit the candles in the iron holders. While waiting for the water to heat, she ate the cheese and half the bread and sorted through her purchases. The russet dress would do for everyday wear, the blue-grey for more formal occasions. Miriel was deft with a needle and the cinder burn could easily be darned. The linen undertunics would not take long to fashion and she could employ a sempstress to make her a handsome gown from the grey and green.

With a small sigh she looked round the bare little room, devoid of all the trappings that had once made it a home. There was not the slightest echo of the former occupant unless it lingered in the neatness and order that spoke of the bare bones of a bachelor existence without the clutter of a large family. She smiled bleakly at the thought. All that had changed were the gender and age of the tenant. Then she shook her head. On the morrow she would buy a mattress for the bed bench and a colourful blanket. She would put hangings on the walls and buy green-glazed pottery for the shelf and the house would be a home, not a monastic cell.

Now came the moment she had been savouring. Miriel drew the bolster case into her lap and with tender reverence took the crown from its purple shroud. The gold reflected the fire glow and the gemstones danced with dark light, offsetting the sea-shimmer of the pearls. Miriel was tempted to set the crown on her head, but a shiver of superstition prevented her. Only a queen had the right, and only then by the grace of God. But it was still a symbol of the power a woman had once wielded and it fascinated her.

The cloud of steam rising from the cauldron fetched her out of her reverie. With great care she replaced the crown in its silk shrouding, put it in the bolster, and concealed it beneath the two dresses. Then she set about her ablutions. The hated grey gown was tossed in a corner. For a moment she considered burning the thing, but decided to give it the benefit of the doubt first by pummelling it in scalding water laced with stavesacre ointment. At the worst, the dress would shrink, but since it hung on her like a bed curtain, that would be no bad result.

When she was naked, Miriel took her new shears, and cut a square from the length of linen she had bought. She shuddered to see the rash of louse bites all over her body, with roseate congregations in her armpits and groin. Dipping the cloth in the water which by now was almost too hot to bear, she began to scour herself.

Beneath the vigorous motion of her hand, her body turned from gooseflesh white to rosy pink. At the back of her mind dwelt the notion that she was shedding her old lives with her old skin and taking on a new identity where she would make the rules. She scrubbed the crevices of her groin, her fingers touching without thought or modesty the place that the nuns said was sinful, equated with the mouth of hell in the view of many priests. The place tingled and her belly tightened, but she did not linger to explore the sensation. Despite the fire, the room was still cold from weeks without occupation and she had yet to wash the stubble on her scalp that passed for hair.

Her head was deep in the well bucket and her ears were full of the sound of her own breathing and the rasp of her fingers against her soapy scalp, so she did not hear the soft tap on the door, nor a moment later a key turning in the oiled lock.

An elderly man took one step over the threshold, then stopped and stared, his eyes almost bulging from their sockets and the veins swelling in his throat at the sight of the young woman's slender, naked body, her breasts wobbling as she massaged her scalp. Runnels of water streaked towards her erect pink nipples and dripped off the end. Against his thigh, his manhood stirred in a response that he had almost forgotten. 'Jesu,' he said hoarsely, not knowing whether to advance or retreat.

Alerted by the sudden gust of cold air on her body, Miriel raised her head to peer through stinging, half-closed eyes, and leaped to her feet, screaming.

'No, mistress, no!' Hastily he closed the door and fanned his hands in a gesture of negation. 'Pray do not fear. I am Master Gerbert Woolman, your landlord. Mistress Bridlesmith told me about you, and I did but stop by to introduce myself. I did not think that you would be . . . would be . . .' He gestured and swallowed, his complexion a dusky crab-red.

Gulping with shock, teeth chattering, Miriel snatched up the length of linen and wrapped it around her nakedness. 'Why didn't you knock?' she demanded in a voice half strangled with fear and fury. She cast about for a weapon and with her free hand grasped and brandished the candlestand. The flame streamed back at her in a soot-edged ribbon of heat.

'I did, mistress, I swear I did. You must have heard me.' He was breathing as swiftly as Miriel, his white beard shuddering with the hard pulse that beat in his throat. She judged him to be about sixty years old with the complacent paunch of good living girding his belt and filling out a tunic of very expensive bright blue wool. 'I pray you, put that candlestand down. I mean you no harm.'

Miriel kept a firm grip on the wrought iron. Terror had given way to outrage, but the word 'landlord' prevented her from attacking him with it. 'Do you want your rent now?' she enquired with icy civility, her fist clenching in the folds of material across her breasts.

He swallowed and, shaking his head, backed towards the door. 'No, no, the morrow will suffice. Indeed, I am deeply sorry to have disturbed you thus, mistress.'

Miriel said nothing, maintaining her rigid pose until he closed the door behind him and turned the key in the lock. Only then, shivering with cold and shock, did she return the candlestand to its niche and collapse on the bed bench. He was the owner of this house and it was obvious that he would have a second key, but until now she had not considered the fact. He could come and go at his will and that violated her sense of security. He might be old, but that did not mean he was harmless. Slowly, hands trembling, Miriel dried herself and resolved that on the morrow she would have a bar fitted across the door so that he would not surprise her again.

Arriving home, Gerbert Woolman closed his own door and leaned against it panting, while his heart ran wild and threatened to leap out of his body. He shouldn't have walked so briskly up the rest of the hill, he shouldn't have let his thoughts shake him so much; it wasn't good for a man of his years. But his mind's eye would not relinquish the image of the woman's slim, naked form, the water streaming down her breasts, nor the vision of her facing him in outrage, draped like a pagan goddess, her features sculpted and pure.

Gerbert pressed his hand to his pattering chest and lurched across to the oak sideboard where his servant Samuel had left out a pitcher of wine and a gilt goblet. With trembling hand, Gerbert poured himself a measure and gulped it down without time to savour the bouquet and rich, red taste.

When Eva Bridlesmith had told him that there was a new tenant in his brother's house, a young widow, he had not been prepared for how young, how nubile. Her flesh was as taut as a virgin's; she had never borne or suckled a child, he would wager on that. His wife, dead these past five years, had been a buxom armful at their marriage, but as the years of child-bearing took their toll, her body had become as slack and shapeless as a sack of cabbages. He had not loved her in the sense that the troubadour's sang of love, but it had been a lifetime bond of companionship and toil, and he missed her. He missed the feminine presence in his household, the little touches that went overlooked by Samuel, no matter how diligent and well meaning the servant was.

The wine coursed through his veins, warming and soothing. Gerbert began to feel a little better and eased himself down in the carved chair beside his hearth. Rubbing his aching knees, he wondered why her hair had been shorn - perhaps a sign of grief at her husband's passing. He had known women do that before. Whatever the reason, it had given her an air of gamine vulnerability that had touched his heart and quickened his loins.

He did not have to touch his crotch to know that he was flaccid now, but still a spark of potential remained, waiting to be kindled anew. He wanted to know more about 'Mistress Miriel'. Where had she come from? How was she going to support herself now that her soldier husband was dead? As her landlord, he had a right to know and every opportunity to find out. Gerbert flicked his finger against the side of the goblet and listened to the satisfying ring of the metal. On the morrow he would take her a gift of wine and an apology. That much decided to his satisfaction, he relaxed in his chair and his head began to nod.

Gradually Miriel settled into her new life in Nottingham. She bought her wall hangings and green-glazed pottery, her mattress and a blanket striped in red and green napped wool. She had a carpenter fit a stout draw-bar on the inside of her door so that never again would she be surprised in the manner of that first evening. When she was sure of her privacy, she dug a hole in the corner of the main room, and in a plain, wooden casket, buried six bags of the silver and Mathilda's crown. Then she stamped down the earth, covered the place with floor straw, and stood her new clothing coffer on top.

The autumn season advanced and darkened into winter. It was a time to embrace the hearth, to hibernate and wait out the twilit days and miserable weather. Despite the chill, the heavy rain and the noisome torrents running down the streets to make a stinking quagmire at the foot of St Peter's Gate, Miriel felt blessed. At least here she had the comfort of her own fire, a varied hot diet, and decent, warm garments. No one dragged her out of bed in the middle of the night. No one made her perch on a hard wooden bench in a freezing chapel to pray for hours on end. No one slashed her knuckles for tardiness. She could live as she pleased.

Although the memories of St Catherine's remained vivid, each day of freedom made them seem less real and more like a nightmare from which she had awoken. The idea of the experience being a nightmare was increased by occasional troubling dreams of Sister Euphemia chasing her across the marshland, the willow switch threatening in her fist. The chase went on for ever, and although Miriel was never caught, she had to run as fast as she could just to keep the distance between them. Sometimes Nicholas would surge up from a hole in the ground, his arms outspread to trap her. She would awaken with a scream of terror, her body streaming with sweat and her heart thundering as if she had indeed been running for her life.

During the day she seldom thought of St Catherine's, but she did wonder about Nicholas and how he would react if they ever came face to face again. She imagined the conversation, trying out different scenes and emotions, from killing rage to forgiveness and admiration. The former was the more likely she suspected, and therefore did not dwell on it very often. It was more pleasant to linger over imaginary but unlikely words of conciliation and praise.

Admiration was certainly not lacking from other quarters. Several bachelors in the neighbourhood had already paid their respects to the new young widow. Miriel kept them at bay with cool indifference and the declaration that she could not possibly consider entertaining male company with her reputation to consider and her beloved husband so recently in his grave.