A Love For All Seasons (24 page)

Master Walter let his head sag against his bolsters. "Speak for me, Colin; my strength is gone."

Yet squatting at Rob's side, the apothecary did as his friend bid. "Knowing as he does that death is upon him and that Katel will not have you here, Master Walter has already arranged for you to go to Lynn, where you will be apprenticed to the grossiers' trade under Master Wymund."

Once again, shame ate at Rob as he glanced in guilty gratitude at his master. He should have trusted that Master Walter would not leave him homeless. So too, should he have understood the intent of the many questions the grossier had asked him when that man stopped in Stanrudde last month to bid a final farewell to an old friend.

"However, in the light of what is revealed this day there are conditions you must accept before he will send you into this new apprenticeship." Master Colin paused to lay a comforting hand upon Rob's shoulder as if he meant to soften what he would say. "The first is that you must leave within the hour, before Johanna returns. Johanna will be told that you were offered coins to leave her and that you accepted."

Horror tore through Rob. "Nay!" It was a raw-edge cry.

Tears filled his eyes as he reared up off the stool, stumbling away from the bed in outraged refusal. They would not only take Johanna from him, but her love, as well. "Is this what you call protection? Nay, I will not do it! What you ask will only hurt her."

"Rob, once more you think with your heart," Master Colin chided. He came to his feet and reached out, his gesture a plea for understanding. "She must marry Katel, and she cannot go into that estate mourning you. If she hates you, it will help to satisfy Katel's wounded pride when he discovers she is maiden no longer."

Although this would, indeed, put a layer of protection between Johanna and the man they'd have her wed, Rob yet shook his head in refusal. To bear Johanna's hate was worse than dying, worse even than betraying his master. "You cannot ask this of me. I love her."

"For the moment," Master Walter said, his voice thready and weak. "You are young. The memories will fade, and you'll soon find another to hold your heart."

Rob only shook his head. Master Walter was wrong. His love for Johanna, and hers for him, would last beyond this awful plot of theirs.

"Finish, Colin," the spice merchant urged, "I must soon sleep."

"The second is more warning than condition. Should you ever return to Stanrudde, thinking to tempt Johanna from her vows to Katel, all the protections that Master Walter has created to shield her from him will be removed. In doing this, Master Walter will encourage Katel to treat her as many men treat their adultering spouses. Against this same fate be you warned not to speak of what has occurred between you and her."

Whatever resistance remained in Rob now drained from him. He stared at his master in utter defeat. "You are saying that if I persist in claiming we are married, or make any attempt to change the way you would have matters, you will allow Katel to abuse her. Even kill her?"

"My daughter has betrayed me just as you have," Johanna's father returned, although there was only sadness in his voice. "In doing so, she forfeits my protection. It is my love for her that causes me to extend it to her yet again. If she betrays her husband, thus me, a second time then she must bear the consequences of her actions."

Hurt seethed in Rob as these conditions wrapped themselves around him, demanding he do as they say in order to protect Johanna.

"What choice have I?" he asked flatly.

"No more than I," his master replied with equal resignation.

As the girl and life he so loved slipped from him, Rob reached out to hold one piece of it close. "Arthur must come with me," he said. "Katel has no more fondness for him than he does for me."

Walter gave an approving nod. "I thought you would not be separated. Wymund has already agreed to take him. Arthur will join you once he has returned from his travels."

The spice merchant drew a deep breath; the blankets barely rose with the motion. "Now, come and bid me your last farewell. Ach, lad, but I am going to miss you."

The hurt his master did him urged Rob to deny this request. But, where his heart might ache, logic would not let him shirk responsibility for what he'd done. In the end, Rob knelt at the bed's side.

The dying man reached out to draw a bony hand along his apprentice's cheek. It was a brief but gentle caress. As his arm fell back to the bed, the corners of Master Walter's mouth lifted. "Do you know how often I have wished you were mine own son?"

It was a statement of love. It was a statement of forgiveness. It was more than Rob could bear. Despite the horrible wrong he'd done, his master loved him still.

Fisting his hands into the blankets, he buried his face into the bedclothes. He lay there, beyond tears or protest, and prayed that he might die. Hell would be easier to survive than this.

Master Walter threaded his fingers into Rob's hair, his touch a father's caress. "Remember always that I will be watching from heaven. Make me proud. Succeed, reaching the heights that I know you can."

Tears filled Rob's eyes. He raised his head and caught his master's hand to press the skeletal fingers to his lips. "Forgive me," he begged, tears scorching his cheeks as they fell. "I am so sorry. Pray God, you forgive me," he whispered.

"You know I already have," Master Walter replied, his heart's own moisture puddling in the deep hollows beneath his eyes. "Colin, go with him as he gathers his belongings. He can leave no sign for Johanna that might explain what happened here."

Although Mistress Alwyna offered a man to escort her home, Johanna refused. The fewer who knew who she was and where she'd been, the better chance she and Rob had of holding onto their lives. Thus it was alone and unprotected that she left the cart at the church only a few lanes distant from her father's home. Memories of her attack the previous day set her fancy to conjuring up ruffians in every shadow. With fear nipping at her heels she pulled her cowl low over her brow and hurried around the corner.

This night was just as dry and clear as the preceding day, the air so frigid it stung at her nose. Having risen hours ago, the moon already hung high overhead, a nearly complete silver disk adrift in a milky sea of stars. Beyond a dog's distant bark, there was no sound; darkness had only deepened the unnatural quiet that held Stanrudde in its grip.

Something moved, rustling at the side of the lane. Johanna shot a nervous glance toward the sound then caught her breath. Fear forgotten, she stopped to stare. This was Katel's handiwork, done without care or concern for whom he hurt.

The moon's unearthly light poured into the front of a ruined shop, rendering plastered walls the pallid hue of a dead man's complexion. Like a sightless eye in a ravaged face, splintered shutters hung from a torn wall, no longer shielding the workshop's interior from the street.

Anger rose in her. He deserved to have his evil exposed to the world for such cruelty. The moment she thought this outrage dimmed into a mother's worry for her child.

If the world might shun her because she was tied to a thief, it would do far worse to her Peter once folk learned of his father's evil. Everyone would say her son's blood was tainted. How could she expose Katel, knowing it would hurt her son?

In the next moment her eyes narrowed in scorn at herself. What a fool she was. They'd say the same of Peter were his dam to be hanged for adultery and grain speculation. Thoughts of the future were better left for later, after she'd done what she had to do.

There was another rustling, this time from behind her. A man's voice, barely louder than a whisper, carried in the still air. Johanna's heart took flight, spurring her legs to do the same and she sprinted down the lane.

Since she had no desire to go blindly into another confrontation with Katel, she avoided the gate. Far better that she first probed the servants, divining what she could of his temper and his plans. To hide her reentry, it was to the apothecary's shop she went, once more pushing past his bushes to trespass through that man's private yard.

Passing the distillery's hearth, she rounded the kitchen's corner. Light escaped from under the cooking chamber's door. With it came the muffled sounds of work being done. Wymar had reclaimed his domain.

Johanna reached for the latch. Wymar would also know what was what in the house; he always did. A jumble of smells greeted her as she opened the door, the eclectic mix somehow managing to work itself into a delicious whole. As Philip before him, it was ofttimes Wymar's skill that tempted men to part with coins for the goods Stanrudde's spice merchant sold. Her stomach rumbled in reaction to the aroma, reminding her she'd had only a bit of cheese and meat over the course of the day.

Pulling the door shut behind her, Johanna glanced around the small chamber. If most of the food stocks were still missing, the kitchen tools once again hung upon the walls, the pots and platters in their places. Small lamps sat in each corner of the table, no more than bowls filled with rendered fat in which a bit of burning wick floated. Still, their oily brightness added to the fire's cheery light, making it possible for Wymar to labor in these dark hours.

The cook stood at the table, a sieve, through which he'd been forcing meat and vegetables to create a sauce, dangling from his hand. Already a big man, a taste for his own dishes had made him bigger still, until it was a nine-month babe he looked to carry in his belly. His pale hair clinging to a steam-dampened forehead, he stared at her until she threw back her hood.

Relief woke in his blue eyes, followed by a welcoming smile. "Mistress! I did not hear the gate bell ring. Where have you been? We could hardly believe it when we returned to the kitchen to find you'd disappeared."

His cry brought his two young scullery lads, Elyas and Rauf, upright on their pallets. Together, they split no more than a baker's dozen worth of years between them. Their faces glowed in the fire's light, the grime that usually covered them washed back to a fine line at the edges of their cheeks. Having already retired for the night, their scrawny chests were bare beneath their mantles-turned-blankets, their shirts and tunics folded neatly aside for the morrow.

"I have been praying," Johanna lied with ease then smiled to cover the coming falsehood. "You are working too hard if you missed that bell. I was so hungry I came here first without thinking to ask. Do you know if Master Katel is home this even?" She came forward to lean against his table's edge.

Wymar's pleased expression soured. "Aye, mistress. Or, rather, he was when I was last within."

Years of experience translated both his words and expression for Johanna. "Ale or wine?" she asked. Ale made Katel mean, wine made him sleep.

"Wine, mistress."

Johanna hid her sigh of relief. Katel would sleep then. Now, if only luck held, she might begin her prying this very moment. She hesitated, uncertain how to broach the subject of Theobald to the cook.

"Hungry, are you?" Wymar asked.

Letting his sieve fall into the pot, he turned to cut a slice from the only ham hanging above the fire. This he set on the table, then took the smallest of his mixing bowls and ladled broth into it from the three-footed pot that stood amid the coals. When he was done he placed both meat and bowl before her on the table. "Eat and enjoy, adding to your prayers the hope for better next year."

Johanna gratefully lifted the bowl to her lips. The rich aroma of the clear soup filled her senses and she didn't set it aside until she'd drunk the last of it. Picking up the slice of ham, she took a bite, yet trying to devise some clever way of asking over her husband's agent. There wasn't one. At last, she simply spewed the question.

"What of Theobald?"

So unexpected an inquiry brought Wymar's brows up high onto his forehead. "Well now, if it wasn't his departure that brought me back into the kitchen in the first place. I had to fix oatcakes for his packet. He and two others left here on the master's business. They'll not be back before the morrow, if that's what you're asking."

Johanna smiled. This was a gift, indeed. She now owned both the time and freedom to search the house.

Wymar turned back to his sieve and sauce. "I'll tell you, I am more than thankful to be returning to my own hearth," he said in amiable conversation. "Cooking over that inner one is no easy feat. The hood ever gets in your way."

"So you are back in here to stay, are you?" However casual her probe, her need to hear the answer was urgent indeed. Katel had once protected his own stores against the riot he meant to foment. If he'd given Wymar permission to return, it meant he planned no further unrest, and Rob was safe, at least, for the moment.

"Aye, thanks be! Those lads'll be toting the rest of my supplies back here come the morrow. The master says that with that foreigner in custody, the threat of violence is gone. I only pray they hang him so we might return to living as best we can in these troubled times." The cook's voice descended into spite, which was the closest to vicious he ever came.

Confidence soared in Johanna. This was perfect! Content that Rob was trapped and his wife was ignorant, Katel had celebrated by drinking himself to sleep while Theobald was gone.

Johanna turned to leave, eager to begin her search. The upended bathing tub stood just beyond the door's frame, tipped against the wall so it would dry. All of her gratitude over this morn's kindness returned. This was followed by shame at not having offered Wymar his due when she first stepped past the doorway. She turned back to him to right her wrong.

"Wymar, I think it is to you that I owe a thousand thanks for this morn and its many gifts."

The cook's gentle smile returned. "Do not give them all to me, as there's plenty of places to spread them. Why, if it weren't for young Elyas, over there, you'd have had naught to wear. That's the clever lad who found you those gowns, such as they are."

"Was it you, then?"

When he shyly nodded, she smiled at him. "You are a miracle worker, child. I'd have sworn there wasn't a single garment in the house that would fit me. Wherever did you find them?"

"They were in the green chest, the one where we keep the ewers," he said, his face solemn as he let this astonishing fact fall from his lips.

He'd found them in one of her dowry chests? Johanna stared at him in disbelief. "You must be mistaken," she said in automatic rejection of something so impossible.

"Now lad," Wymar chided, "what sort of tale is this to be telling the mistress? You know the only things kept in those chests are serving pieces and table linens. My pardon, mistress, but he has a way of making the everyday into something a wee more dramatic."

Elyas's face took on the indignant expression common to all children whose elders refuse to believe what they know is the truth. "It is no tale! The chest is where I found them. I knew they were there because I saw the master put them there."

"What?" The words left Johanna in a soft breath of amazement. Katel had put these gowns into one of her dowry chests? Her misgivings about Elyas's claim dissolved in new interest. "When did you see the master do this?" her certainty that this had to do with Katel's plot making her voice sharp.

At this seeming rebuke, the lad's confidence dissolved into a start of guilt. His lips trembled. Tears came to cling to his thick fringe of eyelashes.

"It was before Christmastide and I did not mean to spy on the master," he wailed. "Rauf had taken the last platter, and I was supposed to tell the maids it was time to remove the table cloths, but the master's cat went beneath the table. I only meant to play with him for a moment."

Johanna crossed the room and knelt beside his pallet to stroke his cheek. "Do not cry, mannikin," she bid him. "I am not scolding, and you've done no wrong. Can you tell me exactly what it was you saw the master do?"

Still sniffling, the boy looked up at her, his eyes widening in fear as if he wasn't certain he should reveal what he knew. Johanna ran her fingers through his mussed hair in a soothing caress. His face relaxed enough to let his mouth move.

"The master came into the hall with Theobald. They thought the room was empty, not knowing I was under the table. Theobald emptied the green chest, and the master looked at the gowns, saying he was certain they'd fit you. After that, they put the garments in the chest then put it all back on top of them. So, when Wymar said there was nothing to fit you in all the house, I remembered—"

Tears slipped down Elyas's cheeks. He wiped them away with the back of his hand. "I shouldn't have watched, but I was afraid to tell them I was there."

"How can this be?" Wymar protested, coming to stand at the end of this lad's pallet. The way he set his hands onto the roll of fat that served for his hips said he yet doubted the boy's truthfulness. "If the gowns had been there, someone would have seen them."

"If no one did, then I think me I should have a look and see why not," Johanna said, working to keep the excitement from her voice.

How strange, nay how fitting, it would be were Katel's exposure to come because a lad sought to do her a kindness. "Elyas, would you dress and come with me? I'd have you show me exactly where you found these."

The boy glanced to his direct superior. At Wymar's irritated nod, he reached out for his stack of clothing. "I have to come right back," he warned his mistress as he pulled on his shirt, "else I'll be too tired to work on the morrow."